Mrs Byrne looked up, like she’d only just become aware that she had a visitor. ‘Sinead, would you stick the kettle on,’ she said to her daughter.
I spent the next half hour bullshitting frantically about this great scheme the council were running, and trying not to stare at the photographs of the man I’d killed on the mantle. There was no question of me confessing my sins now.
On the way out Sinead was waiting for me. ‘You heading back to the office?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Wood Quay?’
I vaguely remembered that was where the council offices were. ‘Why? You want a lift?’
‘Only if you’re going that way.’
I should have made an excuse. Told another lie. I was practised enough by now. Instead, I opened the passenger door of my car. It was a new car. Brand new.
Sinead got in. ‘Council must pay better than I thought.’
I got in the driver’s side.
‘Does this seat move back?’ she asked.
I had to lean over her to get to the lever which moved the seat forward. At first I reached for it with my hand, mumbling an apology.
‘Sorry, I haven’t had anyone in the car until now.’
She took my hand in hers, her skin against mine. ‘Here. Let me help you.’
She guided my hand to the lever. As the seat slid back she made a show of parting her legs.
Still clasping my hand, her fingers pushing into the spaces between mine, she guided my hand up her thigh and between her legs. The tips of my fingers brushed fabric first, then bare flesh. She was wearing stockings. The thought made me hard. Her hand pressed on, pulling aside the fabric of her panties. The hair around her pussy was smooth. Her lips parted as I pushed a finger inside. She was wet. A second finger joined the first and I moved up, massaging her clit.
‘That’s good,’ she said, her eyes closed.
I looked through the gap between the seats, aware that her mother was still inside the house and might come out at any minute.
‘Maybe we should go somewhere?’ I said.
Sinead’s eyes snapped open. Her tone when she spoke suggested that desire had rapidly given way to irritation. ‘What you scared of?’
‘I dunno. Someone might see us.’
She stared at me. ‘So?’
‘Well …’ I stammered.
She took my hand again, moving it away from her this time. She moved it so that my fingers which had just been inside her were against my own lips.
‘Taste me,’ she said.
The sudden rush of the moment had gone but I parted my lips anyway. The sweat from her cunt tasted like salt.
She dropped my hand. ‘Do you live alone?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I do.’
‘Let’s go there then. Or are you scared you might get into trouble with your boss?’
I’d forgotten about my lie. Going to my place would get me off the hook.
I drove – fast.
We never made it past the hall. The sex was frantic and aggressive. There was no pretence of making love. We were fucking. I was deep inside her, my tongue forced into her mouth. I tasted salt again. This time it came from my own blood as she nipped at me with her teeth.
When we were both done, we lay there, propped up against opposite walls. Her handbag was on the floor next to her. She opened it, pulled out a packet of Marlboro Lights and lit one.
She took a drag. ‘You think I’m a crazy bitch, don’t you?’
She wasn’t any crazier than me. That was for definite. ‘Takes two to tango.’
Her eyes flared with irritation again. She pointed the red hot tip of the cigarette at me. ‘Don’t fucking do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Make it a joke.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘My dad,’ she said, appearing to study me (although that might just have been my paranoia). ‘He died a year ago today. That was why I was round checking on my mam.’
‘What happened?’ I asked her.
‘Someone knocked him over when he was walking home from work. Left him for dead.’
I said nothing for a long while. She stayed silent too.
‘Is that why you …?’ I asked her.
‘Why I wanted to fuck you?’ she said.
I nodded.
‘I have to go now,’ she said, standing up.
She picked up her knickers from the floor and pulled them on. I sat there, watched her walk down the corridor, open the door and walk out. I sat there for a long time, wondering what the hell had just happened, trying to order it in my mind, and failing. Waves of guilt rolled back in. I’d gone to make amends to a man’s widow, and ended up fucking his daughter.
I put my fingers back up to my lips and took a deep breath in. The low gnawing I’d felt in my stomach ever since the accident was gone.
But it would return, and so would Sinead; via a text telling me to meet her at the Gresham Hotel after work the following evening. I would do it then. I would confess.
But, unsurprisingly, the moment never arrived. Or rather, a drink in the bar was followed by an invitation on to the roof, and a dare-devil’s fuck with half of Dublin passing by on the street below.
By the time the adrenalin rush had subsided, I’d resolved to let the whole thing go. To live with my guilt and get the hell out. But, as I ran through the usual platitudes in the lift, Sinead just smiled. ‘We’ll see,’ she said, stepping out into the lobby and disappearing into the river of people on O’Connell Street.
It was one in the morning when the buzzer went. A week had passed, and the whole thing, my visit to the house, the incident in the car, the craziness on the hotel roof, had taken on a surreal quality in my mind. I stumbled into the kitchen, and pressed the intercom. ‘Who is it?’ I asked. But I already knew who it was.
I pressed the button to open the door downstairs, walked back into my bedroom and pulled on some clothes.
‘You want to go for a walk,’ she said as I opened the door.
‘It’s one in the morning.’
‘You’re only five minutes from the Liffey. It’ll be romantic.’
It was true. My flat was only a stone’s throw from the Quays. It wasn’t anywhere you wanted to be walking at one in the morning. It was fine if you were heading home after a few jars. If you were on your way somewhere else in other words. But at night, even during the daytime, parts of the Quays were best avoided.
‘OK, I’ll go myself,’ she announced.
I grabbed a jacket and threw it on.
We walked in silence down on to the river. Lights sparkled off the Liffey. She slipped her hand into mine as we walked. It was as if our relationship was moving in reverse.
Up ahead of us, I could see a knot of people, their faces shadowed by hooded tops and jackets. There were five of them; formless, genderless figures. They were making a show of messing, but that’s all it was. They were aware of our approach.
‘Are you not getting a bit cold?’ I asked Sinead.
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Maybe we should head back.’
She followed my gaze to the group. ‘God, Declan, you’re not afraid of those knackers, are you?’
She kept walking, and I had to run to keep up. Now we were maybe ten yards away from them. One of them turned towards us. He was in his early twenties with spotty pale skin and teeth like broken gravestones. ‘Alrigh’, bud. Got a smoke there?’ he asked me.
It was too late to turn back. I shrugged an apology. ‘Don’t smoke. Sorry, man.’
‘What about you?’ he said, asking Sinead.
Sinead stopped and swivelled round on her heel. ‘What about me?’
‘You got a smoke?’
‘Yeah, I do, thanks,’ she said.
‘Give us one then,’ he said, his tone more aggressive.
I thought she was going to tell him where to go, and it was all going to kick off. But instead, she stopped, opening her handbag and fishing out her pack of Mar
lboro Lights and a lighter.
‘Get ready to run,’ she whispered to me, and my heart rate jumped another notch.
She tapped out a cigarette from the packet, and with a jaunty ‘here you go’ she stubbed it into the palm of the guy’s hand. Before he had a chance to react, I grabbed her by the wrist and we took off. They shouted after us first – expletives, and threats tumbling out of their mouths. Then they came after us.
I didn’t look back. I didn’t dare. I just hauled Sinead along in my wake. A couple of streets along the threats fell away into the distance, and we slowed to a jog.
‘What did you do that for?’ I shouted at her.
She stared at me, defiant. ‘What are you angry at me for? I just gave those little feckers a taste of their own medicine.’
The shouts started up again in the distance. Looking down the street, I saw the same group. They couldn’t have seen us because they stayed walking.
‘Let’s get back to my flat before they catch up.’
Sinead blew a smoke ring in my face, then stabbed at the air, drawing a pattern with the red tip of her cigarette. ‘That one that asked you for a smoke. I reckon you could fucking kill him, Dec.’
‘Listen, I’m going home. You can come with me or you can stay here.’
She ground the cigarette under her heel. ‘That’s more like it. You’re better when you take charge. Are you ready to take charge, Dec?’
I sighed. ‘If we go back to my place, I’ll do what you like.’
Fucking her from behind, I had a hank of her hair in my hand. She was screaming. I tugged at her hair again and she let out a guttural moan. She twisted her head round so that she was facing me.
‘Hit me,’ she said.
I stopped, the sweat pouring off me. ‘What?’
She scrambled to the foot of the bed, then clambered down so that she was kneeling in front of me. ‘Slap me,’ she said, grabbing my cock with one hand and massaging my balls with the other. ‘Call me a bitch.’
I hesitated. I was used to masochism in relationships. Hell, it was a key component of dating Irish girls. But normally I was on the receiving end.
‘You said you’d do what I like,’ she went on. ‘Well, this what I like.’
‘Being hurt?’ I asked her.
‘No, pain. I like pain. The pain takes away the hurt. Now, are you going to do it, or not?’
I didn’t answer. What hurt was she talking about? The hurt that came with grief?
Glaring at me, she started to get to her feet. ‘You’re such a coward. Isn’t that right, Declan?’
I pulled my hand back, and open-palmed, cracked her one hard across the face. Her cheek reddened.
‘Harder,’ she ordered.
I did. She must have moved her head because I caught her nose with the palm of my hand near the thumb. The blow drew blood from her nose. I stopped but she urged me on. She jerked at my cock, spitting out orders at the same time.
And I was lost. Lost in a world of guilt and remorse and despair. When I was finished, she got up, got dressed and grabbed her handbag. Her face was a right mess. The blood from her nose trailed down over her lips and on to her chin. One of her cheeks was swollen. A rim of red ran under both her eyes, the harbinger of two black eyes. Not for the first time in my life, regret came sharp on the heels of sex. I thought she was going into the bathroom to get cleaned up until I heard the door out of my flat close. I ran down the hall, looked out into the corridor, but she was already gone. I thought about chasing after her, but I wasn’t sure what I’d say when I caught her. Exhausted, I fell asleep.
* * *
I woke to the buzzer, unsure of how much time had passed. I hauled myself out of bed, and clicked on the light, noticing for the first time the specks of blood on the sheets.
I clicked on the intercom button. ‘Sinead?’
‘Declan Riordan?’ the man said.
‘Yes?’
‘Mr Riordan, this is Detective Sergeant Ross from Pearse Street Garda Station. I’d like to speak to you.’
You don’t fully realise just how bad the phrase “she asked me to hit her” sounds until you’re saying it in front of two stony-faced members of the Garda Siochana in a bleak interview room, with a solicitor putting his hand on your arm to get you to shut up.
‘She was asking for it, Declan? Is that what you’re saying to us?’ DS Ross said.
‘It’s the truth,’ I said.
‘So what were her words exactly?’ asked the female guard sitting next to him.
‘Hit me.’
DS Ross and the female guard raised their eyebrows in unison.
‘She liked pain,’ I went on, digging deeper.
The female guard’s face hardened. I didn’t blame her. I placed my hands palm down on the table. ‘Let me start from the beginning.’
My solicitor squeezed my elbow. ‘I’d like a moment to consult with my client,’ he said.
I shook him off. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want them to know everything.’
So, I did. I ran through the whole story all the way from the night of the accident. That part they clearly believed. I wondered if it was because I was admitting guilt rather than denying it. It was only when I got to my first encounter with Sinead in the car that more eyebrow raised glances were traded. In fact, DS Ross wasn’t even trying to hide his smirk.
As I told my unlikely story, the pieces, the real story, started to fall into place. Sinead might have been genuinely crazy, her sexual tastes may have run broader, and deeper than mine, but I wondered now more than ever whether she’d known who I was as soon as I’d turned up on the anniversary of her father’s death. I’d never get the answer to whether her setting me up for a rape charge was what she had in mind, or whether she’d simply decided that it was the best way to end our affair. Either way, it didn’t matter. Not to the jury anyway. Sinead made for a hell of a witness. Butter wouldn’t melt. On the stand the State’s barrister didn’t content himself with a knowing smirk. Instead, he went for the jugular, taking two crimes, one real and one imagined, and moulding them into something far more vile than the sum of their parts.
‘I put it to you, Mr Riordan, that not content with killing one man, you then chose to visit evil upon the family he had left behind.’
I glanced over to the jury knowing from their studious avoidance of my gaze that now my life really was about to change. I closed my eyes, guilt replaced by terror at what lay ahead, and tasted Sinead’s salty sweetness on my lips. It tasted like vengeance.
About the Story
I first came toDublin in 1989 on a visit to a friend whose family lived on Collins Avenue in the city’s north side. It was a very different place then; economically depressed, ravaged by heroin, a place people came from, rather than journeyed to. It was also, like my own place of birth, Glasgow, a city of tremendous warmth and resilience. It’s a city whose greatest asset isn’t construction, or flash cars, or any of the other bullshit accoutrements of conspicuous consumption that were so important during the years of the Celtic Tiger. No, Dublin’s greatest asset is its people, particularly, in my opinion, those who live north of the Liffey.
In 1995, I moved my young family to Dublin from England. Flying back into Dublin airport from meetings in England, I experienced something I hadn’t expected. For the first time coming back anywhere, including Scotland, I felt truly at home. Maybe I have an outsider’s appreciation of the place, and it’s that outsider’s take which I brought to bear on this story.
The opportunity to write something for this anthology came via a blog written by a brilliant young Irish crime writer by the name of Declan Burke. Declan was helping draw attention to the fact that the publisher was seeking stories, and someone had posted in the comments section that writing a piece of literary erotica set in Dublin was too good an opportunity to pass up because “the entire paradigm of Irish male/female sexual relations is like a primer on S and M.” The comment made me laugh, and then it made me think.
At the sa
me time I’d read a thread in the After Hourssection of a popular Irish message board which revolved around a seemingly perennial question related to why Irish men would be better off dating anyone but Irish women. Irish women, the person who started the thread contended, are difficult, high-maintenance, aloof and bitchy. I’ve always found them self-assured, funny, and, more than often than not, quite beautiful. But then, I’m an outsider.
On the other hand I’ve heard more than one Irish woman complain that Irish men are emotionally stunted, alcoholic, mammy’s boys. There may be a grain of truth to that, but then Irish men don’t possess the physical attributes to blind me to their shortcomings that Irish women do. Plus, what the hell do I know?
But taking these two archetypes, the cowardly male, and the predatory female, gave me a jumping off point for a story with my newly adopted city as the backdrop. I hope you enjoy it.
The City Spreads Startling Vast
by Elizabeth Costello
ALMOST THREE MONTHS PASSED before I ran out of money. In fact, it was coming close to the date when the length of time since Glenn’s death was equal to the length of time we spent together. I sent the same text message to Joan and home: I need a loan of €1,200.00, followed by my bank account details for Joan. They knew well enough at that stage not to call. But the texts back were short. We love you, and no, my mother wrote. Come home to us, or start working again. Joan’s said, If I can’t talk to you, I’m not lending you anything. Stop being such a silly bitch and come and stay with me. A couple of hours later, she texted again with contact details of a friend working in a temping agency. No commitment, she wrote. And it’s usually easy. I looked at my old friend, the crack in the corner of the ceiling. I could not figure out another way.
And so it was that on the Monday morning of the last week in October, I crossed the Portobello bridge for the first time that autumn. I felt like I did when, twelve years old, I went to school after they removed the cast on my healed arm. When I wanted to tell everyone that it was still broken, and could they please be careful. Still, I knew walking was a better option than the bus. Strangers I could handle, selling me my milk or delivering my crate of wine. But not when they pressed up against me. So I walked past the coffee shop where we once got spinach croissants, past the ladies setting up their flower stalls where he bought my solitary sunflowers, past the furniture shop where we put a down payment on a wooden bench. Our first joint purchase, never completed. All the way, leaves rained across the sky in great bursts, gathering orange and grey in raggedy-star bundles along the pavement. They danced around my boots and stuck to my knees and hem of my skirt. Branches of trees waved at me with their frantic limbs. The wind kept implying what a funny joke it would be to whip my hat from my head so I took it off myself and stuffed it into my bag.
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