1989
He and another Guard came to the house the time we were broken into. Mark and I had been arguing about who'd left the kitchen window open. The room was stink with our bile.
He was fine-tuned to pick up on my agitation. I watched his pupils darken when he looked at me; sensed the shifting of his focus. Even with my back turned, I could feel him looking. It made my headache worse.
I liked his mouth, his strawberry blonde eyebrows, his freckles. Mark ceased to exist. It felt good, right from that moment. It felt good to say,
fuck it.
*
He left me his number. I waited a fortnight before I did anything. Don't ask me how I knew he was thinking about me all the while. I pictured him rubbing himself hard to a Tennis Club picture of me torn from
The Sentinel;
considered what I might wear for him. It had been a long time since I'd had to think about all that. I shaved my legs, got a colour in my hair, bought new stockings and knickers. I trimmed my bush with a nail scissors.
*
I used the break-in as an excuse for ringing him. Did they have any new information, blah, blah. He was so easy to talk to. Nothing forced or cagey. We got side-tracked. He mentioned Gillian in passing, wife, I guessed. I'd known from the start that he was married. Men like him always are. He saw my own lack of commitment and raised it. He had a crack in his voice like a bubble bursting in honey. I liked that he spoke quietly and with such good sense. I throttled my fingers blue in the cord of the phone.
*
The following Saturday morning, I saw him in Rooney's but let on that I didn't. I wanted to see what he would do.
I started to salivate like a dog when I copped how he was stalking me. Had he known I'd be here? Had he been watching me all along, tracking my routine? I felt violated, touched. That he could be so devious. Yet that he'd go to that much trouble.
I liked how his colour rose when I busted him in the meat aisle. He was like a boy scurrying to stash a dirty book as the bedroom door opened. Now we could begin to be straight with one another. There were things that I needed him to show me. I wanted so badly that he wouldn't blow it.
It was the first time I'd seen him out of uniform. His claret polo shirt was so tight about his upper arms. I longed to drop all pretence and to touch him, to feel his skin, his breath on my fingers. I didn't care who might see us. But to an onlooker it remained a chance meeting of the barely acquainted. We both played along, both of us aware of the other's complicity.
He was hungover. He'd cut himself shaving. He'd promised his daughters pancakes and not a drop of Jif in the house. Of
course
he'd have daughters, pert little princesses, Irish dancers with kittens and amputee Sindys. It turned out I knew Gillian to see, a frizzy brunette, a clerical officer above in the Health Board. A passable bitch, I suppose. Poring over
Cosmo
on her lunch break, them articles on how to kickstart one's post-natal sex life.
She
was the problem. Pelvic discomfort, a latex allergy...Whatever it was, the man wasn't getting what he needed. No more than I was.
I mentioned in passing that I was dropping into Catharcarra to visit my parents' grave. It was handy, on the way home. On his way as well.
They were buried in the old graveyard, by the wall of the church ruins. There were people beyond in the new section but I was alone. Fatherless, motherless, childless...I kept looking over my shoulder but there was no sign of him. And then, through an ivy-framed window of the church, a flicker of claret...
I have never wanted anything as badly as I did that kiss. Never felt as mad, as coveted. My heart burst with pity for the hurt I sensed at the root of his craving. I could have killed Gillian for her blindness. What kind of bitch was she at all to normalise such suffering?
I can't stop
Don't
Thinking about you
I want you to
You do?
Mm
Fuck, the pancakes...
He stepped back, bewildered looking. Rubbed away my mouth with the back of his hand without thinking. He didn't even say goodbye or look back at me. Just fucked off like a windy boy.
Mark had been at training over at The Harriers and had brought a few of the lads back with him to watch
Sports Stadium
. I walked in and out with bags but not one of them so much as acknowledged me. I put away the shopping in a daze, stopping to touch the cut on my lip, as my bitterness said,
I told you so.
*
He rang me on the payphone at work a few days later. I took the call reluctantly. I just wanted him to be a man about it. I couldn't stand to have him let me down again.
His voice was steady. He said he wouldn't apologise; wouldn't add insult to injury. He said he'd meant what he'd said to me. He swore that it would be the last time he'd ever hurt me. He said I'd suffered enough.
He knew. He wasn't like the others.
I can be cool when I want. I get it from both sides, Mammy and Daddy. They knew how to use silence as a weapon. How it could hurt more than any beating. He took his punishment. He did us proud.
I said I was glad he'd called. I said I was always free to talk if he needed to. If it was possible.
I hear you...
I hung up and composed myself for the benefit of Dodie Sherlock, who was watching me on the sly from inside the half-opened door of her office. She'd a nose like a pointer. She'd know something was off by the colour of me alone.
Use the phone box in the Post Office from now on. It ought to be just us. We should be able to speak.
I had so much to tell him. All that holding back had me full to the craw.
*
Saturday morning, I asked him if he wanted to come and look at wallpaper. I knew he'd say no. DIY was poison to him. Spoiled by his mother. Never had to lift a finger growing up.
He said he'd ring Dots Fagan. I said would he not ring a real painter and decorator and not some waster from the old days he felt sorry for. He said I should see the job Dots had done on Bretts. I said I had and that he'd done some job all right.
He never once looked up from his book. He didn't notice I was wearing perfume nor the bum note of me in a skirt at the weekend...
I checked myself in the hall mirror before I left. I had guilt written all over me. You could have nothing to yourself in Annigal.
Fuck them.
I unfixed my hair and shook it loose. I'd done a good job on my eyes. I made a mental note to stop in JJ's for Silvermints.
I'd memorised the directions he'd given me.
South on Teachlorainn Road, first left after Donemony Bog...
I wondered what story he'd give to Gillian even as I sickened on the thought that he wouldn't show. But I enjoyed the drive. It was good to get out of town. I didn't do it enough.
You'll see a white rag tied to a tree at the head of a boreen. Turn down it, about a half mile...
I drove into wilderness, careful of the bodywork in the narrowing width. It was bogland on either side, white noise of bullrushes shivering in the wind beneath the ghost of a waning moon. The stink of dead water seeped into the car, under my skin. Impossible to reverse now.
He knows it. He's giving me no choice but to come to him.
He was parked by the water's edge in a glade of trees that opened out miraculously.
How does he know about this place? Who else has he brought here?
I was mad at him, at myself, for an instant, but it passed, bled into my adrenaline rush as the door of his car opened.
He was in uniform like I'd hoped he'd be. I vaselined my lips, watched him approach. I liked how he moved. He had music in him, a promise of soul. Even with that pained something in his smile.
He got in the passenger side. We were quiet at first. I offered him a Silvermint but he waved it away.
Are you on duty? How long do you have?
Not long. I can't believe you're here.
I always keep my promises.
I touched his razor burn. He took my wrist, kissed the tips of my fingers one by one. He reached out with his other hand, cradled my cheek. It seemed huge, a grown-up's to a beloved child.
Tell me to stop if...
No.
I went for his mouth, furious off the back of years of neglect, but it didn't bother him. He talked me down to a place of mutual comfort, set the pace. Showed me the pleasure of sparing the tongue, the pith of
relish.
His breath was foul with wanting me. He would stop at nothing.
We got in the back. I sat astride him and unbuttoned his shirt as he gathered up my skirt and aligned our bodies. He was so hard, so boyishly flushed and serious, that I couldn't but smile. He'd have a boy's mean streak as well, no less charming. It was how I wanted him, gentle and cruel, mindful and thoughtless of my pleasure in relation to his own. I wanted to obsess him, to stoke his recklessness. I was done with safety.
I braced myself against the roof. His mouth was tender to the point of pity at my breast, one extended finger touching me from behind.
That
was new. I watched his upper arms break out in gooseflesh when I dragged my nails up them; again when they flickered about his nipple. I was already mad for the body on him, even the bit of a belly. I knew the hunger it represented. I knew that emptiness.
He lifted me up, steered me into the corner. I knew what he wanted. I arched and pulled off my drawers in one slick move. My thighs were pale in a shaft of sunlight, my hand slipping down, emerging from shadow.
I watched him, gauging his reaction. All I'd known were men who were disgusted by it, even though they let on otherwise. Men who used words like,
box, gee, fanny, cunt.
Cack-handed, tone-deaf men. But I also knew they couldn't all be that way.
Mammy used to say that I was too soft, that I was living in a dream world. The last thing I'd wanted was to want to end up like her and yet it had happened to me. Almost happened...
He spoke in tongues to me. To her. Fluent as a tinker. I moved my hips with his fingers, reassured him. He knew what he was doing. That in itself was wonderful to the point of being strange. I urged him to go to the crop if he needed. Express himself. My muck clicked like a scold's tongue. I heard him say my name. I heard the sob in his breathing.
I had never
come.
Not really. Part of me wouldn't allow it. It was wasted on someone like Mark, even if he'd been any use of a lover back before he'd given up pretending to be interested. I realised I'd been hoarding it. I wanted body and soul, to fall in love and to be fucked raw.
I
wanted it. I had as much right as anyone.
Oh fuck...Oh look at you...Oh my poor baby...
A flush spread through the shiver of heatstroke that took me over. The back of his neck went red as a farmer's. I clawed his skull, my midriff tense and sunken. I wouldn't cry, no matter how much I wanted to, nor let him up for air. A wasp choking in honey, he didn't dare stop. He was a grafter. He was so
clean.
