501

  Then he’s remembering the Boys of Kilmichael, ‘those brave lads so gallant and true, who fought ’neath the green flag of Ireland and conquered the red, white and blue.’

  Then he’s the boy taking down the old Fenians’ gun from above the mantelpiece.

  Then he’s all of these rolled into one, but I’m thinking there’s never been a song for a bomber: a whisky-soaked bomber who’s slept for a long time in the country of the enemy.

  When he comes up to bed I say, ‘When?’

  He says, ‘Soon, Irish. Soon.’ and tonight his head’s hardly touched the pillow before he’s gone. In his dreams he’s a hero of Ireland and they will sing about him when the pipes are lit, and the turf fires are burning, and the stout’s flowing like a stream.

  They’ll sing about him forever.

  A Thursday night practice in December.

  (Even closer to Christmas.)

  Still Irish.

  I don’t really want to practise tonight but I’m not going to get any sense out of Gobshite; he’s pissed before six o’clock and he’s looking for an argument.

  ‘You’ll be back early?’ he says.

  ‘I’ll be back early.’

  ‘I’m not after waiting up half the night for you.’

  ‘As soon as it’s done, I’ll be home.’

  The phone rings then and he takes it to his ear, cowls himself around it. The only words he says are, ‘Yes, yes and yes.’

  The phone goes down and his eyes search out and hold mine. He says, with a clarity that belies his condition, ‘Three months, Irish. It’ll be three months.’

  We have that moment of silence, of depth, of understanding without words. Then I leave him and, as always, I say goodbye to my Davey.

  So I go to my darts, to a normal evening. I take with me the person of the dirty talk, the person that can hide behind the crudeness of language. I take the person that they expect to see. I take the person that has true English friends and a mother who has made a promise to a dead child: a promise that cannot be broken.

  And I pretend that the world is not going to change.

  In the George bar Danny’s improved – perhaps not the right word – on the seasonal decorations. There’s now a Christmas tree in the corner and a ‘Happy Christmas’ lettered above the fireplace. Danny’s sprayed some snow on the windows and a reindeer and sleigh are going nowhere on the sill. He must have brought a mile of tinsel because it’s everywhere. Around the pump handles, around the optics and…

  ‘Jesus, he’s even wrapped it round the bog handle,’ says Scottie Dog, coming out the Ladies.

  Anyway, at the bar Danny’s talking up our chances of winning the league.

  ‘I’ve put some money on you lot,’ he says and Katy whispers that he must have robbed the Blind Box.

  Pegs reckons it’s bad luck to bet on us and Maggie reckons it adds to the pressure. Lena says that she likes a man who spends money on her and Scottie Dog says that fifty pence won’t go far.

  Danny says that he wished he’d kept his trap shut. ‘I was only trying to spur you on.’ He looks a bit crestfallen. ‘Tommy Tailor at the Draper’s Arms was shouting the odds for his team and I told him it was curtains for them. So we had a little bet.’

  I tell him that it’s good he has confidence in us and he tells me I’m the only lady in the team. Then he adds quickly, ‘And Lena, of course.’

  She simpers at that one.

  I know I’m drinking more than I usually do, and I even go out for a fag with Katy. We sit in the chilly winter’s night on a damp bench in the smoking garden and Katy looks at her cigarette and says, ‘I should be giving this up before it gives me up.’ Then she says, ‘What’s with you, starting again?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  But I do know; I’m past caring what happens to me. I’ve got a numbness that’s slowly spreading through my body and I can’t wait for it to touch my brain. My head is seething with images of today, of the past. Of always. I can’t settle, I can’t sit for long, and Katy says, ‘Are you on something, Irish?’

  ‘Only fucking gin and tonic.’

  Then Katy’s phone rings and I dump my dog-end in the sand bucket and go back in to join the practise. I leave Katy to her mobile lover.

  Tonight I can’t hit anything. If I throw for a twenty I’ll hit a one, if I aim for the nineteens I’ll get a three. If I fell in a barrel of cocks I’d come up sucking my thumb. I’m almost glad when it’s time to head for home: time to go back to Gobshite and a house without a soul.

  Almost glad.

  Monday night darts, even closer to Christmas.

  The George versus the Fishwives.

  Maggie.

  This morning, after what passes for breakfast, I tell Ken what’s going to happen today and as I speak he looks at my mouth, my voice, with his blank eyes. I never imagined that I would be doing this to him, but I’m tired, so tired.

  So today me and Kayleigh take Ken to the Cedars, the care-home of disinfectant and stale urine and carpeted passages. Tall square windows frame a soggy lawn that has captured a late scattering of leaves. In the lounge, the ubiquitous babysitter beams an endless stream of images into mindless minds, while Christmas carols trill to the season that doesn’t sit comfortably here.

  Depression is in this place, it sprawls in the armchairs, stares through the glass to an outside world that has ceased to exist, to be understood.

  Ken, who can’t know, seems to know he’s being left. For once he stands stock-still, empty and unsmiling in his new existence; he doesn’t shuffle his feet or moan in his throat; he condemns with his stillness, with his silence. But even now if he could utter one word of protest I would take him back to our house, to my house.

  Kayleigh tries so hard to be enthusiastic.

  ‘Look, Dad, you’ve got your own room, your own television.’

  She tries, really tries, while I’ve got this cold heavy lump in my chest that weighs out my betrayal to him. After all I’ve said, all I’ve promised him, I’m to leave him alone amongst strangers.

  ‘He won’t know, Mum,’ says Kayleigh.

  But still I wait for the miracle, for the flicker of recognition in his eyes. But those eyes are blank; they stare into a world that I can’t be part of.

  Behind those eyes the worms of dementia feed on his reasoning, consume his memories. And slowly but surely, they’re taking his life.

  So I bring him to this place, this haven for the damned that’s filled with ghosts shuffling out their lives, or silently watching nothing from deep armchairs.

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ I say to Kayleigh and Kayleigh says again, ‘He doesn’t know, Mum. It’s for the best.’

  ‘I can’t let him stay here, among these people.’

  And then she starts to cry as well. ‘You must, Mum. You must.’

  I know all the arguments, all the whys and wherefores that have been justified a hundred times.

  So I must.

  Kayleigh drops me at home and I go in and make a cup of tea for one.

  Then I make dinner for one.

  Then I make coffee for one.

  Then I sing an old song to myself, to the empty house, about being alone and being lonely. My voice echoes around this empty house and I’m three lines into the song; three lines before I realise my cheeks are wet and my voice is broken.

  I’m going to darts tonight so I get myself ready, pretty myself up, and all the time I’m talking to Ken, asking him, ‘Do like this top? Do you like my new shoes? I won’t be late back. Wait up for me, won’t you?’

  I pretend it’s ten years ago, five even, and Ken is here and he’s smiling at me. He’s behind me in the mirror as I’m painting my face. He’s slipping his arms around my waist. He’s saying into my ear, ‘You’re as lovely as ever, Maggie.’

  But then it’s four years ago and his words aren’t fitting together properly, but I can just make out, ‘Don’t leave me, Maggie. Don’t leave me alone.’

  His face fills the mirror a
nd his mouth struggles to form his meaning and that fear of what’s happening to him is haunting his eyes.

  I banish that image of him; I pull it down and trample it into the carpet. I replace it with the old Ken, the handsome Ken, the Ken who would turn to me in the night, the Ken who’d laugh at stupid jokes, the Ken who rolled on the floor with a baby Kayleigh.

  My Ken.

  And it’s now, this Monday darts night, and as I close the door, do I hear the words?

  ‘Good luck, Maggie.’

  I stand outside on the step, breathe in the night, listen for a sound from inside my house. I listen for the ghost of Ken; the complete ghost, not a shuffling shadow of what was once. I want a perfect ghost who will always be waiting for me.

  I whisper ‘Goodnight,’ and I know he’ll be there when I come home.

  So I go into the dark street and that weight in my heart is falling away with every step. I’m making a new world, a bearable world for me.

  At the George, at the bar when I walk in, Scottie Dog is giving Danny a bit of grief.

  ‘You can’t say that,’ Danny says.

  ‘I just did,’ says Scottie Dog.

  ‘It’s racist,’ Danny says.

  ‘Fuck off, yer sassenach bastard,’ says Scottie Dog.

  ‘At least I don’t wear a skirt like your fucking men,’ Danny says.

  ‘Not in company, Danny.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You should keep yer curtains drawn, Danny’

  Danny says, ‘If you wanted a peep at the old man, you should have asked.’

  Scottie Dog says, ‘I’d need a magnifying glass to see it.’

  Danny says something about a dustbin lid that I don’t really want to hear so I go to the dartboard where Katy and Pegs are practising on their doubles.

  ‘Maggie,’ says Katy. ‘All right?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘And Ken. How’s Ken?’

  Well, they’ve all got to know sooner or later and it’s a small town we live in.

  ‘He’s in the Cedars,’ I say, and the image of that big old house with sodden lawns is in my mind.

  Katy touches my arm. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie.’

  ‘It’s for the best,’ I say, and those words belong to Kayleigh. They’re her reassurance to me: words of little comfort.

  Pegs says, ‘I’ll get you a drink?’

  I was going to say the usual but then I think that I’ve no one to look after tonight.

  ‘Rum and pep, please, Pegs.’

  And it’s the beginning of many on this first night of unwanted freedom.

  By the time I’m on my second drink all our girls are here and the Fishwives are having a warm-up throw. Irish has started taking the micky already; she’s matching each of the Fishwives to a fish. She nudges me, names them in turn as they aim at the board.

  ‘That one throwing, the one with pop eyes, she’s a cod.’

  A fat one’s a whale. A gangly one, an octopus. Another, a long-nosed dolphin. Another, Irish’s opponent, a pilchard. The last one, with buck-teeth, is a shark.

  Irish is full of it tonight, she’s loud and brash and downing her drinks like there’s no tomorrow. Even through her game there’s an endless stream of description.

  ‘Jesus, that was close.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake.’

  ‘What about that, eh?’

  And then a huge, drawn-out, ‘Yeees,’ when she hits her double out. She collects a gin and tonic from the Pilchard, and toasts her win with a slurping swallow. Then she flops down with me and Scottie Dog and Lena. Pegs is on the chalk and Katy’s playing her game –

  ‘With the whale,’ Irish whispers loudly and Lena snorts into her drink.

  Scottie Dog laughs. ‘They’re not a team, they’re a shoal.’

  It’s a good night and we all win. The food comes out and the Motley Crew appear like magic to dip into chips and sandwiches. Katy says, ‘They can have mine.’

  She looks like she’s still losing weight.

  It’s funny with our gang, our team. We all get on well but we’re not really close; we don’t know that much about each other. I mean, I know that Irish calls her husband ‘Gobshite’. I know that Katy’s left her husband, and that there’ve been a few rumours about Pegs. Then there’s Lena living with her mum’s old boyfriend. But I only really know what they bring to darts. So perhaps we’ve all got reasons for leaving our worries at home, for stepping out of the mundane, for an escape for a few hours of the week.

  Pegs says, ‘You ready for another one?’ She gathers the glasses together and looks at me. ‘Maggie?’

  Now, usually I’m ready to go by half past ten and my habit already has me reaching for my coat. Then I realise. I let my coat fall back on the chair.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I will.’

  It’s warm and cosy in this bar and the six of us sit and talk and laugh. We talk about the darts, about the growing feeling that this could be our year. And then I’m thinking about the other years at the George, other faces in other teams. I’m thinking about a long-ago birthday present from Ken: three expensive tungsten arrows in a leather case.

  ‘Only the best for the best,’ he laughs.

  This birthday was the last for us on our own; Kayleigh arrived soon after, and our family and my happiness were complete.

  So I stay in this warmth and comfort of the George until it’s pushing midnight and I really must be going.

  Irish says, ‘Me too.’

  And then she does the most extraordinary thing; she hugs each of us in turn. It’s not a quick hug; it’s a brief, close embrace. And she doesn’t speak except to say goodnight to each of us. On the way out she even leans across the bar and kisses Danny.

  Scottie Dog says, ‘She must be well pissed, I wouldn’t even want the kiss-of-life off of him.’

  Katy and Lena laugh at this but Pegs is following Irish with her eyes. She’s looks puzzled as though she’s seen something she doesn’t quite understand. Then Irish turns, looks around the bar, turns again and is gone.

  I’m next to leave and Danny says to me, ‘Sorry to hear about Ken, Maggie.’

  He says it with meaning and he adds, ‘If there’s anything you need, Maggie…?’

  Without any thought, any bidding, those words are in my mouth again. ‘It’s for the best, Danny. Where he’s gone. It’s for the best.’

  And if there’s a shudder in those words no one seems to notice.

  So I’m at the end of this day, half-high and half-depressed on alcohol, and I’m walking up the dark street to my lighted doorway.

  ‘Did I leave that light on? I don’t remember. I wonder if Ken…? No. No, I musn’t go there.’

  Inside my house the boiler is humming and the rooms are warm, and I make myself a cup of Ovaltine to take to bed. I prop myself up with pillows, sip my drink and think about this day. Then I think that after all this time there’s a peace here now, like a quiet settlement of a conclusion that was inevitable from the first time Ken forgot our telephone number.

  ‘It’s for the best, Mum. It’s for the best.’

  Now those words are in my head as I drift into sleep. They’re in my head as my dreams take me to the feel of gentle hands on my body, touching, warming, bringing me to a tingling…

  And they’re in my head as I realise the hands are mine.

  Thursday morning at the George.

  Christmas Day.

  It’s half past eight and this morning is a bit on the chilly side, but the sun’s bright and Danny’s having a clear-up outside the pub. He’s carrying a thick, green dustbin liner that flaps in the breeze and he’s picked up discarded fag packets, several small, knotted polythene bags casually dropped from the early dog-walkers (The Bag Swingers; the dirty bastards), a large slippery condom, and a pair of brief, frilly panties. He ponders on these panties for a while, trying to put a name to their owner; then he thinks that perhaps he’s spending too much time on this fantasy, pleasant as it is, so he takes a pew on
the grandly named Smoking Patio. Here there are stubbed soggy cigarettes butts on the table, on the floor: everywhere except in the fucking sand-bucket. Danny gives himself a few more minutes, until the chill of the wooden seat soaks into his arse; then he shakes himself into action, finishes his clearing up in double-quick time. All through this he’s thinking of the day ahead: another Christmas Time at the George.

  Then it’ll be yet another night that’ll finish with him crawling up to bed in the early hours, leaving behind the ghosts of so many Christmases in the bar.

  And talking of the bar, Danny loads up bowls of peanuts, bowls of crisps past their sell-by dates and scatters around a dozen Christmas crackers that he discovered in a box under the stairs. (It’s later when Paddy and Pikey Pete split one open in a drunken tug of war that the message ‘Happy Christmas 1999’ flutters to the floor.

  Paddy says, ‘Jesus Christ, Danny. They’re not even this century.’

  Danny says, ‘There’s no fucking pleasing some people.’)

  The George crowds up; the bar is heaving because every man and his dog has turned in to collect the once-a-year free drink from Danny. He moans that it’s the only time he sees some of the buggers, and he wishes they’d piss off for their Christmas lunch. ‘Lighten up a bit, Mr Scrooge,’ says Irish. Danny mutters that Mr Scrooge had a point. Then Katy asks him what Santa Claus has brought him and Scottie Dog butts in with, ‘Hair restorer wouldn’t have gone amiss.’

  Danny says that she could have done with a steam-iron to smooth out her wrinkles.

  So they’re all here, the Motley Crew, Six of the Best well, four of us anyway and all the usual suspects. Most of them have been here since opening and they’re nearly at the home truth stage. Then the Girls try to organise a game of Shanghai but the bar’s too crowded, too noisy. And Jilted John walks in front of Irish as she throws and nearly has his head pinned to the board.

  She calls him a fucking idjuit and he says if she gives him a Christmas kiss he’ll forgive her. Irish says she’d rather drink puke and Scottie Dog says that’ll taste better than Danny’s beer anyway.