Page 49 of The Women at Ocean's End

School was no less boring on the island than it had been when the nuns had droned on endlessly for hours. Here, the boys andgirls were all thrown in together, it was two more years after primary school and then you were free. Dotty couldn’t wait for that.

For as long as she could remember, she had ached to be grown-up and earning her own money and smoking cigarettes. She wanted to be Tracy Lord inHigh Societyand if she couldn’t quite manage that, then becoming a dancer or an actress seemed like the next best thing. She was pretty enough, everyone said so. She could dance and she was fairly certain that there couldn’t be all that much to acting, it was just playing make-up, as far as she could see.

‘There must be something else you want to do with yourself?’ her mother said time and time again. She’d given up trying to teach her how to knit a sock or make a trifle. ‘Look at Constance, there’s a girl with a sensible plan.’

‘Mammy, we both know I couldn’t be locked up in a room with thirty snotty children for an hour, much less the rest of my days. You said it often enough to me over the years: just because someone else is doing it, doesn’t mean I have to follow suit.’

‘Oh, Mrs Wren, I’m not sure I’m all that sensible,’ Constance said, hardly taking her eyes from the pan she was scrubbing. The two girls had been given the job of cleaning up after dinner each evening. It wasn’t a job either of them enjoyed, but Constance always offered to scrub the pots, so at least Dotty could hope to keep her nails in good shape.

‘There’s nothing wrong with sensible, it’s good to have a plan,’ said Dotty’s mother. Sometimes, Dotty wondered if they hadn’t managed to get their mothers mixed up at some point.

‘Oh, I don’t know about planning or how far that gets anyone. Look at my life…’ Maggie Macken dropped a cup into the sink. ‘I’m a terrible advertisement for best-laid plans, but things worked out all right in the end, don’t worry so much.’ She had a way of making it feel as if everything would be fine. And ithad worked out well for Maggie and Constance. ‘I could have wallpapered the whole house with the number of editors who wrote to tell me they didn’t want to publish my book. I was twelve years writing into a void before the books found a home. Even your father had given up on me long before I would have ever thought to give up on my dreams to be a writer.’ She smiled and patted Constance’s back as she said it. Then she turned to Dotty. ‘You mustn’t give up. If you have a dream, you have to give it a go,’ Maggie said as she wandered off back to her study again.

‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s all very well…’ Dotty’s mother muttered.

1960

But behind it all, sometimes, Dotty thought, if only she could be a little bit more like Constance. As the following months bled into years, it seemed that even though they remained close, somehow they grew to be quite opposite.

Constance, with her books, walked around the island like the Pied Piper of Hamlin with an entourage of young children who she seemed to adore, although Dotty couldn’t see the attraction. For her part, Dotty had started to smoke, with some of the older kids. They’d mitch off a little early, walk the long way home, cutting across the empty bogs, and sit with their feet dangling above brown streams, feeling disillusioned with everything from school to home to this damned country that seemed to be going backwards more with every day. Dotty yearned to be in London, in the bright lights, anywhere but here, where the silence was oppressive and there was no getting away from who you were and who you’d always be if you stayed. Eventually she struck up with one of the older boys, someone she knew her motherwould definitely disapprove of: Eddie, a would-be mechanic, was eighteen to her fifteen. He hung around with some of the other boys, always good for bringing along a few bottles of beer and, occasionally, a bottle of spirits he’d come across as payment for some job or other.

It was at the harvest dance, their last year in the local vocational school, that Dotty realised just how much her life had begun to spiral away from Constance’s. She’d been looking forward to it for ages; they both had – she and Constance. They’d picked out their outfits weeks in advance; she’d even talked her mother into buying her a pair of kitten heels, sent over especially from the haberdashery on the mainland in her size. They were going together, Constance and Dotty, but Constance had agreed to sell tickets to raise money for a new veranda at the school, while Dotty planned to meet Eddie there. There would be refreshments served, tea and cake and sandwiches, but Dotty had other plans.

‘Come outside for a while with me,’ she wheedled Constance before the ticket-selling got going. God, Constance was dressed as if she was going to a church meeting; sometimes Dotty despaired of her friend, even if she still loved her like a sister.

‘But I really should…’ Constance made a face.

‘Oh, for once in your life, live a little.’ She dragged her out a side door away from the gathering eyes of the local priest, who was there to make sure that everything went with the right measure of decorum. There was no easy escaping the morality police here; if she cut out a side door alone, some old busybody would come looking for her before too long. ‘Come on, I want you to meet Eddie.’

‘Eddie? Eddie who?’

‘My Eddie, of course…’ Dotty wasn’t sure he was actually her Eddie, but they had become something of a pair, meeting up, sitting in his old banger and giving out about the world asthey saw it. Eddie couldn’t wait to leave the island, although sometimes Dotty looked at him and wondered what was keeping him here. They left the hall to see only one car parked up. A beaten-up old thing that Eddie had rescued a few months earlier.

‘Hey?’ Eddie looked from Dotty to Constance as if it was a question, rather than a greeting.

‘You know Constance, Eddie?’

‘Sure, from the big house?’ He hardly looked at Constance.

‘Hello Eddie,’ Constance said a little stiffly and Dotty could feel her silent judgement in the air. Just about everyone thought Eddie was a bad lot. All right, so he’d stolen some money from the garage and they’d fired him and maybe he’d gotten into a few fights over the last few months, but that was Eddie. Dotty liked that he had an edge to him.

‘Is he your boyfriend now?’ Constance turned to Dotty and, honestly, Dotty wished the ground would open up and swallow her – there had been no mention of boyfriends or girlfriends between her and Eddie.

‘What? No, yeah, I mean…’ Dotty shrugged her shoulders as if such things were far beneath her.

‘Here, have a drink, Mary.’ Eddie held out the bottle for Constance.

‘I’m not Mary and no thanks, I don’t drink alcohol.’

Oh, God, Dotty watched in horror as Constance moved her fingers up to the pioneer pin they’d been given when they made their confirmation back in Galway.

‘Jesus, she’s a bit uptight.’ Eddie grinned and swigged from the bottle. ‘Here.’ He held the bottle out for Dotty and she copied him, feeling a glorious wave of release as the liquid hit her throat.

‘God, I was gasping for that all day.’ She giggled, the heat of the drink warming her, making her feel almost whole again.

‘Dotty?’ Just her name, but the way Constance said it, it was full of reproach.

‘Oh, come on Constance, live a little.’ Dotty wiggled her hips slightly, but the rough ground underneath her feet made her almost fall against her friend.

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