by Susan Finlay
Something Fine or Fortunate
MARGARET ARRANGED THE CUPS, QUICKLY and clumsily, upon the tray and then did the same with the biscuits which, even though it was the most special of special occasions, were still shop-bought, because even the thought of creaming the sugar and butter together was enough to make her clawing hands and her crumbling knees ache until there was no room for anything besides it. Then, as soon as the water had boiled, she picked up the kettle and filled up the teapot, chipping the spout in her haste.
‘Now you’ll have a cup of tea won’t you Eoin? And there’s biscuits too if you’d like.’
‘Aye Nana a cup of tea would be grand.’
Margaret shuffled back into the front room, set everything down, and then straight away began to pour, only an uneven stream of water immediately splashed across her blouse, turning the lilac to indigo. Eoin took the teapot from her and said, ‘Here Nana, let me.’
‘But you’re—’
‘I said let me.’
Margaret pressed her lips together and perched on the edge of an armchair while Eoin poured out a cup. She thought that he had such nice hands. And that they were a bit like Steven’s hands. And that he had such a nice way about him, and always had. That he knew how to be gentle without being effeminate, and to take care of you without making you feel grateful. And that deep down he was still the same anxious, lovable, heartbreaking little boy who had come to live with her all those years ago . . . And then she let him help her grip her cup, while she looked down at the spots on her blouse – which resembled the tears of a saint – and then up at the mantelpiece opposite, where a litter of puppies tumbled across the top half of the calendar, and the bottom stated that it was July 2005.
‘I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself there Nana,’ said Eoin, and nodding at the mantelpiece added, ‘it’s only the second of Feb.’
‘I know, I know, but February was a very snooty poodle, and then I remembered how much you wanted a puppy.’
The low rumbling sound of Eoin’s laughter travelled around the room. Margaret looked at him uncertainly, and as she did so her eyes began to prick with holy water; because although she could see that her grandson looked alright on the outside, which looked exactly the same as before, and although she knew that he was still anxious, and lovable and heartbreaking and was indeed breaking her own, already damaged heart right now, she knew too that there was something else there on the inside, where the army and the Muslims had hurt him . . .
‘I know that you must miss your dog,’ she said carefully, and then, ‘was there no way that you could have brought him with you?’
‘I don’t think so Nana, it’s only soldiers that get discharged I’m afraid, not animals.’
‘But what if he bit someone he shouldn’t have?’
‘Well then I suppose they’d have to put him down.’
The words ‘bring back hanging’ and then ‘hanging’s too good for them’ flashed through Margaret’s mind. That’s what all the papers had said about the IRA during the Troubles, and that’s what all the Irish had thought about the Orangemen from time immemorial, and that’s what she thought, when she thought about herself, and her own failures towards her family now.
She pressed her lips together again and contemplated the statuette of Our Lady that was now stood, serenely, between two of the puppies, whose giant red mouths and giant amber eyes slobbered and glinted above her. Then she tried, and just about succeeded, in taking a bite of her biscuit, looked back at her grandson and said, ‘You really must eat something Eoin. When I was in hospital people kept on telling me how much I needed sugar.’
‘Sugar? That doesn’t sound very healthy.’
‘Well it is. It stops you from fainting.’
Eoin gave an awkward smile, and then picked up one of the biscuits and ate it very quickly. As soon as he had finished, Margaret said, ‘You know I could do you an egg on toast if you’re hungry.’
‘But Nana I’m fine, and you’re the one who has been ill. So it really should be me who is helping you.’
‘But . . . ’
But Eoin had already begun to stack their cups together, along with what was left of the biscuits on the tray. Then he stood up and disappeared into the kitchen while Margaret put in her hearing aid and turned the volume up as high as it would go. She could hear what she took to be the sound of Eoin filling the sink with water, and then silence, which she took to be the sound of Eoin thinking, possibly about her, or Kathy, or even his mother in the same way that she too thought of his mother, her daughter, and sometimes her husband Steven; and then she looked back at Our Lady of Everything, the colour of whom matched her tears.
Do thou, bright Queen, O star of the sea,
Pray for thy children, pray for me.
‘Sorry Nana what was that?’ said Eoin, returning from the kitchen.
‘Hail Queen of Heaven,’ said Margaret, and then passed her hand across her face to hide her flickering eyelids. ‘You’ve heard me sing it before, it’s just that I don’t always reach the end.’
Of Flowers
KATHY STOOD IN THE CENTRE of the room wearing a dress that had once been Meg’s. Everything was cold and white except the dress, which was a festive poinsettia red, so that whenever she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window she thought of a fire in the arctic, or a fire in an igloo, or any other type of fire that would eventually die out.
Kathy stood in the centre of the cold, white room in Forest Fields, which she had turned cold and white by painting it a colour that at the time had seemed clean and modern. It occurred to her that no one but her had been inside the room since Eoin had last been there. And then she began to worry that the sheets on the bed needed changing, and that the towels in the bathroom needed washing, and then that the whole place had a shut-up fusty smell that she couldn’t smell anymore because she’d gotten so used to it.
Kathy stood in the centre of the cold, white room wearing what had once been Meg’s expensive dress and worrying about non-existent smells, and then the world around her shattered. A small stone lay on the floor in front of the window, and there were shards of glass around it. She remained where she was for a moment, trying to work out what had happened, and then she began to edge, very slowly, along one of the walls until she reached the window. Very cautiously she looked out through the hole that was now in the middle of it.
‘Kathy? Kathy is that you?’ shouted Jackson.
‘What are you doing?’ Kathy shouted back.
‘Just letting you know I’m here.’
‘But there’s a doorbell.’
‘I was trying to be romantic. I didn’t realise that it would actually break the glass.’
Kathy went to the door and pressed the buzzer that released the lock on the entrance to the block of flats, and then went back to the hole in the window and watched Jackson as he disappeared. She listened to his tread on the stairs, which was both lighter and more definite than Eoin’s, and then the click of the front door opening and closing, and then Jackson was standing in the cold, white room beside her.
‘Oh shit, I’m really sorry,’ he said, looking down at the glass on the floor.
‘Don’t worry my dad can fix it.’
‘But you’ll freeze to death in the meantime.’
Kathy smiled a nice good smile, because it would have been impossible to explain that it would have been impossible for the cold, white room to get any colder, and then when it became weird to keep on smiling, she went into the kitchen, found an old cardboard box, a Stanley knife and a roll of parcel tape and brought them all back into the front room with her.
‘Here, you can patch it up with this.’
‘Okay . . . ’ said Jackson, looking up at the hole in the window, and then down at the cardboard box.
‘I don’t mind helping.’
‘No, no, I insist.’
Kathy stood back and watched as Jackson began to cut through the cardboard, not by making one shallow groove and
going back over it so that the piece you wanted came away in a crisp clean line, but by hacking randomly at it in a way that made the wrong-sized edges ragged. Then, when he had finished, he placed it against the pane, and then had to use almost all of the parcel tape to try to cover it.
‘Oh shit, I’m really sorry,’ he said again, stepping back from the window, ‘DIY isn’t really my forte.’
‘Don’t worry, my dad can fix it,’ Kathy said again.
‘Yeah but that won’t exactly make a good impression on your dad.’
‘And do you want to make a good impression on my dad?’
‘Well I’d rather not make a bad one.’
Kathy was about to laugh, but then stopped and watched what could have been a blush creeping up Jackson’s neck. She found the idea that he, the Access to Media lecturer, might now be embarrassed by his inability to mend a broken window surprising; and then she found that with this surprise came a kind of tenderness that lessened the gap between them.
‘So where are we going for our tea then?’ said Kathy.
‘Luigi’s. Do you know it?’
‘I don’t know anything about food.’
‘I don’t either really. Except Italian, but only because of my gap year. Sei la ragazza più bella che abbia mai visto.’
Kathy looked at Jackson and felt her own face turn to milk and blood and flowers. All the tenderness that had been there, just a few seconds ago, was now twisting itself into fear of those who knew more and those who knew better. She forgot that Jackson could only speak a few lines of one other, non-English language, whereas she was bilingual, and remembered only that she would one day have to run away from him in much the same way that she had had to run away from English Martyrs.
‘I don’t understand what you just said,’ she said, and then touched the side of her face, which felt hot.
‘It just means that you look nice,’ said Jackson, and then touched her cheek with his own cold fingers. ‘Although also kind of different. You should wear your hair like that more often.’
‘But I’m worried that it makes me look older,’ she said, turning this way and that, as though watching herself in an imaginary mirror.
‘But you are older,’ said Jackson, and then he laughed and tried to kiss her. ‘It’s what education does to you.’
Beloved
DAVE SHOOK HIS EMPTY CIGARETTE packet, patted his empty wallet and wondered if he should give up smoking again. He had only been in his bedsit a few weeks, and already his blog had lots of entries, which were getting lots of hits, and yet the gratification that he gleaned from both these things was somehow less than he had been expecting.
Dave looked at the Habitat curtains that his mother had bought for him, and then at the IKEA cushions that Meg had bought for him. He shook the cigarette packet one last time and threw it into the empty corner beside the bed for which neither Meg nor his mother had yet bought a bin, and then slapped his palm, hard, against his forehead.
Then he jumped up, switched on his laptop, and in an increasingly agitated manner began to type, until the words ‘Post-Modern Magik: A User’s Manual’ sparkled across the screen. It had taken days to write the code necessary to achieve this effect, where the colours in each letter moved like diamonds or stars or carefully programmed pixels even, but as he continued, repeatedly, to tell himself, the result was very much worth it. He clicked on the words ‘log in’ in the top right-hand corner of the page, and then entered his email and password and clicked on ‘update blog’, and a new feeling began to come over him, that if he didn’t do something important immediately then everyone, everywhere, would forget that he existed.
Dave jumped up again and began to pace around his bedsit, which meant taking four strides one way, and two strides the other. After a few minutes of this his eye lighted on a bag filled with hair, which he then picked up and repositioned next to his laptop. Then he went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, which contained only a box of eggs two weeks past their best before date. He removed one of the eggs, took it back to his laptop, and once again sat down, only this time he stared not at the screen but at the picture of Meg pinned to the wall behind it.
The background consisted of garland upon garland of marigolds, strung one on top of the other until the whole of the tiny rectangle seemed to be heaving and swaying in the dappled orange light, while Meg stood in the foreground, dressed in a bright-blue sari. The edges of the fabric were trimmed with gold, and there was also gold in her ears, her nose, on her neck and on her fingers, as well as in what had once been her hair, but which was now in a bag beside him . . .
Dave continued to look at the photograph, which had been taken in Bangalore, a place to which Meg would soon be returning, and a place to which he had never been or indeed been asked to go. He knew that it was less the thought of their being apart that concerned him as the idea that she could quite easily do without his being there. Although he had tried to ignore her lack of interest in his blog, and in what he regarded as his recent, admittedly somewhat unconventional, career advancements, it was beginning to eat away at him – surely if he, as her future part-time house husband, were able to support her in all that she did, then she, as his current, full-time neurosis, could at least try to believe in him a little?
Dave continued to look at the photograph of the woman he had loved, without hope, for the last three years, but who, for the last three months, had appeared to share his feelings. He was aware of the numerous ways she had reignited his faith in his own destiny, but also how impermanent this faith was. How it waxed and waned in direct accordance with what he perceived as her desire for him, and how her encroaching absence was symbolic of the absence in his own life of any reasonable plan, or passion . . .
Dave shut his eyes, and then reopened them. And then he picked up one of the rotten eggs and threw it, so that it smashed against the blue and marigold part of the wall. The yolk slithered fatly over Meg’s face, her jewellery, her sari, what had once been her hair until the whole of the image was a uniform orange, through which she stared, passive-aggressively, back at him.
14.02.2005
I did start to write. I just never finished. Or pressed send. Perhaps if I’d done better at school I’d have found the words, and known how to use them, correctly, or even meaningfully. I’d have known how to explain. But then again, if I’d done better I probably wouldn’t need to . . .
EOIN O’SHEA CLOSED THE DIARY. It was small enough to slip into a shirt pocket, and came with a miniature pencil that slotted in the spine. Inside, each double-page spread was divided into eight boxes, one for every weekday, with just enough space for a few lines of writing underneath it, and one with an ‘inspiring’ quote, which in this particular instance was: ‘Remember, if plan A didn’t work there’s still 25 more letters!’ He looked across at the sunset, which was turning the dilapidated yellow brick buildings along the side of the road into a mouthful of broken and rotten teeth. It was the same as every other view, he thought dolefully, and the only difference was that sometimes you noticed it, and sometimes you didn’t.
Eoin drew the curtains. He was twenty-six years old. A man and then some. And yet the decor of his room did not reflect this. The wallpaper, curtains and carpet, which had been chosen by his Nana, were decorated with large floral patterns, which clashed badly with the black ash furniture he’d chosen when he was fourteen. Other than this it was empty of belongings besides a large, outdated computer, a birthday card with a footballer on the front, and a brown paper bag from the Body Shop.
The Body Shop bag was a recent addition. Yesterday he had gone back there, and bought a bottle of perfume. Not the sick peach that he had tried last time, or one from the old-fashioned-drawer-liners-range, but another type called White Musk, which smelled of hairspray and fresh washing, both of which he associated, to some extent, with Kathy. He had bought it intending to go round to her flat afterwards, and had pictured the scene that would follow, where she fell, like blossom, into his arms �
� only, for some reason he couldn’t quite articulate, he had asked the shopgirl out instead.
Eoin knew that one of the reasons why he couldn’t quite articulate his reasons was because, although he could see why a lot of other men would think that the shopgirl was attractive, she wasn’t the type of person he was usually attracted to. And the way she had tried to flirt, by which he meant the way she had simpered at him, was similarly unappealing. Kathy, on the other hand, was the most beautiful woman he had seen in his life, although she had never seemed to be more than fleetingly aware of it, or desperate for it, despite being so good at it. And Kathy was someone he loved . . .
Eoin opened the Body Shop bag, took out the perfume and sprayed it on his wrist. Then he held his wrist against his nose and closed his eyes. He listened, and tried not to listen, to the sounds of his Nana shuffling downstairs, and, for that moment, it was almost as if Kathy was there with him. Then he opened his eyes and sprayed the perfume all over his tee-shirt. And then he lay down on the single divan bed that he had had since he was ten years old and had first come to live here, by himself, with his Nana, pulled the tee-shirt up so that it covered the entirety of his face, and breathed in, very slowly.
Eoin breathed in and then breathed out again, letting his chest rise and fall in a steady, soothing rhythm. It was something he did often now, a means to prevent the last six months from crawling in and stopping him from being alone. That was not to say that he liked being alone (he didn’t), only that he liked being with other people even less. It was another of the things, along with avoiding Kathy and trying to date the shopgirl, that he couldn’t quite articulate the reasons for; and as if to illustrate the ridiculous nature of his own, specific and personal hopelessness, his mobile beeped: