Read Online At a Time Like This by Catherine Dunne - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Catherine Dunne
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getting into her stride, with her photocopies from Le Monde. She waved at us, her ringed and braceleted hand saying: ‘Just get on
with it, girls.’
Nora’s spoken French wasn’t bad and she told me after the seminar that she’d gone to France for a couple of months once she finished her Leaving Cert. Then she’d gone on
to work in London. Both of these things seemed exotic to me at the time. I’d never lived anywhere else but Killiney
‘So, where did you work when you lived in London?’ I was curious. Georgie and I were already thinking about the summer, doing a little bit of planning ahead. The idea of a few months
in a big city like London appealed to us. That was assuming I passed my exams and didn’t have to come home early to repeat. But I knew that failure wasn’t an option. Not for me,
particularly after the nuclear holocaust that had followed Paul’s Pre-Med exams. Although my parents had made no secret of the fact that they were happy to have got both of us, Paul and me,
to the stage where they no longer had any responsibility for us, they still insisted on academic success. You might say that they held the door open for us as soon as they decently could, but we
went through it on their terms.
I don’t think that Paul ever wanted to be a doctor, but it was one way of getting our parents’ attention. I mean, he really needed them to notice him. And when he failed
Pre-Med, he had more of their attention than he knew what to do with. Don’t they say that for some people, negative attention is better than none at all? That’s how Paul was back then,
I’m convinced of it. As for me, I voted with my feet as soon as I was able. For as long as I can remember, I’d always wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere at all, as long as it was
away from my parents, particularly my mother. I got very tired of always feeling in the way.
I was a serious disappointment to the old pair, I know that. I was a bit of a wild teenager, I did my fair share of illegal substances, developed a Dublin accent, all the better to piss them
off, and I hung around for a while with the sort of people that they didn’t like. I kept Georgie from them, too, as much as I could. They knew of her existence, all right; they approved of
her and her family, and that was another reason for keeping them apart. Georgie was still living in Killiney back then. It was before her father’s transformation from ‘builder’
into ‘developer’ and her family’s move to Ballsbridge when she and I were both barely fifteen. She changed schools then and I missed her.
From the time Georgie left the neighbourhood, I deliberately lived a ‘fuck you’ lifestyle. It was one way of putting distance between me and my parents, their gin and tonics, their
bridge club, their almighty golf. Looking back, I was probably a bit inconsistent – not to mention a complete nightmare by the time I reached eighteen. I was happy enough to have them pay my
fees for Trinity and give me my monthly allowance, though. I figured, well, they have it. So I might as well spend it.
Anyway, I can remember that first conversation I had with Nora as though it was yesterday. I remember how I waited, dying to hear her reply and expecting to get loads of information about
London. I wanted to hear about fashion, about places to see, things to do. But she just leafed through her notebook, as if she was looking for the right answer among all her neatly written tables
of vocabulary and handy phrases.
‘Oh, I just worked in an office,’ she said. ‘I did some temping. It wasn’t terribly exciting, really’
Now that was far too vague for me. ‘But London – what about London?’ I persisted. ‘Is it a great city to live in?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘If you like big cities. I don’t, not really’
And that was the end of that. I got nothing else out of her, either, the next time I tried, so I got the message and gave up. It didn’t take long for me to find
with it, girls.’
Nora’s spoken French wasn’t bad and she told me after the seminar that she’d gone to France for a couple of months once she finished her Leaving Cert. Then she’d gone on
to work in London. Both of these things seemed exotic to me at the time. I’d never lived anywhere else but Killiney
‘So, where did you work when you lived in London?’ I was curious. Georgie and I were already thinking about the summer, doing a little bit of planning ahead. The idea of a few months
in a big city like London appealed to us. That was assuming I passed my exams and didn’t have to come home early to repeat. But I knew that failure wasn’t an option. Not for me,
particularly after the nuclear holocaust that had followed Paul’s Pre-Med exams. Although my parents had made no secret of the fact that they were happy to have got both of us, Paul and me,
to the stage where they no longer had any responsibility for us, they still insisted on academic success. You might say that they held the door open for us as soon as they decently could, but we
went through it on their terms.
I don’t think that Paul ever wanted to be a doctor, but it was one way of getting our parents’ attention. I mean, he really needed them to notice him. And when he failed
Pre-Med, he had more of their attention than he knew what to do with. Don’t they say that for some people, negative attention is better than none at all? That’s how Paul was back then,
I’m convinced of it. As for me, I voted with my feet as soon as I was able. For as long as I can remember, I’d always wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere at all, as long as it was
away from my parents, particularly my mother. I got very tired of always feeling in the way.
I was a serious disappointment to the old pair, I know that. I was a bit of a wild teenager, I did my fair share of illegal substances, developed a Dublin accent, all the better to piss them
off, and I hung around for a while with the sort of people that they didn’t like. I kept Georgie from them, too, as much as I could. They knew of her existence, all right; they approved of
her and her family, and that was another reason for keeping them apart. Georgie was still living in Killiney back then. It was before her father’s transformation from ‘builder’
into ‘developer’ and her family’s move to Ballsbridge when she and I were both barely fifteen. She changed schools then and I missed her.
From the time Georgie left the neighbourhood, I deliberately lived a ‘fuck you’ lifestyle. It was one way of putting distance between me and my parents, their gin and tonics, their
bridge club, their almighty golf. Looking back, I was probably a bit inconsistent – not to mention a complete nightmare by the time I reached eighteen. I was happy enough to have them pay my
fees for Trinity and give me my monthly allowance, though. I figured, well, they have it. So I might as well spend it.
Anyway, I can remember that first conversation I had with Nora as though it was yesterday. I remember how I waited, dying to hear her reply and expecting to get loads of information about
London. I wanted to hear about fashion, about places to see, things to do. But she just leafed through her notebook, as if she was looking for the right answer among all her neatly written tables
of vocabulary and handy phrases.
‘Oh, I just worked in an office,’ she said. ‘I did some temping. It wasn’t terribly exciting, really’
Now that was far too vague for me. ‘But London – what about London?’ I persisted. ‘Is it a great city to live in?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘If you like big cities. I don’t, not really’
And that was the end of that. I got nothing else out of her, either, the next time I tried, so I got the message and gave up. It didn’t take long for me to find
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