Divorcing Jack (3 page)

'Jesus.'

She took a long swig from the bottle and offered it to me. I declined. Beer and cider do not for a good hangover make. Mouse had obviously discovered my Ramones live album. I grabbed Margaret's free hand and led her back into the heart of the dancing. You're never too old to rock 'n' roll.

The dancing was chaotic and by the end of the song I felt the spins coming on and headed for the door. I stumbled up two flights of stairs and found the bathroom mercifully empty. I locked myself in and was sick twice in the washbasin. White, my legs shaking, my head resting on the rim, I reached up to turn on the cold water tap. It was warm and sticky where someone had already been sick on it. I was sick again. I leant over the bath and turned the cold tap on, flicking off the shower control at the same time. As icy water rushed out I put my wrists under it and let it burn cold against my pulse, then splashed it up onto the back of my neck and onto my face. I sat for a while on the edge of the stained cream enamel bath, my head bowed, until I began to settle down. There is no greater feeling than regaining control of your body after it has been usurped by a friend you have willingly invited in. I stood up, steadied myself against the wall and then, without breathing in, washed the sink and taps. I am nothing if not a responsible drunk. The draining water caught the rear end of a slater as it endeavoured to escape the smoothness of the sink, flushing it down the plughole. After a moment the little round shell of the woodlouse reappeared and began to ascend the curved sides of the basin again. I turned both taps on it and it disappeared again. Ten seconds later it reappeared and began its journey anew. I laughed and let it go. I hoped I could come up after going under for the second time.

I was just starting down the stairs when I noticed a light on in my study at the end of the hall. Margaret was standing just inside the door, looking at the books that lined the wall. I get fidgety when people are in my study. I don't like them looking for works in progress because mostly there are no works in progress. I'd been working on a conversation-based novel, like
The Graduate
or
The Commitments,
but my characters kept turning out shy and tongue-tied.

She looked round as I approached.

'You've good taste in books,' she said.

'That makes me sound like I eat them.'

'Devour them maybe. Do you? Devour them?'

‘I haven't read them all. A lot are review copies, from the paper. Take any you want. There's a laugh-a-minute guide to macro economics up there or there's a biography of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Take your pick.'

'I heard you being sick.' I nodded.

‘I beat you to it. Feeling better?'

I nodded again. 'My mouth tastes like a horse's arse.'

'You want a mint?' She asked. I nodded. A wide grin split her face. When I looked closer there was a mint jutting from between her teeth. 'My last one,' she said, clamping down on it, her voice strangled like a ventriloquist's. She angled her face up towards mine, proffering the sweet. I bent to take it. My lips wrapped round the public half. She smelt good, I could feel her heat. My teeth tightened on it. But she wouldn't let go. We were both grinning inanely as we pulled at the mint. As I went for a better grip my lips touched hers and her mouth widened. The mint became a flapping border gatepost, there but unguarded, as our tongues met around it. In a moment it fell from our mouths and we remained clamped together, lost.

I did not think of Patricia. It was as if she did not exist for those few seconds, that my love for her was of a different time and place, that there and then there was only Margaret in the world and she was all that mattered.

When her voice came it was quiet, collected, like an exchange with a dying, unfamiliar relative. She could be a violent, argumentative, tantrummed woman; that was why the calmness of her discovery was all the more frightening.

'You have twenty-four hours to move out.'

And then she was gone. I tried to pull away, but Margaret held me for precious seconds as Patricia walked sadly down the stairs.

Finally I pushed her away. I turned to follow my wife.

'That was nice,' Margaret said. I looked back. I have never seen a more attractive brightness in a girl's eyes.

I turned away again. 'I'm in trouble,' I said. ‘I have to go-'

Patricia's twenty-four-hour expulsion threat evaporated in the time it took for her to consume a triple vodka. It was replaced by a physical assault that Lizzie Borden would have been proud of. I tried the appeasement route and it worked as well for me as it had for Chamberlain.

My left eye was beginning to close and there was a thin trickle of blood running from my nose. It looked like brilliant sap leaking from a skeletal tree. That's how Margaret described it as she led me through the Holy Land; she had a good turn of phrase, for a drunk. I was in mumble mode, little of it favourable to Patricia. She had done more damage to my nose in three years of marriage than twenty years of amateur football. My nose had always been big, but it had not bent perceptibly to the left before I started going out with her. Besides that, she had a singing voice that could pickle eggs.

'As I believe the song says, the best part of breaking up is when you're having your nose broken,' Margaret sang, putting a consoling arm round my shoulders as we crossed onto Botanic Avenue. 'I think maybe I've gotten you in a wee bit of trouble.'

'You could say that.'

'I thought she didn't mind you bringing people home?'

'She doesn't. I've just never snogged with them before.'

'Or just never got caught?'

'I'm telling you. I don't mess around.'

'Nah, you go straight for it.'

Margaret waved down a cab outside the York Hotel. I climbed into the back. She joined me. The driver turned to look at me. He was chubby-cheeked and had bushy eyebrows. He said: 'Don't bleed on the seats, mate.'

'Nah, I'm dryin' up,' I said; it was a rare taxi to get at that time of night, so I held off on the abuse.

'Whereto?'

'Antrim Road.'

'Which part?'

'Up past Fortwilliam Golf Course. Ben Madigan.'

'That's okay.' He put the car into gear and moved off. 'We're not allowed to stop lower down. Too risky. One of our boys got topped up there last month. They always seem to pick on fuckin' taxi drivers. All we're trying to do is earn a fuckin' livin', y'know?'

He was the type could talk himself into getting shot. We didn't try to feed his fire by continuing the conversation. I don't quite know when it was decided I was going to Margaret's.

Traffic was sparse. The lights were on in the city centre, but there was nobody in. A metaphor perhaps for our times. We crossed Carlisle Circus and were at the top of the Antrim Road in maybe ten minutes. We turned into Lancaster Drive. All the streets round about were named after different types of bomber - RAF as opposed to IRA. Margaret paid off the driver then led me to an electric-bill-red front door. I stumbled against it as she fumbled for a key.

'Coffee for you, I think,' she said.

'It's been proved that coffee does nothing to sober you up.'

'What would you suggest then?'

'Another beer, maybe.'

'I thought you might be thinking that. Just as well I'm all out.'

Just as well too, I thought. You could only take bravado so far. She led me into the lounge. It was small, uncluttered.

One wall dominated by a large portrait of herself, the hair jet black, her face more pinched than in real life, but her eyes had the same deep-pool brilliance that had first captured me.

'A self-portrait?'

'How'd you guess?'

I shrugged. You didn't often get the chance to compare self-portraits with the self; but I knew most painted themselves thinner. There was a shuffling, sniffling sound from the kitchen. Margaret went and opened the door slightly and an elderly Jack Russell pressed his face through the gap. I could see a stump of a tail, maybe an inch erect above his hindquarters. He was snarling at me. He reminded me of Patricia.

'That's Patch. I won't let him in. He'd kill you.'

'Don't worry, I like dogs. Dogs like me.'

'He's not a dog, he's a fucking monster. At least that's how the police described him.'

'He's not wanted, is he?'

'He's not wanted by anyone. That's the trouble. Nah, he got out a couple of weeks ago and bit a couple of kids. But of course the cops trail me down to the station. Three hours I was in there arguing with them.'

‘I know the form. First the good guy, then the bad, then the good, then the bad guy comes in and gives you a severe beating with a large orange spacehopper. It's common practice.'

Margaret pushed Patch back into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. I heard her rifling. She opened the door again and flashed a garish box at me. 'Pizza okay? In the microwave?'

I nodded. Probably do me good. It was one of those genuine Italian pizzas from the supermarket, the ones with chef's own hair included.

I sat down by a mauve armchair and began sorting through her record collection. She had maybe fifty albums. A lot of Van Morrison, some Bob Dylan. A worrying series of Status Quo records. There was a Chris Rea album which was also a bit of a minus. I preferred diarrhoea; it wasn't very enjoyable either, but it didn't last as long and you could read a good book at the same time. At the back of the pile there was a pair of Loyalist flute band records. The Pride of Whitehill and the Wellington Young Defenders. Bandsmen in silly uniforms with embarrassing plumes on their caps sat in rows on the cover like psychedelic soldiers.

Margaret came back into the lounge, carefully closing the door behind her. I held up the flute band records. 'Lapse in taste here, I think.'

'Oh, for God's sake. I forgot they were there. Not mine. They're my da's, I brought them with me by mistake when I moved in here.'

'Well, what's he doin' with them? Is he mad?'

'Where we used to live, they came round the doors with them. You more or less had to buy them or you'd get a brick through the window. They were raising money for new band uniforms.'

'Quieter ones, I hope.'

'Guns for the boys, I presume.'

'I dare say.'

Margaret knelt beside me. She selected a Cocteau Twins record and slipped it onto the turntable. I'd seen them once in concert, a lot of years before. All syrupy guitar and high-pitched vocals. The sort of music you should buy on CD, then smash. Still, I was in no mood to argue, with throbbing nose and closing eye, and besides, as she sat back she collapsed into my arms and she kissed me long and soft. I tried moving my hands, but she pinned them behind my back. I didn't struggle.

We came apart with the pinging of the microwave. She jumped up and ran into the kitchen. I heard a low groan and a minute later she appeared at the door with the pizza neatly cut onto two plates. She said: 'I think I may have had it in for too long.'

She was right. It was like eating a discus.

We made love on the floor. It was nice. We had a bit of an argument about the lack of a condom. I volunteered to use my sock. She thought that idea was: a) disgusting; b) stupid. Socks weren't watertight, or whatever. She said, 'You wear a sock, not only will I have a baby, but it'll come out wearing a bloody jumper.' We compromised on my withdrawal. I didn't. We British don't withdraw from Ireland.

Later, in bed, she said, 'What are you going to do about the wife?'

I shook my head. I didn't know. There was a knot in my stomach; I didn't know whether it was guilt or satisfaction. We both drifted off to sleep.

I woke in the morning with a frightening headache, the sort of throbbing that demands that you wash your hair in Lemsip. My first thought was: oh shit. My second: get me out of here.

Margaret was still sleeping. We'd neglected to close the curtains and the sun was streaming in through the window. She'd thrown her half of the continental quilt off her some time during the night and her pale body gleamed like a baby's. I reached out to touch her, but pulled back. It was madness.

She began to stir. Her eyes opened, fluttered, closed, opened. 'Hello,' she said. Her voice croaked.

'I'll get you some water,' I said. My voice croaked worse. I got out of bed and pulled my suit trousers on. They were a crumpled mess and they smelt of smoke and beer and there was a gravel scrape down one leg. I went into the bathroom, used the toilet, opened the window and looked at myself in a small round mirror that was attached with some Blu-Tack to the window frame. It was at the wrong height for me. I bent into the sink and washed my face in cold water. Still half bent, I examined my face again in the mirror. One eye was black and mostly closed. There was a hint of dried blood round my right nostril that the water had failed to dislodge and a slight bruise on the bridge of my nose. My hair was dank and tangled, but I didn't much mind that as long as I still had some.

There was a box cabinet on the wall to my left. It was mostly filled with make-up, but I found some paracetamol and swallowed four and a mouthful of water from the tap. I straightened up slowly, trying to close my throat to make sure they didn't come up again. They didn't.

I went downstairs and into the kitchen. Snarling greeted my entry. Patch sat in a brown wicker basket in the far corner in front of an elderly twin-tub washing machine, his ears erect, grey muzzle pointed at me, eyes keen. I crossed to the back door, unlocked and opened it. Patch was up and out into the back in a flash. I didn't much mind who he bit, as long as it wasn't me.

Back upstairs, with two pints of cold water. Margaret was sitting up in bed, the quilt pulled up to her shoulders. Her hair was tousled and her eyes half-closed still, but she looked better than she had a right to. I handed her one glass and drew the quilt back so I could get in beside her. She moved her hands shyly to cover her breasts as I manoeuvred my way into the bed without spilling a drop. I was an old hand.

She said: 'You're staying?'

I said: 'You don't want me to?'

She smiled. 'It's not that. Most men after a night like that - and all married men - want to make an early break for it.'