Midwinter Break

by Bernard Maclaverty

  Gerry had ended up a university teacher. One who drank too much. Was his failure to make the top to be blamed on his drinking? Or did his drinking come about to take the edge off his lack of success? He finished his drinks and heaved himself to his feet – he swayed – like a rocking skyscraper – but knew he was swaying. He knew his tolerances.

  When he got back to the hotel Stella was asleep. He leaned over her in the bed and kissed her temple. She wakened and said, ‘I feel the cold off you.’

  They decided to eat in the Amstel place again.

  ‘It has the added advantage that we know where it is,’ Stella said.

  When they had ordered and Gerry had poured the wine he said, ‘So are you any easier in your mind about today?’

  ‘No. That kind of thing takes a long time to go away. Ten years from now – if I’m living – I’ll groan out loud with embarrassment in the checkout queue.’

  He put his hand out and covered hers and shook it gently.

  ‘I’m not talking about the Anne Frank House. But about after it.’

  Stella shook her head.

  ‘You learn to live with that,’ she said. ‘Let me see your chin.’

  Gerry turned his profile.

  ‘It’s getting yellower, less auberginey.’

  They ate quietly.

  ‘Why don’t we go tonight,’ said Stella, ‘and have a look at the red-light district?’

  ‘With my wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As they were walking arm in arm a fine cold rain came on. Stella looked up at the night sky and hooked onto his arm more tightly. People were coming and going from a very narrow passageway and they wondered where it could lead. It was just larger than shoulder width, so they had to go in single file. Gerry led the way.

  They came upon a square with window booths where women posed, sitting with their legs open or walking about strutting their stuff, trying to attract and arouse. Gerry stopped and stared. He unhooked his wife’s arm from his own.

  ‘That could be seen as a perversion. A couple looking.’

  ‘Poor things,’ said Stella.

  They carried on and the passage narrowed again. Gerry took the lead. He turned. ‘What’ll I do if some bloke tries to squeeze past me with a hard-on?’

  Stella slapped his shoulder. The narrow lane led to another, less narrow lane. Gerry stopped and looked up at a building.

  ‘It’s a pub, Gerry. As if you wouldn’t recognise one.’

  ‘Rembrandt would have had a flagon or two in here,’ he said.

  Stella cautiously opened the door. A wall of noise roared out – talk loud enough to sound like a train. They edged inside. There were no seats or tables. It was crowded and people stood drinking glasses of draught beer. But it was like no other pub they had ever seen. Low counters, shelved spaces, more like a chemist’s shop than a drinking establishment. Gerry raised an eyebrow to Stella and, with a little drinking mime, asked her if she fancied one. She pulled a face. There was a man and a woman in some kind of folk costume behind the bar. A customer in front of Gerry ordered and the barmaid served him with a beer and a short. She filled the shot glass till it overflowed and Gerry thought, ‘How sloppy.’ The man bent over from the waist and sipped from the glass without touching it. Hoovering up the drink with his lips. The man then lifted the glass and finished it off, draining it for the very last bead, his body language for all the world like Stella putting in her eye drops. When it came to Gerry’s turn he hesitated. The barmaid took one look at him and began shouting at the top of her voice in English.

  ‘You like to try? You know about this?’ Gerry shook his head. No. ‘This is jenever. Before you English had gin, we had jenever.’

  ‘I am not English.’ He had almost to scream to be heard. ‘Irish.’

  ‘With a beer it is very good. With Guinness,’ she laughed, ‘even better.’

  Gerry looked over his shoulder at Stella and mouthed yet another invitation. Again she shook her head. No, not for me.

  ‘Yes,’ he yelled to the barmaid. She pulled a yellow draught beer and set it frothing on the counter. Then she produced a sherry glass, grey with frost from the fridge, and filled it to overflowing with the clear alcohol. It smelled like gin. He performed as the man before him had performed, bending over, sucking up the drink. There was a childish pleasure in it – like abandoning table manners, like licking the bowl. Then he picked up the glass and emptied it. Tasted a bit like poteen.

  The barmaid waggled her finger at him, then shouted, ‘You drink the beer. Then the chaser.’

  ‘Oh sorry. Let me do it right.’ She set up another jenever and another beer. Gerry drank one of his beers, supped the top off the gin stuff, then carried the other beer and the gin glass to join Stella.

  ‘It’s good.’

  ‘What?’

  He leaned in close to her ear.

  ‘It’s good,’ he shouted into her hair. He didn’t like to contradict the barmaid but he thought the beer tasted really good after the jenever. Not the other way around. The beer was the chaser as far as he was concerned. But this was all too complicated to communicate to Stella. She reached out and requested a sip of the jenever. Gerry parted with the glass. Stella sipped and smacked her lips. She wasn’t sure. He could tell from her face. She sipped again.

  ‘Do you want one of your own?’ Gerry was becoming peevish at her lowering the level in his glass.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A beer as well?’

  ‘No.’

  When Gerry went to the counter Stella was left on her own. It was such a phenomenon, the noise of this place. Pubs always amazed her with their volume. If everybody kept their voice down then it would be okay. But fuelled with drink their voices rose. And this happened to all the customers, so everyone had to shout to be heard. The whole thing was incremental and exponential. People became hoarse and had to have more drink to soothe their throats, which made them shout louder to drown out their neighbours. And all the drinkers retaliated without realising it. Because of Gerry, Stella had spent too many nights of her life sitting on the edge of a company of drinkers. Especially in the Derry office with the Norwegians. When the Norwegians got drunk they were very hard to understand. The weirdest things became funny to them. They slid down the wall laughing at what would not make them smile at breakfast time.

  What were these people talking about? What was so important that had to be shouted? A man was standing beside her. He smiled at her, extended his glass to her in a kind of toast and drank to her.

  He was American, by the look of him. He had the top of a Guide to Amsterdam sticking out of his pocket so he must, at least, speak English. There were dark spots of rain on his pale jacket. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles. She didn’t quite know what to do. This, after all, was close to the red-light district. Maybe it was even in the red-light district. Did this man think she was on her own? Was he being friendly or was he trying to pick her up? He leaned forward and said something to her but she didn’t hear. Was it a question? Or a greeting? She nodded her head up and down slowly. She was not good at lying. It made her uncomfortable. The American tried again, leaning a little too close. But she could not make out a single word he said. She looked over her shoulder to see where Gerry was.

  He was at the counter, bending over. What on earth was he doing with that barmaid? His head was on a level with . . . her haunches. It looked like he was doing something terribly intimate – appalling in public. Just come back to me, Gerry, please. The American licked his lips and adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose as if he was going to say something else to her. Gerry arrived carrying two glasses, one brimming over onto his fingers. He gave the half-emptied one to Stella. To take the glass Stella turned her back on the American.

  ‘Talk to me. Loudly,’ she shouted into Gerry’s ear.

  ‘Well, how are you, my poppet,’ he cried out. ‘Drink your drink. All at once.’

  ‘I’d be sick.’ Stella sipped it. Again and again, tiny intakes
. ‘It could grow on you.’ She pulled a face and passed her glass to him to finish. ‘It’s very strong.’

  He sank it in one. She began nodding her head towards the door.

  ‘Let’s skedaddle,’ said Gerry.

  Stella turned her head to nod goodbye to the American but he had moved elsewhere.

  ‘Although skedaddling is not in my nature, on this occasion I will.’

  Outside the rain had stopped. Or else the passageway was so narrow that the rain couldn’t make it down that far.

  ‘What bliss to be away from that noise,’ said Stella.

  ‘And you think I’m enjoying myself when I go out for a drink.’

  ‘I couldn’t make out a word that man was saying.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Some guy. The one with the specs.’

  They eventually came out from the narrowness. To their right was a canal, to their left, a whole streetful of women behind windows in their tiny rooms, touting. Crowds of people were roaming the area. From such a distance the windows were small, bright like television screens. Stella’s hand was latched onto Gerry’s elbow and she felt him steer her towards the windows. The girls wore impossibly high heels and were half naked. Beribboned and bedecked – bored. Pacing up and down. One was reading a book. Another sat as if on a park bench. Next door a girl was drinking from a polka-dot mug. It was difficult to tell colours because of the harsh artificial lighting. A tall girl had an electric fire at her feet with one bar glowing. Yet another had ventilation problems and she was keeping her window from misting over with a T-shaped squeegee. Again Gerry’s arm exerted pressure to go closer but Stella resisted.

  ‘I’m sure they don’t want me gawking at them,’ she said.

  ‘It’s too early. This is cocoa time. About as sexy as Page 3.’

  ‘I just feel sorry for them. God love them,’ said Stella. Many of the women were lit with ultraviolet light and their scanty underclothing took on a vibrant purple luminescence.

  ‘UV is what they use to kill flies in the butcher’s, said Gerry.’

  A crowd of young men came from the opposite direction. Yet another stag party. Gerry and Stella heard them before they saw them – hollering and laughing. They sounded German. They were pointing and backslapping.

  ‘Full of Dutch courage,’ said Gerry. ‘Believe me – if they’re laughing there’s no sex involved.’

  ‘Oh listen to you, Mister Brothel Creeper.’

  ‘I hesitate to say what turns me on – but it certainly isn’t this. Maybe I could be seduced by a big lassie in woollen tights on a bread-cart of a bicycle. Her knees zinging up and down. Imprinting her pheromones on the saddle. Blonde hair flying. That would ring my bell.’

  As they walked, the pavement beneath their feet turned to herringbone. Gerry felt her press him across the road and away from the windows. The ducks and swans in the canal became very noisy – quacking and flapping, standing up and sparring on the surface of the water. The swans arched their wings and straightened out their necks, hissing. Other people stopped to see what it was all about.

  ‘Look who’s stealing the show,’ said Stella. ‘Upstaging the ladies.’

  By the time they crossed the bridge the birds had settled. Ice was beginning to form where the water met the stone walls. In corners it had the appearance of grey cobwebs.

  The other side of the canal was still part of the red-light district. Stella stopped, pulled Gerry back.

  ‘Look,’ she said.

  He followed the direction of her gaze. In a narrow side lane were two horses standing under lamplight. He felt her moving him towards the lane. They approached with caution.

  ‘How wonderful,’ said Stella. ‘What beautiful creatures. I think that gin has gone to my head.’ Gerry could see her pouting as she would at a baby. ‘The first and only time I ever got on a horse, I thought I was sitting on a sideboard.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Some farmer Daddy knew.’

  One of the horses in front of them was a chestnut, the other a spotted grey. They stood together silently. The air coming from their nostrils was visible. A pile of horse dung, still steaming, had gathered in a small pyramid behind the chestnut horse.

  ‘Horse dumps,’ said Gerry.

  ‘Horse apples. We were much more refined in our house.’

  Gerry reached out and held Stella away from the horses.

  ‘Easy. Don’t get behind them. Keep out of kicking distance.’

  ‘I know, I know. They look so calm, so resigned.’

  ‘Mysterious, even.’

  Gerry and Stella stared up at them. The grey moved its head up and down.

  ‘Can you tell if it’s a stallion?’

  Gerry ducked down and had a look underneath.

  ‘I can tell you one thing,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not a cow. How would I know?’

  The horses were not tethered to anything but were covered in paraphernalia and trumpery. Saddles, stirrups, reins – other bits of harness she couldn’t name except for a crossword. Words she would recognise as something to do with horses – ‘crupper’, ‘throatlatch’, ‘girth’, ‘bridle’. There was a sheath with what looked like a baton in it. Indentations in the handle for a better grip, sitting proud of the holster. The chestnut adjusted the position of its back hoof, its shoe making a clopping sound against the stones of the lane.

  ‘This is magic,’ said Stella. ‘There’s something so saintly about them. Aloof, even. Look at the veins, Gerry. Like so many rivers.’

  The grey shook its head and engaged in a little eye rolling. Stella was conscious of the whites. Small sounds came from its harness.

  ‘Easy, boy.’

  ‘They belong to the police. Easy now. That word, that logo.’ She pointed to the blanket beneath the saddle.

  ‘Pol-it-ie,’ said Gerry. ‘Why don’t you pat it?’ The chestnut horse had a white flash on its forehead. Stella reached out and when its head came down to her level she said, ‘You’re a good boy,’ and laid her hand on it. ‘Feel, Gerry. Broad as an ironing board. I thought it’d be soft – like sheepskin. It’s more like a man’s chin.’ Her hand continued to pat the white flash. The horse seemed to be enjoying it.

  ‘They smell amazing,’ said Gerry. ‘Not like anything we know.’

  ‘Leather and milk and horse apples.’

  ‘There’s a tang, a sort of a tang off them.’

  ‘Do you think the cops are in somewhere for a bit of . . .?’ said Stella.

  ‘Never have it off when I’m on duty, ma’am.’ They smiled at this and both simultaneously turned to go.

  ‘In the future,’ said Stella, ‘when I think of the red-light district in Amsterdam, I’ll remember these two beauties. And their silent standing.’

  It was still early enough in the evening and it was Stella’s suggestion that they go back to the hotel. Make an early night of it. In the room they made love again.

  ‘Those horses have got me going,’ she said afterwards.

  They lay side by side staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Why do I take the notion more often when we’re away?’ said Stella. ‘Can you guess?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I don’t have to think of dinners. The dinner. On a daily basis. It’s the bane of my life. Remember Mister and Missus Sheep?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Mister Sheep says I’m fed up eating the same grass, day in, day out.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And Missus Sheep says At least I don’t have to cook it.’ She smiled. ‘We were driving to Edinburgh.’

  ‘I remember.’

  They were both silent for a while.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if that was the last time.’

  ‘Wonder or hope?’ asked Gerry. Stella cooried in between his arm and his chest. He kissed the hair on the top of her head, where her fontanelle would have been.

  ‘I would have loved to have known you when you were younger,’ h
e said. ‘Maybe me and you at the same primary school – your wee white socks. The bows in your hair. I feel I’ve missed a lot of you.’ She began to tap his chest rhythmically with her finger and croon the skipping song.

  ‘Fair Rosa was a lovely girl,

  A lovely girl, a lovely girl

  Fair Rosa was a lovely girl

  A long time ago.’

  In the morning the first thing Gerry was aware of was the wind blustering at the window. The bed was empty beside him. Noises were coming from the shower. He turned on his back and put his hands behind his head. Stella came out of the bathroom, wearing a white towel tucked in high on her chest. She skooshed some foam from a spray can onto her hand and applied it to her hair.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Gerry.

  ‘Styling mousse.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to do?’

  ‘It adds body to my – sadly – limp hair.’

  ‘I wonder would it do anything for me,’ Gerry said.

  ‘Volumising hold, as the can says. Have you never seen me do this before?’

  ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘At home I do all this in the bathroom.’ She shook the container and blew another plume of white froth onto her hand and patted it into her hair. It clung there in blobs.

  ‘It’s like egg white,’ said Gerry.

  She combed her hair, putting her head back, sweeping with strokes of first a comb, then a brush.

  ‘What are you getting all dolled up for at this time of the morning?’

  ‘Mass. It’s Sunday morning.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘Not really.’ She gave one last skoosh and worked it in.

  ‘Do you believe what the tin says?’

  ‘Yes, I do. It certainly makes my hair feel better.’ She stopped her brushing and wet her finger in her mouth then smoothed her eyebrows.

  ‘Do you believe what the girls tell you in the chemist’s?’ he asked.

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘It’s all pseudo science. Those girls in white coats wearing lip gloss.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you’re the worst misogynist I’ve ever met.’