The Death of a Joyce Scholar (20 page)

The negatives were the hour, which wasn’t romantic, the occasion, which was ministering to a sick friend, the possibility that she might nettle the boss (McKeon) returning late (how much late, if done right?) or the big boss (McGarr) if he might need her, and, Jesus, she didn’t want that. He was a Turk, that one.

Then there was the further and more important negative that he (Ward) would take her lightly—a boff in the afternoon—after which she wouldn’t have even his respect. And finally there was the possibility that he wasn’t the roué that rumor painted him, and she might get pregnant. Not having any experience at such things, she didn’t know that she would, but she had always imagined that, given the way she looked (healthy) and felt (healthier still), the mere touch of a man would blow her up like a pumpkin.

She reached for the glass, drank off what remained, and poured herself another, saying, “Lovely stuff this. Where’d you get it? Want another glass?”

“Of course,” said Ward, stretching. “I feel…” He couldn’t come up with the right word, or at least one expressible.

And then the steak and trimmings were done, and Bresnahan, loading the plates up the side of her arm, soon had everything laid out on the bed on all the newspapers save one (“Use that like a place mat,” she advised, smiling playfully), and they ate.

God, Ward thought, it was just what he needed, and the taste! “What did you put on this steak, Rut’ie?”

“Ah, a bit of this and that.”

“Could you write it down?”

“Me? I don’t remember, actually.” Her head was spinning now, and she felt suddenly like she’d dropped three stone in weight. Rashly, she added, “If you want it again, I guess you’ll just have to have me back. You’ve certainly got a well-stocked kitchen. Cook much yourself?”

His mouth filled, Ward waggled his good hand to suggest that he dabbled but did not cook in the strict sense. Most of what he’d assembled in his kitchen was an attempt to encourage the women who came there to cook for him.

His most successful line was, “Sure, with all this I bet we could whip up something better than most restaurants. Why don’t I do the salad,” and then he’d praise whatever was produced, no matter how unpalatable, to the skies. It was called positive reinforcement, which he’d read about in a book, and it was step one in getting a woman to bed, and much less expensive than, say, Les Frères Jacques. He suddenly remembered the girl at Joyce’s Ireland and Bloomsday Tours; he’d phone her later from Hogan’s. Maybe she was free for the night.

But now with Bresnahan he wasn’t joking. True, he ate tofu and mochi and tempeh and the like more for what it did for him and how easy it was to prepare than how it tasted. It gave him less cut, which made his skin seem youthful, and he could just pull it out of the packet or apply a little heat and cook some rice—at which a rice steamer had made him expert—and there it was. The taste, however, was either bland, bitter, or queer.

Bresnahan’s steak was another thing altogether. He went into encomiums, saying he couldn’t remember when he’d last had beef so tender and tasty. And the spuds slathered in butter
with
sour cream and chives and tiny sprouts. Why hadn’t he ever thought of that before? He hadn’t crunched brussels since he’d left his mother’s kitchen in Waterford,
and they made him nearly growl with delight. Maybe that was it all along. He’d been
hungry,
perhaps hungrier than he ever knew, and that’s who Bresnahan reminded him of. His mother, another big, shapely woman.

Ward forced the thought, which was unsettling, from his mind, and soon had his portion of steak, what had been left warming in the oven, and even some of Bresnahan’s—“Really, for a big girl I’m not much with the knife and fork,” she lied, being too preoccupied to eat herself. She then cleared the dishes and poured coffee and sat back down at the side of the bed. “I’ll do the washing up in a few minutes.” She glanced at her watch. “Before I leave.”

“Ah, t’anks, Rut’ie,” Ward said for at least the third time in the Dublin accent he had appropriated at least two months after having joined the Squad, and there followed a silence in which he felt the definite vibes (something he didn’t just believe in; something he understood implicitly) that he knew what she was thinking about, and she knew what he was thinking about, and he knew she knew he knew, and so forth…, and they were thinking about the same thing.

Her eyes rose from the lip of the cup and moved to his; they collided for the briefest moment and caromed off.

Whew! Was her breathing as obvious as she thought? Her heart was mostly in her throat, beating so wildly she thought she’d choke.

The newspaper was thumping. He raised his knees.

“Curious how a big meal makes you warm,” she hazarded, wondering how he had ever gotten the reputation as a playboy. Perhaps he didn’t care for her or had scruples about a cohort. “I mean I’m—” Hot was the exactly wrong thing to say, but she could feel nothing but the blood in her temples, and she thought she was going to explode.

As an antidote she forced herself to imagine how many other women Ward had had on that circular bed that be
longed in a bordello, until a little voice told her, Ah, _the other women, Rut’ie. As long as he _s you. Exactly, she thought, and turning her head back to him, she was about to suggest a nice long back rub for an invalid, when he asked, “What about the case?”

“Which case?”

“Coyle, of course.”

“Ah—the Coyle case.” Yes, that was something to speak about. An update, all business, and she had so much to tell him. And maybe after a decent interval she’d rethink herself, which was always the smart thing to do. They’d have other opportunities, if she had anything to do with his future.

He already knew that the bloke who struck him with the stick was called Jammer and that they were running him down, but much else had happened while Ward was still nursing the effects of the blow.

Suspects: she spoke about the three women whom she herself had interviewed. There was possibly something carnal between Catty Doyle and Mary Sittonn and—who knew?—perhaps between Katie Coyle, the victim’s wife, and Mary Sittonn, or perhaps among all three of them, “for Jesus’ sake,” she added.

“How do you feel about lesbians,” he asked, fully recumbent now, head on the palm of a hand.

“Certainly
not
with me fingers,” she replied glibly, and he smiled.

“I mean, really.”

She shuddered. “They give me the Willies.”

“Better than the Joes.”

And then there was the stock of Kevin Coyle books they had in Sittonn’s antique shop, as though they had put them by against the day Kevin Coyle would snuff it.

But what reason had Katie Coyle to do in her husband apart from perhaps jealousy, which she had disclaimed say
ing that she didn’t care what he did, just so long as he supported her and her kids and no other babies were made, especially by her? And then by Dublin standards, Coyle had been a good husband, father, and provider who brought most of his money home. Certainly she would benefit from his death, but all the more had he lived to produce further books.

Sittonn? She too might have been jealous of Coyle’s attentions to Catty, but then she would have had to have been jealous of David Holderness too, and who knew how many others. Catty was, it seemed—how had the Chief Super expressed it in his elegant, written report?—“predisposed to sexual congress.”

“Nice turn that,” said Ward.

Bresnahan raised an eyebrow. Jesus, was he that much of a swordsman that he’d done her too? “Catty?”

Ward laughed again, and his hand moved out and touched her arm. “No, no—nice
turn of phrase.
”

She looked down at the hand, and, when their eyes again met with kiloton force, they knew that what they were thinking would happen. It was as much as agreed; the hand did not move back.

Almost breathless now, Bresnahan pulled in what little air her capacious lungs could take. The room was a blur. She decided to concentrate on what she was saying and let events take their course. He was plainly in charge, and she his for the taking.

“Then there’s the Floods,” she went on rapidly, nearly breathless now. Fergus, the father, had as much as discovered Coyle, and in rapid succession had become his mentor, tutor, and thesis advisor, only to see his student quickly eclipse him in reputation within the academic community of Ireland and throughout the British Isles. As readily, Coyle then established himself as an international literary figure.

Once a year also Coyle would unshamefacedly display
the capacity of his memory by reciting whole chapters of
Ulysses.
Then there was his affair with Maura Flood, about which Flood was cognizant to the point of even knowing where they met. Did he mind? He said he didn’t. Did he follow them? He did. Had he lied about that and his activities on the night of the murder? Yes.

From as much as they could piece together so far, Flood drove from the final pub to his house in Foxrock and, finding nobody there, to various hotels until, at the Drumcondra Inn, he discovered his wife’s Fiat 500. It was the daughter, though, and not the wife who had driven there. She herself was searching for David Holderness, but Flood couldn’t have known that, since he met Coyle—who’d tired of waiting for Maura—in front of the hotel.

“It then occurred to Flood—or this is what we assume, since he lied to us—that he’d teach the wife a lesson and drive the Fiat away
with
Coyle, who wanted to be taken to Catty Doyle’s house. She—Catty—was Coyle’s…” Bresnahan searched for a term.

Bottom woman, Ward thought. Port of last resort. “True friend,” he suggested.

Bresnahan’s head went back in mirth, and Ward said as nonchalantly as he could, “Twist around a bit here and let me loosen your tie. After all, it’s summer. Why be so formal?”

Bresnahan turned to him and smiled slightly, raising a single eyebrow in what she believed would approximate a practiced manner. She then leaned back and raised her chin. “But Catty had been spoken for that evening—by Mary Sittonn earlier and David Holderness later on.”

In spite of the cast, Ward’s fingers were deft with the knot, and he soon had the tie off her. The buttons of the blouse came next. He nuzzled her ear and sent a shiver down her spine. Having it happen like this in the course of what
amounted to their business was somehow more acceptable than a more formal arrangement, given how different they were as people. And it would keep everything light, the way he preferred it, she imagined.

“Flood, anyway, didn’t stay long in the lane behind De Courcy Square. Catty, for all her unscrupulous behavior—”

In reaching for the fourth button, Ward’s arms wrapped her breasts; the edge of the cast grazed her left nipple, and she flinched.

“—probably didn’t want her neighbors to see men knocking on her door at all hours of the night, and Coyle had Flood drive him ’round to the back door, or at least as close as he could get in the Fiat, which was halfway down the alley.”

Flood was observed helping Coyle out of the car and trying to move him to Catty’s back door, which proved impossible. He then left Coyle lying prone in thick grass there, near the wall, with the boater and stick resting on his chest. Flood must then have returned the Fiat to Foxrock, and collected the Rover on the next day. How three days later the murder weapon—a kind of filleting knife, the blade of which had been custom-honed to a fine point—came to be found under the front seat of the Fiat, was another question, unless, of course, Flood, knowing that he was being watched, waited and returned and dispatched Coyle with the knife.

“But that would have to have been between the hour that he was observed, roughly one o’clock—Jesus, you’re tickling me so!” Having freed the blouse from the waistband of her uniform skirt and pulled it from her shoulders, Ward had begun to run his lips over the fine, reddish-blond hairs at the nape of her neck while his fingers moved to the snap of her brassiere. “…and half-two when the Punks who struck you—” With the brassiere undone, Ward’s hands slid across
her back, around her ribs, and with a touch so gentle they felt like warm feathers, caressed her breasts. “—returned from the cemetery,” she managed.

“The solicitous Jammer, as their story went, inquired after Coyle’s condition and was asked by him to help him get to Catty’s back door on the promise of the blazer he was wearing, the ashplant stick, and even the boater that had once been owned by Joyce himself and had cost Coyle a pile when purchased years before. All Bang and the others knew was that Jammer and Coyle disappeared down the alley—well away from the place in which Catty and Katie and Mary Sittonn said they found the corpse—and returned not long after with the blazer, the stick, and the boater, and without the man.”

Ward’s thumbs and forefingers were now gingerly feeling her breasts—circling the aureoles, flicking and squeezing her nipples, which were extended farther than she had ever seen them and which felt like they’d burst. “What about the weapon, the knife?” he said, his mouth cupping her ear, his tongue darting into it so that her entire body spasmed agreeably.

Ward was actually amazed. Yes, he had known that she was a big, well-built woman, but he had never expected what was now in his hands, and he wished he could cut the cast off his palms to appreciate her totally. He had been with large women before—no more than a few nights earlier with the Dane from the Rotunda operating theater—and without exception they struck him as rather gross, especially their breasts, which were either flabby or too soft, their nipples too large or unresponsive to the touch or kiss.

Bresnahan’s, however, had shape and body. Their skin was firm and her nipples taut and elastic, and oh, their
size
. Truth was that, after legs, Ward enjoyed the physical woman—whom he seldom got beyond—most for her
breasts, and in Bresnahan he had found what he could only believe was perfection.

His mind, coursing (pulsing?) ahead, imagined how it would be to have her swaying over him and all that was now in his hands facing him, hitting him, abusing him with the softest, warmest weights. Or just to have her around, say, placing glasses on the upper shelves of the cabinet in the kitchen, and to catch her unawares and simply heft the slopes of her mighty tits. And then—