Four
It doesn’t matter because as sure as the sun will rise up over Cork Harbour and set down over Knocknaheeny tomorrow, this goal is on its way, destiny is here and now, glory glory here it comes, and Ray Clarke does something great, something that you see from the corner of your eye, and you think ‘you fucken good thing, Clarkey’ and Joe O’Connell, the Clare goalkeeper sees it and there’s nothing he can do apart from shout, but Ian Keane, Ray’s marker doesn’t hear him, so when Ray leaves his place and moves out towards the twenty-one into the middle Ian follows him because he doesn’t want his man to score, no he doesn’t want that, and Ray shouts ‘bat it, Darren, bat it’, which was the code for catch it and if he shouted ‘catch it, Darren’ it was code for bat it, and you know the goal is on now but you already knew, and Ian tries to get between you and Ray to get the batted ball, but in doing that he makes the space inside free, which is why Ray did it in the first place, smart Ray, good Ray, sweet Ray, poor Ray who will kill himself, aged forty-two, put a rope around his neck in his garage for his wife, Paula, to find him hanging there, bad Ray breaking his wife’s heart, breaking his kids’ hearts and fucking up their lives, breaking his mother and father’s hearts, but he couldn’t help it, he couldn’t, all that pain, he just wanted it to stop, but now he’s not poor Ray or bad Ray, he’s great Ray, because now Ian has come out, the bullock is only getting up off his arse and you’re gliding into space, into where the ball will land, and Joe O’Connell in the goal fucks up too because he doesn’t come out, he doesn’t come out, he stands there and hedges his bets because if he comes out and you get a hurley to it first you might tap it over his head into an empty goal and then it would be all about Joe and he doesn’t want that, no he doesn’t want that, so he settles on the goal line, small and ineffectual, he settles just like he’ll settle for Trish Quinlan instead of really going after Cathy Dempsey, he wanted her, and he settled for the teaching that he will always hate, when all he ever wanted to do was just to play music on his fiddle and maybe to write some too, why not, he hears tunes in his head, he hears them but he drives them away, like he now drives away the thought that if he comes to meet the ball he might save a goal, so it’s yours alone and you’re drifting in to meet it, and you’re arching backwards, eyes on the ball, it’s nearly here, and now everyone can see, the whole ground, the whole world can see, they can all see, and you’re bracing your knees for the jump, just a small jump and you know that you’ll have to, but that’s okay, that’s fine, so you do, you jump slightly, and reach your long arm out and you lean back and here comes the ball and there you are reaching and millions of eyes are watching and nobody in the world is breathing – everything is moving now to the sound of a different heartbeat, slow and steady, every single thing, as the ball drops like it’s coming home, it’s home, home forever, sweetly, oh so sweetly home.
Five
The ball sticks to your hand, but only for an instant because in one movement you’re landing, you’re moving forward, you’re gently tossing the ball up, easily, languorously, you’re just tossing the ball up, and now all the Cork people are rising off their seats and the Clare people are wincing because everybody knows now, and you’re twisting your torso, swinging the hurley back to your left, shortening it slightly in case there’ll be a hook but there won’t be a hook, and the ball is in the air waiting, just waiting there for time to do its thing and time does its thing and slows itself down to take a good look, so that everyone watching can be in this moment forever, to savour the pain and the pleasure always, and time says okay that’s enough and the hurley is at the end of its back-swing and now you’re powering it forward, adjusting your feet, bracing your knees, winding up your hips for the hit, and the goalie is tiny, and the ash meets the leather and the ball is flattened where the wood hammers it, and the ball is being driven forward and it’s it’s it’s it’s a long high clearance from Jack Cashman into the Cork full-forward line, only three minutes left in this All-Ireland final, and Darren O’Sullivan is rising, and Sullivan catches and Sullivan strikes and it’s a goal, it’s a goal, it’s a goal for Cork and Darren O’Sullivan, and surely now the Liam MacCarthy Cup is heading to Leeside, with Darren O’Sullivan’s second goal here today in Páirc an Chrócaigh and his ninth in this year’s Hurling Championship, and the ball powers into the net and it billows whitely, ball and net, net and ball, and you’re turning away, grinning, your arms stretched wide to milk the acclaim of the Cork fans in the Davin Stand for this goal, this goal, this, and you’ll think about this goal too many years from now, when your granddaughter, Lee, the first of your three grandchildren, bless them, Mia’s eldest girl (Sonny won’t have kids), when Lee runs up to you all excited after she finds the little tattered box in one of your drawers in the beach house, where your medal had lain forgotten all this time, to ask you about it, and you sit her up on your lap and show her the video on YouTube, the old video of all your nine goals still there after all this time, and she says: ‘Is that you with the stick, Ganda?’ and you say, ‘Yes, honey’, and you make a brooch of your medal and give it to Mia, ‘You’re half Cork you know’, and she’ll wear it at your funeral and people will ask what that word is, and she’ll say ‘it’s Éire, it means Ireland, it was Pop’s, he won it, and that’s a harp in the middle, the symbol of Ireland’, and she’ll wear it again a couple of weeks later when Kim spreads your ashes into the sea, near where you liked to be, towards the end, weak from chemo, walking barefoot by the tide, hand-in-hand with little Lee, who likes to look for shells, and where you like to look out over the water, imagining home, thinking about your childhood, the only child of an unhappy marriage, your father coming and going between shouting matches, growing up tough, not caring, finding freedom in hurling, an escape, finding the game come easy to you, liking the limelight, then loving it, loving the sound in your ears after that goal, that sound, you can still hear that sound, can’t you, after all the years, as you wheeled away, arms spread wide, Ray running up to hug you, yes, as you walk the sandy beach hand-in-hand with your perfect little granddaughter, you think about those five seconds, your five seconds,
waiting for that eternal sliotar,
falling,
falling pliantly
into your upstretched open palm,
falling joyfully,
forever falling from out of a clear blue
September sky.
Áine Laughs
On the way up to Dublin in the car, as she listened to one Joni Mitchell song after another, Áine could no longer deny the sour realisation: that hurling had been her thing and never really Suzie’s at all. Perhaps she’d always known, but wanted to ignore it. Like when you get that first tingling of a cold sore and you know it’s coming, but you still want to pretend it’s a false alarm. Until, that is, it blisters and swells and cracks the skin, breaking open into an ugly crusting scab on your lip for all the world to see.
Baptiste is as stiff and correct as ever as she checks in to The Clarence. She looks around the small lobby, with its wooden panels and deep carpet and those big old doors. So much the same, so different now.
‘Hello, Ms O’Keefe. Áine. Very nice to see you again. Up for the match?’ he says, noticing the Cork jersey she is wearing. He pronounces it ‘ze match’. She had warned him several times to use her first name but it doesn’t sit well with his rigorous formality.
‘I am indeed, Baptiste, I’m a martyr for it, as we say.’ She signs the form, trying to mask the shake in her fingers.
‘Your key cards,’ he says. ‘Room 301, as requested.’
Áine takes one card out of the sleeve and places it on the desk.
‘One will do,’ she says, meeting his eye. He nods his head to one side and that’s as much as she gets. What a handsome man, though.
They’d met him one night in the Front Lounge, and he immersed in a stunning-looking, six-foot-something Viking with a reddish-blond beard. Deep powder-blue eyes. So he’d have no interest, anyway, even if she did, which sh
e doesn’t. Suzie never shut up about the blond man all night until Áine got jealous and fell into a sulk.
Luka, the quiet Pole who had always been uncomfortable around herself and Suzie, has brought in her case and stands to attention nearby, the car keys in his hand. She has her €2 coin ready to give him when he brings it up to her room.
Baptiste smiles again and tells her to have a nice stay. Yeah, right. Have a nice stay. On your own, while your ‘partner’ or ‘ex-partner’ or whatever-the-hell-she-is-now swans around San Francisco in her new corporate Vice-Presidential $1,200 power suit looking down on the LGBT capital of the US from her swanky penthouse suite.
When Luka turns to leave the bedroom, the €2 coin in his hand, she almost asks him to stay. She stands alone in the room and it seems darker than before. She turns on all the lights. Some music is being played in Temple Bar, she can hear it through the window – a song she doesn’t know. She looks at the suitcase on the stand. She goes into the bathroom and runs a bath.
Afterwards, when she has finished her room-service coffee and winced at the bill, she puts on her favourite top – the long blue one they bought together in Chelsea when Suzie had to work in New York and Áine had a free weekend in that posh Central Park hotel. It goes so well with those magical leggings, which somehow manage to make her thighs look reasonable, and those navy Camper wedge pump sandals she got in Malaga. The top has a high neck so she chooses the simple Michael Kors pendant for outside, but her Enibas drop studs will impress even the pickiest of bitches in The George. Everybody loves a classy pair of earrings.
She tries to keep her hand steady as she applies lipstick and thinks of Suzie dressing up, as only she can, putting on something lacy, a short skirt, going out to some fancy place on a hot date with an impossibly beautiful and accomplished gym-toned American blonde.
She goes down to the Octagon Bar before dinner. They have Bombay Sapphire and it tastes like nectar. So she has a second one. But the moment she sits into the taxi she knows that she’s made a mistake. What the hell had she been thinking? What kind of a fool does this to herself? The driver tries to engage her in conversation. He’s heard it is a good restaurant. Is she up for the weekend? Traffic is very bad because of all the buses. The government hasn’t a clue. She tries to be pleasant and make the right noises until she remembers what she’s up to and can’t be bothered any more. Her phone shows three messages, six missed calls, eight notifications on Facebook. She twiddles with the gold band on her wedding finger. Her late mother’s, which she wears from time to time. When the car pulls up outside the restaurant, she almost baulks. How easy it would be to just turn around and eat in the hotel. She closes her eyes, opens them again and takes some money from her bag.
A different headwaiter greets her at the restaurant; Miles must have taken the weekend off. Áine is disappointed; she was all set for a reaction from Miles, some understated sympathy – a look of understanding. The new person is a woman; she puts her at forty-five. Good-looking, maybe South African, she wears her hair in a bun and needs to get a suit another size up, or lose a kilo or two. But the smile isn’t too fake, the make-up looks expensive and those brown eyes! God, they are huge. She wears an engagement ring, a massive rock. A thick golden band beside it. Well-manicured ivory nails against sallow skin.
‘Good evening. Welcome to Chapter One.’
‘Hi, my name is Áine O’Keefe and I’ve booked a table for two.’
‘Ah yes, welcome, here you are. I have you near the back. Nice quiet table.’
She leads Áine down the dim corridor and to the right, into the arched area, past some other tables on both sides. It’s early, so just a few couples and one group of tourists are eating. Her table is at the end, in a central position. She will be on display there. Damn.
‘Ah,’ Áine says. ‘Would any of these be available?’ She points right and left. ‘You see, I have a little problem. I’m actually on my own, the other person couldn’t make it tonight.’
‘That’s no problem at all. Will here be okay?’ the headwaiter says.
‘More than okay, thank you so much,’ Áine says, and sits down.
‘And I’ll have a waiter clear off the other setting.’
‘Actually,’ Áine says. She hesitates. She had rehearsed this too for Miles. ‘Could you, actually, leave it? It’s just …’ She looks pleadingly at the other woman, who nods slowly and smiles. Sympathy – there it is. Hated and craved for.
‘That’s no problem at all. Enjoy your meal.’
Áine puts down her menu and raises her glass of Gewürztraminer. Suzie would have talked about its ‘notes’. She bows her head, takes a sip. The food comes and is eaten perfunctorily. There is a glass of wine with each course, which the sommelier describes to her, but she downs them all in a couple of gulps. She does not register the fermented horseradish sauce with the halibut. Suzie would have been oohing and aahing about it for weeks. The cheeses could be putty; she barely touches them. The restaurant fills. A couple sits at the adjacent table and, of course, the woman immediately notices her and pays close attention. Áine stares at the seat opposite and the place setting, willing herself not to cry or bolt for the door, diners glancing after her, put-out that their expensive evening has been encroached-upon by some emotionally wrought woman.
The George is heaving. A throb of sound and heat pushes against her when she walks past the bouncers and opens the door. What did she expect on a Saturday night? She should have set up a date on the HER App in advance. Too old for this, by far. The DJ in the corner, wearing what looks like a Madonna 1980s outfit, thumps out a tarted-up Lionel Richie song. Áine takes a deep breath. She’s also eaten too much; she should have had the à la carte.
She puts on that look. The one like she belongs, like she’s not desperate, like she might already be meeting somebody but you’d never know your luck, baby. She leans on the crowded bar and orders a vodka and Slimline Tonic from a Cillian Murphy lookalike. From that film, Breakfast on Pluto.
A small little thing, who appears to be about twelve, tries to get her attention from a nearby table. She might be seventeen. Áine watches her, and nods warily. On cue, the twelve-year-old, or seventeen-year-old – or whatever age she is – approaches, all smiles. She looks familiar.
‘Hi, you don’t remember me, do you?’ she says. She’s wearing a Twiggy-like, sequined mini-dress. She actually looks a bit like a young Twiggy, with that pixie crop. Pretty, but a bit on the small and skinny side. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.
‘You look very familiar,’ Áine says.
‘I’m Claudia Goggin, you taught me Irish in Richmond Hill.’
‘Oh Jesus. A good few years ago, I hope.’
‘Long enough,’ Claudia says. ‘Em, are you meeting someone? Would you like to join us? Or me, I should say. My friend is just leaving.’
‘I’d be delighted,’ Áine says. She wonders if she is really going to do this. Really? Pick up an ex-student in a bar? But why not? Claudia must be over twenty-one by now and Suzie had made it plain that they were both free agents. Keep going you idiot, she tells herself on the way to their table, it’s what you wanted isn’t it? Don’t stop now – you won’t break her.
Opening the hotel bedroom door, she senses a stiffness in Claudia. A distance. It began in the lift. Perhaps she’s getting cold feet. Áine badly wants to kiss her again and pull that Twiggy dress off her. By now Suzie would have had her leggings and panties down around her ankles. She fights back the thought, and calms down.
‘Red wine okay?’ Áine says.
‘Oh, sure, I’m easy. But you already know that,’ Claudia says.
‘I wouldn’t say that. You already got about five dances out of me.’
‘God, this room is lovely. I’ve walked past this place so many times.’
‘Pity the bar was closed, it’s kinda cool.’
‘So, I meant to ask you. Are you around for a while?’ Claudia says, with a little too much nonchalance.
‘No,
heading back tomorrow, after the game. School on Monday don’t you know.’ Áine pours two glasses of wine and gives one to Claudia, who has shed her heels and sits on the bed, her skinny legs tucked under her.
‘Oh, yes, the All-Ireland. I forgot. Oh, hey! Didn’t you used to play camogie for Cork?’ She takes a sip of wine and leans out and puts the glass on the bedside locker.
The First Sunday in September Page 7