Malarky (20 page)

Unwritten bedroom regulation.

—What are ya doin'?

—You're tickling me.

—Stop would ya.

—Where are you goin'?

But she kept going.

—Stop that now. Stop it.

—What are you at?

But she kept going.

By final ascension she calculated it was the only time she had successfully managed to shut her husband up.

Two in one day.

A new calculation has taken up residence in her right brain. How to divide her desire between what she wants to do with her husband and her new, more unusual desires of what she must do with Halim? Overwhelmed by the disparity, I am reckless, I am now reckless, she thinks.

She is no longer paying careful attention to cleaning the cups and has noticed the tea stains remain on them after washing. The bathroom floor had begun to maintain its puddles. Specks of black gather around the taps. The towels folded with such regularity now take their time to arrive back on the shelf and stay dirty and slung on the towel rail.

One morning Himself shrieked: Which in this pile is the clean towel?

Unprecedented.

Only when a protest was erupting on the Six One news in front of me, did I allow myself to think about Halim. One of them Middle East places, you know all the red, green and white, the big banners and the bandanas tied around their heads that makes them all look like mad lost pirates. I was sitting on the sofa beside my husband when them scenes came on.

—Where's that, is that Syria? I sounded excited, but my husband did not notice and my husband, who's very good with the news, said don't be silly it's the West Bank, it's them bloody nutters again, blowing each other apart. And I waited a few minutes and sighed.

—Well whether they're nutters or not, I said, they're lovely looking people. Look at the great faces on those young men, see the elasticity in their skin and the beards make them look wise when they're all but twenty.

Then I counted to seven to see did he take note of it. Had I heard the weather forecast today was his only reply.

I was transfixed. There was a fella, a bit of a look of Halim, his fist going up and down, more of a beard on him, and words just flying out of him and the translation was slow in catching up and back to Eileen Dunne. Her hair was so incredible straight and scientific in its exactness, after the surge of fists and arrhythmic flags.

—Wouldn't it be great to speak every language in the world like that man?

It was the daftest thing to say since the fella obviously couldn't speak every language.

—I like the way the women are all tucked in neat to their scarves. There'd be no wind at their ears.

Silence.

—I think they're great, them fellas.

—They're a bunch of bloody nutters and sure we've a country full of them now to go along with our own.

—I hope Jimmy gets one like him, I raised my voice a bit. One who'll be passionate for him. Someone who'd fight for him.

Then he'd a face like a thundery thunk on him alright. Oh Jesus. Up he jumped, changed the channel and didn't speak a word to me until the lottery numbers were drawn, when he observed aloud that the number 7 was being
drawn too frequently and there was something suspicious about it.

It was important to keep the girls in my gang calm. I was strategic. I phoned. I called in. I had to keep them all calm. I have a tactic for each of them.There was a remote chance they might call up and take a stroke at the sight of Halim straddling my chair. The way to keep them out of my kitchen was to be in theirs.

Once I was back in their armpits, they took a relaxation over me, I could see it. I could see by the way they sat, the way they told me the news of the day. Suddenly the demands were gone. They just wanted me here and here I am.

The doctor phones her early. Can she come down? He wants to check her blood sugar. It's most inconvenient for she wants to head to the Blue House first and begin.

 

Days after Halim graced her sofa Our Woman had a problem with her washing up liquid. A cheap LIDL purchase made in Poland or Czech – it won't clean the plates and dishes properly, no matter how much she uses. She paid attention to her breakfast chattels this morning, rubbing the outside rim of a cup 45 times and imagining it as some part of Halim's body. The green scrubber attrition for such a thought she sandpapered her cuticles in accidental punishment. Everything that lay in her sink reminded her of her visit to the virtual stranger's body parts. Everywhere she placed her gaze, chunks and angles of his flesh seemed to blaze up at her. She still had her hands in the sink an hour later. Her cups were not traversing their way to the draining board instead they were rubbed, replaced and rewashed in the sink.

Our Woman's brain ached, as though fingers were separating it inside her head. A pain above her eye. Surely to God the washing up liquid could not induce such misery, it must be something more.

Should she be disturbed by her behavior? Was this headache the manifestation of it? Had it caught up with her now, nipping her viciously and variously through her day to remind her of the plunge she'd taken into that man's groin? She wasn't sure. The revisiting of the plunge, yes, well that made her wince, but in truth, she was merely consumed plotting how soon she could repeat it all over again.

Is there anything as lovely as a nimble, young man the way that sweet Halim is nimble? I thought as I put the butter onto my husband's bread. He loves his butter thick. The pristine condition of Halim's skin, all flat and elastic and not swinging and flopping and clouting ya with the remnants of every pint he ever downed. God love them all for youth is far from wasted on the young, it is age that is wasted on the old. Give us some sweet suck at youth instead of all this wallowing and wounding. I'm sick with the wounding. For what have I done to have that twit deliver me such news? 15 years I waited on a sodden marriage proposal that was 15 years coming. And these days I'd duck whatever is coming, for I am sure there's to be more. I have my hand out now for whatever might fit in it.There are times of the day I don't give a flat toot about what I am after doing. I think bally-ho and off I go and why not, but then I think of the face on the girls were I to tell them and how they'd suck air in so swift they'd fall over. Ah. I'll have a piece of fruitcake and think no more on it 'til this lunch is made. I must go to Ballina again and look for better washing-up liquid.

Halim visited again. No pie, no preparation. Just tea. Just could you help me with my English. That morning she read his essay, but was busy thinking of the parts of his body she had yet to see. The upper arm area between collarbone and triceps and inside his arm. The aforementioned left and right sides at his groin to higher up the sides of his stomach to his armpit. Areas that have become unappealing, drifted to paunchy droop, on her calloused, crocodilian husband.

The essay read. The tenses corrected. A few spellings changed.

—Tell me about your pregnancy. I want to hear everything, Halim said.

She offered a hot drop as distraction which he accepted, but in doing so patted the sofa. Come sit. She asked him if he likes college?

—How many children have you? Halim, sitting, but not as close as she indicated.

—Three. All grown up. London, London, Dublin.

Does he want to see pictures, but he was not interested in pictures. He was not interested in their lives. He was singularly interested in how they arrived in the world.

—How long you married when you conceived the first one?

She thought about the question, considered correcting his grammar, and found it peculiar but was it anymore peculiar than the aged helping themselves to his young flesh? Help The Aged she mused, Help The Aged Help Themselves to the Young. She can see the poster campaign. Watch her! Paws off! Stamped across it.

—I don't understand the question, she admitted.