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Suddenly I’m up on my feet, pacing. Dunno why but I can’t seem to sit still any more.
‘This evening,’ I say firmly. ‘For better or for worse, I have to tell Dan this evening. Even if I have to throw his mobile phone into the fish tank and physically grasp his head between my two hands in a vice grip to get his attention.’
‘Hmmm, I know what you mean,’ says Jules, wolfing back a bag of nachos now. ‘Terrible pity you’re not a sick animal, isn’t it? You know Dan, he can’t resist the scent of the wounded.’
I nod, knowing only too well what she means.
‘Tell you something though, Annie.’
‘What’s that?’
‘This could just be the fright that he needs to put manners on him. You know, when he realises that you’ve actually got a life and a career of your own outside of here. God knows, you’ve made enough sacrifices for him these past few years, and you get sweet feck all in return. If you ask me, he totally takes you for granted and never once have I heard you complain.’
She gets absolutely no argument from me on that score.
‘So,’ Jules goes on, stretching her long legs out towards the fire, ‘maybe this’ll be just the kick up the arse that he needs. I mean, when you tell him that you’re not prepared to sit around and play the surrendered wife any more. Hey, I don’t suppose there’s any chance I can stay and watch?’
Unsurprisingly, I do NOT let her stay and watch. Come eight o’clock, there’s still no sign of Dan, quelle surprise and it turns out Jules is meeting up with one of her pals from college, who lives in Lismore village not too far away. So I wave her off, full of promises to report back the full, unexpurgated transcript of my Big Chat with Dan later on.
It was my full intention to wait up for him, so he couldn’t head straight for bed without saying two words to me, like he normally would. But by half eleven, I’m stretched out on the sofa in front of the fire with the TV still on, out for the count and utterly drained after all the hoofing up and down to Dublin earlier today.
The dogs are the first to wake me; Dan often takes them out with him on farm calls and they always go bananas whenever they get back home. So the minute I hear barking and paws scratching to get through the living room door, I’m groggily hauling myself up, all set for the almighty show-down.
‘Dan?’ I call out, sleepily stumbling to my feet, ‘I’m in here.’
Our three Labradors are first into the room, jumping and slobbering all over me as I pet each one in turn. Then I look up…and there he is, filling the door with his huge, broad-shouldered, hulking frame, still wearing the giant, oversized wax jacket he wears out on farm calls and looking more exhausted than I’ve seen him in months. Honest to God, the dark circles lining his face are now exactly the same shade of black as his eyes.
‘Hey, you’re still up?’ he says, in a voice flat with tiredness. ‘I thought you’d have been in bed hours ago.’
‘Emm…yeah, I…. well…I wanted to talk to you,’ I say, with a highly inconvenient knot suddenly appearing in my stomach. ‘How did you get on today?’
‘Oh same old, same old,’ he says, coming in towards the fire for warmth, as ever, the room suddenly seeming smaller just because he’s in it. He’s left his Wellingtons in the hall but even in stockinged feet, he still towers over me by about a foot and a half. He brings the cold outside air into the room with him and smells of the outdoors: horsey and leathery. Unsurprising, given that he’s been on an equine farm for the past sixteen hours. Must be raining outside too because his thick, black hair looks damp as he runs his hands through it, trying to dry himself out a bit.
‘I was up at Fogarty’s most of the evening – Paul insisted I call over a second time, after I’d done the rest of my calls. But all is well, I think. I did another endoscopy on the filly and there’s nothing sinister. He’s just panicking because she won’t be fit for the flat season, that’s all.’
I smile up at him and change the subject.
‘Hungry?’ Good tactic; a full stomach will possibly make him more amenable to what I have to say.
‘No thanks,’ he yawns, ‘I’m just so, so tired. But James has taken the phones now, so at least I can crash out for a bit. I’ll just feed the dogs then get to bed. Early start tomorrow, you know yourself.’
It flashes through my mind how polite and passionless our conversation is. More like two flatmates who hardly ever see each other than husband and wife.
‘I’ll look after the dogs, don’t worry, but before you do go to bed, Dan, there’s something we really need to talk about.’
‘Could we leave it till later? I doubt I can take too much in right now.’
He’s half way out the door and I know this is the only chance I’m going to get, so I go for it.
‘Dan, remember I told you I was up in Dublin today for an audition?’
‘An audition? Really? You never said.’
I let that go on the grounds that the guy is practically sleepwalking with sheer knackered-ness and has probably even forgotten talking to me this morning. Chances are I’m just a big, blurry shape to him now.
‘Yes, I was and I don’t know how it went but, well, you know how it is. I just have to wait by the phone now. Oh…and say a lot of novenas,’ I tack on lightly, smiling nervously.
‘Well…best of luck. I hope it all works out for you.’
Another massive yawn from him as he winds up the conversation and makes to go upstairs.
‘Dan, that’s not the whole story.’
‘No, no, I’m sure it’s not…but can’t you tell me about it tomorrow?’
For a second my heart goes out to him; the guy is physically swaying on his feet with exhaustion right now.
‘Dan, I’m sorry, but no, this won’t wait any longer.’
OK, now I have his attention.
‘Well, what is it? Some big movie role or something?’
He’s starting to sound a bit narky now, like I’m delaying him from precious sleep time.
‘It’s a play, a new play that’s on in the National in Dublin. One of the actresses is pregnant and has to drop out, so I’d be taking over from her. If I landed the part, that is.’
‘Hey, that’s terrific…well, let me know as soon as there’s news.’
‘And…you see…there’s something else too. Something important.’
OK, now I’m learning a big life lesson. Namely that when on the brink of a potentially volatile conversation with one’s other half, never EVER leave the TV on in the background. Because it has the power to throw the oddest curve balls into the mix. Right now, there’s some late-night American soap opera on TV where a wife is having a showdown with her husband and is telling him she’s leaving him.
‘I am sick of this marriage and I’m sick of being taken for granted!’ the wife is yelling at the top of her voice.
‘So what’s that then?’ Dan asks politely enough, but with ‘then can I please go to bed?’ practically etched across his forehead.
‘I’ve had enough of the way you ignore me!’ screams the TV, as I fumble around for the right words. Shit, and I wouldn’t mind, only I’d rehearsed this in my head about a dozen times this evening.
‘Well, you see, if I were to get cast…’ I start, gingerly picking my words.
‘Do you understand? You are so emotionally unavailable to me and I’ve taken all I can of this. There’s only so much neglect a person can put up with!’ fed-up TV wife is still yelling in the background. I rummage around the sofa for the remote control to switch the shagging thing off, but of course can’t find it.
‘…the show wouldn’t actually be running at the National,’ I say, gathering a bit of momentum now.
‘And, after years of putting up with the way you treat me, I’ve had enough of you and your white silences and it’s time you heard a few home truths,’ TV wife continues to screech, as I root under the armchair cushions where Jules had been sitting earlier, still searching for the remote. No joy, so I just lunge for the telly to switch it off manually. But not before TV wife gets in the final clincher: ‘Because I’ve sacrificed my own life and career for you and get absolutely nothing in return. I’ve barely had as much as a sentence out of you in months, years in fact. We’re not man and wife any more – we’re barely even on speaking terms. So now you leave me no choice but to walk out that door and never come back, do you hear me? Enough’s enough…I’m leaving you and you’ve got no one to blame but yourself!’
‘Annie, I’ve just worked a fifteen-hour day, in yet another month of fifteen-hour days. I’m this close to collapsing with sheer exhaustion. Is there any chance you’ll just stand still for two seconds together and tell me whatever it is that you’re trying to tell me?’
Deep breath. Stay calm. And remember it’s not like I even have the job yet.
‘What I’m trying to tell you, Dan, what I’ve been trying to tell you since this morning, is that if I got the part, I would be going to Broadway. To New York.’
My mouth frames each and every word. And suddenly the fireplace is at the oddest angle.
‘But hey, that would be terrific for you…you love New York…’
‘You haven’t heard the whole thing…’
‘Which is…?’
‘Which is…that I’d be gone for one full year.’
First sparks.
I was barely twenty-four hours at Allenwood Abbey when one accepted fact was drummed into me as received wisdom; namely that my dorm-mate and New Best Friend, Yolanda, fancied the actual knickers off Dan. It seemed that everyone knew, even, it could only be presumed, the guy himself.
As it happened, the following day he and I were sitting together for my very first class – as bad luck would have it – maths. By a mile my worst subject. Yolanda had warned me that Miss Hugenot, the teacher, had a weepingly annoying habit of picking on any poor unsuspecting moron whose concentration she suspected might have drifted out the window, then hauling them up to the whiteboard to write out trig equations. In full.
Anyway, in clattered Miss Hugenot, dumping a pile of uncorrected homework on her desk, before standing imperiously at the top of the class, surveying us all down her long, thin, aquiline nose. I later discovered that she was a perfectly humane woman, but to the terrified, fifteen-year-old me on my first, proper, full day, she might as well have been the Wicked Witch of the West minus the green face-paint, the broomstick and the dum-di-dum-di-dum-dum music in the background.
Please dear Jesus don’t let her pick on me, I semaphored shyly across to Dan, who just grinned back confidently with all the calm of someone who was well able to understand the finer points of differential calculus; not least what the shagging thing actually meant. But then, as I was later to learn, Dan’s one of those rare people that maths comes easily to; for him, doing a long equation is a bit like sinking into a nice warm bath.
‘So, let me guess,’ he whispered, registering my panic and twinkling kindly down at me. ‘Either you don’t know the answer or…could it be that you haven’t done your homework?’
‘Ehhh…both,’ I hissed back. ‘I meant to, it was just that last night…’
‘Your dorm-mate kept you up chatting half the night?’ he guessed knowingly, the black eyes dancing.
‘Something like that, yeah.’
‘Sounds like Yolanda all right,’ he said, but kindly and not in any way putting her down.
Meanwhile the girl herself, seated two full rows ahead of us, had heard him utter the magic word…her own name…and turned around to beam suggestively and swish her blonde, freshly-washed locks at him. Now don’t get me wrong; I liked Yolanda very much, but even at this early stage I was starting to learn that she wasn’t much of a rules girl and didn’t for a single second believe that if a guy liked you, he’d find some way to ask you out. No, she was of the ‘take no prisoners and bludgeon a fella into submission until you eventually become his girlfriend’ school of thought. She smiled when Dan smiled and her eyes barely left his, like he was her magnetic North. And I just knew from the mildly inquiring look on her face that I’d have to relay every detail of the conversation I’d had with him back to her at lunchtime, omitting no detail, however trivial.
Then…to the soundtrack of a drumroll in my head for dramatic effect…came the dreaded phrase.
‘So,’ said Miss Hugenot, glowering at me with beady grey eyes that spotted fresh blood. ‘Let’s all hear from the latest addition to our class, shall we? Miss Annie Cole? Let’s see what they’ve been teaching you out in Karachi, then. Would you care to come to the top of the class and derive from first principles, x, x squared and x cubed, sin x, cos x and tan, from your notes? In full, if you please.’
Mike Sherry was on the opposite side of the class to me and, to a chorus of giggles immediately made this really annoying kissy-kissy noise that almost sounded like he was calling a horse, while I stumbled to my feet, trembling like jelly.
But that was all it took to distract Miss Hugenot. The full headlamps of her attention momentarily turned on Mike, to berate him for displaying such immaturity and in that split second and with sleight of hand that a professional magician would envy, Dan instantly switched copybooks with mine. So there was the answer, all perfect and neatly written and all I had to do was transcribe. Honour was saved and for the first time in my life, I was actually able to leave a maths class with my head held high.
Later on after class, as I was packing up to leave, Dan grabbed my arm and caught up with me as I stumbled off to try and find my next class.
‘Hey, wait…where are you headed?’ he asked me as I consulted an unintelligible map of the school.
‘Ehhh…room 201?’
‘Wrong way. Here, let me show you where it is.’
He took my books and strolled alongside me and to this day I can still remember the nervous, nauseous sensation of butterflies suddenly hitting my stomach. Bear in mind, I’d only ever been to all-girls schools before this and was totally unused to male attention, never mind the dense, sweaty atmosphere of sex that practically ricocheted off the walls at Allenwood. Sex and teenage pheromones that is, impervious either to open windows or deodorant. And now here was Dan, all tall and earthy and confident, utterly secure in his own popularity as only a captain of the school rugby team could be. The approximate size of a block of flats and so muscular he looked like he rowed everywhere. Handsome is such a Jane Austen-esque word, I thought, and yet it was the only possible adjective you could use to describe Dan Ferguson.
I tried to thank him for digging me out in maths class, but he just grinned and brushed it off. Then he abruptly changed the subject and asked me how I was settling in.
‘Great,’ I answered, trying my best to match his cool confidence. ‘Everyone’s being really friendly.’
That much was a polite, white lie; I was crippled with shyness back then, and the truth was that apart from him and Yolanda, I’d barely said two words to anyone else to date.
‘You must really miss your family though,’ he said gently, suddenly stopping in the packed corridor to look intently down at me. And I really do mean to look down at me – even at fifteen he was pushing six feet tall.
‘Very much,’ I nodded, ‘but I’ll see my mother at mid-term. And at Christmas, of course.’
‘She’s in…South America, isn’t it?’
‘Georgetown,’ I nodded, then stupidly tacked on, ‘in Guyana.’ By now people were starting to bang into us in their haste to get to the next class, but still Dan didn’t budge.
‘And your dad?’
‘Remarried. Lives in Moscow now. His new wife is Russian. I don’t really…that is, I don’t really see him all that much. In fact…I don’t see him at all.’
I think he must have guessed this wasn’t a subject I particularly wanted to be probed on, so he tactfully changed the subject back to Mum.
‘Still though, South America’s a helluva long way for you to travel to see your mother,’ he said, worry suddenly flashing into the coal-black eyes. ‘And then keeping in contact can’t be easy either. All those long-distance phone calls, emailing the whole time…’
‘Oh no, it’s absolutely fine, I’m well used to it.’
I might have sounded all sure of myself and blasé, but his quick mind seemed to read me accurately and he easily sensed the insecurity that lay beneath.
‘Do you have any other family here in Ireland?’ he asked kindly.
‘My grandmother…but honestly, I’m completely fine about Mum being so far away. As Yolanda pointed out to me, I’ve got to look on the positive side.’
‘Which is?’
‘She said I’m probably the only one in this school who can go home for the holidays and pick up a suntan at the same time.’
He smiled his gorgeous crooked smile at that, then changed the subject, saying that there was a big rugby match that Saturday in the school grounds against Clongowes Wood, a rival boarding school, and did I fancy coming along to watch?
‘I’m playing in it,’ he grinned and in that second I was utterly sucked into his easy, relaxed charm. ‘And believe me, if last night’s training session is anything to go by, we need all the support we can get.’
Course at lunchtime, Yolanda cornered me and didn’t so much ask as demand to know the exact nature and substance of what we’d been talking about. So I told her, correctly guessing that she wouldn’t like it.
‘He invited you to watch the match?’ she hissed, her blue eyes a beautiful study in wounded pride. Bless her, she’d been kind and welcoming to me; really bad idea to go pissing her off now. And given that I had a social circle that consisted of one girlfriend, the last thing I needed was to start making enemies.
‘Come on, Yolanda, he meant as friends, that’s all,’ I stressed. ‘He was asking me about my mother being so far away and just felt a bit sorry for me, that’s all. For God’s sake, it’s only a rugby match. Won’t half the school be there supporting the team?’
This mollified her a bit and by the time I reminded her that Dan was only being nice to the new girl, she’d finally started to cool down a bit. But not before impressing on me that Mike Sherry had expressed interest in me, that he was a sweetheart and that I’d be a right moron not to really, really, really consider giving him a whirl.
