As he stood smoking by the church railings, a woman walked towards him. She caught his eye, did a double take. Her hair was different, shorter, but he would have recognised those dark eyes anywhere.
‘Lizzie?’ he said.
She looked at him and turned her face to the side, pretending she was looking at him for the first time and figuring out who he was. ‘Oh, Kavanagh. Wow. Long time no see. What are you doing here?’
‘Just visiting the family.’
‘Same as myself. Mam’s looking after Séamie for me. I’ve to go to the chemist.’
‘Séamie’s your son?’ said Kavanagh.
‘Yeah, my young lad. He’s 8 now, would you believe? Making his Communion next year. I heard you’re living in Galway now.’
‘Eh, yeah. Ended up staying there after college, you know.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Right.’
‘So you’re still living here then?’
‘No, out the country a bit. Kevin, that’s my fiancé, he has a bit of land out there.’
‘Great. Well, you’re looking great.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, fiddling with her hair.
‘Well, it was nice to see you …’.
‘Would you have time for a coffee?’ she blurted. ‘A proper catch-up. I don’t have to be back for an hour or two, so …’.
‘Oh,’ said Kavanagh. ‘Yeah, sure. Why not?’
They headed into Reilly’s bar. It was empty apart from the barman, who was watching a hurling match on the small television in the corner of the room. She sat in a seat in the corner, shrugged off her coat and took off her scarf.
‘So, a coffee, is it?’ he said.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Are you having a drink drink?’
‘A pint might be nice.’
‘Okay, in that case I’ll have a glass of white wine. A Shiraz if they have it. It’s a special occasion after all.’
‘Is it?’ said Kavanagh with a laugh.
‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘Two old friends catching up.’ There was a hint of something in the way she said it, a barbed edge, that made Kavanagh feel uneasy. He smiled and backed away, the way you might from a dog you’re not sure is friendly or not.
She smiled at him sweetly. ‘Thanks, Kav,’ and the uneasy feeling retreated.
‘Howya? A pint of Guinness and a white wine,’ he said at the bar.
The barman observed him and then pointed a finger at him. ‘You wouldn’t be Míchael Kavanagh’s son, would you?’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Kavanagh.
‘Ah, you have the look of him. Colum, is it? He used to talk about you.’
‘No, Colum’s my older brother. I’m Joe.’
‘Joe, is it? Good man. I’m Dinny. Dinny Reilly. I knew your father well, the Lord have mercy on him. You have the look of him.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Ah yes, that’s a Kavanagh face all right. He used to sing in here, you know.’
‘Yeah, he was fond of this place all right.’
‘Are you a man for the songs yourself?’
‘Me? Ah no.’
The barman smiled and handed him the drinks and resumed watching the match. Kavanagh placed the drinks on the table.
‘Sláinte,’ said Lizzie, as she knocked back most of it in one gulp. ‘So what has you home? Do you come home often?’
‘Probably not as often as I should. Mam had an operation there, a hysterectomy.’
‘Ah, God love her. My mam had the same thing. Takes a while to get back on your feet after that.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Kavanagh, for want of something to say.
‘Can you?’
‘Well, no. I suppose not.’
She knocked back the rest of her wine. ‘Same again?’
‘Em, sure. One more I suppose.’
She marched up to the bar and came back with two drinks. They continued on, drinking, talking, but avoiding anything relating to what had happened. They shared stories about their friends from back then and what they were up to now, who had headed off to Australia, or America, or the UK.
‘It’s sad,’ said Lizzie, ‘to think of them all away. You’d feel sorry for them.’
Kavanagh laughed. ‘I’m sure they feel sorry for us, still stuck here.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
Kavanagh went out for a cigarette. He was feeling a bit lightheaded. He hadn’t eaten any lunch. It was still very early. He would finish this pint, make his excuses and then leave. When he sat back at the table, Lizzie had a lopsided smile on her face.
‘Thought you’d done a runner.’
‘Course not,’ he laughed. ‘Just having a smoke.’
‘No, you wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you?’
Was it his imagination or was her speech slurred? ‘I probably should be getting back soon though. I only popped out to pick up the paper.’ He pointed at the paper that was thrown across the table, a Guinness stain at its corner. She was looking at him, a smile creeping over her face. There was a look in her eye that was familiar.
‘Joe Kavanagh,’ she said. ‘If it isn’t Joe Kavanagh.’ She looked directly at him: a dare, a challenge, and slapped her hand down on his thigh in a way that could have been considered playful had they been close friends, but given their relative distance seemed to come out of nowhere. He smiled at her, cleared his throat. Her hand was still resting on his leg. She moved closer towards him, looked directly at him: a dare, a challenge.
‘Lizzie, I …’ he said, taking her hand and removing it from his leg.
‘It’s Liz,’ she said. ‘Liz. Nobody calls me Lizzie any more.’ ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise. Liz. Look, it was great catching up but I better be getting back home.’
‘Why don’t I give you a lift?’ she said, suddenly all smiles again as she reached for her coat.
‘Ah no, you’re grand, thanks, Lizzie … I mean, Liz. I have my bike.’
‘A bike,’ she laughed. ‘One for the road then?’
‘No thanks, Liz. It was great to see you though.’ He knocked back the dregs of his pint, put on his coat and picked up the newspaper.
‘Oh, it was great to see you too,’ she spat, her voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘To have a nice cosy chat here like we’re friends.’
Kavanagh stood uncertainly, a sudden urge to run out the door overcoming him.
‘We were never friends,’ she said. ‘You only wanted me for one thing. That’s all you thought I was good for.’
He wanted to say ‘That’s not true’, but he found he couldn’t form the words, couldn’t look at her.
‘Liz, I’m sorry,’ he said eventually. He looked at her as she stood up, her fists clenched. ‘Sure, we were only kids.’
‘Do you know something, you haven’t changed.’ Her eyes flashed with anger. ‘You were a selfish prick then and you’re still a selfish prick now.’ She picked up her glass and threw the remainder of her wine at him. He felt the cold liquid splash his face before he had time to raise his hand. ‘You’d want to grow the fuck up, Joe. I have a child. I’m getting married. I have responsibilities. I don’t have time for the likes of you.’
She wobbled past him, storming out the door. He sat back down on the seat, shell-shocked, the sound of her retreating footsteps on the stone floor reverberating in his head as he took off his wine-splattered coat and wiped his face with the sleeve of his jumper. Dinny Reilly wiped the bar with a cloth and looked at the match on the small TV in the corner. If he had heard the altercation he gave no sign.
‘Same again, Joe?’ he called.
Kavanagh nodded. ‘Thanks, Dinny.’
He thought he heard a kindness in the way Dinny spoke to him, but maybe that was wishful thinking, his need to feel that not
everyone in this town hated him. ‘And one for yourself too, Dinny, if you’ll have one.’
‘Sure, I might have a small one so, Joe,’ said Dinny, pouring himself a whiskey.
‘Grand. Just popping out for a smoke.’
‘Right ya are, I’ll drop it over to you.’
Kavanagh followed the arrow on the handwritten sign on a piece of A4 paper that said ‘Beer Garden’ out to the sunless yard filled with empty beer crates. A plank of wood was held up on two empty kegs, a makeshift bench. He sat down and rolled a cigarette, his hands shaking. He inhaled the tobacco and breathed out long streams of air and smoke. He rolled another one straight after and continued to smoke until finally he could feel his heart rate starting to slow, his hands no longer shaking and returning to normal.
All these years he had told himself that he had done nothing wrong and avoided Lizzie so that he never had to face up to it. As the years flew by he had thought about her less and less. She had almost become a phantom. He had convinced himself that there would be no repercussions, but now he was faced with the horrible truth – she hated him. Grow up, Kavanagh. She wasn’t the first person to say it to him either. Colum had been saying it for years. Simon from the restaurant said the same thing and now Liz. Grow up, Kavanagh. He smoked the rollie down to the quick and headed back into the warmth of the pub. The drone of the match on the telly in the corner and the stout in his glass were pleasant forms of distraction he could sink into: a meditation where his mind could rest easy, safe in the foggy moment of now, free from the troubling thoughts of the past. They quelled the tormenting repetition, that sneering chastisement: Grow up, Kavanagh. It grew quieter and quieter until it was completely silenced.
Chapter 27
‘Are you still milk and one sugar?’ Stevie called from the kitchen.
‘Yup,’ said Donal. ‘A good bit of milk.’
‘Okay.’ Stevie splashed the milk into the cup, seeing the familiar pale-fawn colour appear. They had gone through an unnatural amount of milk in their old house in Stoneybatter thanks to Donal’s milky coffee habit. Stevie seldom drank coffee, preferring tea, but when she did she took it black. She carried the two cups into the sitting room.
‘Nice place you have here,’ said Donal.
‘Yeah, it’s not too bad,’ said Stevie. ‘So, George’s getting married. Wow.’
‘Yeah. I know. The wedding’s in Florence next March.’
‘Nice.’
‘Yeah, I’ve never been to Italy. It should be good.’
‘So, where are you headed later? Are there many of you down for the stag?’
‘We’re going for a meal and then to some pub on Quay Street. They should be arriving soon. They got the eleven o’clock train down, brought a load of cans with them.’
‘Jesus, they’ll be baloobas.’
‘Yeah, it’s gonna be messy. I guess that’s why these things are always in another city. It’s inevitable you’re gonna make a complete show of yourself. Anyway, I bought myself a bit of time with this designated driver carry-on.’
Donal had never been much of a drinker. Even in college when their classmates were drinking like it was going out of fashion, he was happy enough just to have the odd sociable pint.
‘So, this is your stuff I brought down.’ Donal handed her the cardboard box. ‘Sorry, I meant to give you a ring about it before now.’
‘That’s okay. I didn’t even miss anything. I thought I brought everything when I moved out.’ Stevie looked through the items in the cardboard box.
‘It was just a few bits and pieces around the place.’
‘Oh, these. I forgot I had these.’ She pulled out a pair of black sandals she had bought for a summer that had never quite arrived. There was one sunny day that May, and she had gone out and bought the black-studded leather shoes. Although flat they were deceptive in the level of comfort they suggested, and the first and only time she had worn them she got a nasty blister on her heel. The weather had turned and she had left them in the spare room, where she promptly forgot about them and spent most of the summer in black Converses.
‘Maybe not the best weather for them.’
‘Well, I’ve time now to break them in for the summer.’
She pulled out a couple of books from the box. There was her archaeology textbook from her degree, covered in black ink doodles and a dog-eared novel.
‘Confederacy of Dunces. I thought I gave this to you one Christmas?’
‘You did,’ said Donal. ‘That’s your copy.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Stevie. ‘Did you read it?’
‘Never got around to it, but I will.’
‘So … how’s everything going with Amy?’
‘Yeah, good. It’s going good.’
‘I heard you moved in together.’
‘Yeah, we did. I know it seems sudden, but she needed a place to live and I needed someone to move in, so …’.
‘Sure,’ said Stevie. ‘I’m happy for you.’ As she said it, she realised it wasn’t an empty platitude. She genuinely meant it.
Donal smiled at her. ‘Thanks. That means a lot. You seem happier now too. You seem really good.’
‘I am, yeah. It’s nice to be able to talk like this.’
Towards the end of their relationship they were like two ghosts haunting separate rooms, never going to bed at the same time. They had drifted that way and neither of them had made the effort to right it. Unemployment had taken its toll on them: no money coming in, an endless round of job application rejections. Somewhere along the line, they went from lovers to room-mates. Then Donal had got a job and he was up early in the morning. Each night Stevie stayed up late and crept into bed when he was asleep. She slept on her side of the bed and he on his, an invisible line drawn down the centre of the mattress.
After he left for work she sat in the house by herself, trawling through job websites. For no apparent reason, she would find herself crying. Anything could set her off – an ad on TV, a song on the radio. Some days she couldn’t bring herself to leave the house. She knew that if she could get outside and move her limbs it might clear her head, lift her from the fog that had settled around her, but moving from the sofa seemed impossible.
Eventually she started to go for daily walks. She tried the Phoenix Park, but it was too wide and the green vastness of it terrified her somehow. Instead she would walk by the Liffey, down the Quays and into the city centre. She liked the bustle and noise of town where you could be surrounded by people, but still be alone. It was on one of these walks that she found herself in the National Archaeology Museum on Kildare Street. She hadn’t been in the building since the time she visited it on a class trip. It felt like a sacred space to her – the cool air of this marble-pillared hall with its mosaic-tiled floor – and she was suddenly aware of the dirt on her shoes, of her tangled hair, the grime under her nails. She wanted to go home, to shower, to put on some clean clothes. She decided that she would, it was time for a change. As she walked around the exhibition she felt herself filling up with joy. This was more nourishing than any meal. It started to come back to her, her old feeling about history, about exploration, about everything – a kind of unexpected homecoming. Then she saw the sheela-na-gig on the plinth, the one that had sparked her interest all those years ago. It hit her then, a definite thought through the fog: this is what I should be doing. She would study these stone carvings.
Donal placed his cup on the table. ‘Okay, I better get going. I’ve to catch up with these eejits. I’d say I’m about ten pints behind at this stage.’
‘Okay, have a great night. Enjoy Galway. Try not to get arrested.’
‘Thanks, I’ll try. So we’re okay then?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ said Stevie.
‘I’m glad we can be friends. It feels wrong not to be. Sometimes I think of thing
s that I really want to tell you but I can’t ring you up because I don’t know if that would be weird.’
Stevie smiled. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’
‘Okay. Well, let me know when you’re in Dublin the next time. We can meet for coffee.’
Stevie smiled. ‘Okay.’
They hugged and she walked him to the front door. She watched him walk away, already knowing that she wouldn’t be contacting him when she was in Dublin again. That was something people said and didn’t really mean. It was kinder than saying we won’t see each other again and that’s okay with me. Orlaith had been right all along, but this was a good ending. One she could be happy with.
Chapter 28
Kavanagh stood out by the shed smoking a one-skinner joint. He had come outside to refill the turf bucket that lay at his feet. Off in the distance a cow lowed as the breeze whispered through the tall trees behind him. A familiar kind of music. His breath was visible in the cold night air. Above him the stars shone, bright pinpricks of light in an endless blanket of darkness. The only other light visible was from inside the house, seeping out from the edges of the curtains of the sitting room window.
Kavanagh came into the sitting room and set the turf bucket down by the fireplace. He threw another couple of pieces of turf on the fire.
‘Thanks, Joe. That’ll keep us going for a while.’
His mother was watching The Late Late Show, a cup of tea in her hand.
‘I usually have a glass of wine when I’m watching this, but I’m not supposed to with these antibiotics I’m on.’
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