“Well, obviously, you can’t fit me into your busy schedule,” Eugene says, inviting contradiction.
She sighs heavily. “Maybe we’d better cool it for the moment.”
He gives her such a look that she’s afraid she has pushed him too far. “Perhaps that’s best. Let me know when you decide to rejoin the world,” he says in a voice taut with exasperation.
Ellen collapses into a seat in the staff room after a parent-teacher meeting in mid-February and sits with the other washed-out souls. “How did you get on?” Joyce inquires.
“Kept my end up.”
“I’m going to treat myself to a stiff drink tonight.”
“Good idea,” Ellen says. “I’ll buy a tipple on the way home.”
“Entertaining?” asks Terry, when she presents her bottle of wine at the till.
“Unwinding after a parent-teacher meeting.”
“You call that work?”
“There’s more to it than you realize, Terry, same as there’s more to your job than meets the eye.” She’s more circumspect with Terry now, conscious of the woman’s appetite for the lowdown on everybody.
“Your uncle’s in Hegarty’s,” Terry says.
“What?”
“Matt has been drinking all afternoon.”
Ellen has been dreading an encounter with Matt. He’s a tinderbox of emotions, touchy, quick to take offense, and easily fired to anger. Nothing placates him. She has been giving him a miss of late, although he’s on her mind constantly.
“That’s as may be, but I’m going to get a burger and chips from the take-away, go home, and hit the sack. I’m good for nothing tonight.”
“Take a quick look in at your uncle.”
“Matt’s business is none of my business, Terry. He’s a grown man. He’d be furious if he thought I was checking up on him.”
“It’d do no harm to say ‘Hello.’”
“Any other evening, but I’m just whacked.”
“Pop over to him — there’s a good woman. Take over the till, Bart, would you?” Terry calls. She hustles Ellen out of the shop. In a low voice, she says, “Matt was never one of those drones propping up the bar. He’s always been able to hold his drink, but this time he’s out of it altogether, polluted drunk. It’s a crying shame. For his own sake, try and persuade him to go home. I’m terrible fond of him, as you know.” She registers Ellen’s look of irritation and shrugs. “I’m only doing it for the best.”
“Are you sure you’re not exaggerating?”
“I most certainly am not. He needs someone in his corner. Go and give him a hand.”
“Fine,” Ellen snaps. “This is ridiculous, you know.” She opens the car, drops the newspaper and wine bottle on the back seat, and locks the door.
A passerby watches them curiously. “Evening, Mrs. O’Sullivan,” Terry says. “Your magazine will be in tomorrow. I rang the distributors.” She throws Ellen one of those loaded looks and scuttles back into the shop.
“Damn,” mutters Ellen as she enters the pub. At first, she can’t see Matt. Then she realizes he’s wedged in behind a pillar, his cap at an angle and a few days’ growth of stubble on his face. He has lost weight and there’s an unkempt air about him. She’s working up the courage to approach him when a hand is laid on her arm. She turns to find Eugene blocking her way. “Out and about again? And about time, too,” he says with a grin.
Meeting him is like a punch to the stomach. “Oh, Eugene,” she says, winded.
“You never got back to me,” he accuses. “I’d almost given up on you.”
“I know, but I’m getting on top of things finally.”
“This coming out of purdah is long overdue. What’ll you have? I heard a great report of you today.”
“I’m sick of all this scrutiny,” she says. The words are no sooner out than she regrets them.
“Hey!” he protests. “It was intended as a compliment. Customers of mine are the parents of one of your students. The wife mentioned that her daughter loves being in your class.”
“That’s very nice but… Look, I’m sorry. This isn’t a good day.” Out of the corner of her eye she observes Matt raise a finger and order another drink. Even at a distance, it’s obvious how drunk he is, how out of sync his body is. Her whole being contracts with tension. Her breath is constricted. “I can’t talk now, never mind have a drink. I have to go over to Matt.”
Eugene’s face darkens. “If this is more of giving me the run-about, just say.”
“Nothing like that,” she protests. “Anyway,” and she can’t shake off a caustic tone, “where’s your young friend? I don’t see any sign of her.”
“My young friend?” He looks genuinely baffled.
“The one you were talking to the day of Julia’s funeral,” she says lamely. She imagines how she must sound.
“The one I was…? You’ve got me there. I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Nothing she says is right. She pushes past. “Look, I have to talk to my uncle.”
“Okay. Be that way then.”
She pulls her disordered thoughts together and lays a hand on his arm. “This is a bad time, Eugene. There’s a bit of a situation. I can’t leave him on his own.”
“Oh.” He’s inscrutable.
“I really do have to go.”
A moment’s hesitation will sap her resolve. She had better whip herself into action. She sits up on a bar stool beside Matt and orders a glass of lager.
Matt balances himself on the counter with his elbows, his head sunk close to the whiskey glass. For all the world he’s like a wasted, decaying artist, but his shambling appearance doesn’t entirely mask his natural elegance. Although he appears on the point of collapse, invisible threads somehow maintain the vertical.
“Hiya, Matt,” she says. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
There’s no response. She’s not sure he heard.
She tries again. “Hello, Matt. How are you?”
He turns his head and gives her a disturbingly blank look. It’s as if he doesn’t recognize her.
“It’s Ellen,” she offers.
“Ellen,” he says in a sluggish voice, mangling the middle consonants of her name. “Hiya there, Elim.” She’s torn between disgust and sadness.
Another voice intervenes. “Ellen?” Tom, the owner, is busily wiping the countertop. He’s a small skinny man, with a brick-red pock-marked face, almost completely bald but with voluminous curling hairs in his nostrils and ears. He edges a cloth toward her till it touches her elbow. His eyes and mouth twitch and work to catch her attention. He’s like a mime artist. She’s mesmerized by the performance but can’t decipher his message. “Could I have a word?” he asks eventually.
“Now?”
“Yes.” He steps out from behind the bar and she follows him across the floor into a darkened room packed with metal kegs, a door of which opens out into a yard. The room reeks of damp and alcohol.
“Yes?” she asks.
“I’ve served him his last drink today,” he says with a pious air. “I can’t be responsible.” He shudders. “He’s been drinking steadily since I opened up. I’ve never seen the like of it. He was stacking them up like skittles. Worse still, others were buying him drink. Is there any way to get him home?”
She hesitates. “I dunno. I’m not sure he’ll come. You know how stubborn he can be.”
“Cussed stubborn, but you can see he’s beyond caring.”
“You didn’t have to serve him.”
He clicks his false teeth. “It’s difficult. He’s usually a gentleman to his fingertips. Never an ounce of trouble up to recently. I had plenty of delaying tactics. Believe me, I tried to persuade him to go home but he says he can’t abide the place.” Tom slaps the cloth down on a barrel, hunches his shoulders, and rams his hands into his trouser pockets. “It’s hard to know what to do. If I’d refused him earlier he’d have gone elsewhere, and there are no guarantees they’d look a
fter him. If you can persuade him to go home, I’ll organize a lift — or drive him myself.”
She shrugs. “I’ll try,” she says. “I can’t see it getting us anywhere but I’ll give it a bash.”
“Good woman.” He picks up the cloth and pats her as if dusting her with it.
Matt has fallen into a stupor. He lists from side to side. “Matt,” she says. No response. She catches his arm. “Wake up, Matt. How about going home?”
She shakes his arm vigorously. “Come on, Matt. You can do better than this.” He opens his eyes, and she’s shocked by the dullness within. It’s not clear that he recognizes her. “Matt, it’s Ellen. Your niece, Ellen. Time to go home. Have you had anything to eat?”
“He’s eaten nothing,” Tom says. “Packet of crisps early in the afternoon. That’s it.”
Matt grunts something.
“Do you know me?”
He sways alarmingly and looks as if he could slither directly from seat to floor. He makes as if to raise his glass to his lips but misses. Whiskey spills on the counter.
She passes his drink to Tom, who dabs the counter clean. “Matt, we have to get you home. You’ve had a lot to drink. You need to recover. Do you understand?”
He mutters something she can’t make out. “Yes, it’s me — Ellen,” she says, like a hearty nurse to a difficult patient. “We’re going home, Matt. I’m going to drive you.”
They maneuver him off the stool. Suddenly he slumps against her, an impossible weight. His arms are rubbery and inert. She sags, recovers, and struggles to right him. He exhales noxious fumes all over her.
“I’ve got him,” Tom says, dwarfed by Matt’s height. He manages to right the swaying form into a vertical position. “Get his arm around your shoulder — hold on, hold on — good — don’t let go! — I’ve got him on this side. We’ll have to drag him between us. Let’s get him to the door.”
“Not so fast. I can’t get a grip.” Matt has slumped. The toes of his shoes drag along the floor. Her knees give but she recovers. “He’s a ton weight.”
Suddenly Eugene is beside her, uncoupling her from Matt and taking the load. “I’ve got him,” he says.
“Ah,” is all she can say. She’s out of puff.
The cold of the evening air assaults them as they leave the pub. Matt is comatose. “Put him in the back seat?” asks Tom.
“We need to get him home,” she says.
“We’ll have our work cut out for us,” says Eugene.
“He’s not getting any lighter,” pants Tom.
“If you bundle him into the back seat of his car, I’ll drive,” she offers.
“How would you get him out again? Think about it. I’ll do any driving has to be done,” Eugene says. “Tom, you go back and mind the bar.”
“The missus can hold the fort. It’s slow now, won’t pick up till about ten.”
“Is home the best place for him?” Eugene asks.
“What about taking him up to your house, Ellen?” suggests Tom.
She’s horrified. “He wouldn’t like that.”
“It’s certain he won’t like it, but at least you could keep an eye on him. I’d be worried about leaving him on his own at home. If he vomited or anything. You never know.”
“Okay. Okay.”
They drag Matt along the street. She’s conscious of stares and of comments being made. Why are so many people out and about? Let them all go to hell. She runs ahead to open the front door.
“Bring him upstairs to the spare bedroom,” she says. “The bed’s made up.”
They haul him upstairs, remove his coat, shoes, and jacket, and stretch him out on the bed. “We’ll take it from here, Ellen,” Eugene says. “We’ll call you when we’ve fixed him up.”
“I’ve no pajamas.”
“Men don’t wear pajamas nowadays,” Eugene says with a grin.
“Vest and pants will do him,” Tom says.
“Push the bed up against the wall, turn him on his side, and tuck him in tight,” Eugene says.
“Good idea.”
She leaves them to it and goes downstairs. The clock says seven. She sighs.
Presently they join her. “He’s out for the count. He won’t move till morning,” Tom says. “I’d best go and relieve Hannah. Don’t want the punters drinking the place dry.”
“’Night, Tom. Thanks very much for all your help,” she says.
“Mind if I use your facilities?” Eugene asks.
“You know where to go.”
“I’ll be off so,” Tom says. He pauses at the door. “Give us a tinkle tomorrow to let us know how he is.”
She smiles. “Okay. Will do. Thanks again.”
She runs upstairs, slips into the darkened bedroom, and listens to Matt’s ragged breathing. As she looks down at him she realizes that her chest feels tight. She’s full of dread. He has always been part of the backdrop to her life, gruff, usually undemonstrative, an erratically attentive godfather — postal orders on the birthdays he remembered — but always accepting of her in her own right. His approval, which she prized, was shown in the packets of mints he always brought her on his visits to the cousins, and the two telephone calls he made, the first to see how she had fared in her Leaving Certificate, the second to congratulate her on her first-class honors degree — followed on each occasion by a generous check enclosed in a congratulations card.
Matt is the nearest approximation she has to a father. Her real father she remembers in images — his laugh, one or two outings together, a meal with him and Kitty, probably in Dublin, sitting in the passenger seat as he drove the two of them to Ballindoon and being greeted by a radiant Sarah. Some of his sayings have been passed on to her — “Hop to it, jump to it!,” “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and “I’m sick of telling you, I’m tired of warning you” — and four photographs of father and daughter survive, the last taken on the day of her Holy Communion. He was dead long before her Confirmation, but she has lived off memories and stories and happily made do with Matt.
What if this uncle, who means so much, has changed irrevocably? What if he has slipped away from her? If this new Matt is all that’s on offer, how will that change their relationship? The world will be a sadder and more lonely place.
Eugene’s in the kitchen when she comes down. “I’m exhausted,” she complains.
“How’s that?”
“Bloody parent-teacher meeting ran late and I got delayed by road works on the way back. I feel peculiar, kind of light-headed, as if I might float away.” She sits down at the table, shakes her head wearily, and places it in her hands. “And to cap it all, I’m going to be in the bad books with Matt. He’ll be furious when this is all over the village tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about that. Matt will ride it out. Nobody’s out to get him.” He draws a chair close to her and sits down. “Sometimes you have to make allowances for people. I’d put money on it that this is a phase he’s going through.”
“Maybe, but maybe not. That’s what worries me.”
“No jumping the gun. Wait and see.”
She smiles a watery smile. “By the way, thanks for your help.” It’s hard to get out the words.
“What’s the matter? What have I done? You’re so short-tempered with me.”
She’s really not equal to this conversation. There’s a tightening at the back of her eyes and it’s becoming more and more difficult to fight her tiredness. “Why would I be out with you?”
“You tell me.”
“It’s nothing really. I’m just tired, Eugene. The job —”
“Feck all those excuses. They don’t wash anymore. I feel this cold air between us.”
“Could we talk about this another time?” she pleads.
“You’ve been dodging me since Julia’s funeral.”
“I know. I know. I’ve been thinking about things. We’ve nothing much in common, have we?”
He stands up, scraping the chair behind him. “I knew it,” he says angrily. “
Just because I never went to university or got a degree.”
“Oh, my God, no. Where did you get that idea?” she says, startled. “It never even crossed my mind —”
“Then why?”
She can’t answer. He’s close. The clean, sawdust fragrance of him. She breathes him in.
He touches her on the arm, the wrist, the back of her hand. She panics. “Don’t!” she says, and pulls away.
There’s a silence. “Is that it?” he asks. He waits for a while and then she hears “Goodnight.” The tone of his voice tells her that he’s reached a decision.
“What am I supposed to say?” she bursts out. “I don’t have the words.” She lifts her head but there’s no sign of him.
“What was that?” He rushes back. “I didn’t hear you.”
“You have to help me,” she declares, agitated.
He holds her, murmurs things against her hair and ear, and kisses her brow. “Oh, Ellen.”
She looks up. “You remember that young one you were talking to at Julia’s funeral? Matt said you had quite a penchant for young flesh.”
She feels a change in the way he’s holding her. He pushes her away in order to look at her. “Did he really say that?” he asks.
It’s ridiculous to push for an answer, but she has to know. “Words to that effect.”
“All these accusations.” He throws his eyes heavenward. “Wait. I’ve got it! The skimpy top, bare midriff, fake tan madam. Is that who you’re on about? Good God!” he says passionately. “Well, unlike some others I could mention, she was very keen to talk to me.” He laughs. “Do you know who she was? A niece of Mona’s husband. She was practicing her charms on me, before her father claimed her.”
“You were obviously susceptible.”
“Ellen, please,” he says with a grimace. “I was talking to her for fifteen minutes, twenty tops. She’s across the pond, studying art in an English college. She’s lovely, and doesn’t she know it, but nothing she says is worth listening to. You didn’t seriously think? You did! You were jealous,” he exults.
Civil & Strange Page 17
