The Glorious Heresies (36 page)

He starts the car. He has Jimmy Phelan to lie to yet.

Georgie finds her feet. She doesn't know how. It just kind of happens.

She just kind of happens now. From one end of the street to the next. She exists.

London is a massive place and she's frequently lost, and even thinking of it as a collection of towns all jumbled together doesn't help. She is lucky, in that she's happened upon almost straight away by an Irish couple who offer to help her find where she's going. Of course she has no destination. She tells them, tearing up, that she had to leave Cork because of an abusive boyfriend. She tells the Irish couple that she has friends in London but she hasn't seen them in years and claims that the address she has for them is out of date, oh, what is she to do? They find her a guesthouse. She thinks that's about it but the next day the woman from the couple comes to the guesthouse to see her. She gives her the name of a friend in Islington who's got a downstairs flat to rent. It turns out to be no great shakes but no one pays any attention, least of all Georgie. Her desperation is a potent scent and though she never sees the Irish do-gooders again, just that stroke of luck is enough.

She finds an agency. It's not difficult; her ground-floor flat is surrounded by the domiciles of shuffling addicts and weird bachelors, and they know where the action is. She meets a bright-eyed Russian woman in a cafe on Holloway Road. She tells her she's older than is usually asked for, unless she goes into specialised stuff. More lucrative, she says. Georgie shakes her head. The woman gives her the number of another agency, which provides much cheaper lays.

She has found a place in which to exist, outside of reality, as a glitch in someone else's world.

She thinks about exacting her revenge, but it's too soon, and she's not sure where to direct it. Concocting plans around Jimmy Phelan strikes her as futile, like marching on Heaven and demanding God's resignation.

She thinks about Ryan, and one day making him see what he did to her.

One day,
she thinks,
God willing.

She might die in the meantime. She hasn't made up her mind yet.

While she's waiting she posts the scapular back to whatever's left standing on Bachelor's Quay. She addresses the envelope to Robbie O'Donovan.

Young Ryan is out on the back wall. Tara spots him from her kitchen window. It's a quarter to eleven and it's a Sunday night. He really shouldn't be there at this hour. She figures he's been driven out again. She determines to offer her sympathies. No harm; Melinda's away. Her dad has taken her to Dublin for a few days, to see the sights. Tara would like to be lonely without her, but she's glad of the peace and quiet. Melinda is very demanding.

Boys are demanding too. Ryan, like all boys, is usually cheeky and funny but tonight he's quiet as a mouse. There's a nasty bruise around his left eye. “Oh, darling,” Tara says. She sits beside him on the wall and presses up against him; he's shivering. No one in their right mind would sit out in the cold without good reason. The night is damp to its very breath. Ryan has problems with his father. Tara knows because she hears the boor's convulsions. There's no privacy on this terrace. Quite rightly. If there was then the poor boy would have to suffer alone.

“Come inside,” she coaxes, “and we'll have a lovely cup of tea.”

At first he resists because he doesn't want to trouble her. She assures him that she wants to look after him. She rests a friendly hand on his knee and when he doesn't flinch she skims gently up to his thigh and squeezes. “You don't have to go through this alone,” she says.

If he was any other boy on this terrace she wouldn't be so insistent because some of them are only brutes in the making. They follow her down the street and whoop obscenities. They make loud remarks on the bus. Ryan is different. He has grown up very fast, the one positive from his father's cruelty. He has wrested some independence by doing a little bit of dealing to his friends. It's naughty, but sometimes Tara enjoys smoking with him. He's getting taller and broader by the day. He's almost sixteen.

She leads him inside and puts the kettle on.

“Tell you what I'll do,” she says. “I'll put a drop of whiskey into your tea for you. It's beautiful stuff; I got it at Christmas and I've been saving it for a special occasion. Aged. Have you ever had aged whiskey?”

The boy says he's fine.

“Don't be silly,” Tara blusters. “It'll warm you right up!”

The whiskey she has isn't old at all but she thinks it's best if he gets a good drop down him and she doesn't want him complaining about the taste in the tea. She makes it fairly strong. It is very cold outside.

“Come into the sitting room,” she says. “And we'll have a chat. And you know what? If you don't want to talk about your dad we don't have to. We can just watch telly and talk about that instead. Do you like
True Blood
? I have a few of them lined up in the Sky Box.”

When Ryan gets into the sitting room he sheepishly produces a baggie of grass and asks if she wants some. He knows the propriety of barter. She smiles. She lets him skin up and sits cross-legged beside him on the couch and shares the joint with him.

“You roll another,” she tells him, after they finish, “and I'll make another cuppa.”

She doesn't have a second drop herself; she doesn't need it.

He sits on the couch only half watching Bill and Sookie and messing with his phone. He's as taut as a guitar string; she thinks if she touched him now he'd sing for her. They can be so jittery at his age.

“What are you going to do later?” she asks.

“Go home, I suppose.” His voice is so very low; he probably doesn't want his father to know he's next door. Perhaps it's not allowed. Perhaps his father knows the damage a boy can do, especially when the woman next door is on her own.
Ryan knows he's being bold,
she thinks.

“Don't worry,” she soothes. “You can stay here on the couch. I'll bring you down a blanket and pillow.”

On the way back to the sitting room she grabs a couple of cans from the fridge.

“Here,” she says. “I've already given you my loveliest whiskey, so we might as well keep going.”

He drinks up as he's told.

Still so quiet. She tries to get him to talk but he's brooding. She sits back beside him on the couch and tells him if there's anything he needs to get off his chest, she's here for him. He says he's fine, but, mouth a bit more liberated now, he expresses thanks for giving him somewhere to sit while he waits for his dad to calm down. “Calm down?” says Tara, eyes wide. Ryan shrugs. Tara says, “Oh, sweetheart.” She holds him. He doesn't know how to handle that. He freezes. She puts a hand on the back of his neck and guides him to her breast. “It's OK,” she says. “It's going to be OK.”

He pulls away and tells her he needs to use the bathroom. While he's gone she dashes into the kitchen and gets him another can. He doesn't seem so keen when he returns. “I kinda shouldn't,” he says. “Oh, darling,” she replies. “When life gives you lemons, make a gin and tonic. How much worse could tonight possibly get?”

Well, he is langers altogether once he gets to the end of the can and she laughs and gets him another. He's chattier but he's starting to slur. She wonders if he's had a few joints already tonight. By the end of the next can she's able to hug him a lot easier. “Poor baby,” she says, and kisses the top of his head. She can feel his breath on her chest.

One more and he's done altogether. He lies back on the couch and she continues talking to him, telling him that he's worth more than his father knows and that the world is full of good friends if you only learn how to open the door. She realises halfway through one of her favourite anecdotes that he's asleep. She leans over him. “Ryan?” she murmurs. He doesn't move. She sits at the end of the couch and puts his head in her lap and strokes his hair while she watches the end of her episodes.

He starts to snore.

Tara reaches for his phone and goes through it. She makes sure her number is in his contacts. It's saved under “T.D.” Maybe he's worried his dad will see but it's too impersonal, so she changes it to “Tara x.” She opens the Facebook app and considers writing a jokey status update but concludes that it would be inappropriate. She goes through his photos. They're mostly of him and his little girlfriend. Tara rolls her eyes.

There's a video in the library. It's frozen on blurred skin tones. She presses play and holds her hand tight over the speakers.

It's the girlfriend. For a moment Tara doesn't recognise her because she's sucking on a cock and the angle shows only her lips and her downturned eyes, but when the trollop looks up she realises. The girl is naked. The camera occasionally glides the length of her body. Tara figures it's Ryan holding the camera.

“Well,” she says, softly.

The video stops when he comes. Tara watches it a couple more times.

She gets up carefully and leaves Ryan's head back on the couch.

“You're even naughtier than I thought you were,” she tells him. He doesn't stir.

She crouches by the couch and looks at him. He's wearing a pair of grey cotton tracksuit bottoms and a stripy polo shirt in lemon and grey. He's got a stud in one ear and—she gently tugs his collar down—one of those leather necklace things. He doesn't move when she touches his collar so she traces her fingers down his chest slowly.

“You're so fucked I better sit with you,” she tells him, “in case you throw up, and then where would we be?”

She starts at his neck again.

“So fucked,” she says. There's a song to it. “You're so, so fucked.”

This time she works a little way into the waistband of his pants, just to see. Black underwear. “Classy,” she tells him. She strokes his tummy, under his shirt. She touches the thin dark ridge below his bellybutton and slides her finger down. His dick twitches.

“Are you even asleep?” she teases.

She touches his crotch on the outside of his tracksuit bottoms and says, “Ryan? Ryan?” but he doesn't answer. She strokes until his dick is hard enough for her to close her hand around it.

She makes a decision. She straddles him, very gently, and leans down so her head is on his chest, and she listens to his heart beating. “Ryan?” she tries again. His dick is still hard against her. “You might be asleep but your body's wide awake,” she tells him. “Don't you think that's odd?”

No response. She brushes her middle finger against his bottom lip.

“A girl told me recently,” she confides, “that I should take what I can get. Which I thought sounded a bit ugly, but now I wonder if she just wasn't well-read enough to have heard the term ‘carpe diem.' And
clearly
…” She laughs. “Clearly you don't mind.”

She gets up again. She slides her knickers off, kneels by the couch, works his clothes down to his thighs and nuzzles against him for a while, eyes fixed on his face. Then she opens her mouth and holds his dick between her lips and licks and sucks him till she's ready to get back on top. She's wet and it's stupidly easy. She holds his dick and slides over him and starts to ride and eventually he blinks and groans and she's too far gone to want his input or to want to start all over so she cuddles against his chest again, still rocking, almost there, and says “Sssh, baby, go back to sleep” and he does, how easy, how well his mind knows to stay out of this and just let his body have its fun, how fucking easy…

But his hands are grasping her arms, and then there's a rude tumble and she's on the floor, and she skins her elbow on the carpet and clutches it and allows her eyes to water with the shock.

“Ryan, that really hurt!”

He's curled up at one end of the couch, gasping and swallowing like he's had a desperate nightmare.

“That was not very nice,” she chides, back on her feet and fixing her dress.

He stands up, and she feels too wounded to offer an arm as he wobbles and pulls his tracksuit pants back up and peeps like a baby bird.

She folds her arms. “What's wrong?”

And sure he can barely speak, the stupid boy. “No,” he says. “Coz it's not…I have a girlfriend.”

“Well, you better not tell her, so!”

He's very, very drunk, because he starts crying.

“Oh for God's sake,” says Tara. She's careful to look stern because in his foolish, showy blubbering she sees trouble enough to catch in her throat.

“You can't tell her,” Ryan says.

Tara moves towards him but he backs away, and knocks against the sitting-room door frame, and has to grab the banister to keep himself upright. “Why would I tell her?” Tara says, carefully, trying out a smile, finding a foothold. “She wouldn't understand. It's OK, I get what you're telling me. This'll be our secret, I promise.”

She watches him fumble with the front door lock.

She frets about it the next day. She really likes Ryan. He's a pleasant young man. She doesn't want to fall out with him. But she can't be so complacent as to trust his perception of the previous night's events; he drank too much, and he'd clearly been stoned before he'd even come onto her property. No, she'll have to do a little damage limitation. She can't risk him broadcasting his half-remembered misgivings, not with her history. People are far too quick to judge these days.

In the early evening she spots his father walking up the driveway and she steels herself and runs out to catch him.

“What?” he says. Tara's not at all bothered by his tone. Weak-kneed malingerers don't frighten her.

“Just a quick word,” she says. “Ryan was around at mine last night. I don't think he was entirely sober.”

“What was he doing at yours?”

“He says he came by to see Melinda, but…Well look, Tony. I really don't like to get him into trouble, but his behaviour was inappropriate. It became rather clear that he has…well, fixated on me. He seems to think there's something between us.”

“Does he now? And where would he get that idea?”