Page 46 of Every Christmas Eve
‘I’m thinking of spending the summer in Ireland instead of going back home,’ he told me a month later as we sat on a tartan rug in the Botanic Gardens, the sun bouncing off our skin and the smell of coconut tanning lotion mixed with the cheap beers we’d taken to share over my home-made sandwiches.
‘You’re not going home at all?’ I asked him, sensing a pledge of commitment on the horizon.
‘My landlord says he’d halve the rent cos I’d be doing hima favour,’ he explained. ‘And aside from that I can gig in the bars in Belfast to earn some money.’
‘Cool,’ I replied. He leaned across and kissed my cheek, then rested his head on my shoulder. I gulped back some fizzy wine.
‘I’d love to hang out with you more,’ he said to me. ‘We could go road-tripping? Visit my long-lost relatives down in Tipp.’
‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,’ I said, thinking I was hilarious by referencing the famous song, but also wanting to buy myself some time with his suggestion. I knew what he was hinting at. He wanted us to be more exclusive, like a proper couple, rather than a week-by-week arrangement where we’d meet for a pint over lunch, or go to the cinema to break up the monotony of the Queen’s University Library where most of us spent our evenings.
I changed the subject, my head filling with notions that if I did make plans with John, and Ben was home in summer, what would I do then? Could I make a commitment to someone else knowing that if Ben arrived back in Bellaghy, I’d find it impossible to stay away, despite our conversation the Christmas Eve before?
‘This is no way to live your life, Lou,’ said Catherine, one of my closest uni friends, when I tried to explain it to her. Catherine was a no-nonsense cello player from Newry who would often vocalise her frustrations with how I’d put everything on hold – holiday plans, seasonal adventures and now romance – in case Ben Heaney came riding into my life on his white horse, declaring his undying love and commitment tome once and for all. ‘You make the call and never mind what Ben’s doing for summer. What doyouwant to do?’
‘I was hoping to see Ben, but I’m happy to keep up my lease on my digs here too and get a part-time job in the city,’ I said. ‘I’m teaching music two evenings a week already.’
Catherine seemed happy with that.
‘Well, John is here in Belfast, Ben isn’t. You’ll be here in Belfast, Ben isn’t. John is up for a proper relationship, Ben isn’t,’ she told me. ‘You can’t keep putting your life on standby for someone who is calling all the shots without giving you anything in return. It’s hardly rocket science, is it?’
At nineteen years old, with my first full university year in Belfast closing in, I knew I’d a decision to make for my own sanity. But when I tried to broach the subject, Ben didn’t seem to have the same urgency to see me as I did him.
Though my questioning was far from direct.
‘Any plans yet for the rest of summer?’ I texted him as I made my way to our weekly pub quiz. John would be there with all his mates, saving a space at the table for my later-than-usual arrival. ‘I’m wondering if we’ll get to see each other.’
‘We’ll see each other, for sure,’ he messaged me straight back. ‘I’ve a job lined up in Amsterdam on a building site with some lads from Berlin. Did I tell you about that?’
I’ll never forget how my stomach lurched as the stretch of another summer so far apart loomed.
‘No, you didn’t tell me that,’ I replied with a sigh. ‘Sounds like fun.’
‘You could come visit?’ he wrote back within seconds,probably because he was on his way to class or studying in a café or library somewhere. If he’d been with his friends, I’d have been waiting until the next day for a reply. ‘Stay a while. I’d love to introduce you to the gang, Lou. Check out some flights and we can see what would work for us both.’
I sat down on a wall as I digested the ongoing casual nature of it all, watching the sun slowly glide behind tall grey buildings of Belfast city in the near distance. Something shifted within me.
Introduce me to the gang? Did that include this mysterious German girlfriend? He hadn’t told me about her, but I was reading between the lines.
It was all so vague, so Ben, so I took it as the wake-up call I badly needed, even if it cut so deeply.
I felt empty. I felt further away from him than I’d ever felt before, but it was what we’d agreed, so I just had to run with it.
I smoked a cigarette while sitting on the wall, the tears rolling down my cheeks, then I took my time before I made my way to The Botanic Inn. John’s eyes lit up as soon as he saw me, as if he’d been watching the door the whole time. He patted a seat beside him while his friends handed out pens and paper.
‘Just in time, Lou,’ John said, putting his arm around my shoulder. ‘It’s the music round first, so we’ll be off to a flying start. We’re calling our team “The Dejected”.’
I faked a smile. They couldn’t have been more accurate if they’d tried.
As the weight of Ben’s studies became heavier, and myown circle of friends in Belfast’s music scene grew wider, our phone calls became even less frequent. John and I toured Ireland in a camper van during the whole of July, playing music around campfires and busking on the streets for extra cash to fund our next pit stop. It was wild, it was carefree, it was exactly what I needed at the time.
And from what I’d heard from Ben in his sporadic messages from Amsterdam, he was having the time of his life too.
Soon, I found that when something super exciting came my way, like when I was chosen out of hundreds to perform solo at a winter recital in the prestigious Waterfront Hall on Belfast’s River Lagan, Ben wasn’t around to take my call. And if he was, it was short, sweet and to the point.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ he said when I got to tell him eventually. ‘Let’s catch up soon. I suppose a few days in Paris is out of the question?’
Of course it was out of the question. His veterinary degree was a huge commitment, but my music was equally as important and time-consuming to me, not to mention how John and I were growing closer. Days rolled into weeks, and one weekend passed after another. Soon Ben and I could go without speaking properly for longer than I could once have ever imagined.
