Last Chance Saloon (46 page)

The day came when they were lying on her bed as usual, kissing passionately, when she heard the whiz of a zip and felt Lorcan fumbling with himself. Then she heard the crumple of denim and crisp cotton and realized Lorcan was shucking down his jeans. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked in alarm.

‘You don’t have to do anything,’ he said hoarsely, stroking himself. ‘Just touch it. Just once.’

‘No!’

‘Please. You’ll like it.’

‘It’s wrong.’

‘How can it be wrong? We love each other.’

It was the first she’d heard of it, but she was delighted. Though it wasn’t going to shake her resolve. ‘We really shouldn’t…’

‘We should. We love each other.’

And so, trembling, she let him take her hand and guide it to his erect penis. Her eyes clenched shut, she yelped as soon as her fingertips touched the surprisingly silky skin, not allowing herself to register the hardness or the size. ‘There,’ she said, wrenching her hand away. ‘I hope you’re happy and I’m not doing it again.’

She truly meant it, but the next time they were together, he unzipped himself again. Instead of just brushing her hand against it, he clamped her palm along the shaft and wrapped her fingers tightly around it, his hand around hers. Then began to move her hand, up and down, up and down.

‘No,’ she begged.

‘Tighter,’ he groaned. ‘Faster. I love you. Faster.’

The little bed was jiggling. His breath was harsh in her ear and his contorted, red-faced desire made him a stranger to her. She felt sullied and insulted, and as something hot gushed over her hand she was downright disgusted.

But when he was gone and she was alone, she found herself remembering it, and it filled the pit of her stomach – and lower – with excitement. To think she could make him feel like that. She felt powerful and sexy, dangerous and adult, and she wanted to do it again. With a lurch of fear she wondered if she was officially in a state of mortal sin. If she died now would she be condemned to spend all eternity burning in the flames? Though her logical side insisted that hellfire was just a load of superstitious nonsense, her emotional response was one of anxiety and fear. You never
knew
. What if it
was
true?

She could have gone to confession and got absolution and been in the clear if she did drop dead unexpectedly. But she knew the priest would tell her to stop doing those things with Lorcan, maybe even to stop seeing him altogether.

And she couldn’t do that. She was utterly addicted to what they did on her bed and it was inconceivable not to see him. So, trying not to see how far her standards had slipped, she decided that because they loved each other, it neutralized the question of mortal sin. She’d always told herself that no matter what else she did with him, she’d never Go All The Way. After all, even Tara hadn’t Gone All The Way! But over the weeks Lorcan eroded Katherine’s resistance to the stage where every time they lay on the bed, he had his jeans around his knees, her panties were mid-thigh, and he was allowed to place the tip of his erection against her entrance.

‘We’ll never go further than this, will we?’ she whispered.

‘Never,’ he whispered back.

But sometimes he’d jab against her and it flooded them both with such powerfully sweet sensations that he’d jab it a bit more.

‘But you won’t put it in,’ she’d whisper.

‘I won’t put it in,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll just kind of move it like… that. Is that nice?’

She nodded. It was the most beautiful feeling she’d ever had. And, so long as they didn’t actually go any further, she was all right.

‘Is it OK if I just move it a bit?’ Lorcan murmured.

‘Well, all right, so long as you don’t put it in.’

‘I won’t put it in.’

After a while Katherine said, in low alarm, ‘I think you might be putting it in.’

‘I’m not,’ he said hoarsely, his hips making small, frantic movements. ‘It’s on the outside, and I’m just kind of moving…’

But his hip movements became bigger and tougher and faster, and to Katherine’s horror just as a full, packed-tight sensation plunged into her, she heard Lorcan say triumphantly, ‘
Now
it’s in!’

She cried afterwards and he held her in his arms, stroking her hair, saying over and over, ‘It’ll be all right, baby, it’ll be all right.’

She turned a tear-stained face to him. ‘We’re never doing it again,’ she said sullenly. ‘Don’t think you’ll convince me because you won’t. This is the wrongest thing I’ve ever done. If I died now I’d go straight to Hell.’

But they did it again. Another one-off. Then they did it again. But when Lorcan made noises about getting her ‘sorted out’, she snapped that there was no need because they’d never be doing it again.

Of course they did. Not because Lorcan threatened to break it off with her if she wouldn’t play. He didn’t have to. Her own treacherous body was the most persuasive factor – she just couldn’t resist him.

And what consoled her, in her hours of shame and self-disgust, was the thought that he loved her. Once they were married it would make everything all right, retrospectively validate it, as it were.

Not that marriage had actually been mentioned, but it was implied. By the look in his eyes every time he saw her, by the warmth in his voice when he told her he loved her.

‘Er,’ he said awkwardly, wondering why he was always the one who cleared up Lorcan’s messes, ‘it just goes to show that there’s only thirteen people in the world and they do the rest with mirrors. But I suppose we should be off. Amy? Tara? Lorcan?’

‘Yes, we should.’ Amy’s voice was choked.

Lorcan made no sign of having heard anything.

‘Lorcan?’ Benjy repeated, meaningfully.

‘But it’s nice here,’ Lorcan said softly, cruelly. Then he smiled at Katherine, who was lifelessly wedged between him and Joe. And the smile said,
I’ll be back
.

With lazy grace, Lorcan kept everyone waiting while he slowly unfolded himself from beside Katherine. ‘’Bye,’ he drawled, swinging himself towards the door.

‘’Bye,’ Tara and Benjy squeaked, unable to get out fast enough.

Amy opened her mouth to say goodbye but all that came out was ‘Aaarrr.’

The door slammed, the silence hummed and the room was almost empty of people yet full of malevolence.

‘How do you know Lorcan?’ Katherine asked Joe, in a death-knell voice. She didn’t turn to look at him.

‘I worked with him on an ad. Or, rather, didn’t work with him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was such a handful we had to get another actor.’

‘Figures. That’s Lorcan. The big star.’ He didn’t know whether or not she was serious.

‘How do you know him?’

‘I lost my virginity – and a whole lot more – to him,’ she said hollowly.

The way she said it chilled him with real fear. He tried to put his arm around her and she writhed away. ‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I want you to leave,’ she told him coldly.

‘Don’t do this,’ he begged.

‘I want you to leave.’

Joe didn’t understand. He just knew something had shifted ineluctably; that he’d lost Katherine. Was it because she was angry about Angie? Or was it to do with Lorcan? He suspected it was more Lorcan than Angie. While Lorcan had been in the room, Joe had felt like he didn’t exist.

‘Go now,’ she ordered.

In despair, he tried again, but she was unreachable.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he promised, then reluctantly left.

Tara was mortified when she returned an hour later. ‘Katherine, I am so, so sorry. What a terrible coincidence. If I’d had any idea, any sort of inkling, that you knew Lorcan I wouldn’t have brought him
near
the place.’

‘You’re home early,’ Katherine said heavily.

‘Yeah, well…’ The evening had gone off-the-chart downhill after they’d left because the tension between Lorcan and Amy was so toxic. ‘So have I got this right?’ Tara asked. ‘Lorcan is
Beaker from
The Muppet Show
? The one who was your boyfriend when you lived in Limerick?’

Katherine tipped her head slowly.

‘And he ditched you?’

‘Yeah. He ditched me.’

‘Fintan and I suspected at the time that your heart had been mashed.’

‘But I didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘We noticed,’ Tara said drily.

‘Sorry.’

‘He’s very good-looking,’ Tara said. ‘No wonder you were so upset when you came back to Knockavoy. But he’s a right prick at the same time. Thinks he’s God’s gift. Look at the way he flirted with you in front of his girlfriend.’

‘Yeah, that’s Lorcan.’

The weary way she near-groaned instead of speaking alerted Tara. Alarmed, she took in Katherine’s demeanour. She looked drugged. ‘Have you been smoking spliff?’

‘No.’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘No.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’

‘You seem… not very with it. Are you upset? Was it a big shock to see Lorcan?’

‘Why would it be a shock?’

‘You tell me.’ Tara watched her carefully, then realized something. ‘Where’s Joe?’

‘Fuck Joe.’

Tara gasped. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Joe slept with a girl from work.’

‘Oh, no. Oh, no. Please tell me you’re joking.’

‘I’m not joking.’

‘He just didn’t seem the type. And he seemed to be crazy about you. Men, they’re all bastards, every single last one of them. And has it been going on all the time you’ve been seeing him?’

Katherine opened her mouth, but didn’t speak. Ah, feck it, there was no getting around it, she had to tell the truth. ‘Well, it actually happened before I got off with him. But all the same. He never told me, and I’ve been working in the same office –’

‘No, just one moment. Can we have a reality check here? Katherine, have you gone mental? You’re annoyed because he slept with someone
before
you got off with him? Did you expect him to be a virgin? Saving himself for you?’

‘No, but –’

‘You’ve slept with other people, Beaker from
The Muppet Show
, to take one example. You’ve no right to complain if Joe did too. Oh, come on! Show me a person who doesn’t have a past and I’ll show you a boring bastard.’

Katherine hitched and carelessly let fall her shoulders.

‘This isn’t anything to do with meeting Lorcan?’ Alarm mushroomed in Tara. ‘You’re not hoping to, um, start up with him again? Because that would be pure lunacy, Katherine.’

‘I know.’

‘It was twelve and a half years ago. A lifetime. He’s got a girlfriend, you’ve got Joe.’

‘If Joe rings,’ Katherine said, with cold finality, ‘I won’t speak to him, got that?’

‘Until when?’

‘I’ll decide when.’

‘But –’

‘It’s my flat.’

And that was the end of it.

Joe rang several times the following morning and left messages on the answering-machine. ‘Please talk to me, Katherine,’ he asked, his politeness not hiding his desperation.

Tara found it excruciating to listen to. ‘Come on,’ she said at two o’clock. ‘We’ve to go to Fintan’s.’

‘Go out?’ Katherine looked startled. ‘I’m not going out.’

‘But… Why not? Don’t you want to see his lumps? Or, rather, the lack of them?’

‘Not today.’

‘But, Katherine, we’ve been waiting six months for him to improve. It’s finally happened. Don’t you care?’

‘Yes, but I don’t want to go today. Sorry.

‘I am sorry,’ she added, with seeming sincerity.

‘Katherine, please let me help,’ Tara begged. ‘You’re being so weird. Just talk to me, would you?’

‘Go on your own. Give Fintan a kiss from me. I’ll see him soon.’

Her heart heavy with foreboding, Tara finally left, and Katherine exhaled with relief.

She was glad of the solitude. Though she knew she was behaving oddly, it was as if she was observing herself from afar and was powerless to intervene, like watching a wind-up doll which whirs about randomly, banging into doors and walls, mindless of its safety. She’d spent so long fantasizing about Lorcan that she couldn’t believe he’d been delivered into her lap. The shock was disconnecting. Though more than a decade had passed, she’d never really felt it was over. He was unfinished business and because the past had shaped the present, it was more important than the present.

Over the years she’d acted out many, many scenarios in her
head. In most of them Lorcan prostrated himself with apologies, she made him suffer for a while, then forgave him. In the other version he cockily assumed he could take up where he left off and, with a selection of well-practised glares and pithy put-downs, she annihilated him.

She intended that when Lorcan came back – and she was convinced he
would
be back in the next day or so – she’d be the person in control. The ending would be rewritten, this time to suit her. Even if she wasn’t sure if it was the one where she rejected him scathingly or rode off into the sunset with him. Possibly both.

The one thing she was sure of was that the current ending wouldn’t do. Images of that last terrible scene with him assailed her and even now she winced at the very memory.

‘Why?’

She paused and flicked a glance around the pub. She’d thought a public place would be better to tell him her news in, but now she wasn’t so sure. ‘Because,’ she swallowed, and could hardly continue, ‘because I’m going to have a baby.’ Though she knew Lorcan wouldn’t do a runner on her, she couldn’t help being nervous because mythology held that men were likely to make for the hills around this delicate time. But she calmed herself with the thought that runners only happened to stupid, careless girls and no one was as careful as she. ‘Say something,’ she urged, anxiously. ‘Are you angry? If you are, you’ve no right to be, it takes two to tango…’

But he didn’t look angry, just weary. ‘I can’t marry you,’ he said, in pity and exasperation.

‘Why not?
’ Her voice was high and her eyes were sunk like wells into the white landscape of her terrified face.

‘Because,’ he sighed, getting irritated, ‘I’m already married.’

She almost passed out. With a roaring in her ears, the pub receded, transformed into a vision of Hell. As she watched Lorcan, his face changed from something familiar and desirable into a picture of the devil. His handsome mouth thinned into a cruel line, his exquisite nose became a pointy hatchet, his purple-brown eyes turned into red coals. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, because she didn’t.

‘I’m already married,’ he snapped, guilt making him bad-tempered. ‘I can’t marry you because I’m already married.’

‘You can’t be married,’ she insisted, trying to wade out of the nightmare. ‘You never said.’

‘Oh, come on. You must have known.’

‘I didn’t. I’d never have gone to… done the…’

‘Oh, I see, you were trying to trap me into marrying you by getting pregnant,’ Lorcan accused, desperate to turn the tables.

‘No, I wasn’t,’ she defended herself, her breath coming in squeaky, shallow gasps, ‘but I thought if we went, um, if we went,’ she forced herself to go on, ‘if we went to bed that you were going to marry me.’

‘Well, I wasn’t and I’m not. I can’t, you see,’ he added, in gentler tones.

‘I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,’ Katherine muttered over and over, her face in her hands. Katherine Casey did not get impregnated by a man who wouldn’t marry her. It simply wasn’t part of her plan.

She peeked her face out at him. ‘We’ll have to live together. Starting from now.’ It was far from ideal, eminently
unrespectable, but it would have to do. ‘I mean,’ she blustered, ‘I
presume
you’re separated from your wife.’

He exhaled heavily. ‘You presume wrong.’

Again she thought she was going to black out.

‘I don’t necessarily mean a legal separation.’ She was grasping at straws. ‘But you’re not
together-together
, are you?’

‘We live together, if that’s what you mean.’ Lorcan was looking at the door and wondering how soon he could escape.

‘What do you mean?’ she shrieked. ‘I’ve been in your flat. There was no wife there.’

‘She was away.’

‘Away?’ Katherine asked, dazedly. She remembered the plants, the spice rack, the bowls of pot-pourri dotted around the place. She’d thought Lorcan had put them there.

‘Yes, she was away those times you came over,’ Lorcan confirmed, worn out.

Katherine couldn’t speak, she could hardly breathe as the enormity of the information began to trickle through.
You’re a mistress. A
mistress!
How on earth did that happen?

It was at times like this that Lorcan wished he’d kept his willy to himself. He’d enjoyed his time with Katherine, she was sweet. And he’d marvelled at his master-craftmanship as he’d wooed her at just the right rate, but right now he wasn’t sure if all this fall-out was worth it. And for her to be pregnant – Jesus, what a mess! One he wanted to get as far away from as possible.

Through the murk of sweaty terror Katherine saw a solution of sorts. ‘You’ll just have to leave your wife immediately. Come on,’ she said crisply, gathering confidence, ‘I’ll come with you to tell her. We’ll go now.’

Already she was gathering her bag and jacket and Lorcan
was filled with panic. Sometimes Katherine could be so forceful, pushy even, as she reshaped the world into a version that suited her. Lorcan didn’t want to leave his wife, not yet, anyway. Despite his occasional infidelities, he was very attached to Fiona. They suited each other. Not to mention that she bankrolled him.

He was appalled at the idea of living with Katherine and – God above –
a baby
. Katherine would have him trapped in suburbia, cutting grass, going to Mass, changing nappies, converting garages, painting bedrooms and the tedious like while she went to coffee mornings, looked at conservatory brochures and contested their neighbours’ planning applications. The things that had initially charmed him about Katherine were suddenly choking him.

Besides, he’d got what he wanted from her. The thrill of the chase was over, and now he was scared.

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Leave Fiona alone.’

Hearing him talk protectively about another woman was the biggest pain she’d ever felt. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel such agony. ‘You’re not going to tell me you love her?’ she choked.

He hadn’t been going to, but that suddenly struck him as a good idea. ‘Of course I love her, she’s my wife.’

‘You can’t love her, you love me.’

When he said nothing, she demanded, ‘You love me, don’t you? You said you did.’

‘I know I did, but… I’m sorry. Look, I’m very fond of you, and you’re very attractive…’ He squirmed. She’d got it bad. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I’ve been a bad boy again and –’

‘Again?
You mean, you’ve done this before? I’m not the first?’

He moved his head slightly from side to side. She wasn’t the first.

‘But I’m special, aren’t I?’ Clearing space for him to redeem himself in.

But all he said was ‘You’re a nice girl and I’m sorry.’

Before she could follow this unwelcome information to its unpleasant conclusion, her brain flitted to another source of horror. There were so many dreadful things happening that she didn’t know which to deal with first. ‘But I’m going to have a baby.’ Hysteria appeared in her voice.

God, what a shambles, Lorcan thought, uncomfortably. He couldn’t even tell her to have an abortion because he had no money to contribute to it. ‘What will we do?’ she begged, her eyes pleading.

‘I’m not the one who’s pregnant.’ Lorcan’s face was twisted into an expression of dislike because she was making him feel so bad.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re the one who’s up the pole. I never wanted you to be. I wanted you to get sorted out but you wouldn’t. So do what you like with it. Have it. Don’t have it. It’s up to you.’

‘What are you trying to say to me?’ She had a fair idea, but hoped desperately that she was wrong.

‘I really think it’s best if I don’t get involved,’ he said, priding himself on how kindly he said it.

‘But you have to be involved,’ she cried. ‘It’s unavoidable. You’ll have to leave your wife and –’

‘Really, Katherine, I think –’

‘That’s not my name,’ she said wildly. At his confused look, she insisted, crazily, ‘It’s Katherine with a K. It’s your special name for me. Say it.’

‘Katherine,’ he said, loudly and firmly, ‘I think it’s best if we’re not together any more.’

‘NO! Don’t leave me.’

‘It’s for the best.’

‘The best for you, maybe, but how will I cope?’

‘You’ll be fine,’ he said hastily, turning away from her. ‘You’ll be fine, you’ll get over this.’

‘Please,’ she choked, ‘please.’ Then she heard herself say, ‘I’m begging you.’

But, as if in a slowed-down nightmare, he was getting to his feet. He was trying to stand up and go away from her. She knew that if he left now it was all over, she’d never see him again.

He was moving away from the table, but she was holding on to his arm and being dragged with him. A stool fell over and he was trying to prise her claw-grip fingers off him. She bumped her hip, wood denting bone, and felt no pain. People were looking up from their drinks and he was saying something. Hard words. Cruel words. Get away. Leave me alone. A clatter as a pint glass fell, its contents frothing silently over the shiny wood. The barman was hurrying towards them.

‘But don’t you love me?’ she heard her voice screech.

‘No,’ he said.

No.