"Of course he knows. There's not much point to it unless he knows. Do you think I like Myles Geraghty? Do you think I want to do this? Turns out it's all I have, after fifteen years of kids, these legs, these tits, and I won't have them for long, not in this shape anyway. Getting old, Ed, and I don't want to wait around to die. I've tried talking to him, tried warning him. Nothing. Calls for desperate measures. Rub his face in it? Yes. Demean myself? Yes. What next? I know what you'd do. Walk away. School of Ed Loy says, just walk away. But you don't put twenty years into what I've built up to walk away. You can't."
A breath at the corner, a foot snap on frost, and there was Dave. Carmel turned to him, and nodded, and turned back to me.
"I'm sorry if what I said hurt you," she said.
"That's 'Happy Christmas' in Irish, is it?"
"Some things are more important than who fucked who. You know that."
I thought of my daughter, how she hadn't been mine, not in blood, yet I called her mine and always would and knew it to be true. I nodded, and Carmel gave me a kiss, and walked up to Dave and put an arm around his waist and put her head on his shoulder. Dave raised his hand in the air, and I returned his salute, and they walked back down to their house, and their family, and their life, about which, it turned out, I knew next to nothing.
The roads had frosted up, powder bright in the moonlight; I drove back slowly, wondering how this would affect the Leopardstown Festivaclass="underline" Irish racing did not like firm ground, and would cancel a meeting rather than risk the horses.
When I got back to Quarry Fields, I found Tommy Owens's key on my kitchen table and Miranda Hart in my bed. Better than the other way round, I remember thinking as I got in beside her, trying not to wake her, but not trying too hard. She awoke, and her breath smelled of oranges, and the rest of her smelt just as good.
"Merry Christmas, Edward Loy," she said, and for a while, it was.
EIGHTEEN
The door creak again, and the rustle of straw, of paper, and the bolt run with a crack, and her dark head turning, Miranda Hart, and then the bolt again, or the sound of it, like a pistol shot, like the slam of a door, my Spanish girl, my ex-wife, now the rustle of straw, the pistol crack, the turning head, my mother, dark-headed, too, as she was when I was a boy, rustle, crack, door, turning head, Regina Tyrrell, fear in her eyes, and another, someone else, I can't make out his face, rustle, crack, door, head turn: Karen Tyrrell, one eye blue, one eye brown, and the hand closing on her, the hand about to touch her, I can't see his face, Karen, Miranda, Regina, my wife, my mother, rustle, crack, door, the turning head, the reaching hand…
I woke up alone, bathed in sweat, with Carmel Donnelly's words burning in my ears. You're so in love with your own pain. The same fucked-up woman over and over again. It didn't have to be that way. I wouldn't let it be that way. I went out on the landing, and smelt breakfast being cooked downstairs, bacon and eggs, or something that good. I remembered how I'd felt yesterday, before the trip to Tyrrellscourt, when I heard Miranda's footfall and felt the promise of a future. But as I showered, it all came back to me: not just what Tommy had told me about her operating as a prostitute, not just the drugs, not just Bomber Folan or Jack Proby, but what it all amounted to: that she knew so much more than she had told me. What I saw in the bathroom mirror as I shaved was not promise; it was resignation, and something worse than that: betrayal, and the fear of betrayal. The Judas Kiss.
I didn't think I owned as many pots and pans, plates and cooking utensils, as Miranda Hart had used to make a breakfast fry; she emerged from the debris with two plates as I sat down; I wanted to greet her smile with something more than the polite nod I managed, but found that I couldn't. We ate in silence. Miranda broke it.
"I suppose Tommy told you, did he?"
I nodded.
"Well, he probably remembers it all better than I do. I was pretty far gone, most of the time. What did he say?"
"That you took money for sex. That you were available to a whole circle of men that formed itself around Leo Halligan and Jack Proby. He said he didn't know whether you were doing it of your own free will or not. That you were doing so much heroin you maybe didn't even know yourself."
I found myself trying to make it easy for her. To her credit, she didn't want that. She popped some gum in her mouth, lit a cigarette and exhaled.
"No, I wasn't forced. The opposite. I was with Jack Proby at the time, nothing serious, just for laughs-funny how relationships that are just for laughs quickly run out of them-and we were doing a lot of drugs, too much coke, and then I got into smack to take me down, I couldn't sleep, and then I needed the coke to get me back up, and that became a cycle. And that became expensive. And it had gotten so I didn't much care what I did-I can't quite explain how that happens, but when it does, it seems so simple and so realistic, you know: there's a rich golfer, or a trainer, or a jockey, why don't I just fuck him for five hundred quid, or spend the night for a grand. I won't feel anything anyway, the smack guaranteed that, so why not make a profit, you know?"
"And what was this about? This was all after Patrick disappeared: Was it a kind of grief, a distorted mourning for him?"
She bowed her head, and I thought she was crying. When she looked up at me, there was laughter in her eyes.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, it's just…I didn't really give you the full picture before, Ed. Not sure that I should have, worried I'd scare you off. 'I really like you, come in for coffee, but first listen to my life as a smackhead and a hooker.' Above and beyond on a first date, don't you think? But…I don't know, is the answer. I don't know what happened then. What I can tell you about is what happened with Patrick. What happened to By Your Leave."
"I thought you already had."
"That was a version."
"Let me try my version," I said. "Patrick Hutton was getting paid by Leo Halligan, possibly fronting for George, possibly acting on his own, to hold various horses back, dope them or otherwise interfere with them. At Thurles that day, Leo wanted a winner; F.X. wanted to lengthen the odds for Leopardstown; Hutton was caught between them, so he made it obvious he was holding the horse up to throw the blame onto F.X., but also to show Leo he couldn't be bossed around."
"Sort of, but not quite. In a way, Patrick did exactly what he was told to that day; he just did it too well, too publicly, he brought down too much attention on the sport. And on the fix. In truth, at this stage, F.X. and Leo were pretty much in league. F.X. didn't feel you could hold a horse like By Your Leave back, it was better to use her as a flagship for the other Tyrrell rides, you know, let her win, to hell with the odds, and let the glory drip through to the other horses in the stable. And Leo agreed. But this particular race, George had a lot of money laid against By Your Leave. So the word came down to hold the horse back."
"And Hutton rebelled?"
"Patrick was a hothead. He was a bit of a fucking eejit. In fairness to him, it was never going to be easy, unless you out and out doped the horse, and they'd heard she was going to be drug-tested. But Patrick didn't even try."
"Why would F. X. Tyrrell put up with this? What did George Halligan have on F.X.?"
Miranda grinned, and stubbed her cigarette out in some bacon rind. I stared at this picture, trying to remember where I had seen it before.
"Leo was a busy boy in those days. F. X. Tyrrell picked him and Patrick from St. Jude's to be apprentices. And then he wanted extra ser vices. Well, Patrick wasn't into that. But Leo was."
"And F.X. was, you're saying."
"Oh yeah. Did Jackie not tell you?"
"She just said it never really happened for them."