“Like to dance?”
I didn’t answer, more out of surprise than rudeness though that was part of it. I’d my granite face on, the one that says,
“Hey, you don’t wanna dance with me... like I give a shit?”
I turned and there was the caricature Irish colleen, straight from central casting. No fooling, like an understudy for Maureen O’Hara. Red hair, wild and untamed, fresh complexion that screamed health. A small build, though finely shaped, very fine. Her face wasn’t pretty, all the right features in place but something just missed making it so. What it was, was compelling, due to the vivacity of her eyes. I’m Irish, I’ve seen blue eyes all my life but here, here was blue like a kick in the gut. She smiled and I was lost, and delivered. She repeated,
“Wanna dance?”
And Mr/ Smooth, Mr/ Silver Tongued devil, said,
“Me?”
Irish women have great strength, and I was to see the very first show of it as she took my arm, said,
“The song will be over if you stand there debating.”
And I smelled her perfume, like all the clichés, it enveloped me. I walked on her feet, like twice and she said,
“We’re going to have to show you a few steps, fellah.”
Of all the things she’d say to me, none would quite have the resonance of that. The promise of a future implied. Control, reserve, lock down, these are the qualities or liabilities I’ve strived for. All out the damn window even before I knew her name. I loved her right then and if the love deepened as it did and did, there were few moments to equal the dizzying exhileration of falling completely and utterly. Next song up was Alison Krauss and Brad Paisley’s “Whiskey Lullaby.” I know, it’s pure schmaltz, pap as the Brits say, but never, and I mean never did I relish a song so much. She moved in close, put her hands round my waist, and I must have given a slight tremor as she said,
“Me too, that song speaks to me.”
The song ended and I asked if she’d like a drink and she went,
“I’m parched.”
I got the drinks and we sat on the balcony, I asked,
“What’s your name?”
“Siobhan Keane and you’re Stephen Blake, I know all belong to you.”
Doesn’t get more Irish than that.
The next dance was fast and we watched the couples jiving. Americans, when they hear this, ask, what?
“They’re talking like black people? And why?”
No, they’re dancing, it’s our version of swing. And the women are experts, the guys are mainly terrified and truly, for once, are along for the ride. You want to observe a terrified Irishman, see his face as he goes into the first swing of the routine. Like all real macho men, I can’t dance. Never mind the Micheal Flatley hype, he’s Irish American, anyway, the way we tell it, only homosexuals can dance.
You’d believe we’re kidding when we say this.
We’re not.
My mother was a hell of a dancer and my father, he could fake it, a bit, sufficient for the odd wedding or wake, but you could never accuse him of enjoying it. Siobhan asked,
“You don’t, I suppose, want to try that?”
Before I could shake my head, she asked,
“So, are you going to ask me out or just sit there, work on your hard man expression?”
That’s how we began. It was even better than I anticipated. She made me feel like a man I’d want to be. I always wished I could have been the guy she thought I was. She was certainly the woman I loved being with. Unlike the current rituals, we didn’t hop into bed straightaway. She said,
“I want to wait.”
Fine by me as I was nervous, for the first time in my life, it mattered to me that it be special. Truth, too, I was afraid I’d disappoint her.
Gradually, I learned about her family. Her old man was a bad bastard. Drunk and vicious with it. He started out mean and the booze just fine-lined it. I never really got the full impact of the description surly till I met him. Siobhan had deferred for ages bringing me to her home. I’d rag her,
“What? You’re ashamed of me?”
Then saw her face, the despair, the hurt and she said,
“No, I’m ashamed of them.”
You never hear that in Ireland. No matter how bad the situation, the unit of family gets defended even when the evidence is in full sight. For her to say this cost her in ways even I didn’t full realise. Trying for levity, which was among my more blind moments, I said,
“Jesus, how bad can they be?”
Her forehead furrowed in concentration, she went,
“The worst, and don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”
She told me of her brother, in jail for burglary, her sister with two kids before she was nineteen, a mother on pills. Or on tablets, as she put it. You don’t hear that anymore, tablets, like something Moses bequeathed. My own mother was known to suffer from nerves. This was said with an almost imperceptible wink. Translate as drink.
Siobhan’s wrath, and fiery it was, was reserved for her father. Her face literally curled in on itself, her eyes like murder, her mouth, tight and compressed as she recounted the beatings, the poverty, the sheer calculated cruelty of the man. I loved my own father and was at a loss to grasp that some men are just born bad and enjoy it.
Siobhan’s mantra was money... you have money, you get out. She had no hang-up about where it came from, she worked in a bank and often said,
“Money has no conscience.”
When I finally met her family, they were marginally worse than she’d described. They lived in what is laughingly referred to as genteel poverty. Trust me, there is nothing fucking genteel about being poor. In Ireland, translate as, they had nothing but they were clean. The house was part of a terrace, you could hear the people next door and they were loud. Not as loud as Siobhan’s father.
From all she’d said, I anticipated a large, burly guy. He was a small shite, small in every sense, especially his actions. Met us at the door, dressed in unironed pants of a suit, an open-necked shirt that showed grey hair spouting at the throat. His hair was in deep recession, like the economy, and he had the eyes of a ferret, a can of beer in his hand, his greeting was,
“Lady Muck deigned to visit.”
She stared at him for a moment then said,
“Thanks for dressing up, Dad.”
He gave a laugh that had no relation to warmth or humour, went,
“Dress up, for your fancy man? Who have we this time, another merchant banker?”
And he laughed at his term, like we might not get the reference to what it rhymed with. I put out my hand and he looked at it as if I’d asked him for a fiver, said,
“You know where you can stick that.”
That was the high point of the evening. We stayed all of twenty minutes, Siobhan’s mother was in the front room, hugging her knees, she had the eyes of someone who got a terrible fright and never recovered. The conversation consisted of sneers from her dad, tiny whimpers from the mother. As we got up to leave, I noticed Siobhan slip some money to her mother who took it like salvation. Her father stood at the door with me, asked,
“You getting some?”
Took me a moment to grasp his implication then I turned, whispered,
“Some day, maybe we’ll meet down the town, just you and me, I’ll let you have some.”
Like all bullies, he fell back on whining, said to the women,
“This piss head threatened me.”
Siobhan was already moving to get away and I said to him,
“That wasn’t a threat, that was a promise.”
We were more than half way down the street when Siobhan said,
“Promise me you’ll get me out of here.”
I promised, having no idea how I’d accomplish that but it didn’t seem the time to mention it.