The Forever Girl (23 page)

“Really? Is that the way it works?”

He shook his head ruefully. “No. But it gives me something to do.”

In the second week, she went to a film at the Filmhouse, the arts cinema, with Padraig. He had invited her because he had a spare ticket and he thought she might like the film. “Iranian,” he said. “They make pretty impressive films.”

“I’ve not seen any.”

“Nor me. But they do.”

“About?”

He paused. “Oh, about the clash between modernity and the old ways. That’s a good theme for an Iranian film. There are lots of clashes between …”

“Modernity and the old ways?”

“Exactly.” He paused. “You go anywhere there and you see it.”

“You sure?”

He grinned. “I have no idea.”

“You could be talking nonsense, you know.”

“Of course it’s nonsense. Life is nonsense, don’t you think? How much of it actually makes sense? It’s just us filling time because we know that we’re tiny specks in a great broth of galaxies and black holes and gas clouds. We’re nothing, and so we try to make structures and meaning for ourselves, but it’s all nonsense underneath.”

She thought that a bleak view, and said as much. “But some things aren’t nonsense at all. Some things are deadly serious. Pain. Hunger. Human suffering. These things actually hurt people and only …” She struggled to find the right way of saying it. “They only seem meaningless to people who aren’t actually suffering them.”

At the end of the film he turned to her and said, “You were right.”

They were leaving the Filmhouse, but she felt she was still in Tehran, in the cramped house with the young woman arguing with her indoctrinated brother.

“I was right about what?”

“About suffering. About how simple human concerns mean a lot. How they mean everything, really.”

She thanked him. “I’d forgotten our discussion. But thank you anyway.”

“Like loneliness.”

They were out on the street now. He had suggested they go to a bar – and there were plenty about – but she was tired.

“I have to get up early tomorrow.” Then she asked, “Loneliness?”

“Yes. Being … I don’t know – separate from people and being unable to do anything about it. It’s a form of suffering, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.” She smiled at him. “You’re lonely, Padraig?”

He looked embarrassed. “I’m so cheesy. I say cheesy things. It’s
just that …” He looked up at the night sky. “I like you. That’s what I was trying to say.”

“Good. That’s nice to know.”

“Can’t we go for a drink?”

“I told you: I’m tired. Do you mind?”

He shook his head. “Of course not. I’m not much good at these things.”

She said nothing.

“At dates,” he said.

It had not occurred to her that they were on a date, and she was about to say, “But an Iranian film is not a date …” but stopped herself. He now turned to her and said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you.”

She told him not to be silly. “I’m glad you asked me. But …”

He winced. “But …”

“But, well, there’s somebody else.”

It took him a few moments to digest the information. “I thought so. I didn’t imagine that somebody like you … I mean, somebody who looked like you would be … Not that I judge by looks, of course. I may study aesthetics, but philosophy and well, the way your hair looks and your …”

She laughed. “Padraig …”

“And you’re three years younger than I am.”

“So?”

“That counts. You’re not going to be interested in somebody who’s twenty-two.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“But you told me yourself. You’ve just explained. I’m Irish – I can take these things. We can take anything. Come to Dublin and speak to people and they’ll say to you:
we can take these things …
”

She took his hand. “Don’t be silly.”

They were standing at the pedestrian crossing opposite the Usher Hall. They had not crossed, although the light had changed several times in their favour. He said, “We can’t stand here. There’s a bar over there – look – the Shakespeare.”

She did not resist.

“So tell me about him,” he said as he brought the drinks to their table.

She had ordered a cider, and the glass was cold to the touch as she moved a finger down its side, tracing a pattern in the condensation. “He doesn’t really exist,” she said. “Or at least, I don’t exist for him.”

Padraig shook his head in puzzlement. “I’m not sure if I understand. You’re not actually seeing him?”

“No. I never see him.”

He frowned. “But you have actually
met
him? We’re not talking about some film actor here, are we? You don’t harbour a secret passion for …” He named an actor. She would never fancy
him
, she said.

“Good,” he said. “I can’t understand why anybody would.”

“Money, glamour, looks …”

“Small things. Irrelevant.” His eyes lit when he smiled; she noticed it. “So, you do know him, but you don’t see him? I get it. He’s in Africa or South America perhaps, doing something really important – selfless, too – and you promised him that even if it takes ten years you’ll wait for him and …”

“No.”

She took a sip of her drink. She regretted telling him now, and she wanted to talk about something different. “I don’t know if we should talk about it.”

“I didn’t exactly raise the subject.” He looked at her over his glass. “I think that you probably need to talk about this.”

She hesitated before replying. He was right, she thought.

“It’s going to sound corny to you because … well, because men don’t think like this, I know, but I do. It’s just the way I think – the way I am.”

“Of course. We’re all different.”

“I’ve known this guy forever. Since we were kids. He was my best friend, I suppose, or that’s the way I thought of him. Then I realised – a bit later – that he meant more to me than that. I wanted him to know that but I couldn’t tell him, could I? I left it.”

He interrupted. “But you should tell people.” He shrugged. “Otherwise they don’t know. How can they?”

“Yes, maybe. But I didn’t, and all the time I thought of him. And so the years went by and nothing happened. That’s all there is to it, I suppose.”

He stared at her in silence. “You still love him?”

She avoided his gaze. “I suppose I do.”

The admission – to Padraig – made her feel light-headed, and what was more, seemed to carry with it an unexpected sexual charge. In the past, on the few occasions when she had talked to anybody about her feelings for James, it had been to a girl friend or to Ted, and that was different. Now, talking to Padraig, she felt in a curious way that James himself was there – that she was talking to him about her feelings for him.

But then it occurred to her: the sexual charge had nothing to do with James, or talking about James; it had to do with Padraig.

He probed further. “And is he seeing somebody else?”

“I don’t know. I never see him. I told myself I shouldn’t, and
I haven’t. I haven’t spoken to him for … for months. A year maybe.”

“He probably is. People don’t stay by themselves unless there’s a reason.”

She felt a stab of pain. But she knew that what he said was true – and applied to her, too. James was the reason why she was alone.

He lowered his voice. “I think it’s sad … I mean it’s sad in the sense of being bad luck for you.”

She nodded. “Yes, you’re right.”

“You need to forget him, I think.”

“I know. But it’s not easy.”

He smiled at her. “Can’t I help you? I’m not him, I know, but if you got to know somebody else, then that might help you to forget this other person … what’s his name?”

“James.”

“James. Predictable.”

“Are you laughing at me?”

“I’m not. I’m being unkind, and I’m sorry. I’m called Padraig myself, for heaven’s sake – how predictable is that, if you’re Irish, which I happen to be? There’s nothing wrong with being called James. But let’s not mention his name.” He made a slicing motion. “James is now an un-person. It’s official. James has been
abolished
.”

He made her laugh. She liked that, and they had another drink. He said, “Feeling better?”

She felt the effect of the alcohol. The cider had not been very strong, but it had been strong enough. “Yes, much better.”

He reached for and pressed her hand. “Me too.”

She let her hand linger in his; returned the pressure.

That was the beginning of something that lasted for four years, throughout their university years in Edinburgh, until they both graduated. It was a friendship and a romance, but the emphasis was on the former rather than the latter. Each provided for the other what the other needed: Padraig was looking for something, for the perfect love, the head-over-heels affair that would bring him his life partner, but he knew that this would not be Clover. She had already found, she felt, exactly what she was looking for, and it was not Padraig – but it seemed that it was forever closed to her. Both settled for something less than they thought they might find; neither wished to hurt the other, and neither did. Clover, though, began to lead a secret life – out of desperation, out of disappointment, as most secret lives are led.

25

It was not until she had been with Padraig for a month or so that Clover first saw James. The beginning of the affair with Padraig had distracted her, and the upset that the news of James’s presence in Edinburgh had brought to her had largely abated. She had decided that she could live with the knowledge that he was in Edinburgh and had persuaded herself that it did not matter to her. Padraig had suggested that James be abolished; very well, he was. And it surprised her to find out that the act of consigning him to oblivion in this way seemed to help. She thought of him, but only occasionally, and without the desperate tug, the almost physical sensation of pain, that such thoughts had previously triggered. I cannot have James, she thought. He is not for me. It was a form of self-hypnosis – a mantra of the sort that smokers used to abandon cigarettes or alcoholics their alcohol:
I do not need these things. I do not need these things
.

But if weaning from a dependence succeeds, it often does so intermittently, and there will be periods of back-sliding, of weakness, when the temptation to do the thing that you know you should not do is just too strong. For Clover that came shortly before her first sighting of James – a sighting that was not accidental in any way but was engineered by her in just such a moment of weakness.

It happened one afternoon. She had just attended a tutorial and was making her way out into George Square when she passed a university noticeboard. For some reason she stopped and looked at the notices pinned on that particular board. They had nothing to do with her course but she read the largest of
them and saw that it was a schedule of classes in economics, which was the subject that she had been told James was studying.

The notice set out the names of those students in various tutorial groups and their time of meeting. Now she knew what she was doing, as her eye ran down the list.
James Collins
. She stopped at the words – words that were invested with such potent effect, as the name of someone we love always is. She thought, inconsequentially, absurdly:
the person who typed them can’t have known what sort of person he was
. There were five other names in the groups. Olivia somebody; Jenny somebody; Mark, Mustafa, Terry. They would know, of course; these were his
companions
. She looked at Olivia’s name and tried to picture her. She might even sit next to him, and if she did then she would be bound to want him – of course she would.

She turned away. These were ridiculous, stupid thoughts. They were unhealthy. This way lay obsession.

She turned back to look at the notice again. It gave the name of the building and the room number. It gave the time of the tutorial. She looked at her watch. James’s tutorial would have started ten minutes ago, and it would be taking place not more than a few hundred yards from where she was standing. She went to the doorway and looked out. There was the other building. Third floor – the notice had said it would be on the third floor. She looked at the windows along the third floor façade. Behind one of those, Olivia, Jenny, Mark, Mustafa, Terry and James would be discussing whatever it was they discussed in economics tutorials. Prices, perhaps. Markets. Commodities. Rational economic behaviour – an expression she had seen in a newspaper article. Rational economic behaviour was behaving sensibly in response to economic incentives or disincentives. Irrational
economic behaviour, presumably, was doing the opposite.
I, for instance, am now behaving irrationally …

Why? Because a rational person does not stand and stare at a window because she thinks a boy she cannot get out of her mind is sitting with others behind that window. There was nothing rational in that.

She lowered her gaze from the third floor to the ground floor. She imagined that there was more than one door into the building and more than one door out of it. The front door, though, seemed to be the main entrance and exit, as she noticed, even as she was staring at it, students walking in and out. So when you went to your economics tutorial on the third floor that must be where you went in and an hour, or maybe slightly less, later where you came out. She looked at her watch again. Forty-five minutes from then he would walk out of that door. Forty-five minutes from then she could happen to be passing – the building was on the way to the main university library and everybody walked that way. She could be walking past just as James was coming out of the building and she would say …

“James! What are you …”

And, when it happened, as she managed to ensure it did, just over fifty minutes later, he said: “I don’t believe it! I heard you were here and I was going to …”

Then why had he not? She put the question out of her mind. “Me too.”

His smile was unforced. Even if he had not been in touch, the chance encounter clearly pleased him.

He had come out of the building with a girl and she was now standing next to him, smiling at Clover.