“Of course I was.”
He presses in against her. The ease of him. The grace of him. The feel of his touch.
“Oh, God,” she says, remembering the earlier part of the night. “The wine. It’s — I left it in the bloody car.”
“Forget the damn wine. Just kiss me.”
Out of nervousness she dodges him.
“Ellen!” he admonishes. “This is becoming a habit. Is it so terrifying?”
“Sorry, sorry. I’m so sorry,” she apologizes breathlessly. Then she laughs.
He catches her close. “Is this safe? You’re not going to head-butt me again? Put your arms around my neck,” he orders and she complies. “That’s more like it.” He locks her into a grip, his hands tightening about her pelvis, rocking her back and forth.
How do people manage this? It’s weird. She’s all starts and awkwardness, a novice. Nothing has prepared her, she thinks, neither her initial exposure to inept fumbling and strip searches by would-be lovers in dank bed-sits or back seats of cars, nor, certainly, the effects of being mauled by Christy. How could two men be so different? Her hand comes into contact with his hair. She feels the back of his neck, the boniness of his vertebrae. “This is ridiculous,” she murmurs.
“How is it ridiculous?”
“I’m so much older than you.”
“Only in years.”
She laughs. “True.”
“I’m available for any instruction you need.”
“Stop laughing at me.”
He places her hand on his heart. “Feel that,” he says. “It’s hammering away.” He edges her toward the stairs.
“Oh, God! Christ!”
“What?”
“Matt’s in the house.”
“He’s dead to the world.”
“What if he wakes up?”
“He’s not going to wake up. Have courage.”
“You’ve no idea how much courage I need.”
“It’ll come to you.”
“I hope so.”
He laughs. “You’re hardly afraid of me, are you?”
A part of her is alive to the incongruity of what’s happening. “I don’t know about this,” she says, her voice rising in distress. “It isn’t what I planned.”
“Nothing ever is. It’ll be all right. Matt’s almost in a coma.”
This can’t be happening, she thinks, but as from a distance. She clutches him. He brings her upstairs. She’s beyond speech. They fall onto her bed, and it creaks alarmingly. He pulls away, walks across the room, closes and locks the bedroom door.
Through the window she can see the moon, a full moon. Something in her has given way — a trapdoor has opened and she has dropped right through. She lets him undress her and kiss each revealed part. She’s lost in the beauty of his throat, his shoulders, and his chest. His torso, that muscular slenderness, undoes her. It doesn’t seem quite real that she can kiss any part of him. In the mirror she sees the shadows they make. He is responsive to her every move. She feels thrusts from his limbs, hands, and fingers. He repositions himself so quickly that she feels he is everywhere.
“Are you there, Ellen? Are you with me?” he asks, and she’s amazed to hear him say her name.
She hears a cry — for a wild moment she thinks Matt has come into the room — then realizes it came from her.
He lifts his head. “Ellen,” he says. “Ellen?” His voice is molten. His breath scorches her face.
She hears herself say “Yes, now.”
Ten
THIS NEW MATT rustles up tension in pubs, pushing it to the extreme of almost being banned on a few occasions — although clued in enough to hang back or ease off at the last minute, as if he’s gauging how far he can go — and having to be dragged out into the street and driven home. When he accuses Ellen — as he does on several occasions — of being a “conniving, interfering, judgmental cow,” she finds herself full of loathing for this boorish, drunken bastard.
The comments of others she finds hardest to bear. Terry lectures her on family responsibilities. According to her, Matt will “have to be taken in hand and sent away to dry out,” that there can’t be “any more of this carry-on.” In addition, Terry wonders how long his drinking has been “undetected” and “undiagnosed.” Ellen has taken to shopping in James O’Flaherty’s store — nowadays sparsely stocked and gloomy — to avoid Terry.
A visit to Beatrice proves of no avail. “Could you talk to him, Beatrice? He has great regard for you. He’d listen to you,” is met by a sad smile, a shake of the head, and an unnerving silence.
“I don’t know where to turn,” Ellen says in desperation. “He pays no attention to me.”
Beatrice stirs tea. “Do you mind if I say something?” she asks.
“I wish you would. I’m at my wit’s end.”
“I hope you won’t take offense —”
“Why would I take offense?”
“It’s a delicate situation. Often people in trouble don’t want help. It feels like interference to them and they resent it. They most resent the person who gets them out of a jam. Puts them under a compliment.”
“That sounds like nonsense to me.”
“If you harry Matt and persuade him to stop drinking, he could turn on you. You’ll be a reminder to him of the worst times, when he was at his weakest. He’ll associate you with all that and maybe take to avoiding you. Your relationship may never recover.”
Beatrice offers her a scone. Ellen waves the plate away. “That’s crazy. What am I supposed to do? Just let him get on with it?”
“Well, it could be the price you have to pay.”
“Obviously, I don’t want that, but equally I don’t want him the way he is. This is a catch-22 scenario, is it?”
“Damned if you do? Damned if you don’t? Why not hand the problem over to his sons?”
“I haven’t seen Stephen or Colum in weeks.”
“Contact them. Contact Stephen — I know he rings Matt on a regular basis — leave it up to them.”
“But that’s dodgy too, isn’t it? What’ll I say?”
“As little as possible. Then it’s their problem. Take a scone, Ellen. You’re too thin these days.”
Ellen accepts a scone and bites into it. “I don’t fancy having to ring Stephen. I’m not even sure I have his number.”
“They won’t be able to claim they didn’t get fair warning.”
“I don’t want my relationship with Matt to go down the tubes.”
“You can’t control that.”
“God, how is it you know so much, Beatrice?” exclaims Ellen.
Beatrice shakes her head. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s how simple it is to dish out advice. Easiest thing in the world. Acting on it is what’s difficult.”
People think that Matt is out of it, but he’s conscious of what’s going on, aware of it all, not calling the shots anymore, as if he’s an onlooker watching his own performances.
The house is quiet. Now that he may do as he wishes, he’s like a freed bird, flailing and fluttering about, panicked by the opened cage door, unable to take advantage. He has lost the knack of pleasing himself, has forgotten how it feels. The difficulty is coping with each day, trying to find ways to kill time, skid past the maddening crawl of the clock, and defeat torpor.
He wakes up each morning, his swollen tongue furled in his mouth, his teeth covered in a caked layer, his red-rimmed eyes sensitive to light, his skin exuding a noxious nicotine smell, the bedroom fetid and stinking of staleness, decay, and old socks. As likely as not, his head won’t be clear and he’ll have slept through the alarm. He’ll linger on the edge of consciousness — it’s a tossup between dipping back into a doze or resolving to get up — stumble to the bathroom and face that all too familiar reflection in the mirror. When did getting up in the morning become such hard work?
“Flotsam” and “jetsam” — the words drift through his mind — bits of ship’s wreckage. The tide has washed him up on
an isolated little island. Nothing is as expected. Release feels remarkably like loss.
He wipes his face down with a hot flannel. The pores on his skin are enlarged, the lines more pronounced. The whites of his eyes look yellowed. He looks wan, his features a mask, his expression without vigor. Alcohol emphasizes every defect of aging.
He turns on the taps, fills the sink with tepid water, lathers his shaving brush, applies it to his face, catches his razor, wets it, arches his neck, dips his head and shoulders, and shaves. No nips. His hand is steady. He splashes on aftershave, towels the skin dry, rinses out the bowl, and then sets about cleaning his teeth.
The workings of the heart are a mystery. Since Julia’s death he has been staggering about like a person truly bereaved. Why doesn’t he feel what he wants to feel? It’s as if he’s possessed by a demon. The demon speaks through him. He is its thing. He belongs to it.
Even when awake and sober, he dips in and out of consciousness. He’s seldom in the moment, as it were. He doesn’t participate or respond to stimulation. So much of him has closed down. He is of himself — in himself — at this precise moment, but this is no longer the norm for him.
He reviews fragments from recent times — the month’s mind for Julia — Colum, wife and children, Stephen — they all came — stayed over, looked after themselves and looked after him. He barely registered the commemorative Mass or the gathering in Hegarty’s for tea and sandwiches. He was sunken into himself and incommunicado. They tiptoed about and fell away at his approach. He was conscious of their comings and goings, their whispered asides, their tentative words. He loathed their attentions, not least because he felt temporary and inconsequential. He snapped at Stephen because he offered to make him a cup of tea.
As usual, Colum’s children ran a little wild at Sunday lunch in the local hotel, and he took them for a walk between courses. They skipped along beside him, their piping voices full of questions for “Grampa.” A vague memory of the little girl throwing stones into the pond in the hotel grounds, and her elder sister climbing a tree. The boy watchful, restful, his unruly curls, the bottle-end spectacles pressing down on the tiny bridge of his nose. The rest a void.
Stephen dropped him home, but they all trailed back to the house. Faithful attendants, a subdued retinue. He remembers their departure — Stephen first, then Colum, Úna driving — thinks he managed a farewell wave from the door, had to have. Habit. Ingrained.
Ellen has gone to ground recently. As well, really. Just as well. Her anxious eyes and fluttering hands. They haven’t seen much of each other since that time he woke in a strange bed that happened to be in her empty house. He must have been in some state to end up there.
The market-day bus is full of shoppers, bags laden with the day’s purchases. The bus slows — its indicator flashing — and pulls off the dual carriageway onto a secondary road. As it turns the corner, Beatrice spots a dark column of smoke rising from one of the old cottages behind the hedgerows.
“Is that Jim Kilfeather’s place?” asks Dan Tuohy’s widow, Stella.
“I think so.”
“A chimney fire?”
“Probably — can’t tell. The smoke is very dense.” To the side of the cottage can be made out an ambulance, fire brigade, and Garda squad car.
“It wouldn’t kill the driver to slow down so we could get a good look,” Brenda Finnegan says in an aggrieved tone.
The bus driver cranks up the grinding gears as the vehicle gathers speed.
“It’s more than a chimney fire,” Nan Brogan says with a certain amount of relish. “The place looks gutted.”
“God between Jim Kilfeather and all harm,” Stella says. “He never did anyone a bad turn.”
It’s Stella’s first excursion on the bus since Dan’s suicide last August, almost seven months ago. The previous night she rang Beatrice to ask if they could sit together on the journeys to and from town. “I’m not fit to drive the car,” she explained. “I could lose concentration and crash. Still, I can’t keep depending on the goodwill of neighbors. They must be sick of helping me out. I’m going to have to brave the world. However, if I end up sitting beside Brenda or Nan on the bus, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”
“No problem, Stella. Any time you’re going in on the bus, let me know. They’ll never take on the two of us.”
“No, they usually single you out before they hunt you down,” Stella says with grim humor.
Stella has lived at a remove from people in the village since Dan’s death. She keeps her children indoors. They seldom play on the street.
“How are the children?” asks Beatrice.
“Bewildered mostly. I wasn’t much good for anything for the first few months. The school called me up last week to tell me that the little one, Orla, is being bullied.”
“You’re not serious. How?”
“Wicked stuff. Taunts about her father. Jeering her. The works.”
“But that’s terrible.”
“I’ve been talking to the teacher. Supposedly it’s being taken in hand but I have my doubts. Bullies are devious. Could you believe it? Aren’t people cruel?”
“They have to nip that in the bud, Stella. It won’t be allowed to go on.”
“I don’t blame the kids so much as the parents. Whatever the kids come out with is what they overhear at home. I couldn’t repeat some of it, it’s so awful.”
An ambulance, siren whirring, hurtles past on the other side of the road. A collective moan ripples through the bus. Stella makes the sign of the cross. “Please God he’ll be all right.”
“I’d say he knocked over one of those old paraffin heaters or the chimney caught fire. These old bachelors aren’t the best to look after themselves.”
“Or the fire sparked.”
“Something like that.”
Earlier in the day Stella and Beatrice met up for lunch in O’Reagan’s restaurant and delicatessen. “I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time, Beatrice,” Stella said. “Just wondering how you cope. It’s very dark for me now. The only thing keeping me going is the children. The life I had before all this happened didn’t seem to amount to much. But there isn’t anything I wouldn’t give to turn the clock back.”
“We’d all turn back the clock if we could.”
“What do you do to keep going? I feel I could lie down and die sometimes.”
“It’ll be slow but you will find ways and means.”
“Does it ever get easier?”
Beatrice let out a long sigh. “Can’t say it does. It becomes more manageable, that’s about it.”
Stella sank back into her seat. “That’s what I expected, but I was hoping beyond hope that you’d found a secret solution, and that you might let me in on it.”
“Put one foot in front of the other. Keep going. I find doing things helps. There are times when you forget completely.”
“My head is full of it. And I’m so angry, Beatrice. He left us in the lurch. So selfish. If you saw the bills that have to be paid.”
“You have to assume that he wasn’t in his right mind when he died.”
“Well, I can see certain things now. The company were going to let workers go, and Dan was sure he was in for the chop. When I think back, it’s obvious he was paranoid. He thought everyone was out to get him. He had changed. If only I’d my wits about me I might have prevented it.”
“Avoid those thoughts, Stella. Hindsight is treacherous. Don’t trust it. Don’t let it blight your life.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I swing this way and that, but I can’t figure out where I am.”
“One day at a time. You could go for counseling, bereavement counseling. I’m sure it’s on offer.”
Stella was on the verge of tears. “At a price. I suppose you’re right. Take every day as it comes.”
Beatrice patted her hand. “That’s it, I’m afraid. If you want a listening ear, I’m here.”
“Thanks for the chat at lunch,” Stella says on the return
journey that afternoon. She stands up to get off the bus. “I won’t rest till I know if Jim survived the blaze” is the final thing she says. She waves back to Beatrice from the road.
“How’s Stella these days?” Nan calls over.
“As well as can be expected.”
“You’re no good for bits of information, Beatrice.”
“The world’s worst, Nan. The world’s worst.”
The bus slows to stop at the creamery. Beatrice picks up her bag of groceries. “See you next week, Nan,” she calls. Nan scowls.
On her way into the house, Beatrice notices the tractor in one of the lower fields. There’s no sign of Simon. She unpacks the groceries, kicks off her shoes, and stretches out on an armchair.
She wakes to find Simon shaking her. “You were out for the count,” he says.
She sits up and yawns. “Sorry, Simon. I’m tired these days.”
“It’s only March. Take a tonic. You might need a pick-me-up.”
She yawns. “I’ll make a start on the dinner right away.”
“No rush.”
“Town was packed. We saw smoke coming from one of the cottages at the crossroads on our way back.”
“Old Jim Kilfeather’s place.”
“How did you know that? Bush telegraph?”
“One of the lads was driving by, stopped to have a look, and rang me on the mobile. Old Jim knocked over the paraffin stove. Some newspapers caught fire and the whole place went up. He’s in hospital suffering from smoke inhalation.”
“Lucky he wasn’t trapped.”
“Neighbors got him out. It was pure chance they spotted the smoke.”
“I’ll have to get one of these mobiles, Simon, so I’ll always be in the know. Poor Jim. I expect he’ll end up in the county nursing home. Once they land in there, the old lads don’t last long.”
“He’s tougher than he looks, plants his own spuds, digs all the rills himself, and puts down the seed potatoes.”
“That’s finished now.”
“The Feeneys will take him on. He’s a distant cousin of the wife’s, and they’ve always been good to him.”
Civil & Strange Page 18