Stand by Me (4 page)
Maeve always felt sorry for Dominique, who had to live in that dreary house with its pictures of the Sacred Heart and the Virgin Mary on the walls and with both Evelyn and Seamus liable to whip out their rosary beads at any moment. It didn’t help, either, that Gorgeous Gabe (as the girls at school had christened him) had embraced the whole religion thing too. And it didn’t matter how much Dominique might want to live a different sort of life, or even just experience it for a time; it was very difficult to be different in the Brady household.
‘You need to get a job,’ Maeve told her. ‘Any job. Then you’ll have some money of your own and you’ll be able to go on holidays yourself.’
Dominique nodded. ‘I’ve applied to loads of places,’ she said. ‘Banks, insurance companies, the corporation . . . but that all takes for ever and there are so many people looking for work. I’m going into town next week to see if the shops are hiring.’
‘I heard that Cara Bond is off to the States,’ said Maeve. ‘She’s got a Donnelly visa and she’s going to Boston. And my sister is thinking of heading to London.’
‘No!’ Dominique looked at her friend in surprise.
‘There are jobs in the City there,’ Maeve told her. ‘And of course Lorna is good at all that stuff, what with her degree and everything. So she’s giving it a try.’
‘I suppose that’s where having a decent qualification helps,’ said Dominique.
‘Your leaving results were very decent,’ said Maeve.
‘Yeah, but I’m not going to college, am I?’ said Dominique. ‘I didn’t really think hard enough about it, I suppose. Anyhow, my parents couldn’t have afforded it so there wasn’t any point.’ She sighed. ‘My mother has the incredibly dated view that some guy will marry me and look after me for the rest of my life!’ She made a face. ‘How likely is that? It’d be great to go to England and get a job. Then I wouldn’t have to live in Shrine Central any more.’
Maeve laughed. ‘When we both get jobs, we’ll get a flat,’ she said. ‘Then we can do our own thing.’
‘My father would never let me live in a flat,’ said Dominique. ‘Not in Dublin. Not while I could still be at home.’
‘Hey, you’re an adult now,’ Maeve reminded her. ‘You were eighteen last month. You can do what you like.’
‘I wish it felt that way,’ said Dominique gloomily.
‘I promise you,’ said Maeve. ‘We’ll get jobs, we’ll get a flat and we’ll have a great time.’
But it didn’t work out like that. Despite their best efforts, there were no jobs to be found. Dominique eventually enrolled in a secretarial school (Evelyn agreed that it would help her employment prospects if she could type, although she complained that after thirteen years in the education system, it was a bit much to be forced into forking out more money for her daughter to learn a useful skill), while Maeve joined her sister, Lorna, in London. Lorna had landed a good job at Lloyds Bank and was sharing a house with two other girls. There was room for a fourth and, she told Maeve, as there were some vacancies for juniors going in the bank, she should come over and take her chances. Maeve had gone, been offered a position, and happily accepted.
Dominique couldn’t blame her friend for going but she missed her when she’d left. Emma was still around but Dominique didn’t have the same easy friendship with the prettiest girl in the school as she’d had with Maeve. It seemed to her that everybody was either getting jobs (Emma was working on the beauty counter in Arnotts department store) or leaving the country, and she was doing neither. The trouble was, she wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to do and had no idea what she’d be good at. It wasn’t that she was stupid - her exam results proved that - but she didn’t have a burning ambition. Or a dream about the sort of life she wanted to lead.
Sometimes she wished she’d been born with Gabriel’s certainty. But on the nights she went out with Emma and her other friends - occasionally drinking a little too much and hoping that her parents wouldn’t notice the next day - she knew that she did have a certainty about one thing: she sure as hell didn’t want a life of penance, poverty and celibacy like him!
The first job offer she got was as a waitress in a hamburger restaurant on George’s Street. Evelyn was both pleased that she’d got a job and annoyed that her newly acquired shorthand and typing skills were going to waste. It was the first time Dominique had ever had a wage of her own and, even though the money wasn’t great, she felt a rush of independence when she opened her pay packet.
The following morning she went into Peter Mark in Grafton Street and asked for a new hairstyle with a bit more life in it.
‘You need to lose the fringe for starters,’ the stylist told her bluntly. ‘You can carry off something more fashionable. Anything like these.’ She handed Dominique a magazine with pictures of Kylie Minogue, Bananarama and the Bangles. Dominique looked doubtful.
‘Maybe not quite so . . . so big,’ she said finally as she looked at the styles. ‘And not too tarty.’
The stylist sighed deeply. She liked giving people up-to-the-minute cuts but she could tell that the girl in front of her was a bit conservative for some of her favourites. She told Dominique that she’d give her something less radical than Cyndi Lauper but she’d try to make her look good all the same.
‘You should get contact lenses too,’ she advised. ‘That way people would be able to see your eyes. You’ve got lovely eyes.’
Nobody had ever told her that she had lovely eyes before. Dominique felt unexpectedly pleased to think she had a feature that anyone could consider lovely. She couldn’t afford lenses, but she did buy herself some new frames for her glasses - big, white and square. They didn’t show off her eyes but they were very fashionable. She also invested in some bright blue eye shadow, dark red lipstick and high-heeled shoes. (Years later, when she’d learned what suited her and what didn’t, she shuddered to think that she’d been so proud of her primary colour make-up, oversized glasses and ridiculous hairdo.)
She enjoyed her job at the restaurant. She had a good memory for faces and always recognised regular customers. She remembered their favourite meals and would ask if they wanted ‘the usual’, which made them feel welcome and a little bit special. And she never got an order wrong.
So when the letters started to come back from the banks and the building societies and the insurance companies and everyone else she’d applied to for a job, saying that the positions had been filled by someone ‘more suitable’ or that she was on a long panel from which vacancies throughout the year might be filled, she didn’t feel despairing or rejected. She liked what she did, and even though Evelyn felt she should be chasing up office jobs, she was happy.
Her social life began to improve because she started meeting some of the other waiters and waitresses after work and they’d go for a drink in the Old Stand or Bruxelles, which were always noisy and crowded and fun. Dominique enjoyed being with people who didn’t know everything about her and who hadn’t known her when she was spotty and unattractive. (Much to her joy, the spots had disappeared almost as soon as she’d left school and even though she still hadn’t quite cracked make-up, she realised that she seemed to be growing into her looks a little.) She saw her new friends more and Emma and her gang less. She felt as though she was breaking away from her past and setting out on the road to her future.
Neither Evelyn nor Seamus was entirely happy with the lifestyle Dominique was beginning to lead. They wanted to know what the point of all this partying was. They believed that life was a journey towards something better and they wanted her to be a spiritual person, like Gabriel, and to spend her spare time doing good works, not just having fun. Dominique knew that she wasn’t a spiritual person. Especially not now that she was earning her own money and staying out until the early hours of the morning, something that caused intense rows between herself and her mother.
The number of novenas that Evelyn left on her bedside table increased almost daily, especially whenever Dominique stayed out until dawn and threw clothes into the laundry basket that reeked of smoke and alcohol.
‘It’s not from me,’ she told her mother one day. ‘I only have one or two drinks at the most and I don’t smoke at all. I don’t know what you’re worrying about.’
Evelyn reminded her that it was easy to acquire loose morals and dangerous to drink too much because you never knew what it could lead to. It was, of course, she told Dominique, a sin to have sex before marriage, and no man would want her if she had a chequered past. Dominique looked at her mother in irritation and said that she didn’t think God spent his time keeping tabs on her sex life, but if He did there was something decidedly weird about Him, and besides, her past certainly wasn’t chequered. There were times when she wished it was, but so far, despite having snogged a number of men after nights in the pub, she hadn’t slept with any of them. No matter how irrational she told herself she was being, she still harboured images of a bolt of lightning striking her down if she lost her virginity to a man she hardly knew.
She served Brendan Delahaye on the third Friday he came in to American Burger for lunch. She knew that he was a regular customer even though he hadn’t sat at one of her tables before, and so she smiled the smile that caused two dimples to appear in her cheeks and that did more for her looks than the new haircut and dramatic eye shadow ever could.
‘Mushroom burger, well done,’ he said in a soft Cork accent. ‘And I mean well done. Not just scorched. Cremated.’
‘Mushroom burger, cremated,’ she repeated.
‘An extra portion of chips and a glass of milk.’
She stopped, her pencil poised above her notebook. ‘Milk?’
‘Yes, milk. Comes from a cow?’
‘Gosh, thanks for that information. Otherwise I mightn’t have known what you were talking about.’ She smiled at him, not intimidated by him as she sometimes was by her customers, because his expression was open and friendly, and because he was from the country after all, and everyone knew that people from Dublin were far superior to their culchie cousins. ‘You didn’t strike me as the milk type, that’s all.’
‘Oh.’ He sat back in the booth and looked up at her. ‘And what type do I strike you as?’
She studied him thoughtfully. Even though he was sitting down, she could see that he was a big man. Older than her by a good few years, she reckoned; must be in his late twenties. Tall and broad. His face strong-featured and slightly weather-beaten. Light brown hair, gelled but curly. Deep blue eyes. Which were now regarding her equally thoughtfully.
‘A rugby player,’ she said eventually. ‘A pint drinker.’
‘Rugby!’ he snorted. ‘That sissy ol’ game! Gaelic football is the only game in the world for a man to play.’
His accent had become a little stronger and Dominique stifled a giggle.
‘And milk is the only drink worth drinking?’ she suggested. ‘Preferably from your own cow?’
He stared at her and then laughed, loud enough so that the people nearby turned to look at them.
‘When I’m working, yes,’ he said. ‘I like milk. But I don’t have a cow of my own. Not in Dublin, anyway.’
‘Where d’you work?’ She knew that she should be getting on with taking his order - the restaurant was busy and all her tables were full - but she was enjoying the banter with him.
‘On the building site the other side of St Stephen’s Green,’ he told her.
She nodded. There was an office development being built on the site. She’d read in the papers that the economy was finally beginning to pick up and that there was a real need for office space in the city. She couldn’t quite believe it herself, because she still hadn’t got a better job offer, but she hoped it was right.
‘So you’re a brickie, are you?’ she asked.
‘Jeez, girl, you do know how to put a man down. You don’t have to use the term “brickie” as though I’m a no-hoper. I’m working on the site, yes. But when this job is over I’m setting up my own company.’
‘Really?’ She looked at him in astonishment.
‘Absolutely,’ he told her. ‘That’s the only way forward. Things will pick up in this country, and having your own company is what’ll make you money.’
‘What’ll you build?’ she asked.
‘Houses,’ he told her. ‘Lots of them. And I’ll make a big profit from it.’
She laughed. ‘I hope someone buys them from you, so.’
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