I worked too. I rolled over the clothes she always threw around and I went across to the table. I had a desk but it was daft, an old school desk with an inkwell. I could never sit back, I couldn’t cross my legs. Out of place, it was almost sinister. Rachel had bought it in one of the antique shops on Francis Street. A present for me. I never used it – except for the photographs.
Because we fell for it. Rachel’s work was real. So was mine, but she needed the publicity. The mothers of the party girls, and the women who worked for the men who decided that the product they were launching would sell more if the trays were being carried by pretty women with degrees, serving food that tasted great and looked un-Irish; they were Rachel’s market. So the photos began to appear. Rachel with a tray; Rachel and two, three, four other women, all holding trays; Rachel stirring a cauldron; Rachel tasting her grub; Rachel behind the wheel of the van. Look! A woman driving a van! I stayed out of the way. I never went down to the kitchen. I could get in and out of the building without going in there. She did her work and I did mine. I wrote two chapters – I think I wrote two complete chapters. I can’t remember the opening sentence. I can’t remember a word. I typed the first chapter twice, word for word. I remember thinking it would give me the energy, work me up for the second chapter. And it did. I remember the blank page. I remember hammering out ‘Chapter Two’, and I could keep going; there were words queuing up. I filled the page in a couple of minutes. Then I typed that page out again. I think I was writing about the 1916 Rising. I think I remember tapping out the date and liking its look on the page – and that got me on to the next page.
* * *
I’d get the bus or a taxi out to RTE every second or third Sunday and I’d say one controversial thing. On one occasion I said that Leaving Cert students should be issued with condoms when they were walking out of school on Friday afternoons. One of the panellists, an ageing member of Youth Defence, slapped me during the ads. She stood up from her place at the round table, came around and hit me hard. Her engagement ring cut my ear. She was back in her seat, shuffling her leaflets, when the studio light came back on. A researcher crept in and handed me her hankie.
That was the job. Now and again I said something shocking. I stirred it up. There was an honesty to it. I usually meant what I said. It made me hated, and never quite loved. It made me that prick. That twerp. That fuckin’ maggot. How did he end up with her?
How did he end up with her? How did they know? It was Rachel’s fault. I see that now. But it’s meaningless, and stupid. It was no one’s fault. I jumped at it. That twerp fucks that girl. I learnt the verb, ‘to fuck’, from Rachel. Where I came from, where and when I grew up, men rode women. There were other words, and they stayed for a while, but riding was what it was. I rode, you rode, he rode, we rode and, sometime in the late 80s, she rode. No one fucked where I came from. Pregnancy was the result of sexual intercourse; everything else was riding. But Rachel didn’t ride and she certainly wasn’t ridden: Rachel fucked. I left my country and my class behind and started fucking Rachel. And I wanted the world to know that I was fucking Rachel.
There’s a joke I heard years ago, about an Irishman who ends up on a desert island with Claudia Schiffer, after a plane crash. There’s just the two of them, sitting on the sand. After a few days of this, she moves closer to him. ‘Do you wish to ride me, Dermot?’ she says. ‘Jesus, Claudia,’ he says. ‘Like – are you sure?’ ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘We will be here for quite some time, I think. And the days are quite long – yes?’ So, they start riding. All day. And Claudia falls hopelessly in love with him. This goes on for months until one day, the Irishman stands up and moves down the beach a bit and sits by himself. Claudia gets up and follows him. ‘Dermot?’ she says. ‘Is something the matter?’ ‘Ah, sure,’ he says. ‘I’m just a bit down in the dumps.’ ‘Is there something I can do to help?’ she asks him. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘This might sound mad. But would you mind if I called you Des?’ She looks at him, then says, ‘Alright. I will permit this.’ ‘Great,’ he says. ‘Brilliant, thanks.’ He’s holding a piece of charcoal that he found on the beach. He shows it to Claudia and he says, ‘And, like – would you mind if I drew a moustache on you?’ And she looks at him again, and says, ‘Alright, Dermot. This, too, I will permit.’ ‘Ah, great – thanks.’ He draws a rough moustache on her, then stands back. Then he grabs her shoulders, shakes her, and says, ‘Des! Des! You won’t believe who I’ve been riding for the last three months!’
I knew how Dermot felt. But I didn’t have to draw a moustache on Rachel. She drew one on me. Envy is a wild, reluctant form of respect. Men envied me, and women did too. And, for a while, they listened to me, not because I’d become one of the country’s sharper, more incisive minds, but because I was riding Rachel Carey.
She started it. I never went down to her kitchen and the photographers never came up to our loft. And they only started coming up when we started calling it the loft. I don’t remember what we called it before that. The flat? The room? I could phone Rachel now and ask her. She’d be friendly, nice; she’d ask me how I was. She’d laugh when I asked her about the loft. Jesus, Victor – happy days. I won’t, though. I won’t phone her. She’d ask me why I wanted to know. I can’t think of a lie and I’m not going to tell her the truth. I’m writing a book. Her silence would destroy me, even the few seconds before she’d tell me she was delighted.
I could blame the phone. She needed to have a line extension upstairs; she didn’t want the phone to go unanswered when the kitchen was empty. There was only one phone company in the country back then. They didn’t have customers; they had beggars. Not even Rachel could warm them. But her father got someone he knew to sort it out for her. We had a phone beside the bed and I began to know Rachel at work. The phone would ring. She could be gasping, crying, biting my shoulder, then pick it up and sound like a sedated continuity announcer.
—Meals on Heels, Rachel speaking – hi.
It was fun, once she made it clear that I wasn’t to distract her.
—When I’m on the phone, I’m not on you. Agreed?
I nodded. Agreed. Because I didn’t believe her. She’d eventually agree to masturbate me while she explained the difference between samosas and poppadoms to some Monkstown mother who was trying to sort out a Holy Communion. But she didn’t. When Rachel was at work, I wasn’t there. I listened to her explain that, as far as she knew, the Catholic Church had no objection to Indian food.
—You might try the Archbishop’s Palace. Or I could, if you want. But there are nuns in India, aren’t there? Mother Teresa – exactly. And priests – missionaries, yes. I’ll check for you. No, it’s no problem – it’s as well to know, yes.
I knew not to laugh or try to let her see that I was listening.
—No, we don’t strip, I heard her tell another customer.
There was no indignation in her voice, no pause; it was as if she was being asked about an ingredient.
—Nothing like that – no. We serve food.
I didn’t have to ask her how work was going, because I knew. And she sometimes glanced at the pages I left on the desk. We both knew.
We knew nothing. I was always strategic about what I left on view. I had to be. She, on the other hand, was becoming a phenomenon and I was smug enough to think that it was all about cooking.
She announced – be fair: she asked. She asked if it would be okay if a photographer from Irish Tatler came up the stairs.
—Irish Tatler?
I pretended I’d never heard of it. I had, and I’d seen it. But I’d never looked inside it.
—Irish?
—Yes.
—Who reads that?
—Women in dentists’ offices, husbands who have a quick flick through it while their wives are in the loo. Clients.
—Okay, I said.—What is a tattler, anyway?
—No idea.
—Where will I
go?
—You can stay – it won’t be a problem. In fact – listen – you could be working in the background.
And that was it. We’d been photographed together before, once, in the borrowed apartment in Dalkey. Kids in a posh adult world. This was different. We were at home. We were the adults. There I was, my back to the camera, wearing the shirt the photographer had told me to wear. There’s one where I’m standing, leaning forward slightly, reading something on the desk, the window in front of me. I’m JFK, and Martin Sheen, in the White House. I can’t remember what I was reading; it might have been something I’d written.
The photos were of Rachel. I was the white shirt to her left. But then there was the one that made us an item. I was standing again, gazing at the empty room across the street, trying to decide when it had last been occupied. The mid-60s, I thought, and a whole family had lived in there. There was no evidence of this, except the stains and shadows – where a bed might have been pushed against the wall, where a large pot had bubbled on a hob that wasn’t there any more, a line of holes in the wall where the hooks that had held the spare clothes might have been. My father had grown up in a room like that – he’d told me once, and my mother had told me later, after he’d died. I missed him. For the first time in years, I think. Maybe for the first time – I don’t know. But I was missing him, and wondering how looking across the street at an empty room could make that happen, how it could make my stomach drop, when I felt Rachel behind me. She leaned against me. I stayed still. I said nothing. She said nothing. I didn’t turn. That was the photograph.
The next time – I can’t remember the magazine – I was facing the camera. The time after that, we were standing beside each other, leaning into each other, being the couple. Then I sat at the typewriter and Rachel read over my shoulder while I typed All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, again and again, until the sun did what the photographer wanted it to do.
* * *
I went home to my mother’s house for three days at Christmas, so I could go to the pub with the lads I’d gone to school with. I had to knock on doors because I had no phone numbers. Four or five hadn’t emigrated; three were still living at home with their parents.
—You’ve done well for yourself.
—Fuckin’ hell, what’s her name again?
—Rachel, I told them.
—That’s right, said Frankie Best.
He didn’t look like a man who’d once had a trial at Everton. That had been seven years before. He already looked like an ex-footballer.
—Posh bird, he said.
He nodded and smiled.
—And on the radio as well, said Kenny Peters.—Yeh fucker, yeh.
He was smiling too. I was still one of them – just about. I was riding her, so we were all riding her. I was doing it, going out there, getting myself known, riding beautiful women.
—Fair play, said Kenny.—But come here – don’t start going on about abortion in here, d’you hear me? It’s fuckin’ Christmas.
—What’s she do again?
—Does she take it up the gicker?
—Come here, but – d’you get paid for being on the radio? You don’t, do yeh?
—I do, yeah.
—For fuck sake. You’re paying for the next round, so. You still playin’ the football?
—Not really.
They’d already forgotten that I never really played.
—He’s too fuckin’ busy. And you didn’t tell us yet.
—What?
—If she takes it up the gicker.
They didn’t expect an answer. They didn’t want an answer. An answer would have appalled them. They respected their women and Rachel was one of theirs now, for the evening at least, or till I went out to the toilet. It was good to be there, in a packed pub full of people I used to know, men and women – mothers and fathers – who’d known me when I was a kid, who’d known my father, who liked my mother. And their sons and daughters – boys I’d grown up running away from; and other boys, men now too, who’d been a bit careful, a bit frightened, a bit clever like me. And the girls I’d grown up staring at, some of them already looking worn and defeated, and sexy; others still getting the hang of not being children. I don’t remember seeing Fitzpatrick’s sister – or Fitzpatrick – that night; I don’t remember looking for her. It was good to be there. Even though I was never going to pick up my pint and wander, slap the backs, shake the hands, kiss cheeks, grab arses. But I was there and I liked it and I felt almost at home.
And I was at home. I think I was. With the lads I’d grown up with, who’d been in on the terror and crack of the Christian Brothers, who’d stared at German porn mags with me, who’d got drunk with me the first time. I don’t think I’m being sentimental and I don’t think I was then. (I was twenty-three, I think.) Fucking Rachel was one thing. Being the man who was riding Rachel was another. It was why I was there. Not to gloat, although yes. But it explained me. It made sense of me and my desertion. It allowed them to forgive me. And me – it allowed me to forgive myself. They could bring me back in, bring me up to date.
—Moonshine’s living over in Luton now, Frankie told me.
—I know, yeah. My mother told me.
—Married to an English bird, he is.
—What’s she like?
—Don’t know. He doesn’t get his picture in the fuckin’ papers all that often, you know.
There was no malice. This was slagging – it was love.
—Will we all go over?
It was my idea.
—To England?
—Yeah.
—What? Now?
—No.
—It’s fuckin’ Christmas.
—No. The new year. We can go to a match as well.
—Not fuckin’ Luton.
—No – we can go on into London.
—Not fuckin’ Spurs.
—Not fuckin’ Arsenal.
—Will we do it, though? I asked them.
—Ah, yeah.
—January.
—Make it February – get a few quid together. March.
—Okay.
We drank to it. We laughed.
It was the last time I slept in my mother’s house and it was the last time I went for pints with the lads. Two of them are dead. I miss them like I miss my father; I wish I’d known them.
11
I sat at the bar. If Fitzpatrick arrived, he’d drag in others; there’d be safety in numbers. He didn’t turn up. I chatted with a man called Gerry and left after the second pint.
I’d gone to the edge of the estate. I’d walked there one Saturday morning, along the coast. I’d stopped at the corner where the road in joined the main coast road. I’d stood there and looked at the first couple of houses. They were still the same, but very different. So many cars, so few kids. No noise, except for traffic behind me on the main road. A woman came out of Kenny Peters’s house. She was black. She shouted back through the front door – I don’t think it was English she was roaring – and a pile of boys in jerseys came bailing out, trying to trip one another up with their hurleys. She filled the car, and they were gone. Down, I guessed, to the GAA club. I didn’t move further in. The disappointment, the guilt. The guilt. I stood a while longer. I’d set out quite early, before eight o’clock. The heat was beginning to press down on me. I’d have loved a Coke or a Fanta. I hadn’t tasted Fanta in years. I knew where the shop was. I knew it would still be there, with a different name – Mace, Spar, or Costcutters. It had been the Mint when I’d left. It was just a bit further down the road. But I didn’t move. I didn’t feel entitled to. I hoped a car might approach, a half-familiar face under the creases and fat might stare out and the car might slow down and stop after it had passed me. Is that you? I had it planned out, written. I’d turn. Yeah – is that you? Frankie or Will. Or maybe a woma
n. Fitzpatrick’s sister. It didn’t happen.
I was used to being alone. I don’t think I felt lonely. I missed being married but I’m not sure that I missed Rachel. The aloneness was cleaner now. I wasn’t surrounded by her world. I didn’t have to hide.
I didn’t like Fitzpatrick. But he brought me so far back; that was the appeal – the lure. It wasn’t nostalgia. I don’t think it was. I was never going to knock on the front door of my old house and ask to see my bedroom. I missed my mother, and I admit that I started missing her after Rachel asked me to leave. But I was never going to knock on old doors.
I wondered why I wasn’t like him – or, if I could have been like him. How would I have been, who would I have been, if I’d stayed? I wanted to thump my stomach, accept my age. I wanted to stare at women and not care that they saw me. I wanted some of his disaster. His sister intrigued me too. I wanted to face what might have been. I wanted to see the wreckage and like it.
I sat at the bar again. The man I’d chatted with the night before, Gerry; he’d told me about his days since he’d taken early retirement. He walked a lot; he volunteered. He was a bore, but I’d liked him. And I’d liked the feeling, accepting that I liked him. It had been a long time since I’d let that happen. Gerry wasn’t there this time. He’d said something about walking with some other people – a walking club – in Wicklow. Lough Dan, he’d said. I’d thought I’d ask him about the club when I saw him again.
—For fuck sake – the man.
It was Fitzpatrick. He dropped his arm across my shoulders. Still in the pink shirt and shorts. Huge and clammy.
—The man they couldn’t hang.
He let go of me.
—Will you have a pint? I asked.
—Does the Pope shit in the fuckin’ woods? he said.—I’ll have a rake of pints but one’ll do for starters.
He looked around to see who was appreciating him. I wanted to get out; he was too near, too there. But he had me cornered. Getting away would have involved getting around him. He’d have stopped me. He’d have picked me up and thrown me back up on my stool. He’d have laughed and snarled. I had to accept it: I was exactly where I wanted to be.