“Loyola loved a wee drop of port.”
Toasted,
“Slainte.”
And she took a homicidal swallow of the drink. Her eyes danced in her head. I apologized with,
“I’m so sorry, I probably shouldn’t have overdone the sugar.”
She gasped,
“Oh no, ’tis lovely.”
She took another large dose and I could see it physically relax her. I said,
“Ah, Loyola, those were the days, and when I entered the Guards and he the Seminary, we still stayed in touch.”
She managed,
“You’re a Guard?”
She was relaxing, I said,
“Retired now but I do miss it.”
The latter being the only truth I told.
I asked,
“So where is the bold man himself?”
Her eyes kept flicking to the small framed photo that was near hidden behind the host of other frames. I rattled on about the great times we’d had fishing and other nonsense. Finishing her drink, she asked,
“Another?”
“Lovely,”
I said.
Soon as she headed for the kitchen, a barely noticeable stagger in her walk, I was up and grabbed the frame, put it in my pocket.
On returning back, she said,
“I left out the sugar, is that all right?”
I nodded, asked,
“So where do I find my old friend?”
She looked to her left, i.e., lying.
I’d watched Season One of Lie to Me.
She said, and slowly, that careful dance among your words you know are trying to be slurred,
“He’s away on parish business.”
I acted irritated, pulled my phone from my pocket, looked at the screen, said,
“Please excuse me Maura, I’ll have to take this.”
That she hadn’t heard the ringtone was overridden by the booze.
I said to the silent phone,
“What? Now?”
I nearly believed there was someone at the other end, acted like
I’d rung off, said,
“Emergency at home, I’ll have to run I’m afraid.”
I was up and leaving, the drink had her rooted to the chair, she tried to rise, failed,
I said,
“I’ll be back next week and we can have a proper chat.”
And I was outta there.
We must get into step, a lockstep toward the prison of death.
There is no escape.
The weather will not change.
– Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Ridge knew her marriage was over. As a gay woman, she’d married Anthony because of who he was.
He had serious clout. Played golf with the people who ran the city. Anthony simply wanted a mother for his teenage daughter and a lady of the manor for functions. Sex just wasn’t in the picture. Ridge looked good, knew how to behave, and he believed, like breaking in a horse, he could train her into some semblance of aristocracy.
Before the marriage, Ridge had lived in a small house at the bottom of Devon Park. On a quiet day, you could almost hear the ocean. It was an oasis of gentility between Salthill and the city. She loved that house and just couldn’t bear to sell it. She rented it to an ex-lover named Jenny. More and more, she was drawn back to her old life, to intimacy and some remnants of integrity.
Two years ago, as a favor to Jack, she’d gone on a routine call. Some girls were bullying a Down syndrome child and she intended to give a quiet caution to the girls in this family. Neither she nor Jack realized their father was an up-and-coming thug. He’d beaten Ridge senseless, put her in the hospital.
The mastectomy she’d undergone a year before worsened her condition. She’d heard that Jack went after the thug in his own inimitable fashion and, for once, she was glad. Her recovery was slow and painful. She resolved never to be defenceless again. The hypocrisy of her life had begun in earnest then. Jack’s treatment of the thug was never legal, she knew that. She never openly acknowledged it. She was still a Guard and Jack persisted with his philosophy of the law being for courtrooms and justice being for alleyways.
Her marriage had paid dividends, she was almost… almost ashamed to get the rank of sergeant. Torn asunder by that incident and the coldness of her marriage, she had three times a week begun to drive to Devon Park and park outside her old house. Same time those three days. Jack had always warned: never set up a routine; makes you a target. When her shift finished, it was as though her car headed for Devon Park. With a deep longing, she imagined Jenny, curled up on the sofa, dressed in her old track suit, eating chicken curry and watching reruns of The L Word. Her visits became so regular she began to notice the neighbors. Two men, in their late sixties, bang on nine, they’d walk their dogs, head for the Bal, have one pint and stroll back. There was something very comforting in the regularity of their habit.
When the floods came, Ridge, like all the Public Sectors, was stretched to the limit. One Tuesday, after a day of ferocious depression, dealing with people who’d lost everything, she just could not face Anthony, who’d ask, without the slightest interest,
“How was work dear?”
And before she could spill all the pain and distress, he’d add,
“A dry sherry perhaps, my sweet?”
She’d want to scream,
“Wake the fuck up, people’s homes are being washed away.”
But he never actually asked about her work. Once, bone weary from the day, she’d tried,
“Don’t you ever wonder about what I do?”
Anything to break the impression of living in a Jane Austen novel.
He’d raised one eyebrow in that infuriating manner, his tone one of mild reproach, said,
“My dear, I’m sure you do it awfully well.”
Then took out his pocket watch, a fucking pocket watch! uttered,
“Gosh, is that the time? I must to my chamber, we’re riding with the Athenry Hunt at seven.”
The country was submerged in water but these barbarians insisted on hunting down and allowing a pack of hounds to tear asunder a terrorized fox. She’d jumped up, not quite startling him but definitely getting his attention. His eyes met hers. Usually he’d gaze at a spot just above her right shoulder. She stomped to the drinks cabinet and near shouted,
“Jesus Christ, you’ve every spirit on the planet except Jameson.”
He said,
“There’s a rather fine claret I fetched from the cellar.”
She glared at him, wanting to bury him in the fucking cellar.
Grabbing a bottle of Glenfiddich, she poured it into a large, beautiful, handcrafted crystal tumbler.
An heirloom from sweet old Mumsie!
Turned to him, drained the glass, tried not to shudder when it hit her raw stomach, asked,
“Guess what I got in the post this morning?”
Paused.
“Darling?”
With that tolerant smile as outrider, he answered,
“Not the foggiest dear.”
Her head was awash in reptiles of resentment, rage, confusion.
She bored into his eyes, said,
“A headstone.”
He was slightly bemused, tried,
“A silly prank, no doubt.”
Oh, Christ, she thought. She really needed to talk to Jack. Anthony was waiting expectantly, geared for some mildly verbal chess. Her anger drained away. She finished the whiskey, turned on her heel, and went to her room. When Anthony’s daughter had been around, it had been easier. You could put a Band-Aid on a seeping wound. But the girl was at finishing school in yeah… Switzerland.
Ridge had barely finished any school.
To aid her recovery from the savage beating, to vent and to try to restore her shattered confidence, she’d enrolled in a grueling kickboxing class. She was next to hopeless for a few weeks and the other students sneered at her. Drove her on. Then one day, it began to click. She took down the best student, and the Master, who claimed to be from Tibet, but was actually from Shantalla, actually bowed to her.
Not only did it get her in shape, it emptied the simmering anger. On days when her muscles ached and her spirit cried,
“Stop!” she’d mutter,