The Accident

by S D Monaghan

  David pulled into Lawrence Court and almost clipped the orange Dyno Drains Service van parked in the circle outside Shay and Stephanie’s. As he slowed before the driveway pillars, there was a rap of knuckles against the bonnet. David lowered the glass and tried to smile at Shay.

  ‘David, I need access now! We can’t live like this. We’ll have to move out. It’s an impossible situation.’ Shay was beginning to get emotional. ‘The piping has totally backed up and hit critical mass. And do you know what the point of least resistance is? It’s our hall toilet – which has filled, overflowed and ruined the hallway with soiled water. Know why? Because there’s something blocking the pipe on your side of the boundary, beneath your patio.’

  David tried to focus, tried to get with the conversation, but it was pointless. ‘Now is not the time. OK? I’m sorry, Shay. I really am. Just give me till tomorrow.’

  Shay’s lower lip puckered. He wasn’t a man used to being denied anything. But David just pressed the accelerator and entered his driveway. Whatever was annoying Shay would soon be nullified by the stories he would be able to tell his friends and neighbours after David was arrested tomorrow. He parked next to Tara’s car. It was a twenty-foot driveway, but it stretched five years into the past. David walked up it, his life with Tara racing by him.

  The hallway smelled of mint, his wife’s signature tea. It’s her fault. If she hadn’t... If she could’ve just... David entered the front room and for a moment couldn’t help but be touched by the scope of Tara’s ambition; the style and taste she’d conjured up in just one day. He grabbed a bottle of Bushmills and poured a triple measure. He toyed with his drink, watching it, trying to resist it for a moment longer. He looked at his hands. There was the beginning of a slight quiver. Then he drained the glass and poured again. He threw it back, expecting it to taste better than the first one and was immediately disappointed. The alcohol wasn’t hitting him. Fear seemed to consume it before his system could. How he longed for that perfect but all-too-brief state of drunkenness where you wonder why anybody would ever want to be sober; that brief period when you are simultaneously clear-headed and uninhibited.

  He inhaled deeply, entered the kitchen – and there was his wife. Tara stood with her back to him, looking out through the opened slider that let in the water-patter sound from the lawn, where the sprinkler was helping the new grass to take. She called down the garden, ‘Dora honey – pussss-pussss-pussss! Come on home, sweetie. Treat time.’ Her top dipped a few inches at the nape of her neck, exposing the first few freckles that descended between her shoulder blades, mapping out a constellation of exquisite russet dapples.

  How can she be so casual? How can she presume it’ll all blow over? After what she did with Ryan? David wondered when the bump would begin to show. Would he ever see it? By being with Ryan, she’s effectively taken my child from me. Her pregnancy was suddenly like a ritual that David was excluded from, and always would be. He steadied his voice to say what he’d been waiting hours to unleash: I fucking hate you right now.

  But the very second he was about to speak, Tara turned about. Her face was glowing with the extra blood that makes pregnant women look so happy: her skin full as it was of healthy nutrients, empty as it was of abusive substances. Then David noticed the cigarette in her hand. He hadn’t seen her with a cigarette since she’d been his student.

  Without warning, she screamed, ‘You treacherous fucking bastard!’

  He ducked.

  Tara’s wine glass exploded against the wall behind him.

  Chapter Eight

  Five years ago, Tara had been one of a dozen students crammed around a table in a tutoring room of Trinity College. At the head of the table sat David, pointer in hand, a map of Europe unfurled behind him, and next to him, colour slides of MacArthur and Truman. Thirty-five years old, he was dressed in the ageing-hipster attire of suit jacket, T-shirt and Converse sneakers. There was a festive feel to the tutorial, as it was the last class of the semester. The oldest of David’s mature students – ladies in their sixties – had brought in cookies and expensive unseasonal strawberries with whipped cream, which seemed to have the effect of alcohol, making the group boisterous and rowdy as the treats were consumed. But David was disappointed at how distant Tara remained. Perhaps he’d only imagined that her gaze had often lingered on him a fraction of a second more than was necessary over the past few months.

  ‘OK,’ David announced. ‘Time’s up. Our semester is over, and I’m adjourning to O’Neill’s for a farewell pint. If any of my brilliant students want to accompany me, I’ll be getting the first round.’

  As chairs scraped against boards and a few students rose to their feet, Tara finally spoke, loud and assured, from the other end of the table. ‘You keep mentioning that we’ll be fine out here in the West as long as we have these “perfect wars”. What are they again?’

  A hush spread as the few standing bodies plopped back into their seats. Tara rarely spoke in class, but when she did, it was always worth listening to. There was also the fact that most of the young men wanted to sleep with her, so whenever she made a contribution it meant that they could stare at her without self-consciousness.

  David examined a small dollop of cream on his finger. He wanted to suck it clean, but thought that would make him look sleazy. Instead, he dropped his hand beneath the table and rubbed his finger back and forth on the side of the chair. Matching Tara’s gaze, David tried not to be obvious in his admiration for her curious brown eyes, her full lips and healthy, free-falling auburn hair.

  ‘When missiles, planes and drones do their job, it’s a perfect war – no infantry required,’ he explained.

  ‘And you honestly think that’s a good thing?’

  Her classmates steeled themselves for a show. Up to now, Tara had kept her counsel in David’s tutorials, but he was aware of her difficult reputation from her mainstream lecturers. They considered her dangerous: looks, sharp intellect, plus don’t-give-a-fuck confidence in a twenty-five-year-old student meant that she could have whatever she wanted in this world.

  ‘I didn’t say what I thought.’ David picked up a strawberry and pondered eating it, before returning it to the table between his perched elbows. ‘I’m here to tell you how it is – or rather was.’

  ‘So instead of solving things, we come up with machines to keep the status quo as the world spins on to its stupid end. It’s like deciding not to recycle because we’ve discovered that the human race is already past the point where the environmental devastation of the last century can be undone. Because: That Is Not The Point.’

  But surely it is?

  Emer, a nineteen-year-old, jumped in with: ‘And that’s the repetition of history right there. In the male attitude of choosing submergence in a carefully constructed fake world of insulation instead of – Making A Difference. The Generation Xbox. Those who expect interactivity, immediacy and immersion – the three ‘I’s of the twenty-first century first-world life. That’s why we’re so nauseatingly at ease with the “gamification” of war.’

  ‘Nicely put, Emer,’ Tara said.

  David pretended to tie his lace so he could roll his eyes. When young women got sisterly with each other, he thought it was best not to say anything.

  Tara continued, ‘But David, you didn’t answer my question: the perfect war – do you think it’s a good thing?’

  David picked up the strawberry again, took a bite and chewed, pretending to enjoy it even though he wasn’t pushed on strawberries. Swallowing, he said, ‘In 1939 – and for thousands of years before that – twenty-year-olds were queuing up to die for us. Tara, do you know many twenty-year-olds who are willing to die for you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then I think it’s a good thing.’

  ‘You’re being vague. That could be pro- or anti-war.’

  ‘It’s not vague. It’s precise. You didn’t ask me if I was pro- or anti-war.’

  ‘I’m asking you now.’

  He
shrugged: maybe yes, maybe no. ‘I’m pro-survival.’

  There was a ripple of laugher. Tara stared at him, then smiled – was it coquettish? – before causing a sensation with: ‘Fuck you, Mr Miller.’

  David ate the remainder of the strawberry, glad to be able to chew on something to hide the panicked tightening of his throat. What do I do now? If anyone else had said that, he would have immediately kicked them out, before reporting them. Being thirty-five suddenly felt so ancient. He was a decade older than Tara. She was his student. He was a cliché.

  Get a hold of yourself, David. You are the tutor. She is the student. Drolly, he said, ‘And on that bombshell, I’m off for a pint.’

  Half the class accompanied him across the road to a popular bar on the late-night student scene. The split-level pub was slowly filling up with Thursday-night revellers as grungy rock pulsated from the speakers. David managed to sit next to Tara in the alcove his class occupied. As he waited for her to notice him, he wondered if there was a way to sit in a trendy bar which demonstrated that he regularly sat in trendy bars when he no longer did – all his free time being now consumed either by correcting essays or organising lectures so that he appeared to be a teacher worth listening to. Tara was animatedly talking to two young men whose names David could never remember. None of his students, besides Tara, interested him. Their papers were mostly half-hearted, with paragraphs trailing off without conclusion as if they were incapable of holding a thought long enough to do anything with it. But Tara was different. Her work was singularly focused.

  David soaked up the smooth jawline of her profile. She was about five foot ten, but she held herself with such poise that she seemed taller. Her navy skirt matched her jacket, which covered a blouse with the top buttons popped to expose just enough cleavage. It was impossible to tell if she was wearing a bra. David didn’t think she was. He had no doubt that she would be spectacular naked.

  Suddenly Tara turned to him. ‘Hi David,’ she said, waiting for him to start it all.

  He hunted about for a topic of conversation but failed to come up with one.

  ‘Thanks for a great semester,’ she continued. ‘Didn’t think I’d really like a module of Modern European War History – but I did.’

  There was no flirtation in her eyes, so he adjusted his own. ‘Why pick it, then?’

  ‘To challenge myself. I didn’t know anything about history.’

  ‘What are you majoring in?’

  ‘Psychology.’

  ‘What are you going to do when you’re finished?’

  ‘Hopefully something interesting. Hey, is it really true that you still haven’t even started your PhD? How is that? I mean, they’re letting you teach.’

  David shifted on the sofa. It actually hadn’t been a huge surprise that David had become a lecturer, despite being the only member of staff in the history department not to have a PhD. Even though he’d just finished his Masters on Modern European History, he’d already been published in one major journal and several minor ones. In contrast, most of the older senior lecturers had come to their current positions by producing turgid, overwritten dissertations on the Persian-Grecian war of the classical world. Nevertheless, despite David’s individualised brilliance, the dean had still needed to pull in favours to trump the institutionalised reservations against his lack of doctorate.

  ‘I’ll start it next year,’ David said. ‘Right now, I’ve got to teach rather than do research. I need the money.’ Just three short sentences were all he required to inform Tara that he was broke. The fact was that after his mother’s recent stroke, she was close to requiring full-time care and David needed as many classes as possible to save up for that inevitability. He hurried the conversation on. ‘I was editing an article I’m writing for a journal all day yesterday. I spent the entire morning working on the introduction and I took a comma out. In the afternoon I put it back in.’

  Tara laughed: a deep, raspy, sexy laugh. ‘Very good. Wilde. I get it.’

  ‘Yeah, good old Oscar,’ David said, pretending that he’d intended to adapt the quote rather than steal it. ‘Tell me, what’s your story? Introduce yourself, madam.’

  ‘Born in the arse of County Roscommon to a mother who was a barmaid and a father who was a forester. Only child. Happy adolescence. Hurling fan. No serious illness. No allergies. Moved to Dublin at nineteen. Pulled pints in McDaids for a year. Then did a degree in art. Dropped out after two years. Pulled pints again. Signed up for this degree. Ambition to become financially independent and successful without wasting my life as a worker-drone. I like cats. Occasional smoker. Favourite meal: penne rigate.’

  David let her words wash over him, loving the velvety tone of her voice, the calm intelligence contained in it. His senses immersed themselves in her warm breath, the soft pant of her voice, the tickling feel of her out-of-place hair brushing against his cheek. Then he said, ‘Well, that leaves me with much to assimilate. So I’m going to the bar to figure out how to best that. Want anything?’

  She shook her head.

  David walked off, his heart hammering away, and ordered another double Bushmills and Coke. He felt that the young men queuing next to him sensed how old he was. Anyway, the fact that he was drinking Scotch rather than a craft beer meant that he might as well have been wearing a Davy Crockett hat.

  ‘You would like something more, sir?’ the gorgeous Latvian barmaid asked as she passed over his drink.

  You bet. ‘Nah, I’m OK.’ He sipped his drink, feeling it fuel his courage, loosening his tongue, spreading his shoulders. Alcohol rooted him. It put him in the moment. He understood how it had the power to change anything boring into something better. He drifted back towards the alcove, where Tara was talking to some guy in denim jeans and a black leather jacket. His fringe hung fashionably over one eye. He looked like the drummer in a shoe-gazing band of pretentious pricks; the kind of guy who tells you that he’s a ‘musician’ before much later explaining that he’s ‘in retail’ six days a week and in a pub band on the seventh.

  As David hovered near the table, Tara introduced him to the group. ‘This is Ryan – my boyfriend. I may have mentioned him once or twice…’ She trailed off, laughing. Ryan was also about twenty-five, by the looks of it. He was probably her first serious boyfriend. That meant that this was big, that this was the relationship that all future relationships would be measured against.

  David backed away, finishing his drink in two swallows. He made towards the exit, his shoulders a little hunched. The way Tara had said her boyfriend’s name – protective, terse and burdened with consequence – it was as if Ryan was a unique species unto himself; one that she had discovered.

  Outside, David fumbled out a cigarette and managed to light it after five strikes. He then walked among herds of roaming young men as they hunted for alcohol. Scanning the luminous signs, he decided that he was hungry. Otherwise, he had nowhere to go except home to a tiny rented one-bed apartment on the ground floor of a docklands sky-rise.

  As David chose a hamburger joint, he noticed a junkie huddled next to the entrance, his eyes rolling as he drifted into the black hole of his addiction.

  Right now, he’s happier than I am.

  After collecting a cheeseburger, David took a two-seater table and scanned the panorama. The lads were scattered in boozy groups, while the young women marinated in the indoor heat, eager for the months to pass until another bare-limbed hedonistic summer arrived. After a single bite, David put aside the burger, dolefully reflecting on how his youth was no longer fading – it had, in fact, already gone.

  And then, through the glass, he saw Tara. She was smoking elegantly, making arcs with her hand as she raised the cigarette to her lips. She pulled on it deeply. David took in her curves, the shortness of her skirt as it hitched up her thigh, her black ankle boots. She blew out a funnel of smoke and ran her fingers through her deep auburn hair, pulling forward strands so that they fell over her eyes. Next to her was Ryan.

  They entered
and walked down the central aisle. After collecting fries and a Coke, Tara led the way to the table in front of David, who pretended to check his phone. Ryan slipped in beside her and sucked from his litre cup, his throat expanding and contracting like a snake’s. If David did that, he reflected, he’d be popping antacid tabs for a week.

  Suddenly, without having said a word, Ryan stood and walked away. Tara called after him, but he just kept going, and exited to the damp city night. She looked down at her chips and mouthed, ‘Prick.’

  They’d had a fight. Excellent. Sometimes life does do you a favour. The build-up was perfect. Should David cross over to her? Of course. When? In a minute. He was amazed that a young man would just walk away from a girl like Tara and not even look over his shoulder. Was Ryan that good-looking? Was he that cool?

  Tara nonchalantly finished her fries. There were no tears, no panicked phone calls, no desperate texts being tapped out. There was just a frown and a pertness to her lips. She wasn’t heartbroken; she was just pissed off because she was used to getting what she wanted. Tara was probably spoilt, but that was OK. It would be a pleasure to give her whatever she wanted. David imagined being able to afford to order Tara cocktails between courses at Michelin-starred restaurants, and having a grand time as the money slipped away.

  Another guy sat in beside Tara. He was tall, and despite the weather wore just a football top that hugged his muscles like body armour. Leaning in, he muttered something that made Tara recoil.

  She responded with, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Kev,’ he answered, in a hoarse Dublin accent. ‘But we don’t need names.’

  ‘Well, Kev, I’m not your type.’

  ‘You look my type.’

  ‘But I have the capacity to think.’ Tara slid out and moved between the grazing diners, and then down the stairs to the basement where the toilets were. Kev waited a few moments before dumping his tray and following.