by Tim Buckley
He walked to his car and drove away.
28
As I said, Emily believed in a construct whereby you write your own story in life and, as long as you do right and do the right thing, your story will have a happy ending. We never really talked about it because I don’t buy it and any time we did get into it, usually after a few bottles of wine, I inevitably ended up sleeping on the sofa and making her a conciliatory breakfast in bed the next morning. It wasn’t quite karma or the universe or religion, but it worked for her and I had learned eventually not to argue. Some people are comforted by the thought that maybe our path through the world is more than a random walk. I’m not – but karma can sometimes be a bit of a smart-arse.
Brendan’s reaction to my tax cock-up had come as a bit of a surprise. I should have known he’d be annoyed, pissed even, but I had let myself believe that Brendan would react with a rueful shake of his enormous head and even a smile at my boyish irreverence. That the whole thing unleashed a wave of frustration that I hadn’t seen coming made me realise suddenly that Brendan had been cutting me more slack than I’d admitted to myself. A lot more. I’d been wandering merrily through every day oblivious to, or maybe just ignoring, the shit storm that I should have seen coming, but Brendan’s vented spleen brought into very sharp focus the trouble I was in. And things were about to get worse.
Emily’s fracas on the bridge a few weeks earlier wasn’t just about a broken umbrella on a wet day, nor about a splash of oily gutter water nor even about a thieving toerag. It was a symptom – and yet another symptom that I’d failed to see – of a deeper unhappiness with where she felt she had ended up in the world. In the story of her life that Emily had crafted, she would work in and with nature to grow her own vines and make great wine. In that story, she inhabited a plane that floated just above the grimy monotony of the everyday world. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t that she saw herself as better than anybody else or that she thought she deserved more than anybody else, it was just what she’d always seen in her future, where she always thought she’d be. That vision had helped her through all of the crap that goes with life. Some people deal with it by getting angry or getting even, some people deal with it by just accepting that the world is ugly, some people can make the best of any situation – Emily’s coping mechanism was the certain knowledge that she was destined for a better place. Maybe that day on the bridge was her epiphany, the day it dawned on her that it might never get any better than this.
Emily had proved something of a revelation in her short time at the wine shop and, not long after she and I had started going out, she had been promoted from minimum-wage shop assistant to a position in the purchasing department at head office. It seemed like her dreams were starting to come true. Her new position promised her the chance to search out new vineyards and producers to add to the portfolio and to give them a chance to sell their wines into new markets. In the way of these things, however, she learned quickly that getting bottles on the shelves was about much more than the quality of the product, and her education hadn’t readied her for the politics and the nudge-wink back-scratching that went with the grubby underbelly of the wine trade. Hence her frustration that, despite the long hours of research late into many nights that uncovered new wines with great potential, her bosses were blind to anything that rocked the boat with the big producers of proven brands. It was those brands, after all, that brought in the punters and sent them home with heavy bags and lighter wallets. None of it made any sense in Emily’s idealistic mind and, that day, her frustration finally boiled over.
As far as I could glean from her furious account of the day’s events, she’d had a meeting with two of the company directors to take them through her proposals for the summer range. She’d been working flat out on it for weeks, bringing together a fresh new collection of white wines, rosés and light summer reds from exciting young producers in Spain and Italy and the New World. It turned out, however, that innovation wasn’t really what they were looking for and her ideas were lost in a chuntering consensus of conservatism. The unanimous agreement was that change was a good thing but not just now. I don’t know if the verdict was delivered with a patronising pat on the back or with a rap on the knuckles for daring to dare but whatever the sentiment, Emily did not take it well. Apparently, she picked up a bottle of one of the rejected wines, strode across the conference room to where the head buyer was sitting, and poured a generous glass of white Priorat over the keyboard of his laptop. Without another word, she picked up her things and walked out of the office.
Now, I had never had much money but nor had I ever really felt like I didn’t have much money. I’d always managed to get by and do most of the things that I wanted to do. The money from my first book had been a new experience in never really having to check that I could afford something before buying it. It was far from a fortune and it’s not like I was living any kind of high life, but rich is relative and, relative to what I was used to, I was loaded. But a new reality had crept up on me. Emily’s job in the wine shop had barely allowed her to live without maxing out her credit cards. Her new job had paid a bit more but we had still worked our way through what money I had earned and, as Brendan had made very clear, I was a long way from getting another payment from my publisher. We had the usual grown-up bills and rent to cover and, on top of everything, now I had a tax bill to pay. And now Emily was out of work. We hadn’t been together long, not yet long enough to have talked about anything as tedious as money. I didn’t know if Emily had ever saved or put anything aside for a rainy day, but I didn’t really think that was her style and the forecast was for downpours.
“You think I’ve made a mistake, don’t you?” she said. She’d told me the story and was waiting for me to tell her that she had done exactly the right thing, what anybody would have done in the circumstances. “You think I should have stayed there and smiled and just let them carry on screwing the little guys.”
“Emily, no, of course not…” I said with as much conviction as I could muster given that that was exactly what I thought. I could understand her frustration, of course I could, but a job was a job was a job. It was never going to be anything more than that, retail was never going to take her to her place of enlightenment. I’d always assumed that she’d tire of it eventually and I knew it was a million miles from where she wanted to be, but she didn’t really know where she wanted to be and, until she did, how was she going to figure out a plan to get there? So I’d assumed that she’d work out what she wanted to do with her life and that she would – that we would – figure out a plan together. I didn’t think that that plan would be along the lines of: work hard; get turned down; lose temper; assault boss; get fired. And yet there we were.
“Look – it’s just that I’m a bit surprised, that’s all… I suppose I didn’t see this coming…”
“Thanks, Wilde,” she said, through thin lips. “Thanks a lot.”
She marched out of the flat without another word. I was pretty sure that she was best left alone at times like those and I was pretty sure too that I could only do wrong, so I let her go.
That was at about six o’clock. By ten thirty there was still no sign of her and I was getting worried. I’d given up waiting at home and I’d gone into town to see if I could find her. It was a Tuesday night and town was quiet but she wasn’t anywhere to be found and nobody had seen her. It was just gone midnight and I was just about to go round our usual haunts one more time when my phone rang. It was Emily.
“Jesus Christ, Emily, I was getting worried,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Are you Wilde?” a man’s voice asked.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“I’m Dessie, the barman in McDaid’s. I’m guessing this is Emily with me and she’s a wee bit the worse for wear. You might want to come and get her?”
McDaid’s! How could I have forgotten McDaid’s?! Not o
nly was it one of her favourites, it was her go-to place when she was pissed off.
“Sure, no problem. I’ll be there in two minutes. Just don’t let her leave until I get there.”
He chuckled.
“Don’t worry, pal, she’s not going anywhere.”
I took off at a gallop up Baggot Street and along the Green. Even though it was Tuesday, and town was quiet, there were still a few late night drinkers on Grafton Street, but McDaid’s was empty when I ran in, out of breath. Empty except for the girl lying slumped with her head on the table in the corner but holding on tight to the glass in her right hand.
Emily.
“Wilde?” the barman said.
“Yeah. Listen, thanks, man. I appreciate this.”
“No problem, bud. She’s all yours now.” He winked and slapped me on the shoulder. “And good luck in the morning – there’s a rumour goin’ round that you haven’t been Dublin’s best boyfriend, wha’?!”
“Come on, Em,” I said, getting her to her feet to make our way gingerly to the door. “Let’s get you home.”
29
Bobby came round the next morning as promised and we divided up the list of hotels in Sydney. One by one we ticked our way through the list but, by early that afternoon, we’d been through the lot of them and there was no sign of Emily.
“Sorry, Bob, I’ve wasted your time. I guess it was a bit of a long shot. I don’t even know if she’s still in Sydney, she hasn’t used a cash machine or a card in while. I just hope she hasn’t done something… you know…”
“She will come back, you know,” Bobby said. We were sitting on the deck with a coffee and a couple of sandwiches that she’d brought from the café. “She just needs a bit of time, that’s all.”
“I know. I’m just worried about what she might tell herself while she’s gone. She gets so wound up and if I’m not there to bring her down, I’m just afraid she’ll do something daft.”
She nodded but she didn’t argue with me. They weren’t buddies but Bobby knew her well enough to know I wasn’t plucking this from thin air.
“Believe me, I’m well used to sitting at home thinking the same thing,” she said. “Problem is, Mitch usually has done something daft. At least you won’t get a call from the cops in the middle of the night because she needs bail money!”
“Unlikely!” I laughed, probably for the first time in a few days. The thought of a drunk Emily glassing some yob in a bar fight was ridiculous enough to raise a smile from the condemned. “How did you do it, Bobby? How did you keep taking him back, keep getting him out of trouble?”
She shrugged.
“It’s just what you do, isn’t it? I loved him, dickhead that he is, I suppose I still do, a bit. And it wasn’t all his fault. He got some tough breaks along the way. And he’s been a crap dad, but I know that he loves Karl and he’s good to him, in his own way. So you just make the most of it, don’t you? You take the good apples out of the box and throw away the rest so you don’t choke on the smell.”
“You’ve done well to keep it together. It can’t have been easy.”
She thought for a moment, choosing her words.
“It hasn’t been easy, mate, but I didn’t lose a child. Emily’s lost her baby, and I don’t think anybody knows what she’s going through. Not even you.”
She paused and bit her lip, thought for a moment and then decided to say what she hadn’t planned to say.
“Look, we all think we’re strong and we’re smart and we can deal with whatever life throws in our way. Then it chucks in a baby and all of that gets tossed out with the rubbish. Because none of us is ready for that, no matter what we think. When I fell pregnant with Karl, Mitch… well Mitch lost it. He just lost it. He had no idea what to do with a kid and so he asked me to have an abortion. He didn’t want the baby and he couldn’t understand why I did. And even though we hadn’t planned it, I did want that baby. There was no way I wasn’t having it and if that meant losing Mitch, then so be it.”
“Shit, Bobby, I had no idea… That must have been tough, must have been lonely?”
“Yeah. And in the end, I did. Lose him, I mean. So, silver linings, eh?!”
She smiled but there was no humour in it.
“Emily’s struggled too,” she said, “but you’d better believe she’d do anything to turn back the clock and make all of this right. She’s a bit of a cold fish, she doesn’t give much away, so cut her a bit of slack, eh, when you find her? I know you’ve lost Cara too, but at least you can talk to me, to Nathan, to Brendan if you want to. She doesn’t have anybody, does she? This time she doesn’t even have you, and that must be the hardest thing.”
She looked at her watch.
“Shit, I got to go, Wilde. I told Gemma she could have the afternoon off so I’m holding the fort.”
She stood up and I followed her into the kitchen, clearing up the mugs and plates as I went.
“Listen, thanks, Bobby,” I said. “That would have taken me all day on my own.”
“No worries. I’m just sorry we didn’t have any luck. But don’t worry, she’ll be back before you know it.”
***
Nathan had left a message on my phone about some problem at the lighthouse so I packed up my laptop and jumped in the jeep. Now that it was watertight, the crew was working on the plaster and painting outside and on the fit-out of the interior. Nathan had been to the council to see if we could delay the work on the inside for a couple of months. It was, he argued, mainly cosmetic and had no impact on the view from the outside or on the landscape. But the council took the view that it had to be seen as a single job and the completed project had to deliver a viable structure by the agreed date. They were afraid, I suppose, that if we split the job in two, the second phase might never happen and the elephant would remain white. On top of that, a few of the dissenting councillors from the early days felt they had a bit of a point to prove and were in no mood to compromise. So we had to deliver to the agreed specifications and that was it.
The place was a hive of activity when I pulled up. There were eleven men working at the site, between plasterers, carpenters, plumbers and painters, and I could see how much Nathan was loving it.
“G’day, Wilde,” he said, “sorry to drag you all the way out here.”
“No worries, Nate,” I said. “Looks like you’ve got the guys hard at it. Good to see!”
“Yeah, first time in a while they’re all able to just get on with the job without something throwing a spanner. That’s why I called you. We were running low on plaster but the delivery arrived today. Problem is, they’ve sent a different plaster. I don’t think it’ll make a massive difference, especially when it’s painted, but I wanted to check it with you before I open the packs. What do you think?”
“I don’t know, mate. How much time would we lose if we send it back?”
He shook his head.
“Week, maybe? Maybe ten days. It comes from Albany and they’re not a big operation so they won’t have it straightaway.”
“Can we open one pack, plaster a section and see how different it is?”
“Could do, but you won’t know for a week, until it dries out completely. Even then, it might age differently.”
Suddenly, there was a scream and the clanking din of falling scaffolding poles. A couple of the workers dropped what they were doing and ran round the back of the cottage. Nathan took off and I ran after him. When we got round the back, three or four workers were pulling poles off a mangled mess where a section of the scaffolding had collapsed. I ran over to help them and I could see, through the mess of steel, that one of the plasterers was trapped underneath.
“We’ve got you, Stevie,” Nathan shouted, frantically pulling at the pipes, although the man was clearly out cold. “Just hold on, mate, we’ve got you! Robbie – call an ambulance! And someone get the first aid kit!�
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By the time we’d got the last of the poles and platform planks off him, he had sort of come to but he was as white as a sheet and gurgling anguished moans. His leg was a mess, bent at a gruesome angle with the bone poking through the flesh. He’d lost a lot of blood, too, from the blow he’d taken to the head, unprotected by his hard hat which was lying on the ground a few metres away.
“Nate!! Nate!!” It was Robbie, running up the track from the one place on site where we had decent mobile phone reception. “There’s been a pile-up on the highway, they’ve got no ambulances. They say it’s going to be thirty minutes, maybe forty!”
“Shit,” Nathan said. “He can’t wait that long.”
“We’ll put him in my jeep,” I said. “Come on, let’s get him strapped to a couple of those platform planks and we can lay him in the back. Robbie, where’s that first aid kit?! We need to stop that bleeding.”
It took us what seemed like an age to lash two planks together and then to get Stevie on board and to secure him to the makeshift stretcher. Now he was conscious and his screams were curdling my blood.
“Here, Stevie,” Nate said, putting a bottle of homemade liquor to his lips, “drink this, mate. Come on…”
“Nate, you and Robbie get in the back and try to stop him moving around too much,” I said. “Let’s go!”
***
The trip to the hospital took more than twenty minutes, punctuated by Stevie’s screams every time we hit a bump or a hole in the road. The emergency room was chaotic with bloodied car crash victims and frazzled medical staff. Two orderlies got Stevie out of the jeep and onto a gurney and wheeled him away at a gallop towards the operating theatre.
When he was gone, I fell back against the jeep and closed my eyes. Nathan clamped a huge hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t worry, mate,” he said, “he’s a tough one. He’ll be right.”