by Chris Binchy
Without him a wildness was developing in the group, and no one to keep a lid on it. Sylvester should have taken on the role. He was sober. Oh, how sober he was. How he would have loved right now to whistle down a waiter and get a bottle of vodka and a shot glass. Knock them back. One. Two. Three. Even by then he’d be in improved form, more relaxed, a willing participant in this journey to carnage, one of the boys, loose and easy, ready for the club and the honey-coloured girls who would bend and stretch and spread. But he knew it wouldn’t stop there, that he would keep on going through fun and bravado into bitterness, aggression and mess. He could blow it all. End up anywhere. Better not. Better to stop now, no matter what it cost him.
And what had it cost him? On the plane home two days later he thought of all that he had seen and had to close his eyes. Everything was on the tab and he signed at the end of each evening, in restaurants and bars and strip clubs, handing over his card as quickly as he could before he had time to think. The limo company, first-class train tickets to Bratislava and back again, hotel rooms, bottles of wine ordered and never drunk. Single malts slopped down the back of couches.
How close were they now to the end of it all? How much money was there left in the account? It looked healthy enough. If Helen saw the statements she wouldn’t be worried. But he was. He knew what was going out and what was coming in and the gap between the two. The thousands that had been spent in the past few days on the basis of what? A reasonable prospect? The heads on these guys, who nodded seriously when they heard the presentation of projected figures and growth rates? Yes, they’d seemed keen. And as the days had passed they seemed to have arrived at a point where agreement had been reached. But it was an unspoken promise and what value was there in that?
The man next to him, Gerry Something, damp hair on the back of his neck, jacket folded across his big lap, pointed out of the window with a meaty finger. ‘There’s Lambay,’ he said. ‘Everything stops there. Not a word to the womenfolk, what?’ He laughed uproariously. They had been drinking at lunch, in the airport and on the plane.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Sylvester said.
‘Paddy,’ Gerry called, turning in his seat. ‘Hi, Paddy,’ he shouted. He pointed out the window. ‘Lambay rules. Nothing happened. Understood?’ Roars of laughter from behind them. Sylvester had no idea what he was talking about.
He could sit down with Helen and, in the course of an hour, explain the situation. That it was a solid idea, that he and Marek had given it a very professional go. But unless this crowd came on board, they would need to borrow more within a few months. Did they want to? Was there any point? Weighing it all up, did it make sense?
This was not a conversation he would have. It was better for all of them that she go on not knowing for certain. That they all go on pretending and not asking questions, believing that if you looked the part and acted as though everything was all right, it would be. Because there was a chance, Sylvester thought, that that just might be true. That the key to surviving the tricky parts of life might be nothing more than a willingness to do a good impression of people surviving the tricky parts of life. This could come good for them. These braying half-wits, sweating out overpriced beers and whiskey that Sylvester had paid for, might be his salvation. He would say nothing to her for the moment.
Around him there was a cheer as the plane touched down.
‘We made it,’ Gerry said, with a laugh that turned into a coughing fit. Sylvester smiled and felt a glow of affection for the old dope.
44
In bed with Agnieszka early in the morning of a day off, Victor held her from behind and, in a state somewhere between waking and sleep, he talked. It was his vision for the future and she laughed at what he said, not sure if he was serious or joking.
In the northern suburbs of Bucharest, behind gates in a villa that sparkled, bigger than anything that existed in Dublin, they lived a quiet, comfortable life. White stairs and black marble. Plants and light. Polished floors and space. There was a girl, stuck at the age of two or thereabouts. No difficult early days, no vision of where she had come from. He couldn’t imagine a face but he could get the mood, the feeling of happiness, solidity and respectability. There was Agnieszka spending her days doing whatever she wanted. There were staff to clean and cook for them, to mind the child, to wash clothes and iron. His mother would be there. He would work and come home in the evenings, and at the weekends they would do things with their baby and he and Agnieszka would go to restaurants and clubs. That would be enough for them. He didn’t want to travel the world or to keep on building the business, growing just for the sake of it. Get to this point and that would be enough. They would be happy.
He came to the end and waited for her to say something but she didn’t speak. She was lying very still. He thought she might have drifted off and sat up to check. Her eyes were open. ‘Are you all right?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Agnieszka?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
‘I’m just talking,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean anything.’
‘I know,’ she said, and smiled for a moment, but he could see that she was gone.
Something would always bring her back. Standing in a lift with a guy who looked familiar and then hearing his surname. She knew his cousin well, had hung around with her in the summer after third year, a pretty fox-faced girl who even then was ready to get beyond their town into something bigger. When bigger seemed better rather than just more of the same. This boy standing on the street, looking at her the way all those young fellows used to. Not hostile or horny or unmannerly. Just as if she was something that had to be looked at. As if the act of watching her satisfied something quiet, natural and private within them. It was not something she had ever wanted.
She had come this far with a past she had rewritten and a present that had been going fine but seemed to have taken a wrong turn and was leading her now into a future she didn’t want. Things that should have been simple always became complicated. If that Marcin fellow, slow-moving and smiley, maybe stupid, said the wrong thing to the wrong person, would it make any difference? Did he even know anything? There were things she had to worry about and he was not one of them.
Stay on top of it. She could get this back again. Get the money sent. Get some more together, then go and get Jakub and move with him as far away as possible. Somewhere new that, with him, might be different. Get the money and make the move.
She listened to Victor when he talked about Romania. The house in the suburbs like a palace. His mother knocking around the place. Victor looking after them all. Could she go there with Jakub? Was that something Victor could handle? The vision he had might even be improved with this new consideration. They could all be there together. There could be love and happiness and a normal life, safe and protected and a long way from anything bad. If she thought about it hard enough, put everything else to the side, she could see it for a moment, everything the way it should be. But it was a bubble, beautiful and shining, floating beside her, and at any moment, with a tiny damp noise like a kiss, it would disappear.
45
They drank in a bar down a side-street under a railway bridge. The television was tuned into a news channel, stories quietly ticking away on the bottom of the screen, giving the impression that something was happening. There was a smell of toast. The owner was an old man, drinking tea from a mug and talking about racing with a couple of postmen at the counter. A few people here and there, starting and continuing their drinking, no one stopping. But it was civilized. If it hadn’t been for the angle of the light shafting in through the window, the raw overexposure of the early day, it could have been any pub on any afternoon.
The two of them sat at the bar and the owner came over.
‘Tommy.’
‘Ned.’
‘How’re things?’
‘Not so bad. George was asking for you.’
The man laughed. ‘Is that a fact?’
‘Have you any message for him?’ Tommy asked. ‘Can I
give him some news? Tell him something?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘Ah, Ned. It was months ago. He’s sorry. He’s not drinking the same way now.’
‘A new man, is he? Changed?’
Tommy smiled. ‘Within reason. He’s fucking sick of the other place. State of it. He’s been scared straight.’
‘I can’t do it, Tommy. I’m not going to lose my licence over him. He could kill someone next time.’
‘George isn’t going to kill anyone.’
‘That’s it,’ the man said, his voice hardened suddenly. Marcin looked up. ‘End of story. Now what do you want?’
They ordered.
‘It’s a tight shop,’ Tommy said.
‘A what?’ Marcin asked.
Tommy sighed. ‘Your man. He takes no shit.’
‘What’s he saying about George?’
‘George is a bad drunk.’
‘Bad how?’
‘Messy.’ There was a pause. ‘Here, you’re not going to get me put out of this place, are you? One too many vodkas, you’re not going to start fucking talking?’
‘No,’ Marcin said. ‘I drink quietly.’
‘Good man.’
So they drank in silence.
It was after eleven when they moved on to a rougher place. A hard-core group at the bar nodded at Tommy and stared at Marcin.
‘Who’s this man?’ one of them sitting at the counter asked, drunk. They were all drunk.
‘Fellow I work with.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Poland,’ Marcin said.
‘Polish, is it?’
‘Leave it,’ Tommy said. ‘He’s all right.’
‘I wasn’t talking to you, Tommy.’ He pushed himself up off the bar and looked like he might stand up. The barman walked over. Thinning hair, thick glasses that made his eyes look big.
‘Settle down.’
‘We’ll go upstairs,’ Tommy said. Up into a room with another bar and a pool table. Local guys in T-shirts and tracksuits, smoking dope, drinking cans and playing pool. People coming and going with bags of stuff. Kids mostly. DVDs and iPods and phones. Porn. Cartons of cigarettes. Every minute or two voices would be raised and it sounded like something was going to happen but every time they faded back down into background noise. Bursts of laughter that made Marcin jump. The two of them played together against two young guys, skinny, wiry, hard.
‘You know it’s fifty a game,’ one of them said to Tommy, a couple of shots in.
‘Do you think it’s my first time here?’ Tommy said.
‘It is for your man, I’d say.’
They lost on the black. Marcin gave Tommy twenty-five and they handed it over.
‘Double or nothing, you and me,’ one of the guys said.
‘Em,’ Marcin said, turning to Tommy. But he had gone to the bar, talking to the others who were doing some kind of business at the counter. ‘Okay.’ Is Tommy in on this? Marcin wondered. Is it all a plan to take my money or to beat me or kill me or something? For some reason the fear helped his game. The room went quiet when he got on to the black, and some of them laughed and clapped when the ball went down and he won. He looked at his opponent with no idea of what would happen next. The guy fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a bundle of notes. He peeled off two and dropped them on the table with bravado.
‘All right?’ he said, and he walked away. Marcin went up to Tommy.
‘Nice one,’ Tommy said. ‘Do I get my money back?’ Marcin handed him a fifty.
‘The twenty-five will do.’
‘I have to get out of here now,’ Marcin said.
‘One more,’ Tommy said.
At midday they drank in a normal bar, propped in upright armchairs in a room of carpets and chintz, among tables of office workers eating toasted sandwiches and soup, drinking tea. Marcin knew that he and Tommy weren’t in good shape. The barman stood nearby, watching them.
‘I won fifty quid,’ Marcin said, suddenly feeling a bit better. ‘We should celebrate.’
They finished their drinks and went into a supermarket. They bought vodka and apple juice and got a taxi back to Tommy’s flat in a part of town that Marcin didn’t know. It was bigger than his bedsit but not much. Messier, but not a happy mess. In the living room there was an armchair and a couch, an ironing-board set up in front of the TV. A clothes-horse with rows of black socks hanging like bats. There was a separate bedroom with a single bed and no window. Behind the kitchen counter beside the sink empty vodka bottles and cans were piled up. Cheap vodka. Cheap beer. Cigarette packets and four dirty ashtrays from the hotel. The carpet was murky and the air was stale, the bin beginning to smell in the heat of the sun. Marcin pissed in the toilet without closing the door because the light was gone. There was a packet of disposable razors on the floor of the shower, a bottle of medicated shampoo. The towel he dried his hands on was damp.
When he came out Tommy had turned on the TV and taken down the ironing-board. He rinsed two glasses and sat at the table, filled both glasses with vodka, picked one up, clinked it off the other and downed it in one before Marcin had lifted his. He filled his glass again.
‘Hey, hang on,’ Marcin said. ‘We’re supposed to be celebrating. We should have a toast.’
‘To what?’
‘To my victory. To my hundred euro.’
‘Cheers,’ Tommy said. ‘Have you any of it left?’
‘About ten, fifteen, maybe.’ That seemed funny to him then and he laughed.
There were ugly people on the television sitting in a studio talking in an accent Marcin couldn’t understand. He was maybe falling asleep.
‘Do you know what you should do?’ he said, waking up a bit, but drunker now, forgetting what he had known earlier on. Some time may have passed but Tommy was still in the armchair staring at the TV. ‘You should put up some pictures. Of your kids or something. This place is okay but, you know, it doesn’t feel like you live here.’
Tommy turned and looked at him. ‘Do you think that pictures of my kids would make it any better? Seriously, is that what you think? I’m not staying here. It’s just until I get sorted out. But, you know, with her fucking scourging me…’ He stood up now, agitated. ‘Do you think I like this? What am I supposed to do about it? It wasn’t my fault. It’s not easy. You know what I mean?’
Marcin nodded. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean anything bad.’
‘It’d take more than pictures,’ Tommy said, and sat down again. They went back to watching telly in silence.
When he woke the next time, he was in pain. He saw that it was five o’clock. Tommy was asleep in the chair, his head fallen back and his mouth open. The bottle was empty on the floor beside him. If Marcin got home quickly he might be able to get another couple of hours’ sleep before he had to go back in. He thought about waking Tommy, directing him to his bed, but in the end he just left, pulling the door behind him, out into the sunshine and the warmth of the other end of the day, into the middle of the road to stop a taxi.
46
In a graveyard beside a small church with a view of a valley between two mountains Anne’s mother was buried. The sky was blue and the harsh sun, almost directly above them at eleven o’clock in the morning, made the graves and pathways seem scrubby and neglected. The air was still and hot. The priest had to shout to be heard above the noise of traffic on the motorway, unseen and half a mile away. Dessie stood at the edge of the grave at Anne’s side holding her hand, Yvonne on her other side. Beyond them were an endless number of sisters and brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews and cousins. Old and young. People he didn’t like and who didn’t like him. Relatives he was sure he’d never met but who still took offence when he didn’t know them. There were a few neighbours and five or six women that Anne had worked with before she’d had Yvonne. Saw it in the paper, maybe. There were none of his ex-colleagues or his extended family, but he wouldn’t have expected them. Not so much the type to read obituaries as to feature in the
m.
The prayers went on and on. Call and response. They weren’t short enough to ignore or long enough to get lost in. Across the graveyard, standing at a respectable distance, was Sylvester in a dark suit. Dessie had not seen him since he got back. He seemed to have picked up a tan while in Prague. Helen was beside him, looking at the ground and moving her lips to the Hail Marys. He hadn’t seen her out in the world for a long time. She appeared older than Sylvester, not much but enough for her to know it. She was pretty in a motherly way that put limits on Dessie’s imagination. In general he was glad of this.
When the prayers were finished and Anne was talking to neighbours he walked over to the two of them.
‘Good of you to come, Helen,’ he said, shaking her hand.
She leaned in and kissed his cheek. An expensive kind of smell off her. ‘Of course, Dessie,’ she said. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Dessie,’ Sylvester said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Thanks.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s all right. I think she’d got used to the idea but still, you know… It’s her mother.’
‘Of course.’
They stood in silence for a moment.
‘Good thing I didn’t go in the end,’ Dessie said then.