Shift

by Mia Gallagher

  Ready? said Christo.

  Des wasn’t completely AOK with the situation. But he didn’t want not to go out with him, it was their last night, God knows if he’d ever see the poor divil again, and you have to mark these things. Respect. His head was turning a bit from the green stuff, and – he didn’t think this in a sick way, but – he liked the feeling of being with Christo, the way he was just then, not all dolled up and not just himself either, and Des didn’t know if that was good or not, so he just went along with it.

  They started in Sandymount – Byrnes – then up to Ballsbridge, pints in the Horse Show House, chasers in Bellamy’s, down to Jurys, whistle stop along Baggot Street – Ryan’s, Henry Grattan, Doheny & Nesbitt’s, O’Donoghues and the Baggot Inn – tried to get into the Shelbourne but couldn’t, then down to Dawson Street – Dawson Lounge, smallest pub in Dublin – and Kehoes on South Anne Street. They were regulars in Kehoes because Christo liked all the young people. Des was fairly fluthered by that stage but he was pretty sure nobody there recognised Christo that night. Even the barmen thought he was a mot. Then onto the Pygmalion, they call it something else now, or maybe it’s gone, packed with young ones wearing black lipstick and no bras, young fellas acting like you know, not normal, drinking girls’ drinks outta long glasses.

  Des knew he was well on the way to pallatic once they’d hit the Dawson Lounge. Christo, though, just seemed to get better as the night wore on. He had this shine about him. People laughing at him, with him; Des was too gone to tell the difference. He pulled Des into an alley and they – you know – had a jimmy riddle, then across over to Bartley Dunnes. Faces, music, heat. Christo’s eyes, mad and glad in his brown face. White teeth. At one point, he brushed the inside of Des’ arm.

  Soft.

  He woke up with a headache the likes he’s never had since – not surprising because that was the last time he drank – and it was all over the news. It had happened at the back of Fleet Street. Near one of those clubs. They didn’t show any pictures. Des was glad. He wouldn’t have wanted to see what they’d done to him.

  He went to the funeral but didn’t stay long. Isabella pressed his hand. Her face was wet with the tears and she was mumbling in Italian. She seemed terrible old.

  Some of Christo’s pals, the funny sort, turned up but nobody recognised Des from the pub crawl. In a way he wasn’t surprised. Christo had been shining that night, he was the one they’d all been looking at. Des wasn’t anybody. In the long run that was probably for the best. It would have complicated things if they’d remembered him – or worse, told Isabella. Because on the news, they’d said it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been with someone. To protect him. Isabella not knowing would make all that easier. Plus with him leaving the job, it would be tidier, maybe, to keep it like that.

  He got the van a few months later. Isabella had put theirs up for sale and he saw the ad in the Herald, recognised the phone number. She hadn’t a clue about prices – it was going for a song – but he didn’t want to call her. Water under the bridge. Then his cousin Eddie found him a fella who was looking to emigrate and Des bought his van for a good price, nearly as low as Isabella’s. Set up the business, got it on its feet. Had Arthur Regan do a lettering job, all lovely neat black letters. Name, phone number – no mobiles back then – then, underneath, in a beautiful curly script: Services Rendered. It was Sandra came up with that one.

  He stayed fifteen years in the business, then once Ritchie got the hang of it, took a raincheck. He’d never felt fully comfortable in that line of work. He was doing it only because Sandra had wanted him to, and it did make a definite improvement to their standard of living. But with all the buying and moving and what have you in the Boom, Ritchie started bringing in enough for himself with a good bit going back to Des, so it made sense to change gear. He’s never looked back. Took to the instruction like a fish to water. Chose the southside because it gets him away from home a bit longer, and he likes those big roads with the trees. Reminds him of summertime.

  Of course, they ended up not going to Italy that year. Between one thing and another, it just didn’t happen. He thought after it was for the best. Sandra wouldn’t have liked it. They tried Spain a few years later, when the business was nice and settled, but Italy, never.

  08:24

  It’s a bright day. Going to be a scorcher. He’s starting to feel a bit, not great, but better. Hot and prickly like he’s been on the booze, but sleepy. Maybe he’ll get some last-minute kip in. He’ll need it for McFadden this afternoon.

  She failed. Second time round. No surprises there. Twenty percent. He could have told her. Came in straight afterwards and booked another set of ten, with him. She didn’t dare look at him, kept staring down at her feet, twisting the belt on this dress she was wearing, grey wool like a nun’s. He couldn’t help thinking of her thighs under the habit, soft skin, hard bone, the goldy ends on her screwed-up brown hair, those lashes long on sun-darkened cheeks.

  Well, he said. Third time lucky?

  The dots on Ritchie’s alarm clock blur and mesh. His eyes are closing. Sandra whimpers, throws out an arm, pinning him.

  And into third. Lovely. Keep checking the mirrors, into fourth. On the dual carriageway now, free as a breeze.

  He left him at the corner. A shout. Des turned, nearly falling flat on his arse in a puddle. Christo was laughing. Des started laughing too. Another shout. Des blinked. He could just about make out Christo’s lips moving. ‘Coward!’ he was saying. Des’ head was melted by then, with the booze and the taste of Christo’s mouth, but he still knew, even in the middle of all the mess, that Christo was – not that he was right, not that, but that – fuck me, he thought. Maybe? Christo pushed up his lips and blew a kiss. Des put his finger to his own mouth. It was still wet from Christo’s tongue. He let his finger go somewhere in that direction, then turned away, still tasting, and swayed for home.

  Departure

  He was my first. There would be others, though I didn’t know it. But the question is always the same. Why? Then it’s sorry, I wish I had been there. I was there, though. I wasn’t too. That’s why, I used to think. Now I’m not so sure.

  I heard the news on a rainy July afternoon. I was wearing a red scarf around my head. I wanted to look like Grace Kelly in a sports car. A red scarf, and sunglasses in spite of the rain.

  We met up on Good Friday and the two of us went for a walk. The sky was very blue, a perfect April sky. It was warm, the beginnings of summer; insect life darting and flipping through the air. The leaves on the huge sycamores were a fresh green, like the grass in the park only not as sharp. A lovely day.

  We walked along the long road several streets up from my house. As a child I always thought of the trees on that road as big and friendly, like people. My mother used to take me for walks there. In my pram, or later on foot. The houses were big too, full of exciting windows and cream-painted ceilings. The windows were exciting because they had ten little panes in them, not like the two big panes in the windows at home. They looked like something from a story, especially in winter when they filled up with Christmas lights.

  We walk along the big, friendly road. We are talking, of the things we talk about when we’re together. He does most of the talking, but he listens to me too, carefully, with an open sad grace. He speaks of an idea for a book.

  Two children dart by. The boy grabs the ball, red striped with a blue like the sky, and runs on. The girl scrunches up her face and kicks a pebble against a tree. Vicious. In the park we sit on a bench. I like the way he talks, shaping the air with his hands. I remember him as quite unsure, and yet, when he spoke, his words had a certainty mine didn’t have. Still don’t, a lot of the time. He has an idea for a film. He is writing a lot now. His ideas fill sheets of white unlined paper with blocks of handwritten text in capital letters.

  Sun gets in my eyes, so I have to shield my face with my hand when I look at him. I feel good, squinting this way. Summery.

  He talks about the gi
rl he used to go out with, the one who left him for someone more handsome, a guy with a louder voice. He is still in love with her, he says. He wants her to act in one of his films.

  I lean back against the bench, and the wood is warm and hard. The paint is peeling from the heat. It’s strange. This is only April and it’s so warm. The sun and the leaves so bright, their colours talking to each other. I love the way the kids are playing around on the swings and the seesaws. Their mothers and minders soaking up the sun, sinking back onto their coats spread out on the grass and closing their eyes. Beautiful, I think.

  I listen to him talk about the girlfriend, the actress who wanted to be a dancer but learnt too late, and I nod. He tells me that she refuses to see him now, but he can’t blame her. She has her own life. I nod. He tells me he cried thinking of her last night.

  We walk back to my house in silence. The sun has moved around the sky, it’s later in the afternoon. I smell the sweet and cinnamon of hot cross buns.

  We drink coffee down in my parents’ kitchen, and the black cat jumps up on his knee and rubs the side of its head against his jeans. He touches it – he always had a gentle way of touching things – and begins to talk about cats and witches. His new film is about a witch. His new film, the reason why he came to visit me in the first place.

  We go upstairs, to the room everyone loves to sit in, and talk some more. The film will be good to work on. I’ve already helped him, I’ve a very helpful side to me. I’ve looked up stories about white mares in mythology books, I’ve scoured The Occult and The White Goddess. You’ve been a great help, he says. I’ve got loads of ideas now. He explains the plot. It sounds a bit strange, a bit mad, but exciting.

  The doorbell rings. It’s my boyfriend. Introductions in gold sunlight. We chat.

  He goes and my boyfriend stays.

  Aftershave lingers in the warm beam of motes streeling in through the two window panes.

  That was summer. But winter was the beginning. Two, maybe three years earlier. Coming home after the drama festival. Ten of us squashed into the little van, wrecked from dancing and performing and laughing, from writing names in the sand on the beach on the rainy second afternoon, from drinking coffee at two in the morning and talking about acting, movement, voice projection.

  In the van, darkness collapses around us. I put my head on his girlfriend’s knee, and hold her hand. He holds her other hand. Warmth. I feel, I am, very young.

  Coming into the city, I sense flashes of light strobing in through the windows. Hot red bands striping the every-colour black of my shut eyes. An arm shakes me awake. Gentle. We pile out, stretching cramped, exhausted legs. We got to a café and eat mounds of fish and chips and hamburgers.

  He comes down to my bus-stop to wait with me. His girlfriend comes too. It’s bitter cold. It’ll be warmer once it rains or snows. I get my bus, and look out the back window at them. She waves, he puts his arm around her, they walk off. They are dressed in identical green trench coats.

  That trench coat. It always comes to mind thinking of him. He had other coats as well. Who doesn’t? He took me to a film, and he wore a brown leather jacket with a sheepskin collar. The handsome man his girlfriend left him for had a jacket with a sheepskin collar too, only his was denim, not leather.

  The first time I risked saying I love you, instead of just thinking it, was at Christmas. An easy time to say it. An easy time to blame the drink or the season or the sentimentality of wrapping paper.

  I never said it to him. Because, I told myself, he was my friend, nothing more. Because it would have been taken up wrong, because that’s not what I would have meant. I meant a spiritual love, nothing more. It’s a pity spirit is so hard to find without a body. And no fooling around with Ouija boards will change that.

  Someone told me that his girlfriend was a bitch; she went around telling people that she’d never gone out with him at all.

  It was summer, a different one, when he took me to the film in his good leather jacket with the sheepskin collar. We’d met up beforehand in a record shop. He was buying a cheap album, second-hand, some ancient band I’d never heard of, so he could learn more guitar chords. He glanced up and the edges of his eyes crinkled.

  Look.

  He had a white scarf wound around his neck. He looked like a fighter pilot from World War I.

  It was a great film, even though the cinema was tiny with an even tinier screen. The imagery was beautiful, blues and neon, with warehouses and a lighthouse, an opera singer and a godlike man in a white suit. I’ve seen it again since, many times. The first time I saw it after hearing about him was a Christmas, on the television.

  That night, he walked me home, and on the way he told me about his dancing classes and the group he was in. It takes him out of himself, he said; it’s good to meet people, he doesn’t get as depressed.

  Rock and roll. There’ll be a party somewhere sometime after that, and he’ll swing me around under his uplifted arm, smiling, and I’ll remember. Dancing classes.

  The road is washed in clear blue light. The sky is velvet dark and the stars glint. It’s still warm. I feel a bit wary. I’m worried about that. I like him a lot, we’re very close, but I don’t want anything to happen. I hope he will understand.

  We walk up the road my parents’ house is on and our bodies collide as we take mismatched steps. I move away from him. Not too obviously, I hope.

  He asks will he walk me to my door.

  I shake my head. I’m fine, thanks for the evening, the film was brilliant.

  He nods, slowly.

  I move to hug him, and he backs off. A little, not too obviously.

  It’s okay, he says, and I remember again how gentle his voice is. He smiles, and lifts one hand in a little movement. I smell his aftershave as I walk back up the road.

  His brother died near the beginning. The day he heard the news we were rehearsing a play he had written. His girlfriend walked in. Her face was strained.

  Afterwards I saw them on the stairs. She had her arm around him and he was looking at the ground. I went up to him, to hug him, to hold his hand, and when he raised his face his eyes were wet.

  Rain.

  On the day of the funeral, he met us to talk about the play. We all sat around a café table that was covered in dingy white plastic. My fingers messed with salt and pepper sachets; his held a cigarette and shook all the time. His other hand, the left one, cradled a mug of coffee. He sat in his black suit on an orange plastic chair, and reassured us: yes, yes, our performances were all fine.

  His brother was young and lovely, he told me once. His poor mother.

  I can’t remember exactly the last time I saw him, but I know it was after I returned from Germany. He came to see me in a play, and visited me at home once or twice after that. So any last conversation would have been in my parents’ house, in the comfortable kitchen with the round table and big corner window. We would have talked about his films, the many ideas he had, the ones that fell through, the ones that could never have happened, the ones that would have been easy and, maybe, right to do. He would have talked about Transcendental Meditation, his social club, girls he’d met who’d let him down, the night courses in the social sciences, the job two evenings a week cleaning offices. He might have talked about his brother and his medication and his poor tired mother. We would probably have talked about the future.

  He sits at the table, his back against the window. There’s a candle burning, and the kitchen is warm. I see my face reflected twice in the two large panes of the corner window. His face has only one reflection, a profile. Grains of sugar spill on the wooden table. I play with them as he talks.

  He tells me about the night course he’s doing now. A class in philosophy, and they were asked: Who is the centre of your universe? He figured it out. It’s me, he says, and points. I’m the centre of my universe.

  Later we walk into town. It’s December and my feet are cold. He’s pushing his bike, a blue racer with gears and brakes and all th
e rest. The stars are sharper than in the summer. My nose is cold; I hope it won’t get too red. He tells me about a trance he went into. A bit strange, I think.

  An old man with a peaked cap and a long dirty mac shuffles on in front of us. We pass him, and he grunts as the bicycle handle gets him in the back. Sorry.

  Strange? For a while I thought: Oh, no, that would be different now. That wouldn’t be strange now, but wonderful.

  Now, this now, I’m not so sure again.

  I heard in the rain in July, on a grey street made greyer by the sepia plastic of cheap sunglasses. Why. If. Me. I. So many questions.

  What is his face like now? What are his eyes, and his gentle thin hands?

  No more hugs goodbye, I wrote. He must have been so lonely. Live with that.

  A small white room. Drawers full of paper and capital letters, a guitar, a record collection and a scent of aftershave. An empty bed and a chair knocked over by dying feet. A lot remains.

  You First

  Overweight, Adam had thought, four weeks before. Then – Woman.

  Overweight Woman Strides into Ward.

  She’d walked past his bed, only changing course when the nurse pointed in his direction. A mistake, he thought, looking up at her, puzzled.

  A motherly type. Green eyes, brown freckles visible under streaky orange foundation. She had a slight frown that seemed as if it was always there, as if she was constantly trying to work things out.

  ‘Hi Adam,’ she said.

  Something in the way she named him.

  A small smile. ‘It’s George.’

  He stops breathing, hating his bad lung as it tightens, lifts, soars in his chest, a prima ballerina held high by fear.

  Later, Adam thought he’d have known her just from the way she said his name. Some people hold your name in their mouths like a jewel. When it drops out and lands in your hearing, it leaves an imprint there, a fossil shorthand for their presence. Nobody else, when they call you, makes quite the same mark. But she had named herself before he could respond, stripping even that last test from him.