The Teacher at Donegal Bay

Recalling the violence of my outburst, I shivered, although the room was now pleasantly warm. I looked at my watch. Ten fifty-five. The row had gone on for an hour or more. I ended up weeping from pure exhaustion. Colin apologised, insisted he loved me. Just wanted me to be happy. It would all be much better soon, he said. He thought he could promise me that. It might even be he would have some good news when he came back on Sunday night. Of course I was right about the shirts. They did look a bit creased but he’d manage with the blue ones. I was far more important than any old shirts.

So we’d made it up, and at half past midnight I got out the ironing board and did the bits of the blue shirts that showed. Going halfway, my father would call it. He always argued you have to go halfway to meet people, because we all make mistakes sometimes. No one’s perfect.

Eleven o’clock. Warm at last, I took off my coat and went and sat by the phone. Driving into Belfast this morning, Colin insisted he hadn’t told me about the early start because he didn’t want to upset me. He thought I mightn’t sleep as well if I knew we had to get up early. Hadn’t he done his best to help me, when he had so much on his mind? Didn’t I see how important this weekend was to our future?

I could see why it was so important for him. That was easy enough. After all, he’d talked about nothing else for weeks. He thought it would be the moment when his father offered him the directorship. And that was where our future came in, because it would mean more money, as he so frequently told me, besides the perks of his own office and a company car. Things would be easier for us. Of that he was sure. Why, I could even have my own little car, he said. Wouldn’t that be nice for me?

Outside school, he put his arms round me and kissed me. ‘I’ll phone you tonight between ten and eleven. I promise. Just as soon as I get away from the evening session.’ He drove off and I went slowly up the steps into the cold and empty building to put myself together for the day’s teaching, a full nine periods, most of them with examination classes.

The phone rang a long way off. Colin. At last. I set out to answer it, but I couldn’t find my way. I hurried, but didn’t seem to get any closer. Its peremptory ring got louder and louder. I struggled on. Tripped over things in the darkness. My basket. My briefcase. Then a pile of saucepans, which fell down and made a noise even louder than the phone. I woke up and found myself in bed, the room pitch black.

Colin’s alarm clock was still ringing its head off. And it was on his side of the bed. Desperate to stop the appalling racket, I fought my way through the tangled bedclothes, grabbed it one-handed and squashed its ‘Off’ knob against the crumpled pillow. I lay back exhausted, my heart pounding, the strident, metallic sound still vibrating in my ears.

I stared at the cold object in my hand, a wedding present from one of Colin’s friends. ‘Extra loud’, it had said on the box. A curtain of exclamation marks had been added. I was supposed to find it funny. Five forty-five, I read on its luminous dial. Yesterday’s early start. That wasn’t funny either. I just stopped myself flinging the wretched thing at the bedroom wall.

I switched on my bedside lamp, put my hands to my face and moaned, ‘Oh, couldn’t he have turned that bloody thing off instead of the central heating?’ Tears of anger and frustration sprang into my eyes. I’d so needed a good night’s sleep but the few hours I’d had were restless and dream-haunted.

Colin’s promised call hadn’t come till after twelve. The phone box he’d chosen was horribly noisy and the moment he spoke it was clear he only wanted to say he’d try again tomorrow, when he had more coins. I’d asked him to reverse the charges and quickly told him about the job and having to decide by Monday. But he couldn’t have heard properly. All he said was, ‘Well, if Monday suits you for doing it, that’s fine by me.’ Then I heard a voice call out. A woman’s voice. Very bright and sharp. ‘Do hurry up, darling, the taxi’s waiting.’ And he said, ‘Sorry, Jen, no more money. It’s all going fine, just fine. We’ll have a chat tomorrow,’ and hung up.

I sat up in bed and caught sight of my reflection in the glass-fronted wardrobes that lined the wall opposite me. I hardly recognised myself.

‘Stop it, Jenny,’ I said firmly. ‘That way madness lies. It’s dark and you’ve had a bad night. Don’t think. Act. Do something. Anything. Don’t dare think till you’re feeling more like yourself. Come on. Get going. You’re wide awake and you may as well make the best of it. Shower. Breakfast. One thing at a time.’

I turned my face up to the shower’s warm rain and felt my anger drain away. I let the water play on my aching shoulders and imagined my tension washing away down the plughole like so many slivers of metal. I shut my eyes and saw a sandy beach lapped by blue sea. A coral reef shut out the crashing breakers of the ocean beyond. In the sun-warmed waters of the lagoon, I could dive down and follow the flickers of tiny fish, jewel-bright against the pale silver sand, the fine residue of the reef beyond, swept in by the pounding waves.

Reluctantly, I emerged from my reverie and reached for a towel from the heated rail. The towel was cold, damp and smelly.

‘I don’t believe it,’ I said as I dripped across to the airing cupboard for a dry one. The statement was purely rhetorical. It was only too easy to believe the towel rail had finally packed up. It had been on the blink for months. I pulled open the cupboard door, put out my hand for a bath sheet and swore vigorously.

Pushed in among the piles of towels, the bed linen and the table linen was an enormous glass bottle full of seething, yellow-green liquid. The bath sheets were squashed up against the wall behind it. As I reached past the intruding object, the airlock made a loud, hiccupping noise and released a tiny puff of foul-smelling gas. Only a few seconds later, it did it again. Even I knew it was going too fast. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before it blew out the airlock and spewed its contents all over everything. Unless, of course, as Colin had done, I turned off the central heating to keep it happy.

I scrubbed myself dry, ran back into the bedroom and pulled on some clothes. Suddenly the penny dropped. All that racket on the stairs, on Thursday night, and the great jokes about straining your privates. Neville in his element and Colin egging him on. That’s what they’d been up to. And not a thought of ‘Do you mind?’ And now I was left to work out what in hell’s name I was going to do about it, given there was no way I could move the damn thing.