‘Well, I’m bi-curious on my Facebook profile but no, I don’t think so.’
‘Your heart’s on the other side,’ Martha told him.
Martha and Dan Hennessy had met through work, although Dan didn’t have a job, as such. He was the only child of a famous and reclusive British painter – Daniel Hennessy – equipped with an enormous trust fund and an ability to opine on his father’s body of work to any radio station, television network, newspaper or magazine who asked him, for a fee. TV3, where Martha had managed to secure some – very – menial work in their admin. department after her fairly spectacular fall from RTÉ’s grace, had asked Dan to appear on their late-night arts programme to talk about his father’s latest painting which was entitled The Past, The Present, The Future and was, in the main, a series of lines and blobs and squiggles and smudges. Martha thought it was pants and so, it turned out, did Dan and it was on this common ground that the seed of their relationship dropped.
That the seed took root and produced a riot of ground cover was mostly thanks to a robust and shared interest in what Dan called socialising and Martha called drinking.
Martha had noticed Dan on her way out of TV3 that evening. He was at a vending machine, hitting the side of it with the flat of his hand in a way that had little impact on the wares inside. A can of Coke teetered on the edge of a shelf, behind the glass.
‘You need to be firm with it,’ Martha told him, slipping her foot out of her boot, in a way that Dan confessed – later – made him feel both afraid and aroused.
Martha hauled the machine away from the wall, moved her hands along the back of the machine, selected a spot then hit it – once – with the heel of the boot.
She fished the can out of the mouth of the machine, handed it to Dan with a curt nod, then put her boot back on and moved towards the exit.
‘Wait,’ Dan called.
Martha turned. Scowled. ‘What?’
‘I must take you for a drink.’
‘Why?’
‘To thank you.’
‘No need.’
‘I must take you anyway.’ Dan confessed – later – that his manhood – which is how he referred to his penis – went from half-mast to full steam ahead when he said take you.
‘Why?’
‘Because you are beautiful and I am thirsty.’
Martha was thirsty too.
They got married, two months later, in Las Vegas. Like most of their activities, the wedding was unplanned and executed with scant regard to detail and consequence.
Las Vegas was no place for sobriety. Martha had realised that when she and Dan first arrived. They had taken a wrong turn and ended up in an alleyway towards the back of their massive, glittery hotel. There was nothing glittery about the alleyway where they’d found a man sitting on a kerb, wearing nothing but a pair of Calvin Klein underpants, his arms wrapped around his skinny frame, crying quietly into the hard bone of his knees. He’d lost everything, he told them.
‘Even the shirt off your back?’ Up until that moment, Martha had presumed this was just an expression. A figure of speech.
She got drunk, and stayed that way, pretty quickly after that. Vodka with a dribble of tonic. No messing around. Vodka was a reliable beverage. You could depend on it to blunt the edges in a timely manner.
Their hotel room was bigger than Martha’s apartment.
‘Did they upgrade us?’ Martha wanted to know when they opened the door.
‘What?’ asked Dan who, after a trek to the other side of the room, was rummaging through the mini-bar. He tossed her a baby bottle of vodka and she caught it in her left hand.
Dan looked at her with naked admiration. He loved that she could do things he found difficult. Catching was one of those things. So was swearing. And fixing the leak in his kitchen sink. ‘It just needed a new washer,’ she had said.
‘I don’t know what a washer is,’ Dan confessed.
‘Give me strength,’ Martha said.
The pair had decided on the plane over to set a limit for themselves. An amount in excess of which they would not gamble. They shook on it and ordered mini bottles of Champagne to go with their breakfast because they were on their holidays or because it was their first holiday together or because they were nervous flyers or because ...
Just because.
After the Champagne was finished, they’d ordered orange juices which Dan sweetened with a bottle of duty free gin. They proposed frequent and progressively bizarre toasts.
‘Here’s to the hairdresser who gave me a bob in the March of 1994,’ said Martha. ‘I hope he’s rotting in a Turkish prison.’
‘Is he Turkish?’ enquired Dan.
‘No.’
Martha was at the blackjack table on Day Two when she reached her limit. By then, the vodka had its arms around her and she played on. She lost five hundred dollars in two hours.
Martha and Dan had planned to take a trip to the Grand Canyon. They’d planned to go trekking. See the sun rise across the desert.
Instead, after five days of drinking and gambling and eating potato chips and hotdogs and cookies the size of their faces, interspersed with fitful sleep and vague attempts at sex, Martha and Dan decided it would be a hell of an idea to get married in the little church behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant at four o’clock on a Wednesday morning.
So that’s what they did.
Back in Dublin, at work and relatively sober, Martha attempted some analysis of the situation. She wondered about the authenticity of the marriage. After all, the man who’d married them had been dressed as a minion from Despicable Me for reasons Martha appeared to have deleted from her memory bank.
She did that a lot back then.
Deleted things.
The morning after they’d returned, she had found Dan asleep on her oversized sofa in his usual brightly coloured short-sleeve shirt and linen shorts, the telly blaring and a bottle of whiskey – what was left of it – clutched in his hand.
She supposed it was their sofa now.
She looked up annulment on her computer. She’d have to make an application to the High Court. Or the Circuit Court. One of those. She’d have to get a solicitor. She’d think about it after lunch. She went to Grady’s, ordered a toasted sandwich and threw back a couple of vodkas and tonic. It looked just like a sparkling Ballygowan, which was handy because her colleagues – she was now temping in a small market research company – were getting a bit holier-than-thou about people drinking at lunchtime. They looked at her when they said people.
Fuck them.
By the time she got back from the pub, the vodkas had done their work and she’d forgotten about the annulment and the circuit-court-or-was-it-the-high-court and the getting of a solicitor.
Martha helped Dan move the rest of his stuff into her apartment the following weekend. ‘Do you mind if I hang that in the sitting room?’ he said when she picked up the only artwork he’d brought with him.
Martha looked at the small charcoal drawing. It was the face of a woman. A beautiful woman, her hair long and dark and her face small and pale. In her eyes, a reflection of – Martha moved her face closer to the drawing – snow. A field of snow. At the edge lay a boy in a soldier’s uniform.
‘It’s called I See You,’ said Dan, when Martha looked up.
‘Who’s the artist?’ said Martha, searching the drawing for a signature but finding none there.
Dan shook his head. ‘Nobody knows.’ He grinned at her, then poured generous measures of whiskey into the heavy crystal tumblers he had taken out of a box. ‘We’d better get this down us first,’ he said. ‘Before we ring our parents.’
They drank in a methodical manner, both of them reaching for a refill at the same time.
Afterwards, Martha rang her mother – her father was holed up somewhere writing his memoirs, which he’d been working on for the best part of a decade – and Dan rang his father – his mother had left years before – and they told these people their happy news and held their phon
es at arm’s length during the subsequent reactions. But at least it was official now. Telling people made it official.
Nothing much changed.
If she ever compared Dan to Cillian – which she never did because she tried hard never to think about that lanky fucker – she might have expressed relief that Dan wasn’t judgemental. He never commented if she opened a bottle of wine at lunchtime on a Saturday. And a Sunday. No snide, Is it not a little early in the day? comments, thank you very much. Nor did he so much as glance in her direction when she opened a second one. Or poured vodka into her favourite tumbler when she got in from work. Or say, in a pseudo-caring voice, You OK, Martha? Dan didn’t say anything about the regularity with which she went to the bottle bank. Usually at night because, well, that was the handiest time for her to go, wasn’t it? In fact, he offered to go himself. Without a murmur about the weight of the bag or the clink of the bottles.
Theirs was not a conventional marriage. No tedious furniture shopping – Martha had everything they needed – and no arguments about domestic chores: neither of them did any so there was nothing to argue about. On the days Martha went to work, Dan stayed in bed. When she rang in sick, she stayed in bed too. In the evenings, they talked about whether they would eat out or order in.
Spontaneous. That’s what they were.
They drank until the small hours, then fell asleep.
They never fought.
They still didn’t, despite the separation. Three more years and they’d be eligible for a divorce in Ireland. Or, as Dan put it, they could divorce with love.
‘Nobody divorces with love,’ Martha told him.
‘If you insist that we get divorced, then I insist we do it with love.’
Martha had to admit that Dan did most things with love. He couldn’t help himself.
‘Fine then,’ she snapped.
Still, she had to admit the flowers were cheerful. They brightened the room. As did Dan. Theirs had always been a comfortable bond. More in keeping with old friends than lovers.
‘You don’t think I have an uneasy relationship with alcohol, do you?’ he had asked with genuine surprise when she told him, that day, about the decision she had made to never drink again.
‘Probably.’
‘Gosh.’
Still, he soldiered on, although he never drank in Martha’s company now. She was grateful to him for that, and for the companionship he supplied with his trademark ease.
Martha sighed.
‘What troubles you, my precious petal?’
‘I’m worried about Tara.’
‘Perhaps she might grant me an audience? I could visit her tomorrow.’
‘See if you can weasel contact details for Mathilde from her. I think if Mathilde talks to her, she might come round.’
‘There’s something else. I can tell.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘There is.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘There is.’ Dan could do this for hours.
‘Cillian was here.’
‘Cillian? I thought he had repaired to the wild west. Donegal, wasn’t it?’
Martha nodded. ‘He’s only here temporarily. He’s working on the bank job.’
‘Did he ravish you?’
‘Of course not. He’s with someone else now.’
‘And how do we feel about that?’ Dan asked, picking up one of Martha’s long white hands and stroking it the way he stroked his cats.
‘We don’t feel anything about that,’ said Martha, snatching her hand back. ‘We are merely mentioning it.’
‘I suppose he’s still dashing.’
‘He looks the same.’
‘Dashing then.’ Dan looked at his watch. ‘I have to go. I have to pontificate on a radio panel in an hour.’
Martha felt something like panic catch hold of her. She knew if she asked Dan to stay, he would. She didn’t ask him.
‘You OK?’ He put his hand on her sleeve at the door, tugged it gently.
‘Yes. Of course. I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Such a prickly little soul.’
‘Goodbye, Dan.’
‘Call me if you need me.’
‘I won’t need you,’ she barked at him.
When he left, the apartment seemed flooded with silence. Like a weight. A tsunami of silence. When the water pulls back, before the waves hit.
She stood in the dark of the hall and listened to it, this ominous silence. It was not unfamiliar, the sound, but it had been a while since she had heard it. Felt it.
She had been doing fine.
Now, it felt like someone had pulled aside the boulder of the cave she had been holed up in and she was blinking in the glare of the light.
She had been fine.
She thought about tequila. She had never rated its taste but she had appreciated its efficiency. How effectively it would swipe at the silence, chase it away.
She could drive. She’d be at the Pound in five minutes. Her fingers stopped inches short of the hook her car keys were hanging from. She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, in the dark, in the hall, reaching.
In the end, she played her violin. Pulled it out of its case, ran her hands over the cracks. She played every piece of music she had: Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tschaikowsy, Bartok. When she finished, she played them again, louder.
Her neck, arching towards the instrument, ached. The strings bit into the pads of her fingers. The small of her back begged her to stop, as did her neighbours, banging on the walls.
She played on, into the silence, filling it with sound. It was not as effective as tequila. It took longer. A lot longer. Afterwards, she crawled into bed with her clothes on. She was too tired to feel victorious. She did not feel victorious. Because tomorrow was waiting for her. And the day after that. And all the days after that, in a line, waiting for her.
If Tara were here, she would say, ‘It’s just one bad day.’
It hadn’t even been that bad.
Just that sense of disturbance. Of the earth shifting beneath her feet. Changing. But she had already changed. She had been good. It should be easy now. Easier.
Why wasn’t it easier?
Fifteen
‘Lenny, you’re looking well.’ Cillian walked up the driveway towards Lenny’s house as the man opened his front door. Lenny twisted his head, scowled at Cillian. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘I’m very well, thank you for asking. And how’s your good self?’
‘I’m busy.’ Lenny tried closing the door. Cillian put his hand on it.
‘Busy washing Mrs Mitchell’s windows, by all accounts,’ said Cillian.
Lenny’s hand dropped away from the door. ‘Who?’
‘She’s still in Lanzarote. Spending most of her time in that bar you recommended. Still, she was a bit miffed when I told her about her jeep.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Do you have a warrant?’
‘Do I need one?’
‘No!’
‘Because I can get one within the hour, as you know. Or you can just let me in and we can have a chat.’
‘What about?’
‘Won’t take long.’ Cillian stepped inside, closed the door and strode towards the kitchen. Behind him, he could hear the reluctant tap of Lenny’s shoes against the tiles as he followed.
‘How’s Jimmy these days?’ said Cillian, sitting at the table.
‘Haven’t seen him,’ said Lenny, leaning against the kitchen counter.
‘No?’ Cillian’s eyes swept around the room. ‘Where were you last Wednesday?’
Lenny glared at him. ‘Do I need a fucken solicitor?’
Cillian smiled. ‘A pillar of the community like yourself, Leonard? I hardly think so.’ On the wall behind Lenny’s head, there was a corkboard, cluttered with the usual stuff that corkboards were cluttered with. Bills and takeaway menus, a freebie calendar fr
om the bookies, opening times for the local gym, an old Irish pound note. But in the top left-hand corner, half hidden behind a flyer for a new dry cleaners’, was a charcoal drawing. Of a woman. She reminded him a little of Joan. Perhaps because of her uniform. He was sure it was a nurse’s uniform, albeit one from a different era. The nurse was bent over the body of a man in a field. A soldier. Other than the two of them, the field was empty, edged by bare branches of trees reaching gnarled limbs into a dark grey sky that threatened rain. The grass was long gone, replaced by flattened mud.
Cillian couldn’t help noticing the gentleness of the nurse’s arms around the soldier who, on closer inspection, was only a boy, perhaps seventeen years old. Even the way she touched the boy’s neck, checking for a pulse with the tips of her fingers, was somehow tender. One word, Meeting, was printed in small, neat lettering in a corner of the drawing.
Something about the drawing looked familiar, although Cillian couldn’t put his finger on it.
‘I was here,’ said Lenny, folding his arms across his chest. ‘With my girlfriend, Natasha. All day.’
‘Sweet,’ said Cillian. He took his phone out of his pocket, checked the screen and stood up. ‘Well, it’s been lovely but I should get back to work.’
‘About time you did something useful,’ said Lenny, heading out of the kitchen towards the front door. Cillian followed him, then paused halfway down the hall. ‘My jacket,’ he said.
‘Fuck sake,’ said Lenny, already holding the door open.
Cillian moved back into the kitchen, out of Lenny’s eyeline. He already had the phone on camera and he held it towards the drawing, took a photograph of it, before he grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair and left the kitchen.
‘Next time, I’ll bring Custard Creams to go with our tea,’ said Cillian, stepping outside.
‘I’ll report you for harassment, Larkin. I know me rights.’
‘OK, then, chocolate Hobnobs it is.’
Cillian got into his car. In the rear-view mirror, he could see Lenny watching him, his face devoid of his usual charm offensive.
On the way back to the station, his phone rang and he reached for it. It was Stella. ‘I know I’m not supposed to ring you when you’re at work,’ she said.
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