‘Bray’s a great place,’ Mangan said.
‘The pits,’ Carmel corrected.
You could always tell by the feel of a girl on your arm, Mangan said to himself. Full of sauce the fat one was, no more a nurse than he was. Gallagher wondered if they had a flat, if there’d be anywhere to go when the moment came.
‘We could go into the bar of the hotel,’ the other one was saying, the way girls did when they wanted to extract their due.
‘What hotel’s this?’ he asked.
‘The International.’
‘Oh, listen to Miss Ritzy!’
They turned and walked back along the promenade, guided by the girls to the bar in question. Gin and tonic the girls had. Gallagher and Mangan had Smithwick’s.
‘We could go into town later,’ Carmel casually suggested. ’There’ll be celebrations on.’
‘We’ll give the matter thought,’ Mangan said.
Another couple of pulls of the tie, Mangan said to himself, and who’d have been the wiser? You get to that age, you’d had your life anyway. As it was, the old geezer had probably conked it on his own, tied up like that. Most likely he was stiffening already.
‘Isn’t there a disco on in Bray?’ he suggested. ‘What’s wrong with a slap-up meal and then the light fantastic?’
The girls were again amused at his way of putting it. Gallagher was glad to hear the proposal that they should stay where they were. If they went into town the whole opportunity could fall asunder. If you didn’t end up near a mott’s accommodation you were back where you started.
‘You’d die of the pace of it in Bray,’ Marie said, and Mangan thought a couple more gins and a dollop of barley wine with their grill and chips. He edged his knee against Marie’s. She didn’t take hers away.
‘Have you a flat or rooms or something?’ Gallagher asked, and the girls said they hadn’t. They lived at home, they said. They’d give anything for a flat.
A few minutes later, engaged at the urinals in the lavatory, the two youths discussed the implications of that. Mangan had stood up immediately on hearing the news. He’d given a jerk of his head when the girls weren’t looking.
‘No bloody go,’ Gallagher said.
‘The fat one’s on for it.’
‘Where though, man?’
Mangan reminded his companion of other occasions, in car parks and derelict buildings, of the time they propped up the bar of the emergency exit of the Adelphi cinema and went back in afterwards, of the time in the garden shed in Drumcondra.
Gallagher laughed, feeling more optimistic when he remembered all that. He winked to himself, the way he did when he was beginning to feel drunk. He spat into the urinal, another habit at this particular juncture. The seashore was the place; he’d forgotten about the seashore.
‘Game ball,’ Mangan said.
The memory of the day that had passed seemed rosy now — the empty streets they had hurried through, the quiet houses where their business had been, the red blotchiness in the old man’s face and neck, the processions on the television screen. Get a couple more gins into them, Mangan thought again, and then the barley wine. Stretch the fat one out on the soft bloody sand.
‘Oh, lovely,’ the fat one said when more drinks were offered.
Gallagher imagined the wife of a businessman pleading down a telephone, reporting that her captors intended to slice off the tips of her little fingers unless the money was forthcoming. The money was a package in a telephone booth, stashed under the seat. The pictures of Spain began again.
‘Hi,’ Carmel said.
She’d been to put her lipstick on, but she didn’t look any different.
‘What d’you do really?’ she asked on the promenade.
‘Unemployed.’
‘You’re loaded for an unemployed.’ Her tone was suspicious. He watched her trying to focus her eyes. Vaguely, he wondered if she liked him.
‘A man’s car needed an overhaul,’ he said.
Ahead of them, Mangan and Marie were laughing, the sound drifting lightly back above the swish of the sea.
‘He’s great sport, isn’t he?’ Carmel said.
‘Oh, great all right.’
Mangan turned round before they went down the steps to the shingle. Gallagher imagined his fancy talk and the fat one giggling at it. He wished he was good at talk like that.
‘We had plans made to go into town,’ Carmel said. ‘There’ll be great gas in town tonight.’
When they began to cross the shingle she said it hurt her feet, so Gallagher led her back to the concrete wall of the promenade and they sat down with their backs to it. It wasn’t quite dark. Cigarette packets and chocolate wrappings were scattered on the sand and pebbles. Gallagher put his arm round Carmel’s shoulders. She let him kiss her. She didn’t mind when he twisted her sideways so that she no longer had her back to the wall. She felt limp in his arms, and for a moment Gallagher thought she’d passed out, but then she kissed him back. She murmured something and her arms pulled him down on top of her. He realized it didn’t matter about the fancy talk.
‘When then?’ Marie whispered, pulling down her clothes. Five minutes ago Mangan had promised they would meet again; he’d sworn there was nothing he wanted more; the sooner the better, he’d said.
‘Monday night,’ he added now. ‘Outside the railway station. Six.’ It was where they’d picked the two girls up. Mangan could think of nowhere else and it didn’t matter anyway since he had no intention of being anywhere near Bray on Monday night.
‘Geez, you’re great,’ Marie said.
On the bus to Dublin they did not say much. Carmel had spewed up a couple of mouthfuls, and in Gallagher’s nostrils the sour odour persisted. Marie in the end had been a nag, going on about Monday evening, making sure Mangan wouldn’t forget. What both of them were thinking was that Cohen, as usual, had done best out of the bit of business there’d been.
Then the lean features of Mr. Livingston were recalled by Mangan, the angry eyes, the frown. They’d made a mess of it, letting him see them, they’d bollocksed the whole thing. That moment in the doorway when the old man’s glance had lighted on his face he had hardly been able to control his bowels. ‘I’m going back there,’ his own voice echoed from a later moment, but he’d known, even as he spoke, that if he returned he would do no more than he had done already.
Beside him, on the inside seat, Gallagher experienced similar recollections. He stared out into the summery night, thinking that if he’d hit the old man on the back of the skull he could have finished him. The thought of that had pleased him when they were with the girls. It made him shiver now.
‘God, she was great,’ Mangan said, dragging out of himself a single snigger.
His bravado obscured a longing to be still with the girls, ordering gins at the bar and talking fancy. He would have paid what remained in his pocket still to taste her lipstick on the seashore, or to hear her gasp as he touched her for the first time.
Gallagher tried for his dream of Mr. Big, but it would not come to him. ‘Yeah,’ he said, replying to his friend’s observation.
The day was over; there was nowhere left to hide from the error that had been made. As they had at the time, they sensed the old man’s shame and the hurt to his pride, as animals sense fear or resolution. Privately, each calculated how long it would be before the danger they’d left behind in the house caught up with them.