The Accident

by S D Monaghan

  ‘Lads, we all good?’ David asked.

  His question was met with stony silence. They were still wary of him. They refused to believe that he was of their tribe. Even now, as their coach, David’s contributions on football were greeted with the raised eyebrows and smirks that he gave undergraduates whenever they dared offer a personal opinion rather than referencing the source material. But David didn’t blame them – he had done everything in his power not to be like their parents, to leave them far behind for a university life where having an ordinary mid-level IQ consigned you to the bottom of the class. He was sure they all bitched about him when he wasn’t around. A gang of twelve-year-old boys – they were already as bad as the Borgias.

  Bruno shouted, ‘We came here as team, we train as team and we play as team. We ready to take it to them? We ready to go the best?’

  There were nods and the odd exclamation, but David knew that the kids were merely responding to Bruno’s volume rather than the content. Bruno tried again, but David interjected with, ‘Listen – because I’m going to tell you something very important; a fundamental truth. And if you understand it, then it’ll help you, not just in this game but for the rest of your lives.’ He pointed down the field to the Foxrock Rovers. ‘When playing against their kind, in football or in life, you’re all to forget about luck. Luck is for the rich and the connected. Luck is for those dicks.’

  There was an audible gasp, a few sniggers and a ‘Dave, that is enough’ from Bruno. But David, who was very aware that this could be the last time he would ever address his team, wasn’t finished. ‘People like us don’t have luck to rely on. We never did. We never will. For people like us, there is only work, discipline, talent and courage. That’s all we’ve got. So use it. Use it all.’

  As the boys disbanded, Bruno said, ‘Dave, what is the matter with you? You can’t talk to the children like that because... because they are fucking children!’

  David strolled off down the sideline, passing a streak of about fifty parents, mostly from Foxrock. One of the fathers shook his hand because he was wearing the red vest of officialdom. The parents of his own team didn’t acknowledge him. Many were his old schoolmates, but they rarely talked to him any more. Once they had discovered that he’d won a scholarship to the city’s most prestigious university, they’d responded with an immediate unaccountable sense of distrust, which some rapidly nourished into a pathological hatred. But David reckoned he’d probably have felt the same way in their situation. They’d called him ‘College Boy’; a nickname that had stuck with him in Cawley to this day.

  As the game kicked off, someone behind him shouted, ‘Will ya fuck’n move it, College Boy? You’re not made of glass, ya prick.’

  There was a rising roar. Foxrock Rovers were powering through St Augustine’s defence, annihilating their backline before – boom – top corner of the net. Less than a minute of play and they were one–nil down.

  David’s thoughts flipped through his crisis. If only there had been a secret camera in the attic that had filmed everything. Then the world would know that it had been an accident. I didn’t push Ryan out the window. I just punched him.

  Another roar from the sidelines. Foxrock attacking again. One-two. One-two. Bang. A ricochet off the crossbar and back out into play.

  ‘Jazus, ya here to pick daisies?’ shouted the husky, phlegm-pasted voice. A hand landed on David’s shoulder. It felt like being hit with a block of wood. David turned round. The hand belonged to Fred – an almost bald, six-foot thug squeezed into a grimy tracksuit. Fred had been the fiercest street warrior when David had gone to school. At the base of his neck was a tattoo – 88. David had told Bruno that it was the numerical equivalent to HH: Heil Hitler. Bruno had tried to disbelieve that. ‘People aren’t that stupid,’ he’d said, though knowing that of course they were.

  ‘We’re being murdered,’ Fred said now. ‘I don’t have Bernard out training twice a week to be part of this shite. Here’s an idea – take off that lanky monkey at midfield. That string of piss is barely off the banana boat and already you have him taking our kids’ places in the club.’ Fred inhaled a final drag on the stump of his rollie and flicked it past David onto the pitch. He was directly in David’s face now, his neck bent, his gaping eyes protruding in outrage. ‘Do something, College Boy. That’s my lad out there, getting a second asshole torn into him by a bunch of fuck’n ponces.’

  ‘Stay classy, Fred.’

  Fred grabbed David by the throat, positioning his bald face at perfect headbutt distance.

  ‘Jesus, Fred, your kid’s out there!’

  Fred made a phlegmy growl through gums housing only a handful of teeth and hoisted his apron of fat upwards. ‘About time he saw what a real man is.’

  David pushed forward, driving his aggressor backwards. Suddenly, from behind, Bruno’s hands gripped his shoulders before an arm locked into place beneath his chin. The referee ran to the sideline, his whistle shrill. Everyone was shouting: parents from both teams, even some of the children. This isn’t me. David registered expressions of disgust. He registered their disappointment and shock. In the midst of it all, he had a logical thought: How can I claim that killing Ryan was a moment of madness? That I’d acted outside of reason? That violence is not part of my personality? The mother in jodhpurs now stood between David and Fred, arms outstretched to separate them, a beseeching woman in an ageless story.

  Bruno, sweat making a skullcap of his hair, led David away from the crowd. As the dressing room approached, he said, ‘I heard what you say to the kids. I see you fight with Fred. You forget what it’s like. You don’t understand any more. Or maybe you just don’t care any more. So go away, Dave. Go back to your big house and your big deal wife and your big deal university.’

  ‘Jesus, Bruno, I didn’t mean to... It was self-defence. I wasn’t going to touch him. Look, I’ve too much on my mind.’

  Bruno offered a universal shrug – the one that said, Leave me out of your shit – and released him to his own devices. David retreated towards his car, his back bent, shoulders rounded against the day’s unrelenting artillery. His eyes hurt. The sun illuminated everything too harshly – the tree bark, the shining metal of the dressing room roof, the hedge leaves, which twinkled as if their edges were dipped in silver. There was a roar behind him. Another goal had been scored.

  In the car park, a black Skoda flashed its headlights. David recognised the vehicle. The front passenger door clicked open.

  ‘Get in, buddy.’

  ‘Why?’

  Detective Fenton smiled broadly. ‘Get. The fuck. In.’

  David looked up to the blue sky and wondered if he would ever again take this familiar walk from the park to his own car. Sitting in the passenger seat, he closed the door. ‘So what’s the story, Detective Fenton?’

  Voices sniggered behind him. Two men in tracksuits were in the back seat. One had a shaved head, the scalp thickly sown with moles; the other’s short hair was wet-gelled forward into a straight fringe. Both had eyes disappearing in the quicksand of their own sockets. David assumed that they were working undercover.

  Fenton asked, ‘Gordon was meeting with you yesterday – why?’

  ‘He’s my architect. Architect things.’ David swallowed, but wasn’t concerned about trying to hide his anxiety. He assumed that all cops knew that people with any kind of interesting life were unable to be normal in front of them. ‘Anyway, how do you know?’

  ‘Did he mention Ryan?’

  ‘No... I mean, yeah. But just that there was no news. We simply have to get on with it. Like, finalise the snag list without him and all that. You’ve talked to Gordon, right?’

  ‘I’m asking the questions,’ Fenton said softly, making it clear that he didn’t like David, but also that David wasn’t important enough to make an issue of it.

  ‘Right you are, Detective.’

  ‘You’re still calling me that?’

  ‘That’s what you told me to call you, Detective.’
<
br />   ‘How did someone like you ever get to own that house of yours?’ Fenton asked, his accent changing, subtly but noticeably. It was harder, more Dublin city, less suburban estate. ‘And then, stick a hottie like your missus into it? Shit, man, are you like, retarded or something? I’m not a fucking detective.’

  ‘Who are you then?’ David’s voice was almost a whisper as he suddenly realised that he was looking at a new shark from yet another sea.

  ‘Believe me, you prick, we are your worst fucking nightmare. We are the guys in your garden at five forty-five in the morning. We are the reason rich fuckers like you have security systems. All those scary stories you hear at your posh dinner parties or read in the paper over breakfast in your grand fucking kitchen – yeah, that’s us.’

  David grabbed the door handle but Fenton placed a firm hand on his elbow. Everything was suddenly different now – a gun pointed at a man can do that.

  Chapter Six

  ‘I’m sorry,’ was all Tara could manage. She heard her voice. She heard her statement. She’d never believed she could sound so pathetic, her voice so paltry. This is a nightmare. The worst possible things keep happening.

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’ Christine patted Tara’s wrist with exaggerated earnestness. ‘Here am I in your house, looking for attention like an I-don’t-know-what.’

  ‘Look, you’ve made your point. You’ve seen me. You hate me. I get that. I don’t blame you. I’m sorry. And that’s all I can say. Over and over again. Now leave. Please.’

  ‘Ha! You think it’s that easy? I will go when I’ve said what I want to say.’

  ‘Look, you know it now. You found out. And you’ve made your point.’ What if David returns? Would he throw her out? No – he’d throw us both out. ‘Whenever Ryan turns up, sort it out with him. But until then, you can’t take it all out on me.’ How did she find out? Ryan’s been missing since he was with me. ‘How did... How did you find out?’

  Christine laughed. ‘It’s amazing what a wife knows about her husband, Tara. See, Ryan and I have gone through so much over the years... More than you would believe. Did Ryan tell you that he got me pregnant back in school?’ Christine waited for confirmation, but Tara just stared through her. So she continued, ‘God, he was just so gorgeous back then. So I’m eighteen, pregnant and obviously I can’t tell anyone. So I mark it return to sender. I mean, Ryan is a teenager too. So I sneak off to London…’

  Unexpectedly, Christine suddenly forced herself to be quiet, as if she desperately wanted – needed – to talk, but was bound by confidentiality, like a priest in a confession box. The longer she remained silent, the more Tara wanted to hear. She had enough of her own secrets to have learned that the things really worth hearing are the things people absolutely refuse to speak about.

  So Tara – both wanting to hear more, yet smarting from the fact that Ryan had never told her any of this – said, ‘If you want to talk about it, talk about it. Or don’t. I’m not your therapist.’ Ryan never told me he’d got a girl pregnant. He never told me that his child had been aborted.

  Christine smiled – acknowledging, perhaps even reluctantly admiring her foe’s audacity. She piled three crisps on top of each other and crunched them in her mouth. After swallowing, she said, ‘Up to then I’d grown up a little princess – the type of rich where it would be insane to have ever expected to have to get a job. So my parents found out about my abortion and threw me out. I never got a cent from them. The Church got it all. So, kicked out of home and school, I moved to London and did a social worker cert. Then I moved to Paris and worked for a homeless charity. Then back to Dublin, where I ran into Ryan again when he was renovating St James' Home. Four years ago. It was love at second sight. We married and tried for a kid, but it turns out that because of my earlier abortion I can’t have children any more. But we stuck with each other – for a while. Because we were a team. We were partners.’ Christine dipped her hand into the crisp bowl, but her fingers grasped at space. ‘So, a four-year-old marriage and it was good for about two of them. When the economy booms, my god does it boom, and my god did we have a comfortable life for a while. And it’s useful having a handyman around. But now I’m in love with someone else. And Ryan knows. He’s always known. We’re well past that drama at this stage.’

  ‘So why are you here? Ryan and I was just the once. But you – you’re in love with someone else.’

  ‘And that’s my point. I have standards. I wouldn’t ever be with a married man. Do you understand, Tara? Is that making sense to you?’

  Tara, who didn’t need to hear a lecture, said, ‘And you still expect me to feel sorry for you because I slept with your husband? Really?’

  ‘Sorry for me? Oh, no – I don’t expect that. After all, you’re the type of woman who sleeps with married men, and therefore knowingly inflicts wounds on fellow sisters. Why would you do that? I mean, you had no idea that I don’t love Ryan. You didn’t know that at this stage we don’t have a conventional type of marriage.’

  ‘You don’t have any type of marriage.’

  ‘Oh, I have a marriage, Tara. And do you know how I know?’ Christine sipped from her glass. ‘Because you’re the kind of woman that a wife does not want to catch her husband staring at.’

  ‘Look, it’s never going to happen again.’

  ‘Yes, but only because Ryan has had his fun with you. I hope you liked being used? But I suppose I should be understanding – Ryan only tolerates reality because it allows him to screw unhappy women who are stranded there.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Tara snapped. I was happy. I should be happy now. I will be happy again.

  ‘Oh, don’t be defensive. I’m not saying you’re one of those unhappy women. You’re unhappy in an entirely different way. In fact, that’s why I’m here. You’re nothing like the others have been over the years. So I was curious.’

  ‘Curious? Christine, it’s not a mystery. It was just the once... I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘But Tara, you did know what you were thinking. And yes, it was just the once. But it was something. To him. To Ryan. See, my husband screws women. Lots of women. Women that are all the same. The type that think a peek up their little skirt will get a man to follow them around the world. But you – you’re an oddity. You’re something radically different to the usual sluts he sticks his dick into. And it’s not just your money, though of course he likes being around it. Being close to it. Being in it. As I said earlier – you’re not a cash girl in Spar. So that’s one of the reasons I’m here – to witness for myself what he saw in you. Someone who is rich and successful and therefore should be content. And yes, I can see it now. Your distinctive type of sadness. It’s the little-girl-lost eyes. The fear behind the courage. I finally get it. Because, of course, all men want their whores to be fundamentally unhappy.’

  Tara straightened on the stool and stared at the countertop as if it were a desk and she was being scolded by a teacher. Take it. You deserve it. Then she’ll leave. But she couldn’t help but ignore her own advice. ‘Look, let’s not do the whole slut-shaming thing.’ What am I talking about? Why am I even talking? Just let her vent and leave. ‘I told you already that I’m sorry. But it was nothing. Just something stupid.’

  ‘Just like the song.’

  Tara didn’t know what song she was talking about and now felt foolish as well as miserable. She wished Christine would go. Why wouldn’t she leave? Christine had humiliated her – surely that was mission accomplished? Mortifyingly, she felt her eyes glaze with the threat of tears.

  ‘So now that I’ve figured out what Ryan saw in you,’ Christine continued, ‘it still leaves me wondering what a woman like you saw in a married man like Ryan. As I’ve already said, you’re not the vacuous type of slut like the others. No. Sluts like you don’t sleep with a married man for no reason. You already have everything you’ve ever wanted.’

  ‘I. Am. Sorry.’

  ‘We’re both women – experienced women. We both know that if you’re l
ucky, you’ll find a few men during your life that you’re attracted to. Maybe you’ll fall in love with one.’ Christine picked up her glass and drained the red down. ‘But women are not into men. Jesus. No woman in her right mind likes men. Look at them. Take a glance out your front window. Most of them are disgusting. So you chose him – carefully.’

  Take control. Get rid of her. ‘Right, we’re done here.’

  ‘So why did someone like you carefully choose a married man like Ryan? Wait. I think I know. Ryan is handsome and sensual and you have history. So you know Ryan very well – in that you know that there’s nothing thought up by man or beast that he has not been into at some time or another. Sexually, I mean. And of course, you’re an artist – the wild, creative type. So I’m sure there’s a part of you that refuses to live peacefully in the very spellchecked and autocorrected world that is Lawrence Court with Dave the professor. So, tell me, is that it? Was that the reason? Is it that obvious? I would’ve thought an artist with all this—’ she gestured to the sprawl of bespoke kitchen ‘—would be less predictable and boring.’

  Tara stood, and gestured for Christine to do the same. But she remained sitting.

  ‘What about your marriage, Tara? How does that work again? You pretend to be faithful and your husband pretends not to care? It’s a cliché, no?’

  ‘You’re right to be angry. It was probably the worst decision I’ve ever made in my life. But you must leave now.’

  ‘No, it’s not the worst decision you’ve ever made in your life. You don’t know what that is yet. But you will soon.’

  Tara made a ‘huh?’ expression.

  ‘You know what?’ Christine continued. ‘Until a few minutes ago, I still felt sorry for you. I still felt that you didn’t deserve what’s coming. I mean, no one innocent at heart would deserve that.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘But after seeing you in your natural habitat, and listening to you, and seeing you with everything you’ve ever wanted, and seeing how you smugly decided that even that wasn’t enough, then yes – you deserve what you’re going to get. You deserve the shitstorm raging down the line towards you. I just wish – I really wish – that I could be there, right beside you, when it happens.’