by Tana French
“Donna’s the spit of Jackie,” Kevin said. “Buckteeth and all.”
Jackie hit him. “Shut up, you.”
“They must be getting big now,” I said.
“Ah, they are, yeah. Darren’s doing his Leaving Cert this year. He wants to do engineering at UCD, if you don’t mind.”
No one asked about Holly. Maybe I’d been underrating Jackie; maybe she did know how to keep her mouth shut. “Here,” Carmel said, rummaging in her bag. She found her mobile phone, fiddled with it and held it out to me. “D’you want to see them?”
I flipped through the photos. Four plain, freckly kids; Trevor, the same as always, except for the hairline; a pebble-dashed seventies semi-d in I couldn’t remember which depressing sub-suburb. Carmel was exactly what she’d always dreamed of being. Very few people ever get to say that. Fair play to her, even if her dream did make me want to slit my throat.
“They look like great kids,” I said, handing the phone back. “Congrats, Melly.”
A tiny catch of breath, above me. “Melly. God . . . Haven’t heard that in years.”
In that light they looked like themselves again. It erased the wrinkles and the gray streaks, fined the heaviness off Kevin’s jaw and wiped the makeup off Jackie, till it was the five of us, fresh and cat-eyed and restless in the dark, spinning our different dreams. If Sallie Hearne looked out her window she’d see us: the Mackey kids, sitting on their steps. For one lunatic second I was glad to be there.
“Ow,” Carmel said, shifting. Carmel was never good with silence. “Me arse is killing me. Are you sure that’s what happened, Francis, what you said inside? About Rosie meaning to come back for that case?”
A low hiss that might have been a laugh, as Shay sent out smoke through his teeth. “It’s a load of shite. He knows that as well as I do.”
Carmel smacked his knee. “Language, you.” Shay didn’t move. “What are you on about? Why would it be a load of shite?” He shrugged.
“I’m not sure about anything,” I said. “But yeah, I think there’s a good chance she’s over in England living happily ever after.”
Shay said, “With no ticket and no ID?”
“She had money saved up. If she couldn’t get hold of her ticket, she could’ve bought another one. And you didn’t need ID to go to England, back then.” All of which was true enough. We were bringing our birth certs along because we knew we might need to sign on the dole while we looked for work, and because we were going to get married.
Jackie asked quietly, “Was I right to ring you, all the same? Or should I have just . . . ?”
The air tightened up. “Left well enough alone,” Shay said.
“No,” I said. “You were dead right all the way, babe. Your instincts are diamond, you know that?”
Jackie stretched out her legs and examined her high heels. I could only see the back of her head. “Maybe,” she said.
We sat and smoked for a while. The smell of malt and burnt hops was gone; Guinness’s did something eco-correct back in the nineties, so now the Liberties smell of diesel fumes, which apparently is an improvement. Moths were looping the loop around the street lamp at the end of the road. Someone had taken down the rope that used to be tied to the top of it, for kids to swing on.
There was one thing I wanted to know. “Da looks all right,” I said.
Silence. Kevin shrugged.
“His back’s not great,” Carmel said. “Did Jackie . . . ?”
“She told me he’s got problems. He’s better than I expected to find him.”
She sighed. “He gets good days and bad days, sure. Today’s a good day; he’s grand. On bad days . . .”
Shay drew on his smoke; he still held it between thumb and finger, like an old-movie gangster. He said flatly, “On bad days I’ve to carry him to the jacks.”
I asked, “Do they know what’s wrong?”
“Nah. Maybe something he did on the job, maybe . . . They can’t work it out. Either way, it’s getting worse.”
“Is he off the drink?”
Shay said, “What’s that got to do with you?”
I said, “Is Da off the drink?”
Carmel moved. “Ah, he’s all right.”
Shay laughed, a sharp bark.
“Is he treating Ma OK?”
Shay said, “That’s none of your fucking business.”
The other three held their breath and waited to see if we were going to go for each other. When I was twelve Shay split my head open on those same steps; I still have the scar. Not long afterwards, I got bigger than him. He’s got scars too.
I turned round, taking my time, to face him. “I’m asking you a civil question,” I said.
“That you haven’t bothered asking in twenty years.”
“He’s asked me,” Jackie said, quietly. “Loads of times.”
“So? You don’t live here either, any more. You’ve no more of a clue than he has.”
“That’s why I’m asking you now,” I said. “Does Da treat Ma all right these days?”
We stared each other out of it, in the half dark. I got ready to throw my smoke away fast.
“If I say no,” Shay said, “are you going to leave your fancy bachelor pad and move in here to look after her?”
“Downstairs from you? Ah, Shay. D’you miss me that much?”
A window shot up, above us, and Ma shouted down, “Francis! Kevin! Are yous coming in or not?”
“In a minute!” we all yelled back. Jackie laughed, a high, frantic little sound: “Listen to us . . .”
Ma slammed the window down. After a second Shay eased back and spat through the railings. The moment his eyes moved off me, everyone relaxed.
“I’ve to go anyway,” Carmel said. “Ashley likes to have her mammy there when she goes to bed. She won’t go for Trevor; gives him terrible hassle. She thinks it’s funny.”
Kevin asked, “How are you getting home?”
“I’ve the Kia parked round the corner. The Kia’s mine,” she explained, to me. “Trevor has the Range Rover.”
Trevor always was a depressing little fucker. It was nice to know he’d turned out according to spec. “That’s lovely,” I said.
“Give us a lift?” Jackie asked. “I came straight from work, and today was Gav’s turn for the car.”
Carmel tucked in her chin and clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Will he not pick you up?”
“Not at all. The car’s at home by now, and he’s in the pub with the lads.”
Carmel hauled herself up by the railing and tugged her skirt down primly. “I’ll drop you home, so. Tell that Gavin, if he’s going to let you work, he could at least buy you a car of your own to get you there. What are yous lot laughing at?”
“Women’s lib is alive and well,” I said.
“I never had any use for that carry-on. I like a good sturdy bra. You, missus, stop laughing and come on before I leave you here with this shower.”
“I’m coming, hang on—” Jackie stuffed her smokes back into her bag, threw the strap over her shoulder. “I’ll call round tomorrow. Will I see you then, Francis?”
“You never know your luck. Otherwise we’ll talk.”
She reached up a hand and caught mine, squeezed it tight. “I’m glad I rang you, anyway,” she said, in a defiant, semiprivate undertone. “And I’m glad you came down. You’re a gem, so you are. Look after yourself. All right?”
“You’re a good girl yourself. Seeya, Jackie.”
Carmel said, hovering, “Francis, will we . . . ? Are you going to call round again, like? Now that . . .”
“Let’s get this thing over with,” I said, smiling up at her. “Then we’ll see where we are, yeah?”
Carmel picked her way down the steps and the three of us watched them head up the Place, the taps of Jackie’s spike heels echoing off the houses, Carmel clumping along next to her, trying to keep up. Jackie is a lot taller than Carmel, even before you add hair and heels, but on the other hand Carmel has her b
eat several times over on circumference. The mismatch made them look like some goofy cartoon team, off to have painful comic accidents till they finally caught the villain and saved the day.
“They’re sound women,” I said quietly.
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “They are.”
Shay said, “If you want to do those two a favor, you won’t call round again.”
I figured he was probably right, but I ignored him anyway. Ma did her window number again: “Francis! Kevin! I’ve to lock this door. Yous can come in now, or yous can sleep where yous are.”
“Go in,” Shay said. “Before she has the whole road awake.”
Kevin got up, stretching and cracking his neck. “Are you coming?”
“Nah,” Shay said. “Having another smoke.” When I shut the hall door, he was still sitting on the steps with his back to us, snapping his lighter and watching the flame.
Ma had dumped a duvet, two pillows and a bunch of sheets on the sofa and gone to bed, to make a point about us dawdling outside. She and Da had moved into our old room; the girls’ room had been turned into a bathroom, in the eighties, judging by the attractive avocado-green fixtures. While Kevin was splashing around in there, I went out onto the landing—Ma hears like a bat—and rang Olivia.
It was well after eleven. “She’s asleep,” Olivia said. “And very disappointed.”
“I know. I just wanted to say thanks again, and sorry again. Did I completely wreck your date?”
“Yes. What did you think would happen? The Coterie would bring out an extra chair and Holly could discuss the Booker Prize list with us over salmon en croute?”
“I’ve got some stuff to do around here tomorrow, but I’ll try and pick her up before dinnertime. Maybe you and Dermot can reschedule.”
She sighed. “What’s going on there? Is everyone OK?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “I’m still trying to figure it out. Tomorrow I should have a better idea.”
A silence. I thought Liv was pissed off with me for being cagey, but then she said, “What about you, Frank? Are you all right?”
Her voice had softened. In all the world, the last thing I needed that night was Olivia being nice to me. It rippled my bones like water, soothing and treacherous. “Never better,” I said. “Gotta go. Give Holly a kiss from me in the morning. I’ll ring you tomorrow.”
Kevin and I made up the sofa bed and arranged ourselves head to foot, so we could feel like two party animals crashing out after a wild night instead of two little kids sharing a mattress. We lay there, in the faint patterns of light coming through the lace curtains, listening to each other breathe. In the corner, Ma’s Sacred Heart statue glowed lurid red. I pictured the look on Olivia’s face if she ever saw that statue.
“It’s good to see you,” Kevin said quietly, after a while. “You know that?”
His face was in shadows; all I could see was his hands on the duvet, one thumb rubbing absently at a knuckle. “You too,” I said. “You’re looking good. I can’t believe you’re bigger than me.”
A sniff of a laugh. “Still wouldn’t want to take you on.”
I laughed too. “Dead right. I’m an expert at unarmed combat, these days.”
“Seriously?”
“Nah. I’m an expert at paperwork and getting myself out of trouble.”
Kevin rolled onto his side, so he could see me, and tucked an arm under his head. “Can I ask you something? Why the Guards?”
Cops like me are the reason why you never get posted where you’re from. If you want to get technical, everyone I grew up with was probably a petty criminal, one way or another, not out of badness but because that was how people got by. Half the Place was on the dole and all of them did nixers, specially when the beginning of the school year was coming up and the kids needed books and uniforms. When Kevin and Jackie had bronchitis one winter, Carmel brought home meat from the Dunne’s where she worked, to build up their strength; no one ever asked how she paid for it. By the time I was seven, I knew how to fiddle the gas meter so my ma could cook dinner. Your average career counselor would not have pegged me for an officer in the making. “It sounded exciting,” I said. “Simple as that. Getting paid for the chance of some action; what’s not to like?”
“Is it? Exciting?”
“Sometimes.”
Kevin watched me, waiting. “Da threw a freaker,” he said eventually. “When Jackie told us.”
My da started out as a plasterer, but by the time we came along he was a full-time drinker with a part-time sideline in things that had fallen off the backs of lorries. I think he would have preferred me to be a rent boy. “Yeah, well,” I said. “That’s just icing. Now you tell me something. What happened the day after I left?”
Kevin rolled over onto his back and folded his arms behind his head. “Did you never ask Jackie?”
“Jackie was nine. She’s not sure what she remembers and what she imagined. She says a doctor in a white coat took Mrs. Daly away, stuff like that.”
“No doctors,” Kevin said. “Not that I saw, anyway.”
He was staring up at the ceiling. The lamplight through the window made his eyes glitter like dark water. “I remember Rosie,” he said. “I know I was only a kid, but . . . Like, really strongly, you know? That hair and that laugh, and the way she walked . . . She was lovely, Rosie was.”
I said, “She was that.” Dublin was brown and gray and beige all over, back then, and Rosie was a dozen bright colors: an explosion of copper curls right down to her waist, eyes like chips of green glass held up to the light, red mouth and white skin and gold freckles. Half the Liberties fancied Rosie Daly, and what made her even more fanciable was that she didn’t give a damn; none of it made her think she was anything special. She had curves that could give you vertigo, and she wore them as casually as she wore her patched jeans.
Let me show you Rosie, back when the nuns had convinced girls half as pretty that their bodies were a cross between cesspools and bank vaults and that boys were filthy little burglars. One summer evening when we were about twelve, before we ever copped that we were in love with each other, the two of us played I’ll-show-you-mine. The closest I’d ever got to seeing a naked woman before was black-and-white cleavage, and then Rosie tossed her clothes in a corner like they were just getting in her way and spun around in the dim light of Number 16, palms up, luminous, laughing, almost close enough to touch. The thought still knocks the wind out of me. I was too young even to know what I wanted to do about her; I just knew nothing in the world, not the Mona Lisa walking through the Grand Canyon with the Holy Grail in one hand and a winning Lotto ticket in the other, was ever going to be that beautiful.
Kevin said quietly, to the ceiling, “We didn’t even think anything was up, at first. Shay and I noticed you weren’t there when we woke up—obviously, like—but we just thought you’d gone out somewhere. Only then we were having breakfast and Mrs. Daly came roaring in, looking for you. When we said you weren’t there, she practically had a bleeding coronary—Rosie’s stuff was all gone, and Mrs. Daly was screaming that you’d run off with her, or kidnapped her, I don’t know what she was on about. Da started roaring back at her, and Ma was trying to make the both of them shut up before the neighbors heard—”
“Good luck with that,” I said. Mrs. Daly’s form of crazy is different from my ma’s, but at least as loud.
“Yeah, I know, right? And we could hear someone else yelling across the way, so me and Jackie had a look out. Mr. Daly was chucking the rest of Rosie’s gear out the window, and the whole street was coming out to see what was up . . . I’ve got to be honest with you, I thought it was bleeding hilarious.”
He was grinning. I couldn’t help grinning too. “I’d have paid good money to watch that.”
“Oh, yeah. It almost turned into a catfight. Mrs. Daly called you a little gouger and Ma called Rosie a little slapper, like mother like daughter. Mrs. Daly went through the roof.”
“See, now, my money’d be on
Ma. The weight advantage.”
“Don’t let her hear you say that.”
“She could just sit on Mrs. Daly till she surrendered.”
We were laughing, under our breath in the dark, like two kids. “Mrs. Daly was armed, though,” Kevin said. “Those fingernails—”
“Fuck me. Has she still got those?”
“Longer. She’s a human—what do you call those?”
“Garden rake?”
“No! The ninja yokes. Throwing stars.”
“So who won?”
“Ma, give or take. She shoved Mrs. Daly out onto the landing and slammed the door. Mrs. Daly yelled and kicked the door and all, but in the end she gave up. She went and had a row with Mr. Daly about Rosie’s stuff, instead. People were practically selling tickets. Better than Dallas.”
In our old bedroom, Da went into a coughing fit that made the bed rattle off the wall. We froze and listened. He got his breath back in long wheezes.
“Anyway,” Kevin said, lower. “That was sort of the end of it. It was major gossip for like two weeks, and then everyone forgot about it, more or less. Ma and Mrs. Daly didn’t talk for a few years—Da and Mr. Daly never did anyway, sure, so no big change there. Ma gave out shite every Christmas when you didn’t send a card, but . . .”
But it was the eighties and emigration was one of your three main career paths, along with Daddy’s firm and the dole. Ma had to have been expecting at least one of us to end up with a one-way ferry ticket. “She didn’t think I was dead in a ditch?”
Kevin snorted. “Nah. She said whoever got hurt, it wouldn’t be our Francis. We didn’t call the cops or report you missing or anything, but that wasn’t . . . Not that we didn’t care, like. We just figured . . .” The mattress moved as he shrugged.
“That Rosie and I had run off together.”
“Yeah. I mean, everyone knew the two of yous had been mad into each other, right? And everyone knew what Mr. Daly thought about that. So why not, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why not.”
“Plus, there was the note. I think that was what blew Mrs. Daly’s fuse: someone was messing about in Number Sixteen and they found this note. From Rosie, like. I don’t know if Jackie told you—”