The Rachel Incident(5)

“Rachel!” Ben yelled. “What are you at?”

This was when James learned my name was not Sabrina. He smiled at me while Ben ran to get the first-aid kit.

“At last,” he said, laughing with an odd, fresh sort of fondness. “There she is.”

I felt so bad about it that I took James out for a drink after work.

“Okay, killer,” he said, grinning and wrapping his extremely skinny scarf around his thin neck. “You got a table booked at the golf club?”

James’s fascination with my middle-class-ness has not changed since the day we met, and sometimes I wonder if his entire friendship with me is based on some urge to catalogue the precise livelihoods of dentists and their children. A sample question that might come at any time of the day or night: Does Bridget serve the carrots cut into circles or strips?

Strips, I will write back.

Knew it, comes the response.

At this point I would not be surprised if I found out that he’s been writing a book.

It was Christmas party season, and after a few false tries at ordinary pubs we found a tapas restaurant on Washington Street that was attempting to seduce Cork into the concept of small plates by having a bring-your-own-wine option. The whole thing became accidentally romantic, and it made me nervous that James thought that I was trying to undo my earlier faux pas by forcing him on a date with me. I started loudly narrating the menu, accusing the restaurant of trying to make ham sound fancy.

James rested his little face on two closed fists, enjoying the ham chat.

“Small plates,” he said. “So, if I needed stitches, would it have been large plates?”

“Oysters,” I replied.

“What if I broke a limb?”

“I’m not a charity,” I retorted, and he laughed.

“This is how it happens. I read the papers. The rich try to buy you off with a big gesture to keep you from suing.”

“Why do you think I’m rich? I’m not rich.”

He gestured to our surroundings, the chalkboard menu that said “Specials,” the candlesticks in the empty wine bottles that presumably had been brought by customers from the various homes of Cork city.

“I live at home, that’s all.”

“Ah. You’re working for pocket money, then?”

I told James to order whatever he wanted, and despite his assumptions about my wealth, he ordered the cheapest bottle of wine and a bowl of cashews. Seconds later, we were given a bottle of water and two tiny glasses.

“No,” he said, pouring the water. “No one works as much as you do if they don’t need it.”

“Well.” I shrugged.

“You work Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays,” he counted off on his fingers. “And I think I came in once and saw you on a Monday afternoon. But you go to college as well?”

“I come in whenever Ben rings me.” I was shrugging again, and was becoming very aware of how boring shrugging is, as a conversational tool.

“Look,” I said. The waiter came with the wine and the cashews and asked are we thinking about food yet, guys? and James said that the cashews were fine for now.

“Go on,” James said, once the waiter had left.

“I’ve had to pay my college fees,” I said, trying to keep my tone frank instead of pitiful. I told him what I had not told anyone: that my parents, who had easily sent me and my siblings to private schools, were unable to pay for college.

Back during the good days, when both my family’s finances and my reputation as a responsible child were intact, my father had given me a credit card. I had a regular babysitting job, but the credit card was to pay for incidentals like books, notepads and taxis home on nights out. The card was handed over, very ceremoniously, after a long talk about how it was better to have a credit card, because it meant you could build a credit rating.

It was something Jonathan found very funny. His parents were in the civil service, and having a girlfriend who had “Daddy’s credit card” made him feel very earthy. But the truth is, I barely used the card. Until a few weeks into my first term of UCC, when it stopped working.

“Dad,” I said, standing in the campus bookshop, having stepped out of the customer queue to call him, “did you forget to pay off the card?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t forget.” There was a plunge in my guts that felt like fear but in fact was the first dose of reality I had ever tasted. Since the crash, my parents had stopped travelling, stopped going to restaurants, and stopped buying new things. I thought they were being prudent. I had not realised how broke we were. It was on this call that I was told that, in addition to the credit card being cancelled, I would also have to find a way to pay my college fees.

College fees were quite nominal in Ireland back then, a few grand a year at the most, and everyone I knew had their fees paid for them. This goes some way to telling you how stratified my world was. My father was ashamed and I was embarrassed for him.

“We’ll have to figure out something between us, Rachel,” he said, as if he were sating an angry bookie. He did not want me to get a student loan. His trust in banks was too damaged for that.

“Of course,” I said quickly. “I can work.”

“Right,” he said. “And it would be…between us. The boys don’t need to know.”