We knew people who had moved to London, of course. All of them talked about how hard it was, how tiring, how competitive. How diffuse it was, with everyone miles away from everyone else. How cold the British could be, full of mixed signals towards friendship that could leave you years before you got an invite to anyone’s house. But moving to London with my best friend and my boyfriend. It wouldn’t matter how cold anyone was then, would it?
I thought of me and Carey on the tube together, him filling out the crosswords in the free newspapers.
James and I talked until late about how a move to London might work. We would need to save money. How to do that was a mystery, considering we were barely supporting ourselves as it was.
“Could Deenie give you a raise?” he asked.
She was still giving me fifty euro for three mornings a week, but she had also mentioned some extra work coming in, a poetry anthology she might need help with. I wondered if that counted as outside the remit of my internship, and was just labour.
“Maybe,” I said. “And I could always look at bar work.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “There’s none going, and they’re giving all the glass collecting jobs to hot Polish girls.”
I tried not to look too offended. “Because they do it for cheaper,” he clarified. “Not because—”
I put my hand up, a silent request not to be patronised.
“We’ll figure out money,” he said. “You think of stuff, and I’ll think of stuff.”
MICHAEL
Look, I know Craig wasn’t perfect, but it’s still tough to end things!
ALICE
Of course it is! So what did you say?
Michael takes a moment
MICHAEL
I said…that things can’t go on like this, you know? I said that I keep trying, and he keeps not-trying, and at some point, we both have to agree on one or the other. And…he won’t try. And I know he won’t. And it breaks my heart, because…I love him. I love him, and I really wanted this to work, but I can’t try if I’m out there just trying and trying and trying on my own.
It was over five lines of uninterrupted dialogue, but I still think it works.
15
WE DECIDED THAT, in order to move to London, we would need at least ￡4,000. That would cover us on a deposit and first month’s rent, and give us about ten days’ leeway to each get new jobs.
“We can put away that much by the New Year,” he said, with great certainty. “And we’ll be getting our deposit back for this place, once the lease is up.”
“We need to fix the shower,” I said, which still had a black bin liner over the place I had kicked a hole in the tiles.
“That’s just a hundred quid a week, really. Each. Ask Deenie to give you a raise.”
“You think Deenie is going to suddenly double my salary?” I replied. “If you can even call fifty quid a salary?”
“Well,” he continued, undeterred, “once Carey gets involved, he can start chipping in on the fund, too, can’t he?”
“Let’s not complicate things,” I said. I had not asked Carey yet. I was terrified of how he might react. There was a lot of talk around then about “commitment,” not just in my head, but in the culture. The context for commitment was that it was something that women wanted but that killed men. The words “commitment,” “commitment issues” and the decidedly medical “commitment-phobe” were thrown around constantly, so much that I forgot what the word meant, which was usually just about having someone sleep over a lot and occasionally go to weddings with you.
So I continued not to mention London to Carey. The longer I put off asking Carey, the more I could live in a fantasy where he said yes, and we could all begin planning our new lives together. If he said no, it would be the first in a long series of conversations that would inevitably lead to our break-up. I had gone through that kind of heartbreak once that year already. I didn’t have the stomach for it twice.
He brought me toast in bed one morning. It felt very romantic, even though it was my bread. He was so rarely up before me.
“Sit up, now; don’t be covering yourself in crumbs.”
I did as he said, loving the fuss. He kissed a spot of peanut butter off my chin.
“Are you all right, Rache?” he asked, sounding suddenly very shy.
“Of course! Why?”
“I just…” He grabbed at words with a kind of lucky-dip energy when he was nervous. “You’ve been very lugubrious, of late.”
“Lugubrious!” I barked with joy. “I don’t even know what ‘lugubrious’ means. There’s my English degree for you.”
“Sad, sort of morbid,” he answered. “And you never want to go out. You’re a bit stuck to the house. When you’re not working, I mean.”
“Ah, well. That’s money.”
“You do all right. You still have the shop, and Deenie. We can afford to go to The Bróg for one.”
This was the time to tell him. He was curious, concerned, alert, focused. My boobs were out. It would have been so easy. Me and James are planning to move to London. Come with us.
“It’s just, we’re trying to save money,” I said honestly.
“We?”
“Me and James,” I said.
“For what?”
I didn’t want to lie to him, so I didn’t. Not technically.
“We want to move to a better place,” I said, and I waved my hand around, motioning to the damp line crawling up my wall, and to the street outside my window. I implied better places might be up the road, and not in a different country.
“Oh,” he said. “Right.”
I felt a jolt of fear, like I was hiding an affair and moments from being caught out. I thought about telling him. I imagined him pulling away, feeling the pressure of my request, the expiration date of my immigration. The panic at losing him took over, and I put the plate on the floor and pulled him close to me. It was the first time we had sex where I felt aware of wanting to impress him, keep him. Of wanting to put on a show. I felt myself becoming louder, more performative. I remember looking down during it and thinking he looked confused.
Afterwards he petted me on the head, like a horse. “That was a treat for a Tuesday morning,” he said, and I didn’t see him for two days.
In my heart, I didn’t believe I would be moving to London. Some plans get made and they drop right into your hand like a warm egg. Dr. Byrne’s book launch, for example. Others feel vague from conception, and carry on feeling vague no matter how many details you hammer onto them.
This was not how the plan worked for James. He saw himself in London, and spent hours researching different neighbourhoods he thought we could live in.
“Look at this flat I found in Mile End,” he said. “Two bedrooms. A thousand a month.”
I looked at the pictures. It looked dismal, and like it was high off the ground. From the sliding door I could see the tops of buildings.
“A thousand pounds?”
“Split three ways. That’s not much more than we pay now. Of course, there’s council tax and all that in the UK.”
“We still don’t know if Carey is coming.”