“You’ve never had to wait for anything in your life, have you?” she murmured.
Again she felt it throb and she closed her hand around it. All it is is a muscle, she thought. He pees there, he pulls and scratches himself there. He makes me take it in my mouth, and he thinks I really care or mind or like it or dislike it. Her thumb peeled back the foreskin a little more. And this is what he shoves in me like a stick. Wanting her to say things to him. Dirty boy talk, like the stuff he kept in the van. Often he came with a big fuss before he had managed to get inside her. Well, don’t be telling me to do the other stuff first, she had told him. And he was pissed off. She had said no, forgetting that that would only make him do it more.
She thought of the times they did it in the kitchen. Dimly reflected in the glass of the cooker, she witnessed his lust and shock and helplessness. She had known then that she had won something. Dare you. Do it, so, she remembered murmuring to him, turning back to look out the window again. She had seen enough. She heard his breath and believed he was a little frightened as he tugged at his trousers and stumbled into her, panting with those tiny, squeaky sounds, rough. When he asked her, she had told him she wanted it this way.
“I can’t wait,” he wheezed. “You’re a savage, so you are.”
I am that, she thought. He opened his eyes and they wandered around her skin, hardly ever looking into her eyes. He had grabbed her at the door and pulled their clothes off. All fingers and shoving, he had pinned her against the wall with his hips. Probing, shoving, his fingers. All he thought of was between her legs. He had pulled her hair there but she didn’t want to cry out. His nails were dirty.
“You like it,” he said. “You just don’t like to admit it.”
She squeezed him and he shivered. Her best friend had shocked her when they were twelve: you can lead any man by his… After he had stripped her, he had made her stand in the doorway so he could look at her. Posing the way she had seen in his magazines.
“I saw him take a naggin of whiskey from the cabinet and put it in his pocket,” she whispered. “He’s in love with the drink as well as the guns.”
His frown lasted for several seconds: he hadn’t understood.
“He’ll screw up on you, you know. It’s just a matter of time.”
Her thumb sought out the opening again and she pressed down lightly as it pulsed, as if it was a button. Then his face clouded. He spoke in a careful, surprised monotone.
“You fucking bitch. Don’t start up on that now.”
She held his stare until his face slid into rapture as she bit gently on the tip. He suddenly grabbed her head and pushed her down with both hands. She had guessed he would. He lifted and pushed into her. She felt his tics, the itch in her throat. He’d never understand, she knew. He fell under her and the mattress bobbed with their bodies’ weight. She looked up at his face. He was staring at the ceiling, his tongue slowly rubbing along his lower lip. His cheeks were flushed. Later, she knew, he’d tell her to do something and she would do it. It could be the mirror, or the plastic thing, or something really stupid when she couldn’t help but laugh out loud. He didn’t like that, even when she had told him that it felt stupid.
“Did you like that?” Now his voice was soft.
“Yes,” she lied.
He closed his eyes again. Maybe later he’d tell her to go outside in the dark and take her. In the stable, probably. She still had the bruise on her hip. That didn’t matter either, she knew.
“By the way,” Minogue yawned. “Thanks.”
Kathleen looked back at her husband. They had gone out to walk the fields before tea-time. Minogue looked around at the grass and the thinning hedges. The air already had the metallic, lilac hue of evening.
“For what, exactly?”
“For helping to set me up with Crossan.”
“I did no such thing.”
“In cahoots with Maura, that’s clear enough.”
Kathleen Minogue pursed her lips as the words of a retort formed on them. She too was looking out over the hedges at the drumlins. The world turning in on itself more every minute, he thought.
“All Maura knew was that Crossan wanted some advice off you. Was that too much to ask?”
“More than that he had on his mind-”
“Well, let’s leave the matter there for the time being, can’t we?”
They stepped over a stile in the stone wall into a field adjoining the armyard. The farm dog, a wily and stealthy collie, came out to meet them. Maura was standing by a gate.
“Hello all,” she called out. “There was a phone call for you, Matt. From Dublin.”
Minogue was drowsy and dry-throated even before they hit the Dublin Road proper. They had sat around over tea while Minogue became even more impatient and then left.
“‘Single-vehicle accident,’” he said to Kathleen. “You know what that means.”
“Um,” she said.
“That’s often code for a drunk driver.”
“You never got to talking to Mick or Eoin about the future,” she said.
Minogue held his breath to keep himself from issuing a sharp reply.
“Knocked out but he had his belt on. Overnight tonight again.”
“Why didn’t you phone him at the hospital?”
“Eilis said he didn’t want me to know.”
“A great way to pass along information.”
A sizeable bump shifted Minogue in his seat. His thoughts returned to Bourke. He had tossed Crossan’s envelope into the suitcase in a hurry. Bourke was a crackpot, dragging Crossan in with him-all because Crossan felt remorse for doing well out of life while Bourke had not. Christ, there’d be no end to it if he got pulled in.
Kathleen fell to wondering aloud about their son. In his last letter home, he had been enthusiastic about a job interview he’d had. Minogue had noted the Americanisms: world-class, leading edge. Dark shapes gathered in the outer orbit of his thoughts as they drove the by-pass route out of Portlaoise. They advanced in a relentless phalanx and clutched at him. Caught in no-man’s land between Kilmartin and Tynan like a shuttlecock. Kathleen’s bloody apartment scheme. Crossan trying to finagle with this Bourke thing. Now Hoey. He had a momentary glimpse of himself in a few years’ time, sitting in a pod called an apartment, trying to pen letters to his son in the States, asking to be remembered to Kathy. Or maybe making forays into town to meet Iseult for lunch so that he could borrow some of her brave disdain and shore up his own diminishing life. No garden to rescue each spring, kitchen appliances that worked flawlessly, carpet everywhere. Desperate.
He felt Kathleen’s eyes on him as he jerked the wheel and crashed the gears. He had put it off too long, he realised, put it off too long to avoid a real row now. Now there’d be hurt when he’d tell Kathleen that he couldn’t face a future like that. His own fault: he had deceived himself into inertia by hoping she’d get tired of the idea. She hadn’t, and her stupid husband had played his cards too close to his chest. The remorse pulled at his belly and left him helpless and weak. Later, with the Fiat climbing up onto the grassy plain of the Curragh, he found himself staring into the yellow glow of Dublin as it spread out on the windscreen.
“Please God Seamus is on the mend,” he heard Kathleen say. Her steadfast and conciliatory tone betrayed to him that she had been happily thinking about her plans at the same time he had been hoping to avoid them.
He came down over the stone wall and landed lightly on the sod. Without the dog he felt uneasy. He stopped and listened again. Could dogs be ghosts, like people? More than once he had caught himself making remarks aloud, waiting for the dog to respond with the gasps, the happy whines and paws Shep had used to converse with her master. He had found himself standing and waiting for the dog to return to his side from the darkness, to bound up to him, to rub against his legs. Once he had even called out to Shep before he realised what he had done.