‘Why are you telling me this?’ he said.
She smiled, ran the tip of her tongue along her lower lip. ‘Because this is the time when dreams die.’
He looked out towards the mountains, the glimmer of peak ice. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘But I’m not going to let them.’
‘I’m happy for you,’ he said. Now she was just being annoying.
She frowned. But even that was beautiful. ‘I’m telling you this so that when you ask me out on a date, you’ll understand that I’ll only say yes if I think you’re marriage material. You’ll get three dates. I’ll know by then if you are.’
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. ‘And if I’m not?’
‘I don’t date for fun,’ she said, the sun on the river reflecting in her eyes. ‘There is far too much I want to do in my life. So, if you’re not, it’s over, and I’ll move on.’
‘An interview.’
‘Exactly.’
‘What else do you want to know?’
‘Why do you drink so much?’
He gripped the railing harder and looked down into the dark clarity of the water, watching the smooth surface flex over the cobblestone bottom. ‘The doctor asked me the same thing.’
‘Doctor?’
He told her.
She was quiet for a time. Then she said: ‘What did you tell him?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me.’ She reached for his arm and put her fingers on the sleeve of his shirt. He could feel the warmth of her through the cotton.
‘I killed my brother,’ he said.
‘What did you say?’ Her hand closed on his forearm.
‘You said you wanted to know.’
She reached for his hand. ‘My God. What happened?’
‘I was twelve. We were playing with my father’s gun. I shot him. Rhys was his name. He died on the way to hospital. In my dreams, he’s still alive.’ He’d never told anyone before.
They walked a while longer, across to the north side of the river and through the park towards the zoo, close but not touching. She didn’t press him further, and he was glad for it, happy just to walk beside her. At the zoo bridge they crossed back to the other side of the river and turned towards the city, and when they reached her bus stop he stood with her and waited until the bus came and she got on and the bus drove away.
A week later, he did ask her out, and, much to his surprise, she said yes. And when she met him at the restaurant, wearing a black leather miniskirt and towering black heels and a low-cut blouse, a part of him nearly died when she walked up to him and kissed him on the cheek.
A Bar Called Mexico
Chris put the bottle to his lips and took a long swig. ‘The good stuff,’ he gasped, and passed it to Barley.
‘What the hell are we doing here?’ said Barley. ‘We could get into a lot of trouble.’ He drank.
‘Great view, though,’ said Chris.
The young engineer looked out over the town and the serried blue ridges folding away towards the higher mountains in the distance. ‘Just keep your voice down, and no one will know we’re here.’
‘They won’t care,’ said Toby, grabbing the bottle from Barley. ‘We’re here supporting the local economy. They want us to be here. That’s why they didn’t lock the door.’
‘It’s not locked so people can come in any time they want, fuckwit,’ said Barley. ‘No telling when someone might have the urge to pray.’
‘Religion is crap,’ said Chris.
‘You have to believe in something,’ said the young engineer.
‘Why?’ said Chris.
‘Because even if you believe in nothing, that’s still something,’ said Barley.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ said the young engineer.
‘OK,’ said Chris, staring at the half-empty bottle. ‘I believe in poetry.’
‘Poetry is crap,’ said Toby.
‘I believe in banana cream pie,’ said Barley, who’d returned with a fresh bottle.
Everyone nodded. Coming up through the mountains that day, they’d stopped at a restaurant on the outskirts of a small village. It was run by an American expatriate with long grey hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a grey goatee. He’d married a local girl, and was living in Mexico now for good, he said. He also claimed that he made the best banana cream pie in the world. He was right.
‘Religion is crap,’ said Chris.
‘I’m religious,’ said Barley.
‘Bullshit,’ said Toby.
‘I am,’ said Barley.
‘Is that’s why you’re here?’ said Chris. ‘Praying that Lady Brett will be at the bar again tonight?’
Everyone laughed.
Barley grinned. ‘She’s something else.’
They’d met her the night before, in the bar. She’d walked right up to the four of them and introduced herself and asked if she could join them. She was handsome, but not beautiful. Robust, Toby called her. Her skin was very tanned and her hair was bleached by the sun. And she could drink. Barley ended up sleeping with her that night, while the rest of them drank on the beach outside her hotel. He’d only been up there with her for a little over an hour when they heard someone shouting on the beach in front of the hotel. Some guy was standing there in the sand in his shorts and T-shirt, yelling up at the hotel. A few minutes later, Lady Brett appeared on a fourth-floor balcony. There was a brief exchange, consisting mostly of swearing, before she went back into the room and then reappeared with an open suitcase draped over her arms. A moment later it was falling towards the beach, its contents scattering across the sand. Another case soon followed, and then some smaller things – a shaving kit, a book, an alarm clock. Then she disappeared back into the room.
They’d named her Lady Brett after the character in The Sun Also Rises. The young engineer had just read it and had got Chris to read it too.
‘Fuck, that was funny,’ said Chris. ‘I thought I was going to puke, I was laughing so hard.’
‘Her boyfriend was pretty nice,’ said the young engineer.
They’d all gone over and helped the guy collect his stuff, had invited him to have a drink with them. They’d told him about The Sun Also Rises too, that he should read it, but he didn’t look the reading type. When dawn came, he was still with them, blind drunk and swearing off women forever.
‘Fucking crazy,’ said Barley. ‘Drinking on the roof of a church.’ He took another swig of tequila.
‘Stop whining,’ said Toby. ‘You’re the one who got to enjoy Lady Brett while we all slummed it on the beach all night.’
‘It was your idea to come here,’ said Barley, grinning. ‘Lard butt.’
‘I didn’t even get the chance to pack,’ said Chris. ‘I’m using Warren’s toothbrush for Christ’s sake.’
‘Bad planning,’ said Barley.
‘Planning? I thought we were just going to another bar,’ said Chris.
‘Mexico, idiot.’ Toby took another swig of tequila. ‘I kept saying Mexico.’
‘I thought you meant a bar,’ said Chris.
‘You ever heard of a bar called Mexico?’ said Barley.
Toby laughed. ‘Airport convenience store. I told you. But you wanted to hold out for something cheaper, with better selection.’
‘What do you know?’ said Chris. ‘We had to carry you on to the plane.’
Everyone laughed. Toby laughed too, took another drink. The bottle was almost finished.
‘There’s another one in the jeep,’ said Barley, ‘I’ll go get it.’ He disappeared down the stairs.
‘What’s the bet the bastard takes off, leaves us here?’ said Toby.
‘He’s too drunk to drive,’ said Chris.
‘What’s wrong with you, War?’ said Toby, prodding the young engineer with his elbow.
‘He’s pining,’ said Chris. ‘And sober.’
‘Shut up, Chris,’ said the young engineer.
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Toby, whistling. ‘Helena.’
‘Hot,’ said Chris.
‘Who’s hot?’ said Barley, returning with a fresh bottle.
‘Vet Girl,’ said Chris. ‘Helena of Troy.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Barley.
‘She asked me if I had dreams,’ said the young engineer.
‘I have dreams about her,’ said Toby. ‘Every night.’
‘Shut up, Toby,’ said the young engineer.
‘Dreams,’ said Chris.
‘You know, things you want to do with your life.’
‘Oh, that.’ Chris wanted to be a poet. The more he drank, the more he wanted to be a poet. But right now, he was an engineer.
‘What about your fiancée,’ said Toby. ‘She know about this?’
‘I called it off,’ said the young engineer.
Everyone nodded and was suddenly very solemn. Barley passed the bottle around. Everyone looked at Chris.
‘What?’ said the young engineer.
‘We didn’t want to tell you before,’ said Chris.
‘Tell me what?’
‘Well, you know that new guy in drilling? Williams?’
‘Mike Williams, yeah.’
‘Well, he’s been drilling your fiancée for the last couple of months.’ Chris looked at the bottle. Barley smirked. Everyone else looked at their feet.
‘Fuck,’ said the young engineer.
‘She was a skank anyway,’ said Toby.
‘Her eyes are too close together,’ said Barley.
‘And her tits are too small for her ass,’ said Chris.
Everyone laughed.
The young engineer grabbed the bottle from Toby, took a long drink. ‘What do you guys want to do tomorrow?’ he said.
March 10th. Geneva
I walk back to the hotel from Borschmann’s offices. It’s a clear afternoon, and the sun warms me, counteracts the cold wind coming off the lake. Despite what’s just happened, I think about the two stories I read last night before turning out the light and trying to sleep.
It’s strange to think of them there, on that bridge in Calgary, a moment in time so long eclipsed. The younger version of the decrepit and dying man I last saw at the hospital a few days ago; of the woman who was lost to me so long ago I can barely remember what she looked like anymore. The two of them, talking about life, about time, about dreams and the things that kill them. About love and life and finding your way. And now that they are both gone, does any of it matter?
I realise I’ve passed the hotel. I stop a moment, then keep walking.
We lost the deal. I lost the deal. Borschmann wouldn’t accept the terms, the old faggot, and I had run out of room to manoeuvre. A whole week wasted. Months of effort. I had to blow off the weekend with Constantina, too. Shit. Sometimes I don’t know why I do it. Why I put up with it all. Why does it matter so much to me? What makes this so goddamned important? The money? The bonus? The status, the possible promotion, the car, the bigger office? Yeah, yeah, all that. Work harder and get more. Get that feeling you have when you walk into the meeting and everyone junior to you is thinking they want to be you, to have what you have. Like showing up at the party in a new BMW and everyone is watching you – that feeling. That’s what it’s all about, right? Dreams.
I decide to stay here over the weekend and chill. Fly back to London on Monday. I text Maria that I’ll meet her on Tuesday. She can tell me whatever it is she has to tell me then.
I need some time to think. The old man’s stories have been rattling around in my head for days now, keeping me awake. Damn him. Carrying all this around with him all these years and never telling me. I mean, especially later, when there was only the two of us. Then dumping it all on me like this, when there is no recourse, nothing I can do about any of it.
I keep walking along the lakefront. I turn my phone off and just walk. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this – wandered with no destination in mind, no deadline to turn me around and bring me back, nothing tethering me to the daily avalanche of shit they call responsibility.
The air is cold and there are clouds over the lake and a few squalls and some blue sky. A bit of everything.
I turn forty-one this year. Forty-one. I can’t quite believe it, somehow. All that shit about infinity the old man wrote, well I hate to say it, but it’s true. No one ever tells you. Or rather, they do, but you don’t believe them. When I was young, in my teens and early twenties and even later, when I’d walk past a cemetery and look out at those gravestones, all those lives ended, I’d get a feeling. It was always the same. And you know, I’d never really thought about what it was, that feeling I had. But as I walk along by the lake, I realise. It just comes to me. What I felt was disdain. That’s right, disdain. They were dead, I was alive. They were weak, so they died. I would live forever. I can feel it even now. And of course, the joke’s on me. That’s what my old man is telling me. I can hear him. He’s calling out to me as I walk past, and in his voice, there’s disdain. You are weak and stupid. You think you’re different to me. But you aren’t. You’ll end up like me. And there isn’t a goddamned thing you can do about it.
When my old man married my mum, he was twenty-six. She was twenty-four. He was thirty-three when I was born, and Adam was born six years after me. They never told me what happened to Adam, just like they never told me about my old man’s brother. All I remember is arriving back at the landing that day with my mum in the car and the old man is standing there on the dock as we pull up, with the long arm of the lake behind him and Adam in his arms. And when he sees us, he stops for a moment and stares at us, and then he starts running towards us and without saying a word he takes the keys from my mum and puts Adam in the car and drives away. That was the last time I ever saw him. The next day, they told me that Adam wouldn’t be coming home. I was ten.
War News
The young engineer sat at one of the empty tables in the college’s common room and spread his notes and hydrology textbook out before him. Final exams were only a few weeks away now and the room was crowded with anxious students. The TV droned in the background. Outside, spring was coming, and London’s street trees were showing the first sap-green buds. He’d spoken to Helena yesterday, back in Canada, made some progress towards patching it up. She’d been angry with him for a long time, upset about him being in trouble with the law when he was supposed to be studying; about other things, too, but over the last few months he’d managed to convince her that he had learned his lesson. He was going to do his thesis in Africa, had secured sponsorship for the work from the World Bank. He would finish his degree, get a job somewhere doing something good. Then he’d ask her. Maybe things would still work out.
He opened the textbook and started work. He was halfway through a difficult derivation when someone turned up the TV.
‘Quiet,’ a student shouted.
It was the BBC, a special report. Breaking news. Everyone stopped work, turned towards the TV.
‘Oh, my God,’ he heard someone say.
Five months earlier, before Christmas, when he’d finally broken it off with his fiancée and started back with Helena, and then lost her again soon after, and the days were short and dark and cold, the young man pushed his way through to the bar. The publican raised bushy, greying eyebrows at him. The young man pointed at the three half-poured pints of Guinness ranked up on the double blue Dublin GAA bar towel, Áth Cliath just visible between two glasses. ‘A pint of that, please,’ he said.
The publican frowned, started to it.
‘I’ll have a pint of that, too,’ said a voice from behind. Laughter broke over the din of a hundred and fifty raised, mostly male, voices. ‘You from America?’
The young man turned towards the voice. A broad smile beamed out at him from a face chiselled from the Muskoka granite of his childhood, brown and pink feldspars flecked with musc
ovite. The guy took a couple of steps towards him, leaned in across the bar, put down a fiver. ‘It’s on me, Seamus,’ he said to the publican, turning towards the young man and offering his hand. ‘Seán,’ he said.
The young man took the hand, shook, spoke his own name. ‘Thanks.’
Seán handed him a glass, raised his own. ‘Sláinte.’
They moved away from the bar scrum, found some space towards the back of the pub.
‘What’re you doing here, then?’ said Seán, wiping foam from his top lip, glancing towards the front door. His forearms were like twisted rope.
‘Drinking,’ said the young man.
Seán smiled. ‘I mean here in London.’
‘Studying. Engineering.’
Seán sipped, nodded. ‘Oh, yeah. Very good. A man of education.’ His accent was very thick, and it was hard for the young man to understand.
‘I’ve only been here a couple of months,’ said the young man.
‘We like Americans here.’
‘I’m Canadian,’ said the young man.
‘Just as good,’ said Seán. ‘As long as you ain’t a fecking Brit.’
Just then a cold gust swept through the narrowness of the pub as the front door swung open. Two men stepped inside, stood a moment silhouetted in yellow streetlight, then closed the door behind them. Stamping the rain from their dark jackets, they peered in through the smoke.
‘Stay for the music later,’ said Seán, patting him on the shoulder.
But before the young man could reply, Seán was moving away through the crowd, towards the front door. Every few steps, someone would reach for Seán’s hand or nod to him. Women smiled at him, whispered to each other as he passed. He greeted the two men who’d just come into the place. One of them clasped his forearm for a long time, his other hand on Seán’s shoulder as he spoke. After a while, the three of them moved off towards the bar.
‘Friend of Seán’s are you, then?’ said a lilting female voice.
The young man turned and looked down at the woman. ‘Pardon?’
‘Seán Savage,’ she said. ‘Friend of yours?’ Her hair was the colour of an October maple. She was very pretty.
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