Celia told him about the garden party for President Kennedy that was scheduled for the Aras, President de Valera’s official residence. She had been promised an invitation, and confessed that the idea of being in the company of, perhaps even meeting, Kennedy and his beautiful wife made her giddy as the schoolgirl she had been at Mount Anville, the private convent where she had received her education.
They talked about the places they had been, each in the line of their work, he as a soldier, she as Third Secretary to one diplomatic mission or another. Ryan talked about the cold Dutch fields and the warm Sicilian streets, the days dug into gritty ditches in Egypt, the stifling wet heat of the Korean summer followed by the hard bite of its winter. Celia spoke of days typing letters, fetching coffee, collecting dry cleaning, the tedium made worthwhile by parties in hotel suites with cocktail bars and gilded furniture. Months spent in one city or another, weekends on yachts, banquets in palaces.
At twenty six she had seen more of life than almost any man, and certainly any woman, Ryan had ever known. So different from the girls he had shared coy exchanges with as a boy and a young man, so confident in her words and her gestures. Her hands did not lie curled in her lap. Instead they moved with her speech, bold and free. She did not wait her turn to speak in deference to his masculinity. She laughed from her belly, out loud, didn’t titter politely as if she sat in a church pew. She knew the world.
But not the barren places, the dark corners, the bleeding crevices. He measured his words, allowed her a glimpse of the harsh terrains he knew, but no more. Men came back damaged from such places, their souls scooped out of them. He did not wish her to think he was one of them, even if he sometimes feared he was.
Ryan neared the bottom of his second glass of Guinness — a pint this time — while Celia stirred her second rum and Coca Cola.
“It’s good to meet a man who’s travelled,” she said. “This country is so self-absorbed, our tiny little island. It’s as if we’re surrounded by a wall or a fence, like that one they’ve put up in Berlin, except it’s been built all the way around the coast. The only reason anyone gets on an aeroplane or a boat is to emigrate, and then the only places they can think to go to are England or America.”
“It’s expensive to travel,” Ryan said. “Who can afford it, unless they do it for a living?”
Celia leaned forward, pointed a finger, her eyes wide with an idea. “Then everyone should be a soldier or a Third Secretary.”
Ryan raised his own finger. “Then who would stay at home to tend the fields? Or go to church? We can’t leave all those priests with no one to preach to. Whose confession would they take?”
Her brow creased. “Clearly, I haven’t thought this through.”
“Why did you talk to me?”
Her smile faltered. The question had preyed on him since the night they danced, but he hadn’t meant to ask it aloud.
“In Malahide, I mean. Why did you come over to me?”
“That is an improper question, Albert Ryan.”
She brought her glass to her lips.
“But I’d like to know,” Ryan said.
Celia returned the glass to the table, watched the bubbles scale its walls and cling to the melting ice.
“I saw you walk in,” she said. “I saw the way you carried yourself. I thought: this man is not like the others. All those little boys and old men, politicians, civil servants, chinless pencil pushers and clock watchers. You were clearly not one of them. You were clearly something … else.” She looked up from the glass. “And also a little bit sad.”
Ryan felt naked, as if her eyes picked over the skin beneath his shirt. He couldn’t have borne it a moment longer if she hadn’t tripped him with a sudden smile.
“And then you opened your mouth, and you were like a schoolboy at his first dance in the Parochial Hall. I could almost imagine your mother spitting on her hankie and wiping your face before she let you out the door.”
“It’s a long time since my mother cleaned my face,” Ryan said. “Almost a month, in fact.”
Her chiming laughter and a hand on his knee caused a fluttering in Ryan’s belly. He excused himself and went looking for the WC. He found it at the rear of the room, the door hidden in a darkened corner, the mixed smell of disinfectant and human waste meeting him as he entered.
Ryan went to the toilet stall rather than the trough that served as a urinal. He preferred the privacy of the enclosed space over the vulnerability of standing exposed. When he was done, he pulled the chain and heard the roar of the flush.
He stepped out of the cubicle and saw a man at the washbasin, running water over the teeth of a comb. In the mirror above the basin, the man watched the reflection of the wet comb as it smoothed his thick dark hair to his scalp.
Ryan knew this man was not local, his charcoal-coloured suit too well cut, his skin too tanned. The man stepped aside to allow Ryan to wash his hands, but he lingered, taking his time over his grooming, watching himself over Ryan’s shoulder.
The man asked, “Did you enjoy the picture?”
Ryan took his hands from the water. “Excuse me?”
“The picture,” the man said, putting his comb in his pocket. “Did you enjoy it?”
His accent was American, but seasoned by something else. It had that nasal twang, but a depth to the vowels that was more European. His facial expression might have passed for friendly if not for his eyes.
Ryan shut off the tap and lifted paper towels from the stack above the basin. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
The man smiled. He had good teeth. “No, you don’t. I saw you in the movie house.”
Ryan estimated the man’s age at forty to forty five. He had small scars on his hands, and what might have been an old burn on the skin of his neck, not quite concealed by his collar.
“It wasn’t bad,” Ryan said, dropping the paper towels into the bin. “A bit silly. But I enjoyed it.”
“Silly.” The man weighed the word. “Yes, that’s a good way to describe it. Entertaining, but hardly realistic, don’t you think?”
Ryan stepped away from the basin, towards the door. “I wouldn’t know. Good night.”
“She’s very pretty.”
Ryan stopped, his fingers on the handle. He turned to see the man incline his head towards the door, and the unseen room beyond.
“The girl. Your date. She’s very pretty.”
Ryan let his hands drop to his sides, found his balance. “Yes, she is.”
“You’re punching above your weight a little, though, aren’t you?”
Ryan did not answer.
“I mean, you’re getting a little out of your league.”
“Who are you?”
The man’s smile broadened. “You don’t want to be out of your league, do you? If you get in over your head, who knows what might happen?”
Ryan shifted his weight forward on the ball of his right foot. The man braced.
“Who sent you?” Ryan asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you—”
Ryan moved, one hand going in low, the other high, ready to seize the man, turn him, pin him against the tiled wall. Ryan was quick, but the man was quicker. A hard hand on his wrist, pulling, stealing his momentum, using it against him. The man turned and ducked within Ryan’s reach, nimble like a dancer, the sharp point of his elbow jutting into Ryan’s groin, robbing him of air.
The tiles slammed into Ryan’s cheek. He tried to push himself away from the wall, but the man kicked at the backs of his knees, taking his legs from under him. Ryan’s kneecaps cracked on the cold wet floor. He felt the other man’s knee press hard between his shoulder blades, pinning his chest to the wall. A hand gripped his hair, pulled his head back.