Skin Paper Stone

by Máire T. Robinson

  ‘Fucking love them,’ said Alex. ‘Here, I’ll set the table. Where’s the cutlery in this place?’

  ‘It should be in that cabinet in the dining room,’ called Kavanagh.

  He slopped the beans and sausages onto two plates. The chips weren’t drained so they sat in a puddle of grease on the side of the plate. He carried the plates into the dining room where Alex was sitting, sipping his cocktail.

  ‘Dinner is served.’ Kavanagh unceremoniously plonked the plates on the table.

  Alex looked at the plate of food and started to applaud. ‘Bravo!’

  ‘Tuck in,’ said Kavanagh. ‘My first Christmas dinner as a chef.’

  ‘I think you missed your calling.’ Alex raised his glass. ‘Merry Christmas, man.’

  ‘Merry Christmas.’ Kavanagh clinked his glass. ‘Here, remind me to call my mam after this.’

  ‘Okay,’ mumbled Alex through a mouth full of food. ‘Chips and cocktails. This is the best Christmas ever.’

  ‘Do you think I should give Stevie a ring as well?’

  ‘Ah yeah, why not?’

  ‘She’s probably with her family. I might leave it for a bit. I’m thinking maybe I should have gotten her a present or something.’

  ‘You didn’t give her anything?’

  ‘No. See, she ended up leaving a day earlier than she planned, so …’.

  What he really wanted was to paint her something. He had decided this weeks before, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to start. The more he thought about it, the more the feeling of quiet panic rose up. He could give Alex an old painting he found under his bed, but with Stevie it had to be right.

  ‘You’re nearly out,’ said Alex, pointing at Kavanagh’s glass. ‘Top up?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Kavanagh.

  Alex rose, unsteady on his feet, and lumbered toward the bar. He picked up a bottle of tequila. ‘How about an Evil Dead Three this time?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s much like an Evil Dead Two but eviler.’

  ‘I’ll take two,’ said Kavanagh.

  ‘I’m really happy you’re painting again, Kav. I really am. That painting you gave me is class.’ The alcohol sloshed out of Alex’s glass and onto the table, which was covered in rogue baked beans, as he made effusive hand gestures.

  ‘I’m glad you like it.’ Kavanagh didn’t have the heart to tell him that the painting he had given him wasn’t new work. It seemed such a peculiar and distant object to him now. He felt so removed from it that it was like taking credit for someone else’s work.

  Back when he had painted it, he had been trying something: to render images of Galway City without the chocolate box aesthetic they were usually painted with. He wanted to show the usual picture postcard landmarks in a new light. The boats of the Claddagh, the imposing red sails of a Galway Hooker, the swans, the cathedral, the River Corrib, the Salthill Promenade, Mutton Island Lighthouse, the whole place surrounded by water, the pub fronts – Neachtain’s, Freeney’s, Murphy’s. He wanted to take these familiar images and make them identifiable but somehow different, to show people how he saw the city.

  His plan was to integrate these recognisable images with the other images he associated with Galway, the ones that didn’t make the tourist brochures: the canal overflowing with discarded cans and Supermac’s wrappers, the imposing steel structures of the giant oil tanks on the docks – the cause of so many protests – the midnight pubs spewing drinkers onto the cold night streets as they slammed their shutters and left their ejected guests to fend for themselves. A headless Pádraic Ó Conaire would feature in another of his paintings, that great lost son of Galway who had been honoured with a statue that stood pride of place in Eyre Square until some unknown assailant had taken a notion to decapitate the poor fucker. Another would feature the fourteen family crests of the Tribes, the merchant families who had brought Galway to prosperity and been referred to as ‘the tribes’ in a disparaging way, but took on the name as a badge of honour and displayed it proudly, spin-masters of their day.

  At the time, Kavanagh could see all of these images in his mind, lined up and waiting their turn to come to life. His head was filled with blue swirling ink. He had grand notions of this series. He daydreamed a solo exhibition, newspaper articles, his mother and brother travelling up from Clare to see it, commissions, sales. He used to talk about this series over pints with others who told him about the books they were writing or the plays they would stage or the albums they would record. Then, after a year or so, he was meeting these same people and hearing these same plans about these things that never materialised. Still, he told himself that he wasn’t like them. As time went on he heard about his classmates, fellow art school graduates who had made good. They had moved to London or the States. Some had solo shows or lecturing positions in art departments of universities while he was still sitting in Neachtain’s and talking about all of the things he hadn’t done yet. Years were going by and he still told himself and everyone else that he was working on this series. But he talked about it so much that he talked the desire out of himself. Even though the paintings hadn’t materialised, they felt old. He was bored of them before he had even started. It got to the stage where he was fooling no one, not even himself. So, if anyone asked about his art, he gave a vague wave of his hand and said he was working on ‘this or that’.

  The painting he had given Alex was the only one from the proposed series that he had completed. When he had discovered it under his bed, he realised with a sense of shock that he had painted it two years ago and done little else since. Where had the time gone? He felt ancient.

  ‘Ah, it’s nothing, Alex.’

  ‘It’s not nothing, Kav. You actually have something. You could really do something with it. I wish I had something like that.’

  ‘How about some music?’ said Kavanagh.

  ‘Tunes! Tunes!’ Alex chanted as he banged his glass off the table. ‘We need some tunes. Give us a song, Kav.’

  ‘Nah, nah, less of that. I know there’s a radio in here somewhere. Hang on a sec,’ and he went into the kitchen to find it.

  ‘One more tune! One more tune!’ Alex chanted as he laughed to himself and his head lolled to the side like a rag doll … and something stirred from somewhere within the depths of Kavanagh; he found to his surprise that he was singing ‘Will Ye Go Lassie Go’, the old song pouring out from him and filling the empty restaurant.

  When he finished the room was silent for a good minute. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator.

  Finally Alex broke the silence. ‘Fucking hell, Kav. Where did you pull that one out of?’

  ‘My dad used to sing that. I never really liked it.’

  ‘Wow.’ Alex wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Jesus. I didn’t know you could sing like that.’

  ‘It’s some maudlin’ cunt flap of a song, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, not at all. It was …’.

  Kavanagh coughed hard and cleared his throat. ‘Here, I’ll go find that radio.’

  He pushed back his chair, the sudden movement making a loud squeaking noise in the now silent room.

  Chapter 19

  On Stephen’s Day, Stevie headed into town on the bus. The snow was starting to thaw, but small patches of ice remained, little islands clinging to their fast-dissolving pavement kingdoms. She was meeting Donal and some old friends of theirs from college in The Welcome Inn. Any reservations she had about meeting up with Donal were overshadowed by her desire to get out after being cooped up in the house for the last few days. When Stevie and Donal had been together, The Welcome Inn was their ‘go-to’ pub.

  It was near Trinity College, where they were both studying at the time. Sometimes they would join the crowd in Doyle’s, which was directly opposite the university and always full of students during
the week, but more often than not they would walk the short distance over the Liffey to O’Connell Street and across to The Welcome Inn on Parnell Street, where the crowd was a mix of locals and student types and you could always get a seat, even on a Saturday. It was best to stick to pints because if you ordered a short it was rarely accompanied by anything as extravagant as ice or lemon. So they would be sitting there drinking Guinness on cold nights, and talk would turn to warmer climates where people had tanned legs and sat on patios and ate barbecued food, or cities with bars that never closed and people partied all night without being turfed out onto the cold streets to maraud like the ghosts of Vikings. They talked about moving to another country when they both graduated. They could go to Canada – they both had friends who had moved there – or Australia. But then something or other always stopped them. There were student loans to pay back, or a rental deposit on a flat that they needed to save for. One of them would get a job, or lose a job. Or they would say, we’ll start saving money and we’ll go when we have enough. Or we’ll go when this contract finishes or after this or that friend’s wedding. Or well, at this point sure we may as well wait until after Christmas. And so it went for six years.

  So they contented themselves with talk. They traversed the entire globe together during those nights in The Welcome Inn. Papua New Guinea was at the bottom of their pint glasses. The packet of crisps torn open and left on the table was a passport to everywhere, and when they licked the crumbs from their fingers it was not MSG they tasted but the healing salt of the Dead Sea.

  Stevie opened the door of The Welcome Inn, filled with déjà vu that was tinged with a peculiar feeling of nervousness. Inside it was the same old place, the pub the Celtic Tiger forgot, all flocked wallpaper imprinted with a thousand nights of cigarette smoke – a relic from before the smoking ban – low wooden tables and threadbare carpet. The windows had a stained-glass design in draughty, cracked blotches of yellow, green and red, like some disreputable church. Unlike a lot of other pubs, there were no cosy snugs, no turf fireplaces, just a long hall, a solid rectangular shape so you could see everyone and everything in the place. A tiny television over the bar unobtrusively offered ice-breakers for lone men sitting on barstools to talk about whatever match happened to be on, or the latest economic woe, or this or that gobshite of a politician that was in the news that day.

  She saw Donal and the rest of their friends at one of the tables near the back of the pub. They all stood up to hug her hello and the room was filled with a chorus of long time no sees and great to see yous. Donal gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said.

  ‘You too. How’ve you been?’

  ‘Great, great.’

  His new girlfriend didn’t appear to be with him. He sat back down and she noticed he was wearing his green Fair Isle jumper with the leather patches on the sleeves that she used to jokingly call his substitute teacher jumper. In their old house in Stoneybatter that refused to keep in the heat she had often worn that jumper when she was sitting reading in front of the fire. She pulled up a stool and joined them. They settled into a pattern of rounds, cigarette breaks and anecdotes. There was comfort in this collective recollection, filling in the gaps in each other’s memories, holes in each other’s stories, a repetition of events that gave them a collective mythology. Do you remember the time when …? Do you remember your man who …? The stories became embellished with each retelling. Certain parts were glossed over, others exaggerated or invented entirely until they formed new shapes, which everyone nodded and smiled at and accepted as the originals.

  Throughout the night Stevie could see Donal trying to catch her eye, but there wasn’t a chance for them to talk alone. She started to think that maybe that was for the best. Safety in numbers. Still, some remnant of that old pull was there. He still had those same kind eyes. The way he played with his beer mat or ran his fingers through his hair, all of these gestures were familiar to her. She knew him. He knew her. And yet there was something new here now, a distance. They hadn’t seen each other in months, hadn’t been in touch, had only heard what the other was up to through snippets of conversation, mentions by mutual friends.

  Suddenly she wanted to sit beside him, to tell him everything about Galway and about living on her own and how terribly strange it had felt to wake up in her new flat and not in their little house in Stoneybatter. She was sure that he would laugh when he heard about her crappy car and her research trips to the back-arse of nowhere. And maybe, just maybe, back then if she had said, this isn’t what I want or he had said we can make this work even if you move away then they would still be together now. But neither of them had said anything, the silence was pervasive, and then she was packing all of her things into cardboard boxes and dismantling the life they had made together.

  All of this was running through her head as she sat on the opposite side of the table from him.

  ‘Donal, how was Paris?’ asked George. ‘I’m thinking of heading over there some time next year.’

  Donal stole a glance at Stevie. ‘Yeah, it was great. We enjoyed it a lot.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Stevie pushed back her stool and headed outside for a smoke. She stood shivering on the footpath outside. The freezing air felt welcoming as she lit up, inhaled deeply and tried to get her thoughts in order. Paris. It had become a running joke towards the end of their relationship. When it came up in conversation, Donal always gave her that smile. ‘Well,’ he’d say, and recite the story. This became something they trotted out, this funny anecdote, to polish and shape into a more acceptable thing, to render it comical and gloss over what it meant about her, about him, about them. And it nearly worked.

  ‘It’s like the reverse of Casablanca,’ Donal would say. ‘We always won’t have Paris.’ They laughed at it and wanted to make others laugh at it too. But they knew that it was hollow, a fragile thing that could break and shatter and cut them both to shreds.

  Stevie would inevitably shrug and say, ‘I’m sorry. I just couldn’t do it.’ So she repeatedly had to apologise for her fear and make light of it. Sometimes she used to imagine the scenario if she had stayed on the plane. She could see it clearly, the Paris of films: black and white shots of the Louvre; a lift to the top of the Eiffel Tower; herself and Donal together and in love, arm in arm, roaming the avenues and boulevards. It was a nice film reel, but it hadn’t happened.

  Her sense of foreboding had started on the bus to Dublin Airport and intensified during check-in until she and Donal were sitting in the departures lounge. When they were called to the boarding gate and Donal turned to her and said, ‘Are you right?’ all she could do was nod. She tried to speak, but no words would come out. She was underwater. Strangely removed from herself. She heard the faint noise of an announcement, muffled, distant, barely filtering through. Everything was slowed down. She felt Donal’s arm on her shoulder. ‘That’s us. Got your boarding card?’

  The couple boarding ahead of them had their arms entwined, kissing. They told the girl at the desk that it was their honeymoon.

  ‘Oh, congratulations, you two lovebirds. We’ll have to see about getting you upgraded.’

  Someone walked through the boarding gate and had her passport checked, but it wasn’t Stevie. Someone was greeted by the air hostess as she boarded the plane, but it couldn’t have been Stevie because she couldn’t feel her legs. Some puppet-master was controlling her movements.

  ‘I can’t breathe,’ she said to Donal during the safety announcements. Or at least that’s what she tried to say. What actually came out was just a gulping noise. The fish was now on dry land. Panicked, she fanned her hand in front of her face, trying to breathe in air.

  The air hostess came over. ‘You’re okay. Lean forward for me and take deep breaths. Does she have asthma?’

  ‘No,’ said Donal. ‘No, she doesn’t. Stevie, are you okay?’

  She could
hear the panic in his voice but couldn’t form the words to reassure him.

  ‘Okay, long, slow breaths for me,’ said the air hostess. ‘In through your nose and out through your mouth.’

  And slowly Stevie’s breathing began to return to normal, but she was still gasping and crying.

  ‘I want to get off,’ said Stevie. ‘Please.’

  ‘We can get you off the plane,’ said the air hostess. ‘I’m going to radio them to meet us with a wheelchair. Do you have luggage on board?’

  ‘No,’ said Donal. ‘Just our carry-on bags.’

  When she got off the plane, even when she was on the ground, she wasn’t grounded enough. Her head was swimming with thoughts that this could not be the real ground. It would tear itself open to reveal a chasm. The eternity of time would not be long enough for her to reach the bottom. She would plummet, waiting for the ground to meet her, suspended forever in that fall. Her legs weren’t hers. Her tears weren’t hers. Never again. Never again. She said it aloud. Repeated it like a mantra.

  And so it was that they found themselves in The Welcome Inn that night and not on the Champs Elysée.

  ‘I don’t know what happened,’ said Stevie in a small voice. ‘I’ve flown before and that never happened.’

  ‘I didn’t want to go to Paris anyway,’ said Donal. ‘Sure, we couldn’t miss a night in The Welcome Inn.’

  Weeks before, her friends had been slagging her. ‘So he’s bringing you to Paris to pop the question.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Stevie said. ‘It was my idea to go to Paris. I booked the flights.’

  ‘Not very subtle, Stevie.’

  Her mother had said the same thing, as had the girls in the office. It had irritated her. It was as though they could see no other reason to go to Paris, as if the food, the wine, the art and architecture were all a smokescreen, a pretty sideshow. She laughed it off, but it started to niggle at her. This parasitic thought, an earworm burrowing deeper into her brain, whispering, but what if he does? Jesus, what if he does? What then? That would be it. Forever. They would buy a house, get married, have children. That was the other thing. She hadn’t discussed any of that with Donal. It was so many years ago. The doctor had said something about it at the time, that she may have trouble conceiving as a result of her not eating, due to the strain her body had been under at a time when it was still developing.