Surge

by Frank McGuinness

  ‘Hi Fee,’ he said.

  ‘Oh good,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘you got here.’ He could see her mentally ticking a box.

  There was no sign of the lovely Colette – so she and Dec mustn’t live together, Shay thought. He felt, unaccountably, relieved.

  Brian’s party was set for eight. He had been invited to Dec’s, where he thought he was having a cosy birthday dinner, just the four of them – Brian and Fee, Dec and Colette. By seven o’clock, a crowd had gathered in the marquee. A celebratory atmosphere had already built up, thanks to Colette, who circulated with a tray of drinks. She was wearing a dress the colour of an ocean in a travel poster. It was silk, or something very slinky, with a rucked-up bodice and a flowing skirt. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a little bun, and her lips were scarlet. Brian’s friends from the golf club, colleagues from the Hardware Association, old school pals, flirted harmlessly with her. Shay recognised some faces from long ago, but no one he could exactly place. Anyway, he was trying to be invisible. Fee had told him to lay low because he was to be the crowning surprise for Brian, but only after the reveal of the party itself and the champagne toast. Shay found himself lurking behind a row of fake box trees that lined the red carpet leading from the French doors into the marquee. At ten past eight, the doorbell chimed in a prearranged pattern.

  ‘That’s the birthday boy,’ Dec said and left the assembled company in the marquee. Colette took over, putting a finger to her pressed lips, like a pantomime dame. A hush fell. They heard Brian and Fee’s voices and Dec sounding falsely hearty. Colette mimed a count of three, and, as the trio of Brian, Fee and Dec reached the French doors, the crowd roared ‘Surprise!’

  Brian looked like he was going to bolt. He gripped the door jamb and Fee had to prod him forward into the marquee. He was wearing a V-necked jumper like an off-duty priest and a pair of cruelly pressed jeans. (Fee’s influence, Shay supposed.) Shay’s abiding memory of Brian was of a gangly adolescent, full of first-born certitude and a narrow ambition that went no further than serving behind the counter at Starling Hardware. His motto was ‘for the sake of peace’. Don’t give Dad cheek, for the sake of peace; don’t tell Dad you’ve failed your exams, for the sake of peace; don’t be hard on Dec because … Because Dec isn’t that bright is what he meant, though it was never spoken. Brian treated poor Dec as if he were slow-witted. Looking at Colette, Shay thought Dec had outwitted them all. Fee, standing beside her, decked out in white with lots of frills at the hem, looked like a washed-out Bo Peep. Friends crowded around Brian as Fee pushed him deeper into the marquee, and Shay lost sight of Colette. When they were all inside the tent, Fee raised a champagne flute.

  ‘There’s one more surprise …’ she announced portentously. Brian looked hunted. ‘A very special guest has travelled a very long way to be with us tonight.’

  She summoned Shay with her crooked finger from his position behind the plastic pot plants. The crowd parted, Red Sealike, as he presented himself. Brian took one look at him and, to his horror, burst into tears.

  ‘You came home,’ he said, sniffling, ‘for me!’

  The architecture of the Starling family was like an ill-designed playground, the swings and roundabouts of his parents’ affections. There were two years between Brian and Dec, then a thirteen-year gap before Shay came along. His two brothers seemed to Shay to belong to an elder ghost family where the spectre of their mother still ruled. Whereas he was like an orphan, a concrete reminder of her late and embarrassing fertility. Now, with his father gone, there was just the three ‘boys’. When Dad had died in ’99, Shay couldn’t come home for the funeral. Not that he and the old man were close, but there were rituals you missed, and burying the dead was one. It seemed to cement his exile. Brian’s tears made him think that he had been forgiven.

  *

  After the toast, Colette sidled up to him. ‘Thanks be to Jaysus that’s over with,’ she said, blowing upwards at her fringe.

  ‘What?’

  ‘All those lies! Planning a surprise party is worse than having an affair. Fee really liked it, though. Maybe she’s had some practice?’ she said and winked at him as she disappeared into the crowd. The thought of Fee in flagrante delicto made Shay smile.

  There were other ritual humiliations in store for Brian. The opening of the presents had to be done in front of everyone, then the first dance with Fee on the duckboards in front of the deejay’s stand in the marquee, then a round of ‘Happy Birthday’ to accompany the cake, which had three tiers and featured a hammer covered in gold leaf. Although it must have been an ordeal, Brian was doing a good job of faking it, Shay thought. He walked among his people, shaking hands like a populist pontiff and being embraced by women dressed to the nines and tottering in heels too high for them. But he didn’t come near him. Shay couldn’t help feeling that Brian was avoiding him. So much for the biggest surprise of all. He felt more like the prodigal son the fatted calf had forgotten.

  There were two portaloos in the back garden, but Shay decided to use the bathroom in the house. It was an excuse to get away from the party, to absent himself. He knew the occasion wasn’t about him, but he was beginning to feel like the hired stripper. It was as if, single-handedly, he had brought the party down. After the embarrassing tears, Fee had ordered music to be put on. Amy, the fashionista niece, had a boyfriend who was deejaying for the night and had made compilations of Brian’s favourites – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Beatles, ABBA. Middle-of-the-road shite, in other words. The volume of the nostalgia blasting from the speakers in the marquee, accompanied by the round of smoked-salmon canapés offered by the fleet-footed waiters (obviously drilled by Fee) distracted attention away from Shay, but nobody much wanted to talk to him, and, for the first time, he wondered what the hell he was doing here. He calculated the time difference with New York. Just now Petra would be making lunch (it was a Saturday) – pierogi and sauerkraut – and planning to Skype her parents. Once a week they ate together over the airwaves, a virtual feast.

  He tried the bathroom door, but it was occupied. As he idled on the top step of the stairs, he worked out in his head when the baby would be born. His baby. September, he reckoned.

  ‘Penny for them?’ Colette stood looking down at him from the bathroom doorway, an amused grin on her face.

  ‘If I tell you, you won’t burst into tears?’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. He was thrilled to see you, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘You’re absolutely gorgeous,’ he said. It was out before he could stop it. Perhaps it was the bubbly and the several glasses of wine he’d had, or Brian’s outburst, or just being so suddenly displaced – home, but at sea. Whatever it was, it just popped out of his mouth. In all the years he’d been with Petra, he’d never said anything emotionally spontaneous. She, on the other hand, was always complimenting him, to soften him up, he suspected. She’d sigh about the colour of his eyes, or the cuteness of his arse, his lean looks, his shoulder-length hair, as if she just couldn’t help herself. But he’d never felt like that about her. About anybody. In that moment, he felt he’d been pretending forever. Not any more. He leaned in towards Colette. She stepped backwards, and he tripped on the top step of the stairs, and the pair of them fell on top of one another on the swirly carpet on Dec’s landing. He looked into her eyes – hazel flecked with amber – and kissed her.

  They staggered back into the bathroom, not even bothering to close the door. Her head was crushed between the bowl and the side of the bath. The shower curtain dripped on his hair. While he unzipped, she unbuttoned the top of her dress and pulled up the skirt of it, wrestling furiously with her knickers; he could hear her kicking off her shoes. The recklessness and the sheer strangeness of her excited him. Not a word was spoken. When Petra and he did love (her phrase) there were sweet encouragements – baby, baby, yes, yes … But Colette was different, silent, intense, pliable. At the moment of climax, he fell, triumphant, on top of her. His head crashed into her face. Th
ere was a sickening crunch, and suddenly he was covered in blood. Her nose was pumping profusely.

  ‘Jaysus,’ she breathed as if it were an endearment, ‘I think you’ve broken my nose.’

  He leapt up and stood over her. Blood seemed to be pouring from her mouth. The top of her turquoise dress was sodden, the maroon stain seeping and creeping across her breasts. She was groaning softly, but he wasn’t sure she was even conscious. What the hell was he going to do? His first instinct was to flee. But he couldn’t do that, could he? He stumbled down the stairs and made for the marquee. As it happened, there was a break in the music. He raised his hands and noticed they were covered in blood.

  ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ he shouted at the top of his lungs into the silence. Only then did he look down at himself to find more of Colette’s blood smeared on his shirt. Brian’s daughter Claire, dressed in a pink jumpsuit and a pair of purple stilettos, came towards him.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ she said in a little girl voice, ‘sort of.’

  Shay had the impression of the party crowd, as of one, moving in behind her, their festive expressions frozen.

  ‘What’s happened, Shay?’ Brian asked, detaching himself from the crowd. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s Colette,’ he managed to get out. ‘Something’s happened to Colette.’

  *

  It was Dec who sprinted forward, pushing Shay out of the way and running into the house, taking the stairs two at a time. Shay followed in dread, not sure what state of disarray he’d left Colette in. Doctor-in-waiting Claire took up the rear.

  Colette was still half-sprawled on the floor, but she’d managed to cover her breasts and pull her underwear up under the dress and was half-sitting up with her back against the bath. There was blood everywhere, great pawmarks (his) on the shower curtain, his smeared footprints on the tiled floor and more pooling in her crushed lap. Could a broken nose produce this much blood? When Colette looked up, she was greenly pallid.

  ‘What the …?’ Dec roared, then turned on Shay. ‘What did you do to her?’

  ‘He found me, Dec,’ Colette said weakly. ‘He just found me, that’s all.’

  Dec knelt down in front of her. Even on his knees he seemed to tower over her.

  ‘I must have fainted,’ Colette said, ‘and cracked my nose on the way down.’

  ‘I can look at it,’ Claire offered half-heartedly, but Dec brushed her out of the way.

  ‘Oh, my poor baby, are you all right?’ he crooned at Colette.

  Colette looked directly at Shay. They shared a moment of congealed shame before Dec swept her up in his arms, blundered out of the bathroom and into the bedroom at the end of the landing, shouting over his shoulder, ‘Someone call 999!’

  That was the end of the party. For a while, the revellers sat around in the marquee amidst the wandering balloons, the tables littered with the remains of birthday cake and the froth-smeared glasses. Then, one by one, they made their excuses and melted away until it was just Brian, Fee and the girls, and Shay. They sat in the kitchen, the only room not contaminated by the incident, and drank coffee.

  ‘Why did you really come home?’ Brian asked as they sat in the gathering dusk. Nobody bothered to turn on the light.

  ‘You know why,’ Shay said. ‘Fee asked me.’

  ‘I know that, but you didn’t come home for Dad, so why now?’

  Shay thought of Petra and blushed in the darkness.

  ‘Didn’t you have a girl over there?’ Fee said. She had met Petra on one of her outlet shopping sprees to New York.

  A girl, a baby, both of them thrown away just to teach Petra a lesson. Shay felt a sudden urge to confess.

  ‘I made a pass at Colette,’ he told the gloaming. ‘I jumped her in the bathroom …’ Once he said it, he wondered if it was true; had she been up for it, or had he forced her? He didn’t even know that much any more. ‘I mean, we collided …’

  ‘What did you say?’ Brian demanded, and stood up. For a minute Shay thought he was going to strike him. ‘You little bastard …’

  ‘Brian!’ Fee said.

  ‘No, Fee,’ Brian said. ‘No, he’s trouble. Always has been. He breaks things. Broke poor Dad’s heart, threw his good education back at him. Never finishes anything. Drops people … too bloody selfish to put his shoulder to the wheel with Dec and myself. All these years we’ve slaved … while he’s had his precious freedom. He’s a bad apple, and that’s all there is to it. Condemned out of his own mouth.’

  Behind him, Shay could see Claire and Amy, agog at their normally placid father losing the plot.

  ‘Calm down, Brian,’ Fee said, making him sit.

  Shay peered at Fee, but he couldn’t see her expression in the shadows.

  ‘The thing is, Shay,’ Fee said evenly, ‘you probably don’t know, but Colette’s pregnant. She’s had a couple of those fainting fits, so, you know, we’re all worried about the baby …’

  Jesus, is that where all the blood came from?

  ‘But this was an accident. You bumped into her, and she fell,’ Fee was persisting, ‘or she came over weak, and you tried to save her … that’s what must have happened. You’ve got confused what with all the panic …’

  He could see how this was going. He couldn’t tell the truth without dropping Colette in it. What had gone on between them, their moment – whatever it was – was going to be papered over.

  ‘You’re right, Fee … I just feel responsible, you know, finding her like that.’

  He could hear Brian exhale. Shay stood up and went to turn the light on. He’d had enough of the half-dark. It was one of those fluorescent bulbs that flickered several times before reaching a buzzing constancy. In the bluish hum he saw Fee staring at him sourly.

  ‘We’ll just have to pray the baby’s all right,’ Fee said.

  ‘And we won’t be telling poor Dec about any of this, do you understand?’ Brian added, including the girls in the warning.

  ‘No,’ Fee said, ‘he doesn’t deserve that. Now, let’s start the clean-up. By the time they get back, it’ll be as if none of this has happened.’

  Yes, Shay thought, yes. He could call a taxi right now, and, before it was even tomorrow, he could be on the next plane home. Then he remembered. He was home.

  Goldfinch in the Snow

  Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

  Dazzlingly, like tropical birds, thousands of reflections floated in the river. Green and yellow and electric blue in the inky water. Flamingo pink. It lifted the heart to see them. ‘Lifted’ isn’t the right word, Darina thought. She knew lots of words; since she’d been in school she’d been making lists of words and phrases and idiomatic expressions and learning them off by heart because that was the path to fluency. Even so, she often couldn’t find the word she needed, for lots of things. But, cheer up, it wasn’t just English words that failed her; there were things she couldn’t find the right word for in her own language, too. The heart leaped up? It jumped, it bounced or maybe what it did was more like what a waterskier does, flying over the waves at high speed with the foam rising around her, like champagne bursting from a bottle, celebrating. Darina had watched them, at Golden Beach, at home, in the harbour below the hotel where she’d worked as a chambermaid. They looked hardly human, the waterskiers. They looked as glamorous and brave and fast as gods. It was hard to believe that some of those superhuman creatures transformed into the holidaymakers whose rooms were left like the wreck of the … what? Spartacus? That was a line from the classroom. Those gods were the very same tourists who swayed around the bars of the town in the small hours of the morning.

  Pissed out of their heads.

  She hadn’t picked that idiom up in school, but from Mark, her boyfriend over here. He was to meet her here, outside Tara Street station. He was to have met her, he should have met her, he ought to have met her, twenty minutes ago. The lights down the river sparkled, pink and green and yellow, and the big wheel down at the Point rotated slowly against the sky, and the city
looked like magic in the snow, but her feet were feeling the cold. Oh, it was a bitter night, the north wind doth blow, and we shall have snow, and what will poor robin do then, poor thing? Again. Mark was always late, that was an Irish thing, Natasha who worked with her in the café said. Being careless about timekeeping. Darina shouldn’t take it personally.

  Her phone vibrated against her thigh. He couldn’t meet her, she should make it to the party on her own and maybe he’d be there.

  Maybe.

  What Mark forgot was that the buses didn’t run after nine o’clock tonight, New Year’s Eve. And Darina had never known that because she didn’t listen to the news. Didn’t even have a radio. Half an hour later, her feet were really frozen. She was wearing her high heels and her black lacy stockings with the spots, she wanted to look good tonight, she’d high hopes. Of a proposal, actually. If she was honest, and she usually was, she wanted to get married to Mark. Getting engaged wasn’t cool, even at home it wasn’t cool. But if they got married, she’d belong here. More. A bit more. Plus she really loved him. She loved him so much that she felt he was her other half; when he was away that time during the summer and hadn’t got in touch for a week, she felt that she hardly existed. The minute he walked through that door at the airport something snapped back together in her, just like a fastener on a duvet snapping into its hole. She was complete again, everything felt just right. That was the sign, the sign that he was the one for her, her soulmate. Like the sole of her shoe, snapped onto it. Barefoot she’d be, without him, her feet frozen, her heart frozen, the whole country of Ireland a frozen meaningless place.

  A taxi.

  Such a waste of money – she earned the minimum wage at the café, and now after Christmas it would be down forty euro a week, Natasha had said, or else they’d be sacked, and there were plenty who’d be glad to take their places. They all knew it, the boss and the government and Natasha and Darina. This one taxi ride would cost what she would lose in wages next week. Or nearly.