Shift

by Mia Gallagher

  ‘No, no, no!’ said a thin bald man at the centre of the intense group. His voice was loud, heavy with authority. Seán remembered being introduced to him earlier. A cancer specialist from the Blackrock Clinic. The last few bits of talk hushed.

  ‘Of course, it’s an awful mess. Inhumane. But we shouldn’t think about it in simplistic terms. If we go back to Isaiah Berlin…’

  The budding fashion designer was nodding. Seán dropped his mouth to her ear. ‘What’s he talking about?’

  ‘Iraq.’

  A grinding pain begin to throb in Seán’s lower jaw.

  ‘With hindsight’ – the specialist was getting into his stride – ‘it’s very easy to be judgmental. But we have to remember it was an extraordinarily complicated issue at the time.’

  Somebody laughed and Seán realised it was him. ‘Complicated?’

  The specialist glanced over.

  ‘There was nothing remotely complicated about it.’ Seán’s voice seemed very far away; at the same time, louder than he’d intended. ‘It’s obvious the invasion was driven by economics. I mean, just look at—’

  Murmurs began at the far end of the table.

  The specialist lifted his hand. ‘No, that’s not what I—’

  ‘Look at the figures. Take the death rates.’

  ‘That’s not what I—’

  ‘Incredible. We call ourselves a civilised society. What kind of civilised society murders eighty-five thousand—’

  Seán observed himself, as if from a height. He was leaning forward, teeth bared, index finger jabbing, statistics bulleting out from his tongue. Aggressive ape behaviour, Lola called it. The specialist was shaking his head, trying to interrupt. That’s not what I’m saying. No. no, no. That’s not— Two dots of red had begun to glow painfully on his cheeks.

  Morality, Seán was saying, his voice resonant with indignation. Double standards. Greed, capitalism, cynicism. Blah blah fucking blah.

  Shut him up someone, please—

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a third voice, loud.

  The specialist, now cowering, hands spread in defeat, glanced at the doorway. Seán took the time to finish what he was saying, then looked over. The man who’d interrupted them was leaning against the architrave. There was something boneless about the way he stood there, as if he’d been flung at the wall like a piece of pasta thrown by a chef to check if it had been cooked enough. He had an expensive haircut and was wearing a Boss suit over an open-necked white shirt. Silver glimmered at his wrist.

  Seán leaned back in his chair, eyeballing him. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well. See… What I was wondering…’ The man’s voice was slurred, messy, at odds with his expensive appearance.

  Seán sighed, reached for his glass. The table’s attention began to drift.

  ‘What I was wondering was,’ said the man, louder and clearer, ‘was if you’ve actually met any Iraqis?’

  Seán’s hand stopped.

  ‘Yourself, I mean. Personally. It’s just you seem to know so much about it.’ The man at the doorway slitted his eyes. They glittered at Seán, vicious little raindrops in a slack face. His mouth was a shark’s; a thin-lipped triangle stained black from wine.

  ‘All those numbers you keep saying. Very impressive. But you don’t mind me…’ He waved his hand. ‘Asking where you got them from?’

  Glasses clinked. Somebody laughed.

  ‘Wouldn’t be the internet, would it?’

  Seán swallowed his wine.

  The shark’s mouth smiled. ‘I knew it.’

  Everything in the room sharpened.

  Keep the head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Seán carefully, ‘what exactly your problem is—’

  The suit laughed. ‘My problem?’

  Voices rose; some aimed at the suit, some at Seán, others trying to resuscitate safer threads of conversation.

  ‘Leave it, Seán. He’s had too much to—’

  ‘Let’s just—’

  ‘Has anybody seen the latest—’

  ‘You’re the one with the fucking problem!’ shouted the man at the door. ‘You’re the sort of liberal shit thinks we should sit on our arses and do nothing. Fuck Rwanda, fuck the Iraqis. You know how many people died in—’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ shouted Seán. ‘As opposed to—’

  And they were off.

  A dim part of him wanted to stop, but he couldn’t. They had armed themselves, cherry-picking atrocities from opposing arsenals, and there was no easy way out. Rwanda. Bosnia. Mugabe. Hitler. Pakistan. Belfast. Kabul. No point having weapons if you don’t use them. Their words flew, landed, exploded, maimed. Seán felt the back of his neck sear red, saw flakes of spit collect on his opponent’s lips. Once or twice, their host, perched near the kitchen door, tried to intervene, but they ignored him, blinded to everything but the need to bully the other into submission, obliterate, prove I am right, listen to me.

  In the distance, the silence of the other guests crystallised around the peaks of their conflict like a frozen lake.

  ‘Okay,’ said the hostess, standing. ‘Brandy.’

  They eyed each other. Seán’s breath was ragged. The other man’s eyes had become glazed. They could probably have taken it further but…

  The suit slumped back against the door, spaghetti-soft again. Seán’s shoulders drooped.

  Truce. Nil all.

  The hostess smiled a tight smile and laid the cognac on the table.

  ‘Well,’ said the host, ‘that was lively.’

  Timid attempts at conversation began to blossom. Seán sipped his brandy and let his gaze drift around the table. His eyes landed on Poppet. During the argument he had forgotten her. She had vanished, ice melting in hot water. Now she seemed all too visible, her imperfections stark in the candlelight, her garish colours hurting his eyes. He wondered how he could have ever found her, even momentarily, attractive. She was gazing at her plate, her finger chasing a last piece of chocolate around the gold rim. She looked up, catching him.

  The unexpected force of her hate struck matches on his skin. Sickened, he looked away. His glass was empty.

  An hour later, the party broke up, the night’s mix too flimsy to survive the brutality of the argument. The guests made their apologies, shuffled into their coats and left in their cars, swooping down the driveway like participants at a secret wartime conference, their headlamps sweeping long beams of diamond-paned light across the dining-room wallpaper. The man in the Boss suit had been one of the first to go. Seán had stayed till the end.

  He began to make his way to the door, his car keys flopping through his fingers like seaweed.

  ‘Oh Seán, you’re not driving,’ said his hostess.

  He turned and the room turned with him. ‘I’m fine,’ he tried to say.

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  She was adamant. He had to call a cab. Eventually he agreed, sinking back into the leather sofa and letting her make the call because he couldn’t get his fingers to push the right buttons on his mobile; couldn’t get his mouth to form any sound except a grunt. The drink had soldered his jaws. His tongue was flapping around his mouth like a beached fish; disconnected, severed from its root.

  His hostess put down her phone, made her way to the sofa.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Seán, but they’re booked solid for the next two hours. Can you believe it?’

  He nodded blearily. ‘Fucking country we live in.’

  Through the blear he saw the other guests – the ones who’d had the foresight to book their cabs in advance – look on, smirking.

  ‘Fucking country—’ he said, louder.

  ‘Maybe you could stay here?’ suggested his hostess. There was a pained look in her eyes.

  ‘Yes, do,’ said the host. He didn’t look quite so pained yet…

  ‘No,’ mumbled Seán, having sense enough left to do the decent thing. ‘I’ll hail one down on the street.’

  Outside it was cold and murky, no moon. The air was blowing chillin
g little gusts up under Seán’s lightweight mac, a bad choice he’d made earlier, deceived by the evening’s golden sunlight.

  He staggered down the driveway. Objects jerked into sharp focus, melted into a fuzz.

  The footpath was a cold light blue, the colour of Picasso’s dejected Harlequins. Wavering through the gate, Seán stumbled over a loose brick, straightened up, stumbled again. In the corner of his eye he saw his car, long and white and useless. He thought of going over to pat its bonnet goodbye – or maybe even crawl in and sleep there till dawn – but sense arrived again, a delayed, incomplete cavalry. He had a home to go to. Lola would be waiting.

  He had been walking for about five minutes when he first heard it. An odd clacking sound, coming from – his ears found it, lost it, found it again. Ahead of him? Something wooden. Some wooden thing in motion, hitting off the ground. Disjointed, uneven, reminding him of something.

  A children’s story book, a—

  Blind Pew from Treasure Island.

  He stopped. The sound did too. He glanced behind. Involuntary. Stupid. Nothing. He let his eyes drift across the road, take in the empty tarmac, gaping driveways, sparse streetlamps. He could hear his own breath. Taste it too. Sour. He forced himself to squint up the road. The path was drowned in shadows, cast by a dense bank of beech trees overhanging a rotten granite wall.

  Nothing there either.

  He took a step.

  click CLACK

  The streetlamps under the beeches blurred, icy in their basketwork haloes.

  Another step.

  click—

  Something was moving, under the trees. A smudge of black against the lighter black of the wall.

  Seán stopped again. Silence ballooned into the night. His nose was full of the stink of his sweat, sharp and mushroomy. Maybe, he thought, I should turn around.

  Yes. He could turn now, go back down the road to his hosts’ comfortable house and their equally comfortable sofa and lie down and sleep the drink off and leave in the morning, after honourably refusing coffee and toast and marmalade, and battle through the traffic and get back in one piece and—

  His hostess’ pained face resurfaced in his memory.

  Maybe not.

  He tried to gather his thoughts. It was only a matter of minutes till he reached the main junction and then, Christ, surely he’d be able to hail a cab. Once he walked slowly enough, there’d be no danger of catching up with whatever was in front of him.

  Whatever?

  Whoever. Jesus. What class of gom was he, jumping at shadows?

  He started again, walking as slowly as possible, trying to ignore the clacking, the fucking clacking that had started up again when he did, the fact that it had slowed too, that with each step he took, it sounded nearer, like it was taunting him. His eyes strained. There, only a few yards ahead. The smudge, moving through the shadows. He still couldn’t make out details. It looked like one mass of black, no limbs. Maybe it was wearing a cloak.

  A cloak? Who would—

  A sliver of light knifed through the branches, glinting at the place where the head should have been.

  Seán froze. The thing mirrored him. Now there was only a couple of yards between them.

  Seán’s breath quickened. The thing began to turn, disengaging itself from the shadows. He could make out a grey oval – a face, thank God, a head after all—

  Then a flash. A white hand, reaching for him. Seán jerked back.

  His foot lost contact with the pavement, his spine whiplashed. Flailing, he crashed to the ground. His arse smashed into the gutter, landing him on a pile of sodden leaves. He groaned. His ankle throbbed.

  Broken? Christ.

  He looked up. The figure in the cloak was standing above him, silhouetted against the streetlight. Seán twisted, tried to scrabble away. Useless. Pain shot through his leg. He sank back, whimpering

  The figure stepped back and tilted its head to the light. A pale face emerged, the same colour as the moon. A hand lifted, making an abrupt, almost absent-minded movement, as if it was stroking a small household pet that had got trapped on its head.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ said Poppet, and laughed.

  Even afterwards, he couldn’t tell whether she’d meant it as a joke.

  She sighed, her sparkly veil slipping over her head as she bent forwards and lifted one foot off the ground. For a moment Seán thought that she was going to step over him, hike up her skirt and piss on his face.

  Instead, she gripped her ankle and drew off her shoe. Her balance was perfect, the supporting calf strong, bunched with muscles. Cogs in Seán’s memory whirred. I used to be a dancer.

  She dropped her foot, held up her shoe. It had ankle straps and a stiletto heel, and under the dull lamplight was some dark colour that looked black. She pushed at the heel. It gave way, bending inwards at a painful angle.

  Blind Pew equals broken shoe.

  He giggled.

  Hissing, she dropped the shoe. Seán twisted his head. The fractured stiletto sped past his ear, landing spike down in the gutter. Seán’s nose filled with snot.

  Poppet stepped forward. Her feet, inches from his eyes, looked like something from a macabre fairytale. The bare one was arched, her weight pushed onto her toes. The nails had been painted; the same noxious indigo as her shoes. The muscles in her leg twitched, rippling darts of black through her bone-white skin.

  ‘You remind me of my husband.’ Her voice was light in the cold air. ‘I didn’t see the resemblance at first. Did I tell you I once had a husband?’

  Seán said nothing.

  ‘Did I?’ Her voice had hardened.

  Seán looked up and gazed at the top of her head. Her shod foot lashed out, landing in his ribs. He grunted.

  She laughed. ‘No. I don’t suppose I did. Then again, you didn’t give me the chance.’

  Her voice was chisel-sharp now, soiled with the same bitterness that had marred Lola’s in the early days, before she’d learnt sense. ‘I lived with him for twenty years, you see.’

  Oh God, thought Seán. Now it’s all coming out.

  ‘He used to hit me.’ She grabbed a curtain of her hair and pulled it away from her forehead, lifting her face to the light. ‘See.’

  Seán wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be seeing. A tiny fault line where her nose had been broken? A slight wander in her left eye? A chipped front tooth? From where he was lying, she looked intact.

  She twisted her neck, pointed to her left temple. ‘There. That’s where he used the glass.’

  Seán saw cracks in polyfilla. Marks he’d half-glimpsed earlier through strands of hair; craters and bumps he’d taken for the leftovers of acne.

  ‘I was always fast on my feet but the dancing wasn’t much good to me when he got into his moods.’ She smiled. The black lips stretched. The cracks widened. ‘Maybe I should have learnt to box instead.’

  Seán shifted his weight onto his other elbow. ‘Look.’ His teeth had begun to chatter. ‘I don’t want to – but – my ankle is—’

  ‘You name it, I did it.’ Her voice was light again. ‘Black glasses. Headscarves. High-necked jumpers. Long sleeves. Excuses. I had them all. Walls, stairs, doors. Clumsy Poppet. Silly Poppet. Awkward Poppet. Poor Poppet.’

  ‘Look, Poppet, I need to get to—’

  Her foot lashed out again, the stiletto connecting with his breastbone. Seán crumpled back, retching.

  ‘I knew what you thought, the minute you saw me. Look at the silly bitch. Who does she think she is, the auld eejit, going overboard with the hippy dresses, pushing fifty if she’s a day. She’s not fooling herself, is she? That she’s got a second chance, the stupid—’

  The stiletto jabbed again. Seán curved away. Her foot hit air. He grabbed it by the arch. It tensed under his grip, racehorse-strong.

  ‘Let go.’ She pulled. Seán, nauseous, clung on. ‘Let me go, you prick.’

  Her face was grotesque, eyes and mouth black holes in a Scream mask.

  ‘I
need a doctor.’ Sean’s words were coming out in clumps. Cold racing up and down his body. His mouth full of salt. ‘I need to get help—’

  Her held foot jerked, trying to shake him off. He gripped tighter, his other hand reaching for her ankle. She pushed back on her heel, shook again. The motion rattled through him, snapping his neck back. He released her. She tottered. The stiletto waved, an inch from his face. If she lost her balance, she’d send the fucking thing into his eye.

  The sinews in her standing leg strained. The hem of her dress billowed, revealing the white shapes of her thighs, a flash of darkness. Energy surged through Seán, hardening his cock. He glanced down. Instinctive. The erection was pushing at the fabric of his trousers, tent-pole obvious. He heard a laugh. Poppet, her shod foot still raised, had stopped tottering. She was staring at his crotch. Cracks all over her face now, raking down the sides of her nose, digging trenches across her forehead, hatching fault-lines around her lips.

  She lifted her eyes to his. Her smile faded.

  And then, with infinite slowness, her eyes locked on his, Poppet began to move. The movement was so small Seán couldn’t tell where it had started. A torquing somewhere in her hips, a curling of her raised foot, a slow bend of her knee. Plié, first position. Controlled, focused, her legs flickering marble as she lowered her spiked heel, letting it float towards his erection.

  The tip of her heel brushed his zip. Seán made a small ragged sound.

  The stiletto moved down, still light, tracing the length of his cock until it came to a rest on the ridge between his balls.

  Their breathing was harsh. Little white puffs of air. Their chests moved. Up, down. Up, down.

  The stiletto quivered. One jab, thought Seán. One jab and—

  She lifted her foot and flicked it away.

  Bile filled Seán’s mouth. His erection collapsed. He twisted onto his side and retched. The sound tore into the silence, ripping it like soggy paper.

  When he turned back, wiping his mouth, she was already hobbling away, a peg-legged ballerina sinking into the darkness. Pad click pad click. A few yards on he thought he saw her stop and bend. Then she continued, noiseless.