by Nick Laird
“You work too hard for my family.”
“And Liz is coming home.”
“I’m off to see her after this.”
“This?”
“You know what I mean.”
He slipped the camel coat off her shoulders and she let him.
“Were they keen?”
“The lesbians?”
“They were lesbians?”
“I think they’ll probably take it. You’re looking fine today, Mrs. Hutchinson.”
“Don’t call me that.”
—
As Spencer sat on the edge of the mattress, buttoning his shirt, he watched Trisha fasten her bra at the front and twist it round. The pale tundra of her back, the outposts of three moles by her left shoulder. She was tall, taller than Spencer, but neither willowy nor voluptuous. She had a strong athletic physique that over the years and after one child had softened now to what to Spencer seemed all shades of glorious.
“Stop watching me.”
“Why?”
“You’ve seen it all before.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
She stopped and slipped her blouse on. It had a high collar and she squinted in the mirror now to find the catches. The varnish of her self-possession cracked occasionally, as now, and the sly silliness that lived beneath came out. She said, “You’re a bad egg, Spencer Donnelly.”
“Me?”
“Well, me too.”
“How’s it been between you?”
“OK, you know. Sure, you see him more than I do! I think he’s probably sleeping with someone new; he gets texts at all hours. I don’t ask. He was up in Castlerock again at the weekend.”
“He get you anything for your birthday?”
“Did you?”
“I wanted to. You told me not to.”
“He got me an iPad.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“I think he thought it would keep me company. He spent about forty minutes hooking it up to my computer and downloading all the music on it.”
“He’ll use it for porn.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I saw him this morning. He beeped me at the lights and then flipped me the bird.”
“Let’s not talk about him.”
Trish paused, and Spencer saw the conversation was about to take a familiar, tedious turn.
“Do you think we’d be doing this if it wasn’t for him?”
“Don’t. Let’s not go over this.”
Spencer cupped her buttocks, newly captured in her skirt, and tried to pull her back onto him.
“I mean, you get to sleep with your best friend’s wife, and I get revenge on my husband with his best friend.”
“You make it sound a little ruthless.”
“Isn’t it?”
Spencer spun her round and took pleasure in how easy it was to move her.
“Well, that’s all true but you didn’t add in the bit about me loving you. You know that.”
“I don’t know anything.”
She looked genuinely distressed now; the flushed, mild giddiness of having fucked was giving way, inevitably, to guilt. She bit down on her lovely lip.
“We can stop,” Spencer said, knowing that they couldn’t.
Spencer tied his second shoe in a double bow and stood up sharply. Trisha was applying lipstick in front of the mirror.
“We could always tell.”
Trisha winced.
“We’ve been through this.”
“Didn’t he say you’re free to do as you choose? Just as he does?”
“Yeah, but not with you, Spence.”
(iii) Angela Downey, 26
It wasn’t that she didn’t like London, but in the end you missed where you were from. That was just a fact. And when there was a child involved, you wanted them to have the same sort of upbringing you had. No big mystery, even if people treated her like she’d come from Mars, or like she’d failed somehow by returning. Especially if you came back like she had—a single mum with a brown child. “A wee half-caste girl,” as her Aunt Yvonne put it. What a beautiful child, they all said to her, and she heard the unspoken qualification. Perhaps that was unfair. Sophia was beautiful, like a tiny Nefertiti, Angela thought, though who would she say that to? The father had never been around. He was French-Nigerian, Claude, and a personal trainer in the gym she’d joined when she moved into a basement flat in Brixton. He was nice, but he already had three kids and when she told him she was pregnant, he warned her that he had all the children that he needed. She’d assumed, stupidly perhaps, that he’d change. And he did—he stopped coming round. Her mum had been great about it, and what her dad thought she didn’t know, because he would never have told her anyway, but they loved Sophia. You’d have known the wee lassie wasn’t “fully Derry,” but she might have been taken for Italian, her mum said once, meaning to be kind.
And you should have seen her father with Sophia. He doted on her. Jesus Christ, he loved her. You’d think there wasn’t any other kid in the world when he got down on his knees in the conservatory and started building the Lego with her. She never remembered him taking her to the park—but with Sophia he was always walking her down to the swings, or taking her to play Pooh Sticks off the bridge at Callaghan Cross. And tonight they were keeping her without a word of complaint, happy to do it. So she could go out on this . . . outing. It wasn’t a date. No, you couldn’t call it a date. Eugene worked as a salesman in McCulloch’s garage, and she was the receptionist. They’d spent four months smiling at each other before he even stopped to chat. When she looked up his employment file and saw he was thirty-two and never married, she thought, What’s wrong with him? But the answer, based at least on three evenings out, was: Nothing. Or nothing much. He made bad puns. But he stood six foot one and was skinny with a little button nose, and when he’d kissed her last week he’d laughed afterwards with such sheer dizzy joyfulness that she had found herself laughing too. He hadn’t met Sophia but he knew all about her, and said that he loved kids. He had three nieces of his own, and claimed never to forget their birthdays. His Uncle Derek was playing in a céilí band out in the sticks and they were going to have a drink and a wee dance. What harm could come of that?
She said a vodka and lemonade and Eugene turned back to her and asked if Sprite was OK and she said of course and then there was a noise so loud she fell into his back, and the other drinkers pushed against her. They all crushed up against the bar and she wouldn’t ever see her daughter again, and Sophia would never see her. A bullet moved with exquisite speed from the metal barrel of a gun into her skull and out the other side again, erupting.
CHAPTER 10
Spencer jumped out of his car, as the women who loved him watched from the kitchen window, and bounded into the Donnelly house. Liz embraced him.
“Good God, it’s like hugging a tree.”
He grinned, delighted, and pulled up the sleeve of his polo shirt to flex his bicep.
“Seventeen inches.”
Liz poked it exploratively.
“You ever read books?”
“Actually I do. Well, I listen to them in the Audi. Just finished a great biography of Carlos Lambada, the Mexican drug lord. Kingpin of the Badlands.”
Kenneth—who thought of himself as the family correction to this kind of feminine Spencer-fawning—shouted from the depths of his red chair, “You sort out Brian Hughes?”
“I don’t think he’s going to go for it.”
“Why not?”
“Another house over in Cullydown, one of the wee terraces up on the Dromore estate. He thinks it’s a better buy.”
“Nelly White’s?”
“Not sure. I didn’t push him on it.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t think to.”
The
red chair sighed; no one in the universe possessed an ounce of sense. Spencer grinned at Liz.
“My whole family in the one room!” Judith said, and her eyes took on an instant sheen of maternal insanity.
“Well who’s this?” Spencer stooped and picked up Atlantic, who licked his left ear, and then his right. “Aren’t you a dote?”
“Spensy, Spensy.”
Spencer looked down and Michael was tugging on his jeans.
“And you’re a dote too.”
“Liz, Spencer, can you two carry out the trestle tables from the garage? The marquee people are going to be here in the morning.”
—
“How are things then?”
“Oh, you know, shitty.”
“On the shitty scale?”
“Pretty fucking shitty. Lift your end a bit higher.”
“Watch the coal bucket. And that lamp.”
“I came home to find my boyfriend in bed with someone else.”
“Fuck. Go left.”
“He was in bed with another man.”
“Oh fuck. My left.”
“Not ideal. On the plus side, I’m trying to look at it from a Donnelly perspective, like I’m losing a tenant who never paid rent.”
“That is a plus.”
“I like your haircut.”
“Do you? Dad calls it the Ian Brady.”
“Is he a footballer?”
“The Moors Murderer.”
“It looks good. You seeing anyone?”
“Not really.”
“No Myra Hindley?”
“Funny,” Spencer said, meaning the opposite.
There had been girls—always described to Liz when they were on their way out—but never anyone who stuck. This one was “too clingy.” That one was “too bossy.” Used to the intrigues of sisterhood—the competitive self-denigration, the tart protectiveness—Liz always found her brother comfortingly open and uncomplicated, transparent as clean glass. Still, for all his straightforwardness, her little brother was curiously guarded about his love life.
Now he stopped walking and leaned the table against the low brick wall dividing the fruit trees from the lawn. To avoid answering her questions properly, he nodded back at the hulking shape of their father standing at the window, observing his children momentarily not doing what he had asked them to do.
“You notice he can’t find the right words all the time? He says video for radio and document for argument, and I’m off to bad for off to bed. You can’t mention it or he gets wound up about it. You have to pretend it didn’t happen. He said care bear for burger the other day.”
“He did not.”
“No ketchup on my care bear.”
They lifted the table back up and began moving again.
“What do you make of Stephen?”
Spencer shrugged. “He seems up for it.”
“Up for it?”
“For Alison, for taking on two wee ones.”
“But do you like him?”
“Well enough. He’s quiet. Maybe a bit of a breathe-in-breathe-out. You seen the tats on his arms?”
Liz nodded at this. She thought about the driving license but wondered at her own motivations for wanting to tell Spencer about it. It made her feel like Alison, pouring poison in your ear just to make conversation. She held her tongue and Spencer lifted the table back up, nodded at her to do the same, and summarized the situation.
“Alison certainly knows how to pick ’em.”
CHAPTER 11
Only one day to go now. It was important to remember it was her second marriage. You didn’t want to do everything the same. You didn’t want to make a similar kind of fuss. Her dress was cream, a fishtail with minimal detail on the shoulders. No train. Judith had been very against another white wedding, and she was probably right. Her hair would be piled up on her head with a small diamond tiara to hold it in place. She’d seen a thing in Northern Woman in the hairdressers about releasing doves at weddings, and they had ordered two for tomorrow morning—but only two. No overdoing it. Spencer was meeting a fella from Coleraine half an hour before the service to get them. Tomorrow there’ll be doves, she thought, a dress and a tiara, but for now she stood in her old leggings and her Everlast tracksuit top holding hands with Stephen in this draughty church.
She’d asked Trisha, who worked in the office, and whom she’d known for donkey’s years—if never particularly deeply—to be her maid of honor, and she’d turned up in a pair of tight jeans and a sleeveless top that gaped at the back showing her bra, God love her. She had a six-year-old, but you would never have known it. It was just a question of taste, really, and Trisha, nice as she was, had none. Thank God she’d chosen Trisha’s dress for tomorrow for her. She looked nice in lavender, as long as she didn’t overdo it on the eye shadow. If there was time, the beautician could do Trisha’s face in the morning—after she’d done Alison’s, and concealed this bruise beneath her eye.
Stephen did really well. He mumbled a couple of times, but Reverend Gifford was so patient. Afterwards she and Stephen walked hand in hand in silence through the car park at the side of the church and then he pulled her to him and they hugged for a long time. A crowd of wee lads was playing a football match on the far side of the wall, and they could hear the game dispersing as the boys headed in for the evening, exchanging their serious farewells—Aye, see youse now. Take it easy. Keep ’er lit, fellas. Overhead the rooks were circling loudly, also getting ready to settle for the night. He was leaning against the bonnet of his Focus and she was standing between his legs, leaning into him. She closed her eyes and it felt like she and Stephen were the still center of a noisy turning world.
“Do you think he’ll remember to mention the bit about us meeting here in the same church we’re getting married in?” asked Alison as they watched Reverend Gifford lock the vestry door, back in his civvies though still with the collar.
Stephen lifted his head and waved to him.
“Because it’s almost like fate, isn’t it?” pressed Alison, awaiting his confirmation.
“Like, what goes around comes around, you mean,” murmured Stephen stupidly, nestling his head back into her neck.
“No, no,” said Alison, trying not to get cross. “That’s something else altogether.”
—
Stephen liked to say he started as her handyman and ended up her husband, but for Alison it was this bit about the church that mattered, because it seemed to sanction her good instincts, which is all Alison ever wanted: external confirmation of whatever she felt inside. But yes, he had painted her lounge. It was just after she moved in to her new place, when housewarming cards filled the kitchen windowsill. They weren’t really housewarming cards, of course; they were Congratulations on Your Long-Awaited Independence cards, Condolences on the Demise of Your Shitty Marriage cards, Sorry to Hear You Were Mentally Ill When You Got Yourself Hitched to That Drunk Cop cards . . . People in the street who hadn’t given her the time of day were now smiling and stopping to chat and laying a hand on her arm and reassuring her that if there was anything they could do, anything at all . . . She’d run into Carol Hutchinson, Trisha’s mother-in-law, in M&S by the biscuit tins, and she had recommended someone called Stephen McLean, who’d just painted their living room and papered one of the bedrooms, and had really done a fantastic job, a super job. Very clean, very quick, really very reasonably priced. He goes to Ballyglass Presbyterian. You must have seen him there. Sits by himself at the back in a gray suit. Bald.
That Sunday she sought him out after the service. He stood on the steps, and she watched him shake hands with Maurice Sheldon, one of the elders, and then help him down the stairs. He moved purposefully, carefully, as if he were carrying something breakable within him. Reverend Gifford appeared beside him, and Stephen listened intently as the minister talked in his ear. Alison found she
was staring at him and his eyes met hers—he smiled. But it meant nothing. Everyone smiled at each other at church. That was the whole point.
“Stephen, is it?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve a wee job that Carol Hutchinson thought you might be interested in.”
He had a little patch of stubble on top of his bald head, but at least he shaved it. And the eyes, under the level brows, were so brown.
“Oh yes. A painting job?”
“Aye, well, painting and maybe fixing up a few things.”
He pulled a slim diary from his inside pocket, unexpectedly professional, and extracted a thin pencil from its spine.
“Let’s see. I’m putting in conservatories during the week, but what about Wednesday evening I come over and you can show me what needs doing? Then I can give you a quote.”
—
He took off his shoes at the door, without being asked. All smiles and comments on the fine weather, the solidity of the house, the lovely cornicing in the hallway and no questions about the absence of a man living there. His rollers and sheets and brushes were nicely ordered in a plastic crate and he removed his black leather shoes again—school shoes, really—and left them paired at the front door. He locked himself in the toilet and came out dressed in gray tracksuit bottoms and a plaid work shirt, both heavily spattered with paint. When Alison had taken Isobel and the baby to Tesco’s, they’d returned to hear him whistling proficiently in the bathroom upstairs. She’d never found bald men attractive, but by the time she offered him a cup of tea at 6:00 p.m. she’d noticed how gentle and patient he was with Isobel, who’d stood and watched and talked at him for a good hour and then trod emulsion all over the bathroom tiles. He cleaned it off with white spirits and told her she was lucky to live in such a nice house. There was something attractive about a mind that moved in a straight line.
The second night she came into the kitchen, where he stood at the sink, sleeves rolled up, washing his brushes. As she set the children’s empty plates on the side, she saw on his left forearm the British lion reared back on its hind legs, though unsteadily, as if it might be tipping over, and under it, in Gothic script, was “No Surrender.” On the other arm the bloody hand was red and bright, and below it a dagger with “Made in Ulster” written along the blade. But he looked so mild, so bald, so normal. Well, didn’t they all. Weren’t they all just normal-looking idiots. The ruiners. The mentals. Still, she was surprised. Though it wasn’t unusual, it wasn’t out of the ordinary. The way things had been, the way things had gone, you never knew what challenges, what problems, what circumstances led . . . And then there was the question of class. Not everyone had had the same start out the gates. You had to remember that. But she didn’t want Isobel asking about the tattoos. It’d be like her to notice them. It held her off: It reminded her that she knew next to nothing about him. She stayed up in the nursery with Michael, and when Stephen shouted, “I’m off then, cheerio,” she shouted down, “See you now, cheerio,” and only when she heard his car pull away did she go downstairs and put the chain on the door. It was not hard to keep away from him for the two weeks of evenings and Saturdays he worked on the house.
