The Middle Place

by Kealan Ryan

  ‘I think maybe you’re a bit too drunk,’ she says, pulling her head away from his sticky face.

  ‘How dare you, madam!’ he yells, then storms off to the dance floor.

  Ten minutes of dancing later, however, Mairead walks past him and he jumps in her way. ‘Have you forgiven me yet?’ he asks.

  ‘Piss off,’ she says.

  ‘Ah come on, it’s a wedding after all. Let’s just let bygones be bygones. Come on, we both said some things we didn’t mean and now it’s time to make up.’ This couldn’t possibly work. ‘You like what you see and I like what I see, so let’s stop playing these silly games,’ Tim perseveres. The dancing has sobered him up; there’s hardly any slurring from him at all. Mairead can’t help but laugh at his bullshit. Tim has a cheeky grin on his face as he goes in for the kiss again – and this time she accepts it. You little bollocks, how the hell did you pull that one out of the fire?

  ***

  I’m really enjoying the whole event. Tim’s been kissing that Mairead bird ever since – lucky bastard’s probably going to get laid. Very happy for John and Niamh too, they’re obviously made for each other and both seemed to have a blast all day. It’s 2.30 a.m. and they’re all still up in the residents’ bar. Now that I think about it, this was actually my favourite part of a wedding. Everyone relaxing, jackets off, ties missing or being used as headbands – pints of Guinness and a bit of a sing-song. I’d love to be joining in; I knew loads of songs and loved singing when I was drunk. Davey and Tim are talking about just that: ‘It’s a pity he’s not here for this one,’ Davey says.

  ‘He was a divil for a sing-song alright,’ Tim nods. I can’t understand why Mairead is still hanging around Tim; he’s more langered now than ever. Every once in a while Tim belts out the start of one song or another, the whole place quietens down for him and then he forgets it after the first line. The latest is: ‘A hungry feeling, came over me … Came …’ Then he just takes a sip of his pint as if he has done nothing, leaving everyone else wondering if they should wait for the next line.

  Pamela’s talking to some guy I don’t know. Or rather, he’s talking to her. He’s a bit annoying, but she’s putting up with him because she’s in a good mood. Plus she’s pretty drunk. I haven’t been mentioned yet, but I know it’s just a matter of time considering this dummy’s going to try and score with her and Pam’s clearly not into him. I can’t blame him for trying to chat her up – she looks amazing and there’s no me there with my arm around her.

  Still, it’s annoying to watch. If I was there I would have bounced this asshole ages ago. Have you ever listened to a drunk person try to chat someone up when you’re sober? The waffle they come out with is ridiculous. This guy’s been talking about his job for the last ten minutes. Nobody wants to hear about your job, unless you’re a race-car driver or astronaut or something.

  Graham – that’s his name – is just an engineer and he’s been going on about some fucking generator up in Derry that he’s supposedly in charge of. I mean, Jesus, who gives a shit? Pam clearly doesn’t, anyway. ‘The generator bearing overheated because of problems with dirt ingress in the lube oil pumps.’ What the fuck is he on about? ‘So they send me up, it’s a pretty common problem but they rely on me too much so …’ The blank face on Pam is priceless. This guy’s really reaching, you can tell the poor fucker knows he’s being boring but what can he do? He has nothing else to give.

  Looking back, I wasn’t a million miles away from this clown when I first talked to Pam. I was twenty-six when I met her. I was in Australia on a year’s working holiday visa and she was a friend of this girl Karen who I hung out with over there. Pam was just over for the summer. The first time I met her I was after smoking a bunch of weed. I was sitting in this Irish bar called The Fiddlehead, which was the mangiest shithole of a pub in all of Perth, yet somehow the best craic as well. She sat down beside me so I had no choice but to talk to her. I’ve always been useless chatting up girls – unless I’m drunk, anyway – but being stoned and with someone out of my league? I hadn’t a hope. It was horrible, I don’t ever remember being so boring – I even wanted to get away from my own company by the end of the conversation. She hooked up with one or two other lads before I scored with her about a month into her stay, and when I finally did we ended up going out. After we spent the rest of the summer together, she decided to apply for a visa herself in order to stay for longer, and I was only delighted as I’d already fallen in love with her.

  ‘So have you a boyfriend or anything?’ Graham asks. Yep, only a matter of time.

  ‘No, I’m married.’ Good girl, Pam.

  Graham frowns, looks around the bar. ‘Oh, right, where’s your husband?’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Really, how come?’ Ah shit, Pam doesn’t want to talk about it, not with this guy anyway.

  She looks at her drink, near empty. ‘Well, actually he died. He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh my God – that’s terrible. Is he dead long?’

  ‘About six months.’

  I’m not buying this guy’s concerned face and neither is Pam. He has the sad expression on for two reasons:

  He thinks with a sad face he still has an outside chance of scoring.

  He’s pissed off the hot girl he’s been talking to is actually some lonely heart with a dead husband.

  He slides closer to her on the couch. ‘That must be very hard. You poor thing.’

  Pam sighs. ‘To be honest, I don’t want to talk about it if you don’t mind, okay?’

  ‘Sure, sure. Of course – let’s talk about anything you want.’ Graham the tosser then starts singing ‘Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby’. I know he didn’t mean any harm – he’s just nervous, but Christ, what an idiot. He knows it too. ‘Sorry, bad joke.’

  Pam has had enough. She stands and hurries out of the residents’ bar before the tears fall. Brian and Tim notice her leave and follow her out to the elevators.

  ‘Shit, Pam, are you alright?’

  ‘I just want to go to bed,’ she says, wiping her eyes. The elevator button is lit up; the electronic screen above the steel doors has an arrow on it, pointing downwards.

  I wish to God I could hug her. I could never bear to see her cry, no matter how mad I was at her, or even if I was the cause of it – in fact, especially if I was the cause of it. The sight of her crying melts my heart, pure and simple. I’d always give her such a hug any time I saw her like this. Brian hugs her now, but I wish it was me. Jesus, now Tim’s half-crying, rubbing at his eyes.

  ‘What the fuck happened?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing, just that eejit in there, talking about Chris and stuff.’

  ‘What fucking eejit?’ Brian asks. He looks fit to burst someone.

  Pam shakes her head. ‘Nobody, it’s nothing. I just want to go to bed. He’s just some fool.’

  ‘Who the fuck did it?’ Brian demands. Part of me wants her to tell him, but she’s beginning to calm down.

  The elevator door pings open. Pam steps inside. ‘Nobody did anything, Brian. I just got a little upset. Seriously, I just want to go to bed. Sorry for ruining everything.’

  This line seems to devastate Tim. ‘Pam, please, please now – you didn’t ruin anything, that’s the last thing you should be thinking of. You didn’t ruin anything, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Pam says as the elevator door closes, shutting her away from my brothers.

  I follow Pam in the elevator. A constant flow of tears is running down her face. She steps out when it reaches her floor and proceeds down the corridor in her new, subdued walk. Outside her room the little red flashing LED tells her that her electronic keycard doesn’t work. Her first impulse it to fling it away, but she gathers herself and tries again. Green.

  She steps inside and exhales a breath as if she has just been holding it for a long time underwater. I watch her undress – she is
so beautiful it hurts; part of me wishes I could look away. She gets under the blankets naked. The last time she stayed in a room like this, I was naked beside her. It had also been for a wedding and we had snuck away early to go to bed. Given that it was a rare night away from the house and Robbie, we wanted to have big, loud, noisy, drunk sex. It was fantastic. Now, she’s curled into a little ball. I used to curl up behind her and cup one of her breasts till I fell asleep. She misses my hand, misses my body warming her back. She was always cold when she first hopped into bed – no matter how warm the room, she’d say she was freezing until I warmed her up. Now she has no one to rub her ice-cold feet against. I used to give out about it, but in truth I always loved it. She’s cold now. The big blanket won’t warm her. I’ll stay with you, Pam, till you stop crying. Till you fall asleep.

  ***

  Back down to the residents’ bar, Tim’s getting the spinnies. Brian’s riled up for a fight but doesn’t know who to take it out on. He wants to be the big man – to kick the shit out of someone for Pam. It’s mainly the whiskey that’s given him an angry brain, but I think he wouldn’t mind venting some anger anyway. He has a puffy-looking head on him, which John spots on his way back from the jacks.

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  The sight of John’s smiley red face calms Brian down and gives him the cop on not to go ruining the night on everyone.

  ‘Ah nothing,’ he mutters. ‘I’m just looking for my drink.’

  John nudges him. ‘Would you look at the state of your little brother, he’s bollocksed!’ The two of them start laughing at Tim, slouched on the couch while Mairead tries to talk to him.

  ‘Are you listening to me, Tim?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘I’m grand, thanks.’

  As soon as he says this he’s up on his feet and heading for the door. The air out in the courtyard is much better than the stuffy bar. Tim takes a deep breath and looks up at the sky.

  ‘I miss you,’ he whispers.

  I miss you too, Tim.

  The crisp air begins to wake him up. The grass is damp, but this doesn’t stop him from sitting down – there is no one else outside and Tim likes the fact that he’s alone. He sparks up a smoke and looks out at the darkness. Sooner or later, he’ll have to go back inside, but for now it’s just the two of us out here together, enjoying the cold.

  My Death

  12

  The day I died all I wanted to do was watch Unforgiven. It’s my favourite Clint Eastwood movie and Pamela had just gotten it for me on Blu-ray, a nice surprise as mostly we just streamed shit for free, but this was the special edition with loads of cool features. I was delighted when she gave it to me because I’d wanted this edition for ages but couldn’t justify paying €30 for it. I knew if I bought it at that price, the following week I’d see it for a fiver – that’s happened to me too many times before.

  ‘Ah fuck it, let’s just stay in and watch Unforgiven,’ I’d suggested.

  Pam shook her head. ‘No, we’re going out.’

  She had already told Orla that we’d meet her in town, but I wasn’t too on for it because none of my mates were going and, as I said before, Orla wrecks my head. I suppose I was always going to go – Pam had already sorted a babysitter and there was no way I’d stay in by myself. Besides, I knew from experience that as the night went on I’d end up enjoying Orla in spite of myself – but for some reason I always felt I had to put up some form of protest when it was just the three of us going out.

  As it happened the night went pretty well, at first. I hadn’t been in town in a good while and was enjoying the buzz of the city. Dublin can be great for that, all the people milling about in the streets. There’s always so many people outside, especially if the weather’s nice, which it was. We did a bit of a pub crawl and ended up in a real Orla-type pub – huge, fancy, darkly lit, jam-packed, standing-room only, playing gammy chart-type music on full blast and full of wankers.

  One of those wankers was Danny Murray.

  He was at the other end of the bar having an argument with Michelle when we first walked in. Since I’ve been living in Danny’s head I now know what they were arguing about – nothing. Completely pointless. Just arguing about arguing, the way couples can do when they have a good few drinks in them. Michelle had started making a scene by raising her voice at him, causing Danny to get all embarrassed. ‘Shut the fuck up, you stupid cunt,’ he shouted. He used the word ‘cunt’ on purpose because he knew how much she hated it – he wanted to get at her like she was getting at him. The only problem was she stormed off when he said it.

  ‘Michelle!’

  Danny caught up with her at the door where we were standing and told her to calm the fuck down and not to be running off like that. I always got a kick out of watching another couple fighting on a night out – plenty of times it had been me in that position and it’s kind of funny watching the expressions on the two faces.

  Danny saw me laughing at the pair of them and got even madder at Michelle. He’s a striking-looking fella when you first see him. Kind of an ugly bastard, but he’s so unusual-looking I’d say girls could find him attractive. Dark skin, dark eyes. He’s very tall and wide, built like a fucking wrestler. Most Irish guys, even if they’re big and strong, aren’t that well cut – but you can tell that this guy is all pumped-up even through his shirt. It looks a bit much; you just think gym knob.

  The pair were causing such a big scene that we were thinking of moving further inside. Then Michelle gave Danny-boy a push and the ignorant fucker fell back against me, spilling half my pint. ‘Here, watch what you’re doing, will ya?’ I gave him a little shove off me and the big thick bastard didn’t even look around or apologise or anything. He just followed her outside to continue their domestic.

  I forgot all about him then and went about enjoying my night. Pam was in great form – as fun as Robbie is, we were delighted to have a night off – and I was even managing to get a kick out of Orla. ‘Men just find me too intimidating,’ she declared at one point. The Why Don’t I Have a Boyfriend Speech was a regular occurrence on a night out with Orla.

  ‘Why’s that, because of your spiky haircut?’

  ‘Oh fack off, Chris.’ When Orla would say fuck, she wouldn’t say it like normal people – she has this makie-up conceited Dublin accent. It’s like she’s going for a mix between ‘feck’ and ‘fuck’, but it comes out as ‘fack’. ‘No, it’s because I know what I want and I go out and get it.’

  ‘Well then, why don’t you go out and get a boyfriend?’

  ‘Oh fack off.’

  I asked Orla once why she uses the word ‘fack’ instead of ‘fuck’.

  ‘That’s just the way I talk,’ she said.

  ‘Well why not use “a” for all your vowels then? – “Fack aff ya stapad cant!”’ It ended up becoming a joke language for me and Pam for a while – ‘Wat tha fack ar ya cakan ma far danar ya batch?’

  ‘Ap yars.’

  That kind of thing.

  ‘Would any of your mates be interested in taking Orla out?’ Pam asked with a grin as she sipped at her G&T. She only says this to put me on the spot; she knows full well there wouldn’t be a fucking hope of it.

  ‘Em. Yeah maybe,’ I stuttered.

  Thank God Orla butted in. ‘Oh please, as if I’d go out with one of those Neanderthals.’ Herself and Pam burst out laughing. Christ, Neanderthals – what a stupid thing to say.

  ‘Who’s a Neanderthal?’ I asked.

  ‘Fred for one.’

  ‘Why Fred?’

  ‘His name is spot on for a start – he even looks like Fred Flintstone, for fack’s sake.’

  I had to laugh at that one. He does look a little like Fred Flintstone.

  Last orders had been served and I was thinking about Unforgiven again. The two girls were talking about tr
ying to get into some club, but I convinced them to come back to our gaff, smoke a spliff and watch Clint Eastwood be a cowboy – I used the old ‘It’s not fair on the babysitter’ routine.

  The girls suggested going for one more smoke outside before catching a taxi home. I shrugged. One more couldn’t hurt, right? Wrong. When they say smoking kills you I don’t think that they have my scenario in mind, but still that’s exactly what happened.

  Danny and the girlfriend were outside in the smoking area too, looking solemn – as if they were sick of arguing but had still not made up. I had literally just pointed him out to Pam saying, ‘There’s that fucking eejit that bumped into me’ when he came strutting over.

  ‘Can I get a light?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I said a little grudgingly.

  Danny sparked his smoke and then just walked off without saying thanks. That’s a real pet hate of mine, fucking height of bad manners. Between that and bumping into me, I felt I had to say something.

  ‘You’re welcome by the way.’

  Danny turned. ‘What?’

  ‘I said you’re welcome.’

  He strode towards me, cheeks red. ‘Have you got a problem?’

  I started getting a little nervous then because he’s such a big cunt, but I tried not to show it with Pam and Orla standing there.

  ‘You’re my problem, shithead – what the hell is wrong with you? You don’t say thanks when someone gives you something?’

  ‘Fuck you, asshole!’

  I saw the look on Pam’s face, so thought twice about slagging him again. ‘Look, just forget it,’ I said. Michelle called out to him to just come on.