The Glorious Heresies (24 page)

The plan was to have Joseph and his sometime band meet them in a couple of hours, do some shots, neck some pills, and go into town to meet Karine's posse. For the time being they shared a stillness. The staff played R&B over the PA system for a sparse crowd too sober to sway. Karine sat up and stretched, and checked his shirt for the powdered residue of her affection.

He thought about asking her to set aside her plans for the night and head back to bed with him, though he knew what the answer would be. Being allowed into nightclubs was a novelty to her, three months legal and only out of school. He felt a twinge for the partying he'd already missed.

“Karine?”

“What?” She was playing with her curls, fluffing them carefully before letting them tumble through her fingers.

“Can I tell you something?”

“Only if it follows ‘You're amazing and I love you.' ”

Pfft.
“Obviously.”

“Go on so.”

“When you're inside,” he said, “you feel like your life is over. Like even though you know you're only doing so many months or whatever, it stretches out beyond all logic, and you're so smothered by all that you forget what's going on outside. And I missed stuff for you, y'know? Birthday and Christmas and your Leaving and your Debs. I've been an asshole. I know it, like. I'll make it up to you.”

She touched his arm. “Ryan…”

“Y'know, Dan thanked me for it. Doing the time for him. But while I was doing time for Dan you were out here waiting for me and I reckon that deserves thanks too.”

“That's just silly,” she said. “Let's just get on with living, like. Gimme a tenner; I'll get a couple more drinks.”

He watched her walk to the bar on her killer heels and let his eyes travel from her calves to her thighs and then over the curve of her arse, running into the small of her back…The same way, he thought with a turn, that he'd been looking at the girl in the restaurant, except this time it was right that he wanted to slide his hands between her legs, push out her thighs.

He wasn't the only one. At the bar, a fella walking past grabbed a handful of her arse, and she started and yelped. The guy put his arm around her waist and that was as much as Ryan saw before he landed over beside them, going, “Ah, what the fuck?”

It was a fella they'd gone to school with, a bloke Ryan had barely seen since. Niall Something. Coen? Vaughan. One of the hurlers. One of the sort that was never found hiding behind the fence at the back of the pitch, so stoned he could barely stand up.

“Fuck me,” said Niall Vaughan. “Is that Ryan Cusack?”

“Is that my girlfriend's arse in your hand?”

“When did they let you out?” Vaughan asked.

“Fuck off and mind your own business.”

“Everyone was talking about it, is all. Y'know, you look at your Leaving Cert class and you remember who's missing and why.”

“You'd want to say sorry to Karine,” Ryan said, stepping right up to Vaughan, chest to chest, and in fairness, the other didn't back away. There was a grin dancing on his face.

“Karine doesn't mind,” he said.

“Karine does,” snapped Karine.

“Oh God, sorry I grabbed your arse, your ladyship.”

Karine took her vodka from the bar counter, gestured towards Ryan's pint, and tugged at his arm. Ryan didn't move.

“You don't sound very fucking sorry,” he said.

Vaughan rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, get over yourself.”

“Ryan,” Karine whinged, “come
on.
”

“Come on, come on!” Vaughan echoed, pressing his hands together.

“I'm not convinced he's that bothered about being called on his bullshit,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, he's drunk? Can we leave it please?”

“I'm not drunk,” said Vaughan. “I didn't know you were back together, did I? Y'know, grabbing your ex's arse shouldn't bother you.”

“She's not my ex,” Ryan said, moving close enough that he could snarl into Vaughan's ear. “And if you touch her again I'll take you apart, yeah?”

“Sorry, Mr. Breaking fucking Bad. Far be it from me to go back for seconds with you gawping at me. She's all yours.”

“Ryan!” snapped Karine. “Come. On!”

Ryan frowned. “What d'you mean, go back for seconds?”

“Seconds of her arse, like. Seconds of the rest of her.”

“What's he on about, Karine?”

“He's pissed and he's disgusting,” she said. “Pick up your pint and get back to the table. Now.”

Niall Vaughan mimed a cracking whip.

“Ryan, honestly, if you're going to spend any more of tonight spatting with clowns…”

“Ah, Karine,” said Vaughan. “Ah now. That's not nice.”

“Dickhead,” she muttered, turning away.

Ryan looked back at Vaughan, who pushed his bottom lip out.

“You don't have to be so aggressive, like,” he said. “Or is that what happens in there? No, seriously? Like after a few dozen rapes in the shower?”

Ryan said, “Whatever problem you have, d'you wanna take it outside?”

Vaughan held up his hands. “Ah no. No, I couldn't do that to you.”

“Yeah,” said Ryan. “I didn't think so.”

When he turned around Vaughan said, “Not after I fucked your girlfriend.”

Ryan turned back.

“What'd you say to me?”

“I fucked your girlfriend. After the Debs. In fairness, boy, she was in fucking heat. If it hadn't been me it would have been someone else.”

Ryan would have punched him. Not a bother; he would have levelled the fucker. What contest? The lad was barely able to stand up straight and he was asking for it, howling for it, taking out billboards up and down the motorway advertising his need for it.

But he wasn't lying. Ryan Cusack stared at his girlfriend of three years and the look on her face, her glistening eyes and her parted lips, told him that this was the rawest truth he was ever likely to hear.

She's sitting on the bed, mascara smudged under her eyes, and I stand as far away from her as I can get, over by the door, my hand hovering onto the handle every so often as instinct tells me to get away, get the fuck out, just run, boy, keep running. I have to make myself stay. Every molecule is screaming against me being this close to her and it's a feeling so alien I've already thrown up. I just can't believe it, like. I can't fucking believe it. I just…

She's crying and I'm crying.

“C'mere,” she implores, for the seventh or eighth time.

I shake my head. I can't look at her. “No,” I say. I fix on the corner of the ceiling. My head is sliding left to right. I'm like Churchill the fucking dog.

She's sniffing. My head feels like it's been scooped hollow. Then the next minute it feels like my brain's been jammed up right behind my eyeballs. Then the next it feels like the brain's dripping down my throat and choking me.

You've no idea. You've just no idea. Like that's it. I'm done. I'm finished.

“Ryan, please, just talk to me.”

She's already spilled her side of the story. It's the end of August, I'm away in prison, she's got her Debs coming up, yer man asks her, her mam and dad and sisters tell her she'll regret it someday if she doesn't accept, she remembers what a prick I am for leaving her, she drinks the bar dry and he fucks her in the car park. There you go. I lost my girlfriend up the side of a fucking Ford Focus.

“You have no idea what I went through,” she blubs.

“You, girl? You? What about me? All I fucking had in there was the knowing I'd come home to you and you were spending your nights out whoring with fucking Niall fucking Vaughan!”

“You did come home to me, Ryan! I'm still here for you!”

“No. No you're not.”

“I am! One mistake, for God's sake. And where were you? In prison! You weren't thinking about me when you got yourself caught with someone else's cocaine, were you?”

“It's my fault, is it?”

“It's both our faults! Ryan, for fuck's sake. I love you.”

I cough out a laugh and drag my hand across my eyes.

“I do, Ryan.”

“No, you fucking don't.”

“I do. Oh for God's sake, I do!”

I'm fucking proper bawling now and I can't get the words out at all. Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. I wheel around and kick the wall. I kick it again, and again, and knock my head off the plaster and she jumps up and hugs my back. I don't even push her away. I'm too exhausted. I don't know what I am.

A few minutes later I get the words out: “Did he come inside you?”

I shake her off and she sits back on the bed and folds up like a poked slug.

“Did he, Karine?”

“He wore a condom, if that's what you mean.”

“How would you know if you were that fucking drunk?”

“Coz I made sure. Fuck you, Ryan. Because he wasn't you.”

“Did you go down on him?”

“Of course I didn't.”

“Why ‘of course you didn't,' Karine? I'd have said up to two hours ago that of course you wouldn't cheat on me and here we fucking are.”

She puts her head in her hands. “I didn't go down on him. I swear. It was just an ugly stupid fuck in a fucking car park.”

“Did you come?”

She says no and I really want to believe her. If the Lord God appeared right now and said, “Here, Cusack, you can have either the promise of eternal life or the promise that your girlfriend didn't show her O-face to Niall Vaughan,” I'd take the second with both fucking hands.

So we sleep somehow. Both in our clothes, beside each other on the bed, fucking beat. And when we wake up, she starts kissing me, and saying sorry, and touching me and I'm getting hard despite myself and there's this sudden forked road and a signpost telling me if I don't fuck Karine D'Arcy right now I'll never fuck her again.

So I do. I have to. I can't lose her. I'm not able. I hold her down and fuck her like I'm exorcising her. An ugly fuck. That's how she wants it, isn't it?

And after I come I roll over and listen to her crying again, until I can't stand it anymore. I get up and go for a slash and when I come back to bed she looks at me all red-eyed and says, “That's how it is now, is it? That's just how we're going to fuck from here on in?” and I can't answer her. I lie on my side with my back to her and stare instead at the fucking floor.

“You don't have the money to take this to a courtroom. You'll drag it out, you'll hurt everyone, and you know you'll fail well before the end. So let's be sensible and settle this now. For God's sake, isn't that the only thing we can do?”

Georgie was sitting on the couch in the living room of the CAIL centre. Flanking her, William and Clover Tobin. Across from her, elbows on his knees and staring at the floor, was David. His mother, a glacial thing in a thin cardigan, sat on the armrest of his chair, rubbing his back. Opposite and to Georgie's left sat David's father, Patrick Coughlan, CEO-turned-cultist. He had plump jowls so clean-shaven they seemed artificial. He looked like a melted bucket.

In Georgie's arms slept Harmony Faye Fitzsimons. Born on a Monday afternoon with a student midwife holding her mother's hand in her father's stead, she was, as all babies were, perfect. Her primitive demands invoked something similarly primal in her mother, but Georgie was careful not to indulge instinct. Though Clover said that Harmony should be breastfed and allowed to share the bed with her mother, Georgie chose bottles and a Moses basket. It had been ages since Georgie had done cocaine or touched a drop; being with child had proved a better deterrent than being with Christians. Still, the notion that she was contaminated by her past was a tough one to get shot of. Harmony was too beautiful to risk blemishing.

Patrick Coughlan sighed.

“This isn't how we wanted things to go either,” he said.

“How did you want things to go?” asked Georgie. “Did you hope David would find a paragon of virtue so tolerant she wouldn't be turned off by his drugging and gambling?”

“Well, I tell you what we didn't want. Him to impregnate an addict when he was supposed to be tackling his own demons.”

William delivered a wobbly interjection. “Is this going to resolve anything? This mud-flinging? This is a place of mercy.”

“It's a place of bloody vice!” snapped Coughlan. “I'd hoped your adherence to the gospel would be enough to direct David, and look what happens! This woman is a damned vagrant. How did you even accept such a person? I sent David to you, William, because I thought he would be protected. And instead you fed his weaknesses.”

“All we can do is ask for your forgiveness,” said William.

Georgie shifted the weight in her arms and leaned forwards. She'd cried all her tears, and was left with a dull headache and stained cheeks.

David kept his eyes on the floor. He had spoken only to confirm his father's assertion that this takeover was his wish. They were at the centre because they wanted to take Harmony with them, and their logic was watertight.

William and Clover were anxious about the idea of raising a child on their land. They explained that they couldn't provide structure but were too spineless to admit the fear that Georgie would drag them into ignominy with her once again. In David's bid for custody he had complained how Georgie introduced him to cocaine, which she'd procured and brought to the centre under pretext of conversion during a city break. William and Clover were upset, but more again, they were frightened. Their lakeside retreat had crumbled into a mess of responsibility and risk. Their notion of bringing the world together under the Jesus banner hinted now at effort without recompense, and they hated it.

“It's clearly in the baby's best interests to be with her father,” Coughlan said. “We can support him. She'll be safe with us. What has she otherwise?”

“She has her mother,” Georgie said.

“A ‘mother.' Why do women think that word alone is enough? Why should my granddaughter suffer while her ‘mother' gets her act together? Grand, you're clean, whatever. That's no guarantee that you won't relapse.”

“David could relapse just as fast!”

“If he does, he has his family there to stick him back on the straight and narrow. If you relapse, who's here for you?”

“I'm not alone down here.”

William sighed and sat forward off his wife's silence.

“We're not set up for looking after a baby,” he said. “I'm sixty-two, Georgie.”

“You wouldn't have to look after her,” Georgie cried. “I'm just saying it's not as if I don't have support. You know. For if things…If things don't…” She stood and turned to face William. He looked away. “Things will be fine, actually,” said Georgie. “Why wouldn't they be?”

“We can't support you both, Georgie,” said Clover.

“I'm not asking for charity.”

Coughlan said, “Then what are you going to do, ha? Move out? Get a job? Go to college?”

“Other women manage. I'm not the only single mother on the planet. I've been fine up to now, haven't I? I never starved.”

William said, “Georgie, the state you were in when I found you, how much worse would that have been if you'd had a baby at home?”

Harmony Faye pursed her lips. Georgie crooked her first finger and stroked her cheek and the little mouth opened.

“I didn't though,” said Georgie. “Did I? I was looking after myself.”

“And you were failing.”

“I've grown up since.”

“Have you?” asked William. “Look, Georgie, I know your heart's in the right place—”

“I thought that was enough? Belief and good nature and all that shit, am I right?”

“For God's sake this isn't a game, Georgie. You were a prostitute! You could have been killed and you didn't care!”

Forced to listen to her saviour's well-intentioned treachery as the faces around them turned white, Georgie fixed her gaze on her daughter, her perfect face, the even features yet to display allegiance to one parent or another. There was nothing she could say. William stammered and David's mother gasped.

Georgie had not yet been saved. The baby had to be given up. David looked up at last with round eyes and lips pulled back. Georgie managed a tear. It slid down her face and hung on her jawline; when she cuddled Harmony the tear fell and landed on her cheek.

She tried for a while, chasing salvation in hard work, except it was hard work in rounds and circles, and it never got her anywhere. She arranged a cut of the profits from the farmers' markets in return for her tending shoots and weeding, so that she could put some money away for a training course. But what was she left with, only pennies? William told her not to worry about funds while she was at CAIL; her leaving was no longer a priority, now that the baby was safely away.

David had left her an address and phone number. Whenever she called he would run through Harmony's development as if he kept milestones noted on a pad by the phone. Should she wish, at any stage, to acknowledge his selfless hard work he was available for praise and appreciation. Should she wish to revisit their arrangement, he warned, she would have to get herself a house, a job and a lawyer.

William and Clover and her fellow spiritual halfmen continued as normal. They got as far as pitying Georgie, for pity was easy enough.

“I don't know how you could have done that to me,” Georgie bawled to William, after the community indicated they'd wring their hands for her behind turned backs.

“You forced my hand, Georgie. What else could I do?”

“Oh, I don't know. What would Jesus have done?”

“The very same thing,” William frowned. “You'll see that some day.”

Georgie left CAIL nine months after they'd given her daughter away.

“Left,” like it was some proud stand? No. “Stole away,” months later, like it was a last resort. She went through her stuff in the witching hour and plucked out what remained of her old life, which was sweet fuck all after William had tried shaming the devil out of her wardrobe. She stuffed her world into a stolen knapsack and slipped out the back door, clambered over the fence at the back of the vegetable gardens, and tripped through wet grass in the black night until she had room to skirt around and come back to the road. From there she trudged, the bottom of her dress wringing, a deserter from Christ's army.

The road was bordered with brambles. She pushed into the hedgerow and dragged her arm along the thorns, and after seven miles of penance she found a bus stop and sat on the other side of the wall propping it up until morning.

Was there a more miserable month than February? Was there a less welcoming time to return to the streets?

Once off the bus at Parnell Place, Georgie realised she had nowhere to go. Her escape had been fuelled on the assumption that some way would open up as soon as she arrived, but she left the bag on the ground by her feet, bunched her hair behind her head, looked out over the Lee and that was as much as she got.

She had accumulated enough to rent a cheap hotel room. The receptionist directed her to the nearest Internet cafe, which was full of Spanish students attempting to stave off the damp by flailing loudly at one another from computers placed inconvenient yards apart. Georgie searched for one-bedroom flats and calculated deposits.

She got a takeaway for dinner and felt sick afterwards. In her hotel room, she fought a losing battle with the air conditioning and made herself a cup of instant coffee that twitched in her veins for an hour afterwards.

At eight thirty she got a phone call.

“William said you'd run off.”

It was David. He was peevish.

“I'm back in the city,” Georgie said. “I'm going to get my life together and I'm going to come for Harmony then.”

“You're going to get your life together with what, Georgie?”

“Something more concrete than prayer.”

“Yeah? Well, if you think you can battle with me using ill-gotten gains, you're mistaken.”

“Ill-gotten gains? What the hell are you talking about, David?”

“You know what I'm talking about.”

Quivering with the effort of indirect accusation, he berated her for vague intent as she sat on the hotel bed and cried.

“I never said I was going back to that, David. I've moved on. I'm only sorry that William Tobin didn't have the decency to see that and keep his stupid hippy mouth shut.”

“See, that's what's poisonous about you, Georgie. After all he did for you, you're insulting him. If it wasn't for William Tobin you'd probably be dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“If it wasn't for William Tobin I wouldn't have met you, you mean.”

“If you cared about Harmony you'd never have said that.”

“I meant it for you!
You
think it would have been best if you'd never met me. Your parents think it!”

“I accept my trials,” he said.

“You're turning into one of Them, David. Is that how you're going to raise my daughter? As a judgemental little prig?”

“Something tells me you won't be around to find out.”

She paid for two nights in the hotel and for two nights she lay awake and fancied ways out of the rut. One time she was passing out CVs and getting called for interviews. In the next vision she was awarded an emergency payment from the social welfare, enough to put down a deposit on a flat. Each dream slid with the encroaching midnight stupor into stark prophesies of straddling punters in the back seats of their cars, and Robbie O'Donovan was a shroud over it all.

She had tried to put his insinuated demise out of her head, she really had. It was difficult to draw up murder mysteries in the last trimester, and after that she'd been distracted, wholly, by David's invasion and conquest. Robbie's ghost hadn't followed her down to the West Cork lakeside. Now she was back in the city and his memory jabbed at her.

She left the hotel on the third morning.

Her sums were sound and they told her that if she chose another night in a rented bed she'd be cutting her newfound sovereignty short. She had no wish to rush back to William and Clover's awkward embrace and, really, what were the odds they'd even want her to? She'd burnt bridges in dashing off under moonlight. In the daytime this shore was inhospitable, but she was stuck here.