Dublin 4 (13 page)

The lead singer of the Great Gaels was tapping the microphone and testing it by saying, ‘
a haon, a dhó, a thrí
…’ Everyone laughed and settled down with full drinks.

‘Come on now, attention please, we don’t want anyone with an empty glass now getting up and disturbing us,’ he said.

‘Divil a fear of that,’ someone shouted.

‘All right, look around you. If you see anyone who might be fidgety, fill up their glass for them.’

Two men beside Jo looked at her glass disapprovingly. ‘What have you in there, Miss?’ one said.

‘Orange, but it’s fine, I won’t get up and disturb them,’ she said, hating to be the centre of attention.

‘Large gin and orange for the lady,’ one man said.

‘Oh no,’ called Jo. ‘It’s not gin …’

‘Sorry. Large vodka and orange for the lady,’ he corrected.

‘Right,’ said the waiter, eyeing her disapprovingly, Jo felt.

When it came she had her purse out.

‘Nonsense, I bought you a drink,’ said the man.

‘Oh, but you can’t do that,’ she said.

He paid what seemed like a fortune for it; Jo looked into the glass nervously.

‘It was very expensive, wasn’t it?’ she said.

‘Well, that’s the luck of the draw, you might have been a beer drinker,’ he smiled at her. He was very old, over thirty, and his friend was about the same.

Jo wished they hadn’t bought the drink. She wasn’t used to accepting drinks. Should she offer to buy the next round? Would they accept, or would they worse still buy her another? Perhaps she should just accept this one and move a bit away from them. But wasn’t that awfully rude? Anyway, now with the Great Gaels about to begin, she wouldn’t have to talk to them.

‘Thank you very much indeed,’ she said putting the orange into the large vodka. ‘That’s very nice of you, and most generous.’

‘Not at all,’ said the man with the open-neck shirt.

‘It’sh a pleashure,’ said the other man.

Then she realised that they were both very drunk.

The Great Gaels had started, but Jo couldn’t enjoy them. She felt this should have been a great night, only twenty feet away from Ireland’s most popular singers, in a nice, warm pub, and a free drink in her hand, what more could a girl want? But to her great embarrassment the man with the open-neck shirt had
settled himself so that his arm was along the back of the seat behind her, and from time to time it would drop round her shoulder. His friend was beating his feet to the music with such energy that a lot of his pint had already spilled on the floor.

Jo hoped fervently that they wouldn’t make a scene, and that if they did nobody would think that they were with her. She had a horror of drunks ever since the time that her Uncle Jim had taken up the leg of lamb and thrown it into the fire because somebody crossed him when they had all been invited to a meal. The evening had broken up in a shambles and as they went home her father had spoken about drink being a good servant but a cruel master. Her father had said that Uncle Jim was two people, one drunk and one sober, and they were as unlike as you could find. Her father said that it was a mercy that Uncle Jim’s weakness hadn’t been noticeable in any of the rest of the family, and her mother had been very upset and said they had all thought Jim was cured.

Sometimes her sisters told her terrible things people had done in the hotel when they were drunk. Drunkenness was something frightening and unknown. And now she had managed to land herself in a corner with a drunk’s arm around her.

The Great Gaels played encore after encore, and they only stopped at closing time. Jo had now received another large vodka and orange from the
friend of the open-shirted man, and when she had tried to refuse, he had said, ‘You took one from Gerry – what’s wrong with my drink?’

She had been so alarmed by his attitude she had rushed to drink it.

The Great Gaels were selling copies of their latest record, and autographing it as well. She would have loved to have bought it in some ways, to remind herself that she had been right beside them, but then it would have reminded her of Gerry and Christy, and the huge vodkas which were making her legs feel funny, and the awful fact that the evening was not over yet.

‘I tried to buy you a drink to say thank you for all you bought me, but the bar man told me it’s after closing time,’ she said nervously.

‘It is now?’ said Gerry. ‘Isn’t that a bit of bad news.’

‘Imagine, the girl didn’t get a chance to buy us a drink,’ said Christy.

‘That’s unfortunate,’ said Gerry.

‘Most unfortunate,’ said Christy.

‘Maybe I could meet you another night and buy you one?’ She looked anxiously from one to another. ‘Would that be all right?’

‘That would be quite all right, it would be excellent,’ said Gerry.

‘But what would be more excellent,’ said Christy, ‘would be if you invited us home for a cup of coffee.’

‘Maybe the girl lives with her Mam and Dad,’ said Gerry.

‘No, I live on my own,’ said Jo proudly and then could have bitten off her tongue.

‘Well now,’ Gerry brightened. ‘That would be a nice way to round off the evening.’

‘I don’t have any more drink though, I wouldn’t have any beer …’

‘That’s all right, we have a little something to put in the coffee.’ Gerry was struggling into his coat.

‘Are you far from here?’ Christy was asking.

‘Only about ten minutes’ walk.’ Her voice was hardly above a whisper. Now that she had let them know that the coast was clear, she could think of not one way of stopping them. ‘It’s a longish ten minutes, though,’ she said.

‘That’ll clear our heads, a nice walk,’ said Christy.

‘Just what we need,’ said Gerry.

Would they rape her? she wondered. Would they assume that this was why she was inviting them back – so that she could have sexual intercourse with both of them? Probably. And then if she resisted they would say she was only leading them on and insist on having their way with her. Was she stark staring mad? She cleared her throat.

‘It’s only coffee, mind, that’s all,’ she said in a schoolmistressy way.

‘Sure, that’s fine, that’s what you said,’ Christy said. ‘I have a naggin of whiskey in my pocket. I told you.’

They walked down the road. Jo was miserable. How had she got herself into this? She knew that she
could
turn to them in the brightly lit street and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind, I have to be up early tomorrow morning.’ She
could
say, ‘Oh heavens, I forgot, my mother is coming tonight, I totally forgot, she wouldn’t like me bringing people in when she’s asleep.’ She
could
say that the landlord didn’t let them have visitors. But she felt that it needed greater courage to say any of them than to plod on to whatever was going to happen.

Gerry and Christy were happy, they did little dance steps to some of the songs they sang, and made her join in a chorus of the last song the Great Gaels had sung. People looked at them on the street and smiled. Jo had never felt so wretched in her whole life.

At the door she asked them to hush. And they did in an exaggerated way, putting their fingers on their lips and saying ‘shush’ to each other. She let them in and they went upstairs. Please, please God, may Nessa and Pauline not be in the kitchen. They never are any other night, let them not be there tonight.

They were both there. Nessa in a dressing gown, Pauline in a great black waterproof cape; she was colouring her hair apparently, and didn’t want bits of the gold to fall on her clothes.

Jo smiled a stiff ‘good evening’ and tried to manipulate the two men past the door.

‘More lovely girls, more lovely girls,’ said Gerry delightedly. ‘You said you lived by yourself.’

‘I do,’ snapped Jo. ‘These are the girls from next door, we share a kitchen.’

‘I see,’ Pauline said in a huffed tone. ‘Downgraded.’

Jo wasn’t going to explain. If only she could get the two drunks into her own bedsitter.

‘What are you doing, is that a fancy-dress?’ Christy asked Pauline.

‘No, it’s not a fancy-dress, wise guy, it’s my nightdress – I always go to bed in a black sou’wester,’ Pauline said and everyone except Jo screeched with laughter.

‘I was just going to make us some coffee,’ said Jo sharply, taking down three mugs with Visitor painted on them. Gerry thought the mugs were the funniest thing he had ever seen.

‘Why do you put Visitor on them?’ he asked Jo.

‘I have no idea,’ Jo said. ‘Ask Nessa.’

‘So that you’ll remember you’re visitors and won’t move in,’ Nessa said. They all found this very funny too.

‘If you’d like to go into my bedroom – my flat, I mean, I’ll follow with the coffees,’ Jo said.

‘It’s great crack here,’ said Christy and produced his small bottle from his hip pocket.

Nessa and Pauline got their mugs immediately. In no time they were all friends. Christy took out a bit of paper and wrote Christy and Gerry and they stuck the names to their mugs – so that they would feel part of the gang, he said. Jo felt the vodka and the heat
and the stress had been too much for her. Unsteadily she got to her feet and staggered to the bathroom. She felt so weak afterwards that she couldn’t face the kitchen again. She went to the misery of her bed, and oblivion.

She felt terrible in the morning. She couldn’t understand why people like Uncle Jim had wanted to drink. Drinking made other people ridiculous and made you feel sick, how could anyone like it? She remembered slowly, like a slow-motion film, the events of the night before and her cheeks reddened with shame. They would probably ask her to leave. Imagine coming home with two drunks, and then abandoning them in the kitchen while she had gone away to be sick. God knows who they were, those two men, Gerry and Christy. They might have been burglars even … Jo sat up in bed. Or suppose when she had disappeared … suppose they had attacked Nessa and Pauline?

She leapt out of bed, uncaring about her headache and her stomach cramps, and burst out of her door. The kitchen was its usual tidy self: all the mugs washed and hanging back on their hooks. Trembling, she opened the doors of their bedrooms. Pauline’s room was the same as ever – huge posters on the wall and a big long clothes rail, like you’d see in a shop that sold dresses, where Pauline hung all her gear. Nessa’s room was neat as a pin, candlewick bedspread, chest of drawers, with photographs neatly arranged; little
hanging bookshelf with about twenty paperbacks on it. No sign of rape or struggle in either room.

Jo looked at her watch; she was going to be late for work, the others had obviously gone ages ago. But why had they left her no note? No explanation? Or a note asking her for an explanation?

Jo staggered to work, to the wrath that met her as she was forty minutes late. Jacinta said to her at one stage that she looked pretty ropey.

‘Pretty ropey is exactly how I feel. I think I’m having my first hangover.’

‘Well for you,’ said Jacinta jealously. ‘I never get a chance to do anything that might give me even a small hangover.’

She was dreading going home. Over and over she rehearsed her apologies. She would put it down to the drink. Or would that be worse? Would they find her even more awful if they thought she was so drunk last night she didn’t know what she was doing? Would she say she had been introduced to them by a friend, so she thought they were respectable and when she found out they weren’t it was too late? What would she say? Just that she was sorry.

Neither of them were there. She waited for ages but they didn’t come in. She wrote out a note and left it on the kitchen table. ‘I’m very very sorry about last night. Please wake me when you come in and I will try to give you an explanation. Jo.’

But nobody woke her, and when she did wake it was Saturday morning. Her note was still on the table. They hadn’t bothered to wake her. She was so despicable they didn’t even want to discuss it.

She made her morning cup of tea and stole back to bed. It was lunchtime before she realised that neither of them was in the flat. They mustn’t have come home.

Jo had never felt so uneasy in her life. There must be a perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, there had been no arrangement to tell any of the others their movements. She had realised this on Thursday night. They all lived separate lives. But what could have happened that they had disappeared? Jo told herself that she was being ridiculous. Nessa lived in Waterford, or her family did, so she had probably gone home for the weekend. Pauline was from the country too, somewhere. Well, she had to be, otherwise she wouldn’t be in a flat. She’d probably gone home too.

It was just a coincidence that they had gone the same weekend. And just a coincidence that they had gone after the visit of the two drunks.

Jo stood up and sat down again. Of course they had to be at home with their families. What else was she imagining? Go on, spell it out, what do you fear, she said to herself, that those two innocent-looking eejits who had a bit too much to drink kidnapped two big strong girls like Pauline and Nessa? Come
on! Yes, it was ridiculous, it was ludicrous. What did they do, hold them at gun point while they tidied up the flat and then pack them into a van and bear them off?