‘Right you are. There’s a little kettle there now if you’d like a cup of tea.’
‘Great.’
‘Breakfast is served from eight until nine tomorrow. Will I put you down for the full Irish?’
‘Oh no, not for me thanks. Just a bit of cereal is fine for me, if it’s going.’
‘Toast?’
‘Oh, no thanks, just …’.
Eggs?
Just the cer…’.
‘I could do you a scrambled egg on toast, or a boiled egg, or a poached egg, or a rasher? Are you a vegetarian, is it?’
‘No, I’m not. I just don’t eat much in the mornings.’
‘Ah, sure you haven’t a pick on ya! Sure I’ll do you the full Irish. It’s included in the price, you know?’
‘Well …’.
‘Sure you know the way, if it’s put in front of you in the morning you might change your mind.’
‘Right.’
‘Night so, love.’
‘Night, Mrs McGarry,’ Stevie said to the retreating curls.
‘Dolores, love. Call me Dolores.’
Maybe I’ll have a bath, Stevie thought, as she brought her washbag into the bathroom. The sink gurgled and choked like a dying man, and a cloying smell of dampness cloaked the air. Maybe not. Brushing her teeth, Stevie saw that her reflection appeared gaunt in the mirror above the sink and the dark circles under her eyes were highlighted by the poor lighting overhead. She headed back into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. As she had suspected, the mattress was soft and offered little support. She ran her hand over the starchy bed cover and grimaced: a severe case of Catholic quilt. The light in the room was cast from a single bulb that gloomed in a pink chintzy ceiling lamp. She tried to find the switch for the bedside lamp and ran her hand around its base to no avail. She checked the top of the stand near the bulb and still couldn’t find it. Then she ran her hand along the flex and finally found the switch. She flicked it on. It sparked for a brief moment and then the bulb died with a popping sound at the exact moment a spider scurried across the wall and disappeared behind a picture of the Sacred Heart. Stevie let out a startled shriek and clamped her hand over her mouth. The garish image of the crucified Jesus looked down at her reproachfully. She could go downstairs and ask Mrs McGarry – Dolores – if she had a spare bulb, but she could hear the strains of the Coronation Street theme music. She didn’t want to deprive the poor woman of her soaps and force her to scuttle around the house on her bad hip looking for a light bulb amongst the cobwebs and religious pictures. She unpacked her pyjamas and her notes, then smoked a furtive joint out the window as she checked her phone. No missed calls or messages. She still hadn’t heard from Kavanagh. He’d said that he’d call when he was leaving her place that evening. He had looked her in the eye and kissed her on the lips and sounded like he meant it. Maybe he had at the time but had changed his mind since.
She closed the window and changed into her pyjamas. She planned to read over her notes in bed, but tiredness came over her like a wave. Wrestling with the sheets that had been tucked in tightly, she turned down the bed before sinking under the covers and drifting off to sleep. She half woke to hear the plaintive sound of a cat looking to be let in. In the dream it was on the windowsill and she had forgotten to close the window after smoking the joint. In the dream she could sense it there, just outside, and she tried to rouse herself from sleep to go and close the window, but she was weighed down by her own heavy limbs, immovable as stone. She knew in the dream that it was too late now and that the creature would come flying in through the curtains and onto the bed, an angry mewling ball of mangy fur, knife-like claws scratching, a cat’s body with the cold stone face of a sheela-na-gig.
Chapter 12
The kitchen of Flanagan’s was filled with a cacophony of voices and clanging pots, the smell of boiling cabbage, and an invisible wall of soggy heat. Kavanagh lugged giant saucepans with encrusted brown-sauced rims into the sink before dousing them with detergent and setting to work on them with the power-sprayer. He loaded and unloaded the industrial-sized dishwasher in a constant dizzying routine of clinking plates, soap and steam. Despite the back-breaking work, it felt good to be using his hand again. He no longer had his arm in a sling, and there was a faint scar where the stitches had been. He was vaguely disappointed that they hadn’t left more of a mark on him. The smell of the kitchen was nauseating, and the various cooking odours were doing his hangover no favours. He had been dying for a cigarette break, but when he took one the tobacco on his empty stomach had made him heave, and he thought for a moment he would vomit. At least, poised over the sink all morning, he was standing in the right spot for it if he did. His feet ached from standing all day. Part of the bonus of working in the restaurant was the free meals they had offered, but the smell was so off-putting he couldn’t imagine taking them up on it. It was unbelievable that people actually came here of their own free will and paid for this food.
The restaurant was a newly-opened tourist trap on Quay Street that served ‘Traditional Irish Fare’ according to the sign over the door, which featured a grinning leprechaun playing a harp surrounded by a border of shamrocks. A giant pot of gristly Irish stew boiled on the hob. Plates of fatty bacon and lacklustre cabbage were served up with a generous splatter of curdled parsley sauce. Microwaved plates of stodgy apple crumble wept beneath mounds of synthetic cream. Simon, the owner, lived out in Barna some place, and according to the staff was never really there except to count the takings at the end of the day. His surname wasn’t even Flanagan. It was Dudley-Tompkinson, but then if he opened a restaurant called Dudley-Tompkinson’s, people would probably have expectations of tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off and Eton mess. Best not to confuse people.
‘Good lad, Joe,’ Simon had wheezed, resting a manicured hand on Kavanagh’s shoulder after he offered him the job. ‘It’s minimum wage to start with, but play your cards right here and we’ll have you moving up the ranks in no time. Six months down the line and you could be managing this place.’
Kavanagh nodded and plastered on a smile to go with his poker face. Six months down the line I’ll be sending you a postcard from Thailand, you fat fucker.
‘Kitchen porter’ was his official title. In the hierarchy of the kitchen, he was on the lowest rung. That didn’t bother him at all. He had always found it strange that people were so defined by their jobs. His father, the teacher; his brother, the accountant. Why couldn’t people just be? As soon as they were telling you their name, they were telling you what they did. He didn’t know where that left him. Was he Joe Kavanagh, the artist? To call himself an artist seemed ridiculous. It was such a loaded word. He didn’t know if it was something you did or something you were. If it was something you stopped doing, was it something you ceased being?
He remembered when he was still a young lad whose balls hadn’t dropped, not yet old enough to be self-conscious or embarrassed by his own earnest pursuits. During the summer holidays he used to head out with his painting set and easel and paint the long grass and the sheep.
‘Do you know what you are, Joe?’ Colum, his older brother, would ask when he arrived home with his paintings from the day. ‘You’re a real kunstmaler.’ He’d put the stress on the first syllable and smile like someone who knew more than Kavanagh. He had started studying German at secondary school, and he knew that Kavanagh had no idea what he was calling him, but could only presume it was something derogatory.
‘You don’t know what that is, do you, Joe?’
‘Yeah, I do,’ Kavanagh would lie. The trick was not to show that he was upset. If he concentrated very hard, he could keep his expression neutral. Then he wouldn’t have won, but he wouldn’t have lost either.
Colum would smirk. ‘What is it then, smart-arse?’
‘Why should I tell you if you already know? Sounds like you don’t know what
it is.’
And Colum would walk off laughing, amused at having tormented his younger brother. Kavanagh had no idea what the word meant. He even thought that it might be something Colum invented. It was only later when he started secondary school himself that he heard the word again in German class. He was surprised, considering the way Colum had spat it at him with such disdain, to find out that it was an innocent word that meant ‘artist’.
Working in the kitchen, he found his thoughts wandering off in all kinds of directions. Something about the dull repetition of tasks made his mind drift back to the past. It would be better if he had someone to chat with. The other lads working there seemed fairly sound but they all spoke to each other in Polish. He was the minority party in the kitchen. So unless they decided to address him in English, he couldn’t really join in their conversation. He could barely hear them anyway over the radio and the general noise. Besides, he was expending most of his energy on trying not to puke, so he wasn’t too bothered.
He found himself thinking about Stevie, replaying their morning together. Her straddling him, her long legs wrapped around him, her blonde hair falling over him as she bent down to kiss him. The softness of her lips. Shit, he should ring her. He hadn’t rang her still and the days were getting away from him. Kavanagh sprayed a saucepan with a water jet. He sighed as a particularly stubborn layer of gelatinous brown liquid refused to give up its embrace of the saucepan’s rim. Think of the money, think of the money, think of the money, he repeated to himself.
Chapter 13
Stevie let herself into her hotel room, dropped her bags and looked out the window. She could see the River Shannon below and Athlone town in the distance. The room hadn’t cost much more than the basic B&Bs she had stayed in on the rest of her trip, but she noticed that there was a flat-screen television on the wall, and the receptionist downstairs had been keen to point out that the bath had a jacuzzi function. The hotel was one of those Celtic Tiger follies, built back in the time when people took weekend breaks to rural idylls just for the hell of it. Now it stood barren and pristine, trying to tempt punters with recession-buster midweek offers and relaxation-spa and golfing deals. The breakfast order form on the desk had already been filled in: one orange juice, one Rice Krispies, one white coffee, one fried egg, white toast. Stevie imagined that she was this person in an alternate universe, a parallel ‘her’ who ordered these things: a person who drove a large car that never broke down and planned foreign holidays, perhaps.
She ran her hand over the bedspread and then sat down on the king-sized bed. The covers felt soft and inviting, the mattress firm and supportive, unlike the cramped bed with the banjaxed springs in the last B&B. The bed was far too large for one person, she thought, as she patted the other side of the made bed. It was an invitation for sex. An invitation she couldn’t accept. She imagined what it would be like if Kavanagh were there with her, but pushed the thought from her mind. He wasn’t going to call, best to forget about it. The blankets and sheets were all tucked in under the mattress in some unnecessarily complicated manner, and there were far too many pillows and little cushions on top. She grabbed them and threw them onto the chair, then turned down the bed.
Downstairs in the bar, Stevie had a bowl of soup as she read over her notes. The place was practically empty apart from an older couple sitting by the window that overlooked the car park. Stevie watched as the woman examined her cutlery, bringing it close to her spectacled eyes and squinting at it before placing the knife and fork back on the table. Then she lifted up her side plate and examined the bottom of it before placing it back down. She leaned forward and touched the flowers in the vase that stood in the middle of the table and said something to her husband, who was staring into the middle-distance. He didn’t reply. She picked up the cutlery and started the whole routine again. Stevie felt a sudden sense of happiness that she was alone, that she no longer had to make small talk. She remembered sitting with Donal in a café just before they broke up and neither of them had a word to say to each other. Had they stayed together, maybe they would have ended up like this couple. Being content in her own company was preferable to feeling lonely in someone else’s. A giant television beamed a soccer match into the room as the lone slack-jawed barman stared at it and the young lounge girl wiped a cloth over and over the same clean countertop.
Back in her room, Stevie flicked on the television but couldn’t concentrate on anything. Her mind was full of the sheela-na-gigs. She loaded the photographs she had taken onto her laptop and scrolled through them one by one: the plaited hair of the Rahara sheela-na-gig; the two sheelas at Scregg Castle in County Roscommon – the tiny one with its legs in an acrobatic pose, and the second figure with the same cow-like ears as another in Kilsarkan, County Kerry, that she had seen a photograph of; the weathered Abbeylara sheela; the strange four-eyed sheela of Taghmon Church in Westmeath; and the sunken, compressed oval figure of Moate Castle with a wide mouth, teeth, and a protruding tongue.
Her mobile phone rang, piercing the silence of the room, and she scrambled to retrieve it from her bag. She saw ‘Kavanagh’ displayed on the screen. She cleared her throat and told herself to sound casual.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey, Stevie. It’s Kav.’
‘Oh, hi. How are ya?’
‘Sorry I haven’t rung sooner.’
‘Oh, that’s okay.’ She hoped her voice didn’t betray the amount of times she had checked and rechecked her phone since she had last seen him.
‘I started a new job and I’ve just been up to my eyes.’
‘Ah, fair enough. That’s great about the job. Where are you working?’
‘In the sudsy bowels of hell. You know that new Irish restaurant on Quay Street? The one with the leprechaun on the sign?’
‘I know the one. I’ve passed it all right.’
‘Just passed it. You’ve never gone in?
‘Can’t say I have. Am I missing much?’
‘A party on a plate, that’s what you’re missing. The best food in Galway. How the place doesn’t have several Michelin stars is beyond me. The toasted ham sangwich is a triumph.’
Stevie laughed. ‘I’ll have to check it out when I’m back so.’
‘Oh, are you away somewhere?’
‘Yeah, I’m doing a bit of research, visiting a few sites.’
‘Ah shite. I finally have a night off. I was seeing if you wanted to meet up for a pint later.’
‘Ah, I would, only I’m in Athlone. I’ll be back tomorrow evening though.’
‘Sound. Sure I’ll give you a ring then. Maybe we could do something?’
‘Sure. Sounds good. Talk to you then.’
Stevie went back to looking at the photographs. Faintly, she could just about hear the sound of a television coming from another room, the ping of a lift, the tiniest wisp of two voices laughing. A hotel room was a strange place to be alone.
Chapter 14
‘So, I’m meeting up with that girl tomorrow.’ Kavanagh passed the joint to Alex.
‘Yeah? That’s deadly, man. Where are ya bringing her?’
‘Just gonna bring her to Neachtain’s for a few pints, I think. She said she likes the place.’
‘Nice one.’
‘Why, do you think I should bring her somewhere else?’
Alex shrugged. ‘Ah … nah, I think Neachtain’s is good. You can always go on somewhere else after.’
‘Should I buy her something?’
‘Yeah, buy her a pint anyway, I suppose, and a kebab from the Charcoal Grill on the way home.’
‘No, like something … I dunno. Flowers or something?’
‘Flowers?’ Alex took a long drag of the joint as he considered this. ‘Yeah, I suppose.’ He exhaled a steady stream of smoke that floated upwards. ‘Flowers. Yeah, sure why not?’
‘B
ut I’m meeting her there and she’d have to carry them around with her all night.’
‘Yeah, that would be a bit shit really when you think about it. They’d probably start to wilt.’
Wild Strawberries was projected onto the wall, and they watched the black and white figures. Kavanagh had seen this one before. This was the bit where the professor guy was at his old cabin in the countryside. Kavanagh found he was tired from the long hours of work, and the joint was making him even more drowsy. He couldn’t muster up the energy to read the subtitles, so he stopped trying to follow any narrative and instead looked at the images, letting them wash over him as though each frame were an individual painting.
‘If you were American now,’ said Alex, ‘you’d bring her on a date, bowling or playing miniature golf or something.’
Kavanagh grimaced. ‘A date? Irish people don’t go on dates, do they? Have you ever gone on a date?’
‘Only to the pub.’
‘Is that a date though? Is going to the pub not just going to the pub?’
‘I dunno. I think it’s going on a date to the pub.’
‘This has all gotten very confusing all of a sudden,’ said Kavanagh, taking a drag from the joint and passing it back to Alex.
‘Ah yeah, the pub is grand I’d say. Sure see how it goes. Maybe next time bring her somewhere special. Here, you should bring her to your restaurant. Wine and dine her. Sure you’d get the staff discount.’
‘Yeah, we could feed each other bacon and cabbage. Pure romantic, Alex.’
‘I don’t know. I’m the wrong person to be giving advice. I haven’t had much luck meeting ladies.’
‘Well, actually leaving the house would be a step in the right direction.’
‘Sure, send them up to me, send them up to me. I’ll leave the door on the latch.’ Alex laughed. ‘If they look like Bibi Andersson all the better.’
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