by Roddy Doyle
—I’m testing you, said Joe. —And I asked first.
—Jess is engaged to Gavin.
—Correct, said Joe.
We left the child and went back downstairs. We stood in a full room and shifted to let the traffic pass, and looked at the people who had always known one another – the couples, the friends, the gorgeous tribe.
—Where is she? said Joe.
She was why we were here. Somehow. Our girl – our woman. Hi. She’d dragged us here. I looked around. I looked at every chair, along the walls, through both doorways. Where was she? She’d left George’s with the rest of them, with us. She’d been outside. We’d seen her get into one of the cars; she’d dragged her cello in with her. We’d heard her laugh. Not your lap?! Be good now! The Mini we’d pushed ourselves into was just a bit further down, near the corner of Fade Street. We were all going to the party. She was here, somewhere.
I didn’t care. I feel it now, I felt it then. The impossible dream – but I wasn’t dreaming. Joe, though – I don’t know. I’d been infatuated before; I knew what it was like. The spunk eyes, and the wish to protect the girl from spunk eyes, my own eyes. To be engulfed, protected, changed. To disappear into a woman. To be killed, born. To feel the woman right against you. I don’t know about Joe. He was in love with a woman he didn’t know. But I don’t know. I was looking half heartedly for the Emmylou girl. I wanted to smile at her. See what happened.
—We’ll try the kitchen, said Joe. —This is shite.
We battled our way out to the hall – the house kept filling – and found the kitchen, a home in itself. There was a fireplace, a huge black metal oven, a silver fridge. The place was packed. And she was there. She was sitting on a chair, the only person in the room sitting. It took a while to realise that the thing she seemed to be leaning on was the cello. Had she played, was she about to play? She moved to the side, bent down – she disappeared. And reappeared – she’d been getting her bow from the case on the floor. She was going to play. I looked at Joe, at the side of his face. I saw his sneer. Not there for long. He killed it, wiped it from his face. It was how we always reacted to things we didn’t know – art, food, the world: we sneered. And that was what Joe did when he saw that she was about to play the cello. At first.
She threw her head back, and brought her hair with her. But it almost immediately fell back in front of her face as she sawed at the strings and, gradually, her movement produced notes and a sound that began to flow and rise. It was probably Bach – I don’t know.
I saw the Emmylou girl. She was at the door, looking – like everyone else – at the cello. I left Joe and went across to her. She was by herself. I stood beside her.
—Hi.
She looked.
—Oh. Hi.
We both looked at the woman playing the cello.
—She’s not very good, said Emmylou.
—No, I agreed.
I looked across at Joe, to make sure he hadn’t heard me. He was gazing – I think that is an accurate word – gazing at her, at her bow hand, at her, hidden behind her hair. It was the look of a man who fancied the woman he was looking at. That was it. He was waiting to see her face again.
I’m making this up. I saw Joe’s face that night, almost forty years ago. But I’m lying. I don’t know what his expression was like. I didn’t care. The woman beside me was holding my hand. I’d made my hand touch hers and she’d taken two, three of my fingers and held them, then opened her full hand to mine. I think her name was Alice – I’m not sure. I slept in her bedroom that night and met her mother the following morning. I remember that but not the girl, the woman, herself – not really.
I didn’t stay. Alice started to turn, away from the music. She pressed my hand and I went with her.
We didn’t know the cellist’s name was Jess. When we watched her play, when I was watching Joe. We didn’t know she was engaged, and that she was playing Bach at her own engagement party.
I look again – I try to remember – to see if I can spot Gavin, the fiancé. I have no idea who Gavin was. I can’t see him standing beside her, over her. I can’t see him leaning against the fridge, staring around, making sure that no one interrupts the performance. I can’t see him in George’s, with his arm around her shoulder. I don’t think I ever did see him. I’m not certain that the child with the bottle opener said Jess and Gavin. I slept with a girl that night and I think her name was Alice, but I’m not sure.
The woman we’d been staring at and thinking of for months was called Jess – I know that now. We were in her house. And I remember, Alice didn’t like her. I remember, it had helped me to like Alice, to reach for her hand. I’d done that when I’d heard – she’d let me hear – her irritated sigh. I liked her then, I’d liked her before then. But not enough to remember her name. I’m calling her Alice because it seems fairer – nicer – than calling her the Emmylou girl.
I know that the woman was called Jess. She was the boy in the bathroom’s sister and she was engaged. But – before we went into the house and upstairs to the beer – we didn’t know her name. We hadn’t heard it, we hadn’t asked it. That – what we didn’t know – is true. Downstairs, in the kitchen, we didn’t know we were looking at the fiancée. That must be true. We didn’t know she was Jess.
I look again at Joe before I leave with Alice.
I can see it: he’s smitten. I decide this.
* * *
—
Joe had gone downstairs, to the Black Hole of Calcutta. I’d been down already. It was well lit, almost beautiful, probably protected; it was like descending into the nineteenth century. I sat on the stool while he was gone. The place was filling and it was the easiest way to protect it. And I was tired. Wired and tired – and drunk. I checked my phone. I was dreading the call and wanting the call.
He’d had another go at explaining to me – and to himself, I thought – how he had felt. Finding Jess, finding what she meant to him, had been like finding something that he’d lost and would have given up on if – in this case – the growing sense of despair, and terror, hadn’t made that impossible.
—This is somethin’ that happened, I said. —What you’re talkin’ about now. This is somethin’ that happened?
—Yeah.
—It did?
—Yeah, he said. —Yeah.
—Wha’?
—My weddin’ ring.
—You lost your weddin’ ring?
—Yeah.
—What happened?
—Another fuckin’ cliché, said Joe. —The Christmas party.
—You took your weddin’ ring off.
—Don’t ask me why.
—Why?
—Well, there you go, he said. —It makes no sense. The woman knew I was married. So it was – ah, it was stupid. An’ nothin’ happened, like. Nothin’ was ever goin’ to happen. But I took it off anyway. In the jacks. Put it in me jacket pocket.
—Where were you?
—Some fuckin’ place I’d never heard of. The younger ones always lead the way. So anyway, I’m chattin’ to her. I think I might even have been talkin’ about the kids, for fuck sake. But somethin’ – the drink. Or the fact tha’ she is a very good-lookin’ woman, an’ dead-on. I take the fuckin’ ring off when I go out to the jacks. Like I’m announcin’ somethin’ to myself. Givin’ myself permission. Connin’ meself, I suppose. Totally illogical. Totally fuckin’ stupid. An’ like I said, I wasn’t particularly frisky or anythin’.
—You didn’t say that.
—Well, I’m fuckin’ sayin’ it now. But anyway, I come back from the toilet an’ there’s someone else sittin’ where I’d been, an’ I’m glad. I really am. A few more drinks. Mad things – cocktails, you know. Buckets o’ fuckin’ gin an’ vegetables. An’ I slide out, I’ve had enough. Into a taxi an’ home.
He remembered the ring in the morning. He was lying in bed. He’d moved to the s
ide that Trish had just vacated, into her warmth, when he remembered. His jacket was downstairs, draped carefully over a chair in the kitchen. He was nearly sure that that was where he’d left it. He was always very tidy and methodical when he was drunk. The jacket was down in the kitchen and the ring was in the pocket and Trish would go through the pockets and find the ring, and she’d know exactly why it wasn’t on the third finger of his left hand. She’d know immediately, without having to think it through. There was nothing to think through. He’d taken off the ring because he’d wanted to unmarry himself for the half hour it would have taken him to get into some young one’s knickers, and he’d forgotten to remarry himself on the way home because he’d been so drunk – the smell off his breath, off his skin, was proof enough of that.
He sat up in the bed, too scared for a hangover. He was hoping he’d see the jacket on the floor, although he knew he wouldn’t. His suit trousers were draped over the back of the chair beside the window, with his shirt and the tie. His shoes were side by side, parked under the chair. His underpants were on him.
—Me heart, Davy, he said. —I’m not jokin’ yeh. The poundin’ tha’ should’ve been in me head – it had emigrated to my fuckin’ heart.
Had he had sex with the woman the night before? He knew he hadn’t – he was positive he hadn’t. But he was sniffing himself and checking his crotch. Even though he knew nothing had happened. And he hated himself because nothing had happened and he was thanking Christ that nothing had happened. He couldn’t think of anything to tell Trish, to explain the ring. She was down there now – he was sure of it – holding the jacket up in one hand, slipping the other hand into the first of its pockets.
Joe had forgotten about Jess or he was trying to make sure that I forgot about Jess. But it didn’t matter. It was him at his best, his own hero and villain, genius and eejit, bringing himself to big life in a story. The boy and the man I think I’d wanted to be.
—D’you have form? I asked him.
—Wha’?
—Well, why would Trish have been goin’ through your pockets?
—Oh, he said. —That’s just Trish. She’s a pain in the arse – no. No, sorry – that’s not fair. But you know the way I’m tellin’ you a story? Now, like. Here.
—Yeah.
—Well, she’d’ve been tellin’ hers, he said. —If tha’ makes sense. In her head – livin’ the story as she went around the kitchen. Searchin’ the pockets – that’s what they’re there for, kind o’ thing.
—A pair of fuckin’ drama queens.
—Fuck off, but yeah.
He wanted to go downstairs to the kitchen but he was afraid to. There was a chance she hadn’t searched the pockets, and wasn’t going to. But she might have been waiting at the foot of the stairs with the ring sitting on the palm of her hand. Or in the kitchen, waiting, pretending there wasn’t a fight and a separation on the way. He couldn’t think of anything to tell her if she’d found the ring. But he got out of bed and put on his dressing gown. He lifted the shirt and trousers off the chair, to make sure that what he knew was true: the jacket was downstairs. He checked the trouser pockets – and no ring. He thought of a story on the landing. He’d tell her he’d got the ring caught in a towel, one of those small white towels that they stack beside the sinks in hotel toilets. The Clarence – he’d say they’d been in the Clarence; they’d all gone there after the food. They’d been to the Clarence before, him and Trish, so she’d know exactly what he was talking about. He’d had to take the ring off to free it from the towel because it had become snagged, somehow – he didn’t know how; he’d been drunk. And he’d forgotten to put it back on. He must have slipped it into the pocket so he could wash his hands.
Trish was there, in the kitchen. She was making a list, opening and shutting the fridge and the presses. It was a couple of days before Christmas. He’d forgotten all about Christmas. It was why he’d been out with the office gang.
—The dead arose, she said.
Her back was to him. She was looking in the freezer above the fridge. The jacket was where he knew he’d left it. He lifted it off the chair, exactly as he’d pictured Trish doing. He put his free hand into the pocket he’d slipped the ring into the night before. Trish was still rooting through the freezer. The pocket was empty; the ring wasn’t in there.
—No fuckin’ ring, Davy, he said. —An’ I knew I’d put it in there. I fuckin’ knew.
Trish had turned.
—What are you lookin’ for? she asked.
—Nothin’, he said.
—You’re not smokin’ again, are you? she said.
I’d forgotten: Joe used to smoke. In fact, it was unusual that he hadn’t mentioned it tonight because he often had a smoke – just the one, or two – when we were out together.
—No, he told Trish. —My wallet.
He was delighted – relieved. She hadn’t been searching the pockets. She’d have known there wasn’t a packet of Silk Cut and matches or a lighter in the pockets if she’d already been through them. But Trish loved her drama. She might have been leading him to the trap. He still had to be careful, and the hangover was kicking in. He was dying. He checked the other pocket as Trish pointed to the black wallet – an anniversary present, from Trish – on the kitchen table.
—There it is, look.
The ring wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the only other pocket it could have been in. There was just one inside pocket and he would never have put the ring into that one. He was reliving the moment, the night before, soaping the finger, sliding it off, putting it in the pocket – the outside pocket, right side. Trish was looking at him. She’d shown him the wallet on the table and he was now putting his hand into the inside pocket, searching for something he no longer needed to search for.
—Joe, she said.
—What?
—Your wallet’s on the table.
—Yeah.
The inside pocket was empty. He was hoping his face was too. But he thought he was going to vomit.
—There’s Coke in the fridge, said Trish. —D’you want some? You look like you need the bubbles.
He put the jacket back on the chair. He lifted the shoulders, to make sure it sat well. And saw the wedding ring. On his finger.
—Ah, Jesus, I said.
—I swear to God. On my fuckin’ finger.
—That’s brilliant.
I laughed. I leaned against him. I put my forehead to the side of his head, for a second. I lifted my head.
—Jesus, Joe, I said. —You’re a terrible fuckin’ messer.
I knew we’d be having another pint.
—My fuckin’ heart, Davy, he said. —An’ she asks if I want a fuckin’ Coke. An’ there was me thinkin’ she was goin’ to murder me – stab me – or wallop me with somethin’ out o’ the fuckin’ freezer. A leg of lamb or somethin’. The fuckin’ turkey.
He kept looking at the ring; he couldn’t help it. He kept expecting it to be gone. He couldn’t believe that nothing was going to happen. He was almost disappointed.
—I loved fightin’ Trish, he said. —I have to say tha’.
—Joe, I said.
—Wha’?
—Why’re you tellin’ me this?
—Wha’ d’you mean?
—You told me this – the story, like. It’s brilliant, by the way. But you said it would – I don’t know – illustrate how you felt when you met Jess again. And now you’re tellin’ me you liked the fights with Trish.
—Well, it’s true.
—What is?
—The fights.
He looked around; he’d just heard himself. He looked back at me.
—Rows, I meant. Arguments.
—I know wha’ you mean.
—Trish, he said. —She’s like an opera singer when she’s arguing. She’s fuckin’ amazin’.
—Yeah, I said.
I’d met
Trish only a couple of times but I remembered her tearing the face off me once and I’d felt tiny, torn apart and lucky to have been the focus of such attention. She’d held my arm when she’d finished with me. She’d run her hand up and down it, elbow to shoulder, shoulder to elbow. She’d patted it. We were all drunk in a back garden. Any friend of Joe’s is a friend of mine, she’d said. I have your back, remember that. I came away feeling lucky and lonely.
—You still haven’t told me, I said.
—I miss Trish, he said. —There’s a part o’ me tha’ misses Trish. I have to say.
—You still haven’t told me.
—Fuck off, Davy, for fuck sake. I’m gettin’ there – I’ve lost track. It made sense when I started. Yeah, that’s it – it was tha’ feelin’ of elation when I saw the ring. I thought I was fucked, then there it was. But that’s goin’ off track again. But it was the feelin’. Like a miracle but, actually, it was easily explained. I must’ve remembered the ring was in me pocket, probably in the taxi on the way home, an’ I’d put it back on. Simple as. So, yeah. I found Jess.
—An’ it felt miraculous.
—It kind of did, he said. —But a slower burn, if you’re with me. Gradual. Like, I can’t quite believe this but it’s happenin’. At the school an’ then when she texted me, I was thinkin’ – I suppose – here we go. But then the first couple o’ meetin’s. An’ it settled into this other feelin’ – tha’ there’d been no reunion, it’d been like this all along.
Joe was back from the toilet. I stood, and he got past me and sat. He brought his pint closer to him with his right hand. I looked at the left.
—You still have your ring on, I said.
—Wha’?
He caught up with what I’d said and he held up the hand.
—Yeah, he said. —An’ you spotted it as well. You’re a bit of an oul’ one, aren’t you, Davy?
—Fuck off.
—Well, Jesus, he said. —I can’t think o’ one other man – not one – who’d’ve noticed or given a shite. No offence.
—Only because you were talkin’ about it, I said.
—You’re grand, he said. —I’m only slaggin’ yeh. But, yeah. I still have it. Trish flung hers at me.