SIGNING ON:Our columnist refuses, point blank, to borrow from friends or family. She has no such qualms
SHE WORKED in catering. Movies. Outdoor events. Each gig a new challenge. Such-and-such a “star” is coeliac. So-and-so refuses to eat anything with a face: No problem.
She misses that the house is no longer brimful: Truffles; chorizo; air-cured ham.
Misses calling to friends, car boot overflowing. Hasn’t been in Caviston’s in a year.
Big deal! Anyway, she missed her babies. That’s her main concern as she sets about the new company – childcare: Cost and quality thereof.
***
When her business folded, he took it personally when suppliers who’d inundated them with hampers, vanished. She regarded it as a fact of life. Maybe he’s right, maybe people have forgotten their manners? They certainly forget you when you’re on the way down.
***
The summer before they went bust, they rented a house on the beach. The newborn would sleep as Dad and eldest dived in. She’d watch, the feeling of contentment glorious. She’d married a good man, a good father. Yes, he’s idealistic, over-sensitive, almost Mediterranean in how he blows suddenly hot. But he has heart. And humour. He’d flick water from his hair, laughing.
She misses his sunshine.
***
Because she kept her own books, did her own hiring, and firing (he’d have been incapable – quite soft beneath the macho blustering), she is more comfortable discussing budgets. He avoids:
– I’m going to the gym.
– Fine, but the bills will still be here.
***
Driving home once, she saw him, bike tilted into a roundabout at an almost impossible angle: He says he forgets everything on the machine.
She wonders, does he forget he has a wife and children?
***
Her favourite sound: the engine coming to the door. Her least favourite: the depressing music he listens to. One track, he plays incessantly: “There’s a hole in my neighbourhood down which of late I cannot help but fall.” Self-fulfilling prophecy. She plays feel-good stuff. Abba. Beyoncé. You’d have to pay her to watch Vincent Browne. Too many men fighting for the mic. Too much bombast about “radical reform”.
Just do it.
***
He’s drawn a line in the sand. As a result, can come across intransigent. It’s the principle, he says. They’re taking advantage.
Principles, she thinks, are for people whose pensions remain intact.
***
A socialite lambasting unemployed who refuse low-salaried jobs. He snaps the radio off:
– Patronising, right-wing t***.
– Possibly. But she’s a success. As a result, her opinions are sought after.
He looks at her as if she’s a traitor. What does he expect? Mass-conversion to Marxism?
***
He’s gone and done a “Britney”. Shaved off his lovely, silver-flecked hair. Looks like an inmate. And, when he dons a suit for interviews, a hit-man. She ensures she’s out of the house when he returns. Texts, “how did it go?” When he sends back one of his terse messages, “Ámadáns!” she pretends she has shopping to do.
***
Whereas his interactions with civil servants seem fraught, hers run smoothly. A polite official informs her of an Enterprise Allowance scheme. They could earn up to €317 a week, maintaining 100 per cent of their dole for the first year, 75 for the second – the very break they need.
***
He refuses, point blank, to borrow from friends or family. She has no such qualms. Believes it is a matter of time before they re-pay.
The essential difference between them is: she still has hope. (He’d say that’s because she isn’t out there, on a daily basis, “prostituting”.)
***
Their daughter’s party is an unqualified success. A woman does face-painting, balloon bending. A child psychologist, she works in a creche for a little above minimum wage. But has concrete plans to set up on her own.
His wife draws strength from such female versatility.
***
To see him chasing around the garden was wonderful. The Old Him. Making the children laugh. Making her feel safe. She has loved him, every day, since she was 23. Tells him so. He muses, says he has loved her, four days out of seven, for the same period: What would you do with him? (Don’t answer.)
***
Women friends are more effective. The presents practical, well-chosen. Men bring cheap sweets, too many cases of beer. Ireland trounced England. Go home happy. Why wake with a head full of doubt?
***
He’s lifting too many weights. Something lumpen, proletarian, in the musculature. She preferred him when he was more like Alec Baldwin. Fatter. Happier.
***
This too will pass. She endured first 17, then 11 hours of labour, three bouts of mastitis, thyroid dysfunction that went undiagnosed for a year. Cooked for 14 hours straight, carrying babies who’d weigh in – thanks to his frame – at 8lbs 5oz each. Dealt with the most self-indulgent prats on the planet. Did it with a smile.
Men! Still, where would we be without them? Not in this mess, actually: in Canada, which has emerged unscathed, the Regulator was female.
