Читать книгу Meet Me In Manhattan - Claudia Carroll - Страница 16

So now it’s the morning after that hellhole of a night at the Fade Street Social restaurant and all the love bombardment from Andy really has started, full-on and furious.

The phone calls. First thing in the morning, last thing at night. Texts flying into my face throughout the whole day. Emails coming through to me constantly and that’s before the giant, oversized bouquet of flowers arrived. Pink stargazer lilies. With a note that read, ‘Forgive me for what happened, Holly. And give me a chance to explain, at least. Please.’

As for what my best buddies have to say about it all?

Joy: ‘Good riddance to Captain Fantastic, then. I know he had a perfectly valid excuse for standing you up, but I have to say half of me is relieved. All I can hope is that this’ll be a lesson to you to wrench yourself away from those bloody dating sites once and for all and stop lying your head off online. Just be yourself, Holly, and in time you’ll meet your perfect man, trust me.’

Dermot: ‘Oh please, if you heard some of the last minute call-off excuses I’ve heard over the past few years, you’d sit back and laugh. Honey, I’ve heard it all and believe me, this is nothing! So just get back online and start flirting with other guys and if Mr Wonderful suggests another date, then let him do all the organizing and arranging. If it suits you to turn up, fine and if not, the he gets a taste of his own medicine. Either way, it’s a win-win, babes.’

Mind you, I think I’d probably caved long before any of their well-intentioned Tweedle Dum – Tweedle Dee advice ever kicked in.

Truth is, I believe him, and what’s more there’s hard evidence to back him up. Andy’s a pilot after all, is my reasoning. And wasn’t this kind of carry-on all part and parcel of a pilot’s life? Yes, I’m sure it’s a rarity that there’s a ‘mid-air emergency’ and that a flight suddenly has to be re-routed to the nearest hospital, but still, there you go. And what’s so awful about giving someone the benefit of the doubt anyway? Is it so terrible to believe the good in people and not be so bloody cynical all the time?

Whether I like what happened last Saturday night or not, the fact is, if this is to move forward, then I have to accept that this guy’s whole professional life is at the whim of weather reports, flight schedules and of course the great unknown, passengers themselves.

‘So after my letting you down so badly like that last week, Holly,’ he drawls down the phone at me, during one of his umpteen phone calls this week alone, ‘Is there even the slightest chance you’d still be prepared to meet up with me again? To give me one more shot?’

One more shot. And why not, I ask myself. After all, it’s hardly like there’s another queue of eligible guys waiting to ask me out, now is there?

‘Sweet Jesus and the Orphans,’ says Joy exasperatedly when I tell her. ‘If you’d brains, you’d be dangerous.’

So it’s all arranged. Yet again. Or take two, as Andy refers to it. This Thursday night, he’s flying into Dublin (yet again), same deal, and yet again, he’s staying at the Radisson airport hotel where apparently Delta always overnight their crew, jammy feckers. He begged and pleaded to meet up at the same restaurant, but I was having absolutely none of it.

Once bitten, etc.

Anyway, this time the deal goes thusly; Andy is due to arrive into Dublin that morning, and will call me as soon as he ‘touches down’ to confirm. Then we’re due to meet in the Shelbourne bar right in the dead centre of town at 8 p.m. and it’s actually the perfect spot for me, as my plan is to just stride through the bar and if he’s there he’s there, if he isn’t he isn’t and I’ll just keep on walking.

Worst-case scenario, I’ll end up looking like a girl who’s zigzagging her way through a crowded bar scouting around for a pal who hasn’t shown yet. Public humiliation factor: zero.

Not that it’ll happen. Lightening doesn’t strike twice.

‘Holly,’ Andy reassured me over and over, ‘if I have to swim the Atlantic this Thursday night, I’ll be there in that bar at the Shelbourne hotel waiting for you. And that’s a good old Southern promise.’

What can I say? It’s less than two weeks and counting to Christmas.

And I need all the distraction I can get.

*

Second week in December now, the weather is lock-jaw cold and just trying to navigate my way up the quays to work in sub-zero temperatures is treacherous, with icy pavements and early-morning shoppers banging stuffed shopping bags off me at every turn. A school choir of carol singers are warbling out ‘Adeste Fideles’ and all I want to do is wallop my umbrella off each one of them for having the barefaced cheek to show Christmas cheer.

Even Starbucks is at it, with their special seasonal red coffee cups and ads all over the shop for eggnog latte. Not even they are immune to schmaltzy Christmassy music and, I swear, by the end of the twenty minute wait to get served, I really think I’d rather listen to human nails being scraped down a blackboard than one more chorus of, ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’. Staff are stressed off their heads and customers look completely strung out, which pretty much sums up what the holiday season is all about. If your name is Holly Johnson, that is.

And I know all this makes me out to be a terrible Bah Humbug altogether, but I’ve good reason to dread this time of year. A few of my pals have gently started asking me what my plans are; my married friend Sue has very kindly invited me for dinner with her husband and kids, while another old pal from college has asked me to spend the day with herself and her partner. Meanwhile Joy is on at me to join her family down in Limerick for the holidays, and although it’s a lovely offer and one I’m very grateful for, we both already know what my answer will be.

Instead, my plan is to do what I always do; get my head under the duvet on Christmas Eve and stay holed up in the flat till the 26th when, thank God, it’ll all be over for another twelve blissful months. And I’ll have done it and survived it and somehow lived to tell the tale, with any luck.

God bless my friends, though, that’s all I can say. I love that they’re concerned, I feel deeply blessed that they care so much. And I only hope that they’ll forgive me for pulling yet another Greta Garbo in just wanting to be alone. They know my reasons why. They know I don’t really have a choice.

Anyway, Dermot and I grab a sambo together at what passes for a lunch break in News FM (generally a snatched ten minutes at your desk trying not to get crumbs jammed into your computer keyboard). But I can tell by the way he goes eerily quiet on me that there’s something on his mind.

‘So,’ he eventually says, wiping a wobbly lump of coleslaw off his mouth. ‘C-Day approaches.’

‘Don’t remind me …’ I groan back at him.

‘… And this year, I have a plan concocted especially for you.’

‘Dermot, you don’t have to—’

‘Just hear me out, Missy. You can’t stay holed up all alone same as you do every year. So here’s what I’m proposing …’

‘Please … there’s really no need …’

‘No … trust me, I think you’ll actually like this one. Myself and a gang of mates are renting a cottage in the wilds of Donegal where the plan is we barricade ourselves in with a car boot stacked full of vodka and spend the whole holiday watching horror films on DVD. Starting with Rosemary’s Baby and working all the way up to Paranormal Activity, by way of A Zombie Ate My Boyfriend’s Brains. So come on now, what do you say?’

‘Oh Dermot, you’re so sweet to include me …’

‘Why do I sense a big, fat “but” coming?’

‘But tempting and all as A Zombie Ate My Boyfriend’s Brains sounds, I’d really be no company at all. I wouldn’t inflict myself on you. Besides, I’d really rather get through the whole day alone. I’m not ready to do any more right now, I’m so sorry. Not this year anyway.’

Dermot however is good at hearing rejection, claiming he gets enough practice at it in his sex life.

‘Offer’s always there if you change your mind,’ he says cheerily. ‘Just remember, this could be your one and only chance to see The House of the Devil on bootleg DVD.’

It’s like he and Joy are in cahoots though, because that very night when I get home, she’s already there ahead of me and I can just tell by the look on her face exactly what’s on her mind. Time for the Big Chat, that is. The same one I try my level best to dodge my way out of every other year.

‘Tick-tock,’ she says, even pausing Netflix on the telly as I burst in and clatter down Tesco shopping bags, while peeling off layers of all my winter paraphernalia; multi-weather brolly/handbag/coat/scarf etc. Everything you need to survive in a country like Ireland, where we effectively have two seasons; winter and winter minor.

I think the very fact that Joy has torn her head away from Netflix is warning enough that just there’s no dodging the Big Chat right now, try as I might. The giveaway being that she freeze-frames the telly on Breaking Bad, her all-time favourite US TV import at the moment. She’s an out-and-out Breaking Baddict and no matter who calls her in the middle of it, anyone from Krzysztof to her own Mammy, she’ll snarl at the phone and then at me, ‘Nobody calls me in the middle of Breaking Bad. NOBODY.’

I play for time by asking her whether or not she wants tea and a sticky bun, but she’s well wide to me after all this time.

‘Now we’ll have none of your diversionary tactics, Missy,’ she says tartly, getting up from the sofa and following me into the kitchen while I stick the kettle on. ‘Come on, Holly, you know right well Christmas is only ten days away and you’ve got to make some kind of a decision here. You can’t just bury yourself away again this year, like you always do. You’ve got to make plans.’

‘And so I already have,’ I tell her, busying myself whipping milk out of the fridge and unpacking groceries I stopped off for earlier.

‘You mean hide out here, all alone with nothing but the duvet, the telly and a bottle of Pinot Grigio for company? Same as last year?’

‘Can’t think of any better way to mark the worst day on the entire calendar can you?’ I ask, face reddening a bit by now.

But Joy’s having absolutely none of it.

‘Sweetheart,’ she says, softening a bit now. ‘I know. Believe me no one knows more than I do how Godawful it is for you. But staying here all alone, yet again? It’s just not good for you, it’s not healthy. I’d be worried about you.’

I shrug lightly and act like I’m tossing the whole thing aside, though I doubt strongly that she really does understand. No one possibly could. And with no offence to Joy who only means well, particularly no one like her could ever understand, with two hale and hearty parents, three sisters and two brothers to eat with and drink with and row with and love. Just like family are supposed to at Christmas.

Family.

‘I’m just saying,’ Joy goes on, eyes not leaving me, not even for a second. ‘You know you’re more than welcome to spend the holidays with my family, that goes without saying. My folks would be thrilled to have you, as would all the gang. And I know it’s always a bit boisterous and rowdy, but at least it’s better than being by yourself isn’t it?’

But that’s the thing though. And Joy knows it by now as well as I do myself.

‘Like it or not,’ I sigh, ‘I am all alone.’

There’s just the tiniest beat, like she’s weighing up whether or not she should say what’s really on her mind.

‘Not necessarily,’ she offers quietly.

‘Joy, please. Not this. Not again. And certainly not right now.’

‘I’m just saying, you can’t know that for definite.’

‘But I do know.’

‘You know I’d help you, if you ever decided to—’

‘Christmas,’ I interrupt her firmly, ‘is a time for family. If you’re lucky enough to be blessed with one, then good for you.’

‘But you could have … I mean you might still be able to find out exactly …’

‘Look. Whatever happened in the past, the fact is that now I’m alone.’

And the surest and safest way to get through C-Day, I’ve long learned, is to suffer it out, try and not inflict my company on anyone else and take comfort from the fact that in twenty-four short hours, 26th December will roll around and it’ll be all over for yet another year.

At least, that’s the plan.

*

Maybe it was the conversation with Joy and with Dermot earlier, but in bed that night, it was like the Ghost of Christmases Past came back to haunt me.

25th December, 1990.

Thank God we lived in a flat-roof bungalow, that’s all I can remember thinking when Mum got up to her annual festive ritual again. She did this, year in, year out and the seven-year-old me absolutely loved it, despite the whispers floating round the school playground.

‘… Everyone knows there’s no such thing as Santa Claus …’

‘But that’s not true! I’m telling you, I saw him last year! I waited up for him and about midnight, there he was, giant sack and all. He even took away the carrot stick I’d left out specially for Rudolf …’

‘Just listen to you, Holly Johnson. You’re off your head, that’s what’s wrong with you. Because there isn’t any Santa. It’s just your Mam and Dad doing it to try and get you to be good over Christmas. You should see what my parents do every year to keep us believing. Sure last Christmas, my Dad …’.

‘Shhh!’ I remember Sandy Curran, who we all used to nickname Sandy Currant Bun, hissing. Then an embarrassed silence while the penny dropped; that the words ‘dad’ or ‘parents’ were something not to be mentioned in front of me, as they all instantly remembered my own particular family situation. In fact, barring Jayne Byrne – a quiet-spoken girl in my class whose father had died the previous year, I was the only other girl who came from a single-parent family.

‘Sorry Holly,’ one girl grumbled reluctantly.

‘Yeah, me and all. I forgot.’

‘I didn’t mean to …’

‘It’s OK,’ I shrugged, realizing in the way that little girls of seven can, that my little family had been earmarked as different right from the get-go. Realizing it, though not having the first clue why.

‘Ho, ho, HO!!!’ was all I could hear from the roof of our little bungalow, in a woman’s impression of what a deep man’s baritone should be. Which were followed by footsteps but God bless Mum, because she was so svelte and petite, by absolutely no stretch of the imagination could anyone – even a seven-year-old – possibly confuse those footsteps with a rotund, fifteen-stone Santa Claus.

The trouble she went to just to keep Christmas magical for me, her only child. And I loved her for it, even though I hadn’t the heart to tell her all the disturbing rumours that had been circulating the playground ever since Halloween. Or about Beth, another girl in my class who was openly laughed at and ridiculed for ‘still believing’.

Then there were the snow prints on the living room carpet, leading a trail all the way from the chimney over to our Christmas tree and back again. To this day, I still don’t know how Mum even managed it. Papier mâché? Cotton wool? Back then, I was too young and thick to dig a bit deeper. And yet every Christmas morning without fail, there they’d be; real, live snow prints dotted all over our living room carpet.

Money was tight for Mum and yet still Santa never failed to deliver in style. A doll’s house that particular year, I remember. A little girl’s fantasy version of just what a proper Victorian doll’s house should be, right down to window boxes and plastic figurines in bonnets and corsets that you could move around inside.

‘You see?’ she said, beaming that wise, calm smile that’s imprinted on my mind to this very day. ‘Santa never forgets good children.’

It’s only looking back now that I realize how tough Mum must have had it really. She’d adopted me at forty-two, quite late-ish in her life, certainly for the nineteen eighties, a time when women in their forties rarely had kids and certainly didn’t go adopting on their own. It was an extraordinarily brave thing to take on, then as now, and until I arrived I think she never really thought it would actually happen. I was, as she used to joke, ‘her little surprise’.

Right from when I started pre-school, she was by far the oldest of all the mums waiting for us at the school gates. Not only that, but she was one of the few who worked full time too; all the others seemed to have husbands who were the main breadwinners. Back then, right bang in the middle of The Decade that Taste Forgot, I can still see all the younger mothers in shoulder pads with big hair and waaaay too much blusher all nattering excitedly about Talking Heads / Duran Duran / who was going to see Fatal Attraction that weekend.

And right there at the back, always at the back, Mum would be waiting quietly for me. More often than not, still in her nurse’s uniform of long blue trousers with a white top over it, navy woolly cardigan, flat, sensible shoes with her hair pulled back into a tiny bun. Neat as a pin, like always.

‘Is that your mammy or your granny?’ I remember one girl in my class innocently asking me. I never said a word to Mum about it, but I think she knew anyway. She knew by the way I hugged her tight that night and said, ‘I think you’re lovely … and not that old at all!’ She just knew, same way she always knew everything, mind reader that she was.

The subject of my birth parents was one she and I never went into, at least not until I was old enough to properly understand. Even though as a nosey kid I practically had the poor woman persecuted.

‘Molly in my class says you have to have a mother and a father to get born,’ I used to plague her, day and night, like a dog with a bone.

‘And Molly’s quite right,’ Mum would reply, briskly getting dinner ready, efficiently cleaning up any mess behind her as she went. Swear to God, our kitchen was cleaner than any hospital she’d ever worked in. You could have performed surgery right on our kitchen table, it was that sterile.

‘But then what happened to my real parents? Did they die? Like Jayne in school’s Dad did?’

‘Holly,’ she’d say calmly, barely looking up from the housework as if to reduce the enormity of where this conversation was headed. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that family is family and that all families are different? Sometimes you have a mum and a dad who aren’t able to bring up a child by themselves and sometimes you have someone like me, who’s on her own, but who wanted nothing more than a little girl exactly like you.

I wanted a child like you so badly, then you came along and you were like a miracle for me. It was December when you first arrived and suddenly there you were. My own personal little Christmas miracle.’

‘But Mum …’

‘… What’s really important,’ she’d add, stopping to affectionately ruffle the top of my head, ‘is that in our little family, no child could possibly be more loved than you.’

‘But where did my real mum and dad go?’ I persisted, with all the stubbornness of childhood.

‘Sweetheart, they didn’t go anywhere and if you ever wanted to meet them, then when the time is right I’m sure we can. But here in our little family, there’s just the two of us; you and me. And if you ask me, we’re the best, happiest family you could ever ask for.’

Didn’t stop me from being utterly consumed with thoughts of my birth parents though, particularly when I was old enough to fully understand and Mum told me everything. All about my birth parents, how ridiculously young they were when I was born, my biological mother nineteen and still in college, while my father was younger still, just eighteen and barely out of school. She told me how they’d no choice but to put me up for adoption.

But then before what happened I’d happily have battered down the Adoption Authority’s offices to track down my birth parents, wherever they were now, wherever life had taken them.

Whereas after, I gave up even caring. The only family I’d ever had was gone, so what was the point, I figured. After all, I’d been lucky enough to have the best parent anyone could possibly have asked for.

And that, for me, was plenty.