The Wake - Table of contents

The Wake - afters (13)

The first thing I saw when I closed the door of the flat was Kitty Birch right in my face swinging on the hook. Instrument of divine torture. Spanking new, Aisling told me laughing the first time she showed it to me. And still freeze-framed on the wall outside the bedroom door were two policemen and their blurred batons over my head, like fans winnowing me away at ten past four, fifth of October, and me still hanging on to the no waiting sign.

“Sit down there and I’ll get yous something. Let me see. I only have whiskey. Hold on, there’s a bit of Bacardi left. And I think there’s Coke in the fridge. What do you say?” She looked at me first. “A drop of whiskey would be great,” I said. No harm loosening up. Only the one though. Any more and

“I’ll have a rum and Coke thanks,” Frances said.

Her squeaky voice was really getting to me. Everything about her was off-key, hair sticking up now like a squaddie in shock, face so pale you’d have thought she dipped it in a bag of flour, like gothic or something, shoulders up to her ears, eyes away back in her head, shapeless black jeans to go with the black polo she kept pulling up over her chin. That would be anxiety. Her night’s plans disrupted. I knew from the set of her face she could have seen me far but at the back of it all she was probably settling for three in the bed.

Aisling was stooped getting Coke from the fridge. “I see you still have the photo on the wall,” I said, heart going like mad. The pleated leather skirt had come up a fair bit showing most of the back of her legs as she bent and when she turned she caught me looking and blushed. “If I was a believer,” she said smoothing her skirt, “I’m sure I’d have Saint Antony or somebody like that up there but seeing I’m not ...”

“I was talking to a cop the other day,” I told her, “down at Kevin McLaughlin’s. You know, the car dealer on the Buncrana Road.”

“Right?” said Aisling. She handed us the drinks and sat beside the table-lamp which she then lighted. Her face had got thinner, I could see that now, and it wasn’t just the urchin hair that did it. And very pale. Ruby lipstick she had on brought out the paleness.

“Aye, friendly guy and all.”

“Why, does that surprise you?” said Frances. “That he was friendly?” She was challenging me. Looking back on it now it wasn’t surprising. I was a man and a rival to boot and she’d probably made up her mind that I was an outsider of the left-wing loony club. I blinked at her with this perplexed look on my face trying to make her feel foolish. I might as well have been blinking at Lenin’s statue. “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.

“You sounded as if you had them stereotyped, that’s all.”

“Stereotyped?” Fuck her. I’d rather be doubly incontinent than heaving up against this one. “I don’t know where you got that idea from.”

“That friend of yours down in the hotel. I gathered you were bosom buddies the way you were defending him. Well, birds of a —”

“I wasn’t exactly defending him dear. I was explaining him.”

I think the word dear got to her because she went even more rigid than she already was. Aisling intervened.

“Hey you two, take it easy. What were you saying Jeremiah? God it’s cold, isn’t it? I’m just feeling it now so I am.” She rose quickly and clicked the superser twice and then sat down again. The blue and yellow flame appeared, flickered and steadied. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

“Naw it was just that I changed to a Beetle recently and —”

“Oh I didn’t know you’d changed. What’s it like?”

“Great except when you’re turning a corner it’s like driving a ten ton lorry.”

“I heard that about them. But they’re very dependable aren’t they?”

“I dunno yet. I haven’t had it long enough yet to know.”

“But you were saying anyway.”

“Aye. This fella was asking me how I was managing with it and I told him I’d a problem getting used to the dip switch on the floor. You know the way in other cars you’ve got it up beside the steering. Anyway he started advising me about the dip because he had a Beetle himself and then he said I’m a policeman, maybe you won’t want to be talking to me when you hear that. I was sort of caught unawares and I said Not at all. I was thinking afterwards he could have been one of those guys up there on the wall.”

Aisling laughed. That tinkle again. The waves of heat quivered in the cold air and the faint smell of gas brought back our first time, the night of the fifth.