I had written an essay about pyjamas, based on the idea that in the Victorian period young women started buying negligees from France for their bridal trousseau. It had caused a great moral panic about what young brides were doing in bed with their husbands, and whether they were adopting cheap whore’s tricks. I related this to modern sensibilities, because at the time there were a lot of Daily Mail headlines about women wearing pyjamas to the supermarket. Morality and pyjamas. I felt quite clever about it. But explaining this back to Fred Byrne, I wondered if writing the essay was the cheap whore’s trick. It was all so embarrassing and intimate, talking about garter belts and lace.
“And really,” I said, my throat dry, “the design of Victorian undergarments would go on and be part of more cultural movements. Like the flappers. Their outfits were just slips, really, and this thing of underwear as outerwear, it was like…it was a signifier, of the growing independent female population in urban areas. The private made public.”
It went on like this for a while. Signs and signifiers. He started to glaze slightly, the way a lot of clever men do when the discussion is getting altogether too feminine, too fussy, and too preoccupied with bits of lace.
“Why aren’t you doing film studies, if you’re so into all this? Or fashion?”
I should have said something twee, like, Because I simply love the novel, but I knew this would not truck with him.
“English feels like a better way of keeping your options open. There are no jobs in film or fashion.”
“Have you heard the news?” He smiled. “There are no jobs anywhere.”
“No,” I reasoned, “but it feels like the whole world is filled with bits of text, doesn’t it? Brochures and signs and things. Something is bound to come up.”
“Brochures and signs and things. And that’s why you’re pursuing an English degree?”
I didn’t know what to say. I chose English, originally, because I liked to read. But even then what I liked most about reading was that I was good at it. I had taken to it quite quickly as a child. In the absence of any other discernible gift, it seemed like a fine thing to pursue, if only to receive more praise.
There was a knock on the open door, and I turned around to see another girl waiting to discuss her essay and potentially to be fucked by Dr. Byrne. Don’t bother, I wanted to say.
I got an email the next day to say that he was delighted to welcome me to the seminar class. It was a form letter, my name just filled in at the top, and no personalised sign-off or PS whatsoever.
I printed it off, though. I still have it somewhere.
5
ON 14 JANUARY 2010, Jonathan dumped me outside the Crawford Art Gallery with the explanation that we were growing apart. I asked him how. He murmured something about how I “seemed fake” and then bounded off towards Patrick’s Street before I could ask him what that meant.
Of course, I now know what that meant. I was living with James, working with James, and talking like James. I can’t really hold it against Jonathan: I was being extremely annoying. The thing that drove him the most crazy was that I was now obsessed with describing whatever situation I was currently in as though it were a movie or a TV show.
Some sample dialogue.
Jonathan: I think it might rain.
Rachel: Are you sure?
Jonathan: The forecast said rain.
（Beat）
Jonathan: （looking out the window） I think it’s starting to rain. Maybe we should stay in.
Rachel: （giddy） I feel like I’m in a French film and we’re two lovers who are trying to will it to rain so we can stay tangled in ze sheets.
（Silence）
Rachel: Ah, monsieur, doesn’t ze sky herself want us to stay indoors? Enjoy ze ways of ze flesh, ah-haw-haw-haw?
Jonathan: Okay, so, I’m going to go.
It wasn’t really fair on him. We’d had a straightforward and fond relationship up until that point, and our jokes had been mostly taking the piss out of other people. I couldn’t just expect him to start playing silly games, the kind me and James were now doing, when there was no pretext for it in our relationship.
The only reason I remember the date is because I was working that afternoon, and Dr. Byrne came into the bookshop.
Dr. Byrne had come into the shop before, of course. All of my college professors had. We were a big bookshop, and we carried a lot of stuff from the smaller, Irish-run presses. I often got a nod from faculty members of UCC, people who weren’t necessarily my tutors but who recognised me and were willing to make small talk about the holidays. But now it was different. He had hand-picked me to be in his seminar class of final-year students, so he knew me.
It was a Thursday night, the weather bitter cold outside, and the shop was set to be quiet until it closed at 9 p.m. Processing my grief, I started marking down a stack of literary-themed calendars on the counter. WAS: 9.99 / NOW: 4.99.
“Rachel,” Dr. Byrne said. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
“Hello!” I said brightly, stumbling into that young person’s problem of never knowing how to address your professors, your parents’ friends, or your friends’ parents. “Yes!”
“Any recommendations?” he asked politely, which is something people always ask if you work in a bookshop. I could never remember the title of a single book.
I looked down at his stack: a reissued book of poetry by Irish revolutionaries and a snow thriller. I wanted desperately to recommend something tense, lean and masculine to show him that I understood men.
“…Hemingway?” I threw out, uselessly.
“Ah,” he said, without emotion. “Batman for fat, bookish boys.” Then he looked down at himself. “I’ll take two.”
I burst out laughing. I hadn’t grown out of the schoolgirl giggle habit. I was always nervous and I was always laughing my head off.
“Like Dorothy Parker,” I said, “is Wonder Woman for depressed girls.”
I couldn’t believe I had come up with a line like this so quickly. He laughed instantly, caught my eye, and I thought: Fuck me and I’ll say more things!
He tilted his eyes skyward, trying to remember the verse. “Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful…” He trailed off.
“You might as well live,” we said together, and then we smiled. With perfect conviction I realised that I was going to rebound from my ex-boyfriend with my college professor. How chic!
“She went bull-fighting with him once, you know,” he said. “For a magazine. I think they wanted her to be appalled by him, but she couldn’t have been more charmed.”
“Me neither,” I answered. And then: “About Hemingway, I mean.”
He looked at me, perplexed at this half-flirting, but not altogether uninterested.
“I wonder if I might trouble you”—he pointed at the computer at the end of the counter—“to check a book for me.”
“Of course,” I said, stationing myself at the creaky PC. “What do you need?”
“Well, ah, it’s a little odd.”
He coughed, and I had a painful fear that he was about to open our affair with a red-faced request for The Joy of Sex or something. I considered whether I would still go through with our relationship even if he did this. Surely not, Rachel?