The good life imm-5

by John Brady

  “Will we stay?”

  “Didn’t we decide to?”

  “All right.” He watched the waitress approach, the glitter of something on her nostril.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I’m not used to the idea that the restaurant is not finished but merely abandoned.”

  “God, Da, the older you get! What’ll you eat now?”

  “Your mother was asking for you.”

  Iseult cocked an eye and held the glass of water to her cheek.

  “I’ll phone her tonight,” she said.

  “She’s excited about the wedding. So am I.”

  Iseult searched his face for sarcasm. He kept his gaze on posters across the room.

  “I suppose I should get her more involved. Plans and everything. It was to be the Registry Office, I hope you know.”

  Was, thought Minogue. Her hands searched around the table, touching the vase and its single flower, the tumbler, the cutlery.

  “‘Was,’ ” he said. Iseult arranged her knife, fork and spoon in overlapping patterns. “Did I hear you right?”

  “Pat’s parents dug in their heels. They won’t go unless it’s in a church.”

  She picked up the knife and stared at it.

  “I had a monster row with him over it,” she said.

  “And?”

  She began to finger the handle of the knife. The tip held some fascination for her.

  “I thought I knew him.”

  Minogue said nothing. Thin, clear soup arrived.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  She blew on the spoon.

  “What I told him I’d do.” She put down the spoon and joined her hands over her bowl.

  “He comes home the other evening and starts hemming and hawing. I thought he was having me on.”

  She sighed and returned to her soup. Minogue thought of Pat’s parents. He had met them half a dozen times. The mother, Helen Geraghty, was from Meath and was very active in community groups. She liked amateur theatre and took classes in writing. The father, Des, was a bank manager in Terenure. He liked golf and expressed keen interest in the Minogues’ visits to France. He had buttonholed Minogue after a few jars at the Christmas and spoken darkly of the state of the country’s coffers and conscience. We have to pull up our socks here in Ireland or we’d never be taken seriously in Europe-or anywhere else for that matter, according to Des. Minogue had become used to the prospect of knowing the Geraghtys better as in-laws. Kathleen and Helen maintained correct and cordial relations. Compliments were plentifully exchanged and neither woman allowed earnest discussions of politics and other contentious matters to blunder into argument. Both sets of parents were punctilious in maintaining the open secret that Pat and Iseult lived together.

  “His parents are gone barking mad since the abortion referendum,” Iseult said.

  Minogue had tired of the soup. Barking mad, he repeated within. Pat’s parents, those golfing, innocuous and charitable suburbanites, those people with generous and tolerant instincts, had declared themselves committed to following Church teaching. Helen Geraghty had referred to the matter with almost apologetic earnestness, he recalled, but he hadn’t missed the glint in her eye: “Really now, Matt. When it all comes down to it, there’s only one choice, isn’t there?” He’d been stunned later to hear Des Geraghty reading the lesson at Sunday mass broadcast on RTE. Was Des Geraghty in that thick with the Church, he’d spluttered to Kathleen. What did he mean “in that thick,” was her reply. He glanced at Iseult.

  “Maybe Pat doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

  “Oh, really, Da? I thought that principles are supposed to cost you something. I told him to sort himself out and then get in touch with me when he’s ready.”

  The waitress laid down bowls of vegetable casserole. Minogue lost heart at the sight of the steam rising from them.

  “Get in touch?” he asked. “Is he banished back home to think it over maybe?”

  She poked at cauliflower with her fork.

  “No. I left.”

  Minogue looked down at her fork working. This food was too good for you, he thought: lentils, cauliflower, beans. Iseult’s moody excavations with her food brought him back twenty years. Ma, I hate cabbage, I hate it! Either by design or indifference, her hair was all over the place. Her mauve t-shirt and worn jeans looked like she’d worn them gardening. The heat had made her eyes glisten and brought colour to her cheeks. There was a smell of turpentine or paint around her. She glanced up at him.

  “Don’t you like this stuff?”

  He was too far gone to prevaricate.

  “A lump of meat in the middle would do the job. A bit of a caveman, I’m afraid.”

  Iseult began to describe the panels she was planning for an installation in the hall of a gallery. She wasn’t being paid. It would be great exposure.

  “The idea is why we keep things to look at,” she said around a piece of carrot. “We kill them with our minds. We interpret them and we classify them. Do you get it?”

  Minogue chewed on the half-cooked stalk of a legume he couldn’t identify. “Back Then” indeed: like starving peasants who’d eat roots and bushes during the Famine. Chic.

  “Not really. Did you say you’d moved out of the flat?”

  “No, I didn’t say.” She speared broccoli.

  “So you have.”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Until your intended gets some sense.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “He can fuck off, so he can.”

  Minogue dropped his fork. Iseult twisted away a smile.

  “Listen to me, now. Maybe if we gave some thought to Pat’s reasoning?”

  “I’m not going to analyse anything, Da. To hell with that. That’s just rationalizing.”

  “Sorry for trying to be reasonable. I rather like Pat.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Well, where are you staying for the moment then? What’s the name of your friend, the photographer, I’m always forgetting her-”

  “Aoife. No.”

  “Which friend then?”

  “I’m like you, Da. I’ve no real friends. Scared them off, I think.”

  Minogue sat back and folded his arms.

  “You know, Da,” she said. “I have that thing too. The difference is, I’m still not used to it.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, Da,” she said. “You pretend you don’t understand because you’re afraid I can’t handle it or something.”

  “Did I fall asleep and miss-”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” she broke in. “Don’t treat me like a kid. Don’t protect me, I don’t need that. Teach me. Teach me about being alone.”

  Every part of Ryan’s Pub seemed to be oozing out smells. Minogue tried to take stock of them while he waited for the barman: varnish from the stools and counters, the hop tang of beer and stout from the taps, the ashtrays, hot dishes and glasses from the dishwasher, even diesel fumes? The doors had been jammed open. The sky to the west was orange on the dusty windows. He looked back to where Iseult had commandeered two stools. Modern primitive, he thought. Drinking orange juice in a pub must be the latest outrage. He carried the drinks over.

  “Well, how bad can it be,” he said after his first swallow. “Trying to please people is not the most ignoble of things. Pat has parents, doesn’t he?”

  “What do you think? The Immaculate Conception or something?”

  He bit back a comment about Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.

  “Try that one on your mother, why don’t you,” he said instead.

  “What I mean is that Pat doesn’t believe in this crap any more than I do. And you’re only making excuses for him. You like Pat, that’s the problem.”

  “Problem, is it. Fight your own fights, love. I’ve had to recover from too much friendly fire over the years.
”

  “Big help you are. Maybe Daithi was right.” He looked up from his glass.

  “Now what does that mean?”

  “You know. You were allergic to telling him what to do.”

  He took a gulp of his drink and glared at her.

  “See?” she said.

  He tried to steer the conversation away. She shrugged off questions about jobs. The talk drifted to his holiday in Greece, the fact that traffic in Dublin was out of control. Iseult’s best friend from primary school had just gotten married. Minogue was dopey from the beer. Would she have another orange juice? No. Thanks. She had detected no sarcasm in her father’s offer.

  She slipped off the stool. He followed her outside and took his bearings. The new car smell in his Citroen still held its own. Iseult began fiddling with the electric sunroof and then the windows.

  “God, the laziness,” she said. He thought about phoning the squad-room.

  “What do you want to do? Will you come home with me?”

  “Remember the Sundays we used to go to the zoo,” she said.

  “The zoo.”

  “We had lemonade and crisps and chocolate and ice cream. I remember all of it.”

  Minogue looked over at her. Hormones, he thought. She hadn’t brushed away the strands of hair which had drooped as she had fiddled with the dashboard.

  “The installation I’m doing. It has the zoo in it. The animals looking in at the people and the mess they’re making of things. How we ruin everything.”

  “That’s clever,” he said without thinking.

  “Clever?” she cried. “I don’t want clever, Da! I want fucking real!”

  He turned the car without a word and drove through the lights onto the Main Road which ran the two and a half miles through Phoenix Park. He knew that she knew the zoo was closed. True, he thought with a tight ache around his heart: I think I have that thing too, Da. All the while preparing to forge her own bonds-and Minogue believed that she loved Pat and wanted him to win her in this trial-his daughter was still driven to untie them in advance. Contrariness, the family heirloom. She was laughing now.

  “Remember the ice pops and the salt and vinegar crisps?”

  “How could I forget.”

  “Gallons of lemonade and everything? Chocolate? God, we were spoiled! How did we ever keep it down!”

  “Ye didn’t always. I well remember carrying Daithi one warm day in the Botanical Gardens…”

  She guffawed. His sadness moved off. He kept the Citroen cruising along in second gear. Shrubs and trees had thickened in the dusk. An oncoming car flashed headlights at him. He had forgotten.

  “I can smell the elephants,” she said. “Or something. Dung.”

  He coasted by the railings set into the hedges which marked the boundaries of the Dublin Zoo. The car seemed to be gliding now. He glanced over at Iseult’s arm draped out the window. Over the lisp of tires he heard a screech alien to Irish birds.

  “Hear that?” she whispered. “Macaws, I’ll bet you.”

  She fell to staring at the passing trees. The Citroen seemed to have found its own speed, and its own route. They heard the birds’ screeches again. Minogue looked across the grass toward the coppices and groves where deer occasionally sheltered. Her hair hid her face from him. She drew in her hand from the window and held it folded over the other. The bob of her head alerted him. He heard the first sob.

  “Will I stop, love?”

  She shook her head but didn’t look up. He headed back to the Main Road. She sniffed, blew her nose and pushed her hair back. He wondered if she wanted him to say something. Plenty more fish in the sea, love? Pat means well? As well you found out now and not later?

  “I always wanted to set them free,” she sniffed. “Find the keys and open all the padlocks. Let them run somewhere they wouldn’t be gawked at any more. Where they could be themselves.”

  She turned her head and gave a wan smile.

  “Can you imagine elephants trying to hide and live normal lives in Ballyfermot?”

  “Nothing to that, love. I work with a buffalo inside. Jimmy. Speaking of which, I must head back there now. Come in with me, why don’t you? Phone Mammy from there.”

  “How late are you staying?”

  “I wish I knew. We’re waiting for information. People to show up, witnesses, call-ins. New yield from forensic tests, breaks from door-to-door work. It’s our second night at it.”

  “Not going so well, is it?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll just go in and see if there’s any new information that can’t wait until the morning. I’ll let John Murtagh and the new lad show their mettle tonight. Okay?”

  “I’ll wait in the car.”

  He hadn’t the heart to ask her who’d phone Kathleen to tell her that her daughter was coming home. She brushed her hair back from her face again.

  “You know,” she said, “I meant that about the alone bit. How you turn in sometimes. You think I’m not old enough to figure it out. But I am.”

  He struggled once more to avoid saying something stupid. He mustered a smile.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “And I know even less about you artist types. Just take damn good care that your stronghold doesn’t turn into a prison when you’re not watching.”

  A tremor jolted him against the tree. He’d dozed off. He rubbed at his burning eyes. The crappy yellow light above the trees made the city look like it was on fire. He could see a few stars. He shifted his back against the trunk. He could smell his breath. He returned to rubbing his stomach. Great. All he needed was the runs now on top of the itchies and the sweats and the… Birds squabbled overhead. Oh, Christ, something had to give.

  He got up slowly. There was that weird groaning and grunting again. Elephants, he thought, big, smelly elephants. Rhinos. Giraffes. The stink off the gorillas; the way they looked like people. How come he could hear them and the zoo a mile away? They’d like this heat, of course. Maybe they were at it in there, the males and the females. Did all of them sleep though? No. He sniffed carefully again. A stink of manure. Monkey piss. How’d he know it was monkeys? After things got back to normal, he’d get a laugh out of telling them about the night he spent up by the zoo. They’d laugh, all right. They? There was no one waiting for him to talk to, no one to share a joke with. Not even Ma: she’d had it. All his stuff in plastic shopping bags around the back of the restaurant, dumped like rubbish. Nobody wanted to hear from him, and nobody-nobody-had ever asked him-not once, nobody-how he felt. Like he had no feelings. Like he was the type of bastard who could do that to Mary, who could even think of doing that to Mary. Like he was some kind of an animal.

  His throat was killing him. He found the bottle of Coke and finished it. Christ, it’d be better to sleep in the day and stay up at night, not bother trying to get to sleep and worrying. Sleep: the more you want it to come, the farther away it gets. It must be well after midnight now. At least he hadn’t bumped into down-and-outs or courting couples. In a way, he wanted some to be here so’s he’d know the place was safe. He fingered his cigarettes. Twelve, enough even if he couldn’t sleep at all. He cupped his hands around the lighter. With the cigarette lit he glanced at his watch. Half one. The Coke had left an awful furry taste on his tongue. He hawked several times but couldn’t summon the spit. The cigarette was doing a little dance in the dark. That meant his hand was shaking. He imagined dark figures slouching by the Park gates, fanning out across the fields, tiptoeing from tree to tree. He got to his knees. He could see nothing in the darkness under the city’s glow. He slapped his knuckles against the trunk.

  Minutes passed. It had worked-he had calmed down. He sat down again. He began to think about the few times he had slept out before. They’d put together a sort of a hiking club back when he was eleven or so. That social worker fella that was always hanging around, the bearded fella who never got mad. Finn. Hiking up in the Dublin mountains. Jammy, him, the lads. Joe Ninety, Spots, Tommo. Had Pizzaman been w
ith them on that? He couldn’t remember now. Pots and pans and half the bleeding furniture they stuffed into them bags. O’Reilly and the vodka, Christ! Walking up by the Hellfire Club, Finn spots O’Reilly handing it to someone. War. Bleeding war, man! We’re all going back. Who else has stuff?

  They’d sung as they marched along, dirty songs some of them. Finn pretending to be pissed off but smiling. Even the other fella, the priest who never put on priest’s clothes. What was his name? Four eyes. Goggin-that was it. Camping up in the Pine Forest or something, everybody shagged and ready to hit the sack, sitting around the fire, Goggin came on with the fucking sermon. How did it go? Jesus in the bleeding garden of what’s-the-place. Praying, yeah. Just before the big thing. Cavalry-Calvary. “Won’t one of you stay up and keep me company?” And the apostles all shagged off or fell asleep or something. And Jesus woke them up or something and asked again…

  He forced himself to let his eyes close. Orangutans had orange hair, faces like oul wans. There were all kinds of ones that looked like cats or squirrels or mice or something. Lepers-no-lemurs. Come to think of it, we were monkeys too. He suddenly ached for someone beside him.

  Talk about anything. Jammy, so he could see that he had all his marbles, that he was just as quick and smart as ever. There was a time when people admired him for the stuff he knew, for all the facts he could remember. Lemurs. Krakatoa; the Vikings; Jesse James. All the stuff he knew: different types of clouds, makes of cars-he could guess the age and model of any car with just a look at the bonnet. Two seconds, that was all he needed. That counted for something, didn’t it?

  An ambulance siren made him open his eyes. He watched its blue lights flashing as it raced toward the city centre. Some poor bugger in an accident. His eyelids slid down again. Images flared suddenly in his mind then: himself covered in blood lying on a stretcher in the ambulance. The driver booting it, the other one looking down at him. Jesus! He writhed and stood up and squeezed his eyes tighter. He’s a goner, one of them was saying. My God, look at the blood. They must have used razors on him. They sliced his eyes and everything. We’re too late. Take him to the mortuary.