Mary, Mary

by Julie Parsons

  And then there was Margaret. Another humiliation. He had walked with her out of the Four Courts, taken her by the arm and led her to the car. That day, the same day. He had driven her back to the house in Monkstown. He had followed her into the house, wanting to talk to her, to tell her how sorry he was. She walked ahead of him down the steps to the kitchen. He waited until he heard the sound of water gushing from the tap into the kettle. Then he went into the sitting room. Two battered armchairs were placed on either side of the fireplace. An empty whiskey bottle stood, with two glasses, on the hearth. He bent down and picked them up. Both were smeared with dusty fingerprints. There was a pile of photographs on the floor. He squatted down to look at them. They were of the girl. He put down the glasses and picked them up, flicking through them, surreptitiously. And found some others. Of boys, of young men, handsome, happy. With dark curly hair and blue eyes. Taken on a playing field, a tennis court, sunburnt legs and arms and broad smiles.

  ‘I’ll take those.’ She came towards him, her hand outstretched. She took the pictures from him, and put them up on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Look,’ he began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I—’ He stopped. ‘What can I say?’

  ‘What can you say?’ She put out her hand and rested her index finger lightly on his chest. His fingers closed over hers. He stroked the soft skin. She stepped back quickly.

  She didn’t offer him tea or coffee or a drink. He walked out into the hallway. She opened the front door. He stood, looking at her, then he bent to kiss her cheek. But somehow she had moved away, and his mouth just brushed the corner of her ear. He stepped back, suddenly flushing, and then he turned and walked out of the door and down the steps. When he got to his car he looked back. She had closed the door behind him.

  It still made him blush to think of it. And it made him feel even more lonely and even worse about Janey. There was one evening a week or so ago when he decided to look for her again. This time he tried the group of pubs around Dame Street, the places she told him she went with her new-found women friends. It was quite late, around ten o’clock, when he pushed open the door into the Foggy Dew. He stood in the middle of the floor and looked around him. Groups of people in threes and fours hugged the seats along the dingy walls. The talk was low and intense. Faces lifted towards him, scanned his dress, his demeanour, then dropped away. He walked to the bar and ordered a drink. A pint and a Black Bush. Ceilidh music droned from the big old radio on the shelf behind the bar. He pulled himself onto a stool and took a cigar from his breast pocket. The barman proffered a light.

  ‘All regulars in here?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  He twisted around on his stool.

  ‘Not much of a crowd for a pub in the city centre.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what the new owners think. We’re closing next week. Refurbishment.’

  ‘So where’ll they all go?’

  The barman shrugged. ‘Plenty of other places round here.’

  McLoughlin took a swallow from his pint, wiping the froth from his top lip with the back of his hand. He picked up his drinks and moved over to a table in the corner, sitting down beside a group of women. They all looked alike. Short hair, earrings, baggy trousers and thick sweaters. He tried to eavesdrop on their conversation but they seemed to be speaking a language unlike his own. The women looked like Janey had become: their hair was short and naturally grey, their bodies solid, stocky. They all wore silver rings, heavy, simple, the kind that could double as a weapon. He remembered Janey’s engagement ring. It had belonged to his grandmother. Seed pearls and amethyst. Victorian. Very pretty. She’d stopped wearing it about ten years ago. She said her fingers had swollen and the worn gold of the band cut into them. He wondered where it was. He must look in the chest of drawers. See if her jewellery box was still there. The wooden one he’d given her the first Christmas they were married. Walnut, handmade, lined with green baize, with little compartments for rings, earrings, bracelets. You’d better give me something to put in it, she’d said. Of course I will, my love, he’d replied. But of course he didn’t.

  He moved from pub to pub. Each one was like a parallel universe, he thought. All these people whose sensibilities and customs were so different from his own. He stared at the alcohol in front of him, the gleaming dungeon-black of the Guinness, golden hops and barley transformed by fire, and the glistening silk of the whiskey. As he swilled it around his mouth it reminded him of Janey’s wet softness. Once it had given him so much pleasure.

  A girl sat down in front of him. She was very young, with a ring in her nose. Her hair was cropped short, very black and shiny. Her leather jacket swung open as she leaned across the table to pick up a box of matches. Underneath she was wearing a skimpy vest top, tie-dyed in brilliant greens. Her nipples peeked through the cotton, small and round, the size of peanuts. She smiled at him, showing pretty teeth, and crossed her legs, her tiny skirt riding up her narrow thighs.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked, conscious suddenly of his words slurring. She drank brandy with Coke. Doubles at a time.

  ‘How about it?’ she asked, holding out her hand.

  He followed her outside, and filled her hand with money. She stopped in a doorway and drew him in. He reached to kiss her, but she pulled away, dropping down, kneeling in front of him, her small fingers fumbling with his zip, her little girl’s mouth teasing him, drawing him out. He closed his eyes, scarcely able to stand as the pleasure roared through him. Afterwards she spat in the gutter and walked away.

  He fell from the doorway and followed in her footsteps. The streets were filled with people. They all seemed to have somewhere to go, to be with someone. He walked down the road, heading towards the river. Light poured from doors and through windows smeared with condensation. A band was playing, country music. Tears filled his eyes as he stopped to listen to the aching choke of a harmonica. He pushed his way in through a half-open door, stepping over a couple who were lying on the footpath, their legs splayed out over the cobbles, their arms wrapped around each other. He squeezed his way up to the counter. It was nearly closing time. Panic filled him as he watched the big hand on the round wooden clock high on the wall creeping up to and past the number eleven. He banged on the bar, waving at the barman, who seemed to have stopped serving and was lounging at the far end, a cigarette in his hand.

  ‘Hey, over here. A pint. Please.’

  The barman looked at him, eyes narrowed through the smoke. He waited for a couple of seconds then moved reluctantly towards the taps. Slowly, carefully, he put a glass under a spigot and began to pour. McLoughlin felt relief flooding through him as the stout flooded into the glass. He pulled himself in closer to the bar, making space with his elbows between the jostling bodies and shoved his left hand deep into his trouser pocket, looking for money. Flesh pressed in all around him. The curve of a buttock against his, the softness of a breast against his back, the heavy thrust of a beer drinker’s gut against his ribs. He closed his eyes and leaned back into the warmth, his fingers curling around the comfort of the glass. And then he felt it, unmistakable, a hand touching him, feeling his balls, tracing the line of his penis through the soft wool of his trousers. For a moment he did nothing. He stood, looking at his own flushed face in the mirror behind the bar. The hand moved gently, slowly, then suddenly, pain, excruciating, shooting down his thighs, up into his groin, and out into his belly as the hand twisted and turned, grasping the soft loose flesh of his scrotum and pinching the hard spheres of his testicles. Vomit rose up into his mouth. He dropped the pint glass. It fell and rolled, the creamy liquid pouring across the bar, drenching, soaking, flooding. He screamed once, loudly, then staggered back, crashing through the people around him and finally as the hand released him, falling onto the filthy floor, lying, sobbing, surrounded by shoes, boots, butts, crisp packets, rubbish.

  Someone, he didn’t know who, helped him to his feet and led him outside where he sank onto a low window sill, gaspi
ng out his thanks. And then he saw him. Lounging against a lamp-post on the other side of the narrow street. The light shone down on his blond hair. He was smiling, a broad smirk of triumph carving his face in two. He walked slowly towards where McLoughlin was sitting, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. ‘Naughty, naughty,’ he said, then turned and sauntered away.

  McLoughlin took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the tears from his eyes. He blew his nose. Cold seeped into him. His jacket and shirt were sodden. He felt in his pocket for his wallet and car keys. His hands shook as he did up the buttons of his jacket. He got to his feet and began to walk carefully back towards Dame Street and his car.

  He hadn’t been out socializing since that night. A couple of the lads had phoned him but he’d said he had flu. The doctor gave him a cert. Told him to take it easy, prescribed tranquillizers, warned him about taking them with drink. He’d flushed the green and black capsules down the loo. There would be an inquiry into the Mitchell case. He wasn’t sure which way it would go. The judge had been extremely critical of their conduct. ‘Mendacious,’ he had called it. Said it ‘grievously undermined the integrity and the legality of the criminal process’. Said that ‘irreparable harm had been done which militated against the accused’s right to a fair trial now or at a future date’. Even if he was exonerated, he didn’t think he’d have much of a future in the force. But did he care any longer? It was, after all, just a job. Nothing more.

  He stood up and went out onto the terrace. The concrete slabs were slippery under his feet. Green algae had grown on them over the winter. They needed to be treated, like his boat. This summer he had planned to go to France, maybe even the Mediterranean. He would sneak past the Gates of Hercules at Gibraltar and meander, rust-red sails against the navy-blue sea, as far as Menorca. The little island. He would lose weight, get fit and strong, cleanse his mind and his body. Lick salt from his lips as he swam, pushing his arms and his legs together like a frog. It was all ahead of him. If he could just free himself from everything that had happened, the corroding sense of guilt that followed him around every day, sneaking up on him when he let his guard down.

  He remembered last summer, the beautiful summer, when it had all begun. If he could only go back to the beginning again. He’d do it all differently. He knew he would.

  50

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘About a week, perhaps ten days.’

  ‘Without water?’

  ‘Without water.’

  ‘And with water?’

  ‘Much longer, a month. Possibly a month and a half. Once 60 per cent of body weight is lost it is inevitable.’

  ‘But you won’t do it, will you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Let me touch your hair. The way I used to. Let me feel it against my skin, slippery and soft, making me shiver.’

  She turned her head and let it drift over Patrick’s bare chest. Backwards and forwards, the fine strands falling across his nipples, gleaming like a bird’s wing.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Do it again.’ He arched back, the firelight turning his pale skin the colour of Victorian gold. ‘Kiss me, kiss me now.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘not yet.’

  He had come to see her. The night before the trial ended. She wasn’t expecting him. And she called out, asking who it was, before she opened the door. As he stepped inside he pulled her to him. He took her head between his hands and kissed her. First on the forehead, then on the bridge of her nose, then on each cheek and finally on the mouth. She opened her lips and his tongue slid in, meeting hers, in that familiar way. Then she stepped back, and took him by the hand, leading him into the firelight.

  They sat side by side in the old armchairs. He began to talk. Memories poured from him. He took hold of her left hand, and held it tightly, running his fingers over hers, from time to time kissing her palm, or rubbing its soft skin against his cheeks and his chin.

  ‘I had forgotten,’ he said, ‘how much I loved you.’ And he stood her again in the middle of the room, and began to undress her, dragging her clothes from her body. When she was naked he knelt down, his head against her belly, his arms tight around her hips. Then he pulled her onto the floor and cradled her to him, feeling her softness through the layers of his clothes, breathing in the smell of her skin, from the creases in her neck, the hollow of her armpit, the bend of her elbow, the dark softness of her hair.

  ‘Let me,’ she said, and she rolled him onto his back, tugging at his shirt and tie, his belt and trousers, until he too was without clothes. She lay beside him, resting on one hip, and touched him, running her hand down his chest, over his stomach, gently, carefully.

  ‘Do you remember?’ she asked. ‘The picture in the gallery.’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, turning his head to look at her. ‘The beautiful bare-breasted lady. Robert Fagan’s wife, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Would I still remind you of her?’

  He raised himself up on one arm and touched her nipple, then bent to take it in his mouth, pushing her down flat on the hard floor, gathering with one hand both her wrists behind her head. Then with the other hand he opened her to him, feeling her wetness slipping down his fingers, pausing to lift them to his nose, touch them with his tongue, before pushing himself deep inside her, until she opened up her mouth to let out all her pain and her body rose up to meet him. He kissed her then, nipping her top lip with his teeth, so the taste of her blood filled his mouth, and then he let go of her hands so her arms could fold around him and her legs slide up his back until she rolled him over and braced herself against the floor, crouching above him while he reached up to kiss her, to lick her, to bite her, his fingers leaving their red imprints across her white skin.

  ‘My love, did you ever love anyone the way you loved me?’

  She didn’t answer. She pulled herself off him and knelt, her hair falling forward, her mouth sliding up and down his silkiness until there was nothing else but the sounds and the smell and the sweetest pleasure.

  She thought about him now as she sat in the back seat of Jimmy’s big car, how he hadn’t believed her when she told him what she wanted to do. How he had looked at her and laughed. Nervously.

  ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘Think about what he did to her.’

  And he had thought about it. She had watched him in court, the way his gaze rested on Jimmy’s face. Drifted from his files and his piles of books, constantly, inexorably, back to the bright golden hair, the pretty blue eyes and the soft red mouth. A puzzled gaze, some of the sureness of the barrister knocked off. And he had said to her, ‘I should be inured to this. I thought I couldn’t be shocked or frightened or horrified by anything. But, suddenly, I am.’ She had seen how Jimmy came up to him after the judge announced that he was dismissing the charges. She had seen how he took him by the hand, and put one arm around his shoulders, thanking him, congratulating him. And she saw the look of revulsion on Patrick’s face, how he moved away quickly.

  She had said to him, that first night he came to see her. ‘You have breathed the same air as that thing that calls itself a human being. You have sat in the same room with him and talked about the weather and football and the price of a pint. But don’t you see, can’t you see, that he is a monster? How do you think he killed our daughter? He didn’t just beat her to death with his fists. First of all he turned her into an object, a shapeless, inhuman creature. That is what he did. And that is how he was able to kill her. And that is what I will do to him.’

  They were stopped now at traffic lights. The suburb of Tallaght lay all around them, the houses the colour of diluted orange squash in the light that poured from the surrounding criss-cross of roads. To the right was the white glow from the glass dome over the shopping centre. She had been there with Mary, one bright summer‘s evening, to see a film. She couldn’t remember what it was, but she could still feel the greasy slick of popcorn on her fingers, and Mary’s breath on her cheek as she whispered a running c
ommentary in her ear, making her laugh, until a man sitting in front had turned round and told them off, sternly.

  She shifted on the leather seat. It creaked beneath her. It was very quiet inside the car apart from the heavy breath of the engine idling, and the muffled pulse of the traffic. She looked up at the rear-view mirror, and at Jimmy’s eyes which flicked constantly from the road to her face.

  ‘Of course you know where we’re going, don’t you?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Well, then, where would you like us to be going?’

  He turned round to look at her, one hand drooping over the seat. He touched her knee, lightly.

  ‘Clever, aren’t you? How did you find out about it?’

  The lights changed to green and the stream of traffic moved off. Slowly at first, then gathering speed along the wide straight road. Three cars behind them on the inside lane, McLoughlin straightened up, half lifting himself from his seat to get a better view of the black Mercedes. And its passengers. The man in front with the fine blond hair, and the woman in the back, the shape of her head and shoulders unmistakable, even through the disguising shroud of her long shawl.

  McLoughlin had been sitting on the steps outside the Central Bank when she walked past. There was quite a crowd in the city that night. Tourists, visitors, people out to enjoy themselves. He had looked at the woman below him on the footpath. He couldn’t see her colouring, or even her features. But he had known her immediately from her size and her shape, the carriage of her head, and the way she moved. He had got up and followed her, seen her turn to her left and walk down Anglesea Street towards Bloom’s Hotel. No, he had wanted to shout. Don’t go there. Watch out. But he had pulled back, and waited. And seen him get out of the car and open the back door for her. And seen her get in, willingly, voluntarily, of her own accord.