To be beside the.
Jimmy then finds himself wondering where Maria lives, and if she is involved with anyone. Or married even. He didn’t notice if she was wearing a ring.
He slides down and sits on the windowsill.
At which point his phone rings.
He hesitates for a second, then gets up and goes over to the desk. He can see who it is before his hand has even reached the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Jimmy, hi, it’s Maria.’
‘Hi. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. But listen.’ He’s listening. ‘You’ve started me thinking about this, and now I can’t stop. But I need to do more than think about it, I need to talk about it.’
‘OK.’
‘So can we meet again?’ She pauses. ‘Today?’
‘Yeah.’
Yeah.
‘How about for lunch?’
‘Sure.’ Leaning his free hand on the desk, he turns and slowly lowers himself into the chair. ‘Where did you have in mind?’
He acts like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He takes the bottle of Jameson from the cabinet and places it on the fold-out shelf. He takes a glass – Waterford cut crystal, one of a set, a gift from Paddy Norton – and drops four ice cubes into it. Then, as he opens the bottle, whiskey fumes hit his nostrils – molecules of it rising to his brain, like tracker scouts, seeking out receptive lobes and cortices. He tilts the bottle and pours, watching mesmerised as the golden liquid cascades over the ice cubes, one of which cracks loudly and splits. When the glass is nearly full he puts the bottle down and screws the cap back on, an act which feels measured, grown-up.
He looks over his shoulder.
He’s alone here, but you never know. Mary’s in town and the girls are off doing whatever they’re doing. They don’t even live here anymore, but they both have keys.
He doesn’t want to be disturbed.
He takes the glass in his hand, ice cubes clinking.
Tinkling.
Oh Jesus, like music.
But has he overdone it? It’s a greedy-looking affair, practically full to the brim. He’d never serve a drink like this. On top of which it’s not even lunchtime. It’s not even mid-morning. But does that matter? The time of day it is? If it was half past seven in the evening and he was in a tuxedo holding a Manhattan in his hand he’d still be a fucking alcoholic.
Still be a degenerate lowlife.
Still be -
Oh just shut up and drink the bloody thing.
He raises the glass to his lips and slurps.
Slurps whiskey.
The taste of it, the feel of it going down.
Oh.
My.
God.
He holds the glass in front of him, stares at it in disbelief. Raises it to his lips again. Takes a couple of genteel sips. Just for confirmation.
Then another slurp.
Puts the glass down. Turns around.
Stands, waits.
Already he can feel it, that burning sensation in his stomach, that hesitant acceleration in his brain chemistry, like a fluorescent tube-light clicking and stuttering into life. Already he can feel those familiar cravings, sudden and impatient…
For a cigarette, for company… for another sip…
He turns around and takes one.
Then goes over and switches on the radio. He picks up the remote and switches on the TV as well, tunes it to Sky. He presses the mute button and drops the remote onto the sofa.
He goes back to the corner and retrieves his drink.
He stands there, taking sips, looking into the glass, swirling its contents around.
The last time he did this was nearly ten years ago. He was a cabinet minister trying to stay on top of a very difficult portfolio. But he was gambling at the same time – and obsessively, any chance he could get, the races, card games, whether this or that bill would pass and by how many votes, whatever. Plus, to crown it all, he was having an affair with his bookie’s wife, Avril Byrne. It was the only time he ever cheated on Mary, but it was enough to last him a lifetime. Big and messy, it was all hotel corridors, hidden credit card bills, misplaced packets of condoms, blinding headaches, rows, shouting, lies, more lies and fucking endless rivers of booze. He doesn’t know how he survived it. A few of the lads – including Paddy Norton – took him aside one day and told him he was becoming a liability. They said that if he wanted his shot at the leadership – which had always been on the cards, sort of – then he’d have to get his shit together in pretty quick order.
And weirdly enough that’s just what he did. He stopped. From one day to the next.
The gambling was little more than a question of impulse control, which he’d let slip, so apart from a huge pile of unpaid debts there was no problem there. Avril was easy, too – he never liked her that much anyway, and besides, she seemed more relieved than he was.
No, it was the other part that was really hard, the not drinking part. That part took forever. The shakes, the sweats, the vivid dreams, my sweet Jesus. But it worked out in the end. He lost weight, got in shape, had the laser surgery on his eyes, smartened up.
Moved up.
Ironically, a few years later, it was the affair and the gambling that nearly scuppered his leadership chances. Some prick at party HQ loyal to the Taoiseach resurrected the whole thing and leaked it to the press in some sort of preemptive strike. But he weathered that one as well and took power soon afterwards.
In fact, the closest he came to taking a drink during all of that time was when Mark Griffin showed up, and when Paddy Norton -
Bolger clicks his tongue.
Fuck it.
He’s not going there.
He takes another sip, and then two more.
The weather girl is on Sky – though not the one he fancies. There’s some choral thing on the radio.
He looks into his glass.
He’s fallen off the wagon now. It’s official. He can release a statement to the media. Ex-Taoiseach succumbs to demons, has a little drinkie, feels he deserves it…
But then, in the next moment -
Couple out walking their dog.
To which he says, fuck it, he’s not going there either.
He turns around and replenishes his drink.
But what does he do now? Trapped in the apartment like this, a caged beast, the clock ticking until Mary gets back.
He looks at his watch.
There’s plenty of time, though – hours in fact. He’ll be able to sleep it off, drink some coffee, say he’s feeling under the weather, say he even detects a cold coming on…
He grunts. Sniffs.
Jesus, what is he, twelve?
He takes another long slurp from the glass and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket.
Then he walks across the room, glass in hand, not sure where he’s going exactly. He almost loses his footing at one point, but somehow ends up in the study.
Standing over his desk.
He picks up a wad of pages, photocopies from a folder, and looks at them for a while.
What? Is he kidding? In these memoirs the publishers aren’t going to want him re-hashing some select committee report on quarterly budget estimates – if that’s what this is, he can’t quite focus on it properly – they’re going to want juicy anecdotes, an interesting angle on events, they’re going to want a book people can read.
He sits down and puts his drink on the desk.
What he should do is lay everything out straight, shoot from the hip, no pussyfooting around or lilding the gilly. Gilding the lily. He should write a warts-and-all account of what it’s like to hold down the top job – the in-fighting, the petty rivalries, the smoke-filled back rooms, all of that stuff, of which there was plenty, though without the smoke of course, because no one does that anymore.