This Charming Man

by Marian Keyes

  ‘I love him too. And he hasn’t run away in a while.’ Or if he had, they hadn’t involved me in tracking him down.

  ‘Well, that’s a fine injury you have there,’ Dad said. ‘Fighting again outside pubs, were you?’

  I clicked my tongue. The bruise was nearly gone and I was sick of talking about it. ‘It’s such a silly story –’

  ‘Wait a –’ He seemed to suddenly notice something. ‘Grace! Have you been growing again?’

  ‘What? No!’ I’m only five foot nine, but they make me feel like a freak.

  ‘You must have been! Look at us, we’re the same height, you and I! And we never were before. Look!’ He gestured for me to stand beside him and measured a line with his hand from the top of his head to the top of mine. ‘Look!’

  He was right.

  ‘Dad, I’m the same height I’ve always been.’ I gestured hopelessly. ‘I don’t know what to say. You must be shrinking.’

  ‘Gaah! Old age. It’s so undignified. Sorrows etc., etc.’

  Dad was a small-boned man with soulful eyes and a big nose. Between the nose and the cigarettes, he could have passed for French. On holidays, once in Italy and another time in Bulgaria, people thought he actually was French and he couldn’t hide his pleasure. He thinks the French are the most civilized nation on earth. He loves, loves, loves J-P Sartre. Also, hearteningly, Thierry Henri.

  There was the sound of the front door opening and closing. Ma and Auntie Bid were home.

  ‘We’re in the kitchen,’ Dad called.

  They fluttered down the stairs, taking off gloves and unbuttoning raincoats and complaining about the smallness of ten-cent coins (obviously continuing some conversation they’d been having in the car). They looked very alike, both tiny little creatures, except that Auntie Bid was half bald and the colour of urine.

  ‘Bid…?’ I asked helplessly.

  ‘I’m grand, grand.’ Feebly she waved away my concern. ‘Don’t try hugging me, I’ll puke.’

  ‘Grace!’ Ma was pleased to see me. ‘I didn’t see your car outside.’ She furrowed her forehead. ‘What’s up with your face?’

  ‘Her car got stolen and burnt out on the Tallaght bypass,’ Dad said. ‘And I’m shrinking.’

  ‘Oh! Oh Grace!’ Ma was saddened. ‘ “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” Hamlet, act four, scene five.’ (Ma is also an intellectual.) She put gentle fingers on my cheekbone. ‘What happened here? Surely it wasn’t Damien!’

  I had to laugh.

  ‘Damien’s a handsome man,’ Auntie Bid croaked.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Nothing. Just saying. Don’t mind me, I’m not myself. I think I’ll sit down.’ We all leapt to usher her into a chair, from where she continued her unexpected speech. ‘I always liked a man with a powerful build. I’d say when he’s naked, Damien has a fine pair of thighs? Does he?’ she asked, when I didn’t answer. Too startled to. Naked thighs! Could the cancer have spread to her brain?

  ‘Um, yes, I suppose he does.’

  ‘And moody, of course; nothing as alluring as a moody man.’ She sighed wistfully. ‘His intelligence, his sensitivity, his essential unknowability.’

  Now there she was wrong. The thighs I could go along with, but not the allure of moodiness. Not that Damien was exactly Heathcliff.

  ‘If Damien ever hit me,’ I tried to wrest controlof the conversation, ‘I’d clobber him right back, and he knows it.’

  ‘Lovie, if he ever touched you, there’s always a bed for you here.’ Ma just lives for a good cause.

  ‘Thanks, Ma, but the cold would kill me.’

  Ma and Bid had inherited the house when their great-uncle Padraig – the only member of their family to have ‘done well for himself’ – shuffled off his mortalcoil. Thirty-nine Yeoman Road was a Georgian Preservation Society’s delight: high-ceilinged rooms, all the better for frozen air to circulate mistily in; original multi-paned windows which courteously permitted all draughts ingress and rattled like a box of cutlery whenever a lorry passed.

  Every other resident on Yeoman Road – well-upholstered gynaecologists and estate agents – had bought their house with their own money. And indeed, had plenty more to pay for underfloor heating and ergonomic German kitchens, and to freshly lacquer their front door so it shone as sparkly and confident as a politician’s smile.

  Defiant in shabby, chilly gentility, Ma and Dad were never invited to the Yeoman Road Residents Association, mostly because the meetings were about them and the fact that they hadn’t repainted their facade in fourteen years.

  ‘Bid, cup of tea?’ Dad was poised with the kettle.

  Bid shook her patchy little head. ‘I think I’ll go upstairs for a while and do some vomiting.’

  ‘Good woman.’

  As soon as poor Bid had headed off, I rounded on Ma. ‘What’s she on? That stuff about Damien?’

  Ma shook her head sadly. ‘She’s been reading Mills and Boons. Too sick to concentrate on anything else. They’re poison, those things. Refined sugar for the brain.’

  ‘Dad says you’re giving up smoking?’

  ‘That’s right. We must provide a supportive environment for Bid. In fact, Grace, if she knew you were giving up too, she’d appreciate it.’

  ‘… Er…’

  ‘Ask Damien as well.’

  ‘God, I don’t know about that…’

  ‘Solidarity! Go on, he’s scared witless of you.’

  ‘Ma, he’s not.’

  ‘Everyone’s scared witless of you.’

  ‘Ah Ma…’

  ‘Tell me what happened to your car.’

  I sighed. ‘Nothing much to tell. It was outside the house when I went to bed last night, it wasn’t there this morning. I rang the rozzers and they found it, a charred husk, on the Tallaght bypass. It happens. It’s just a great big pain in the arse.’

  ‘Were you insured?’ Ma asked, triggering a rant from Dad.

  ‘Insured?’ he cried. ‘As if it would make a difference. You check the small print on your policy, Grace, and it wouldn’t surprise me to discover you’re covered for absolutely everything, except burn-outs on the Tallaght bypass on a Thursday at the end of September. A crowd of amoralcrooks, insurers. Big business holding the ordinary man to ransom, putting the fear of penury in him, leaching billions a year from his meagre pay packet, with no intention of honouring their side of the bargain –’

  Dad looked set to run for some time, so I answered Ma. ‘I was insured but, like Dad says, they’re bound to pull some stunt so I won’t get enough money to replace it.’ A pang of loss pierced me. I’d loved that car – zippy, sexy, all mine. The first new car I’d ever owned and I’d only had it four months. ‘I’ll have to get a loan or something.’

  This brought Dad’s rant to an abrupt end. Both he and Ma said quite quickly, anxiously even, ‘ “Neither a borrower nor a lender be! For loan oft loses both itself and friend.” ’

  I shook my head. ‘I won’t be looking for anything from you.’

  ‘Just as well. We haven’t a pot to piss in,’ Dad said.

  ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Hairdresser’s. Getting my colour done.’

  Ma disapproved. Her own hair was a short grey pudding bowlthat she cut herself with the nail scissors. Even Dad took more pride in his appearance. Aged sixty-nine, he still had a thick sweep of silvery hair and attended Champs Barbers on a monthly basis to maintain his favoured style of Left Bank Thinker, circa 1953.

  Into the quiet came the sounds of Auntie Bid puking her guts out in the upstairs (only) toilet.

  Ma asked, ‘Do you know how much Irish women spend annually on haircare? Money that could be better spent on –’

  ‘Please, Ma, it’s just some highlights!’ I did a quick sweep of my appearance, from my black trouser suit to my flat boots. ‘I’m hardly Barbie!’

  In the hairdresser’s, my bruised cheekbone caused a stir.
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  ‘You must have really riled him,’ Carol said. ‘What d’you do? Burn his dinner? Forget to wash his jocks?’

  I started channelling Ma and wanted to say something po-faced like, ‘Domestic violence is no joke.’ But I kept my mouth shut. No one with sense locks horns with their hairdresser.

  ‘I’m a journalist,’ I said. ‘It goes with the territory.’

  ‘You? You write about breast-feeding and drunk teenagers. Like, you’re not a crime reporter.’

  Carol knew me well. I’d gone to her for years. She had no imagination and neither had I. All I had ever wanted was for her to make my mousey roots blonde. I didn’t want lowlights or stripes or anything fancy and, as luck would have it, she didn’t know how to do them. It was an arrangement that suited us both.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.

  ‘You won’t believe me.’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘I fell over in the street. I tripped on a loose paving stone outside Trinity and landed flat on my face. Everyone waiting for the 16A saw me. Lots of people laughed.’

  Carol thought I was holding out, so she left the stuff on for too long and burnt my scalp. Out at the rainy bus stop it was rush hour and I had to jostle with what seemed like hundreds of teenage schoolboys to get on the bus, and when I was turned away because the bus was full my mood took a downward turn. I was sad about Auntie Bid, even though she was a contrary old boot, and sad about my car and full of dread that I might have to give up smoking.

  Also quite annoyed because, in the melée as we’d tried to board the bus, one of the schoolboys had pinched my arse and I wasn’t able to identify the culprit in order to ‘discuss’ it with him.

  Despite swathes of them having swarmed onto the bus – my bus, taking my seat – there were still an unholy number left at the bus stop. Sourly I eyed them swinging their satchels at each other and passing around a single cigarette. I hated teenage boys, I decided. I absolutely hated them. I hated their spots and their randiness and I hated the way they were different sizes. I mean, look at them! Some were miniature four-foot squirts and others were six-foot lummoxes with overextended, gangling arms that scraped off the ground, and they all hung around together in one ridiculous mismatched gang.

  My disconsolate gaze landed on a cluster of schoolgirls covertly watching the boys from beneath sparkly eyelashes, and I decided I hated them too. Their exaggerated giggles and stench of fake strawberry and inch-thick layers of sticky lipgloss literally dripping off their pouty mouths. Also the way they tended to despise me for being ancient (thirty-five) and not wearing high-heels or enough make-up. If I ever turn into her, just shoot me. I once heard one of them actually say that! (Which was very unfair as I’d just spent forty-nine hours in a freezing, muddy field, without bathroom or coffee-making facilities, trying to get a story. That’s why I don’t work hard news any more. Too much time standing in a ditch in the pelting rain, day in, day out.)

  Nursing my grievances, I sent Damien a text.

  R u cooking 2nite?

  No. Ru?

  I sighed. Put my phone back in my pocket. We’d go to the Indian.

  Another bus rounded the corner and the crowd surged forward. God, this was so stressful. I clenched my jaw with grim determination. I was getting on this bus, as God was my witness. (Actually he probably wasn’t. Not according to letters sent from readers, telling me I would burn in hell.) And if any of those spotty oiks tried pawing me, they were getting an elbow in the spleen. Pinch my arse once and get away with it, shame on you. Pinch my arse twice and get away with it, shame on me.

  This time I got on, I even got a seat, and I tried to lose myself in my Dennis Lehane, but the journey took for ever, letting the entire population of Ireland on and off at each stop, and every now and again I’d have to put my book down and sigh heavily to demonstrate how pissed off I was.

  On the up side, at least I’d have something to write about for next week’s column. But all the same. It’s not every day your car is stolen and burnt out, and even though it was nothing personal– at least I hoped it wasn’t… I’ve offended one or two people over the years, but surely I couldn’t have riled them to that extent? – I still felt slightly paranoid, like the world wasn’t a very nice place, which of course it wasn’t, but most of the time I didn’t mind.

  I was hungry. I didn’t know how I’d let that happen. I feared long stretches without food and believed in preventative eating, eating even when I wasn’t hungry, just to avoid it.

  My pocket started vibrating, and when I got my phone out I nearly elbowed the woman beside me onto the floor.

  ‘You’re not going to like this.’ It was one of the subs, Hannah ‘Dreary’ Leary. ‘Big Daddy won’t go with your column. Not controversial enough. Look, I’m only the messenger. Can you file another?’

  ‘When?’ I knew when. I was just being awkward.

  ‘Next half-hour.’

  I snapped my phone shut and my hand lit up with pain. I kept forgetting about it, then being reminded in the most unpleasant way possible. Proceeding with more caution, I gingerly extracted my laptop from my satchel, apologized to the unfortunate woman next to me for once again invading her space with my elbows, and started typing.

  Controversial? I’d give him controversial.

  It was ten to eight before I got home. Home was a red-brick terrace in ‘the upmarket suburb of Donnybrook’. (Quote from estate agent.) A pretty house, very charming with originalfeatures. Extremely small.

  Of course it wasn’t exactly in the heart of Donnybrook, because if it was it would have cost us an awful lot more and wouldn’t have been such a long walk from the bus stop outside the Donnybrook Pharmacy. In fact, none of the shops near us was called the ‘Donnybrook’ anything. Not a good sign. Perhaps we didn’t live in Donnybrook at all. Perhaps we’d been had by the estate agent and actually lived in Ranelagh, which wasn’t half as nice.

  Damien – he of the powerfulbuild and fine naked thighs – was standing at the kitchen counter, the paper open in front of him, colouring black teeth into a picture of Bono. He looked knackered.

  ‘Finally!’ he declared. He baulked, the way he did every time he saw my bruised face. ‘I was just going to text you. What kept you?’

  ‘Fecking bus.’ I threw down my bag and started unbuttoning my jacket. ‘Ten minutes at each stop.’

  ‘Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you all day,’ he said. ‘Small scandalette emerged in the Dailsession and it was allhands to the pumps.’

  I waved away his apologies. Damien was also a journalist, the political correspondent on the Press. I knew about deadlines.

  ‘What did the insurance company have to say for themselves?’ he asked.

  ‘Ha! You’ll love this. If my car had been just damaged, I’d be entitled to a loaner until it was fixed. But because it’s a write-off, no loaner. Can you believe it? I spent the whole morning on the blower to them, I did no work. Jacinta wasn’t happy –’

  ‘ – Jacinta’s never happy.’

  ‘Then I disappeared early to get my hair done.’

  ‘It’s very nice,’ he said quickly.

  I laughed.

  ‘How long before the money comes through for another car?’ he asked.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. And whatever they give me, it won’t be enough to buy a new one.’ Gloomily I unzipped my boots.

  ‘Don’t take them off,’ he said. ‘Stick your jacket back on, let’s go down to the Indian and get a takeaway.’ He wrapped his arms around me. ‘Grace, we’ll do the sums, see if we can get a bank loan to buy you new wheels right now. And untilthen I can bring you to work on the bike.’

  Damien was too impatient to drive a car. Instead he wove in and out of the ranks of Dublin gridlock on a black and silver Kawasaki. (Ma calls it a Kamikaze. She worries.)

  ‘But you’ll have to go miles out of your way.’

  The Press were based in some wretched industrialestate on the M50, where you can buy eight th
ousand scanners but you can’t buy a single sandwich, while the Spokesman’s offices were in the city centre.

  ‘It’s okay. You’re worth it. So how’s Bid?’

  ‘Bad. Out of the blue she said she reckoned you have a fine pair of thighs when you’re naked.’

  ‘Jesus! What brought that on?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He went quiet, locked inside himself for a few moments. Then gave a little laugh. ‘God. Anyway, how’s the chemo going?’

  ‘She looked awful. The colour of butter.’

  ‘Butter? But that’s a nice colour.’ He thought about it. ‘Maybe not in a human being.’

  Almost eight months ago Bid had gone to the doctor because her persistent cough was driving Dad round the bend. The doc had told her to have a bronchoscopy, but an appointment didn’t come free for seven months. When it finally did, cancer was diagnosed immediately. Surgery followed, when a ten-centimetre primary tumour was removed from her left lung, but her lymph nodes showed ‘positive for metastatic disease’. Translation: it had spread to her lymph nodes. (I was fooled briefly by the word ‘positive’, thinking it meant something good.) To treat the lymph nodes, she was to get six rounds of ‘aggressive’ chemo, at four-week intervals. It would be next February before we knew whether or not she’d be okay. If she’d been given the bronchoscopy when she’d first gone to the doctor, the cancer wouldn’t have had time to metastasize to her lymph nodes and she’d be better already.

  ‘Poor Bid,’ Damien said.

  ‘… Ah… listen.’ I decided to go for it. ‘I’m glad you’re sympathetic because I’ve something to tell you and you’re not going to like it. Ma and Dad are giving up smoking. And so are you and I.’

  He stared at me.

  ‘In solidarity,’ I urged.

  ‘Solidarity,’ he muttered. ‘With Bid, it’s like having a second mother-in-law. I’m the most misfortunate man alive.’

  Now and again Damien and I discussed giving up cigarettes. Usually when we were skint and one of us added up how much we spent on them. We always agreed that the right thing would be to give up, but rarely did anything about it.