“Horseshit, cowshit, what’s the difference? You can’t wipe it off your feet all at once.” Jael held her stare. “Do you ever get homesick?”
“What is this, a joke?” said Maria warily. “That’s not a Jael-type question.”
“Whatever you say.” Jael began piling up dirty plates. Crashes interleaved with silence. The stack was a hand’s breadth high when she burst out, “Only whenever I try to get to know the real Maria, you act like you’re about to be raped.”
Maria put down the tea towel and rested her hand above Jael’s elbow for a moment. “Hey. Hey. Take it easy.”
With a self-deprecating grimace, Jael walked out of the room. Maria sank onto the sofa and wiped her hands with the tea towel; a headache was beginning to lace its web behind her eyes. With her right hand she squeezed at her shoulders, trying to loosen the taut muscles; tugging open the top button of her shirt, she slid her fingers round to the nape of her neck.
“Need a rub?” Jael swished through the beads behind a newspaper.
Maria stood up, folding the tea towel. “I’m fine.”
Jael snapped the paper open, leaning against the back of the sofa. “You should get Ruth to give you a proper massage someday; she’s a lifesaver when my back starts acting up. Her kind is called ‘healing bodywaves’; she learned it at a week-long workshop on goddess spirituality.”
They exchanged queasy grins. “Whatever you’re into,” murmured Maria, checking that she had shut the fridge door properly.
“Here we are,” exclaimed Jael, peering at the small print on the back page. “‘Taut and riveting, reminiscent of …’ blah blah … ‘dreamy fetishism …’”
“Sorry?”
“Oh, didn’t I ask you already?” asked Jael. “It’s the last night of that French thriller at the Lighthouse, and I thought, well, that you mightn’t have anything better to do.”
Maria’s shoulders stiffened. “I’m sort of tired.”
“Yeah, but not actually doing anything, are you? Not hitting the wine bars with your bimbo friend, for instance.”
“If you mean Yvonne, she’s not a bimbo.” She settled herself in the rocking chair and put her feet up on the hearth.
“Don’t tell me,” hissed Jael. “She’s actually an undercover Kremlin spy, masquerading as a bimbo.”
Maria started unlacing her shoe. “If you’d ever met her, you’d know she’s a really decent person.”
“Nice, even?”
“No, decent. There’s a good nature behind that fluffy facade. She laughs at all my jokes. Besides, I need some friends who aren’t on pension.” She avoided a swipe from the rolled-up newspaper.
“Anyway, what about the movie?” continued Jael.
Yawning, Maria wriggled deeper in the chair. “I really should be doing that essay on frescoes. And what about the washing up?”
“Only social rejects stay in on Friday nights.”
“Why didn’t you go with Ruth last week?”
Jael shook her head impatiently. “She dispproves of French films; apparently they’re all voyeuristic. Complains loudly every time there’s a close-up of a pair of legs, even if they’re Charlotte Rampling’s.”
“I really don’t—”
On her knees, Jael dug her fingers into the straggly rug. “Please. I’m begging for company. Am I going to have to kiss your foot?”
Maria’s socked toes wormed away. “All right. Stop getting at me.”
“Yippee.”
“I’m a bit broke though,” she complained as she put her shoe back on.
“No problem, I’ll pay,” Jael said, her voice muffled by the coat cupboard.
“You will not.”
She found herself being tugged out the door. “Shift a leg. We’ve only ten minutes to get there, and I hate missing the trailers.”
“OK, but I’m paying for myself,” shouted Maria, clattering down the stairs. “And kindly stop treating me like an aunt.”
She could tell it was an arty cinema, because the seats were black instead of red plush, and among the couple of dozen watchers there wasn’t a popcorn carton in sight. After a long credits sequence, with reverent close-ups of tomatoes being sliced, the film started to flow, and Maria slid down in her seat and relaxed. But there was one scene about halfway through that left her rigid. As the heroine and hero squabbled in the foreground of a smoky café, the camera shifted to focus on the table behind them: two slim men with moustaches locked in a kiss. A sound of revulsion began to rise from the cinema audience. Maria sat stiff and blushing—whether for the men or for the audience, she wasn’t sure. Jael, tossing Smarties into her mouth by the handful, didn’t seem to notice.
When they emerged, blinking, the sky was navy blue. A furious dispute was going on by the ticket office; Maria recognised that woman from the women’s group—Pat, wasn’t that the name?—insisting that her wheelchair was not going to block the aisle. Maria gave a little wave, but Pat didn’t seem to recognise her. Jael had hurried on; Maria had to dash along the side street to catch up.
“Will we walk the long way home?” Without waiting for an answer, Jael turned down a cobbled alley.
Maria was lost already. She peered around her. “Is it safe?”
“You’ll be all right if you stick with me, kid. I keep a hatpin in my lapel.”
The beggars had packed up for the night, leaving only a few cardboard boxes and, on the slab where the alley ended, a smeary chalking of the Last Supper. Jael slowed to a stroll. “I love films like that, with fishnet tights and snarling violins and not a social issue in sight.” She watched Maria as they paused on a curb. “You didn’t enjoy it much, did you?”
“Oh, it was beautifully filmed,” said Maria quickly. “Only I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to sleep tonight. That bit where the cat leaped out of the kettle …”
Jael ducked in front of a truck; Maria held her breath till the coppery head emerged on the other sidewalk. By the time she caught up, Jael was peering at a menu framed in a heavily curtained window. “Are we hungry or are we hungry?”
“Peckish,” said Maria. “But what—”
“You are about to traverse,” intoned Jael in the voice of a car ad, “a frontier in culinary excitement. Those innocent taste buds are about to experience the fiercest chicken vindaloo—to be strictly accurate, the only chicken vindaloo—in Dublin’s fair city.”
Maria’s protests lowered to a whisper as they entered the dim hush of the Indian restaurant. “Chinese is cheaper, and anyway, shouldn’t we be getting back to find out how Ruth’s debate went?”
“Chinese is for wimps,” Jael hissed back. Then, resignedly, “All right, we’ll get a takeaway here and take it home. But don’t tell me you prefer Chinese when you’re a vindaloo virgin.”
Maria crossed her arms and leaned on the counter.
“Trust me, sulky,” murmured Jael in her ear.
She stuck out her tongue, but had only just time to whip it back into her cheek when the waiter trotted up.
They were rounding the corner of Beldam Square by half ten. “Let’s take a shortcut through the square,” Jael proposed, heading for a gate half hidden in the hedge.
“It’ll be locked.”
“Maria,” said Jael with a sigh as she wedged her foot into the wrought iron and clambered over, “you musn’t let these little circumstances get in your way. Swing the dinner bag over.”
Poised on the top bar, Maria clung to Jael’s bobbing head for support. “Stop laughing,” she ordered; “if you let me fall on one of these spikes, you’ll put an end to my marital prospects.”
“Ah, sure what harm,” murmured Jael, heading through the trees.
Maria picked her way over the grass after her; it was too dark to see anything but leafy mounds and tree trunks. “Wait for me,” she called. “I’ll bet this place is crawling with rats.” Stumbling onto the gravel walk, she found Jael balancing on the arm of a park bench, craning over the treetops.
“You can see the flat fr
om here.”
“Are you sure?” Maria climbed up behind her. “How can you tell it’s ours?”
Jael shaded her eyes from the streetlight. “That has to be Ruth, walking past the kitchen window. She keeps reminding me to buy a blind for it, but it always slips my mind.”
“Look, she’s taking off her cap,” said Maria. The small figure four floors up was black against the warm light. Then, with a shiver, she jumped down. “Let’s not. I’d hate it if I didn’t know I was being looked at.”
Jael grinned down at her. “You like to know you’re being looked at all the time?”
“Don’t correct my grammar, beast,” answered Maria, catching her leather cuff and hauling her onto the gravel. “I meant, if I was being spied on from a squalid park bench, I’d rather know about it.”
“It can’t do Ruth any harm,” said Jael; “she’s guarded by the goddess’s personal troupe of angels.” She picked up the leaking paper bag and led the way toward the gate.
It was Hallowe’en morning, and Maria was dividing her attention between her scrambled egg and a page of diagrams.
“We Scorps,” announced Jael without warning, glancing up from Motorcycle Monthly, “are not the green-eyed monsters society has labelled us, but rather sweet, unassuming creatures.”
Maria gave her a blank look, then turned back to the geometry.
Swallowing her toast, Ruth explained. “It’s the lady’s birthday and she wants a tin of chocolate Brazil nuts.”
“How do you make sense of all that verbal diarrhoea?” asked Maria.
“Practice. It takes at least a year to get to know all her little quirks.”
Jael made a troll face over her granola. “Would the pair of you kindly stop bitching and nip down to see are there any cards for me. I heard the postman ages ago.”
“I’m busy,” said Maria, eyes following a parallelogram.
“Nip?” repeated Ruth. “Nip down four flights?” But she went.
Maria abandoned her maths book. She began the washing up rather halfheartedly and was soon distracted by a page of wet newspaper under the kettle.
“Mmm?” inquired Jael through an unpeeled kiwi fruit.
“Listen to this, Scorpion,” said Maria. “If it’s your birthday this week: ‘You have a headstrong personality and would make a good actress, sewage worker, detective or undertaker.’”
“You’re lying through your teeth, Murphy. Bring that paper over here.”
“Look, down in the corner.”
Jael snatched at the page. “God, they actually say sewage worker. I wouldn’t mind the others—even undertaker—they’ve got a certain grandeur. But a sewage worker!” She sighed, reaching for a banana. “Let’s see whether Aquarians get any kicks this week.”
Maria wiped the page with a towel. “It’s a bit blurred, but I think it says I’m to watch out for marital conflict and risky investments.”
Ruth reappeared, coughing. “Three brown bills for me, one parcel and one postcard for the birthday girl, and … ha ha, look at this, a card from Maria’s tutor wondering why she’s missed three statistics classes in a row.”
“There’s twenty-three of us squashed into her tiny room, reciting figures,” complained Maria. “I don’t see the point.”
Ruth’s answer was cut off when Jael handed over her postcard. She looked down at the blue-and-white village scene, glowing under the sun. “What’s this?”
“Read it,” said Jael brightly. “She’s on Mykonos.”
Ruth handed it back. “No thanks, it’s yours.” She turned away to finish the washing up.
Jael brushed past Maria at the door of the bathroom and muttered sharply, “What do you bet she read the whole postcard coming up the stairs?”
The safest answer was a shrug.
At dinner that night they drank toasts to the pope and the plight of the aged—Jael having difficulty in blowing out her thirty candles. To the strains of flamenco music on Ruth’s dragging tape recorder, they ducked for apples in a wok full of water, which Maria managed to overturn on the carpet. Tonight she would not watch them, would not worry and analyse and hold back. Tonight was for having a good time, all girls together. Jael and Ruth overdosed on chocolate nuts and whisky while Maria nursed a glass of wine. At two in the morning she left them tangoing on the sofa, roses (improvised from red paper napkins) stuck between their teeth. Her bed wrapped her in a cool embrace, and she slept almost at once.
It began as her usual bird dream, with her rising above the bed, melting through the window, gliding over the roof and away. But this time she found herself hurtling through a canyon, her wings flaring out behind her. Gradually she realised that the cliffs at the end—or were they skyscrapers?—were too close together. She hunched her feathered shoulders and tried to slow down, but as the gap came nearer and nearer, the wind forced her eyes shut. She knew that the gap had narrowed to nothing.
There was no crash, just a quietness; like in a cartoon when the cat skids out over a precipice and sits for a few long seconds, rigid and bemused, on thin air. Gradually a set of pale lines formed themselves into striped curtains, barred with street light. Maria knew where she was, but she was still waiting for the fall. She wanted to crane back over her shoulder to see where solid land ran out; her stomach was clenched against the drop.
A glass of ice water, that would bring her back to reality. Pulling her dressing gown on over her thin pyjamas, Maria crept down the corridor. Before her hand touched the beads, a faint sound stopped her. Shadows were twisting on the rug in front of the dull embers.
She held her breath until her pulse thumped in her throat. As her eyes got used to the dark, she could see firelight edging over a tangle of limbs. It wavered on Jael’s long brown back arched over Ruth, their arms like the dark interlacing bars of a hedge. Ruth lay askew, her lean body stirring under the weight of her lover. Maria had to strain to hear the rough breathing, the indistinguishable words. She had no idea how long she had been standing there, all her senses riveted to the scene, when a frantic whisper began to spiral from the bodies. She couldn’t tell which of them was making the sound. It was like nothing she had ever heard. As it clawed its way upward she wrenched herself away and ran back to her room.
Furled up in the foetal position, the quilt over her head, Maria waited for calm. She thought perhaps she was going to throw up, but it was too far to the bathroom, so she swallowed it down. I’m a voyeur, she told herself, mouthing the words into the pillow to make them real. I’m worse than them. To do it is one thing, that’s their business, but to watch it, to spy on friends at their most exposed … how can I look them in the eye tomorrow morning?
Outside, the rain had begun, rumbling and spitting at her window. She found her cheeks latticed with tears for the first time since she came to Dublin. So that’s what it’s like, she thought, bewildered.
4
CUTTING
Looking at a flattened curl on the back of Ruth’s head, Maria wondered whether she had been hallucinating. This frail, cuddly woman could have nothing to do with the shapes by the fire last night. Leaning against the sink, Ruth washed two aspirins down with orange juice. She was colourless as paper; tiny wrinkles showed round her eyes.
Jael lay diagonally across her futon with a sockful of ice on her forehead, rejecting Maria’s offers of hangover remedies and breakfast. “I’m thirty fucking years old,” she commented, eyes shut, “so what good will a poached egg do me?”
When Maria came back into the kitchen, Ruth was picking up sticky wine glasses and tattered napkins. They washed up wordlessly, their hands dipping in tandem. Half an hour later they were curled into the sofa, swapping family photos.
“Is that your little brother in the suit?”
“It was far too big for him, but Mum insisted,” answered Ruth. “He’s doing law; she’d love him to become a diplomat.”
Maria contemplated three photos of the same triangle: a woman sitting in an armchair with a boy at one shoulder and a young,
slightly sullen Ruth at the other. “Is that what she wanted you to be?”
“Oh, no, the Civil Service was much more suitable for a girl, no need to live in foreign parts. It broke her heart when I ditched it. Maybe if I go on and get a master’s, it’ll make it up to her.”
The next sheaf of photos showed Ruth and her mother walking on hard shingle. “What would you research?”
“Medieval nuns. My professor tells me it’s a soft subject, but I think they led such fascinating lives.” Ruth looked up and smoothed the lines out of her forehead. “What about you, Maria, what are your plans?”
“Plans, woman?” She shrank back into the folds of the tartan blanket. “I’m not old enough to vote yet.”
“I keep forgetting.”
Maria tapped the photos into a neat pile. “You know how, when you’re small, adults can never think of anything to ask you but what are you going to be when you grow up? Well, I used to say a bus driver just to shock them. And because I liked buses.”
Ruth grinned reminiscently. “I always said air hostess, just like every other little girl in my class. Jael said terrorist once and got slapped for it. At least that’s her story.”
“Should we try the malingerer again?”
“Why not.”
Finding the bedroom door open, Maria picked her way through strewn jumpers and coffee bowls to the window and pushed it a few inches open.
Eyes shut, Jael ordered, “Shut that damn window.”
“We were going to go for a walk as far as the river,” said Maria, nudging it farther open.
The reply was prompt: “You can go for a fuck in the park for all I care, ducky.”
“Oh, come on,” Ruth called from the corridor, “let her fester.”
The sunlight was turning to violet in the oil-streaked puddles. How familiar the streets were to Maria now, as if she had spent years in Dublin rather than weeks. The grimy corners, bus stops askew, green street-name plaques so high on the red brick walls that tourists had to crane up as if looking for Superman. The city was always quiet after a holiday, especially the debauch of Hallowe’en. Orange streamers were coiled in gutters, and some joker had left her witch’s hat on the skull of a bronze patriot.
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