Stella came back into the room, handed him a glass of Prosecco. He wasn’t much of a Prosecco drinker. Stella and her sisters always drank Prosecco, Cillian noticed. Probably because there was always something to celebrate: engagements and hen nights and weddings and babies and anniversaries.
Cillian accepted the glass, touched it against hers and they drank. He knew Stella would drink one glass and if she took a second, she wouldn’t finish it. He had seen her on the way to the bottle bank, her empties in one small cardboard box, comprising mostly glass jars that had contained olives and pesto and soya sauce. He knew he would never get up in the middle of the night and find her downstairs, passed out on the couch. He liked knowing that. The certainty of it.
‘You look deep in thought there,’ Stella said when she sat down.
‘Oh, just thinking about work stuff. It’s been a ... funny week.’
‘Funny?’
‘Busy, I mean.’
He told her a little about the case – the bank robbery – and she in turn supplied him with details of the field trip to the castle in Donegal town with her ‘kids’ and Cillian could almost hear the click of things falling back into place, things getting back to normal. It was only natural that Martha should be in his head, with the week that was in it. Him coming across her after all this time.
He felt better after the food. Less ... wrong footed. He’d probably just been hungry, despite the curry he’d eaten in the Star at lunchtime. Hollow legs, Joan used to call him when he was a kid, asking for second helpings and then thirds.
After dinner, Stella rummaged in her handbag, drew out a small square parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with a gingham ribbon. ‘That was the manliest ribbon I could find,’ she said, handing him the parcel. ‘It’s just something small, something to mark the occasion.’
He managed not to say, What occasion? Could almost hear Martha giving him maybe as much as six-and-a-half out of ten for cop-on. Her expression would have been bemused.
Instead, he accepted the parcel. ‘I don’t have anything for you.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. She leaned across the table, put her hand on his shoulder. Her fingernails, always painted, were red tonight. As red as one of Naoise’s fire engines.
‘I know we haven’t seen each other much these past few months,’ she said, ‘but we met exactly a year ago today, would you believe.’
He felt shock. That so much time had passed between them. Inside the wrapping paper, a box containing a pair of silver cufflinks in the shape of fish. ‘They’re lovely,’ said Cillian, who had never worn cufflinks and wasn’t entirely sure how to go about attaching them to a shirt.
‘They’re salmon, the jeweller said,’ Stella told him, leaning towards him.
His phone rang.
‘Sorry, I just have to ...’
‘Go ahead,’ said Stella, straightening. She watched as he fished his phone out of the pocket of his jeans. He looked at the screen.
It was Martha. He walked into the small room off the kitchen, which had been his office before he transferred to Donegal. He closed the door.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘It’s Martha Wilder,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Your name came up on the screen.’
‘Oh. Right.’
A pause then.
‘I got your message just now,’ she said. ‘I had put my phone onto silent at the hospital. I’m just leaving now.’
‘No worries. I was just ringing to see how Tara was?’
‘I don’t think she appreciated my visit.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s gone mental.’
‘Is that the official diagnosis?’
‘The doctor confirmed she’s got that traumatic thingy-majiggy.’
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder?’
‘It sounds so serious when you put it like that.’
‘It’s probably just a short-term thing. It often is. And Tara is made of stern stuff.’
‘I think if I could just slap her in the face a couple of times, she’d snap out of it.’
‘Maybe let the professionals handle it.’
‘Did you catch the baddies yet?’
‘Still working on it.’
The door opened and Stella stood in the doorway. ‘You want some coffee, baby?’
She never called him baby.
He pointed at his phone to indicate – unnecessarily, he felt – that he was still on a call. Stella nodded and left.
Martha said, ‘Sounds like you’re busy there, I’ll let you go,’ and she hung up without any further ado and it felt like a gust of wind had blown through the house, knocked things over.
‘Who was that?’ said Stella. In all the time – a year apparently – that he’d known her, Stella had never asked him who he’d been on the phone to.
Ever.
‘Martha Wilder.’ There was no need to lie.
‘Oh,’ said Stella, pushing at her cuticles with a fingernail in a way that looked painful. ‘I didn’t know you two were still in touch.’
‘We’re not.’ He gave a brief account of Martha and Tara being at the bank and Tara now in hospital. He didn’t mention that he had been in Martha’s apartment. It was already a bit ... awkward. That he had not mentioned Martha when he initially told her about the robbery.
Stella didn’t comment on that. Instead, she looked at her watch. ‘It’s late to be calling,’ she said. ‘Was she drunk?’ Her question was matter-of-fact. Almost rhetorical. She had seen the YouTube footage. Everybody had.
‘I don’t think so.’
Stella opened her mouth then closed it again, as if she had decided against saying whatever it was she had been about to say. Cillian was glad. He didn’t want to talk about Martha. Besides, there was nothing to talk about. He had already thought about her much too much today and now he was anxious to get the day behind him.
After they’d eaten, Stella stood up, removed the fancy dressing gown – a kimono, perhaps: was that what they were called? – with a studied casualness. Cillian scanned the complicated red-and-black all-in-one bodice-type thing but still could not locate any buttons or zips. She took his hand, led him to his bedroom. ‘This is another bit of your anniversary present,’ she said, turning towards him as she reached the edge of the bed.
‘I feel bad, not having anything for you,’ he said.
‘Oh, but you do,’ she said and ran her hand down his T-shirt, unbuttoned his jeans, unzipped them, slid her hand under the waistband of his boxer shorts, took hold of him.
This was an aspect of Stella that he had not quite acclimatised to. It was an unexpected part of her, he felt. He thought it might be because of her job. If you had to guess what Stella did for a living, there was a good chance that you might go for school teacher. There was something school ma’am-ish about the way she held herself. Straight. Unbending. She wore her hair short and dyed it dark brown three times a year. Manageable, she called it. And the way she dressed – an almost prim femininity with emphasis on A-line skirts, court shoes and high-necked blouses. It was like a uniform which, when removed, signalled the end of something. Like the ringing of the school bell to dismiss class.
Stella had waited until maybe the third or fourth time they had sex before she revealed her predilections. She adopted a sort of breathy voice, fluttered her lashes in a way that made Cillian think she might have something in her eye and spoke in heavily accented innuendo. Cillian felt he was playing opposite her in a film except he didn’t have a script. Didn’t know his lines.
He knew he wasn’t what Stella would have called an adventurous lover. He felt she would have preferred one of those. She was fond of props. Blindfolds, fake feathers in dubious colours, massage oils in various fruit flavours – she favoured summer berries — and ribbons to tether wrists and ankles to bedposts or, if no bedposts were available – as none were in his rented house in Mount Charles – she improvised with door han
dles and window catches and the like. The ribbons, as harnesses, were ineffectual but Stella seemed unconcerned with their shortcomings in this regard. Instead, she thrashed about on the bed as if she were swaddled in metal chains and whimpered in a sort of baby voice that Cillian was not to touch her there and under no circumstances should he lick her there and whatever he did, please, please, please, oh no, no, no, don’t kiss her there.
It took Cillian a good while to get used to the drama.
Martha had called him a robust lover.
‘Robust? That doesn’t sound great.’
‘It is what it is,’ she’d said, in her matter-of-fact voice. ‘Now stop talking and take your clothes off.’
In all other areas, Stella was, well, standard, he supposed. Although standard was no way to describe a person. What he meant was she was a normal person. Not that her sexual preferences were abnormal or anything. They just took you by surprise, that was all. Took a bit of getting used to. Besides, they didn’t spent too much time in bed. Between Cillian’s work and Stella’s job and their family commitments, there wasn’t all that much time to indulge the various sexual sagas Stella came up with.
The arrangement suited Cillian down to the ground.
‘Does Stella mind? You being in Dublin for six months?’ Joan had asked when he took her for dinner shortly after his secondment began.
‘Not a bit.’
‘Really?’
‘She’s glad of the free time, to be honest. She’s busy doing the lesson plans for the resource hours she’ll be taking on in September. And then one of her sisters is getting married so she’s—’
‘Another one?’
‘Aye. They’re all at it.’ He’d smiled but Joan did not smile back. Instead, she shook her head. ‘And what about you and Stella? Have you talked about ... the future?’
Cillian shook his head. ‘Stella’s getting over someone,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t want a big deal of a thing. And neither do I. It’s just nice to have a bit of company from time to time. It suits us both.’
Except that, now, here she was. In Dublin, in his home, with her fancy dressing gown and her homemade lasagne and her suitcase that was much too big to be a weekend bag. And no mention of a departure date and her squaring it all away with Niall, without either of them saying a word to him.
Stella – perhaps sensing his confusion in relation to the complicated bodice, and maybe everything else – took off her shoes, her glasses, got into bed and steered him towards a cleverly concealed zip at the front of the thing. She did not produce feathers or ribbons or blindfolds or suggest a narrative involving, for instance, a nurse and a patient and, for a while, everything was grand.
Afterwards, Stella propped herself up on her elbow, traced circles on his chest with the tip of her fingernail. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, then paused, looked at him. Her brown eyes were nearly black with pupil. Outside, Cillian could hear what sounded like the hoot of a barn owl, eerie and still. He was seized with an urge to pull on his jeans, his flip-flops, to go into the garden and see if he could spot it.
Stella nudged him. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes,’ Cillian said. ‘Sorry.’ He tucked his hands behind his head, looked at the tongue and groove ceiling he had spent a weekend putting in last summer. It had been a painstaking job but now, lying here, the wood glowed amber in the lamplight, gave the room a sort of gentleness that Cillian associated with the house that he would soon leave again.
‘Well, just about you coming home to Donegal. Another two weeks and you’ll be back for good.’
Cillian nodded, waited.
‘I’m just ... looking forward to it. That’s all. I’m very ...’ she sat up in bed so he couldn’t see her face anymore ‘ ... fond of you, you know.’
‘I’m fond of you too,’ he said, and it wasn’t a problem, saying it, because it was true. He was fond of Stella.
Stella turned around, took his hand, smiled at him. ‘And when you get back, we can ...’
‘I’ll have to get this case sorted first.’
‘I know. You keep saying.’ There was a shrill edge of impatience in her voice now.
‘Sorry, Stella,’ Cillian said. ‘I just want everything to be clear, you know?’
‘Jesus, Cillian, it’s not like I’m asking you to marry me or anything.’ There was a pause then. A clammy, expectant one, like the pause between the crash of thunder and the flash of lightning.
Then, ‘You should see your face,’ and Stella laughed – hahaha – and nudged him in the ribs with the point of her elbow. Cillian laughed too. He felt tired.
‘All I meant,’ Stella went on, her voice straining now with the kind of patience she reserved for her senior infants, Cillian felt, ‘is that we can do things. Together. Like a proper couple. When you get back. That’s all.’
She waited for him to say something. He fished around, then, ‘Right.’
‘For starters,’ Stella said, ‘you can dance with me at Selene’s wedding. You’ll be the only man there who can dance.’
Cillian laughed. ‘I thought Selene and Eddie were taking salsa lessons. For the first dance malarkey?’
She snorted. ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I should know. God knows, I tried to with Patrick.’ She threw herself back against her pillow with a deep sigh.
‘Are you OK?’ Cillian had taken Stella’s account of her break-up with Patrick – we outgrew each other, it was a mutual decision – at face value.
Stella looked at him, struggled to produce a weak smile. ‘I’m fine ... now.’ A studied emphasis on the now. Then, as though she had given herself a stern talking to, she sat up, rearranged her pillow and settled herself against it. She smiled at him like the last bit of their conversation had never happened. ‘Who taught you to dance, anyway?’
His phone rang again and he made a dive for it. Stella shook her head and sighed, got out of bed, headed for the bathroom. He was glad. He wouldn’t have to say it now. Say her name again. Say that it had been Martha Wilder who had taught him to dance. Two years ago. In the back garden of this house.
He picked up the phone, jabbed at the answer icon.
‘Hello?’
It was the station.
‘Yeah?’
‘We picked up the young lad. Roman Matus.’
‘Where?’
‘Not far from Blessington.’
‘Is he alright?’
‘Well, he’s not the happiest bunny in the hutch but he’s in one piece, just about.’
‘I’m on my way.’
Ten
Who – the fuck – calls a grown man baby. For. Fuck. Sake.
Martha flung her phone towards her handbag on the passenger seat. It missed and landed on the floor. Then it began to ping, letting her know she had a voicemail. She harboured an acute desire to take her foot off the accelerator, use it as a hammer to flatten the phone.
She didn’t bother trying. Only because she knew she couldn’t reach the damned thing.
She gunned the engine and roared out of the hospital car-park.
The day had become night without Martha noticing. She had spent a long time at the hospital, for all the good that had done. She didn’t want to go home. Instead, she drove with no particular destination in mind, rolling cigarettes with one hand which she smoked one after the other. The February night was full of the threat of rain. Martha didn’t mind that. She liked winter, once Christmas was in her wake. Christmas was adept at reminding people like her of all the things they had squandered.
In winter, there was no need to be out and about, doing energetic things like women in tampon ads. In winter, it was perfectly acceptable to pull the blinds down at four o’clock in the afternoon, wrap yourself in pyjamas and slipper socks, drink too much tea, watch too much television. It was expected, almost. Although, in recent months, Martha hadn’t been watching too much television. She had finally admitted to Tara what she’d been doing, when her friend had phoned from L
ondon last week.
‘How are you?’ Tara had asked.
‘Fine,’ Martha said.
‘Can you elaborate?’ Tara was keen on particulars.
‘On a scale of one to ten, ten being grand and one being fairly toxic, I’d say I’m a six.’
‘It’s not like you to be so positive.’
‘Maybe a five-and-a-half.’
‘What are you up to?’ Tara had asked.
‘The usual. The freelancing work is getting steadier now, a few more—’
‘No, I mean right now. What are you doing right now?’
‘I’m talking to you on the phone, you dope.’
‘Just before I rang. What were you doing?’ Sometimes Tara could be pedantic.
‘Well ...’
‘Go on.’
‘I ...’ Martha hesitated again, feeling exposed. This was her first time saying it out loud. ‘I appear to be writing a book.’
‘I thought so,’ said Tara, who loved being right and almost always was.
‘Why did you think so?’
‘You used to talk about writing one.’
‘I was usually pissed.’
Tara didn’t comment on that. Instead, she said, ‘How good is it?’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’
Tara said nothing. She often said that silence was one of the best weapons in a business woman’s arsenal.
‘OK, then. It’s ... I think it’s ... I mean it’s not too ...’
‘Sorry to interrupt but could the next sentence be a complete one? It’s just, I’ve got an incoming call from Tokyo that I need to attend to.’
‘Fine,’ Martha snapped. ‘It’s ... alright.’
‘Alright?’
‘Yes. Alright.’
‘Excellent,’ said Tara, as if Martha had used another word. A better word.
‘What’s it about?’
‘Don’t you need to attend to Tokyo?’
‘Let me worry about that.’
‘It’s about a woman.’ Martha paused there.
‘Go on.’
‘I am going on. Give me a second.’
Tara said nothing.
‘The thing about the woman ... I mean ... she’s a ... well, she’s going through ... that is to say ...’
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