Temptation

by Dermot Bolger

  Joan and her brood came up from the beach. She glanced over in downright disapproval. Chris didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘The old guard drove me back to Dublin, offering to dispose of the wreck. I muttered a black joke to myself about Sam Burns hardly wanting it back and he said, “Sure, it’s too far gone for even Sam to buy.” I thought I was cracking up when he knew the name. “We all know Sam,” he said, “we’ll check the undercarriage if it’s one of his cars. He’s been known to weld whole chassis back together again.”

  ‘He asked had I not known that Burns dealt in crashed cars. But in my heart I had. The sly fuck with his mobile phone and allegedly pregnant wife. That car was too spotless for the potholes of Leitrim. But I’d got greedy. Everybody loves a bargain.’

  ‘You said the crash was the other driver’s fault?’ Alison reminded him.

  ‘A crash happens so fast you never really know. One second can make the difference between sitting here alone or having my family around me. The guard kept talking about Burns. Picking up wrecks at auction, selling them six months later as good as new. Sometimes there were complaints, engines seizing up, but mostly the cars had no connection to their numberplates. He’s one lock–up in the Republic, another in Belfast. It’s simple, buy a wrecked car, then stick its plates on another one stolen in the other jurisdiction. Change a few chassis numbers and who can spot the difference?’

  Shane climbed onto the waterfall and balanced like an explorer surveying a new kingdom. Alison wanted to call out, but felt unable to break the spell of this conversation.

  ‘So your car was probably just stolen,’ she said, as though that was some comfort.

  ‘I don’t know what I sent my family out in,’ Chris replied. ‘But I tracked him down.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Burns. To the scutteriest yard imaginable with a hideous bungalow beside it. Miles of state forestry blocking out the sunlight, with no undergrowth, not a single living thing. He’d two Alsatians chained in his yard and bits of car parts everywhere. Tyres and batteries, rusted exhausts. I kept thinking of an abattoir, slabs of rotting meat. It was three weeks after the funeral, I couldn’t get their bodies off my mind. He wasn’t there of course, off buying or selling. A salesman after my own heart. His wife was bringing the kids home from school in the battered wreck he allowed her. They were fabulous kids. You could tell she was bringing them up well. It didn’t seem fair, the bastard having kids and mine dead. But nothing seemed fair then, a rage inside me. I needed someone to blame.’

  ‘What were you going to do?’

  Shane climbed down, but Alison was uneasy. What did she really know about who Chris had become?

  ‘I just wanted to confront him with the consequences,’ he replied. ‘I wanted him to suffer guilt. I wanted to ask, man to man, would it have made any difference if I’d bought a car from a reputable garage? Maybe I wanted somebody to lift this guilt off my shoulders.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘His wife bundled the kids indoors, then approached like I was a strange animal. I asked about her pregnancy, laying on the sarcasm. But she wasn’t having it. “What do you want?” she said. “I’ve children inside. Why are you frightening them?” That’s who I’d become. Take away a family and you’re left with the solitary man our mothers warned us about. I said I want to know the history of the car my loved ones died in. Surely I had that right?’

  He went silent. Inside, people were gathering around the dessert selection. You couldn’t feel hunger listening to this, but Alison would have killed for a white coffee, loaded with sugar for comfort. Sheila returned, looking at her with such an adult expression that Alison couldn’t help smiling. She climbed possessively onto her mother’s knee.

  ‘You’re always talking,’ she told Chris. ‘All you do is talk.’

  Alison winced at Sheila’s unconscious echo of the words she had taunted him with in Loughshinny twenty years before. But Chris only laughed.

  He leaned down conspiratorially. ‘Do you know my real name?’

  Sheila shook her head.

  ‘Mr Dull.’

  Chris’s tone changed. He was a natural storyteller. Alison couldn’t tell if he was inventing the story or had told it to his own daughters. But within seconds Sheila was mesmerised, laughing at Mr Dull’s adventures as pilots on aeroplanes and bank tellers fell asleep when he spoke to them, so he had to land planes alone and help himself to cash. Alison left them and joined the dessert queue. She glanced back out, again unable to disguise an uneasy feeling. She knew what the car dealer’s wife had felt. Men alone, unattached, near children. She filled a tray with coffees, cakes and milk for Sheila and walked back.

  Sheila drank her milk greedily, ignoring the cakes. ‘That’s better,’ she announced in a grown–up voice and ran off. Chris watched her go.

  ‘She’s a lovely kid.’

  ‘I’m sorry if she brings back memories.’

  ‘Children are themselves,’ he replied. ‘It’s not fair to put ghosts on their shoulders. I’m learning to let go. That’s what coming here was about. The world doesn’t stop because of one accident. People have their own lives, in truth they haven’t time for someone else’s grief.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘I owe Sam Burns for teaching me that at least.’

  ‘What did Burns say?’

  ‘I liked his wife. I couldn’t help it, a Galway woman. You know how you get a feel for people, that there’s somebody else behind the poxy hairstyle and Joe Dolan records, somebody who found themselves trapped into being Mrs Car Dealer with the longest phantom pregnancy in history. The sort of woman who puts up with things for the kids. She hated his guts, but would never admit it, even to herself. She asked how long it was since I’d eaten, forced me to go in and made tea and sandwiches, talking all the while with the kids in the front room at their homework. It felt nice, sitting with a stranger. I didn’t want trouble, I’d decided to finish my tea and go. I think she’d half forgotten Burns because she looked as surprised as me when he appeared. I hadn’t time to say anything. Maybe it was the sight of us so cosy, or his wife’s guilty look, but he went for me – not physically, just shouting. I’d no right to be there, it wasn’t his fault if my wife couldn’t handle the bloody car. It didn’t matter if he was a dealer. His cars were clean.

  ‘It wasn’t anger in his eyes, it was hatred. And I felt it in the room. In his kids who came to the doorway. The younger two hated me without knowing who I was. But the older two, they hated him. I walked out, shoulder to shoulder, both waiting for the other to throw a punch. The hatred left his eyes. He’d seen the intruder from the door. I could drown myself in the nearest lake for all he cared. His eyes at least were honest. Honest indifference.’

  Chris stood up. ‘I’m going to lie down,’ he announced. ‘Wine in the afternoon? Is there no end to my descent into decadence?’

  He moved quickly away, before she could speak. The Bennetts were coming out, with putters in their hands. Chris held the door for them. Mrs Bennett smiled in appreciation. Alison felt cold. She looked in the sandpit for Sheila, then found her alone in the playroom, colouring in a picture. Some child had run riot in the pretend kitchen. The plastic cooker and fridge were overturned, with pots scattered on the floor. Alison picked Sheila up, despite her protests and carried her outside. She sat on a bench, rocking her, humming snatches of tunes, needing to feel the warmth of her daughter’s body and be out among ordinary people in the sea air.

  Alison needed to escape from the hotel. Maybe to the National Heritage Park at Ferrycarrig, where the children could run loose along the woodland paths between replica Neolithic farmsteads and ring forts, or simply to walk along the lake at Johnstown Castle.

  Yet she was stranded, a prisoner without a car. Jack Fitzgerald would arrange a lift into Wexford if there was something necessary to purchase. But she couldn’t simply say that she needed to get away.

  At four o’clock, after giving Sheila her antibiotic, she rounded up the children for a walk on the beach.
Danny was being belligerent, claiming he wanted to stay, but she couldn’t risk leaving him on his own. Besides she wanted her family around her, doing proper family things. She had fantasised about them walking together like this and for once reality wasn’t going to ruin the fantasy. They’d walk along the beach and be happy if it killed them.

  And they were. Within minutes sulks were forgotten as the boys threw stones into the waves and carved their names on wet sand. The beach curved for miles, all the way into Wexford town with its twin steeples in the distance. Sheila collected coloured stones and shells for her bedroom. Alison’s pockets were lined with sand as she minded them.

  The further from the hotel they went, the more carefree Alison became. This was what a holiday was about, even if Peadar wasn’t here to share it. The perfect greeny–blue of the sea, the miles of deserted strand. No doubt the weather was better in packaged resorts abroad, but there was nothing personal about them. Childhood was so short and memory so fickle that she wanted to give her children a few perfect images to carry through life.

  But you couldn’t choose what children would remember. Maybe in thirty years Danny would only remember the sensation of being sick in a hotel bathroom; Sheila might recall her mother’s terror as she was dragged into hospital in the dark and Shane might still experience the sensation of feeling abandoned as his brother deliberately hid from him with new friends.

  Would they still be close then or have scattered across the globe? The future frightened her, technology changing so fast it was impossible to imagine their adult world. As always on this beach, it was her parents she began to think of, their hopes and disappointments with her and how they would have loved to see Sheila run along the shingle with sunlight in her curls.

  As always Danny was the first to want to turn back, sitting on a rock to ask if she remembered to bring drinks. Shane was sturdier, with more stamina. Alison would have walked forever. The horror of Chris’s story seemed distant now, as did his kiss last night. This was her life, in its here–and–now wonder. Danny took her hand, trying to steer her up the dunes where he guessed there were roads with shops where drinks could be cajoled from her.

  ‘I wonder will Daddy get down soon?’ he asked.

  ‘You miss him, don’t you?’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like a proper holiday.’

  ‘We’ll make it one, eh.’ She gave him a squeeze. She could remember him being born and the strange relief that he wasn’t a girl. A fresh start.

  ‘He must be lonely without us,’ Danny said.

  ‘I’m sure he is.’

  ‘At least he said my painting of the windmill was cheering him up.’

  ‘What painting?’

  ‘The one in the kitchen, beside the phone.’ ‘What did he say?’ Suddenly goosebumps appeared on her legs.

  ‘That he was looking at it as we talked and I told him I’d made the sun especially bright to cheer him up.’

  ‘Walk on ahead,’ she said. ‘To the top of that sand dune. See if there’s a shop along the road.’

  Why in God’s name had she walked so far? Why in God’s name was she such a bloody fool? Imagining the perfect anything. If Peadar was at home this morning then he definitely wasn’t there alone. She remembered clearly how his voice changed in the way it always did on the phone when someone entered the room. It couldn’t have been McCann or a solicitor. Peadar never arranged business meetings at home. He said they made you look like an amateur. So who the hell was walking around her kitchen at eight–thirty a.m.? What little tramp, still naked maybe except for her dressing gown. Showering with her soap, her towels, making love to her man. It was irrational, these sudden accusations taking root in her head. There were no previous signs but no apparent signs in Ruth’s marriage either. Not that Alison would have known what to look for. Ruth always said that the wife was the last to know, emphasising the phrase whenever they met for coffee. Alison had thought this was dramatic self–pity, but maybe Ruth had been trying to tell her something that the whole of Raheny already knew.

  Sheila tugged at her arm with another shell. She almost flung it back at the child, then caught sight of her daughter’s face.

  ‘Run on up to Danny,’ she said. ‘Help him find a shop. Go on, you too, Shane!’

  She watched them run innocently across the sand. She had no other proof, just the intonation of a voice that she knew inside out. Peadar, her rock. Could she be transferring her own guilt about last night onto him? Herself and Chris were different. That had just been one moment of relief over–spilling. She stood alone, watching her children crest the dune. Danny pointed, calling back. Everything was still perfect, if she could only control her imagination. She wanted to sit on a rock and get her breath. Maybe McCann had called over, that man would sleep in Peadar’s ear if allowed to. There was no proof of anything, no proof at all.

  She could hear Danny shouting, ‘Hurry up, Mammy, hurry up!’ Peadar wouldn’t risk ruining their happiness. The children ran impatiently towards her, sliding in the sand. Danny led the way, her firstborn, the spit of Peadar in many ways. She put her hands out and he jumped up, pressing his arms around her, laughing and scolding at the same time that she was such a slowcoach in everything.

  The obvious thing was phone Peadar, but he never seemed to be in. Perhaps he was on his way down to surprise them – he loved surprises. But she didn’t know where to find him in Dublin. The answering machine wasn’t even on at home any more, as though he was deliberately avoiding people, and the school phone simply rang on.

  She slipped away from the children’s disco to try again from their room – even phoning his solicitors, but it was six–thirty and the office was closed by then. Who else could she call? McCann would only get pleasure from being rung up, his sly voice yielding information grudgingly with his countryman’s habit of answering every question by asking a question himself.

  It was only then that she noticed two slips of paper on the bedside locker. Shane must have picked them up when entering the room before her. They were messages from reception, obviously pushed under the door, informing her that Peadar had phoned twice while she was on the beach. ‘All’s well’ read the first message and ‘Sleep well’ went the second. They read like a cheapskate’s telegrams or clues in a cryptic crossword. She rushed back to the disco before the children missed her.

  When they were watching their video with curtains drawn in the television room, she went into the French Bar. How long was it since she’d sat in a bar on her own? But this was Fitzgerald’s where you could relax without people getting the wrong idea. She needed a rum and coke. Last night’s guilt was getting to her, her imagination running riot. She wished she hadn’t left her book in the room or had something to read, even one of the bloody kitchen brochures still littering the house at home. Another failing that annoyed Peadar – indecisiveness. What would it have mattered if her new kitchen had been of Scandinavian pine or American white elm? Even if they could afford to buy the bloody thing, any man would grow tried of somebody incapable of making a decision. That was another reason she had chosen Fitzgerald’s instead – the safe routine was simpler. But maybe Peadar needed more, something she had grown too staid or preoccupied to give him?

  The French Bar was empty. She loved its sense of evening light, the old display cases of exotic geese shot on the Wexford slobs, echoes left over from Fitzgerald’s past, when guests wore plus–fours, brought nannies and enjoyed shooting trips. They would have been displayed here when her father worked in the kitchens – the White–Fronted goose, Anser albifrons, shot on the North slob in January 1934, and the Pink–Footed Anser brachyrhynchus, shot on December 2nd, 1931, on ‘only its second occurrence in Ireland’. So much for Irish hospitality, she thought.

  The barman moved around, clearing the already spotless ashtrays. Alison was his only customer. If she wasn’t there he could probably sit down and read his paper. She bought a second rum as much to give him a tip as for any other reason.

  The kids were
immersed in the video when Alison went to check. Sally was there, talking to another mother as she rocked her child. The young woman noticed Alison’s surprise at her presence and walked across to join her.

  ‘You stayed on.’ Alison was pleased for her.

  ‘Just about.’ Sally lowered her voice. ‘He’s a queer hawk.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That friend you’re always talking to. Chris something or other. Did you say something to him?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Us.’ Sally jigged the child slightly who started to stir. ‘You mean he didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Then maybe I shouldn’t either. This is our first holiday since the baby, our last for a long time too I suspect. My husband got talking to him once in the bar, just for a moment. He checked that our room wasn’t booked for the next two nights, then paid for us to stay on himself.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ Alison said.

  ‘He didn’t even want us to know, except that we refused to stay unless Jack Fitzgerald told us who it was. He’s separated, is he?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  The baby was awake now, fists going, clamouring to be allowed to crawl. Sally struggled with him and laughed. ‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he? You won’t tell your friend I told you.’

  It was typical of Chris, Alison thought as Sally walked away. No fuss. An almost embarrassed generosity. She watched her children share one armchair in a contented tangle of limbs. That second rum was a bad decision. She decided to have no wine with her meal and maybe just an Irish coffee afterwards. The babysitter was due at eight but she took her time bringing the children back to the room. Lunch had been a casual, less public affair, but, generous or not, she didn’t want to be seated at dinner before Chris Conway arrived and feel obliged to ask him to join her.