Thirteen Stops

by Sandra Harris

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” she said, looking up at it and wondering, as she did every time, is this it, then, the place where my luck finally runs out and this guy kills me and chops up my body in his bathroom so that he can fit me into a suitcase and chuck me in the canal? It was a risk she ran every time she did a job, even though the agency had all the guys’ addresses and credit-card details so that they could be identified quickly if anything happened. A fat lot of good that would do her if some guy had already gone all Norman Bates on her, Maroon always thought, but those were the risks you took in a job like this. At least she was being paid extra for it. The money would come in very handy.

  In the sitting-room, a spacious book-lined room containing a desk with a laptop on it in one corner, Maroon took off her leopard-print coat and dropped it on one arm of the couch. A fat marmalade cat sat curled up cosily in one corner of the couch. Maroon loved cats but Andrew wasn’t keen on them, so she wasn’t able to have one in the house. She reached out a hand to the orange-coloured moggy, who purred extravagantly.

  “She must like you,” Graeme Groves said in surprise. “That hardly ever happens. Lady Simone doesn’t like anyone usually.”

  “Except you, I suppose.” Maroon sat down on the couch near the cat.

  “Oh no. She hates me most of all. She never has anything to do with me if she can help it, except at feeding-time. Then she can’t get enough of me.”

  Maroon looked at him curiously again for any sign that would indicate that he’d been making a joke, but his face was totally deadpan.

  “Would you like tea or coffee?” he asked politely then.

  “Um, a black coffee, please. No sugar.”

  “Okay. No sugar.”

  He left and she heard him clattering about in a room across the hall from the sitting-room which she assumed was the kitchen. There was the distinct sound of a crash and a muted but still recognisable swear word.

  She was surprised but quite pleased at the offer of coffee. She sometimes got offered an alcoholic beverage but mostly they just wanted to get down to business. In a way, Maroon preferred that. The sooner they got down to it, the sooner she could get out of there and go home to Andrew. No money would change hands. The men paid by credit card through the website, and the payment included a service charge. If she had no physical money on her, no actual notes or coins, then she couldn’t be robbed. You met all sorts in this job. This man seemed different, not the kind to rob a defenceless woman. You never could tell, though, just the same.

  When he returned, he was carrying two mugs of coffee – one black, one with milk – on a small tray. He set the tray on the coffee table beside the couch and sat down in an armchair opposite Maroon. Immediately, though, he leaped to his feet, crying “The biscuits! I forgot the biscuits!”

  He rushed out of the room, returning seconds later with a packet of plain digestives and a plate.

  “Damn, damn, damn!” he muttered to himself. “I screwed up at the last minute. I’m always doing that. I fall down at the last hurdle. I nearly manage it but then I mess it up. That’s typical of me.” He looked as if he was about to cry.

  “It’s all right,” said Maroon, who was beginning to see the light. “I don’t need any biscuits, thank you. The coffee’s fine on its own. I had a big breakfast earlier.”

  “That’s not the point,” Graeme replied stubbornly. “A good host always offers a guest a biscuit to go with their coffee.”

  “You are a good host.” Maroon picked up her coffee and took a sip of it, even though it was still much too hot. “This is really decent coffee. See, I’m enjoying it.”

  “Are you really?” He brightened a little. He stared hard at her for a minute or two, then he said, “Are you really called Maroon?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “No, of course not. Who’s called Maroon?”

  “Well, I thought it might be your real name because you have those lovely purplish streaks in your hair,” he said shyly.

  She fingered her long purplish-brown ponytail. “You like them?”

  “Oh yes. Very much.”

  “I wasn’t sure about them at first, but now I think I’ll keep them in for a bit.”

  He nodded vigorously, then said, “May I be allowed to know your real name?”

  “Of course, if you like. It’s Vicky.”

  “Vicky!” he repeated. “Vicky. Vicky. Yes, I like it. I like it very much. It suits you.”

  “Thanks. Now, can I ask you something personal?”

  “It’s rude to ask personal questions,” he said, but he said it nicely.

  “Yes, you’re right. It is. I won’t ask it so.”

  “Ah no, go on. I don’t mind you asking.”

  “Well, if you’re sure,” she said.

  He nodded vigorously, sitting up all straight and formal and waiting for the question, as if he were on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and there was a lot of money riding on the answer.

  She crossed her legs and looked at him curiously, wishing that she could smoke a cigarette with her coffee. “Are you autistic, Graeme?”

  He blushed to the roots of his hair. After a while, he nodded. “How did you know?”

  She shrugged. The purple top she wore slipped down off her shoulders a little bit. “A lucky guess.”

  “How long have you known?” he said then.

  “Since he was a baby,” she said automatically, then stopped and bit her lip. Why had she said that? She hadn’t meant to say that. It had just slipped out because Andrew was on her mind, and now Graeme Groves was looking at her in confusion. “Sorry, look, forget I said that. Listen, do you want to get down to it or what?”

  “You mean the sex?”

  She nodded, hiding a smile at the serious way he said ‘the sex’. “It’s what I’m here for. Isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?”

  “Couldn’t we just talk for a bit instead?” he pleaded. He sounded like a little boy begging for an ice cream.

  “It’s your money. What would you like to talk about?”

  She wasn’t entirely surprised by his request. Guys often requested her services and it turned out that all they wanted was a woman to lend them a sympathetic ear for an hour or two. Sometimes they still wanted quick sex afterwards, but sometimes too it would never come to that. All they genuinely wanted was just a chat with a woman who’d be pleasant to them. Vicky could do that. Some men were lonely. That was okay. There were lots of lonely people in the world.

  “Who’s the baby you talked about just now?” Graeme said. “When I asked you how long you’d known I was autistic, you said ‘since he was a baby’. Who’s the ‘he’? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Do you mind if I smoke in here?’ she said, unable to contain the longing for a second more.

  Graeme looked a bit disapproving, then he said, “If I get you an ashtray, then will you tell me who the ‘he’ is?”

  “I swear.” She made the Boy Scouts’ sign with a half-grin.

  Seconds later, the sounds of mad clattering from the kitchen reached the sitting-room.

  “I can’t find any ashtrays!” Graeme wailed. “I don’t think I have any! You see, I’m not a smoker myself. It’s such a disgusting habit. It turns my stomach.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she called back, wincing. That had certainly told her, anyway. Most people weren’t so brutally upfront about their dislike of cigarettes. They usually just made a face or wafted their fingers about passive-aggressively for a bit to dispel the smoke. “An ordinary saucer or a side-plate will do.”

  When she was at home, she often stubbed out her fags in her coffee cups but somehow she didn’t think that that would go down too well here, in this pristine and neatly organised house. Even Andrew said that smoking was a disgusting thing to do.

  Eventually Graeme returned with a saucer in his hand.

  “Here it is!” he said triumphantly. “I chose this one because it’s got a chip in it, so it’s not a good one exactly, but don’t wo
rry, it’s still perfectly clean.”

  “Okay, thanks,” she said, thoroughly bemused by all his flapping about.

  “So now will you tell me who the ‘he’ is?” he repeated, seating himself on the armchair opposite her once more.

  “Are you sitting comfortably?” she said wryly, wanting to smile at the sight of this tall, lanky guy settling himself more comfortably on the couch just because she’d suggested it. He held a cushion to himself the way Andrew did when he was watching television. “Then we’ll begin . . .”

  Andrew was her baby boy, her sixteen-year-old son who she’d brought up on her own because his father was a no-good jailbird. She’d met Andrew’s father when she was only sixteen herself, the age Andrew was now. His name was Tommy Keeley. Still was, unless he’d changed it and, knowing Tommy the way she did – he was so damned slippery – it literally wouldn’t have surprised her in the slightest. He’d been exactly the kind of guy to sweep a silly, naïve schoolgirl off her feet. (It was her own fault for falling for a guy called Tommy, the archetypal rebel’s name. Sometimes Vicky wondered if she’d have fared any better with a Terence or a Malcolm. As it was, she might just as well have teamed up with a Jimmy, a Johnny or a Danny, the ultimate rebel-without-a-cause names.) Tommy had been out of school for ages himself, he told her proudly, since he was twelve or thirteen, and he now tore around the streets of Dublin on his motorcycle every day until it was time to go and collect his dole and spend it all on fags and booze and petrol for the bike. Vicky thought that all that stuff he talked about doing sounded incredibly romantic and rebellious. She wished that she herself were half so grown-up and daring. She was stuck in school for another two years and she was already wishing that she could leave. She’d done her Junior Cert and hadn’t fared too badly in it, but she was dreading the poxy Leaving Cert. Everyone knew it was way harder than the Junior Cert, and the thought of those additional two years of gruelling study was filling her with despair. She wasn’t altogether sorry, then, when she discovered she was pregnant with Andrew. She’d be able to leave school and she and Tommy could set up home together with their baby. They wouldn’t be able to live with Vicky’s parents. Her mother had remarried after the death of her husband from a sudden heart attack, and Vicky’s stepfather was a despot who went ballistic when he heard about the baby. He called Vicky every name under the sun and even belted her one in the face so that, when she fled round to Tommy’s place with a suitcase, she had the beginnings of a lovely shiner.

  Tommy’s mother was dead and his father was well on the way to becoming an alcoholic. The flat was littered with empty beer cans, and takeaway boxes, their leftover contents long since congealed, cluttered every surface. So many times Vicky nearly puked, with the baby in her stomach and all, trying to clean the place up for Tommy and his old man.

  Even when it was clean, Vicky decided that she didn’t want to live somewhere where the spectre of alcoholism constantly hovered, waiting patiently to carry Tommy’s father away. Old Man Jeff, as Tommy called him, made the most depressing sight, slumped in his armchair in front of the telly from one end of the day to the next, the pile of empties on the floor around him growing ever bigger. He never went out, except to collect his dole and go to the boozer. It was horrible.

  “Don’t you want to help him?” she’d once asked her boyfriend curiously, but Tommy merely shrugged.

  “It’s his choice. What he does is nothing to do with me.”

  No love lost there, Vicky decided. She said no more about it.

  Eventually, the pair of teenagers went to stay with Vicky’s Aunty June, her mother’s sister, for a bit. June was motherly and sensible and she went down to Dublin City Council, or Dublin Corporation as it was known back then, on Fishamble Street and more or less demanded that they give her pregnant niece and her boyfriend a flat, which, much to Vicky and Tommy’s surprise, they did. The flat on Thomas Street was where Vicky and Andrew were still living today.

  They hadn’t been living in it long, however, before Tommy started filling it up with boxes of stuff he got from ‘friends’. When Vicky asked him what was in them, he wouldn’t tell her, only that he was ‘holding them for a friend’. When the cops came and raided their flat, Tommy went to prison for a year. He started his first sentence not long after Vicky had given birth to their son in the Coombe with only her Aunty June for company. Tommy was out with his mates during the labour, flashing his cash about and playing the big man. When he came out of prison after only serving six months – “Time off for good behaviour, Vicks,” he’d said with a grin – the flat began to fill up with boxes of stuff again. Vicky went berserk and chucked him out, boxes and all. He went back to his dad’s flat for a bit, but living in squalor no longer appealed to Tommy, not since he’d become used to having Vicky cook and clean for him. Even the prison was cleaner and more inviting than his dad’s place. He went back to Vicky with flowers stolen from outside a petrol station and a drawer-full of promises that he wasn’t long breaking.

  Vicky had to face facts. She was a teenage mum with a petty thief for a boyfriend. Over the years that followed, Tommy was in and out of prison for theft, breaking and entering, lying to the dole people, receiving stolen goods (a favourite pastime) and other petty crimes. When he eventually got sent down for a long stretch after an innocent householder, an elderly woman, was hit on the head with a tire-iron during a burglary (Tommy wasn’t the aggressor, but he’d been there and witnessed it and had done nothing to help the old dear), Vicky decided she’d had enough of his shit. She kicked him out for the last time. She brought his remaining belongings round to his dad’s flat, where Jeff Keeley was still pickling himself to death with booze. She changed the locks of the flat in Thomas Street and tore up the visiting orders that Tommy sent her from the prison. It was hard but she did it.

  “I just didn’t want Andrew growing up around that kind of thing,” she told Graeme now. He nodded as if he knew exactly what she meant. Easing off her high heels and slipping her bare feet up under her on the huge comfy couch, she lit another cigarette and continued with her story.

  She’d brought Andrew up herself from then on, with little or no help from anyone. She lived on social welfare allowances and did cleaning and child-minding jobs and even dog-walking jobs, and she put Andrew in school when he was old enough. She hadn’t given a flying fuck about her own education but, oddly enough, she cared very much about Andrew’s, and about his future too. The school confirmed her own early suspicions that there was something very different about Andrew. He was exceptionally bright in some ways but slow almost to the point of backwardness in others. He could do sums in his head that the guys who made up the entrance exams for NASA would have wrestled with but putting on his own socks and doing up the laces of his trainers defeated him completely. He also was on the go from morning till night, and had real difficulty relating to kids his own age and people in general. Strangers made him nervous, hostile and even openly rude. A change of plan and the sudden appearance of an uninvited visitor could trigger a meltdown.

  As a child, he’d had terrible tantrums that Vicky at first assumed were par for the course with toddlers and developing children. As he’d grown older, however, these ‘tantrums’ turned into bouts of violent rage as Andrew tried to make sense of the world around him with the limited tools at his disposal. Angry at the absence of a father without being able to find the right words with which to articulate his thoughts, he lashed out at everyone around him, with Vicky who was always there getting the worst of it time after time. He saw other kids around him with fathers and devoted grandparents and he hit out at Vicky because she had failed, as he saw it, to provide him with either. He became more and more aggressive in his behaviour towards her and others until the mainstream school in which he’d initially been enrolled suggested it might be best if Vicky found him a ‘special’ school, because he was clearly suffering from psychological problems and his temper was out of control. The other kids in the school were terrified of him and so
was Vicky by this stage, much as she still loved him with all her heart. The head teacher, another motherly and understanding woman not unlike Vicky’s Aunty June, had put a distraught Vicky in touch with the local School-Age team of psychologists, speech-and-language therapists and occupational therapists. Attached to the Health Service Executive, they were like a group of professional trouble-shooters specially trained to help kids with the most complex emotional, psychological and even physical problems. They had saved Vicky’s bacon, anyway, and she didn’t care who knew it.

  Some painfully intense therapy sessions, with a child psychologist who was very good at her job, followed for both mother and son. A diagnosis of Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder for Andrew didn’t faze Vicky at all. She welcomed it with open arms. It was comforting and reassuring, in fact, to know that there were legitimate reasons for Andrew’s strange and aggressive behaviour. Not that having autism made you violent, the child psychologist was quick to point out, but frustrations arising out of not being able to express yourself adequately to the people around you frequently did. Vicky was mainly relieved to learn that the violent outbursts stemmed mostly from his two medical conditions and not specifically from having an absentee jailbird for a father. That must have affected him too, though, she was always thinking. She lay awake at night consumed with guilt over the whole thing. She loved her son dearly but why did she have to saddle him with a petty criminal for a father? She had never really stopped beating herself up about her inability to provide Andrew with the normal family situation he saw around him every day. Luckily, in the last few years the idea of the traditional nuclear family had taken a bit of a battering and now, of course, families came in all shapes and sizes. That had helped to ease the pressure on Vicky a little, but she still needed to keep taking the anti-depressants and sleeping tablets her doctor had prescribed for her during the worst of their black days.