The Marble Collector

by Cecelia Ahern

  ‘A pub on Capel Street. The Marble Cat. I think I’m close to something.’

  He pauses. ‘Okay, baby, okay. If you think it will help.’

  He sounds so uncertain, so nervous but too afraid to express it, that we both laugh.

  I’m lying on a picnic blanket though I can still feel the bumpy ground beneath me, earth and broken rock. I’m roasting in my suit. My tie is off, my sleeves rolled up, my legs feel like they’re burning in my black pants beneath the heat of the summer sun. There’s a bottle of white wine beside us, half of it already drunk, I doubt we’ll make it back to the office at all. Friday afternoon, the boss probably won’t return from lunch as usual, pretending to be at a meeting but instead sitting in the Stag’s Head and downing the Guinness, thinking nobody knows he’s there.

  I’m with the new girl. Our first sales trip together, this one took us to Limerick. I’m helping her to settle in, though she’s currently straddling me, and slowly opening the buttons on her silk blouse. I’d say she’s settling in just fine.

  No one will see us, she insists, though I don’t know how she can be so sure. I’m guessing she’s done this before, if not here, somewhere like this. She leaves the blouse on, a salmon peach colour, but undoes her strapless bra which falls to the blanket. It topples off the blanket and on to the soil. Her panties are off already, I know this because my hands are where the fabric should be.

  Her skin is a colour I’ve never seen before, a milky white, so white she glows, so pale I’m surprised she hasn’t sizzled under the sun’s blaze by now. Her hair is strawberry blonde, but if she’d told me it was peach I would have believed her. Her lips are peach, her cheeks are peach. She’s like a doll, one of Sabrina’s china dolls. Fragile. Delicate looking. But she’s not fragile, nor angelic; she is self-assured and has a glimmer of mischief in her hazel brown eyes, an almost sly lick of her lips as she sees what she wants and takes it.

  It is ironic that we are lying in this cabbage field on a Friday afternoon, the day when my ma would serve us up cabbage soup. The word soup was an exaggeration, it was hot water with slithery slimy over-boiled strips of cabbage at the bottom. Salty hot water. The money would always run out by Friday and Ma would save for a big roast on a Sunday. Saturday we would be left to our own devices, have to fend for ourselves. We would go to the orchard and laze in the trees eating whatever apples we could, or beg and bother Mrs Lynch next door, or we’d rob something on Moore Street, but they were quick catching on to us so we couldn’t go there much.

  It is doubly ironic that we’re lying in this cabbage field because in a game of marbles the banned practice of moving your marble closer to the target marbles is called ‘cabbaging’, which is cheating. This is no great coincidence, of course. I tell her this fact as we pass the fields; not of my involvement, no, only the men I play with know this and nothing much else about me. I simply share the term with her as we pass fields of cabbage, me in the passenger seat, her driving – on her insistence, which is fine with me as I’m drinking from the wine bottle, which she occasionally reaches for and takes a swig from. She’s wild, she’s dangerous, she’s the one who will get me in trouble. Maybe I want this. I want to be found out, I don’t want to pretend any more, I’m tired. Maybe the mere mention of a marble term is the beginning of my undoing. She looks at me when I say it, then slams her foot on the brake, spilling my wine, then does a U-turn and heads back the way we came. She pulls in beside the cabbage field, kills the engine, gets out of the car, grabs a blanket from the back seat and heads for the field. She hitches her skirt up to climb over the wall, high up on her skinny pale thighs, and then she’s gone.

  I jump out of the car and scurry after her, bottle in hand. I find her lying on the ground, back to the soil, looking up at me with a satisfied grin on her face.

  ‘I want a part of this cabbaging business. What do you think, Fergus?’

  I look down at her, drink from the bottle of wine, and look around the field. There’s no one around, passing cars can’t see.

  ‘You know what it means?’

  ‘You just told me: cheating.’

  ‘No no, what it means exactly, is when you shoot from an incorrect spot.’

  She arches her back and spreads her legs as she laughs. ‘Shoot away.’

  I join her on the blanket. Gina’s at home in Dublin, at Sabrina’s parent–teacher meeting, but despite the thought of her, this opportunity really doesn’t offer much of a challenge to me and my morals. This electric peach girl isn’t the first woman I’ve been with since I married Gina.

  Apart from the day baby Victoria was stillborn and I cheated at Conqueror to win Angus’s corkscrew marble on the road outside of our house, I have never since cheated in a game of marbles in my whole life. I don’t need reminding from anyone, not even as I enter her and she cries out, that in the marble world I am a man of my word, a perfect rule-abiding man, but the man without the marbles? His whole life has been about cabbaging.

  ‘Hello,’ I hear a woman say to me suddenly. She’s in a chair beside me. I wasn’t aware of her before now, not even of an empty chair, but all of a sudden there she is.

  The sun is back out again, eclipse over, everybody’s eclipse glasses are off, mine too though I don’t recall doing that either. I feel like my ma, in her final years, dithery and forgetful with her glasses, when she was always previously spot on. I don’t like this part of ageing, I always prided myself on my memory. I’d a good head for names and faces, could tell you where and how I knew them, where we first met, the conversation we had and if it was a woman, the clothes that she was wearing. It works sometimes like this, my memory, but not always. I know that comes with age and I know the stroke contributed to it too, but at least I’m here being looked after, not at work having to remember things and not being able to. That happens to people and I wouldn’t like that.

  ‘Hello,’ I say to her politely.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asks. ‘I notice you seem a bit upset. I hope you didn’t get a bad phone call.’

  I look down and see I’m still holding the mobile phone. ‘No, not at all.’ But was it? Who was it? Think, Fergus. ‘It was my daughter. I was worried about her, but she’s okay.’ I can’t quite remember what we talked about, I got lost in a daydream after that but my feeling is that it’s fine, she’s fine. ‘Why do you think I was sad?’ I ask.

  ‘You had tears on your cheeks,’ she says, softly. ‘I sat here because I was concerned. I can leave if you like.’

  ‘No, no,’ I say quickly, not wanting her to leave. I try to remember why I would have been so sad speaking to Sabrina. I look over at Lea, who’s watching me, worrying, and then up at the sky and I remember the moon, the miniature marbles that would fit in her dimples and then I remember the marble up Sabrina’s nose and tell the concerned lady the story. I chuckle, picturing Sabrina’s bold face as a two-year-old, red cheeks, stubborn as anything. No to everything and everyone. She could do with learning that word now, running around after three boys all the time.

  The lady’s eyes have widened as though in fright.

  ‘Oh, don’t be alarmed, we got the marble out. She’s fine.’

  ‘It’s just that … the marble story … do you …’ She seems flustered. ‘Do you have any more marble stories?’

  I smile at her, amused; what an unusual question, but it’s kind of her to show interest. I wrack my brain for marble stories, not imagining that I will have any, but I’d like to please her and she seems eager to talk. There it is again, the haze, the shutters of my mind firmly down. I sigh.

  ‘Did you grow up with marbles, as a boy?’ she prompts.

  And then a sudden memory pops up, just like that. I smile. ‘I’ll tell you what I do remember: growing up with my brothers. There were seven of us, and my ma, who was a tough woman, introduced a marble swearing jar. Any time someone swore they had to put a marble in the jar, which in our house was the worst kind of punishment. We were all marble mad.’ Were we? Yes, we were. I laugh. ‘I
remember my ma lining us up in the room, wooden spoon in her hand and pointing it in our faces. “If one of you fucking swears, you’ll have to put one of those fucking marbles in here. Do you hear?” Well, sure, how could we keep a straight face to that? Hamish started laughing first, then I went. Then it was all of us. I don’t remember Joe there, if Joe was born at all, I don’t remember him around much. Probably too young. And that was it, in the first minute of its inception there were six marbles in the jar. They were our least favourites, of course, clearies that were chipped and scratched, Ma hadn’t a clue. And even though we didn’t own those marbles it would still bother us, me anyway, seeing them sitting up high on a shelf so that we couldn’t touch them.’

  ‘What did your mother do with them?’ she asks, eyes glistening like there’s tears in them.’

  I study her for a bit. ‘Your accent. It’s peculiar.’

  She laughs. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘No, not in a bad way. It’s nice. It’s a mix of something.’

  ‘Germany. And Cork. I moved there in my twenties.’

  ‘Ah.’

  I look down at her hands. No wedding ring, but a ring on her engagement finger, that she keeps playing with. Rolling it back and forth on her finger.

  She sees me looking and stops fiddling with it.

  ‘What did your mother do with the marble jar? Did you ever get them back?’

  ‘We had to earn them.’ I smile. ‘Every month we’d have the chance to earn them back. One person would win them all, which was a game in itself, though I don’t think Ma saw it like that. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us swore a few times on purpose just to up the stakes of the game. We would have to help out around the house. Do the washing, cleaning, and then Ma would decide who deserved to win.’

  ‘Controversial,’ she laughs.

  ‘It was. We had some terrible scraps after those days. Sometimes it wasn’t worth winning or you’d get your head kicked in, you’d end up giving back the marbles they owned in the first place. But if you could tough it out, they were yours.’

  ‘Did you ever win them?’

  ‘Always.’

  She laughs. A musical laugh.

  ‘I won them every month for the first few months because Ma used to give me a note; I’d bring it to the chemist, and then I’d carry a brown paper bag back to the house. Never knew what was in it till my brothers told me I was carrying lady pads. They ripped into me so much I never did anything to help again.’

  ‘You lost out on your marbles.’

  ‘Not mine. I figured out I should just not swear in front of Ma.’

  We both laugh.

  ‘We’ve talked before,’ I say, suddenly realising.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, a sad smile that she tries to hide. ‘Several times.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘You’re visiting someone here,’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’

  We sit in silence, but it’s a comfortable silence. She has her shoes off, and she has nice feet. Bright pink toenails. She fidgets with her ring.

  ‘Who are you visiting?’ I ask. It’s not grumpy Joe, I never see her with him. It’s not Gerry or Ciaran or Tom. It’s not Eleanor or Paddy. In fact I don’t recall seeing her speaking with anyone other than me and the nurses. Though my recollection of that doesn’t count for much. Not these days.

  ‘You’ve never asked me that before. You’ve never asked who I’m visiting.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘You’re visiting me, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her eyes are bright, she’s almost breathless. She’s beautiful, there’s no doubt about that, and I study her hard, her green eyes … Something in my mind stirs, then stops again. I don’t even know this lady’s name. To ask now would feel rude, because she looks at me so intimately. She’s still fiddling with her ring, looking down. I look at it more closely.

  There’s a piece of what looks like a marble embedded in a gold band, a transparent clear base with a ribbon of white and bright-coloured stripes on white in the centre. It is a machine-made marble from Germany. I know this instinctively. I know this and nothing else. No wonder she asked about the marble-story. She has a fascination with them.

  ‘Did I tell you the marble-swearing-jar story before?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ she says softly, big beautiful smile.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Stop saying sorry.’ She places her hand over mine, the one with the ring. Her skin is soft, and warm. Another stir. ‘You never told me it here, though.’

  I run my finger over her fingers and over the marble. Her eyes fill with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, swiping quickly at her eyes.

  ‘Don’t be. It’s incredibly frustrating to forget, it must be an entirely other thing to be the forgotten.’

  ‘You don’t always forget, and those days are the most wonderful days,’ she says, and I see a sweet woman who holds on to the smallest hope.

  ‘Foreign sparkler,’ I say suddenly, and she gasps. ‘That’s what this marble is.’

  ‘That’s what you called me sometimes. Fergus,’ she whispers, ‘what is happening to you today? This is wonderful.’

  We sit in silence for a moment.

  ‘I loved you, didn’t I?’ I ask.

  Her eyes fill again and she nods.

  ‘Why don’t I remember?’ My voice cracks and I become agitated, frustrated, I want to stand up from my wheelchair and run, stride, jump, move, for everything to be the way it was.

  She turns my face to her, one hand below my chin, and she looks at me with warmth and I remember my ma’s face when I was summoned to her one day when she thought I was dead, and I think of Bounce About and I think of a pub in London and a man named George who called me Paddy, handing me a Czech bullet and of seeing Hamish dead. All in a flash.

  ‘Fergus,’ she says, her voice bringing me back, calming me. ‘I’m not worried about you not remembering. I’m not here to remind you of anything. The past is the past. I just have been hoping that I will be lucky enough that you will fall in love with me again, a second time round.’

  This makes me smile, instantly stops my agitation because, of course, it’s beautiful. I don’t know her and I know everything about her at the same time. I want to love her and for her to love me. I take her hand, the one with the ring and I hold it tight.

  I arrive home from the airport feeling rough, but feeling exhilarated, still on a high, the adrenaline racing around my veins shouting for ‘more!’; a night of partying preceded an early morning flight to get back in time for Sabrina’s thirteenth birthday party. Her first year as a teenager. Gina has arranged a marquee and private catering for forty people, mainly her family, thankfully none of mine could come. Or at least that’s what I told Gina; I only asked Ma to come but after Mattie’s recent heart operation she’s afraid to leave his bedside. Gina didn’t mind, I think she’s happy none of my family could make it, and she wasn’t surprised either, it’s nothing new. We’re not the closest of brothers. We were until I met Gina, then I separated her from my family, always thinking she was too good for them. After sixteen years I’m beginning to see that was a stupid idea; there are times, occasions when I’d like them to be here. When Sabrina did something, or said something and I wished they’d been there to see. Or a family day out when the waiter trips up, or a twat friend of Gina’s says something and nobody but me can see he’s a twat, I know they’d agree with me and I wish they were there. I could imagine a wisecrack from Duncan, the intensity from Angus, the way he took over at protecting me after Hamish went, as if he knew something, as if he knew he had to. Little Bobby’s charm, attracting all the ladies – we called him our ‘bit bait’. I think of Tommy looking out for Bobby all the time, still watching out for the slugs and snails in his path, and Joe the baby, the one who came long after we lost Victoria, sensible Joe, who looks at me, Angus, and Du
ncan like we’re somebody else’s family, not his, never fully able to connect with us, as we’d all moved out of the house as he grew up. He listened to stories from locals about Hamish and thought of him like a monster, the boogie man: if he wasn’t careful, Hamish would come and get him; if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up like Hamish. Hamish, the ghost in our home that was always there, sleeping in our room, eating at our dinner table, the echoes of him in every single room, his energies absorbed into everything around us, into all of us.

  We didn’t talk like that about him though, neither did Ma. Hamish was funny, Hamish was strong, Hamish was brave. The best way to be the best you can be is to be dead. Ma mollycoddled Joe, made him a bit soft. Not in a sweet way, like most younger kids are, but in a way that made him worry, that made him fragile, that made him think he should be looked after more. She was afraid he’d hurt himself, she was afraid he’d get lost, get sick, die at any moment. Too dark out, too wet out, too hot out, too far away, too late, too early – No, Joe, just stay in with Ma and you’ll be grand. He’s a worrier, serious, thinks about everything twenty times before he thinks about it again. Safe. Has a boyfriend and lives with him in a new apartment on the quays, pretends to us he doesn’t, walks around with a coffee cup and a briefcase. I see him sometimes if I’m driving to town in the mornings. Gina would like Joe, he’s doing well for himself, something with computers, but Joe doesn’t like me. I miss them sometimes, when I least expect it, but I’m glad they’re not here today.

  Sabrina greets me at the door, appearing happy, wearing too much make-up in a too short skirt with heels on for the first time. She’s letting her top fall off her shoulder, showing off her bra-strap – the new bra that Gina bought her a few weeks ago. She doesn’t look good, not to me, not even to me and I’m her dad, I’m supposed to think she’s perfect in everything, blinded by fatherly love. Not today. It’s a birthday lunch, the weather’s not great for April, it’s a grey day and Sabrina looks dressed for a garden party in Spain. The material of her skirt is flimsy and nearly see-through, a cheap silk of some sort, I can see the goosebumps on her skin.