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  ‘Jesus Christ, you’re tight as fuck,’ he would say.

  Eventually, there was no getting inside, and it began to hurt like hell whenever he tried. We did other things instead and that kept him happy for a while but he always returned to the subject, like a child picking at its scabby knee. Eventually he used the word frigid, which occasioned our one and only row. After an hour we kissed and made up and I went on my knees before him. He liked that, but Sister Mary Magdalene would have been appalled.

  Three days after this our boss rang me and said that Victor had had an accident on his bike. A car had hit him as he was turning into the road outside the call centre, after his night shift, and had knocked him flying. He was in hospital with a broken arm and collarbone, and concussion. His life was not in danger. As I put down the phone my eyes were blurry. I wanted to catch a taxi and speed across the city straight away to visit him, before realising I couldn’t possibly do this. His family would be there, and they had never met me. Neither of us had introduced the other to our parents, as if hedging our bets. We had been secret people. So I got up the next morning and ate my nut cluster cereal and went out to work as usual. To people who asked me how Victor was I said, sedated. All that week the feeling grew on me that I had in some way been responsible for the accident. I wondered what Victor had been thinking about as he turned into the road and into the path of that car. I suspected it might have been the word frigid. My intention had been to visit him after a few days but as the week progressed I felt heavier and heavier, as though the material of my body was being converted into some dangerous metal. I told myself he would blame me and not want to talk to me. I told myself I would be upset by the sight of him lying there with a bruised face and the arm of his pyjamas slit up to the armpit to make way for the plaster of Paris. By Friday I was convinced he would be better off without me and that same day I gave a week’s notice at the call centre. Nobody paid much attention; their staff-turnover was high. I went on the dole for a while until I got another job in another call centre. I sent Victor a letter telling him I’d seen him in the hospital while he was unconscious and that it had made me think I wasn’t any good for him. I wished him a speedy recovery. On my birthday, which was two months later, he sent me a card. On the front of the card it said, ‘I asked my psychiatrist what I should get you for your birthday, and he said…’ and when you opened it, it said, ‘an appointment!!’ All he’d written was, from Victor.

  I freely admit it, I suffer from what might be described as a failure of feeling. All my life, at significant moments, I have done the wrong thing, emotionally. Like when I was fifteen and my grandmother was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. I had always been very fond of my grandmother but after I heard what was wrong with her I started to behave as though she was already dead. When I looked at her, propped up on her pillows, her soup spoon wavering because she was almost too weak to hold it up to her mouth, I felt like asking her why she was even bothering to eat, why didn’t she lie down then and there and get it over with. She asked my mother what was the matter with me, why was I being cold, when the truth was that I was looking past her, past the six months that the doctors had given her. I saw her reduced to an abstract figure, like those chalk outlines the police draw on the ground around a corpse. She was just someone who would disappear from the face of the earth in six months time. It was as if she had never been my grandmother. We were an unfailingly polite family, however. My grandmother never mentioned the fact that she was dying and no one else mentioned it to her. And, after eleven months – her heart was unexpectedly strong – she did die. Strangely enough, I’ve never been able to drink soup in public since without getting a dreadful case of the shakes. I usually order a solid starter.

  A psychiatrist would undoubtedly put a fancy term, like depersonalisation, on this behaviour of mine.

  I call it facing facts.

  When I looked past my grandmother, past the doctors’ conservative estimate of her suddenly reduced life expectancy, I saw clearly what was behind her, and it was nothing. Not nothing as I had known it before, like an expected letter that failed to arrive, or a feeling of boredom, or the absence of noise on the top of a mountain. This nothing was like an enormous grey insect that sucked all of my grandmother’s past out of her and left the rest lying there like the dry skin of an orange. It didn’t matter that she’d loved her mother or been married at nineteen and had six babies.

  It didn’t matter that I was her granddaughter.

  I didn’t matter.

  Come to think of it, the death of my amour propre can be traced to that moment. It was like a religious conversion. I looked out at the world through different eyes. It was as if a little grime had been cleaned from the windscreen, but the view outside was terrible. It made things like sex and depilation seem completely pointless.

  So I watch other women who buy lingerie and have facials and drench themselves in expensive scent, or men who have back, sack and crack waxes, and think compulsively of the phrase ‘fiddling while Rome burns.’ I confess my lack of amour propre even makes me feel a little superior sometimes, if that isn’t too much of a contradiction.

  EITHNE MCGUINNESS

  Feather Bed

  I thought they’d put me in a little room on my own and when they didn’t I was glad. Sister Róisin liked me; said I was a great girl for not making a fuss. I didn’t talk to myself, or snore, or wake up screaming in the night. At home, making a fuss led to a beating. To being told to get the wooden spoon and to pull down my knickers.

  ‘This instant, if you please.’

  My bare bottom felt huge in our little kitchen. The weight of my dress pressed onto my back and shoulders. My socks bit the soft skin behind my knees. Knickers floppy and disgraceful around my ankles. The blue wooden chair that Daddy painted to match the cupboard was cold and smooth against my belly. The relief when she finally hit me; sharp red pain. We both wanted to get it over quickly before someone – Daddy – walked in. It was our secret. When Daddy was around we pretended to be pure.

  I never cried, I’d pull up my pants and climb the stairs. Then I’d twist myself in two in front of the bedroom mirror to count the moon-shaped stains the wooden spoon had left behind. She was always sorry later; she’d stroke my head and tell me she loved me. I didn’t believe her. Even if she did, it didn’t change anything; the whizzing in my head or the thumping under my vest.

  ‘I love you more than anything in the world, why do you have to be so bold? Is there something wrong with you? Something you want to tell your mammy?’

  I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I just liked fighting with her and making her wild. It was better than sitting there looking at her painting her mouth red. Better than being left alone in the afternoons when she went ‘out’. Better than watching her slide into Mr Naidoo’s green Mercedes and having to stay beside the phone when the sun was shining, to tell my father she was gone to the shops if he rang. Much better than the dirty, sweaty smell of her when she came back all shiny.

  ‘Who got you a little present for being so good? Daddy doesn’t like you having too much chocolate, so this is just between you and me.’

  I stopped eating the chocolate, saved up eight Crunchies, four Lion bars and twenty Curly Wurlys but she wouldn’t stop going out. I was eleven years old.

  In the hospital, I listened to things and watched people from behind The Readers Digest. I read the joke pages and increased my word power. After a week Sister Róisin said maybe I should go home; I didn’t seem crazy at all. Next time she tucked me in, I explained all about the baby. She went very quiet. Then she kissed my hair.

  ‘The family,’ she said, ‘is a breeding ground for character and moral strength. Maybe we’ll hang on to you for another week or so, all the same.’

  The days were very long. We were only allowed watch telly in the evening but the radio played on and on. Mary in the next bed went mental if anyone talked while Gay Byrne was rabbitting. I told her my mother said he was a louser because
he talked down to people, but Mary started to cry so miserably, I let her be. She had a spark in her eyes listening to him; like he lit her up from the inside. Larry Gogan had no effect on her at all, though. She ignored me shouting out the answers to the ‘Just a Minute Quiz’ – even when I got them right. Larry sounded fair. He was disappointed if people got things wrong, not secretly laughing at them. Larry was the King of Pop; he chose the Top Thirty. I loved the songs he played, especially the ones with lots of verses, that told a story, like Bohemian Rhapsody and Ground Control to Major Tom.

  Angela had the window bed because she’d been there the longest. She was welcome to it. I got a headache trying to see the outside through those bars and the worst of it was, if I was near the window at all, I couldn’t stop looking. Seemed like there were magnets in those bars. Angela used to be a hairdresser, said she’d give me a whole new look, if only they’d lend us a scissors. One afternoon, I let her backcomb my hair and Meat Loaf came on the radio. Before I knew it, I was up on the bed, growling into the wide part of my hairbrush with Angela wrapped round my knees. She did the woman’s part, ‘And will you love me forever?’ Even Mary, who was so old she whistled her words, joined in. Banged out the beat with her wedding ring on the white metal frame of her bed.

  Dr O’Doherty stuck his neck around the door.

  ‘Down,’ he said, as if I was a dog. I just sang louder. He stepped into the room. Angela half-slid, half-rolled off my knees and snuck back into her corner. I kept going, though it was hard work without my backing singers: in fact, I think I went out of tune. O’Doherty looked angry; he came close, right up to my face. I kind of spat at him, I didn’t mean to, it was the song – you know the exciting bit about praying for the end of time. He told me to shut up in this low, filthy tone. Then I really did get upset – you don’t expect that outside of your own home.

  You can tell a lot from a person’s eyes, if you’re looking. Dr O’Doherty’s were glittery and boastful. They made me want to scratch them. I reached out and the shine went right off them. He swung for me. Quick as a flash, I jumped clear; his fist scooped the air. O’Doherty didn’t like me because I had my own psychiatrist, paid for by the V.H.I.

  ‘Her own con-sul-tant no less, nothing too good for her ladyship.’

  He went to grab me again so I kneed him in the balls. He folded like a wet paper bag. Mary laughed, a weak windy sound. Angela was scared; she started to pray, her mouth wobbling like the brown and orange fish in the dayroom tank. I hated that tank; stupid fish gawping at nothing, darting round and round in murky circles.

  O’Doherty was still crouched over. Everything was completely still. I heard Larry introduce the next number – Julia, by the Beatles. Julia is my mother’s name. I got into bed, pulled the clothes up to my chin. O’Doherty raised his head; his eyes were all watery, just like a baby getting ready to cry. That made me so sad I pulled the covers right over my head.

  He made the nurses do my dailies after that, prescribed an extra pill for me to take after breakfast. The first day I stored it under my tongue, Angela laughed when I showed her. I stuck it into a hole in the skirting board. The next day the nurse stood over me, I pretended to swallow. She poked around my mouth, rubbing the chalky lozenge against my tongue as she pulled it out. She rinsed her fingers in my water glass and handed me another tablet.

  ‘Down the red lane like a good girl.’

  Angela didn’t even look ashamed.

  ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘If you keep up your messing, you’ll get us all into trouble.’

  O’Doherty was extra nice to Angela from then on; brought her in some American magazines he said his wife had finished with, and a large bar of fruit and nut. If I spoke to him, he presented me with the crisp white square of his back. I missed him all the same, his Aqua Velva smell and the soft fingers on my elbow as he wrapped the blood pressure sleeve around my arm. The nurses’ hands were leathery from being in water. The extra pill made me sleepy but it didn’t stop me getting up.

  My favourite person was Marcella, the cook. She was fat and smelled of brown bread. I didn’t eat much but she didn’t mind. I explained that my brain only had the power to administer to a certain square inch ratio. If my body got any bigger, my brain would overload trying to control the extra area and I would lose my power.

  ‘Power to what?’

  ‘Exist.’ I told her.

  She nodded, ‘You know best.’

  You can see why I liked her; she was a very unusual person to find in a mental hospital, though it was more of a halfway house. It was called Cluain Mhuire, which meant something like the refuge of Mary. There was even a little church, but they didn’t let anyone from our ward go to mass in case we caused a disturbance. The optimum calorie intake to keep my vitals ticking over, without any unwanted expansion, was six hundred and fifty. I ate the porridge in the morning – no sugar, just milk. At lunchtime, I usually managed some grey looking meat and gravy, then a boiled egg with triangles of toast for tea.

  I had learnt the ‘calorific value’ of every food from my mother. She went to Unislim on Wednesdays and brought back lists of food with pastel-coloured headings. Yellow and green were good, pink was so-so and red, well you can imagine. On Tuesday evenings, I sat on her feet while she did her sit-ups. She looked like a worm who’d been poked in the middle – both ends wriggling. We walked backwards on our bottoms across the carpet and did scissors with our legs, but mostly she made me count. She said I was good at that. No matter how much she dieted, my mother could not reduce her bust. She held her wrists and jerked the skin back, making them jump with the fright. She said they were a curse, she was a slave to them and they’d be the undoing of her, if she let them.

  Marcella’s bust was huge; massive batch loaves under her apron. I asked her if she hated them. She said the Lord made her that way, well upholstered, her husband was mad about them, said it was like resting on a cloud.

  ‘How many people can say that?’

  ‘None.’ I said.

  I leaned up against them, just to see. She felt more like a feather bed to me. Still, I didn’t want big ones; Marcella was probably a slave to her husband’s desires. He’d always be at her, saying, ‘Give us another go on your cloud.’ I wasn’t going to be a slave to anything.

  I saw my psychiatrist on Wednesdays. His name was Dr David Walker. He was so polite and well-spoken I thought he might be a Protestant, but he never let on. Told me nothing. I asked him all sorts of questions during the inkblot and the word association tests, but he was a hard man to draw out. I made him laugh though, he said I was a tonic and that I’d be better off on stage than … long pause … ‘A loony bin,’ says I. That made him laugh more. He asked me what I thought about life and how I thought others saw me. I told him I didn’t think people were looking at me at all, that I didn’t want anyone looking at me and from now on I’d be keeping an eye out. I had to make things up to fill the hour. I told him I’d been shoplifting in town and that a dirty oul fella in a banjaxed hat followed me down a lane. He smiled and wagged his head at me, knowing well I’d been locked up since the previous Wednesday.

  ‘An overactive imagination,’ he said, ‘that’s all that’s wrong with you.’

  It was three weeks before Daddy came to visit. I recognised the shape of his head through the wavy glass in the hall door. I ran up and started rapping, ‘Daddy, Daddy it’s me.’

  ‘Hello love, hello.’ He sounded scared. Sister Róisin unlocked the door. Daddy looked like he’d had a slow puncture. In the dayroom he took my hand and rubbed it so absent-mindedly you’d think it was his own.

  ‘Nice place.’

  ‘Not so bad.’

  ‘I wanted to come earlier, but they said it was better to let you settle.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I missed you though.’

  ‘The doctor says I’m a tonic.’

  ‘And your mother, she misses you a lot.’

  He stood up and went over to the tank
. It seemed easier for him to talk to the fish.

  ‘Says to tell you she can’t wait to get you home, wanted to come herself, but she’s still not well … poor girl. Delicate, always was.’

  He was such an eejit, hadn’t a notion. If he’d seen her bump herself down the stairs, he’d see how delicate she was.

  It wouldn’t come out. She’d spent hours in the bath drinking mugs of gin and castor oil, sending me up and down for boiling water. Then she told me to put my Wellington boots on. She’d left them in the hall for the tinker lady, who called once a month for things for the babby. I hadn’t worn those boots since I was eight. My foot only went halfway in. She sat on the sitting room floor. I just stood there looking.

  ‘Do I have to tell you again? Do I?’

  I started to cry. She pinched the soft skin under my arm between her fingers.

  ‘Do it, or I swear you’ll be sorry.’

  I closed my eyes and kicked out hard, the wellie flew off, hit the mantelpiece, then landed on her head.

  ‘You needn’t think I can’t see through you. You’d like me to be ruined. Keep your precious Daddy all to yourself. Kick me. Do you hear? Kick me.’

  He wasn’t there the night it dropped out; it wasn’t his hand she squeezed till the knuckles were white as bone. Her head thrown back on the cistern, blue veins pounding around her eyes. The glare off the bare bulb in the outside toilet bouncing off the wiry grey hairs standing to attention on her head. I’d never noticed them before. It wasn’t him who had to flush.

  ‘I’m done for, give me a knock when it’s gone,’ she said, pushing home the bolt on the kitchen door.

  It wouldn’t go down. I poked it with the handle of the toilet brush. Each time I touched it, sour tea sprayed into my mouth, right up my nose. I thought I saw the shape of a hand, or maybe it was a foot. What if it was still alive? Squirming away from the pointy tip of the brush. It started leaking; tadpoles of blood stuck to the sides of the bowl. It took a long time and half a bottle of Harpic. Mammy opened the door as soon as I lifted my foot onto the step, I didn’t even have to knock.