‘This is the 1990s, Anna, you don’t have to live in hope that a man will put a roof over your head. You should have your own independence. May as well have it now, rather than hanging around waiting for me to snuff it.’
I had been living with Hugh at the time, for about six months, and had been seeing him a little over three years. We lived in what he called ‘deepest suburbia’, as if it were a jungle. It was a bungalow, which he hated - picture windows and a utility room, kids screeching on a swing in the garden next door - but which I quite liked. The day after the phone call, when I arrived for my weekly visit to Nonna, she had the kitchen table layered with brochures and property pages, and her face stuck in a notebook that was fast filling up with comments and itemized lists. This has always been my grandmother’s way: impetuous and organized at once.
She had it all figured out: ‘Now. What you want is this - a place near work so there’ll be no more sitting in traffic, you want a bright room where you can do your bit of painting. A studio, yes. You want a location that’s on the way up, so you’ll get value and space for your money - not some pokey hole that thinks it can charge what it likes because it’s in the the right area. Oh, and somewhere big enough to take in a lodger, in case things ever get tight. But not so big as to cost a fortune to run. How much are you paying in rent at the moment?’
‘I’m not actually.’
‘Oh? So does that other fella pay it then?’
‘No. He has the house on loan from a friend who’s living abroad.’
‘He certainly has the knack of landing on his feet. I’ll give him that.’
Nonna had never taken to Hugh. It wasn’t that she had officially barred him from her flat, but I had known after the first time I had brought him, not to bring him again.
‘He’s married, isn’t he?’ she had said the minute he left.
‘Separated,’ I said, ‘but he’ll be getting a divorce soon.’
‘Will he indeed?’
‘He’s English, you see, and—’
‘Yes, I gathered that. Children?’
‘Two.’
‘Oh, now that’s very nice, I must say.’
‘Yes, they’re nice kids.’
‘You’ve met them then?’
‘Yes,’ I had lied.
‘Separated - you say?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Since when?’
‘Oh, ages ago.’
‘Before you met him?’
‘Oh, ages before that,’ I lied again.
Three years on and she had long ago stopped asking questions about Hugh’s family, settling instead for the odd swipe whenever the opportunity presented itself. She still referred to him as ‘that other fella’, but I no longer bothered to correct her; besides I thought if she was serious about buying the flat, the less said about Hugh, the better.
The day we went to look at the flat, Hugh had been using my car, and as Nonna seemed to begrudge him the least little thing, I told her it was in for a service but that I’d be happy to pay for a taxi. She wouldn’t hear of it. The more buses the merrier, as far as she was concerned, to get maximum value out of her bus pass. We bused it to the estate agent’s office. Then we took two buses to her solicitor’s, and another one to her bank. I remember being a little surprised that she was known by name in both places.
Later that afternoon, in a big Georgian house on the rougher side of town, myself and a young estate agent had watched her, an elderly woman of uncertain age, a wiry little dynamo in fact, only slightly bent at the bony shoulders, skitting through rooms, sniffing and poking, pointing out various attributes and faults with her walking stick in a way that made me realize this wasn’t her first inspection. Then she told the estate agent to let down the ladder for me and I was ordered upstairs to take a look at the attic.
‘Do you like it?’ she called up to me.
‘It’s very nice.’
‘Yes, but do you like it enough? That’s the question,’ she said as I came back down.
‘I suppose.’
‘Is the light good?’
‘Lovely.’
‘Ah, for God’s sake, Anna - could you paint up there?’
‘I could certainly try.’
’Brava!‘She nodded and smiled. Then, turning to the estate agent, ‘Now I’m not going to waste time dragging offers back and forward - you’ve told me the asking price, and now I’m giving you my offer - the only offer, mind. Would it be possible to get in touch with the vendors today?’
He looked baffled, even a little put out, as if he’d been robbed of something and couldn’t figure out how - or, for that matter, what.
We stood then, the three of us out on the street looking up to the top of the house where Nonna had decided my new flat would be. Across the way, two winos were sitting on the steps of a derelict house, taking turns to swig on a bottle. A teenage mother, pushing a buggy, screamed at her crying toddler to ‘shut the fuck up’. At the end of the street a few dodgy-looking customers were pinned to the corner.
The estate agent was speaking louder than he’d done when we were indoors, as if he was doing his best to keep our attention on the house, and away from the street itself. I, too, was beginning to have serious doubts about the area. My grandmother only noticed the house.
‘Now you make sure that other fella pays you rent,’ she said, nodding a greeting to the winos as we walked back towards O’Connell Street to catch the last bus of the day. ‘Let him be the lodger - that’s what you do.’
‘I will.’
‘And don’t let him near that studio. That studio is yours. He has his own place to paint - did you tell me?’
‘Yes, he has a studio near the docks.’
‘And who gave him that, I wonder?’
‘It’s a government scheme, Nonna.’
‘Right. This will be a whole new start for you, Anna, see that you make the most of it. And whatever you do, don’t go putting his name on any documents. Do you hear me?’
‘I do.’
‘I’ll have a word with my solicitor, just in case.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘Well, I will anyway.’
We continued down North Great George’s Street; grids or bars on all reachable windows, chains wound round the steering wheels of cars. An empty bottle of Marie Celeste sherry stood by the kerb, a pancake of dried vomit a little further down.
She paused when we got to the end of the street, looked back and with a sweeping gesture, ‘Majestic, I suppose you’d have to call it. Just look at the workmanship. You’d never get that sort of workmanship today.’
‘Do you not think, Nonna, that it might be, you know, a bit on the rough side?’ I asked with a cautious tip of my head towards the middle-aged corner boys who were now staring in our direction.
‘Ah, what’s wrong with you, Anna? They’re only passing the time of day having a chat. No one’s going to murder you. And besides, haven’t you that other fella to protect you?’
The very mention of Hugh warmed me. I knew he, at least, would love this street. He would find it ‘interesting’, ‘edgy’, ‘raw’. He would find in it a source for his art; a place to invite his artistic friends without the shame of respectability. In those days I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my own face, unless it was through Hughie’s eyes.
‘My father used to work near here, you know. Long years ago,’ Nonna said.
‘Did he? I didn’t know that.’
‘Oh yes. The Rotunda Hospital, down there. Some of his patients were from around hereabouts. Salt of the earth, as they say. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. You know, I was reading this article on the future of Dublin and, well, things are on the up, you know. This is the time to buy. Definitely.’
I laughed at her earnest little businesslike face. ‘You’re full of surprises, Nonna,’ I said.
‘No more than yourself,’ she had curtly replied.
*
I must have been dreaming about that first
day with Nonna; my new start. I wake up thinking about it anyway, but before I can indulge in yet another lament for lost things, I become aware of something. Or someone.
I open my eyes and he’s here again. Hugh - in our bed; his back to my back. I can feel his warmth lying in the space between us like a child or a family pet; some live, loved thing anyhow. I can hear him breathe, see the turn of his shoulder from the corner of my eye. I am so overcome with joy I nearly vomit up my own heart.
I talk myself down - after all, no point in getting too excited until I know the terms and conditions. What if it has been a one-off shag, ‘for old time’s sake’? What if he gets up in a few minutes, says how great it’s been seeing me again, returns the keys, laying them gently on the table by the door, wishes me well, then leaves to go back to his wife and kids in London? In that case I will let him go without a scene - of course I will. No crawling or whining, no threatening to tell the wife or smother the children. And absolutely no name-calling. This is what I tell myself. On the other hand, what if he wants to come back to me? Well, he needn’t think I’m going to make it easy for him. Although I doubt I’ll make it that difficult either.
I don’t know what time it is but the rain-grey light of early morning lurks over the bedroom. The state of the place. I’ve really let it go to hell and I wonder if he’ll comment on it and what he’ll say if he does. ‘I always knew you were untidy, baby, but this really exceeds all…’
Baby. He’ll call me baby.
The lamps in the sitting room outside have been left on and through the frame of the opened bedroom door, the flotsam and jetsam of a night that is beginning to creep back up on me. There’s a plateful of fag ends on the arm of the sofa and I notice the curtains haven’t been drawn and that on the far window there is something white and rectanglular stuck onto the pane. A pair of wine bottles on the kitchen counter I recognize as being ‘this week’s special offer’, from an all-night grocery on Dorset Street. On the corner of the coffee table, a silver takeaway carton with a dribble of sauce down its side. And it comes to me now, the Good Garden Chinese and the bland bored face of the owner when he called out my number and I lifted my eye and unstuck my mouth from a clammy drunken snog, before getting up from the leatherette seat to collect and pay for the order.
There are clothes on the sofa, clothes on the floor. I can see from here - my jeans, one of my socks, my knickers. One Doc Marten cherry-red boot. All this happens so quickly; a matter of seconds - from the time my eyes open to the time they land on the boot. I wish they hadn’t, not so soon anyhow. I wish I could have held on to the moment just a bit longer.
I lie listening to the rain needling the windows, or soft shuffling on the rooftops and flat-roofed extensions that deform the rear of these houses, until I can’t put it off any longer. Turning slightly to look over my shoulder, I find the wrong hair on the wrong-shaped head lying behind me; one gold stud earring, a gold chain around the neck, a signet ring on the hand hanging over the quilt. I slide out of bed and wish I could die.
Plucking my clothes from the floor, I trip over myself to get into the bathroom. I don’t even consider wasting time by having a shower, and to go looking for clean clothes - if there are any clean clothes - would mean having to go back into the bedroom, naked, and I’d just as soon go naked out onto the street. I get back into my dirty knickers and jeans still damp from wine spilled all over them, by me or somebody else.
When I’m dressed I go into the sitting room, begin bashing about, then I move behind the counter to get stuck into the kitchen presses and drawers. I’m looking for paracetamol or a bottle of Rescue Remedy, something to ease the pain that is hopscotching inside my head. At the same time I’m looking for a way to wake up whoever it is, in there, in my bed. Just to get it over with, to get him out of my flat, that’s all I can think about now. I hear the bed creak and a voice through a forced yawn calls out, ‘Any chance of a cup of tea out there?’
He is on his side, resting on one elbow. I come to the doorway, arms propped with laundry I have no intention of washing just now, but which I hope lends me a busy, preoccupied air. He flips the bedclothes back, stands, stretches and walks buck-naked across the room. ‘Back in a minute,’ he says, giving his arse a quick dry scratch as he passes. I know him. Christ, I know him.
Shay. Shay something or other. Good-looking, mid-twenties, years younger than me anyway, full of himself from his stupid little fringe to the oxblood-polished toes of his 14-hole Docs. I know that he sometimes works in a pub off Gardiner Street where Hugh used to drink when he wanted peace and quiet, in other words a cure. A run-down dive that nobody goes into, owned by a bachelor publican in a nursing home, one disinterested relative living abroad just waiting for him to croak it. The manager, a piss-head on the fiddle, leaves this Shay in charge when he’s off on one of his benders.
I also know that he’s from the flats where a lot of my students live, which is how I know he has a child - no, make that two children - although he didn’t stay with either girl beyond conception. I can’t remember if he’s the same Shay who has a sister in the nick for drug-dealing. And I can’t believe I’ve been stupid enough to let him into my bed.
What I can remember, now, is dropping into the pub for a drink yesterday afternoon on my way back from visiting Nonna in hospital.
*
Empty house, apart from one old man at the far end of the room sitting under the television shelf. The old man, muffled up to the ears, here and there muttering about the cold. The smell of burning dust from a two-bar electric fire nearby him.
The light in the pub was a dull, watery brown except for one fluorescent tube behind the bar and a trim of unseasonable Christmas lights over a rusted mirror. I sat at the end of the counter, only meaning to stay there as long as it took for my drink to arrive, when I could fold myself into a corner, hide for a while behind my newspaper, wait for the dregs of the day to pass. It’s so much easier to go home when it’s dark. But straight off the barman had started chatting to me, and bit-by-bit I began chatting back. Before long he was giving me drinks on the house and helping himself to whiskey. He had seemed nice. He was funny anyway. He was all right, I suppose. Better than sitting on my own, muttering about the cold.
It grew dark and I was still there. He started making cocktails, dancing and wagging his arse in a rumba up and down the bar. He rolled a joint, the two of us hysterical at my efforts to inhale and hold it down into my chest. The old man began giving out yards, ‘Ah what’s goin’ on down there now what’s going on now, wha’, wha’ wha’?’ Until the barman - now Shay - brought him over a pint and a small one.
‘Right, Mick, that’s a little present for you now, on the house. But keep it to yourself. OK for a piss are you? Sure now? Well, just give us a shout if there’s a change in the weather.’ It was only then that I noticed the old man was in a wheelchair.
An occasional customer had wandered in, always alone, never staying for more than one drink. Single men on the way back from the country looking for something to blur the return to one of the run-down bedsits or seedy B&Bs that seem to lie behind every second door around here. At some stage three girls out on the rip stuck their heads in the door and screeched at the shock of an empty pub. And we listened to their voices roller-coasting up the road, then fading away. It was so quiet after that.
By now the old man had fallen asleep and from a notebook hanging on the wall, Shay called a number and told someone on the other end of the phone that their father was ready for collection.
Shay Foster. His youngest brother is a student in my junior cert class, he had told me.
‘Oh, that’s just fucking great,’ I had said, drunk by then. I was well drunk.
‘I won’t say a word,’ he promised.
‘Actually, he’s not bad, your little brother, quite good, by the way. I should tell you that. Has a bit of talent. He could do something with that.’
‘Like you, do you mean?’ he had asked.
‘Oh Christ
YES - just like fabulous me!’ I had thrown back my head, followed by my arms and had nearly fallen off the stool. He caught me on the way back up, grabbed the back of my head into the palm of his hand and stuck his tongue into my mouth.
‘Not too young for that though - am I?’ he had said, then asked if he could call me ‘Miss’.
*
Now here I am, timid in the doorway of my own bedroom, listening to him pissing like a horse in my bathroom. There’s no sound of a flushing chain or a tap being turned on - it’s a no-frills piss he might take on the side of the road. Not that I can blame him for skipping the formalities - considering the mess that’s in there. He comes back, boyishly jumps into the bed, pulls the pillows around him to form a little grotto, then clasps his hands behind his head.
He’s looking me over. The cross on his chain is winking at me, a bunch of black hair pops out from each oxter, although his chest, bare of hair, has obviously been waxed. I imagine he probably thinks he’s done me a big favour. He may even be deciding if he should do me another one before he gets going. Or then again, he may be thinking of an excuse to cut out now. But I get in there first.
‘Shouldn’t you be going to work?’ I ask him.
‘It’s Monday,’ he says.
‘Don’t barmen work on Mondays?’
‘Not this one. Not this Monday.’
‘Well, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, anyway,’ and he frowns slightly as if he doesn’t quite understand. I spell it out for him. ‘Actually, I’m expecting people. Guests. For lunch. You’ll have to - you know - go.’
‘You wouldn’t be tryin’ to get rid of me now?’ he says. ‘You are - aren’t you? Jaysus, that’s a good one all right.’
I turn back into the sitting room.
A few minutes later he follows me in. He’s buckling his belt and looking around for the rest of his clothes. ‘Would it be all right if I finished getting dressed first or would you prefer me to do it out on the street?’ He’s pretending to be funny, but I can see he’s annoyed. He steps on something, winces, then lifts his bare foot - the stub of a spare rib is stuck to his sole and there’s a deep pink bruise on the carpet. He flicks the spare rib off, finds his socks and boots, then makes a space on the edge of the sofa by pushing anything that’s on it over the cliff and onto the floor. It’s a gesture of contained anger.
Last Train from Liguria (2010) Page 14