out the spare blankets, and dumped them onto the floor. Stan was all for bedding down there and then, but Rita was soberer—she found their coats and somehow got him downstairs. Then she heaved his arm over her shoulders and staggered him off up the road.
Suds had given up; he was curled on the floor like a baby, and there was no way Josie was about to wake him up and take him home. I shook out a blanket and covered her up, then I threw another one over the foetal Suds. He stirred, tucked the edge of it in under his chin, smiled, and snuggled down deeper into the manky old carpet without once opening his eyes.
I thought I’d start lifting the glasses and bottles out into the kitchen, but I couldn’t seem to aim my hand straight, so I sat and smoked a cigarette instead. I could drink for ages without passing out or vomiting in those days. I thought I was great and Robbie was proud of me; I never once stopped to ask myself did I like it or what was the point or was it worth the crucifying awfulness of the hangover the next day.
I was desperate for bed, but I held off joining Robbie; I wanted to be certain sure that he wouldn’t wake up. I didn’t like sex with Robbie when he was really drunk, I could have been anyone or no one for all he cared, he was clumsy and rough and only thought of himself.
I’d have bedded down with the rest on the floor, but I knew there’d be no holding Robbie if he woke in the morning and I wasn’t there alongside him where I belonged. He’d accuse me of doing I-don’t-know-what with I-don’t-know-who—then he’d take me by the shoulders and shake the teeth near out of my head while the rest of them scuttled off-side as fast as they could like so many crabs with the runs. And it was all in his head. There wasn’t a sinner who wasn’t way too afraid of him to look sideways at me, much less try to get a leg over Robbie’s wife.
But if I hated Robbie in bed when he’d drunk too much, I hated him worse when we were out together and the drink took him in that twisted way it sometimes did. There were times he got so jealous I couldn’t even take a light off someone. I’d be grabbed by the wrist, pulled from a room, pushed into a corner of some landing or hallway, and fucked against the wall. That was Robbie with the drink on him: not caring how I felt, not caring if anyone saw, not caring about anything except himself and whatever it was that was eating him alive.
I’ve seen me walk home holding my skirt closed to keep it up, torn knickers stuffed into my pocket, dead tear trails running down my face.
And in the morning he’d be all over me: how sorry he was, how he knew I didn’t look at other men, how it was only the drink—
If he remembered at all, that is.
And I learned fast; I’d forgive him fast—at the start because I was shocked and ashamed, later because I knew if I didn’t he’d stop being sorry and start into listing the things he’d seen me do with his own two eyes. What I’d said to this one, how I’d flirted with that one—
It was a funny time, I can see that now, and I know what Liam means when he says he can’t understand why I stood for it. But it wasn’t like that—it wasn’t a question of standing for things.
I was young, I didn’t know much, I thought if he was that jealous it meant he was dying about me.
And I was dying about him—I really was—he was that good-looking and streetwise and together. Sometimes I’d be waiting for him and I’d see him coming up the street before he’d spotted me. Then I’d stand there, watching him, and I couldn’t believe my luck.
When I met Robbie I was a good girl trying hard to be a bad one. I was at Queens, studying Russian and living in a flat with four girls from Lurgan who were all doing geography and knew each other from school. I’d got talking to one of them in the coffee bar at the end of the first week: they’d rented this flat, she said, and there was a room going spare if I didn’t mind it being a wee bit poky.
“How poky’s a wee bit poky?” I asked.
“There’s space for a single bed. And a window as well, but it’s too high up to see out.”
I said yes right away. It was cheap, and already I hated my landlady. Besides, if there’d been enough room they’d have stuck in another bed and I’d have had to share. But they didn’t really want me, nor I them. They were into country and western and the Scripture Union and cocoa in their pyjamas and studying hard. I wasn’t, but I might as well have been. I was stuck with them, knowing there was more to this student-thing than I was getting, not knowing how I was going to lay hands on it. Until I met Robbie, that is, and everything changed.
It was in the canteen of the Students Union. I mostly didn’t go there because it was cheaper to eat at the flat, but I was going to see a Russian film at the University Film Theatre and there wasn’t time to go back before it began. There I was, a plateful of food on a tray in one hand, cutlery from the plastic bins in the other, when Robbie knocked into my elbow and near sent the whole lot flying.
“Sorry,” he said.
“That’s alright,” I said, though my fried egg had a wet, orange look to it and the chips and sausages were afloat in spilled Fanta. Then he was trying to give me his plate and I was refusing and he was insisting, and the end of it was we were sitting at the same table sharing his chips and his fry and I never did get to The Battleship Potemkin and the girl I was supposed to see it with never spoke to me again.
After that I was Robbie’s girl.
I thought it had all been a providential accident, but a week hadn’t passed before he was telling me he’d had me picked out, he was only waiting his chance.
“What d’you mean by that?” I asked him.
“I fancied you, stupid,” he said, sliding his hand between my thighs. But I wasn’t having that, or not right away, so I made him spell it out.
He’d fancied me, he said. He’d seen me around, but somehow I always vanished before he got near enough to speak. Then there I was, right under his nose, so he’d knocked into me, just to get talking like, and look how we’d ended up.
Robbie wasn’t a student, but he lived two streets up and he shared a flat with students. He used the university canteen because it was a good place to pick up girls. He looked at me hard when he said the last bit, but I wasn’t going to rise to that one; I knew it was sort of a test to see would I make a fuss.
I didn’t rise, but I did take my courage in both hands and I asked him why he fancied me. I wasn’t fishing for lies or for compliments either—I badly needed to know.
He said it was my hair, but he wouldn’t say anything more. Later, when we’d been to bed a few dozen times in about two days, he said he’d been right, so he had, I looked so repressed, a volcano waiting to blow.
I didn’t say anything. Part of me was offended, and part of me was the opposite. Repressed at least held potential. And I sort of liked the volcano bit. But maybe he’d meant frustrated?
A couple of weeks later I moved into Robbie’s flat. His flatmates smoked dope and drank way too much and never went near the Scripture Union. I was shy with them, but I liked them as well, and soon I knew loads of the wrong sort of people and felt I was halfway alive.
Just the same, it wasn’t that long
