Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Roddy Doyle
Praise
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Fiction
The Commitments
The Snapper
The Van
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
A Star Called Henry
Oh, Play That Thing
Paula Spencer
The Deportees
The Dead Republic
Non-Fiction
Rory & Ita
Plays
Brownbread
War
Guess Who’s Coming for the Dinner
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
No Messin’ With the Monkeys
For Children
The Giggler Treatment
Rover Saves Christmas
The Meanwhile Adventures
Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of nine acclaimed novels and Rory & Ita, a memoir of his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.
This is the heart-rending story of a woman struggling to reclaim her dignity after a violent, abusive marriage and a worsening drink problem. Paula Spencer recalls her contented childhood, the audacity she learned as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with Charlo and the marriage to him that left her powerless. Capturing both her vulnerability and her strength, Roddy Doyle gives Paula a voice that is real and unforgettable.
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO JACK
At the age of 37—
She realised she’d never ride —
Through Paris —
In a sports car —
With the warm wind in her hair —
Shel Silverstein, ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’
The author is grateful for permission to reprint lines from the following:
“Leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver © 1967 by Cherry Lane Music Inc., administered by Harmony Music Ltd, la Farm Place, London W8 7SX. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” by Jimmy Webb © 1968 by Island Music Ltd. Lyrics reproduced by kind permission of the publisher. “All Shook Up”, Words and Music by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley, © 1957 by Shalimar Music, Inc. all rights administered by Elvis Presley Music, Inc., New York, USA. International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved. “Brown Sugar” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards © 1971 by ABKCO Music Inc., New York, USA. Used by permission. International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved. “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” by Shel Silverstein © 1974 and 1980 Evil Eye Music Inc., USA. International Copyright Secured. All rights ‘reserved. Used by permission. “Knock Three Times”, Words and Music by Irwin Levine and Larry Russell Brown © 1971 by 212 Music Co/Forty West Music Corp, USA. Reproduced by permission of EMI Songs Ltd. “Take a Giant Step”, Words and Music by Carole King and Gerry Goffin © 1966 by Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc, USA, Reproduced by permission of Screen Gems-EMI Music Ltd, London WC2H OEA. “Everyday Housewife” by Charles Richard Cason © Full Keel Music Company o/b/o Windswept Pacific Entertainment Company, controlled in the UK and Eire by Windswept Pacific Music Limited. “Tupelo Honey” by Van Morrison © 1971 by Caledonia Soul Music Co. and WB Music Corp., USA. Warner Chappell Music Ltd, London W1Y 3FA. Reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd. “When you Wish Upon a Star”, Music by Leigh Harline, Words by Ned Washington © 1940 by Bourne Co., USA, Warner Chappell Music Ltd, London WIY 3FA. Reproduced by permission of international Music Publications Ltd. “There’s No Lights on the Christmas Tree, Mother” by Harvey/Condron and Talisman. Reproduced by permission.
Every effort has been made to obtain necessary permissions with reference to copyright material. The publishers apologise if inadvertently any sources remain unacknowledged.
‘He climbs into a woman’s skin so brilliantly that you have to pinch yourself to remember this was written by a man . . . Doyle triumphs in The Woman Who Walked Into Doors because he remembers what other male writers have forgotten – that his heroine is more than just a woman. Mainly, she is a human being.’
Sunday Express
‘Doyle closes Paula’s story with admirable delicacy, solving no problems and healing no wounds, but celebrating the wilful tenacity of a life.’
Scotsman
‘This is a wonder of a book, full of mercy, but a real stab in the heart, too. Doyle is more than merely important, he’s essential, and The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is his best work so far.’
Russell Banks
‘Anyone looking for a great novel from a brave, brilliant writer should read this book. Read it, and weep. Read it, and learn something new. Read it, and care.’
Oregonian
‘This wonderful novel reaffirms the achievements of Roddy Doyle . . . It is hard to imagine any lover either of fiction or of life who could remain untouched by Paula Spencer . . . Wonderfully written, with urgency and blazing compassion.’
Cleveland Plain Dealer
‘Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina and now that foulmouthed, lively, immensely endearing survivor: Paula Spencer, Molly Bloom’s sadder and wiser younger sister.’
Los Angeles Times
‘A stunning depiction of a woman’s battered soul told with the indomitable wit and the lilt of Roddy Doyle’s extraordinary voice.’
Mary McGarry Morris
‘Compelling . . . astonishing . . . Paula’s voice is wonderful . . . It is this mixture of spirit and grief that makes The Woman Who Walked Into Doors a painful and beautiful story, a tale where the sadness and despair are redeemed because they are never denied.’
San Francisco Chronicle
‘Magnificently constructed . . . What seems to me extraordinary about Doyle’s novel is not the awful story it tells . . . but the places he travels through Paula’s tough, genuine soliloquy . . . Doyle does a marvellous job. His Paula Spencer is irrefutably alive.’
Boston Sunday Globe
Also available from Vintage
RODDY DOYLE
‘It is 1968. Paddy Clarke is ten years old, breathless with discovery. He reads with a child’s voraciousness, collecting facts the way adults collect grey hairs and parking tickets. Doyle captures the speech patterns of childhood brilliantly, the weird logic of the incessant questions, the non-sequiturs and wonderments . . . Like all great comic writers, Roddy Doyle has become an explorer of the deepest places of the heart, of love and pain and loss. This is one of the most compelling novels I’ve read in ages, a triumph of style and perception’
Joseph O’Connor, Irish Times
‘Truthful, hilarious, painfully sad’
Spectator
‘A superb recreation of childhood’
Dermot Bolger
‘Gloriously triumphant . . . confirms Doyle as the best novelist of his generation’
Nick Hornby, Literary Review
Also available from Vintage
RODDY DOYLE
‘A magnificent achievement’
Guardian
‘Roddy Doyle has done the impossible – he has made Paula Spencer even more unforgettable the second time around’
The Times
When we first met Paula Spencer – in The Woman Who Walked into Doors – she was thirty-nine, recently widowed, an alcoholic struggling to hold her family together.
Paula Spencer begins on the eve of Paula’s forty-eighth birthday. She hasn’t had a drink for four months and five days. Her youngest children, Jack and Leanne, are still living with her. They’re grand kids, but she worries about Leanne. Paula still works as a cleaner, but all the others doing the job now seem to come from Eastern Europe, and the checkout girls in the supermarket are Nigerian. You can get a cappuccino in the café, and her sister Carmel is thinking of buying a holiday home in Bulgaria.
Paula Spencer is brave, tenacious and very funny. The novel that bears her name is another triumph for Roddy Doyle
‘A phenomenally rewarding read’
Observer
I WAS TOLD by a Guard who came to the door. He wasn’t one I’d seen before, one of the usual ones. He was only a young fella, skinny and with raw spots all over his neck.
—Missis Spencer?
He couldn’t have been more than twenty. He looked miserable.
—Missis Spencer?
I knew before he spoke. It clicked inside me when I opened the door. (For years opening that door scared the life out of me. I hated it; it terrified me. We had this screeching bell like an alarm that shook the walls when anyone rang it. It lifted me off the floor, the kids started bawling; it was fuckin’ dreadful. You were caught, snared, caught in the act. You looked around to hide whatever you’d been caught with, things that Charlo had left in the hall, things he’d robbed and left there. He changed the bell, after I chewed his ear and nearly wet myself five or six times a day. Nicola, my oldest, wouldn’t come round the back to get into the house. She wanted to come through the front door; it was more grown up. She rang the bell ten times a minute.
—Forgot me jacket.
—Forgot me money.
—Don’t like these jeans on me.
I hit her — she was thirteen, or twelve, much too old to be smacked — the hundredth time she rang the bell one Saturday morning. I hit her the way a woman would hit another woman, smack in the face. I was a bit drunk, I have to admit. I regretted it, tried to stop my hand after it had smashed her cheek and come back. She held her hand up to her cheek. It was red where I’d got it. She was stunned; she hadn’t noticed me getting more annoyed. They never do at that age — at any age. I was sorry for her but she’d deserved it. I was sorry I was drunk, ashamed, angry; I usually made sure that no one noticed. I couldn’t cope; it was only a stupid bell. She said she hated me, slammed the door and ran off. I let her away with it. The new bell was a nice bing-bong one but it made no difference. I still died a bit whenever someone rang it. The Guards looking for Charlo, teachers looking for John Paul, men looking for money. It’s hard to hide in a house full of kids, to pretend there’s no one there. Bing-bong. Only bad news came through that door; my sister, my daddy, John Paul, Charlo. Bing-bong.) It clicked inside me when I opened the door and saw the Guard. It was his face that told me before I was ready to know it. He wasn’t looking for Charlo; it wasn’t the usual. He was scared and there was something he had to tell me. I felt sorry for the poor young fella, sent in to do the dirty work. The other wasters were out in the car, too lazy and cute to come in and tell me themselves. I asked him in for a cup of tea. He sat in the kitchen with his hat still on him. He told me all about his family.
I SWOONED THE first time I saw Charlo. I actually did. I didn’t faint or fall on the floor but my legs went rubbery on me and I giggled. I suddenly knew that I had lungs because they were empty and collapsing.
Charlo Spencer.
There he was, over there, leaning against the wall.
Fiona nudged me.
—There he is.
I saw him and I knew who she meant. It couldn’t have been anyone else, after all I’d heard about him, after all I’d expected. He was with a gang but all by himself. His hands in his pockets with the thumbs hooked over the denim and a fag hanging from his mouth. It got me then and it gets me now: cigarettes are sexy — they’re worth the stench and the cancer. Black bomber jacket, parallels, loafers — he was wearing what everyone wore back then but the uniform was made specially for him. The other boys looked thick and deformed beside him. Tallish, tough looking and smooth. In a world of his own but he knew we were watching him.
We’d been dancing together in a circle, our jackets and jumpers and bags on the floor in front of us, and I was sweating a bit. And I felt the sweat when I saw Charlo. This wasn’t a crush — this wasn’t David Cassidy or David Essex over there — it was sex. I wanted to go over there and bite him.
He took the fag from his mouth — I could feel the lip coming part of the way before letting go — and blew a gorgeous jet of smoke up into the light. It pushed the old smoke out of its way and charged into the ceiling. Then he fitted the fag back onto his lip and the hand went back to his pocket. He was elegant; the word doesn’t seem to fit there but that was what he was.
The music. I remember it. Women always do. Sugar Baby Love. By The Rubettes. It was the perfect song, sweet and fast, corny but mean, high-pitched but definitely masculine. Charlo’s theme song and he didn’t know it. He had nothing to do with it; the D.J. had chosen it, just then and there. And it fitted; it was perfect. Looking back at it now. But I didn’t know he was going to look at me. I didn’t know he was going to move away from the wall and walk. I didn’t know he was going to stand in front of me. I didn’t even have time to dream it.
He was coming over. The cigarette went onto the floor; he flicked it away, didn’t look where it was going. He was coming straight at me but he wasn’t looking. I was shiteing; he was going to walk past me.
—D’you want to dance?
I let him sweat for a bit.
—Yeah.
His timing was perfect. The Rubettes stopped and Frankie Valli started singing My Eyes Adored You. He must have planned it. His arms went through my arms just as Frankie went My; his fingers were knitted and on my back by the time Frankie got to Eyes. He’d been drinking. I could smell it but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t drunk. His arms rested on my hips and he brought me round and round.
—But I never laid a hand on you —
My eyes adored you —
I put my head on his shoulder. He had me.
I KNEW NOTHING for a while, where I was, how come I was on the floor. Then I saw Charlo’s feet, then his legs, making a triangle with the floor. He seemed way up over me. Miles up. I had to bend back to see him. Then he came down to meet me. His face, his eyes went all over my face, looking, searching. Looking for marks, looking for blood. He was worried. He turned my head and looked. His face was full of worry and love. He skipped my eyes.
—You fell, he said.
I HAD AN older sister, Carmel, and two younger, Denise and Wendy, and three brothers, Roger, Edward and George, all younger — George is still only a teenager, the same age as my Nicola. Then there were my mother and father, Hilda and Roger. The O’Learys of 97, St Francis Avenue. No cats or dogs.
Wendy is dead. She was six years younger than me. She did a bit of babysitting for us; she was great — she’d get up in the morning with the kids and give them their breakfast so we could stay in bed. So I could stay in bed. She was lovely, a lovely figure, smashing black hair — like an ad. Nicola and John Paul were mad about her. They never minded when we were going out because that meant that Wendy was going to be staying for the night. Myself and Charlo really went out in those days, not just down to the local pub although we did that as well. We made an effort, went into town to the pictures. We even went back to some of the dances we’d gone to before we were married. For a while. I didn’t drink as much then, only when we were out, on special occasions – I can’t remember what they were. Wendy was the passenger on her boyfriend’s motorbike and he drove it into the wall of a bridge in Wicklow, somewhere near Glendalough. In broad daylight. He lost control of it or something, skidded. He was going too fast, something like that; I don’t understand motorbikes or driving. She’d only been going with him for a couple of weeks. Mammy and Daddy didn’t know he had a bike. She’d never told them. The Guards came to their door. Eddie came to ours.
It was a happy home. That’s the way I remember it. Carmel doesn’t remember it like that and Denise won’t talk about it at all because, I think, it would mean that she’d have to take a side, mine or Carmel’s.
I remember lying in my cot just below the bedroom curtain that was blowing in and out over me; the curtain had flowers on it. The sun was on the wall when the curtain blew into the room. There were noises from downstairs, the radio and my mammy humming and putting things on the table. I was warm. Carmel was asleep in her bed. Denise wasn’t born. That’s the first thing I can remember. I think it’s all the one memory, that it all happened at the same time. I think it’s true. I’m not sure but I think there’s another part — my father in the coal shed scraping coal off the floor into the bucket, the screech of the shovel on the concrete. If it did happen then it must have been the weekend because the fire was never lit on weekday mornings. I don’t trust that bit, because I always loved that noise, something about it, even now — maybe knowing that there was a lovely big fire coming. The cot was white, chipped so that some of the wood underneath showed. There was a picture of a fawn at the end where my head was. I thought it was a dog until years later when my daddy took it down out of the attic for Eddie. When I saw it again — I was eleven — it was a fawn. I checked the chips where the white was missing to see if it was the same cot. It was. When I think of happy and home together I see the curtain blowing and the sun on the wall and being snug and ready for the day, before I start thinking about it like an adult. I see flowers on the curtains — but there were never flowers on the curtains in our room. I asked my mammy when I was over there last week did we ever have flowery curtains and she said No, they’d never changed them, always stripes.
I told Carmel. The three of us, the three sisters, went for a few drinks — children’s allowance day — and I told them, my first memory. She was sneering before I’d finished but it was too late to stop. It was the drink that made me tell it; otherwise, I’d never have told Carmel. She’s a hard bitch.
—Lucky you, she said. —D’yeh want to know what my first memory is?
—No, I said.
—I’ll tell yeh.
—I don’t want to know.
—I listened to yours —
—I don’t want to know, I told her. —You can keep it.
I can give her back as good as she gives. It took me years to realise that it didn’t matter that she was the oldest; it didn’t mean that she always had to be right or that she had to have the last word. She still thinks it matters; that’s her problem. I like her, though. I love her. I feel sorry for Denise sometimes, stuck between us. They’ve been great to me over the years, my two sisters. They won’t let me tell them that, but they have; they’ve been just brilliant. I’d never have done what I did — I’d never have finished it — without them helping me.
My mammy lost two babies between me and Roger; she had two miscarriages. I was 1956 and Roger was 1959. She only told me about them two years ago; I’d never have known. I can remember her smiling, patting my head, picking me up, fixing my dress properly on me, a yellow dress. She never yelled. Would I remember if I’d seen or heard her crying when I was still a baby? It really shocked me. She’d hidden it. She was always so gentle; she’d always had room for me. Carmel says it wasn’t like that. She says she knew; she heard Mammy crying in their bedroom. She says that Daddy was never there. Maybe I only remember her dressing me because I dressed my girls, Nicola and then Leanne, the same way. I had a yellow dress for Nicola, and Leanne had it after her; it was still good. (I try not to make my kids wear hand-me-downs.) Maybe that’s all I remember, me dressing Nicola, and I’m imagining the rest. But I remember it, the yellow dress. It was too big for me; it must have been an old one of Carmel’s.
—I never had a yellow dress, she says.
I shouldn’t have asked her.
—I hate yellow, she says.
—Yeah yeah yeah, I say.
I hate it when I say that, Yeah three times like that, especially when I say it to the kids. It’s a habit I got from Charlo.
I lost a baby as well.
I liked being cold when I was little because there was always somewhere in the house that was warm, somewhere to go into; the kitchen or the living room. They were always warm. The cold pushed you into them. We all fitted, in front of the telly or at the table. I had a corner of Daddy’s chair that was all my own. He blew his cigarette smoke so it looked like it was coming out my ears. Carmel doesn’t remember that either. I don’t know how he did it, made the smoke blow in both directions. I never saw him; I had to keep my back to him. Charlo couldn’t figure it out either. He wanted to do it with John Paul. He tried it but he just blew the smoke straight into the back of his head.
There was more ice in the winter. Carmel agrees. If we threw water on the path outside the house before we went to bed there was a slide there in the morning. No one complained either. These days they’d sue you. These days. I sound like an oul’ one. It was more than thirty years ago, though. Another thing I remember that doesn’t seem to happen any more is freezing cold feet, cold that would make me cry. I remember being in school early and sitting in my desk and dying for the teacher to come in and turn on the heater because my feet were killing me, they were sore like a car had run over them or something really heavy and cornered had fallen on them. It was the cold. I had socks. I had proper shoes. I had porridge for breakfast. Pop on the Flahavans. I smacked my feet up and down and clenched my fists; it was agony. I wasn’t the only one. We all complained about it. Mammy said it was growing pains — I think she said that — but it couldn’t have been; my toes weren’t the only parts of me that were growing but that was where all the pain was, and only in the winter. I’ve never been able to afford good shoes for my own kids — good shoes — and they’ve never complained about cold feet. Poor Leanne had to go through one whole winter in runners and she never whinged once. She got them drenched one day and I took them off her when she got home from school. I stuffed them with paper and put them up to the fire and hoped to God they’d be properly dry in the morning because I didn’t have the money to get her another pair. They were still damp, a bit less than wet, at bedtime so I put them in the oven. I preheated it, then turned it way down and put them in. I sat in the kitchen for an hour and kept taking them out to make sure they didn’t melt. It worked. I wanted Charlo to come in and see me, to see how desperate I was. He had money, I knew he did. The smell off his breath told me that. He didn’t come home that night, though. I’m almost certain he didn’t. (It kills me writing that and reading it — I could never afford good shoes for my kids. I don’t put all the blame on him, either.) My kids never complained though, and they would have if they’d been really cold. That’s one of the good things about living where we live; you’re never alone, there’s always someone as badly off as you — there are plenty. Now and again it would be nice to see somebody worse off, but I only get that comfort from the telly, the reports from the Third World on the News. The pictures from Sarajevo were very bad but they all seemed to have good warm clothes. I always piled the socks on the kids, two pairs; they liked that. Nicola always liked two different colours so that the inside pair looked like a stripe; it looked very nice. John Paul always made sure that the inside socks were tucked well inside the outside ones, so they couldn’t be seen. That’s the difference between girls and boys.
There were no surprises at home; there were never any — even at Christmas. We knew what we’d be getting, the present from Santy and our Christmas clothes. I wanted a surprise once — because my best friend, Deirdre, was getting one. I was eight or nine, I think. I let Santy know that I wanted a surprise but I also told him in the letter what I wanted it to be, because Mammy had hinted at what I’d be getting and I didn’t want to be wrong. There were no surprises, never any rings on the doorbell or faces in the kitchen window. What was left of Sunday’s meat with boiled potatoes on a Monday; shepherd’s pie on a Tuesday; I don’t remember what there was on Wednesdays and Thursdays; cod on Fridays, with chips from the chipper — we’d have hated the fish without the chips; stew on Saturday. Ice-cream on Sundays; rice on Monday — when I woke up in the morning I knew exactly what was going to happen. I had my bath on Saturdays; I had the water after Carmel, me and Denise in the bath together. Mammy scrubbed, Daddy dried us.
—He didn’t.
—He did, Carmel.
—Not me.
—Ah Carmel; he did.
—Uh uh.
—Didn’t he, Denise? I say. —He did.
He dried us; he made us disappear inside the towel and pretended he couldn’t find us. Half-twelve mass on Sunday, halfway down the aisle on the right side. Daddy wore his blue suit. Mammy ironed his shirt on Saturday night, only his shirt. She did the rest of the clothes during the week, in the afternoon, listening to the radio. Daddy got his Sunday Independent in The Mint after mass, and the ice-cream. In the summer we went to Skerries or Bray after dinner. Bray was the best. I loved the long walk along the seaside and the railings. I didn’t like swimming. I didn’t mind getting wet but I hated having to get dried. We had picnics on the sand. We never had one of those rugs, the nice checked ones with the woollen frills around the sides; Mammy put all the picnic things on a cardigan or a jacket. I remember it like it’s now, biting into sandy bread. It would have been disgusting at home or anywhere else but it didn’t matter at the beach. I remember once we had our picnic in the rain.
—We’ll stop if it gets heavy.
That was my mammy all over. Daddy went along with her. We were the only people there.
—Can we not go to a shelter?
That was one of the boys, probably Roger, the oldest.
—You heard your mammy.
We got Ninety-Nines or chips before we got on the train home, one or the other, depending on the weather. We all had to have the same, to stop any arguments. A bag of chips between two of us. Daddy made sure that we divided them fairly.
—Your turn. Now yours. That was a massive one he got so you’re to get two small ones.
That was the type of thing Charlo loved doing as well, playing with the kids like that. He was really great at it when he was in the mood.
We only ever went on holidays once. I checked, and Mammy says I’m right. We couldn’t afford it, she says. We could have gone some years but it would have meant doing without things, and Mammy and Daddy didn’t think it was worth it. They began to go more often later, when I was gone and married and most of the others were gone too. They went together to Spain the summer before Daddy died. Courtown was where we went for that holiday. I was thirteen; 1969. I loved it. We had a caravan for a week. We all fitted; the beds came out of nowhere. Mine and Carmel’s was on top of the table; it came out of the wall and landed on the table. It was great except for having to go out into the dark to the toilet. The toilet was a big cement block in a corner of the park. The floor was always wet and uneven. They cleaned it every day but the smell always hung on. There was a section for women and a section for men. The boys said that the man’s section was woeful. You washed there as well in the morning. There were four sinks in a row. You had to queue up. It was always cold in there. There were no windows, just a bulb hanging from a thick, crooked wire. I loved watching the women washing themselves, the way they could concentrate and talk. I never saw Mammy doing it. She always went in after us, after we’d all been fed and were gone. She wouldn’t let us hang around the caravan.
—Go out now and get some of God’s fresh air.
That was what she always called the other side of the door, God’s fresh air. She still does. She isn’t religious or anything — big into religion, as Nicola would say. Daddy never said it. She must have picked it up before she met him. There was an emergency toilet in the caravan but Daddy said he’d kill us if any of us tried to use it. It was only a bucket with a fancy lid on it in a cupboard all of its own. Roger was determined that he was going to piddle into it before the end of the week. He didn’t say anything; we just knew. He nearly made it. He had the lid up and his willy out when Daddy caught him. We didn’t warn Roger. Daddy dragged him over to the toilets in the dark, and the ground was wet and muddy. Swing boats, bingo and chips. I remember a hill above the harbour and long grass and walking through it. I made a friend called Frieda. She was in the caravan three down from us. Her mammy was real nice; young and lovely looking. She lay on the beach all day and let Frieda do what she wanted and gave her far more money than I ever had. Frieda was an only child. Her daddy wasn’t there. She said he worked in South America. I believed her then but I know better now. She lent me her blouse but took it back when I got chocolate on it. We met these two boys from Belfast. I can’t remember my one’s name; I got the second best. The other one was called Liam. He was sixteen and tall and I thought was he gorgeous. I couldn’t understand a lot of what he said because of his accent but that made him even nicer. He was mysterious; God love me. Frieda told me later that she’d felt his thing leaning against her when they were kissing, behind the Crock O’ Gold; it was pressing into her. I didn’t ask any questions. I only liked my fella because he was Liam’s friend. We found out later, after I’d let him put his hand on my breast — on top of my jumper — that they weren’t really friends at all. They’d only met just before we met them. They had a fight two days after; my fella beat Liam. It was the first time I’d let anyone feel me. They were real breasts — only boys said tits. I had them before I left primary school. I didn’t like him touching me but I felt great after it. I thought I’d grown up a bit; I’d got something out of the way. I liked kissing. He hadn’t a clue; he just kept pressing his lips into my face. I had to get my tongue into his mouth and go round his teeth and then he followed me. He gasped; I remember it. The trick was stopping before your mouth got too sore, stopping and starting, giving your mouth a rest. Frieda got two love-bites. I didn’t get any. My fella wouldn’t have known how to give me one. Much more importantly, my mammy would have murdered me.
Carmel admits it: she loved Courtown. She was old enough to go to the dances. I remember her climbing into bed.
—What was it like?
—Brilliant.
—What was the music like?
—Brilliant.
—Any fellas?
—Mind your own business.
Everyone could hear everything in the caravan.
—Go to sleep over there.
Denise has her own caravan now. They have a site near Courtown. They even go there in the winter. I’d love that, somewhere to go. She’s never offered; I’ve never asked. It’s not Denise; it’s her husband, Harry. He’s a bit of a creep. Even Denise thinks that; it all comes out when we’re out together.
—Show us your diddies! Paula! Paula!
That was Roger and his pals behind the hedge; probably not Roger himself because he knew I could kill him if I wanted to.
—Show us your diddies!
I kept walking. I made sure I didn’t look anywhere near the hedge.
I had my breasts in primary school, in sixth class. Only two of us in the class had them, me and Fiona. We hung around together for months, leaving everyone else out, just because of that — we had breasts. I was dead proud of them after I’d got over my mammy looking at me. It was after my bath on Saturday night; I was standing on the towel, shaking, pretending I was cold. Mammy was rinsing Denise’s hair. I started to dry myself. I never rubbed the towel all over me or up and down my back; I hated that. I did one arm first, then the other, then a leg, all the way down to the foot, then the other leg. Each bit had to be dry before I went on to another bit. I never rushed. I saw Mammy looking at me, at my chest. Then at me, my face. I couldn’t understand her expression. I thought she was going to lose her temper. She looked away when she saw me looking back at her. Then the part that killed me: she was blushing. She was panicking, it seemed like, the way she dried Denise’s hair; she made Denise cry. Because of me. She didn’t look at me again.
—Stop fussing, she said to Denise. —You’re alright.
She left us in the bathroom.
—She’s a bitch for doing that, said Denise. —Isn’t she?
—Yeah, I said. —She didn’t mean it.
—She did.
—She didn’t.
—It still hurt.
I’ll never forget it, the look on my mammy’s face. It left me feeling like I’d done something terrible to her; I’d hurt her badly and I didn’t know how, just that I’d done it.
It was better a few days later.
—Now, she said. —We’re going into town, the two of us.
Just the two of us, no sisters, no brothers; I loved it. She didn’t tell me why but it didn’t matter. I knew from her mood that it wasn’t the dentist or doctor or anything bad. I remember one thing that happened on the way into town. I was looking out the bus window at a woman slapping her little young lad. I turned to show the woman to Mammy and it was raining on the other side of the road. I looked back and it was still dry on the woman’s side. She’d stopped hitting the child. I didn’t understand it then. I thought it was some sort of a miracle or sign; it started to worry me. Then Mammy told me that it was only a sun shower. I can still make myself feel the way I felt when I saw it; it’s like missing a last step in the dark and walking into nothing.
We went to Clery’s and she bought me two bras. Then she took me into a restaurant and she got me a jam doughnut and a Fanta. She told me not to squirt the bits of doughnut from my mouth into the Fanta because only kids did that and I wasn’t a kid any more.
—And you’ve a bra to prove it, she said; she whispered it, leaned into me, the first time she ever did anything like that. She nudged me. She laughed nicely at me blushing, then I laughed. She looked at me as I shoved the last lump of the doughnut into my mouth.
—The first time ever, she said. —No jam on your clothes. It’s all happening.
She was grand when my period came; she explained it all before it happened. The facts of life, they were called in those days. Those days; Jesus. She kept me home from school and gave me all the facts. We sat in the kitchen drinking tea. Why I’d bleed, what to do, how long it would last, the pain if there was any. She told me not to worry about any mess, there was nothing that couldn’t be cleaned.
—Be ready, she said. —That’s our motto.
She gave me a note for school on Monday that said I’d been too sick to go back on Friday after dinner. But I told my friends what had really happened. I was walking a new way now. The Facts of Life. We used to giggle about them; we tried to find them in our dictionaries. We knew it was about things going into holes,