Malarky (33 page)

It is after the dullness of Penneys and the buggies banging into her and a look at the duvets downstairs. Duvets, pans and watering cans. All seasons. All leanings. Or maybe it was Dunnes Stores where she saw the watering can. Gardening implements and underwear they're all melding into one and she's half hearted in feigning concern over their quality or any desire for them. Picked, turned and merely replaced, her eye on the exit. The heat, the exasperation of shoppers with their
hands on hangers and too short shorts and pneumonia inducing tee-shirts, donut rings of flesh bulging from them, squeaking through the rails. Why she is among them she can barely fathom. They might have dead children, especially the Africans. Sure their countries are ravaged with disease and here she is among them. She's careful to smile at the Africans hoping maybe a conversation will emerge, 'til she feels silly for they have their small sons around them and they're buying football strips and socks for them. Too young maybe, she supposes. She could join a Black church, she's seen them advertised. Come up for service once a week and find people who've escaped from massacre and terror. Find the others with dead sons. What's she doing here amongst the swimming towels, finding comfort in the suffering of others. What's wrong with her? Of course there are people here who know death, they're only 10 minutes from The Mater hospital, but she's certain none of them, none of the Irish here have lost a son the way her Jimmy's gone. She'd have to go to America or England or up the North to find those mothers. She wonders can anyone here in Penneys right now spell Afghanistan? She probably can't either. She certainly can't visualize exactly where it is. The mad oasis of all those countries beyond Turkey, where no one takes their holidays for Christ's sake. There's none here buying tee shirts to wear in the West Bank. These countries that are only on the telly because they're having the buildings and bridges bombed out of them. Pakistan, Pakistan, that's the border now, she's calmed by remembering a fact as she sorts through a stack of tea towels that have words sewn on them like “cappuccino” and “Paris Café.” At the cutlery, was it cutlery? Maybe it was at the vests, the packets of two vests she became confused about Iran – what language do they speak there? Iranian? She can't go on not knowing the answer and she'll have to ask someone here and for fear of doing just that, she leaves past a distracting stand of umbrellas, past two
security guards with darker skin and brown eyes too like Halim had and out the closest side door. Would any of them be from Beirut, could you strike a conversation casually and find someone who knows something about over there? Could they tell her whether it is like Beirut inside in the hospital described, all roads that lead to the beach, heavy hot air among the hills.

They are behind her, the two, and she smiles back at them, but they keep coming. Mrs. Hello. Excuse. Stop. The tea towels are pressed between her fingers still. Stop. Please. Oh Mother of Divine God the cappuccino tea towels are still in her hand. She's distraught at it and heads straight into their arms, handing them over. I'm very sorry. I don't know what happened. I never intended to take them. I was thinking of something and became distracted. Please. He's looking at her, measuring her. It's ok, one says to the other. I'll pay for them, but really I don't want them at all I don't even like them. Go on, he says, just be careful the next time. Take a basket in your hands ok. The other says he'd better search her bag or they'll get in trouble. They push a few bits aside. Take out her book about Beirut and flap through the pages. You been to Beirut, he asks her. No, I haven't, but I believe it is a beautiful place. Would you believe me if I told you that was what I was thinking about when I had to leave the shop? Neither of them gave a response. I was upset because I couldn't remember the language they speak in Iran and I am worried there will be a war there. She cannot control the build-up in her eyes and her words sound ridiculous, an old person speaking like a child. I'm sorry, she says. Just be careful next time. The humiliation follows her back out the door, people are staring at her. Her cheeks burn, her hands are clammy and she must get to Eason's.

A Traveller woman, a big girl she is, is holding a half-eaten packet of cakes in one hand and two or three children hover
near her, tripping over her stout legs. She can feel her move over and see her mouth depress.

—I'm sorry, she starts to tell her, but tears are progressing down one side of her face and the woman God bless her has seen it and stares in for about 5 seconds, but relieves her of any further answer by approaching a man in brown shoes. She knows he's wearing brown shoes because her head is deliberately lowered. She takes a moment by the wall there leaning in, the pressure below in her bladder mounts. The Traveller has gone to the security guard and she's looking over at her but the Security Guard is emphatic. He looks over but he has those arms crossed, but he says something and then the girl looks again to her. She has to move off before anyone asks her.

She uses the side trail of her hair to collect the tears. Amazed that you can cry into your hair, if it's of a good enough length. She thinks slowly of the words she'd say if anyone asks her what's wrong with her? She tries to imagine saying it's my son, my son's been killed but it doesn't sound right, my son's been killed and you are all out shopping she wants to say, but corrects herself, she too, is out shopping. We'll always be out shopping she thinks as her tears tumble. Two am on a Thursday and Henry Street will be throbbing. Even if they cratered it, we'd walk around the edges to get to Roches Stores.

Should Marks and Spencer beckon? That's where women of her age go, but she doesn't want to become calmed by chocolate mousse or pineapple tidbits or overpriced melon, so it's along by the jumper shop that is no more, imprinted with For Lease signs and the two brass statues of the women shopping with their bags at their knees. Knees smeared in pigeon shite and stubbed out fags, but what the hell they're knees nonetheless and she longs to be a woman who sits and talks to another like her about shopping instead of this flustering
that's taken her over and has her eyes evacuating themselves in public. She cannot be certain if the grief is worse than the fear of humiliation. She's let herself go, she's let herself go, in public, continuously roil around her head like the belt of a generator. Beirut, Beirut, and you've let yourself go, you daft woman, eventually meet on a loop of Beirut and let go. Beirut and let go.

The Bridge is tricky. The gravitational pull of the crowd is straight over and under like a train through the viaduct to deliver yourself into the devilish palm of Temple Bar. The last time she walked through it she was astonished to see orange apartments and not a single tree. Today there are swarms of hungover young fellas and teenage whizzes who only remind what a great, great teenager Jimmy was compared to them and make everything forty times worse. He wasn't a young lad for hanging about. And the noise of them. Are they worse than the girls she wonders as a girl, half-dressed her bits hanging out of her, races and jumps, straddling a fella, nearly knocking him into her. And the noise that picks up. There's something military about the noise of teenagers, as they spot each other screeching out their targets. It's a strange old language they speak and she's not about to understand it. Would you ever shut up she wants to shout, until it strikes her no, keep going, keep going, keep ramming each other into the wall and smacking each other on the head, do lift up and let out a siren wail at the sight of each other, for one day you might not be here to caper about this way and it's mothers who'll walk these alleys and arches for any smudge that may remain of you.

She'll do the bus stops, waste a bit of time and head back to the station. Up the Quays she forces herself, tempted into a newsagent by the promise of a Club Milk and a paper, but the queue of crisp-buying youngsters feels too long and she's hot, everywhere she goes into she's so hot. They're pulling at
chocolate, papers and magazines. And they're all so young again. Everyone is young, everyone is who Jimmy was and who Jimmy couldn't be. She's come to Dublin for the day's shopping to be shut of the voices and the sights and it's back to the Blue House with the gaping hole she'll retreat to early. It's back to the stool and the small hope he'll come again and stare at her from the wall. If she can hear him alone, that would do.

She's like a bold teenager out there: the flask jolting her thigh like the accidental budge of a drunk or clumsy lover. Her finger presses hard on the spoon handle. Along she goes merrily. She hasn't thought too much about what she'll do when she gets to the house and she's going along very merrily with the freedom thing until something takes her ankle sharp and fast. She's down. It's wet. This is not good.

The flask has bruised her leg. Hip soaked in a muddy graze. Whatever way she fell or however she slammed, the side of her head – her temple – took a whack that sounded worse than it feels and now she's down here on her side in the dark and the worst of it, is not the difficulty getting up, it's that her plans are slipping away.

Ding! goes the plan to arrange the small footstool, dang! disappears the careful removal of her flask from the bag, and rats! to the gentle twist of the lid, breeze of steam and comfort of her cup of tea, all alone, in another man's house.

She doesn't care about physical collapse, nor cuts, she is stuck and she's not going to be stuck any longer because Lord knows what they'll do if they find her out here, in this condition, with a spoon up her sleeve. They'll commit her, she's sure.

She attempts to thrash her body about a bit, to roll to her knees, but however she fell, something is stuck or gone out of joint. All she can feel is the flask wedged under her thigh and searing pain when she tries to put her arm down to push herself up. The pain is there, no matter what she does with her arm, so clearly it must be broke. She's to go the other way, to
get herself over the flask, more pain, it doesn't look good. Dark and marshy where she's fallen, if she can get flat on her back then she can inch her way down the hill she came up perhaps. But what of the boulders, the sharp stones? And there's the wall she climbed over. The wall between herself and her house. The wall between her house and the common land and Limerick's house. Should she call out? No. For she does not want any of them to come and find her.

Of course it's cold, it would be cold, it couldn't be any thing other than cold, if you're foolish enough to go out with your spoon and your flask and your plans afloat. There's no foot traffic up here at night. The backs of the farms lead up and out to this common land and it's a great way to access a place discreetly. They'll only be coming up here to dump stuff. Would she be lucky, would this be a night some young hooligan might make a deposit and she could offer him ten euro if he were to lift her back to her feet, leave her down to the house and say nothing. 15 euro she thinks. A fella would take 15. He'd get a few cans, a young fella'd be happy with 15. She can think such giddying nonsense because she's afraid. She's afraid she's gone too far now and what was she thinking, scooting back here like a nimble mountain goat looking for a munch. I told you discretion, discretion, she chastises herself.

Beirut is slipping away from me, she thinks. Beirut, Beirut, can you hear me Beirut?

Anois, anois, the Blue House with the gaping hole in it. The faded Blue House, her first step towards (Beirut) because she can see and hear Jimmy in there. No one'll believe her, they'll say she's away on the wind, gone with the fairies and ruder besides. But he's there, sometimes he's there and sometimes he's not and when he's not she can feel the cold.

—I'm interested in a house, I told Grief on a Friday.

—In what way?