Thirteen Stops

by Sandra Harris

  Jack never answered when she rang the phone number he’d given her. He never replied to her texts either, even though she received delivery reports for every single one she sent. He never acknowledged her many phone messages. Was he disgusted, she wondered, at how desperate she seemed to be to contact him? Did her pathetic eagerness and persistence make him want to puke? Or did he just get some sick buzz out of the whole thing? Earlier that day she’d sent him a text saying that she thought she might be pregnant. She’d wanted to shock him into ending his communication silence, but she’d waited all day and nothing whatsoever had come back from his end. How could a man be so cold? Fauve asked herself this question constantly. How could he be so unfeeling? She herself felt much too feeling these days. She felt as fragile as a flower whose petals were in danger of being plucked off by the wind or the sticky fingers of children. She was exhausted and emotional all the time. She was so emotional she wanted to cry every time she saw a sad ad about road-traffic accidents on TV, or when someone on the news had had a child on a medical-treatment waiting list for years and they still weren’t any closer to getting that life-saving operation, and meanwhile the parents were nearly half-dead from stress and worry. And don’t even get her started on the flippin’ Angelus, the one minute of reflection time on RTÉ One every evening before the Six O’Clock News came on, when the dings donged and the bongs binged. The sight of all those dear old geriatrics or special needs children and adults working together on their sweet little craft projects, smiling happily all the while, had her bawling like a baby before the fourth or fifth dong had dinged. Like, what were they trying to do to her anyway, twisting her poor tormented heartstrings into such agonising knots like that? It was a form of legalised torture, that’s what it was. And to think that the government condoned it!

  Also – and this was the real proof – the reason that Fauve was absolutely convinced that she was pregnant was that, a couple of times in the past week, she hadn’t wanted to go to Copper’s or Flannery’s after work, hadn’t wanted a drink even. If that wasn’t an indisputable sign of pregnancy, Fauve honestly didn’t know what was. She who was tired of Copper’s was obviously pregnant. She wanted to cry. She loved Copper’s. It was practically her favourite place in the world. She loved watching the Guards, the Lady Guards and the nurses getting off shamelessly with the teachers and the social workers and the civil servants, and she adored bitching with her friends about the state of such-and-such a person, who was going to get herself A Reputation For Being An Easy Lay if she wasn’t careful. Would she ever again fall onto her Luas or into a taxi while stinking drunk, clutching her chips and batter burger and only just making it to Kilmacud before she puked her guts up all over the pavement? Would she ever have those carefree, happy times again? Fauve could feel them slipping through her fingers like shite through a goose.

  “I think he must have fake-numbered me after all,” Fauve told Doireann now, her lower lip wobbling and the tears threatening to spill over in earnest. “No one ever answers.”

  “The slimy prick!” Doireann exclaimed with such conviction that Fauve felt momentarily comforted. “Like that time with me and Ronnie. Remember Ronnie? He had the Porsche and the kind of mole thing on his face. I was gutted about not seeing the Porsche again when he fake-numbered me but quite honestly, Fauve, I could never have brought myself to kiss him on his mole thing.”

  Both women giggled guiltily. The thought of Ronnie the Mole was just too funny.

  “You have the test, right?” Doireann said then, draining the last of her coffee and licking the biscuit crumbs off her lips.

  Fauve nodded dully. “In my bag.”

  “Right, well, what are we waiting for, then? Let’s just get it over with, why don’t we?”

  “You promise you won’t tell the others, no matter what the result is?” Fauve felt really anxious now. This didn’t feel like those other times, when they’d all done pregnancy tests together and cackled with booze-fuelled laughter and relief when the tests had come back negative. This time felt different, which was what really worried her. This time felt real.

  “I swear to God I won’t say a word,” Doireann promised. “Cross my heart and hope to die. May I never get off with another grease-monkey again if I tell a lie.”

  Fauve grinned in spite of herself. Doireann was a posh bird from Dublin 4 who loved a bit of rough. She was drawn inexorably to mechanics, construction workers, plumbers and electricians. She fancied anyone in overalls and big dusty boots, carrying a greasy rag and a breakfast roll from the local Spar shop. Whenever a workman was called to the house, Doireann always tried to make sure she was in to give him the once-over, like the cheeky young plumber who’d come to unblock the kitchen sink recently but who’d stayed, as Doireann put it with a filthy grin and an elegant quirk of her perfectly shaped eyebrows, to give her own pipes a bit of a flushing-out as well. And very good at it he’d been too, according to her.

  “See, now you know I really mean it.” Doireann held out a hand to Fauve in encouragement.

  Fauve smiled weakly and took the proffered hand. “Okay then, let’s do it,” she said.

  STOP 4: BALALLY

  Orla and Nathan

  Orla Dunlop stormed off the Luas at Balally and began charging up the road as fast as her strappy high heels would permit, not caring if Nathan was behind her or not, although she knew he was. She couldn’t believe he was being so obnoxious about the whole pregnancy-test thing. Was he really such a prick, she wondered? Was he really as much of a prick as her friends thought he was? They tried to hide it from her, to give them their due – they were all decent, kind-hearted girls – but Orla knew just the same.

  “Slow down, for fuck’s sake,” Nathan whined from behind her. “I’ll get a fucking heart attack if I have to keep up this pace.”

  If you do get a heart attack, Orla thought uncharitably, it’ll be because of all the steak dinners you eat with your clients and your friends and all the booze you swill down like a hippopotamus with dehydration, and not because of me, you big ape. Immediately she felt guilty for thinking it.

  Aloud she said, “Well, we’re already late, aren’t we?”

  “It’s a party, Orla. We’re supposed to be late.”

  “Well, that’s good then, because we are.” Her voice was all high and shrill, the way it got when she was angry with him, which had been happening a lot lately. Too often for her liking.

  “I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

  To Orla it just sounded like more whining. “I don’t care. Let’s just find this place and get it over with, will we?”

  “You’re meant to enjoy a party,” he grumbled, sweating already in his pinstripe suit. “Not just endure it like it’s some kind of torture devised by the Waffen SS or something. I knew we should have taken a taxi instead of getting the bloody Luas. A taxi would have brought us right to the door. And that bloody robot woman with her ‘Please move down the fucking tram’ really gets on my wick. She’s not the boss of me. Have you got a tissue on you?”

  Wordlessly she handed him a mini-packet of hankies from her handbag. He pulled one out awkwardly with his stubby fingers and used it to mop the sweat from his neck and forehead. His neck was bulging over the collar of his shirt as if he’d tied his bloody tie too tight. No wonder he felt uncomfortable.

  “Jesus, it’s hot tonight!” He stuffed the sweat-soaked tissue into his suit pocket.

  Well, good. She wouldn’t have put it past him to try and hand it back to her to dispose of.

  “It’s not hot, it’s cool. You’re just sweating,” Orla said coldly.

  “You’re a hard woman to apologise to.” Nathan checked again on his phone for the location of No. 19, Mornington Crescent. “The bastarding street should be around here somewhere,” he said, looking around.

  “Oh, an apology?” Orla said sarcastically. “Was that what that was meant to be?”

  “What do you want, Orla? For me to go down on my hands and knees and grovel around in the
dirt and the muck, is that it? Of course,” he went on pompously, “I could do that here if you really want me to, but the knees of my trousers won’t be any the better for it.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop being such a drama queen and get up,” Orla said irritably as he made as if to actually get down on his hands and knees on the wet ground, much to the surprise of an elderly lady who was trundling past with her shopping in one of those check trolleys favoured by old dears. Am I forgiven then?”

  He consulted his fob watch on the fancy watch chain, a new gimmick that drove Orla nuts. The watch-and-chain combination was expensive and the real deal all right, but it was so fucking hipsterish it annoyed her. She knew she was being unreasonable but she couldn’t help it. Everything about Nathan was annoying her lately, from his loud, hectoring voice to the Brylcreem he slathered on his hair which, when he kissed her, somehow managed to get itself all over her clothes. It was sticky and disgusting and hard to get off. But Brylcreem was back in fashion again, worse luck. It fitted with the image of the successful businessman Nathan was trying to project, and it went with his pricey pinstripe suits (“All bespoke, I’ll have you know,” he said when people were misguided enough to bring up the subject) and the stupid show-offish fob watch that made him look like a twat. He was only a Mercedes salesman who worked in a showroom and took people out for test drives in the cars he sold, and he occasionally treated favoured clients of the showroom’s to slap-up meals on the company’s credit card, but the way he acted, always lording it over people, you’d think he owned the whole bloody company, the Mercedes brand itself. Talk about full of himself!

  “Well,” he reiterated when she hadn’t replied, just stood fiddling with the strap of her bag, “am I forgiven or what?” He looked at her expectantly.

  She slid her gaze away from his and mumbled, “Okay, fine, whatever. Now can we just get to this stupid party, please?” But she hadn’t really forgiven him. And his thinking that the test was hers was only the least of his misdemeanours. It was the other, more insidious, ones that were bugging Orla.

  “What the fuck is this?” he’d demanded suddenly, holding it up for her to see.

  They were in the bathroom of the house in Kilmacud that Orla shared with her three friends. They were getting ready for the party in Balally, just one Luas stop away, which was being held in the home of one of Nathan’s old rugby-club pals. They were leaving Nathan’s car, the Mercedes he was hire-purchasing from his work with his staff discount and of which he was inordinately proud, outside Orla’s house and taking the Luas, so that he could have a few drinks at the party and not have to worry about being done by the Guards for drink-driving on the way home. He’d chanced it plenty of times before but not since he’d bought the Merc. The Merc was his pride and joy in life. He loved that Merc more than he loved Orla, she was starting to think.

  Nathan no longer played rugby himself because of what he called his ‘trick knee’, but he still kept in touch with all his old rugby mates, who Orla couldn’t stand because they were all nearly as loud and vulgar as Nathan. They treated women like commodities, like objects to be used and abused and then cast aside when they had fulfilled their purpose. Orla was dreading this party for that self-same reason. Nathan’s friends acted like they knew all about what she got up to in bed with him, which they probably did because Nathan was most likely telling them, the blabbermouth. He put his pals ahead of her, Orla sometimes felt. Then she’d feel guilty for thinking that way. Nathan was perfectly fine when they were on their own together. He was loving and even considerate and thoughtful at times (when she reminded him to be), but when he was with his friends he turned instantly into a foul-mouthed lout. It was clearly just a guy thing. She’d known other blokes who were exactly the same. Grand until you saw them around their mates.

  “Where’d you find that?” Orla said, her eyes wide.

  “In the bin, when I went to put a tissue in.” He glared at her accusingly. “Can you tell me what exactly it’s supposed to be?”

  “Well, it’s obviously a pregnancy test.” Orla took the little object from his hand and peered at it curiously. “And . . . and it’s positive!”

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “Well, what?” echoed Orla, still not getting what he was driving at. When the penny dropped, her eyes widened further and she squeaked, “You don’t think this test is mine, do you?”

  “Well, who else’s could it be?” His face was shiny with sweat and looming alarmingly close to hers.

  “Who else’s? What do you mean? I live with three other women! Fauve, Sasha and Doireann, remember, my housemates? This could belong to any one of them!”

  “So what are you saying? Are you saying that this isn’t yours?”

  “Of course that’s what I’m saying!” She dropped the test back into the wastepaper basket and covered it over with some clean toilet paper she’d pulled from the roll. “I’m not pregnant, Nathan. I take the Pill. You already know that!”

  “Well, I hope for your sake that you’re telling me the truth, Orla,” he said grimly.

  “What do you mean, you hope for my sake?” She was shaking now.

  “Well, I’m as sure as fuck not getting tied down with some snotty brat at my age. So if that’s what your little game is, you can think again, missy!”

  “Missy?” she shrieked. “Who are you calling ‘missy’? I told you that this test isn’t mine! Don’t you believe me? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to go out and buy another test and wee on it right in front of you to show you that I’m not actually pregnant?”

  “There’s no need to get hysterical.” Nathan sounded sulky now. “What was I supposed to think, Orla?”

  “Well, you could have just asked me if it was mine, instead of jumping to all the wrong conclusions.” She was starting to cry now.

  “All right, all right.” He was using the wheedling voice he brought out when he was trying to make it up with her after a row. “There’s no need for tears, okay? I believe you.”

  “Okay,” she gulped, turning away from him and dabbing at her eyeliner, which was starting to run. That was all Nathan’s fault, damn him.

  “We’re perfect just as we are, aren’t we?” he went on, coming to stand behind her so that they could each see the other’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. “A baby would just screw up how perfect everything is for us right now, wouldn’t it? Well, wouldn’t it?”

  She nodded because he expected it. His hands went up to cup her breasts in the lacy top and bra she was wearing. In the mirror she watched him kiss her neck hungrily. She could smell the Brylcreem on his dark hair (so much for her lovely new top, anyway) and the heavy, expensive designer cologne he had on. Everything he wore had to be designer, from his shoes to his underpants. She closed her eyes, not in passion but to block out the sight of him. His breathing grew heavier as his hands moved lower. She felt herself being pushed forward over the sink and her suede skirt being hiked up over her hips. Then her little lacy knickers were coming down and Orla felt herself tense up between her legs.

  As he entered her, hurting her because she wasn’t even remotely turned on, he grunted and said, “You’re so beautiful, Orla. You’re so fucking beautiful, I can’t resist you!”

  She didn’t answer, just gritted her teeth and waited until he was done.

  Now they stood outside the house on Mornington Crescent. It was a house in which a party was clearly being held. Balloons were tied to the trees in the garden, the place was all lit up as if for Christmas and loud rock music was pumping from the open windows.

  “Nate, ya fat bastard, how are ya keeping?” bellowed the very large bearded man who opened the door. He was so big he even dwarfed Nathan, who was solid enough himself.

  “Grand, Mattie, grand! Yourself? You remember Orla, don’t you?”

  “I certainly will after tonight,” Mattie said suggestively, allowing his gaze to roam over Orla’s breasts in her tight top.

  “Did you see that?”
Orla whispered after Mattie had gone off to find them drinks and their host, a guy called Ronan. “He was practically raping me with his eyes!”

  “Ah relax, would you, Orla love! It’s a party.”

  After he’d necked a few beers himself, Nathan was slobbery and horny, pawing Orla openly in front of his mates. Orla tried to relax with a few drinks too, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from being all tense and uptight.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” she said at one point, desperate to get away for a few minutes.

  “Don’t be long, sweetheart,” Nathan slurred, having a quick feel of her backside as she passed him.

  He was deep in a conversation with his mate Ronan, whose birthday it was, and another man called Georgie, about the current state of Irish rugby. Orla had been bored to death sitting there with them in the battered-looking armchairs, but Nathan didn’t like her to mingle when they were out together. He preferred her to stay by his side. “Where I can keep an eye on you,” he always said jokingly, but it was no joke when he got her home and started accusing her of flirting with other men or even just of eyeing them up. He’d given her a couple of digs on occasion simply because he hadn’t believed her when she’d sworn blind that she hadn’t been flirting. She was much too afraid to even talk to other men any more when she was out with him, so his accusations were nearly always unfounded and born out of his jealous and paranoid mind.