Stay (3 page)

“She’s coming back.” He practices saying it. Hates himself for doubting it’ll only be the week. “Her shirts are drying out on the line.” He says this too, as if it’s proof enough, as if in seven days Abbey will be at the door, slipping into his rubber boots, trudging outside to unpeg the clothes, bringing them in flat and stiff with wind. Flagon picks her bowl up in her mouth and drops it at Dermot’s feet; she barks into it, paws it until it flips over. Grabbing it, Dermot walks over to the sink, bends down, opens the cupboard, scoops some food out of a bucket.

“An bhfuil tú an madra?” he asks her, ruffles the fur on the back of her neck as she leans in and starts eating. He watches as she burrows her nose around in the bottom of the bowl, half of the food spilling out over the side. “Yes, you are a dog.” He says it in English, then in Latin, then French. Flagon’s head is in the bowl even though most of the food is on the floor. The whole enterprise moving in increments across the kitchen linoleum as she noses it along. “I told you so,” he says, kneeling down beside her. She looks up at him for a second then goes back to eating. Dermot adding, “I won’t tell you who I am.”

Dermot decides he’ll be busy, get some work done so things will have changed while Abbey’s gone. Cut his hair, call and make an appointment, go clean shaven. Anything.
At least get up off the floor. He rings his friend Michael in Galway. “I’m rearranging the furniture. Would you give us a lift to Hughes?” Dermot sits in his chair by the fire, eyes the couch perpendicular to the door, the coal bucket, the stool against the wall opposite, the big oak table and two chairs by the far window, everything in its place, in the place Abbey has put it. Dermot remembers when she first moved in at the start of winter, the mess of the cottage, the drafts coming through the gashed thatch roof. Abbey, keeping her coat on from the cold, had walked through the front room, stopping to tap the glass of the framed manuscript that he’d hung over the bookshelf.

“What’s this?”

“Kiliani Vitae,” Dermot said, going past with her bag, not even glancing at the illuminated page.

“Is it real?” She’d traced the capital K, the bold red and blue strokes that curled into a fox’s head and tail. After the “K” the writing was small and ornate. He’d looked at her from where he was standing in the bedroom doorway; her bag sitting on the end of the bed.

“A reproduction.”

“Oh.”

He went over to her then, to warm her hands between his. Abbey’s eyes welling up.

“It’s a copy of the fourth recension of his life.”

Abbey kept her head down; she was watching his big pale hands go bump bump over her knuckles, back and forth. Dermot moved his hand to her hairline, pushed a strand of her hair back.

“My thesis.” That’s when he knew it for sure. He’d have to be gentle with her, he’d have to explain things, he’d have to weigh what he said.

“There’s stacks of books on our friend Kilian under the bed. He met a particularly bitter end.”

Abbey laughed and looked around, then started crying.

“If you’re not sure.” Dermot said it slowly. Still, he had it out before he could retract it. He didn’t care if she was sure or not, he just didn’t want her coming and going all the time, a day here and there and then the bus to Dublin, another day God-knows-when dictated by her work schedule. He was tired of waiting for her to come around. It was all or nothing, he didn’t have the means to manage anything else. They’d only been together two months. He remembers thinking that if he strung the days one after the other they would amount to a week and a half. “Stay with me,” he’d muttered the week before when she was halfway out the door for Dublin. The closest he’d come to commitment in years.
Stay. Unpack. Eat three meals at my table
. And then here she was, her bag set down on the foot of his bed.

“Are we all right?” he asked.

“Fine.” She walked straight into his chest, scratched her chin on his blue wool sweater. “Really, it’s fine.”

Dermot’s hands on the back of her head, her neck, one hand finding her wrist so that he could bring it up to his lips. Abbey stepping back, accidentally bumping the narrow bookshelf, the framed manuscript knocking back against the wall above, the cup of coins on the top shelf jingling around in their mug. She’d almost started to cry again.

“All right?”

“Yep.”

“You’d think we were falling apart here.”

Abbey wiped her nose on her sleeve. “One of us, anyway.”

“Come here,” he said, turning the corner, walking into the bathroom. He turned the taps over the tub on, and pulling up his sleeve he set the plug in.

“Have a bath. I’ll get the fire up.”

“Where’s Flagon?”

“I’ll call her in.”

Steam started to filter up from the taps. Leaving the room, Dermot saw Abbey unbuttoning her overcoat, undoing her jeans.

Dermot turns the picture frame that sits on the side table towards him. It’s a black and white photo from one of those booths in Dublin; Abbey too close to the camera, eyes wide, clip of dark hair angling in across her cheek. He looks rough, like he’d been left out in the elements, forgotten. He turns the frame the slightest bit so it sits on an angle, a gesture she probably won’t even notice. He wants the cottage to go back to its original state, wants the gash in the thatch roof to widen, the table to be covered in papers, the dishes left out on the counter instead of put away. He thinks back to when the mud floor wasn’t covered by rugs, when all he had he could count on the one hand—dishes, a sleeping bag and kettle. Dermot bunches up the wool blanket on the couch, he throws the candles on the mantle into the bin so she’ll think he’s lit them, that they’ve burned down to nothing in her absence. He goes back
to the photo and puts it face down so he doesn’t have to see himself; turns the ringer off on the phone. Then he waits. It’ll be half an hour or more before Michael pulls up. Dermot plants himself on the couch, turns the radio on and then, unhappy with the blather on RTE, switches it off. Sits there in the quiet. Waits for the house to go dark around him.

Spar

AFTER his fourth pint at Hughes, Dermot steps out. Walks through the rain past the bakery, the closed tourist shop, careful to stay under the awnings. The street is dark save for the Spar, which is lit up like a ferry port. The bells jingle above the door of the corner store as Dermot enters, and he is immediately stunned by the fluorescent light. Walking over to the counter he eyes the
Times
but leaves it.

“Dermot,” says the cashier; the boy leaning forward, slack-jawed, eager.

“Jimmy,” says Dermot.

Dermot feigns an interest in the magazines, then turns his attention to the front page of the
Independent
. Picks it up, puts it down. He walks up to the cash and wavers, plants his hands on the counter top and enunciates “John Players,” so as not to give off a slur. Jimmy turns, grabs a pack off the shelf, sets it firmly down in front of him.

“Anything else, then?”

“No.”

Or had Michael asked for something? He pictures getting up at the pub to run over, and Michael asking for … Dermot tries to figure out what it could be. A paper, a bar, a piece of fruit? Dermot looks around for a clue. Was it a snack Michael wanted? It almost comes to Dermot, but Jimmy interrupts and it’s gone.

“Did ya hear about Mrs. McGilloway?”

“No.”

“She passed on this afternoon.”

Dermot staggers back a step and then catches himself. Jimmy watches him; his face a mess of pock marks and freckles.

“Eileen McGilloway?” Dermot’s voice is garbled, his tongue feels thick.

“The postmistress.”

Dermot shakes his head. “I know.”

“McGilloway’s only just gone fifty-three.” Jimmy starts to ring in the Players.

“What of?”

“That’s four fifty-five.”

Dermot already has the exact change on the counter.

“What of?” Dermot repeats.

“Sorry?”

“Eileen McGilloway.”

“I think it was the heart.”

Drunk, Dermot chortles for no reason, turns and walks out under the ruckus of the door.

——

“Eileen McGilloway’s died,” Dermot says.

“I’ve heard.” Michael gestures with his thumb to the next table, where a group of women are sitting. “Just like that. After her postal run this morning.” He finishes off his pint and shifts around in his seat, turning his attention to the women. They’ve been talking about McGilloway since they came in.

“Can you believe it?” Margaret Keating turns to Dermot. Her eyes liquid.

“Jimmy just told me.”

“She was still in the van, it was parked in the drive.” Keating has gone over this detail again and again since she heard. “Tom Joyce found her. Slumped over in the seat.”

“The neighbour,” Dermot says. Michael nods.

Keating takes her coat off, puts it down on the stool between herself and the seamstress from Furbo. The younger girl, elbows on the table, chin in her hand, says, “I imagine Deirdre’ll be coming over from Dublin now.” Stirring her gin with a plastic straw.

“I’d say so.” Keating takes a sip of her pint.

Dermot leans towards Michael. “Deirdre’s the daughter.”

“I gathered, but thanks all the same.” Michael says it loud enough that Keating looks over, surprised by his British accent. Tries to place if she’s seen him with Dermot before. She has. The archeologist. From London. After a minute she turns to Dermot, says, “Ní fhaca mé thú le tamall.”

“I was there this morning. At the church.”

Keating holds still. “Right. You were.”

Michael raises his glass in the women’s direction, says, “To Eileen—” Suddenly unsure of her last name. The women
lift their glasses and then turn away. Over by the door three of the Bord na Móna lads come in, voices raised. The talk is football, the World Cup.

“He was injured or he’d have made the cut,” says one.

“No way,” says another, “it was Carsley from the start.”

“Kennedy should be there.”

“Carsley.”

“Catch yerself on.”

Niall nods their way from the bar. The three of them traipse over to the counter mud slaked onto the floor as they make their way past. A few hands go up by the far wall in greeting. A “Hiya Tomás” is called out. People move aside to give them a few stools and they settle in. Two from a second car follow a minute later. They’ve come from Maam. Every Friday they do a tour of the pubs. Michael nods at a man called Angus; he’s met him once or twice while doing surveys out at the bog.

“How’s it Michael?” Angus’ hand on Michael’s shoulder as he moves through the crowd.

“Well enough.”

“Grand.” And the two men in their rubber boots, work pants and coats join the other three at the bar. Pint after pint appearing on the counter before them.

After another round Dermot and Michael fall silent, listening to the banter at the bar. The Bord na Móna lads have moved from football to the exorcism at St. Brighid’s and then on to the upcoming election. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael posters on every second lamp post along the coast road.

“Bertie’ll take it.”

“A majority?”

“You’d think.”

“You’d hardly know one from the other.”

“My mother lives next to the Sinn Fein fellow in Tuam.”

“I thought she was in Clonbern.”

“No, came over a year ago.”

Conneely, his back against the door jamb between the two rooms, clears his throat, leans in to Tomás, the foreman. “Did you know Eileen McGilloway?”

Tomás jabs his thumb at the blond fellow two stools down, “Liam did. He dated the daughter.”

Over the next hour, the room becomes more crowded. The seisiún in the back hits its stride and then flounders again when the fiddle player makes for the bar. Everyone is talking about McGilloway. Over at the next table, Margaret Keating lifts her doughy elbows into an old tweed coat. She backs into Michael’s seat by accident, almost ends up on his lap. There are stunned looks from the other women at her table. Brigid, Keating’s niece, had come in an hour ago, and as her aunt rights herself Brigid counts the number of empty glasses in front of her place at the table.

“All right?” Michael says, steadying Keating’s arm. Teetering on her heels, Margaret nods at the two men before pulling her purse straps onto her shoulder. She squeezes Dermot on the arm then goes by him.

Dermot pulls out a cigarette and lights it, inhales. “She was my age.”

“Eileen McGilloway?”

“The very one.”

“Do you know the daughter?” Michael asks.

“I’ve not seen her since she moved to Dublin.” Dermot says “Dublin” and the right side of his face flinches. He rubs his cheek with his hand. Michael has brought up the issue of Abbey again without meaning to. Dermot had avoided the subject early in the evening, had eventually started in about it, then went to the bar before he’d said too much. When he came back, he’d changed the conversation to Michael’s conservancy project at the Museum. When Michael had broached the subject of Abbey again later, Dermot suddenly announced he had to head over to the Spar.

“Where’s my Marathon?” Michael remembers he’d asked for a chocolate bar.

“Still at the shop.” Dermot turning his glass in his hands.

Michael gets up, walks over to Niall, buys a Smithwicks and a bag of crisps. The pub is stifling—there are coal fires at either end of the room, the low ceiling trapping the heat. A trickle of sweat inches past Michael’s ear. On his way back to the table, Michael looks into Hughes’ second room, wondering if it’s cooler. The bigger room is a mix of wood high-backs and fold-out chairs, a large L-shaped couch along the far wall, an old card table set up beside it. Like a banquet room that hasn’t quite come together. There are kids sprawled out on the couch and a woman bounces a little girl on her knee over on one of the far chairs. The musicians pick up again after a break. If it weren’t for the large wood beams that cross over the ceilings of both rooms, and the cardboard Guinness coasters set out on every table, you’d never put the two rooms together. By the open window, the fiddle player tunes his instrument. The guitar gets underway.

“It’s only a week right?” Michael says as he sits back down.