Stir-Fry (11 page)

“What did she say?”

“Keep me some apple crumble, I think,” said Jael, and topped up Maria’s glass. “Or it could have been, Teach me how to rhumba, but that’s less likely.”

Maria licked the last trace of sweetness off her fork. “How come you don’t have a watch, anyway? Surely the stud farm could finance one.”

“Just don’t like them, they’re like handcuffs. Besides, if I want to know the time, there’s usually somebody to ask. No better way to chat up a stranger on a train.”

“You’re so bloody suggestive about all those years of travelling,” commented Maria from the window. She scanned the pavement but couldn’t see Ruth yet. “I bet you were a dishwasher in a series of little German teashops.”

Jael swirled the dregs in her balloon glass. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Couldn’t care less, to be honest,” said Maria. She stared over the rooftops. “But if I’d spent ten years on the move, I’d never shut up about it. All those trilingual puns and stories you must have.”

Jael was pressing the last crumbs of pastry onto the back of her fork. “I do use them at parties, or sometimes I make them up, because the best stories are lies. Like that time I was climbing in the Tyrol and slipped down a glacier—”

Maria turned, belligerent. “I believed that one.”

A whoop of laughter. “It must have been a good one, so. But mostly I find the present more interesting.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” Then, casting her a concerned glance, Jael asked, “Why, is your present life so dull?”

“No, no.” She fumbled for the words. “It’s different for me, because things are so, well, different nowadays. I mean Dublin and all. Whereas you’ve got a past worth talking about.”

Jael tipped the wine bottle up to get the last mouthful. “Live long enough, pariah, and you too will be a Woman with a Past.”

“Maybe.” Maria turned her gaze back to the window. There was Ruth at last, a dark figure bobbing in and out of the crowd of shoppers. Maria waved her fingers.

“Anyway, why isn’t your own past worth talking about?”

She turned. “Ah, because. It’s only home, and it’s still there, I haven’t got right away from it yet.”

“I don’t think we ever get right away,” said Jael softly. “Tell me something about it.”

“Like what?”

“Something small.”

Maria turned into the room, frowning in concentration. “Can’t think. Well, the TV screen always has a sort of figure-of-eight smear on it from Mam, from my mother, she wipes it with a wet rag every Saturday morning. And we once had a budgie, but it flew out the window in a storm and didn’t come back. There’s a little statue of Our Lady with the hands chipped off, and a field out the back full of cowshit.”

“Look, don’t satirise it for my benefit,” Jael broke in. “I’m not a journalist.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just, if you liked it, don’t try and be sophisticated by slagging it.”

“I am not trying to sound sophisticated,” said Maria in fury.

Jael leaned her forehead on her fist. “That came out wrong. All I mean is, I come from the country too, I remember the smallness of it all.”

“Thought you were a filthy rich Prod from a stud farm.” Maria’s voice came out even more hostile than she intended.

“Horseshit, cowshit, what’s the difference? You can’t wipe it off your feet all at once.” Jael held her stare. “Do you ever get homesick?”

“What is this, a joke?” said Maria warily. “That’s not a Jael-type question.”

“Whatever you say.” Jael began piling up dirty plates. Crashes interleaved with silence. The stack was a hand’s breadth high when she burst out, “Only whenever I try to get to know the real Maria, you act like you’re about to be raped.”

Maria put down the tea towel and rested her hand above Jael’s elbow for a moment. “Hey. Hey. Take it easy.”

With a self-deprecating grimace, Jael walked out of the room. Maria sank onto the sofa and wiped her hands with the tea towel; a headache was beginning to lace its web behind her eyes. With her right hand she squeezed at her shoulders, trying to loosen the taut muscles; tugging open the top button of her shirt, she slid her fingers round to the nape of her neck.

“Need a rub?” Jael swished through the beads behind a newspaper.

Maria stood up, folding the tea towel. “I’m fine.”

Jael snapped the paper open, leaning against the back of the sofa. “You should get Ruth to give you a proper massage
someday; she’s a lifesaver when my back starts acting up. Her kind is called ‘healing bodywaves’; she learned it at a week-long workshop on goddess spirituality.”

They exchanged queasy grins. “Whatever you’re into,” murmured Maria, checking that she had shut the fridge door properly.

“Here we are,” exclaimed Jael, peering at the small print on the back page. “‘Taut and riveting, reminiscent of …’ blah blah … ‘dreamy fetishism …’”

“Sorry?”

“Oh, didn’t I ask you already?” asked Jael. “It’s the last night of that French thriller at the Lighthouse, and I thought, well, that you mightn’t have anything better to do.”

Maria’s shoulders stiffened. “I’m sort of tired.”

“Yeah, but not actually doing anything, are you? Not hitting the wine bars with your bimbo friend, for instance.”

“If you mean Yvonne, she’s not a bimbo.” She settled herself in the rocking chair and put her feet up on the hearth.

“Don’t tell me,” hissed Jael. “She’s actually an undercover Kremlin spy,
masquerading
as a bimbo.”

Maria started unlacing her shoe. “If you’d ever met her, you’d know she’s a really decent person.”

“Nice, even?”

“No, decent. There’s a good nature behind that fluffy facade. She laughs at all my jokes. Besides, I need some friends who aren’t on pension.” She avoided a swipe from the rolled-up newspaper.

“Anyway, what about the movie?” continued Jael.

Yawning, Maria wriggled deeper in the chair. “I really should be doing that essay on frescoes. And what about the washing up?”

“Only social rejects stay in on Friday nights.”

“Why didn’t you go with Ruth last week?”

Jael shook her head impatiently. “She dispproves of French
films; apparently they’re all voyeuristic. Complains loudly every time there’s a close-up of a pair of legs, even if they’re Charlotte Rampling’s.”

“I really don’t—”

On her knees, Jael dug her fingers into the straggly rug. “Please. I’m begging for company. Am I going to have to kiss your foot?”

Maria’s socked toes wormed away. “All right. Stop
getting
at me.”

“Yippee.”

“I’m a bit broke though,” she complained as she put her shoe back on.

“No problem, I’ll pay,” Jael said, her voice muffled by the coat cupboard.

“You will not.”

She found herself being tugged out the door. “Shift a leg. We’ve only ten minutes to get there, and I hate missing the trailers.”

“OK, but I’m paying for myself,” shouted Maria, clattering down the stairs. “And kindly stop treating me like an aunt.”

She could tell it was an arty cinema, because the seats were black instead of red plush, and among the couple of dozen watchers there wasn’t a popcorn carton in sight. After a long credits sequence, with reverent close-ups of tomatoes being sliced, the film started to flow, and Maria slid down in her seat and relaxed. But there was one scene about halfway through that left her rigid. As the heroine and hero squabbled in the foreground of a smoky café, the camera shifted to focus on the table behind them: two slim men with moustaches locked in a kiss. A sound of revulsion began to rise from the cinema audience. Maria sat stiff and blushing—whether for the men or for the audience, she wasn’t sure. Jael, tossing Smarties into her mouth by the handful, didn’t seem to notice.

When they emerged, blinking, the sky was navy blue. A furious dispute was going on by the ticket office; Maria recognised that woman from the women’s group—Pat, wasn’t that the name?—insisting that her wheelchair was not going to block the aisle. Maria gave a little wave, but Pat didn’t seem to recognise her. Jael had hurried on; Maria had to dash along the side street to catch up.

“Will we walk the long way home?” Without waiting for an answer, Jael turned down a cobbled alley.

Maria was lost already. She peered around her. “Is it safe?”

“You’ll be all right if you stick with me, kid. I keep a hatpin in my lapel.”

The beggars had packed up for the night, leaving only a few cardboard boxes and, on the slab where the alley ended, a smeary chalking of the Last Supper. Jael slowed to a stroll. “I love films like that, with fishnet tights and snarling violins and not a social issue in sight.” She watched Maria as they paused on a curb. “You didn’t enjoy it much, did you?”

“Oh, it was beautifully filmed,” said Maria quickly. “Only I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to sleep tonight. That bit where the cat leaped out of the kettle …”

Jael ducked in front of a truck; Maria held her breath till the coppery head emerged on the other sidewalk. By the time she caught up, Jael was peering at a menu framed in a heavily curtained window. “Are we hungry or are we
hungry
?”

“Peckish,” said Maria. “But what—”

“You are about to traverse,” intoned Jael in the voice of a car ad, “a frontier in culinary excitement. Those innocent taste buds are about to experience the fiercest chicken vindaloo—to be strictly accurate, the only chicken vindaloo—in Dublin’s fair city.”

Maria’s protests lowered to a whisper as they entered the dim hush of the Indian restaurant. “Chinese is cheaper, and
anyway, shouldn’t we be getting back to find out how Ruth’s debate went?”

“Chinese is for wimps,” Jael hissed back. Then, resignedly, “All right, we’ll get a takeaway here and take it home. But don’t tell me you prefer Chinese when you’re a vindaloo virgin.”

Maria crossed her arms and leaned on the counter.

“Trust me, sulky,” murmured Jael in her ear.

She stuck out her tongue, but had only just time to whip it back into her cheek when the waiter trotted up.

They were rounding the corner of Beldam Square by half ten. “Let’s take a shortcut through the square,” Jael proposed, heading for a gate half hidden in the hedge.

“It’ll be locked.”

“Maria,” said Jael with a sigh as she wedged her foot into the wrought iron and clambered over, “you musn’t let these little circumstances get in your way. Swing the dinner bag over.”

Poised on the top bar, Maria clung to Jael’s bobbing head for support. “Stop laughing,” she ordered; “if you let me fall on one of these spikes, you’ll put an end to my marital prospects.”

“Ah, sure what harm,” murmured Jael, heading through the trees.

Maria picked her way over the grass after her; it was too dark to see anything but leafy mounds and tree trunks. “Wait for me,” she called. “I’ll bet this place is crawling with rats.” Stumbling onto the gravel walk, she found Jael balancing on the arm of a park bench, craning over the treetops.

“You can see the flat from here.”

“Are you sure?” Maria climbed up behind her. “How can you tell it’s ours?”

Jael shaded her eyes from the streetlight. “That has to be
Ruth, walking past the kitchen window. She keeps reminding me to buy a blind for it, but it always slips my mind.”

“Look, she’s taking off her cap,” said Maria. The small figure four floors up was black against the warm light. Then, with a shiver, she jumped down. “Let’s not. I’d hate it if I didn’t know I was being looked at.”

Jael grinned down at her. “You like to know you’re being looked at all the time?”

“Don’t correct my grammar, beast,” answered Maria, catching her leather cuff and hauling her onto the gravel. “I meant, if I was being spied on from a squalid park bench, I’d rather know about it.”

“It can’t do Ruth any harm,” said Jael; “she’s guarded by the goddess’s personal troupe of angels.” She picked up the leaking paper bag and led the way toward the gate.

It was Hallowe’en morning, and Maria was dividing her attention between her scrambled egg and a page of diagrams.

“We Scorps,” announced Jael without warning, glancing up from
Motorcycle Monthly
, “are not the green-eyed monsters society has labelled us, but rather sweet, unassuming creatures.”

Maria gave her a blank look, then turned back to the geometry.

Swallowing her toast, Ruth explained. “It’s the lady’s birthday and she wants a tin of chocolate Brazil nuts.”

“How do you make sense of all that verbal diarrhoea?” asked Maria.

“Practice. It takes at least a year to get to know all her little quirks.”

Jael made a troll face over her granola. “Would the pair of you kindly stop bitching and nip down to see are there any cards for me. I heard the postman ages ago.”

“I’m busy,” said Maria, eyes following a parallelogram.

“Nip?” repeated Ruth. “Nip down four flights?” But she went.

Maria abandoned her maths book. She began the washing up rather halfheartedly and was soon distracted by a page of wet newspaper under the kettle.

“Mmm?” inquired Jael through an unpeeled kiwi fruit.

“Listen to this, Scorpion,” said Maria. “If it’s your birthday this week: ‘You have a headstrong personality and would make a good actress, sewage worker, detective or undertaker.’”

“You’re lying through your teeth, Murphy. Bring that paper over here.”

“Look, down in the corner.”

Jael snatched at the page. “God, they actually say sewage worker. I wouldn’t mind the others—even undertaker—they’ve got a certain grandeur. But a sewage worker!” She sighed, reaching for a banana. “Let’s see whether Aquarians get any kicks this week.”

Maria wiped the page with a towel. “It’s a bit blurred, but I think it says I’m to watch out for marital conflict and risky investments.”

Ruth reappeared, coughing. “Three brown bills for me, one parcel and one postcard for the birthday girl, and … ha ha, look at this, a card from Maria’s tutor wondering why she’s missed three statistics classes in a row.”

“There’s twenty-three of us squashed into her tiny room, reciting figures,” complained Maria. “I don’t see the point.”

Ruth’s answer was cut off when Jael handed over her postcard. She looked down at the blue-and-white village scene, glowing under the sun. “What’s this?”