Quiet City

by Philip Davison

  He had already made enquiries among Meadows’ friends, former employers and colleagues for any indication of grudges, personal disputes – anything that might be the basis for blackmail. Purposefully vague, even clumsy, enquiries, where he thought it prudent.

  Nothing significant presented. He knew that sometimes, there was a delay. Somebody needed to be spooked.

  20

  Gloria wasn’t sure what the phone call was about, not even when he said: ‘By the way, does the name “Virginia Coates” mean anything to you, Mrs Meadows?’

  ‘No. Why? Who is she?’

  ‘Somebody who enquired about your loss. A friend from your husband’s childhood.’

  ‘I don’t know her. Should I speak to her?’

  ‘No need. You leave that to me. We’re just being thorough.’ Barrett had decided he would say nothing more to Gloria on the matter for now. There was digging he could do before upsetting her further. He would tell her about her husband’s affair at a later date. He would tell her and linger a while to reassure her. He could bear witness, albeit in a modest way. She understood the value of bearing witness. If she let him stay, they might talk a while about her music.

  The two-sided conversations about priorities, compromises and naked desire Gloria used to have with herself in the bathroom, she could now have anywhere in the apartment, but the bathroom had, if anything, become the essential transponder box.

  Calls from friends and colleagues had subsided. It was understood that she didn’t want to be shadowed. Later, there would be trips to the theatre, and dinner parties. She might join a book club, return to yoga classes, become a Friend of the National Gallery, but for now, she wanted time to herself. Today, she felt she was hiding away, holding her breath so that she could knit her insides back together. She couldn’t have that. Time to get out, she thought, sitting on the toilet lid and staring into the shower pan. Time to get on your feet.

  She rose very early in the morning, dressed for the outdoors, and began a long walk from her apartment to the South Bull Wall, a journey that would take her out into the middle of the bay. The tramp to the coast was as she imagined it would be, but took more time than she had anticipated. No matter. At Irishtown she rested a while and watched taxis and heavy-goods vehicles charging to the port tunnel. Pressing on, she crossed back and forth on the industrial neck of service land that led to the wall. This, too, took very much longer than she had expected, having visited here only in the car; it made her anxious. She was afraid that a prowling van or lorry would pull up beside her. She had her phone with her, but who would she call?

  She alerted Jesus.

  South Bank Road, White Bank, Pigeon House and on through the bends: south, east, north, east, north, and finally east again and on to the wall. Nothing bad happened. She was surprised at the calmness in this exposed place. Stumbling on the uneven surface that the old granite blocks presented was oddly reassuring. The Liffey flowed out on one side; the tide came in on the other. There was no glugging or lapping that she could hear. Even the gulls were, for now, mute. It was a flat, grey morning. The air was cool and salty. A rusty blue and white cargo ship passed her with a thudding engine noise and slid out to sea.

  She nodded to two old men, pink and blubbery against the white wash of the Half Moon Swimming Club, but she talked to no one. She had no cogent flights of thought. She removed her woollen hat, unbuttoned her coat, let her pockets take the weight of her hands. Don’t walk on broken ground with your hands in your pockets, she heard Richard chant. Fuck off, she replied with an easy softness.

  Her fear of being attacked had passed. This wasn’t tough, she reminded herself. Going down to the bin-room was tough. When she arrived safely at her destination, she pressed both palms firmly against the sloping red walls of the Poolbeg lighthouse. She had managed to reduce the gap between her physical tiredness and her emotional exhaustion.

  Already, the wind was picking up. There were others now on the Bull Wall, coming in her direction. Two Chinese fishermen, who had bounced on their bicycles all the way to the lighthouse, dismounted and began assembling their long rods. They gave Gloria the slightest of nods, which she matched. Then, belatedly, she broke her silence with a booming ‘Morning.’ Both men nodded again, this time more emphatically.

  ‘Morning,’ one mumbled into a small lunchbox that was filled with bait.

  And what was that? It was the kick that came with beginning something late. Gloria hadn’t thought about the walk home. She took off for home with a start, determined to wear herself out.

  On the tramp back along the wall, she was assailed by thoughts of Richard and his wandering, his ranging into such unfamiliar terrain, which Gloria took to be a measure of his upset – what she had come to recognise as disaffection. She could not let that be the end of it. She had been keeping at bay her need to know exactly what had happened, leaving it to the police to report to her, but now it was overwhelming. Might she have kept him safe by having not left the apartment that evening? By answering calls. She thought about a driver seeing a man in the roadway, about not being able to stop in time, then driving on. She could imagine it clearly. It was as vivid and egregious as the cctv images of Richard in the bin-room. She saw her poor stricken husband through the stranger’s windscreen squint into the headlights the instant before impact. ‘Stop.’ But there was no stopping.

  Her sense of purpose quickly drained, and suddenly she felt tired and hungry. On Bath Street she got in a taxi, but the thought of going home directly gave her a cramp. She wanted distraction. She had the driver take her through Ringsend and on to the city centre. She needed to buy food.

  Gloria had taken to shopping in a Chinese supermarket. It was at Fidelma’s suggestion. Though she didn’t say it, she knew Fidelma went there to meet men of a certain age. Men who cooked for themselves and took a bit of trouble. She liked cooking Chinese and Indian food for herself. She could strike up a casual conversation and not feel exposed. She wasn’t suggesting this for Gloria, of course, but now that Gloria was on her own she could explore as she explored. She liked the jars with a photograph of the chef or the company head on the label. Smart move, Fidelma thought. There wasn’t such emphasis on sell-by or best-before dates. That was good for a person living on her own. Fidelma had not actually brought home any man from any supermarket as yet, though she had had a number of encounters. She didn’t feel under pressure. She was exercising patience and was quietly optimistic.

  None of this meant much to Gloria, but she went there now. It was inappropriate, she thought. That was a help.

  She wandered up and down the aisles reviewing her life with Richard until a handsome young man spoke to her – something about yams. She found herself behaving more like Fidelma than Fidelma, just for the hell of it. There was a certain disconnected pleasure to it.

  When she opened her cupboard now, she had successful Chinese entrepreneurs staring out at her, the men serious, the women serious and smiling. She had opened most of the jars and a few of the tins to use a little of their contents. They could be in her cupboard a very long time and still do their stuff, she supposed, but what to do with the yams and that polystyrene pallet of magnificent red chillies? She could pool with Fidelma, of course, but Fidelma was fully stocked.

  21

  Gloria dreamt that her fingers froze and metamorphosed into claws, which she had to show the judge and excuse herself, first in English, then in Irish, French and Italian. The judge halted the murder case to let Gloria through to her private antechamber. She was savvy enough to see that Gloria couldn’t turn the door handle by herself, and did it for her. ‘Stay in here,’ she ordered. ‘I don’t want anybody seeing the state of you.’ The be-clawed Gloria glimpsed her mother taking her place in court in front of the judge. Her mother was all bangles and rings and smiling red lips when she presented her scrawny hands to the judge for inspection. Gloria woke before approval was given.

  Her first day back in court was a Friday. For her it proved uneventful.
Colleagues treated her kindly. The case in Courtroom 7 had no frenetic closed-captioning; no translation was required; there was no video depositions. However, Gloria was afraid she wouldn’t be able to concentrate, that she would have to report herself to the court clerk and to the judge. In the event, she coped. In fact, the proceedings had the uncanny smoothness of a vivid narrative dream, which in itself was a signal of distress.

  She had a bottle of water for her lunch. She took a short walk in the Phoenix Park, then hurried back to her post. When the ‘all rise’ command came, she faltered. The day was already too long. There had been too much deliberate talk. She yearned for the night, when she could get out again and walk and be guided by the incidental sounds of the city and the blessed quiet, when she could shake off the dreamstate of her real-time reporting and be wholly alert.

  She fell asleep on the couch; woke on the edge of her bed, one startled foot searching for a shoe. It was half past midnight when Gloria stepped out of the apartment building and stood on the pavement, looking up into the night sky. Why was the moon in black and white?

  I think I feel the earth spinning, she told Richard. What do you make of that?

  That can’t be good, came the reply.

  No, she confirmed.

  Does it make you dizzy?

  Not yet. But I’m nodding from the ankles.

  Emotional gyroscopics. That’s what you’re experiencing. I’m watching you now. I don’t see physical movement.

  I’m telling you what I feel.

  Clock or anti-clock?

  Clock.

  You feel the earth spinning and you’re rotating from the ankles?

  Yes.

  Can’t do anything for that. I’ll keep watch.

  ‘You’re useless to me,’ she shouted into the night, more loudly than she had intended. Somebody came to a window two floors above the café. That brought Gloria’s eyes down to street level, looking left and right for any sign of comfort. The lights in the café were burning, but the shutter was down. They were cleaning up.

  She told Jesus she was out again and set to walking. Gloria hadn’t taken up the offer of counselling, because Jesus was her counsellor. She spoke; he listened. For the record, she wanted to make several declarations. First, there would be no hoarding of grief.

  She would not hoard her grief. What else?

  She would grieve, yes. She was grieving now, but …

  Go on, Gloria, what else?

  She would waste no time with regrets.

  What regrets were these?

  Her marrying Richard. There, she had said it. Having no children because of his negligible spermcount. Letting him slacken on their plan to adopt until it was too late. Sacrificing, and for what? This crock who grew more distant and vague, this fool who had got lost and had died on her in a place he should never have been. What she had given up for Richard Meadows.

  She paused to admit that there was a time each had sought to embrace the doubts and desires of the other. A time when they were drawn towards each other, the one thinking the other was standing in the heat and the light. There was a point where they had drawn level and were perfectly poised. That was when she had a family: her and Richard. When Jesus could see they were on their way together, and in the here and now.

  When she crossed the river northwards on Beckett Bridge, she was thinking of the fractured plumbing throughout the city: all the leaks, big and small, the water sinking deep into the earth, the plumbers turning up late, not shaking their heads. The system would never be patched up, could never be fully patched here or in any other city, Richard had told her. It was part of the planet’s finite and constant body of water, however we exploited it. We could only ask where the water was located at any given time.

  The wind was playing on the surface of the Liffey and in the suspension wires of the bridge. It was lulling drunk sailors sleeping below the waterline, she imagined. Calling in the foxes. It had taken her some three hours to get here because she had, without temporal reason, walked, unchallenged and unmolested, the four sides of St Stephen’s Green, Fitzwilliam Square and Merrion Square before going to the river.

  She was now on the redeveloped North Wall, the financial district. Montreal, she thought – though she had never been to Montreal. Clean, nicely squared off, scrubbed quays with placid water, model trees, a tram, smartly dressed pedestrians with take-away coffees - a take-away coffee in the neighbourhood where she worked carried differently. There was a better class of seagull at this end. She could move down here. Be a stranger. From this place a person might go anywhere.

  She walked in blocks again, alert and dumb – which was why, perhaps, she got a chill when she caught sight of herself in a plate-glass window. It wasn’t her clothes or her demeanour that irked, but an unfamiliar expression. She was prompted to move on when another solitary figure on the far pavement appeared and slowed, to observe her.

  She turned west and made her way along by the river, past the Customs House, to the desert that is O’Connell Street. As she turned the corner she glanced behind and caught sight of the man she had seen reflected in the plate-glass window. Not a youth, not an old man; not somebody shambling along, but walking with purpose. A fit, middle-aged man with floppy blond hair. He was dressed in a short coat, flannel trousers and trainers. He was keeping pace.

  There were a few rowdy shouters stumbling her way. That didn’t bother Gloria. It was part of what she was seeking out. She didn’t avoid them. Didn’t give them a wide berth, but pushed on through, inviting their slack-mouthed leers and soaring catcalls. She could brush with toppling drunks, even shake hands with huddled figures in doorways, and be on her way. She could have an affair behind Richard’s back, Jesus told her. She could do that now and still be on her way.

  It was the trainers that set her off. Could he really be following her?

  She turned again, this time heading for the district where she worked. Between her place of work and her present position was the fruit-and-vegetable market. She could take refuge in the halls if she needed to, among familiar faces. She’d be safe there.

  But she was still too early for the market men and women. It would be another half an hour before the halls were open. On a stretch of Mary’s Abbey she paused for a moment, turned quickly, saw no one, found herself clutching her thumping heart.

  God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb. Who said that? It wasn’t from the Bible. Who was Maria? It was her own voice that spoke these words in her head. Where did she get them? This was something to fix on, instead of the business of putting herself in danger.

  At the grand corner gate to the market halls she dodged to the right, slowed her pace, filled her lungs with the faint tang of over-ripe fruit. She determined she would make a square of it, then strike back across the river and head for home. If her legs gave out, she would hail a taxi. Left, left again on the redbrick corners. Somewhere in the jumble of adjacent lock-ups and warehouses she heard the rattle of a heavy shutter winding up on its roller. As she broke from the cover of the fourth corner she saw him again, advancing towards her, making no sound on his feet. His timing was unnatural. He was just yards away when he spoke.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said in a soft voice. These few words struck physical dread in Gloria. She ran for all she was worth, until she thought she tasted blood and her legs had turned to jelly. She collapsed in a heap against the river wall. Was she all right? What could he see, that creepy blond-haired stranger in his coat and trainers? The encounter had sent her reeling, made her dizzy, made her feel sick in her soul. God damn Richard Meadows.

  It was a bright, blowy morning. Nearly 7 am. Cars flew by, their glass flashing the yellow morning light. She did something she had never done before: she went to an early house. She’d seen the painted notice on the parapet of a corner pub advertising a ’7 am opening’, seen it as she passed on the elevated railway. She went there.

  She needed a stiff drink. There were two solitary figures at the bar. Men wh
o gave the impression they wouldn’t be staying long, but would not be hurried.

  ‘Morning,’ the bartender said powerfully. ‘What can I get you?’

  Gloria searched for any sign of pity in his face. There was none. She ordered at the counter, then slid onto a bench seat. The one drink knocked her sideways, and she was grateful for that. She closed her eyes to let the light on her cheeks be her balm. Nobody would mind, she was sure, if she opened them again soon.

  An hour later she took one step out of the doorway onto the pavement. She felt so weak she was afraid she might fall down in the road between cars and go under the wheels before she got to lie in her sorry bed. She waited to hail a taxi from where she stood.

  22

  ‘Look, it’s time I came to see you.’

  The phrasing and the intonation suggested that he had been torturing himself with the decision, but was finally taking action.

  ‘Yes, Tom,’ Gloria said, as though he had caught her naked on the stairs. ‘Of course. I’d like that. It’s long overdue.’ Long overdue: what the hell was she saying? What kind of signal was she sending?

  Tom was in her thoughts lately, it was true. Richard liked Tom, and Tom had always liked Richard. Gloria was sorry for Tom, and knew that he now felt sorry for her. They both had to get away from feeling sorry.

  ‘Any time that suits,’ he said, already in retreat. ‘We could meet for coffee, if you like. Any time at all.’

  Gloria marched up and down at her window with the telephone pressed hard to her ear. She heard herself inviting him for a meal. ‘It’s Chinese night,’ she told him.