‘Do you think me irresponsible for taking this job?’
‘Me? Why?’
‘You were giving me an odd look.’
She laughed. ‘I was looking at you in wonder. I’d thought all gorgeous men were stupid or queer.’
‘Fatally flawed?’
‘Yes.’
He preened without embarrassment. This was the fruit of hard work-outs, he explained. ‘See. No flab. Pinch.’ She did and saw that he was made, as he had said, not by Bernini but by exercise. This home-made, hard-earned quality made his body seem cosier and she had begun to relax in her enjoyment of it when he again brought up the IRA. He couldn’t make out where people stood on the issue, he complained.
Remembering Owen Roe’s remark, she said: ‘We double think. In practical terms we’re dead against them, but in some shady, boggish area of our minds there’s an unregenerate ghost groaning “up the rebels”. Most of us keep the ghost well suppressed, but children, drunks, unemployable men, and emotional misfits can become possessed by it. Does that answer your question?’
He looked at her. ‘It raises a more personal one.’
‘What?’
‘Why are you so afraid of feeling?’
‘Am I?’
‘You resist me all the way.’
‘Perhaps it’s dependence I’m wary of?’
‘You can have one without the other.’
That was news. Unreliable, to be sure. Shutting him up, she explored, as a blind creature might have done, sniffing and tasting, listening and stroking, then letting him do the same. That was the reassuring part and she must have needed more of it, because he felt strange to her when they began to make love: his shoulders covering her like a coffin lid, his rhythms unfamiliar, the angle of approach not good. She was too wet when he slid in so that she could hardly feel him and, though she wanted to grind her pelvic bones against his to focus the sensation or have him take her from behind, she felt shy about asking for this and fearful of seeming whorish.
‘Tell me what you like,’ he said.
She couldn’t. She wanted him to experiment, not ask.
‘Did you come?’
‘No.’ Baldly. Apologies were for marriage.
‘We’ll learn each other. No hurry.’
‘How nice you are!’
‘Well, I’m not a macho.’
No. He was a light-footed invader. He had slipped through her defences in no time flat. How? What had he done? Nothing she could put her finger on. It was his making the thing seem ordinary, instead of being – as it was – a double adultery in one of the better bedrooms of Dublin’s best hotel.
*
Sister Judith felt she was living behind a sheet of glass. A shroud. Some insulating chemical. She was cut off and had no rights. No place of her own. No privacy. Words dripped away, rolled, disappeared, like beads from a broken rosary. She was getting too tired to try and find the right ones for what she felt.
Felt?
Yesterday she couldn’t find her darning kit, her little quilted box that she’d had since she was a girl. With the silver bodkin and the scissors in the shape of a swan’s wings. She’d looked high and low and panic had caught in her throat as if someone had a hand on it. Stolen? Hidden? The scissors had been her mother’s.
She’d got into a tizzy, tossing through drawers, injured and angry at their daring to make off with it. Her thing. She had so little. So few things of her own and nothing else from the old days. She was panting and the floor was littered with the rubbish they’d given her: stuff she couldn’t wear in man-made fibres that irritated her skin. Then she’d come on the little kit, not where she’d put it and, stupidly, had begun to cry.
It was their interfering, going through her few poor things, putting their order on them. She felt like a child again. Reduced.
That was petty, of course. She was being silly. Weepy. Silly. The way she’d been years back at the Change, but she’d got over that long ago. Now she didn’t know what was the matter with her. Chin up, Judith, she told herself but it didn’t work. Her mind was like her drawers: all confused.
Her will was faltering.
It hardly seemed worth while making a stand. If you didn’t though, the few certainties you had got gnawed away. But her energy flagged easily these days.
It was partly the food. They brought her things she couldn’t digest and she didn’t like always to be complaining. She was unwell all the time now. Nauseous.
Were those phone calls real? You had to have something to compare ‘real’ with. In the convent there had been known people, places, things. She’d been sure of them. Here the whole place could be imaginary.
And they were always badgering her about the past. You’d think they wanted to mix her up. What interest was the past to them, whoever they were?
Them.
Take Bridie and the Principal Girl. Who were they? Bridie, she knew right well, could not be her Bridie from long ago. That Bridie would be ninety now if she was a day, and this girl was in her twenties. She was sorry now she’d called her that. The other one, at least, she wouldn’t name. She did impinge though. Thrust herself forward. Yesterday – was it? – she’d come into the room when Sister Judith was on the commode. Without a by your leave or a word of warning. No knock. Sister Judith had been outraged. You could have knocked her down with a feather. The intrusion! Oh, she knew the girl meant no harm but it was so reducing! She’d felt exposed. On show. Treated like a senile old animal.
Truth hurt, to be sure. There was truth in that. That was what made it so unbearable. But you’d better bear it, Judith, face the truth if you want to hold on to your wits. Face it. You did soil yourself once – twice. Twice now. You’re losing control.
Well, if she was, there was the more need for dignity. If she was to take hold of herself, she needed support. Not to be treated as a – a what? Child? Thing? Something not house-broken. Oh God.
Not that she’d managed to think all this right off. No. What she’d done was to throw her shoe at the Principal Girl. Right smack at her face and then she’d slipped sideways off the commode and soiled herself after all.
Later, they’d had to wash her and she’d wept right through her bath.
‘What’s the matter?’ the Principal Girl kept asking. ‘Tell me, please, Aunt Judith?’
What was there to tell?
She was a thing now, a child, an old animal. Smelly.
‘Tell me about Owen,’ the girl asked.
What did the girl care about Owen? He was dead. Sister Judith wished she was dead herself. She nearly was. Diminished. Isolated. Glassed in. Glassed out.
‘Do you remember Owen?’
‘Owen,’ said Sister Judith venomously, ‘is responsible for a lot. He’ll be paying for it in Purgatory. Oh, he’ll have a long spell there, I’m telling you. You’d better be saying masses for his soul. And for mine too,’ she added. ‘God help me, I’m an uncharitable old thing. And proud.’ It struck her that she was paying for her pride now, doing her Purgatory on earth.
*
Telegrams, wistful and cryptic, kept coming from the elder O’Toole. James mentioned them to Larry, who had phoned about shipments which would not be arriving as scheduled. Some delay.
‘I can’t just ignore his requests,’ James pointed out. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘What does he want?’
‘Shit, Larry, he uses a code. Football terms.’ James tried to remember. ‘A quarterback sneak. A double reversal? Stuff like that.’
‘Have you no idea what he’s up to?’
‘Something about our having the wrong end of the stick about Driscoll’s death. He wants me to do some investigating.’
Larry got skittish and James guessed he didn’t want him to talk freely on the Irish phones. So why ask questions then? James felt impatient with both O’Tooles. Surely, the old man’s plots were harmless anyway? ‘Security’ could only be a joke word in such a connection – though, remembering the first Customs Offi
cer’s reaction to the letter, maybe not? The trouble was ‘First Customs Officer’ sounded like a character from Gilbert and Sullivan. A cable from Larry followed up the telephone conversation and reminded James about not making waves. The O’Tooles were metaphor addicts. ‘Do not,’ Larry repeated, ‘not pursue Driscoll quest.’ OK, OK.
Probably some old O’Edipal game was being played out between son and father and now James had got the older and weaker sparring partner into trouble. He felt bad about this and, deciding at least to do something about getting the old man his Coat of Arms, dropped into the Heraldry Commission to ask Michael O’Malley’s advice. He wanted to see O’Malley anyway. James had a bad conscience about having hurt him, though Grainne said he shouldn’t worry.
‘He just likes the idea of having me around,’ she assured him. ‘He doesn’t notice what I do. Honestly. Michael’s a very abstract person. He lives in his head.’
James discounted what she said, since, obviously, it suited her to say it. Liking Michael, he felt himself to be unlikeably predatory. He wished there were something he could do for the man – a sort of payment – and, vulnerable with guilt, entered Michael’s office in some anxiety lest the injuries done him should have taken visible effect.
The office was reassuring. James had expected something poky and dark, but it was pleasantly proportioned and lit by broad shafts of light pouring through Georgian windows from a roof-propped sky. Michael, looking in better fettle than at their first meeting, greeted James with delight.
‘Grand to see you,’ he said heartily, ‘what can I do for you?’
James was amused to note his own concerned relief. Your cuckold, it became clear to him, was related to you like a sporting opponent – or sponsor. Feeling a warm gush of friendliness – almost gratitude – towards Michael, who was bearing up so commendably, he wished there were some way to implement it. Put a hand on Michael’s? Hug or give him a pally tap on the butt? Not possible. James had a focused insight into the solaces of duelling. In jealousy cases, he’d lay money, the duel must often have superseded the love affair. He could imagine himself and this amiable, fuzzy-looking man putting up their pistols and repairing for cheerful refreshments after settling their quarrel. Meanwhile, it remained unacknowledged.
He handed Michael a page of squared paper with drawings of weapons: pikes, battle-axes, a bristle of cutting edges on a red field. It was O’Toole’s sketch for his Coat of Arms.
‘Ah Jayzuz, the O’Tooles!’ Michael laughed indulgently as he examined the specifications. ‘Yer man,’ he told James, ‘has been reading O’Hart’s Irish Pedigrees. First edition, Dublin, 1876. Most recent reprinting, Baltimore, 1976. A piece of fiction as fanciful as any, it traces subscribers’ genealogies to Adam via Noah, Japhet, Magog and their descendant, Milesius. What did I tell you!’ Michael slapped his thigh, ejaculating a whinny of wild glee. He had a look of a friendly centaur, thought James, or a lateral connection of one of Darwin’s apes. The nap on his tweed jacket, perhaps as a result of frequent wettings and dryings out, had begun to grow and curl. Surely, such an easy, outgoing guy would not suffer if a man who cared for her had a friendly little thing going with his wife?
‘The O’Tooles,’ read Michael from the paper he had received from James, ‘are a Milesian family. Tell me now,’ he looked squarely at James whose guilty heart jumped, ‘why does a hard-nosed American with lolly in the bank go in for this? I can see why he might have a hundred years ago. The Irish-American ego then needed a boost the way the black American one does now. The blacks – I’ve heard them – will tell you Saint Augustine was black. They can have the old fart for all I care. The Irish were less modest. O’Hart, in his day, argued with exhausting ingenuity that Gaelic was the language spoken by our first parents in Paradise. Ah well,’ said Michael, ‘old strategies recur. New dogs play old tricks, what?’ He was smiling at James who thought: what does he mean ‘trick’? Am I the ‘new dog’? How should I respond? Larry had warned him about the devious way the Irish communicated their thoughts.
‘Womanish tricks too,’ said Michael, pointing at the O’Toole armorial bearings. ‘Look at the fripperies: laurels, a crest, a crown. I say “womanish” because women are bred to masquerade, being ashamed of their essential function.’
James smiled carefully at Michael, whose fuzzy look, he noticed now, was not amiable at all. He just hadn’t shaved.
‘My ego is wobbly,’ said Michael, ‘so naturally I look back to my Grandda and say with Emerson that man is the sum of his ancestors – but why should a success artist like O’Toole?’
‘Why what?’ asked James, wondering did the guy know or not know and whether he himself was paranoid. Was he, James, the ‘success artist’ and tool who’d screwed Grainne less than twenty hours before? Cool it, James. Smile and be a villain. Doesn’t the Bible say the wicked shall prosper like the green bay tree? ‘Surely it’s an innocent urge,’ he asked guardedly, ‘to know your forbears, I mean?’
‘Ego,’ said Michael, ‘self-promotion is what it is. People come in here from all over: Florida, Canada, Canberra. You don’t think they want me to turn up ancestors for them who were hanged for sheep-stealing or poor tenant farmers who took their landlord’s name, as many did?’
‘O’Toole’s not asking about his genealogy. He just wants a copy of his armorial bearings.’
‘There you are! He simply assumes he has a right to them. Does it cross his mind that his claim may be no better than that of some black man whose slave ancestor was given the slave-owner’s name? Less good,’ said Michael, ‘if one considers that the owners fucked the women and so the bloodline could be there. They did, didn’t they? It’s not a calumny?’
‘What?’
‘Fuck the black women?’
‘Sometimes,’ said James, ‘probably. I don’t know if studies have been done.’ Eager to get off the subject, he said that O’Toole wasn’t too worried about accuracy. ‘It’s just a whim,’ he explained. ‘He’s an O’Toole fan as he might be a Dodger fan.’
‘Ah, the fickle rich,’ said Michael, but was writing out the names of heraldic artists to whom James could apply. The conversation was probably innocent of innuendo, after all. Yet the subject seemed inescapably booby-trapped. Michael, foraging through heraldic lore, kept dropping toothed words like ‘honour’, ‘wife’ and ‘family’.
It seemed to James that their glances kept bouncing off each other.
Duffy, said Michael, meant ‘black-a-vised’, ‘dark-featured’, just as Clancy and Flynn – related to each other through the nominative and genitive of the word for ‘blood’ – meant ‘red-complexioned’. ‘Let’s go for a jar,’ said Michael, suddenly beset by thirst. ‘Nice pub down the street. Unless you want to ask me something else? On your own account perhaps?’
‘I’ve been discouraged.’
‘God, I’m terrible at my job – still, I’m sure you’d bear disappointment lightly.’
James preceded Michael down a curving stair. The genial voice behind him was still, with or without intent, delivering ambiguous barbs. Cupid was blind and so might jealousy be. Justice too. Michael almost certainly. Grainne was convinced he didn’t know. But what about instinct? Suddenly, at a turn of the high, spiral stair, James thought: suppose he were to push me now? Over that bannister? Splat! A flattened James would turn the floor three storeys below into a field charged with a strange device: azure-trousered, vulned, gules. But he had rounded the turn and Michael, once more in his line of vision, was a grudgeless man lost in clutters of information so coherently rounded that surely no novelty could impinge? Michael, thought James with amusement, was impervious to the unexpected. On a surge of affection, he squeezed the tweedy knob of the other man’s shoulder as they walked out of the door into the bright safety of the mid-day street.
10
Sounds from the North Wall.
Sleep cradled Grainne, ebbing then flowing in again, like mud tides around a mollusc. Fog horns mourned through humid air. Hooves rang on the
asphalt outside her window. That would be some civil servant headed, in mac and hacking-jacket, for his morning canter on Booterstown strand. Sthurrand, sthurrand. Receding, the sound was absorbed into opaque returns of dream which charged it with associations: prancing of dressage horses in Vienna, of carriage horses in films of Paris in the Nineties, glitter, dust, ducks, an exuberance of leaves and of ladies whose life was a narrow dedication to pomp. Limited objectives: their achievement must have provided focused satisfaction.
So did Grainne’s waking memory that she had a lover.
Revelling, she lay and felt the shape of his absence in her bodily cavities. His penis had been everywhere. The dart of his tongue had astounded, then driven her half-mad with nervous pleasure. Yesterday, after making love a first time, she had begun, playfully, to cavort with him on the bed while his tape-recorder played through interviews he had made earlier in the week. Thawed out, no longer taut, she had been as relaxed as he. A pair of albino dolphins, they nuzzled and bussed each other in imitation of childhood’s imitation of sex and, before she knew it, he was doing something to her which she had not even imagined, awakening sensations where no sensation had been, livening areas of her secret flesh, causing a whirr and cascade, an unravelling, dissolving thrill so that she was moaning and he had to pause to tell her to stuff her mouth with a pillow. He couldn’t reach it himself, being down between her thighs, his pale, stubbly hair incongruously sticking up like a wheatsheaf through which she kept running startled hands.
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