Eager to Please

by Julie Parsons

  He got up from his desk and walked out on to the landing. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to the wooden cabinet screwed to the wall. He reached inside and pressed the stop/eject button on the video recorder. The machine clicked and whirred and a cassette slid smoothly out. He picked up a new one from the shelf above and fed it into the recorder’s wide-open mouth. Then, with the old tape in his hand, he walked back to his office. He labelled it, dated it, then turned on his own machine. He watched the tape slide in, click into place, then he pressed play. He looked at her face, joyful in the sunshine, and wondered how long it had been before she could smile like that again. He watched her and wondered. Over and over and over.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS DISAPPOINTING really, Jack Donnelly thought as he wandered through the shopping centre, eating an apple and thinking about what he’d do for lunch. There had been, after all, no real mystery about the death, the murder, in fact, of poor little Karl O’Hara. He was just another junkie killed by just another dealer. It was shocking, tragic, depressing, all those sentiments. But it wasn’t a mystery. Jack had gone to visit all the people whose names had popped out of the computer, including Karl’s girlfriend. She had sobbed bitter tears all over the baby boy who bounced happily on her knee as she told how Karl had tried going on methadone, stuck to it for a while, then slipped back to the real thing. Then when she’d had the baby he’d told her he was going to give it all up, try to get himself together. And for a while it seemed fine. They’d been offered a flat by the Corporation, and there was some money coming in for a change. But then she realized that Karl was dealing as well as using. She’d tried to get him to stop. But he told her it was only until he got a few bob together. Then he’d give it all up, buy a van, get into the delivery business like his old man.

  ‘So, what happened?’ Jack leaned towards her and tickled the kid beneath his ample red chin. The baby looked at him with an expression of amazed surprise, then looked away, looked back, and burst into peals of excited laughter.

  Karl was trying the oldest trick in the book, and the one least likely to succeed. He was using more of the gear than he was selling. Helping himself to samples of the product. Something had to give, and at the end of a very long day it was Karl’s frail, undernourished and wizened little body that succumbed.

  The girlfriend’s bags were packed for London. She was going to stay with her sister.

  ‘I’ve had it with this dump,’ she sobbed, while the baby pushed himself up on his sturdy little legs and pulled at her nose and hair. Jack reached over and took the child from her, taking care not to rest his wet and reeking bottom on his lap.

  ‘And before you go,’ he said, unpeeling the kid’s sticky fingers from his tie, ‘you’ll tell me who was the bollocks who threw your Karl into the sea, won’t you?’

  She did. And she told him a lot more than he’d asked. All kinds of intelligence that would be very useful in the days to come. As he passed the baby back to her, surreptitiously wiping his hands on a piece of crumpled tissue from his trouser pocket, he pulled out a couple of twenty-pound notes.

  ‘You might need these, for the little one.’

  She turned away, her sobs even louder. He slid the money under a plastic bowl half filled with soggy cornflakes and stood up.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said, and meant it.

  Poor kid, he thought as he turned into the supermarket and joined the queue at the sandwich counter. Not a great start in life for either mother or child. He thought of his own daughters. They were aged six and ten – bright little things, cute and lovely. Well behaved, got on fine at school, no trouble at all. They even seemed to be coping with his split from their mother. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d actually made the break. He’d been living on his own for three whole months in a one-bedroomed flat in the new development, just by the inner harbour, barely big enough for the three of them when they came to stay, every second weekend.

  It was the younger of the two, Rosa, who asked all the really difficult questions.

  ‘Don’t you love Mammy any more? Do you love us still? Why did you leave us if you say you love us? Do you love anyone else? Mammy says you have a girlfriend. She says you’re going to get married again and then maybe you’ll have more children, and you won’t want us any more. Is that true, Daddy? Are you coming home tonight? Why won’t you come home tonight? Mammy’s cooking your favourite dinner, roast chicken and lots of crunchy potatoes. Please, Daddy, just come home for one night. Please, Daddy, we miss you.’

  That was typical of Joan, leaving him to make all the explanations.

  ‘And, Daddy, we don’t like her new friend. He smokes. He makes a smell everywhere. He sleeps on your side of the bed, and he always wants to watch football when we don’t. We want you to come home and tell him to go away.’

  He didn’t like being a cuckold. He could see that everyone at work knew. They were polite about it. But he’d caught the smirks, the whispered asides. He wondered if Joan had slept with any of his friends. He asked her, when eventually he got around to confronting her about the messages on the answering machine, the cigarette butts in the ashtray in the sitting room, the used disposable razor in the bin beneath the sink, when his electric model was there on the shelf.

  ‘That’s all you care about, isn’t it, Jack?’ she screamed at him. ‘That I might have fouled your miserable little patch. Thinking about yourself for a change, is that right, Jack? You don’t give a damn about me. You never have. Why did you marry me? Tell me why? Or maybe I should tell you, get it all out in the open for once.’

  He’d cringed then, waiting for it.

  ‘You liked fucking me, didn’t you? I was easy. I was pretty then, and I was available. And do you remember when we got engaged, whenever we had a row or a disagreement over anything, what was your answer to it? You’d go out and you’d get plastered, and then you’d come to my flat and we’d fall into bed and that would be that. But it couldn’t carry on like that, could it? Sooner or later you were going to have to start talking to me, getting to know me, letting me get to know you. But you didn’t want that, did you? And even after I had the girls, I thought you’d want it then, but somehow you didn’t. You were happier talking to them, getting to know them, than you ever were getting to know me. So don’t you give me a hard time about what I’ve been doing. Just don’t try it.’

  She said a lot more that night too. About the way he lived his life. Or rather the way he didn’t. She was right about a lot of it too, he had to admit. And he wondered for a moment if maybe this might be the catalyst that could make it all happen between them. He tried to kiss her, but she wasn’t having any of it. She told him to go. And it was easier to do what she wanted, although he could see what the bitch was up to now. Rewriting history, coming the injured party with everyone they knew, so there was no sympathy heading his way.

  And what had he done with the rest of his life? Catching petty thieves and locking them up. Catching mad bastards and locking them up too. It was all pretty pointless, he thought. Not so high on the list of services to humanity. But on the other hand who was he to be so dismissive of the whole business? There were plenty of other guys, he knew, who loved the way of life and got real satisfaction from it. Who relished every masculine moment. But not him. The trouble was that he didn’t love anything else either. Aimless, that’s what I am, he thought as he cast his eye across the list of sandwiches on offer, and picked, as always, Swiss cheese and tomato, aimless and truly pathetic.

  He paid for his sandwich and walked out of the shopping centre. Bright sunlight pricked at his eyes, making them water. He fished around in his jacket pocket for his dark glasses. He sat down on a bench in the little paved area between the shops and the new cinema complex that had just been built. The metal back to the seat was comfortingly warm as he leant against it and took a bite of cheese and tomato. In spite of his gloom he was looking forward to picking up that bollocks of a dealer this afternoon. Now that w
as useful, that was worthwhile. He could see examples of the guy’s handiwork everywhere around him. In the pale, sullen faces of the kids who lolled around him, shrieking abuse at each other and anyone else who came too close. Junkie voices, he thought. An unnatural tone that had nothing to do with accent and everything to do with unreality.

  He finished his sandwich and leaned back. His eyes closed behind the tinted lenses, his head dropped on to his chest. He dozed. And woke suddenly, jerking upright as a car alarm nearby began to sound. He blinked, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then put them back again, stretched and straightened, glancing at his watch to make sure that his lunch break wasn’t yet over. He noticed for the first time the woman seated by herself in the corner diagonally across, squashed between a row of parked cars and a litter bin. She was taking items of food from a plastic container. An apple, an orange, a small sandwich, a bottle of water. She arranged them carefully beside her on the bench. She looked around as if she was checking to see if anyone was watching, then she began to eat. Quickly, neatly, breaking the sandwich up into small pieces, cutting slivers from the apple with a plastic knife, breaking the orange into segments. Her movements were precise and tidy. She reminded him of the sparrows that hopped on springy legs between the lunchtime strollers, picking up scraps of food invisible to the human eye. It was only as she was finishing and stood up, turning to face him as she pushed scraps of orange peel into the litter bin, that he recognized her. Andy Bowen was right. She wasn’t gorgeous any longer.

  He stayed very still, wondering if she would see him. But she was completely self-absorbed. She sat down again on the bench and began to pack away her lunch box. She drained the last of the water from the bottle and put it back in her bag, then she stood up and began to walk away.

  To follow or not to follow? He thought of the way it had been that day in the house. Detective Superintendent Michael McLoughlin bending over the body. Blood everywhere. So much of it. The post-mortem report said that he was exsanguinated, that he’d bled out. He remembered McLoughlin talking about it afterwards, saying that it looked like someone had taken a hatchet to him, and commenting on how calm she was. They’d thought it was shock, because she’d been there in the same room with him for at least twelve, maybe even fourteen hours. She’d have watched him die. And then when they let her go, cut the handcuffs off her wrists, then she got upset, started to cry all right. But it was the daughter she was worried about. Made them phone the hospital immediately to see how she was after the accident. That was all she seemed to be worried about, that the kid was OK, that she wasn’t upset. McLoughlin always said they should have suspected something wasn’t right immediately. But she was so clear about everything, about what had happened that night in the house.

  The house. That he had been invited to how many times? He remembered the first time was for the baby’s christening. Martin had sent out a general invitation. Everyone was welcome. It was a beautiful sunny day. And one hell of a party. It went on all night. Martin was the life and soul, until he got so drunk he keeled over. Looking back on it now, with two children of his own, he wondered how Rachel had coped with them all. And there had been that moment, he had remembered it afterwards, when he had gone upstairs, looking he supposed for the bathroom, opened a couple of doors off the landing, and had seen her feeding the baby. It was dark in the room and he had pulled back quickly, embarrassed by the sight of her bare breast, so full and white in the light from the stairwell. He noticed that there was someone else with her, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her low chair, his hand on the baby’s head, and recognized that it was Dan. Well, he was the baby’s godfather after all. He’d been carrying her around all afternoon, showing her off, giving Rachel a hand with the food and the drink and everything. While Martin had done what Martin always did. Hung out with his buddies. The other guys from Special Branch. The elite, they liked to think. Always a group apart.

  He remembered that he had felt – what was it? – guilt, somehow, that he had intruded into the quiet, calm world of the baby. And suddenly responsible for the racket that came up from downstairs, for the crowd of stragglers drinking their heads off in the kitchen and living room, and for the stench of alcohol and cigarettes that wafted into the small, quiet nursery. He wondered if he should leave. But Martin had grabbed him by the arm as he came down into the hall, shoving a pint glass and a plate of sausages into his hand, and that had been that.

  It was a lovely house. Or it had been. He was one of the team who searched it, looking for secrets. There had been none. There had been nothing hidden. Just the lingering smell of gunpowder, strongest in the sitting room, beside the stained carpet. He remembered too that he had taken the nightdress they had found in the skip and compared it with the others in the chest of drawers and the clothes in the wardrobe. Same brand names, same size, same range of colours. And he had felt bad, guilty and awkward as he turned from the cupboard and looked at the bed. It was unmade. A cup of tea had been spilt across the bedside table. Underwear was lying on the floor, and a pair of shoes were thrown awkwardly in a corner. The air was stale and rank.

  Had she been back there since then, he wondered as he waited and counted to ten. Then he stood up and moved out on to the footpath, turning right to walk up the main street. He could see her up ahead. Her grey hair stood out clearly among the crowds of lunch-time shoppers. And he remembered her father who had taught him when he was a student in Templemore. Old Gerry Jennings. A good guy, one of the best. So proud of his daughter. The first one in the family to go to university. To become an architect of all things. Making things, building things. Making money, Gerry, someone had said, and they all laughed. And he laughed with them. Yeah, making money to keep me in my old age, when I’m shot of all you lot.

  She had stopped at the traffic lights and was waiting for them to change. He hung back, turning away from her, watching her in the reflection of the newsagent’s window. When the lights changed she hesitated, then rushed across the road, barely missing bumping into a young woman with a baby in a buggy and a child by the hand. He turned and crossed too, quickening his pace to catch up with her, just in time to see her disappear through the large bronze doors of the huge modern church which dominated the town centre.

  Perhaps a fit of penitence, he thought as he paused, dipped the first two fingers of his right hand into the holy-water stoop and muttered, automatically, the words coming without thought, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen,’ feeling as always his mother’s warm hand on his, hearing his mother’s low voice breathing in his ear. It was much darker inside, apart from the light that streamed through the floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows at the northern end of the nave. St Michael, the archangel, vanquished evil in yellow, blue and red, with the Holy Ghost in the shape of a large white dove looking on from its vantage point in Heaven. Mass was being celebrated and he saw that Rachel had taken her seat midway between the altar and the last pew. She had slipped on to her knees, bowed her head and buried her face in her hands. Her grey hair was not out of place here, among this congregation of the elderly faithful. He sat down in the pew closest to the door and closed his eyes. She had looked very striking on the day of her husband’s funeral. She had worn black, of course, but he remembered that she had carried a white rose. The photograph that had been on all the front pages the next morning was of the moment when she had thrown it into the open grave. A small white splash against the darkness that surrounded.

  He remembered the drive from the morgue at St Vincent’s Hospital to the huge Spanish-style church at the top of Kill Avenue. He had helped carry the coffin up the aisle. He shifted, suddenly uncomfortable, remembering its weight, and the way it had cut into his shoulder. He had tried not to think what was inside it. But in spite of himself he had begun to imagine Martin’s body, the way it would look if the polished oak of the coffin fell away. The thought had made him stumble, almost slip on the shiny marble floor, and to straighten himself he had clutched
at whoever was on the opposite side, feeling the warm roughness of the heavy dark blue uniform. A relief when they had reached the altar and their burden could be laid down on the waiting trestles.

  Such a public occasion. So high profile. The playing of the last post, the removing of the flag, the careful folding and handing over of it. The Garda Commissioner coming to shake her hand and commiserate. Even the Minister for Justice and the President’s aide-de-camp and a gaggle of politicians. TV cameras, newspapers. The works. And all she probably wanted was to be on her own, to grieve by herself, without the public scrutiny. But the public scrutiny of the funeral was as nothing compared to what had followed. A lot of lives had been ruined that night all those years ago.

  Silvery bells rang and he opened his eyes. Around him the devout were preparing themselves for communion. On the altar the priest raised the silver salver and jug.

  ‘Take this, all of you, and eat. For this is the body of my son which he has given up for thee. Take this, all of you, and drink. For this is the blood of my son which he has given up for thee.’

  The bells rang again. On cue the men and women in the seats around him began to shuffle into the aisle. He watched the silent column form and waited to see if she would join in. But she didn’t move. He stood up and took his place in the queue. As he passed by her seat he glanced down. She was staring ahead. Tears were streaming down her face and she was mouthing silently to herself. He stood before the priest. He held up his hands, one palm crossed over the other. He closed his eyes and heard the muttered intoning, ‘the body of Christ, the body of Christ, the body of Christ’. He felt the wafer against his skin and raised his hands to his mouth. The saliva on his tongue received its dryness and it began to melt. He swallowed. A sense of peace flooded through him as he turned and walked back to his seat. The miracle had happened as it always did. He believed again. All doubts washed away. Now he knelt to pray, the words tumbling one over the other. ‘Holy Father, help me now and forever. Holy Mother, protect me and my children from sin and darkness.’ He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against his knuckles. ‘Thank you, Lord, for this gift of eternal life. Thank you, Lord. Thank you.’