Deadly Confederacies

by Martin Malone

  Bereft, feeling as though a part of him has been lost, he opens a bottle of whiskey. The apartment feels strangely naked without her touches. She forgot the painting of the galleon caught in high winds and raging sea – or perhaps she hadn’t forgotten, had instead made a decision not to take it, because she knew he liked it a lot, and she would think of that whenever she laid eyes upon it.

  Over the next couple of days, he sits for longer than usual at the café – middays run into late afternoons. There is no reason for him to hurry home. On Tuesday, he espies the new couple walking under an archway. He watches them. They are a distance away, across the esplanade, between him and a mill of people and pigeons on the wet flagstones. The skies had cried this morning, briefly. Maria and whoever. Holding hands, her leaning in against his shoulder, smiling. He is young, this new man, and walks properly. Should he go and warn him of her wandering eyes, her poor driving skills, how she cannot tolerate the company of human wrecks – how her carelessness had put one man in a grave, and another within sight of one? Or has she already told him? It’s possible, he supposes, but unlikely. She probably gave him a sanitised version of events. In her mind, the van driver had been driving too fast – he had not seen her. His statement to the Italian police, asserting this as a truth, had most likely kept her out of gaol. It also helped her case that the driver had previously been banned for drunk driving. Still, the truth is there – buried – but it never alters, or loses its sting.

  Infrequently, he had thought of his son and former wife, and had asked himself how they were getting along without him. A couple of times he’d stared at his mobile phone and wanted to dance his fingers on the digits. One time, he had done it … the call rang into an answering machine. Anthony would be 15 now, Rosemary 36. They probably think he is dead. Rosemary would have received his life insurance – that’s after seven years of being missing, yeah? Then you can be declared dead for legal purposes. He isn’t sure, but maybe for that reason alone she wouldn’t be thrilled to hear his voice. What happens to paid out insurance on a man who turns out not to be dead?

  He’s never before experienced the swell of loneliness that now pervades his whole being – wreaking devastation with his nerves. In a fit of temper last night, he’d wrenched the handrail free and let it fall onto the stairs. He drank several shots of whiskey in quick succession, as though this might quell the fire raging within his bones. Thinking, thinking – his thought-blades that cut and tore at his soul in a bout of prolonged mental anguish; a torture that seems to happen to him mostly at night, when the power of the past is strongest. It is the wolves circling, beginning to close in. He’d rang Maria, but she wouldn’t answer. Clicked him off after telling him to ‘Fuck off and leave me alone’ in response to a dawn phone call.

  There they are – the new couple. Sadness bites. He looks at his phone on the table, lying on the top of the newspaper, beside his notebook … the number not Maria’s. He rings, mindful of someone watching him – a someone asking himself about the sad-looking man at the corner table, apprehension replacing the sadness as he waits, phone to ear.

  ‘Hello?’ a man’s voice answers.

  ‘I’m looking to speak with Rosemary … Leary.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘She used to be friends with my wife.’

  Silence.

  ‘My mother died last year … I can put you on to Herb, my stepfather?’

  Silence.

  ‘Hello,’ the young man’s voice says quietly.

  Garcia says, ‘No, it’s okay. Who are you?’

  ‘Spanner.’

  So he has my nickname.

  He is forcing himself beyond the shock of learning of Rosemary’s death.

  ‘How’s your father?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh … and what happened to him?’

  ‘He was lost at sea.’

  This is what she had told him.

  He hears a voice, a man asking who’s on the phone.

  Garcia says, ‘I’m terribly sorry to learn about your mam and dad.’

  ‘That’s life,’ his son says, ‘but thanks.’

  If someone is watching him, what he sees is a man with tears streaming down his face. His son’s voice … Rosemary …. If he had stayed, could he have prevented her death? Had his leaving her wounded her deeply and set in train an illness? No. She’d wanted to be rid of him. He should not have left; not when it was she who’d wanted to leave.

  She’d hurt him in the way of women who know their men. She said he hadn’t got the spark to make it as a singer/songwriter – would never amount to anything much more than a caterwauler in a pub. Their interminable rows pushed and pushed him. He had to leave so he could tame the wolves that were sniffing around the shreds of his sanity. He hears now their howling from the woods of his mind.

  With some considerable mental and emotional effort, he stands. Looks around. He will walk for a while, that helps. He might catch sight of something beautiful that adds a reason for a living – flowers, a magical pattern of birds in flight, young lovers holding hands. Perhaps he will sit in the coolness of a church and light a votive candle for Rosemary. Do small living in the now things to disperse the pack of wolves.

  She’d found happiness with someone else – good. His son thinks his father is dead. Good, too. Clouds have silver linings. The world moves on. He has given too much of himself to the people-watchers here. It is time to find another café. Perhaps another city.

  A day unlike any other

  He notices, because she is ignoring him, grey skies overhead and black clouds to the west. Two magpies; one follows the other across his eyeline. A sudden lift of wind touches rain-kissed daffodils into a frenzied dance on a margin of estate greenery. He is also aware of a fleeting metallic scent of rain, the slow and heavy trawl of traffic in both directions. Thick bad breath of diesel fumes. Up ahead, a speed van. A black cat with two white paws waiting outside the closed doors of an Indian restaurant. Driving a Nissan Almera, a man for whom he had once worked. A car the same make and model and navy colouring as one he used to own. Beside him, her strong silence.

  They had been walking for a mile, from the bridge over the river, along the main street, towards the rented house they call home, but know that it is not. For something to say, he says, ‘It’s going to rain.’

  The young woman grunts.

  He says, ‘You’ll be grand.’ After his remark fails to elicit a response, he adds, ‘We should get a hurry on.’

  But she does not quicken her pace.

  They are passing the Pakistani’s house; it has slates halfway down its gable ends, resembling, to the young man’s mind, a German soldier’s World War II helmet. He remembers saying this to her before, and so refrains from mentioning it, and the fact that his mother used to work for Mr Sood, for she also knows this. He thinks that perhaps the problem with them is that each has run out of new things to tell the other.

  She says, ‘Don’t …’.

  ‘I wasn’t about to,’ he says.

  ‘You say it every time we pass that fucking house.’

  ‘Sometimes you mention it before I do,’ he says.

  ‘Only to stop you telling me.’

  Once, they had both worked at a banking call centre. It was where they’d first met, in the staff canteen. Their salaries were poor, but combined it made for fair. In the downturn they lost their jobs, his going shortly before hers. Swamped in debt, their home was repossessed, so too his car. Even the baby she had been expecting turned out to be a mirage. It was as though their coming to live together had cursed them. The crash, he corrects himself, it wasn’t a curse – it had to do with the crash. Cunt of a year, 2008. Blame the government – smug Ahern and his ‘go commit suicide’ to his detractors. Bluff ‘Diddy Man’ Cowen and his picture in the art gallery – fair play to
the guy who did the stunt. All members of the LLLS – Living Like Lords Society – on their fat fucking pensions while the rest of us are shit in the loo. No flush.

  *

  In the sitting room, he turns on the TV and lounges on the sofa, his shoes and coat on.

  ‘It’s your turn,’ she calls to him from the kitchen.

  To make dinner, he remembers. He doesn’t want to cook. She will pick at whatever he cooks. Critique with small sighs.

  ‘Use the nailbrush – your nails are filthy,’ she says, as she passes through the sitting room to the bathroom.

  He watches her, shakes his head, then rubs at the dark stubble on his face.

  She’s getting so fucking fat, he thinks, while I’m losing weight.

  The doc had told her she needed to have that lump in her left breast checked out. Another entry in a long list of shitty happenings. What is he supposed to say? They don’t tell you that. Oh yeah: listen, hug, comfort, console. How do you manage that with someone who carves you with her eyes? Fill her with optimism, he supposes. Paint her a pretty picture, say she’ll be grand. Think positively. It might be what she needs to hear, even if she knows they are all out of pretty pictures.

  ‘For …’ she says, emerging from the bathroom. She is biting her tongue, he knows – he should be cooking something.

  She is using that antiseptic wash on her hands instead of washing them. And she never washes her hands if she only peed.

  ‘Did you use all of the toilet paper?’ he says, remembering that she had a couple of days ago. Using the last leaf of bog roll is like taking the last Oreo biscuit on the plate: out-and-out selfish.

  ‘Have you got the dinner on?’ she says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’m not cooking … end of story,’ she says, slouching into the armchair, crossing her legs and folding her arms.

  ‘What’s left out there?’ he says, then sighs.

  Payday is tomorrow. Visiting the doctor had taken up their last fifty euros – money they’d put by over two weeks to get her to the doctor. They’d applied for a medical card, but hadn’t got any word back. She had called the department and been told there was a delay in processing applications.

  ‘I dunno,’ she says, ‘a can of tuna maybe, pasta.’

  She’d been crying too. Fresh tears had fallen a few minutes ago.

  ‘Oven chips?’ he says.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Crinkly ones?’ he says.

  He only ate those, while she prefers thin cut like you get in Mickey D’s.

  ‘Thin,’ she says.

  ‘Beans?’ he says.

  Her silence brings his eyes from the TV.

  ‘Get up off your fucking arse and look,’ she snaps.

  ‘Why don’t you fuck off with yourself!’ he says irritably, but with an added something that is close to bitterness, and worse, outright dismissiveness.

  Then she goes bawling her eyes out.

  ‘It might be … what did the doctor say? “be-nine”, right?’ he says, ‘it could be … you don’t … we don’t know yet. The doctor said it was best to be on the safe side.’

  She dabs a tissue to her eyes. He’d never seen her eyes so red from crying. Not even after she’d miscarried.

  ‘It might be nothing,’ he says.

  ‘It is something,’ she says in a knowing way.

  He stands, considers hugging her, squeezing her shoulder to show that he is there for her. It would be a lie. Of course he would stand by her, but the hugging and touching and kissing is stuff of the past between them. He hadn’t realised that until this very moment.

  ‘I’ll do us egg and chips,’ he says, squeezing her hand.

  ‘We’ve no eggs.’

  ‘Beans it is.’

  ‘Peas.’

  ‘Peas, so,’ he says.

  He hates peas, especially mushy. He wants to say this, but she is sick. If not with cancer, then from the worry of possibly having it, and so she doesn’t need to hear him bitching about little stuff.

  He is glad to be in the kitchen and away from the sight of her misery, and would murder to have money for a couple of pints. He wonders if she told her parents. Not over the phone – it would have to be a sit-down job. Probably at their place – he wouldn’t be present. She wouldn’t tell him that she had broken the news until she had it done. They owe both sets of parents a lot of money; handouts for this and that to pay bills, and had long exhausted those sources of revenue. Still, desperate, he’d asked his dad the other day for a loan, and was met with a sigh and a quiet refusal. He hadn’t got it to lend, he said. Her parents had said that she should move back in with them – her bedroom was there. For her. So, without saying a bad word about him, they had managed to cut his feet off at the ankles. Her mother never liked him – her father likes no one.

  No chips. Croquettes. Bought cheap from Tesco. After they’ve eaten, she says she is going out for an hour.

  ‘Where?’ he says.

  ‘Mam’s,’ she says.

  She has no money for a bus, and her parents’ house is a long walk.

  ‘Do you want me to go with you?’ he says quietly, half hoping that she doesn’t.

  ‘No, Mam is collecting me,’ she says.

  ‘You …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Later, she sends him a text to say that she is staying over. He retires to bed shortly after midnight. He misses her. Even if there is a divide in the bed, and they had taken to sleeping back to back, it had always made him feel good to know that she was within touching distance.

  He feels empty without her. Unable to sleep, he returns to the sofa and watches a DVD she had said they’d watched before – he’d insisted he had not. Minutes into the movie he remembers its middle and ending. She is so often so right about things, while he misses the mark.

  He texts her goodnight with an x, and waits for her response. But there’s no reply.

  In the morning, the cold awakens him. He checks his phone to see if she’d messaged him, and shakes his head on his way to the bathroom. Jen never fails to answer his texts. If she didn’t text she would ring, or send a ‘call me’ message.

  The toilet paper holder is empty. If she were here he would be angry with her; now that she is not, he finds her inconsideration somewhat endearing. He knows himself well enough to understand that his mood is tempered by the notion of his money waiting for him at the post office. Usually they stroll there together, and afterwards treat themselves to lunch in ‘Cake K’ before doing the weekly shopping. Rent and electricity and gas bills are all overdue, but he tries not to think about them. Messages her to say he will meet her at the PO at the usual time. Other things he does not dwell too long upon: his mother’s birthday; a score he owes to a friend for a spot of hash; his car; toilet paper. Her sickness.

  His father had called him last week to remind him of his mother’s birthday. A couple of scratch cards, son, a birthday card, son, eh – so I won’t have to listen to her whinging. He can stall his hash friend for another week. His mother will get over the disappointment. She will not show her hurt so as not to cause him any. As always. Fuck the recession and the whole shower of bollocks that led us there – we need to go fucking mental like the Arabs. The only fuckers here that you hear whinging up a mighty fuss are those about to lose their slice of fucking cake, farmers and ….

  He waits for her outside the post office in the mall. There is no sign of her. He joins the queue, hands over his welfare card, signs the docket and collects his money. There’s a dance of coins in the slip tray. Several times he had looked back at the queue to see if she had joined, hoping to see her smile, a tiny wave, hand busy then in the handbag for her card. A plastic card she hates.

  He buys credit for his phone, fe
eds it, then calls her. No reply. Next he dials her parents’ landline. Her father answers like he’d been expecting his call.

  Her father says, ‘She’s staying with us for a while, yeah, until she gets these tests done.’

  ‘I’ll be round,’ he says.

  ‘No. Leave it for today, don’t call … until tomorrow, how’s that?’

  ‘I did nothing on her, Mister Dunne … it’s not my fault. Why is she running out on me now?’

  ‘She’s terrified. Let her be with her mother for a day or so. It’s a woman thing, yeah?’

  Her old man had been pleasant to him. He hadn’t expected that. But she hadn’t wanted to speak with him, and that hurt. He considers ringing back to ask her dad to remind her what day it is, but she wouldn’t forget. Money isn’t something you forget when you have none. He lunches in a café they had not eaten in as a couple so as to lessen his pining for her.

  Afterwards, he buys toilet paper – the good-quality sort, not the thin stuff; you might as well use your naked fingers – a six pack of beer, and crisps, and tells himself to hold off spending more until she is with him. They had made shopping a social occasion.

  Walking home, he thinks of yesterday, how the wind had disturbed the daffodils into a dance, how she’d refused to talk, and when she did she’d been short with him. How quiet she had been, quiet among the thorns of her tears, making today for him unlike any other.

  A Lasting Impression

  Sometime in spring, Josh Frayne turned about on the steps of the Railway Arms Hotel with his wife at his elbow in her wedding dress and threw handful after handful of coins into the air. Silver threepenny pieces and sixpences pirouetted on road and footpath, tinkled to silence on a manhole cover, dancing hares, Irish wolfhounds and harps. We kids hurried about on our hunkers picking up the bits of silver rain. And then the guards came, and they put an end to it. I didn’t see Josh for twelve years, and then I walked into the factory to start a new job, and there he stood at the clocking machine, issuing timecards, regulations and glossy employee handbooks to the new employees. A forklift went by spouting out noise and diesel fumes, and he repeated himself because our response had been muted; he wanted to be certain that we were sure about his rules. In the intervening years he had put on a lot of weight, and grown his fair hair long. There were pockets of sorrow under his eyes. He wore a green overcoat with two biros in his breast pocket, and black shoes with an intricate scroll around the toecaps.