She chose the steam room instead which was empty or at first appeared to be. She stretched out on the upper tier of hot tiles, adjusting her bathing costume, and stared up at the slow drip–drip of water converging and falling from the corners of tiles in the curved roof. It took several moments for her eyes to adjust to the steam and for the blurred outline of a man sitting against the far wall to register. She knew without being able to distinguish any features that it was him. Alison cursed herself for picking the steam room, then became angry. She had often shared this space with men before without it costing her a thought. If he was a voyeur that was his problem not hers. Besides he couldn’t get more steamed up than he was already. Alison lay back, closed her eyes and decided to ignore him.
‘They say five minutes in here earns you five years off purgatory.’ His voice broke the silence, as if he knew she had only now become aware of him. Alison made a non–committal noise, hoping to discourage him. But he laughed instead, wryly and familiarly. ‘We could have used some of this heat, stuck out at night in that mobile library in Skerries.’
Alison lay perfectly still. Mentally she checked her bathing costume, the state of her hair, a half dozen inconsequential things as she tried to place his voice. She felt naked, stripped of her anonymity. It was twenty years since she had briefly worked in the mobile libraries. She opened her eyes and tried to peer across through the steam.
‘Do I know you?’ she asked.
‘A different time, Ali, a different world.’
How long was it since anyone called her Ali? The nickname had only been used by a handful of people. It was a brief benchmark of freedom at eighteen when she got her first job away from Waterford. The mobile libraries were a stopgap until she started training as a nurse the following April. Everyone working there had a pet name that summer. The three lads sharing the top table all called themselves Harold. ‘Is Harold in yet, Harold?’ ‘No, I haven’t seen him, Harold.’ Betty was known as Sheila because she wanted to emigrate to Australia. Sharon was called Lucy because she phoned in sick to smoke dope in her bedsit and watch reruns of Here’s Lucy – a programme she swore she hated but not as much as she hated work. The nickname Ali had suited Alison back then, the bright sparkle of it as she floated like a butterfly through late–night library parties in bedsits.
In Dublin, being called Ali made her feel different from the child she became again when she took the train home each weekend. That’s what nicknames did, made you part of something special. It was why Peadar renamed her Alison within weeks of them meeting that summer, like her real name had turned full circle to become an intimate term of endearment between them. But she felt flustered in the steam room now and knew the man could sense it, because his voice changed, growing almost apologetic.
‘I hope I didn’t startle you,’ he said. ‘I saw you last night and couldn’t believe my eyes. I knew you hadn’t a clue who I was. You mightn’t remember me anyway. But, of course, the beard doesn’t help, or the absence of it. You used to joke that at twenty I looked forty with it and at forty I’d shave it off and look twenty again.’
‘Chris?’
Good Christ, she thought, not Chris Conway here, all of a slap, in the steam room at Fitzgerald’s. Chris had never needed a nickname. A manic explosion of jokes and gestures, he always stood out simply as Chris.
‘You’ve barely changed, Ali. You must have a portrait of yourself growing old in your attic.’
She laughed, flattered and embarrassed. The beard. That’s what had perturbed her about the face yesterday. Chris Conway. A dozen memories jostled together. Laughing as he persuaded her to take a piggyback off him all the way to the bank to cash her first pay cheque. The Friday afternoon himself and a driver went to do a stop in Tallaght and the mobile van was spotted on Sunday morning, still not returned from a remote pub car park up the Wicklow Mountains. His tricks to torment and thwart the old librarian who liked to bully female trainees. But Chris was right, the memories came from a different world. It was ten years since Peadar last mentioned him, something about the book trade. Alison didn’t know what to say, so she tried a joke.
‘You’re in trouble.’
‘Sorry?’ he replied.
‘Your wife …’
‘Yes.’
‘You can expect a frosty reception. I mean you’re hardly a new man, are you, leaving her with the kids all this time?’
The door opened and Mr BMW came in. He sat on the tier below her, grunting contentedly like a bloated Roman emperor. A drop of water hit her nose and ran slowly down onto her lips. She felt Chris wanted to say something but was inhibited by the man’s presence. That would be just like Chris, she thought. The silence seemed so awkward that for a moment she wondered if she’d made a mistake.
‘You are married?’ she asked.
‘I married all right.’
‘Kids?’
‘Two girls,’ Chris replied. ‘I saw your kids in the pool. They’re lovely, the wee one especially.’
‘Another father of girls,’ Mr BMW cut in, as though he owned the conversation. ‘Sweet suffering Jesus, when you are the father of daughters you pray.’
Chris didn’t reply. He picked up the drenched towel he’d been using as a pillow and pushed the door open.
‘I hope she doesn’t lynch you,’ Alison teased but Chris never looked back. Ignoring her, Mr BMW stretched out on the tiles below so that Alison would have to step over him to exit. Above the hissing steam she heard the splash of a body entering the plunge pool. For some reason she found herself counting the seconds until another splash told her that Chris’s head had emerged again.
It was time to return to her own kids but she waited to let Chris get ahead of her. A sign on the wall prohibited children and the use of oils in the steam room. It didn’t mention stilettos, she thought, glancing at the obese belly on display below, as if waiting for slaves to carry its owner off to the vomitorium. She decided Mr BMW would probably enjoy that too much. Alison stepped carefully around him and pushed open the door, glad to escape from the heat. The water in the plunge pool still rippled after Chris. She decided that if her pores wanted to close badly enough they could do so by themselves.
The mother who had been glaring towards the sauna now swam alone in the adult pool. She was about thirty–three, Alison reckoned, though she could even be younger. A bathing hat could not contain her long fair hair. As she reached the far wall and kicked over to swim on her back, Alison found herself watching, comparing their features and figures, noticing how the woman’s willowy arms moved without effort through the water. It was ridiculous to feel a stab of jealousy. There was no way Alison would ever have become Chris’s wife. But she wanted to know if Chris loved this woman, not in the understated way most men love their wives, but like he had once loved her. Back when she was Ali and, for one magic summer, her image possessed him in every waking moment. When she unwittingly made his life a living hell and yet knew that she was all he lived for.
Chris’s wife reached for the stepladder and climbed out, graceful and lithe, unaware of being stared at. Alison watched the woman stroll towards the showers, before arms were suddenly wrapped around her legs as Shane and Sheila raced to greet her and her thoughts no longer had time to be her own.
Generally by Monday afternoon that pampered Fitzgerald’s feeling would swamp Alison. The children were more settled in after their swim, but the boys still left mounds of food on their plates in their eagerness to escape and explore every corner of the gardens. Peadar would be back soon, dancing attention on her to compensate for his absence, and for now all she wanted was to take a good book and relax on the deckchair beside the crazy golf course in the gardens.
She could probably do without Chris Conway’s family being there, if she was honest. But his presence didn’t really perturb her now that she’d had time to adjust to it. She’d often wondered how his life had turned out. Curiosity was one of her pleasures and one of her faults. It might be fun to watch Chris now, no
longer the youth who imagined himself unobserved as he sat like a lovesick calf on a bench shaded by trees opposite her bedsit on Drumcondra Road. Alison wondered how he would introduce her to his wife. He could hardly call her an old girlfriend. They only ever kissed once and it was she who initiated that, a spontaneous, dare–devilish gesture as they climbed a steep road in Dalkey in late July sunshine on lunch break from the mobile van.
That was two weeks before the lunchtime on Loughshinny beach, when she cut his hair, after which everything went sour. Alison never knew why she had pocketed a lock of his hair that day and kept it for years in an envelope. Maybe it was the intoxication of power. Chris was two years older than her, a year younger than Peadar. Yet if she had wanted to that lunchtime she could have cut off his beard or fingernails. She could have sheared him bald and he would have happily allowed it just to sense her body close to his.
His wife would know nothing of this and not even Peadar understood what had nearly happened in Loughshinny. Stated in black and white, she and Chris were never more than workmates, yet nothing about Chris was ever black and white. Possibly this mass of contradictions had given him his manic energy. He was always first up on the vans each morning, bowing like a head waiter to let the other staff enter, wise–cracking, drawing out shy newcomers, bullshitting half the time as he subverted every rule in the office. Then, if the van suddenly emptied so that they found themselves alone, he became tongue–tied, as unable to address her as he was unable to stop undressing her with his eyes.
Alison smiled as she settled back in her deckchair and urged Sheila not to cling on to her so much. Ever since being left in the pool this morning the girl was like a shadow. But Alison didn’t really mind. A year or two ago Danny and Shane were the same, not allowing her a second to herself. Now part of her felt sad to watch them run freely around the grounds. Occasionally Shane tried to clamber onto rocks beside the ornate waterfall in the stream that wound between the crazy golf holes and she had to call him. But otherwise the boys could now be left to themselves.
Geraldine appeared in a tracksuit at the glass doors and started rounding up children for the afternoon’s activities. The young woman’s mood never changed from year to year. Good–tempered and amused by her charges, yet with her eyes only a fraction away from being thrown to heaven in mock horror. Danny was especially fond of her, and Alison watched him run to be first in the queue of children in mock formation. They would begin with clay modelling, she was saying, followed by multi–sports and then the great sandcastle–making competition on the beach.
In previous years Danny had been shy, but now he seemed eager to try everything and therefore Shane would tag along for a while as his shadow. But Alison knew the smaller boy would grow bored, especially if Danny latched onto somebody his own age and ignored him. She would need to check regularly that Shane wasn’t just sitting among the other children, too shy to even cry.
Sheila had ventured into the sandpit beside the Slaney Room to play with the girl she’d met in the pool. They were setting up house in the giant–sized shoe there. Alison moved her chair slightly to keep an eye on her, then lay back to read while she got the chance.
Afternoon tea was being served when Peadar returned from the scramble. Older guests always queued in advance or gathered on armchairs near the serving counter like swallows in autumn. It had been her mother’s favourite meal here. Not the extravagance of dinner, but the simple indulgence of being served tea and puff pastry cakes on a sofa. Alison smiled when she saw Peadar with a tray among the elderly couples. He grinned through the plate glass, holding up three fingers to show how many cakes he was going to fetch her. She shook her head vigorously, holding up a single finger but happily aware that he would ignore her. She could worry about her weight another day.
Peadar emerged into the sunshine and placed the loaded tray on the grass, making a great show of being her personal servant.
‘Hurry up, slave,’ she teased, ‘or I’ll beat you.’ ‘Promises, promises,’ he laughed, lazing in the deckchair beside her and sipping his white coffee. ‘How was the scramble?’
‘Don’t ask,’ he replied. ‘The Irwins stood too near the ball – after they hit it. The old lad had one moment of glory though, on the third. I hit the longest drive, but into the rough. We all scuffed the second shot so the best one was only trickled up the fairway. Then the guy chipped in from ninety yards. “An eagle, my first ever eagle,” he kept screaming. I thought he was having a heart attack. I hadn’t got it in me to remind him it was only a birdie and if his wife knew then she was singing dumb.’
‘Was he cheating?’
‘No. He was scrupulously honest for the rest of the round. Let him enjoy his glory.’ He looked around. ‘Where are the terrible threesome?’
Alison pointed towards Sheila and asked Peadar to check on Shane in ten minutes’ time.
‘Ten minutes,’ he exclaimed. ‘Did you ever think to see the day when we’d get ten minutes here to ourselves?’
It was nice to look back and laugh about the first year when Danny refused to stay in his high chair. They had been forced to eat meals hurriedly, taking turns to hold him down with one hand while Danny bawled and scattered place mats, spoons and anything else they could give him to play with. He was three before they could eat breakfast without a lump in their stomachs and by then Shane was unleashing spoons like an Olympic hammer–thrower.
Peadar stopped talking and looked towards the doors of the Slaney Room as Chris Conway emerged onto the patio. He nodded before strolling down the steps to the beach.
‘You’ll never guess who that is,’ Alison said.
‘Chris Conway.’
‘Did you recognise him last night?’ She was surprised. ‘He’s having the life of Riley here. I don’t think I’ve seen him give his wife a hand with the kids once.’
‘For Christ’s sake, not so loud,’ Peadar hissed.
‘Well it’s true,’ Alison protested. ‘I was fond of Chris, but his wife must be a right mouse.’
‘She’s dead.’ Peadar’s voice was low.
‘What?’
‘I meant to tell you when I got back, but I forgot. I heard about him at the scramble. He is supposed to play with some friends of the Irwins, so Jack Fitzgerald tipped them off at dinner last night. Seemingly Chris always brought his family here in the second week in June, but when he hadn’t renewed his booking this year they let it go to someone else on the waiting list. He phoned last Tuesday and by a fluke they had a cancellation this week.’
‘But …’ Alison stopped. She had never actually seen Chris with the fair–haired woman. She had just presumed and linked them in her mind. What in God’s name had she said in the steam room? Peadar glanced back, making sure the man didn’t reappear on the steps.
‘It happened in January,’ he said. ‘A head–on collision with another car on the Dunleer by–pass heading home from Dundalk. Their two daughters were killed as well, aged nine and twelve. Some young fellow on the wrong side of the road. The police had to cut all four dead bodies from the wreckage.’
Peadar picked up his coffee cup. Alison knew Chris Conway had returned. She heard the gate being bolted and waited for him to approach. She didn’t know what she would say. She picked her book up, tempted to pretend she was absorbed in it, but knew that Peadar would find her behaviour odd.
‘Hello, Chris,’ she heard Peadar call.
‘You’re looking well, Peadar.’ His voice was relaxed. She looked up but he was already past, strolling towards the first tee on the crazy golf course. He picked up a putter some child had dropped and they watched him aim a ball straight down the tunnel with the waterfall tumbling over it. He walked around to where his ball had stopped six inches from the hole, tapped in and walked on. Alison felt disturbed.
‘What the hell is he doing here?’
‘What do you mean?’ Peadar replied. ‘He has as much right to be here as anyone else.’
‘And would you casually pop back here if
I died? If we were all killed?’ Alison didn’t know why she sounded this rattled. But it wasn’t just the mistake of misreading the situation which upset her. This short break in Fitzgerald’s was so precious that it seemed unfair to be forced to confront something so dark as this. She knew the thought was selfish, but just now she hadn’t room to cope with somebody else’s pain. There were three hundred and fifty–nine other days in the year when she would readily sympathise with any catastrophe.
‘I don’t know what I’d do if you died,’ Peadar replied, looking at her. ‘What the hell has got into you?’
Fitzgerald’s must have been a place where Chris’s family were happy, so how could he calmly face whatever memories confronted him in every corridor? She saw him in her mind, playing crazy golf with two laughing daughters. Alison watched him tee off on the second hole.
She felt cold. The other girl had left the sandpit and Sheila was digging alone in the sand. She came running when Alison called, delighted to be allowed to climb up onto her knee. Alison wished Chris Conway would go indoors or, better still, pack his bags and leave. Perhaps that was selfish, but Fitzgerald’s wasn’t meant to be about death. Two golden girls of nine and twelve, such perfect ages. Old enough to be independent, yet still happy in themselves before the guerrilla warfare of puberty.
She had been twelve when first kissed on the rock which still guarded the beach, a few steps away. Not that the rock looked anything like how she had seen it back then. Now it never seemed as large. Only twelve–year–old eyes could properly spy its grey and white streaks sparkling in the evening sun or experience the true sensation of sand pressing against bare soles.
Alison looked up and saw two boys emerge from the tennis courts. They stopped to watch Chris tackle the impossible slope of the Augusta hole. One said something and Chris handed him the putter. The boy narrowly missed and watched the ball roll back down the slope. He tried again and got it in one. The boy looked to be about twelve. He handed the putter back to Chris who walked towards the next hole that curved out of sight past a cluster of trees. There was nobody else on the course. The boys strolled carelessly on, already forgetting about Chris’s existence.
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