Malarky (29 page)

I don't recall exactly when the Blue House became so important to me. It crept up and took me over in the way projects take me over. I'm in them, before I contemplate them.

Our Woman takes the bus.

Too many Prime Time programmes on random gang violence in Limerick have her nervous of car-nappings. She read the word in an article about Brazil, thus Brazil and Limerick have merged. Never mind that legions live a peaceful life there, when they see her Mayo plates they see a plump duck, an invite to attack her. She can see faceless people pulling shovels from the boots of their cars to batter her into the ground, flattening her like a mole.

The bus driver, his stomach pressed against the steering wheel like the pleat of a duvet, explains the estate is on the outskirts. Hard enough to get there by bus, but describes the way to do it and wait now, 'til he sees, can he leave her at this spot, not on his route, but what harm, might it be easier for her, it would, it would so. A ruse to get her to sit up beside him perhaps. He talks of his daughters, one away in London, most unfortunately the other married a farmer in Thurles. And does he like the husband? I do, he says but I didn't want her going marrying this quick, but what can I do? Two hours and Our Woman's learnt of many things he likes and doesn't like, his wife trying to insist he eat salad, he's worried about farming subsidies, people are driving too fast and no offense now, but he doesn't like Enda Kenny. She's no opinion on the man, she says. Whether he eats salad or he doesn't, he has generously delivered her, she's there, stood in front of generic wood door, generic net curtains but peculiar statues stare at her from the window. China mermaids are they? White. An odd white, a not quite belonging white. Like they should have a dirty smudge where someone lifted them absentmindedly after messin' with a car.

A man, nervous fluster of an aging male, answers.

—Yes.

—Hello.

—What is it?

—I need to talk to you.

—Is it you?

—It is.

—He's long dead your father.

—He is.

—Is there trouble?

—No. No. It's about the house above. I wonder would you rent it to me.

—There's little left of it to rent.

—I'd be happy with what's left.

—What do you want with it? It'd only be good for grazing animals.

—That's all I want it for.

—Call back next week and give me the chance to think.

If all were to be well it should have ended there. But as she's leaving, he calls after her are her family well?

—There's little left of them now. I lost my husband and my son recently as well.

He's sorry. He won't ask her what happened for he wouldn't want to upset her like you know. Confused, he mutters, it'd probably be no harm if she was to have animals in about the place, he hasn't been near it in years. But she better call back for he'd have to think about it. Goodbye now and in he's gone, catching the tail of his dressing gown belt in the door and struggling before re-opening it. She's careful and doesn't look back. She won't have him embarrassed. She knows what way fellas go when you catch them short. She hears the door slam. It may have lost her the house, the dressing gown belt may have scuppered it.

She wanted him to ask what happened. She wanted to be upset by his inquiry after her dead men. What is wrong with
her? She'd be happy enough if someone was to take the time to assume they'd upset her by asking the questions she's delighted to answer. I had a husband and a son and they were both taken from me suddenly and what have I learned from this? I have learned no answers. I've learned to act rather than wonder. I've learnt only how to misbehave.

On the bus back, the wobbly, straw haired alcoholic, the bus driver cautioned them about on the way down, this fella who selects Eastern Europeans to sit beside . . . well here he is now stagger-teetering his way back the bus. Heads are down, clear of his gaze – don't, don't sit beside me, whatever my sins, don't chose me. Plunge, plonk. The smell hits her the way heat swipes your face at the oven door. His heat says drink hath been consumed and will continue to do so as long as there is a pulse left in me. He's a desperate alcoholic, the one who'd see every limb removed before he'd quit. Below the above-the-waist stink of him, he's soiled himself, since he stepped off the bus and barely noticed because his inebriation insulates against the embarrassment of the trace of wet on a leg. Even the man's eyebrows are in disarray.

A lean, his nostrils toward her.

—You're going to Dublin, is it?

She nods. (She can't speak to him because he'll talk the whole way home.) The bus is headed the opposite direction. Should she tell him lightly that he doesn't know whether he's coming or going today? She remembers the earlier refrain, arra he's harmless enough. He can sleep it off instead.

There's plenty harm in the smell of him as the stench now is turning her stomach. The small bangs from his right forearm which falls onto her every time the bus turns. What can she do with it, only shove it off, or lift him up by his sleeve.

Once he's in a deep enough sleep, she's an idea. A handful
of baby wipes Joanie tucked into her handbag a while before – did Joanie think diabetes caused dribbling? She goes to work on him. His hands are in awful shape. She wipes one, tentative so he will not wake to see she's repairing his hygiene. Above, she opens the air vent. No effect. She's pegged in by him. He's bitten the corner of his mouth and there are various scars on his face, but his hands are the worst. Swollen with muck and either hard drinking or hard work, his unnaturally widened fingernails and bludgeoned fingers are difficult to improve. He's young enough beneath the damage, yet rolling through bottle to bottle. She could bring him home and fix him up. She could put him in the Blue House.

It's the neglect that grabs her. He reminds her of an injury she once sustained trying to move a lump of rock in the field. It slipped back. An extended moment with her left hand pinned underneath it, a pain that gave way to a numb astonishment. Her screams brought Jimmy and he rolled the rock away. It was only in retreat did the scale of the pain raise itself back to an accurate octave. She remembered her son holding her left hand in his two hands, and pressing it into his armpit to bring the blood back to it and her roaring and him Mam, mam can you feel
your fingers?
and pulling her amid this distraction to the kitchen, him muttering oh Jesus Christ.

This fella today is under the rubble that's himself, inebriated against it all, even a strange woman mopping him up on the bus. And what it is to have someone pull at your hand and demand the blood come back to it. What it is. What it is to have someone mutter oh Jesus Christ on your behalf. What it is.

Through the window, she forces her attention onto the landscape in the hope of any explanation that might take her from yet another public dissolve. Long finished, uninhabited developments gouge the edge of the countryside, leaking out from every village with names more redolent of fizzy wines
than serious settlements. They infringe where cattle once grazed. Eventually there will be nothing left between villages, no lead into them and no lead out. You don't see people walking so much anymore, she thinks. There's no rhythm to lull you. There's no slow pace of a person headed up the town. The town that's two streets and a crossroads. They say the population is swelling but the roadside is so bereft of people you'd swear they'd been wiped off by an epidemic. The development and its pace are akin to the disgrace of him beside her. Caught up in itself it pays no heed to those wandering among it, just the gallop forward and he, like it, just the daily lift to the lips, never mind where he shits or sleeps or makes a fool of himself.

Yet there's something to admire in all the disgrace of him, that he cares so little, that he's proudly reduced. Were he in her situation he'd act on her desires. Desires that have taken her into this bus to Limerick to knock at the door of a man who has instructed her to return for his verdict. He'd lay his head where ever he has cause or need to and would not go to Limerick to ask permission, nor hesitate asking permission to do this or that. He needs no permission to head to the pub each day and there's no pub would caution him until he started to smash the place up.

She'll do like him. She'll no more wait to enter the Blue House. She'll go back to your man next week to seek his permission to be in a house he doesn't give a toss about because she's committed to do so. She's tired of fellas telling her yes and no. Tomorrow she'll go over to the house and decide on the state of it.

The next Thursday she found out how bitter he was. She returned against her better judgment, against instinct, she returned only because he told her to.

—Oh it's you again, he snaps at the door.