*
Somehow she is not satisfied.
The arrangement of him sitting was all wrong. He should have been on his feet or back. The two positions she witnessed her son. All the details of what she imagined — never mind the outcome — were not satisfying. It must be in the execution that the triumph is felt. The triumph that sent her husband returning to Red the Twit. Somehow she wants what it is she has seen, exactly how she’s seen it. A need to be under two fingernails at the same time.
*
— So …
she hears Halim say unhesitatingly,
— tell me all about the birth of your children?
But she chooses to let it pass.
*
In the car back, neither of them say as much as she hopes they will, but a few times he thanks her for the visit and says I had a good time, like he wasn’t supposed to. She responds with random questions on whether he wears glasses and where does he buy his food?
— You’ll come again, won’t you, she asks him. His exams are looming. Does she have an email? No, no she doesn’t. You could write me a letter, I am always behind that back door, she smiles.
The rain at the bus station makes it hard to make out the buses but she chitters out that if he misses the bus she’ll be happy to drive him and sure, she could drive him anyway, but no he’s keen not to inconvenience her.
When she pulls up the car, he turns and places his two arms around her and she notices as he pulls backwards that he fondles her breast lightly through her jacket, a polite departing afterthought that calms her. He bends down to his knees, puts his two hands on the seat and thanks her, before pulling his bag on his back and walking away. He does not look back at her. And this is good.
Our Woman finally understood why Jimmy took up with men this way. There was something nice about it, she decided. Even when it was raining.
*
She scrutinized her husband. Again.
Back from Tubbercurry with little to report: the trailer, unsurprisingly, no good, fellas should not advertise things dishonestly. Their described state reflected nothing of the truth he rumbled. How those words rag at her? What is to become of us she thinks wondering if the evidence of what she had done this afternoon might be written all over her?
She was surprised how easy it is to move into another part of her day after the explicit activities of the afternoon. She’s between regret and resignation, a nowhere-in-particular spot.
She looked at her husband and had the strongest feeling he never put a finger on Red the Twit, despite what Red said, for how could he lay with such a good feeling at him, as the one at her, and betray nothing of it. He’d looked so thoroughly miserable all these months and if he was having this kind of fun, surely his demeanour would have improved.
To tempt him, she boldly asked.
— Two men, homosexuals, what is it they get up to together? How would they manage it?
He eyed her astonished.
— What else, he said. Sodomy. Sodomy is what they do. He was shook. She could tell. She shook him alright.
— Is that it? she said. Nothing else?
Light off.
*
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 your 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 seven 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.
Episode 10
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 Czechoslovakia — 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 forty-five 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.