‘They earn a good living out of it,’ O’Donnell didn’t hear him. ‘A damned good living. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do, ye know.’
‘What is?’
‘Remembering the cards in the casinos.’
‘You any good at remembering?’
‘Yeah. Too good. Forgetting, that’s my problem.’
‘Can you open or what?’ Tom’s grandfather nodded towards O’Donnell’s cards.
‘Especially the bad,’ O’Donnell picked up the cards. ‘If you can’t forget the bad then you carry it around with ye.’
‘I can’t open,’ his grandfather said.
‘Ye wear it like a jumper,’ O’Donnell shook his head.
‘Like a bleedin’ polo neck, is it?’ Tom’s grandfather snapped.
‘Fuck off,’ O’Donnell threw his cards down. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Can ye open or what?’ Tom’s grandfather raised his voice.
‘That’s a damn good living in Vegas though,’ O’Donnell swayed on the chair before steadying himself by gripping the table. ‘A damned good living.’
‘Christ sake,’ Tom’s grandfather stood. ‘I’m going out for a slash.’
He tottered outside to urinate at the rear of the horsebox.
Tom would usually move to his grandfather’s bunk when he was alone with the man, as far away from him as possible. This night, the night of the cheating, Tom was brave. He stayed where he was to make sure that O’Donnell wasn’t going to steal any of his grandfather’s money.
In the candlelight the man’s eyes were murky puddles.
‘You ever gut a fish?’ he asked and removed a knife from his pocket, a straight, sharp blade about four inches in length. It didn’t look like the type of knife a fisherman would use. It was scalpel-like.
‘You have to jab the knife right into the fish’s stomach,’ he said, jutting his hand outward. ‘Then you run your hand along its belly so that all the guts and shit comes out. You’ve to be careful. They’re slippery little fucks, they are.’ He smiled. ‘I’d say you’re a slippery one. I’d say you get up to a lot of mischief when your old man isn’t here.’
He stood up then and took an unstable step toward the young boy. Tom tensed and readied himself to run but there was the creak of his grandfather returning. O’Donnell quickly hid the knife under his coat and fumbled for a time, trying to get it back into his pocket. He took a step backward and fell against the side of the box before letting out a soft cry. When he brought his hand from under the coat there was blood. It was a murky black in the poor light.
‘My hand,’ O’Donnell slurred. ‘There’s something wrong with my hand.’
Tom’s grandfather staggered over to the table and picked up O’Donnell’s cards.
‘What’s wrong with your hand? It looks like a good enough hand to me.’
O’Donnell just stared at him, too drunk and shocked to comprehend what he meant. Then he stumbled through the opened door and ran in the direction of the pier.
They would never see him again.
The next day Tom’s grandfather was working near the bumper of the truck, scraping paint from the section that was damaged at the Fortress Pub. He still had the wide-eyed deranged look of someone who wasn’t wholly clear of the drink. Tom swept around the rear wheels, adding to a pile of dirt which he had previously swept from inside the horsebox, bottles, cigarette butts, bloodied playing cards. There was a dried trail of blood leading from the horsebox, a whole lot of blood, Tom thought as he swept along the side of the vehicle. He came across what at first he assumed to be a stumpy, gnarled piece of wood. On closer inspection he discovered it was the top of a finger, pale and dirty, the nail long and stained yellow. Strangely, at that immediate time, Tom wasn’t shocked by the find. He quickly swept it up and put it in a bag with the rest of the rubbish. Later, when they left Howth and began to move around Dublin, whenever he was going through a hard time he would dream about that finger, picture it in the mouth of a gull as it fluttered above a cluttered dump. Tom would wake up in a sweat and ensure that he still had all his digits by touching the tip of each finger against his thumb.
One-two-three-four.
Still there.
One-two-three-four.
Chapter 14
There is a cotton-wool appearance to Mr Grundy’s hair and beard. He wears hefty black spectacles that make his eyes look large and cartoonish and his mouth is dark gaps between scarce crooked teeth so that when he smiles his face takes on a drunken pirate kind of expression. He likes to talk and to Tom he sounds like the kind of man who has not spoken to anyone in years, the kind of man who fears he may never speak to anyone ever again.
Tom recognises this trait. He sometimes sees it in himself.
‘The wigs were my wife’s,’ Mr Grundy says. ‘She used to do the amateur dramatics.’ He pulls a large refuse sack from the hall. It is stretched in places with uneven bulges and a melted section in the centre. ‘But don’t you be thinking that Ted Grundy was just sitting around waiting for her to get home. No way. I had plenty to keep me busy. Jesus, I’m not saying that I was a wild man or anything. But I knew how to have a good time. Understand?’
He stares at Tom until Tom nods his head.
‘What are you using them for again?’ he asks. ‘Mice, wasn’t it?’
‘No, it’s for a model.’
‘Of a woman?’
‘Yeah,’ Tom says. ‘It’s for some project to do with a dating agency.’
Mr Grundy smiles his pirate smile.
‘Dating agency,’ he laughs. ‘Jaysus sure what would you need a dating agency for? Fetch me a tie. Someone fetch me a tie,’ he shouts behind him. ‘Old Ted Grundy needs to show this man a thing or two about getting the women. Dating agency,’ he shakes his head as he opens the bag.
The wigs are bunched together.
They smell of wet carpet.
‘I met the queer one in a cracker factory,’ he nods to a photograph on the mantelpiece. ‘Crackers about each other, that’s what I’d say all the time, ye know, when anyone would ask how we were getting on. Acting silly and all that. She’d call me mad. Ted Grundy, you’re a mad man,’ he laughs, ties a knot in the bag. He lifts and drops the bag a couple of times as if he’s testing the weight.
‘She could play any part,’ he says. ‘That’s why she had so many wigs. She was very talented.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’d say she could have gone professional if she wanted.’ Mr Grundy carries the bag to the front door. ‘She was involved with it right up to the end mind you. Not a lot of them can say that. Sure they can’t?’
He keeps his hand on the bag for a moment, stares at the ground. When he looks back to Tom he is smiling.
‘Good luck with the dating agency,’ Mr Grundy says. ‘They’re gas, aren’t they, dating agencies? Ye wouldn’t see me getting mixed up with all that at this age. No, I think when you’re on your own this long ye kind of get used to it. It just becomes a habit. Sure Ted Grundy Junior has retired a long time ago, if you get my meaning,’ he winks. ‘A brother of hers was into all that dating and shite. He’s lived in America most of his life. They all seem to be into that stuff over there. It’s different here though. Or it used to be different, I guess. Jaysus, sure we weren’t as picky as people are now. We’d just go with the first thing that came along. Well, second thing if you counted Willie Dowd’s sister. But nobody ever counted her. I suppose it just came down to luck. Those that were unlucky, sure, they just got on with it, head down and all that. Some of us, the very few of us, well, we struck gold really. Didn’t we?’
Tom gives Mr Grundy the ten-euro note at the door and the old man carefully folds it three times so it is the size of a stamp before putting it in the pocket of his cardigan.
‘Don’t be shy about calling in if you’re ever in the area,’ Mr Grundy says as Tom closes the front gate behind him.
Tom smiles and nods before moving down the street.
; There is a row of shops a couple of streets from Mr Grundy’s house. Barbed wire twirls up the side walls and across the gutters. There is a glass-sheltered bus stop with a view of a dental surgery with drooping blinds.
Tom waits for a bus there.
He feels the vibrations of the engine through the ground before the coolness of its shadow.
He takes it to the city centre and gets off near the Manhattan Hotel. A revolving door sweeps him inside and he feels the push of cool air behind him until he reaches a modest counter in the lobby. There is a second, lower level behind the counter, two grey cushioned chairs behind, a tourist stand on the far side with rows of leaflets and a dumpy sculpture on the side closest to the door, a metal tree with tiny, detailed leaves.
‘It’s you,’ the receptionist says as he approaches.
It is the bartender from Friday night, Fiona.
‘What are you doing here?’ Tom asks.
‘I don’t know how to break the news. I work here.’
‘But you work in the bar.’
‘I work wherever the hell they put me.’
‘What’s that you’re reading?’ Tom nods to an opened book in front of her on the lower desk.
‘What?’ She looks around nervously. ‘Nothing. I’m not reading anything.’
‘Looks like a book to me.’
She closes the book. There is an image of a small, furry creature scaling up a rock on the cover. The title is in bold letters, The Bolivian Chinchilla Rat and Other Endangered Rodents.
‘Do you read a lot of books like that?’
‘No,’ she shakes her head. ‘I mean, yes.’ She lifts an A4 diary and shoves the book underneath. ‘Sometimes I do.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘No,’ Fiona quickly cocks her head to the side in an effort to see behind Tom. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m looking for my watch.’
‘And?’
‘I was hoping that someone handed it in.’
‘Nobody has handed it in.’
‘How do you know? You haven’t checked.’
‘Let me see. I’ve been on the desk since you rang an hour ago and nobody had handed it in then. And wait,’ she scrolls her finger down the A4 diary on the desk. ‘It says here that you’ve rung at least seven times before this. And there was no sign of it then either.’
‘Has anyone mentioned anything about it?’
‘I think it might have made the ten o’clock news last night.’
‘What about the blonde woman? Has anyone seen the blonde woman that I mentioned?’
‘You didn’t say anything to me about a blonde woman.’
‘I was talking to some man. I told him about a blonde woman with an old-fashioned haircut? She might have it.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Not sure. I saw her looking at it.’
She nods her head slowly.
‘Will you be able to ring me if it turns up?’ Tom writes his name and phone number on a page in his notebook and rips it out carefully.
‘What’s the big deal with the watch? Is it expensive? Sentimental?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘You suppose,’ she laughs. ‘That’s such a man thing to say.’
‘What?’ He hands her the page.
‘If it’s sentimental just say it is. There’s nothing wrong with keeping things because they remind you of somebody.’
‘I got it off my granda. He’s dead,’ Tom suddenly leans on the counter. ‘You have great arms ye know.’
‘You think?’ She scans her arms.
‘They really stand out,’ Tom says.
‘Compared to the rest of me you mean,’ she laughs.
‘Yeah,’ Tom nods. ‘Here, let me have a look.’
‘Go away.’
‘Come on. Hold them out,’ Tom says.
She tuts loudly before raising her left arm. Tom gently takes her by the wrist and slowly rotates her arm.
She reddens as he does this.
‘I wish I had arms like yours.’
‘You’d look funny with these arms,’ she says.
‘No, they’re not for me.’
She moves to say something but decides against.
Tom carefully brings her arm down to the lower level of the counter before releasing it.
‘So you’ll let me know if the watch turns up?’ Tom asks.
‘I might,’ she sighs. ‘So is that all?’
‘Yeah.’ He shoves his hands into his pockets. ‘Actually, no, wait. Kindness, what do you think about kindness?’
‘I don’t know,’ she shrugs. ‘It’s a good thing.’
‘I know that. What I want to know is how could you tell if someone is a kind person?’
‘I don’t think kindness is just about gifts and money,’ she bows her head for a moment. ‘I’m not sure. I’d say you’d cop on fairly soon if someone is kind or not.’
‘That doesn’t really help me,’ Tom says.
‘Fair enough.’
‘I gave you that piece of paper with my number, didn’t I?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And it has my name on it?’
‘Yes,’ she exaggerates the roll of her eyes.
Tom walks away but stops and turns.
‘It has the right number on it, doesn’t it?’ He begins to walk back to the desk. ‘I might check.’
‘It’s the right number,’ she says. ‘I have a record of it in the reception diary in any case. Right beside your name, Tom Stacey.’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he turns back toward the door, hesitates only once more before exiting.
This is no use, he thinks. I need to talk to Karl, find out when he last saw the watch.
He decides to pay him a visit.
From the moment Tom enters Karl’s house he can’t help but compare the Angela of today with the Angela of his youth. Back then she seemed so sure of herself, so in control. Now she is almost kite-like in her actions. She drifts towards the sink in the kitchen before rapidly changing direction. She talks as if it is an effort to do so and her character is diluted in a way, a mere hint of the person she once was.
‘I warned him,’ she takes the seat next to Tom in the kitchen. ‘I warned him. No one can say that I didn’t warn him.’ There is no anger in her words, just resignation. She runs her palms down her cheeks, stretching the skin so red arcs show under her eyes. ‘Karl never listens,’ she says. ‘No, he has to do everything his own way.’
Tom nods. He wishes he hadn’t called in. He tries to avoid looking directly at her, tries not to get drawn into her situation.
Angela’s dressing gown has slipped to the side at her waist, revealing the stubbly skin of her crossed legs. Tom glances at them and feels embarrassed. He looks away, towards a collection of drawings that are tacked to the side of a cupboard: owls, ladybirds, some kind of egg-shaped creature surrounded by coloured circles. One of the sheets contains a child’s name in various different colours, Freddie, written at least thirty times. Tom guesses they’re going to have trouble with that child.
‘Yesterday was grand, ye know,’ she says. ‘Like I was ready for it this time, like I was used to it by now and I could cope. Then this morning I saw this packet of biscuits on the counter and for some reason this really messed me up. Jesus Christ, it’s only a packet of custard creams, I kept saying to myself. But it was more than that. He had bought them last Wednesday, before any of this happened. Does that make any sense to you? Do you understand? They were more than just a packet of custard creams.’
Tom nods again, his eyes move to her bare legs. She catches his glance and fixes her dressing gown roughly. But when it opens again she leaves it.
‘I threw him out,’ she says. ‘I did it. Jesus.’ She closes her eyes. Her hair is limp, more yellow than blonde, clumped together in parts. ‘I don’t know how he’s going to cope on his own. The man can barely dress himself. But I had to do something. I can’t live like this.’
Tom l
ooks at the ground. He’s not exactly sure what has happened between them and he doesn’t have the courage to ask.
‘I can’t even bear to think of how we’re going to arrange things with the kids,’ she says.
She bows her head and Tom remembers how Angela used to sing in the choir when they were just kids, eleven or twelve. She was Angela McGuire back then, striking, angelic in some ways. Mrs Trevor, the woman who organised the choir, knew it. She put her in the most prominent position in the group, central, in front of the candles so the flames made her blonde hair glow. Tom remembers the hard benches pressing against his knees, the cold draft that crept in through a gap in the church doors, its chilly embrace. He remembers the voices of the young girls, and how Angela would stare at the ground when she sang, her hands tight at her sides, the concentration causing her to frown.
Tom liked to watch her during Mass. He enjoyed looking at her without her being aware that he was looking at her. And when she was singing he could do this because those eyes of hers just focussed on the floor and he could gaze for as long as the song lasted.
He watches her now, her hands clenching the dressing gown to her chest. She looks smaller than she did as a child, more vulnerable. He tries to see some of the girl that illuminated and enchanted so many boys in his youth. He only sees her sadness.
‘I remember you in the choir,’ Tom says.
She blinks a couple of times. Her eyebrows dip.
‘Do you still sing?’ he asks.
She looks at him for a time, looking without looking in a way. Soon, she begins to cry. It is silent and her tears are large. They weave down her cheeks. She leans forward, into him. He awkwardly puts his arm around her shoulder. He feels her weight against his chest. She shivers and Tom thinks of how it feels as if she is made of warmth and solidness while he is made of nothing but anxiety and air.
They stay that way for a minute but it seems longer to Tom.
She sits up when she is finished crying and fixes the dressing gown at her legs.
‘I’ve thought about singing, ye know,’ she says softly. ‘But singing is for the young.’
A Model Partner Page 13