Dublin 4 (24 page)

‘Gerry,’ she gasped at him.

‘Look, it’s a wedding. I don’t know people, I’m not relaxed, I’m not able to talk to them. Just three or four glasses and that’s it. It’s all
right
, tomorrow it’s back to the everyday business of drying out.’

‘I beg you …’ she said. He had held his glass out to a passing waiter.

‘What do you beg me?’ His voice had turned hard and the edge of it, the cutting edge, had a sneer as well. ‘What could you possibly beg from me, you who have everything?’

His voice was loud now and people were beginning to look at them. Emma felt the kind of dread and panic that she used to know as a child when she was at the carnival. She hated the carnival each year – the bumpers, the chairoplane and the ghost train. Most of all she hated the helter-skelter, and this is what it felt like now. Fast and furious and not knowing what lay ahead.

‘Could we go home, do you think?’ she asked faintly.

‘It’s only beginning,’ he said.

‘Please, Gerry, I’ll give you anything.’

‘Will you give me champagne, and fun and a bit of a laugh? No, you’ll give me a lecture and a flood of tears and then if I’m very good a piece of shepherd’s pie.’

‘No.’

‘What, no shepherd’s pie? Oh, that settles it, I’ll have to stay here.’

She whispered, ‘But the whole life, the plans … the plans. Gerry, you’ve been so good, God Almighty, five months and not a drop. If you were going to have a drink, why here, why at this place, why not with friends?’

‘I haven’t any friends,’ he said.

‘Neither have I,’ she said seriously. ‘I was thinking that not long ago.’

‘So.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll go and find us some.’

He was sick three times during the night, retching and heaving into the handbasin in their room. Next morning she brought him a pot of tea and a packet of aspirins, half a grapefruit and the
Irish Times
. He took them all weakly. There was a picture of the wedding they had been at, of the young couple. They looked smiling and happy. Emma sat down on the bed and began to pour tea.

‘Hey, it’s after nine, aren’t you going to work?’ he asked.

‘Not today. I’m taking the day off.’

‘Won’t they fire you? Recession and all that?’

‘I don’t think so. Not for one day.’

‘That’s the problem hiring married women, isn’t it, they have to stay at home and look after their babies?’

‘Gerry.’

‘You told them you’d no babies, but still here you are staying at home looking after one.’

‘Stop it, have your tea …’

His shoulders were shaking. His head was in his hands. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, poor poor Emma, I’m sorry. I’m so ashamed.’

‘Stop now, drink your tea.’

‘What did I do?’

‘We won’t talk about it now while you feel so rotten. Come on.’

‘I must know.’

‘No worse than before, you know.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, it’s hard to describe, general carry-on, a bit of singing. A bit of telling them that you had had the cure and you could cope with drink now, a servant not a master …’

‘Jesus.’

They were silent, both of them.

‘Go to work, Emma, please.’

‘No. It’s all right, I tell you.’

‘Why are you staying at home?’

‘To look after you,’ she said simply.

‘To do sentry duty,’ he said sadly.

‘No, of course not. It’s your decision, you know that well. I can’t be a gaoler. I don’t want to be.’

He took her hand. ‘I’m very very sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does. I just want you to get inside my head. Everything was so drab and hard and relentless. Same old thing. Dear Johnny, I don’t know whether you remember my work. Dear Freddie. Dear Everybody …’

‘Shush, stop.’

‘No thanks, I’ll have a Perrier water, no, thanks, I don’t drink, no, seriously, I’d prefer a soft drink, nothing anywhere, nothing, nothing. Do you blame me for trying to colour it up a bit, just once, with somebody else’s champagne? Do you? Do you?’

‘No, I don’t. I didn’t realise it was so grey for you. Is it all the time?’

‘All the bloody time, all day, every day.’

She went downstairs then and sat in the kitchen. She sat at the kitchen table and decided that she would leave him. Not now, of course, not today, not even this year. She would wait until Helen’s fourteenth birthday perhaps, in June. Paul would be sixteen, nearly seventeen then. They would be well able to decide for themselves what to do. She made herself a cup of instant coffee and stirred it thoughtfully. The trouble about most people leaving home is that they do it on impulse. She wouldn’t do that. She’d give herself plenty of time and do it right. She would find a job first, a good job. It was a pity about RTE, but it was too close, too near, in every sense. She could rise there and get on if she had only herself to think of. But no, of course not, she had to
get away. Maybe London, or some other part of Dublin anyway, not on her own doorstep. It would cause too much excitement.

She heard him upstairs brushing his teeth. She knew that he would go out for a drink this morning. There was no way she could play sentry. Suppose he said he wanted to go out and buy something; she could offer to get it for him, but he would think up a job that he could only do himself.

There were maybe another thirty-five or forty years to go. She couldn’t spend them with her heart all tied up in a ball like a clenched fist. She could not spend those years half-waking, half-sleeping in an armchair, wondering how they would bring him in. And even more frightening was sitting watching and waiting in case he broke out, the watching and waiting of the last five months. She would be blamed of course … selfish, heartless, no sense of her duty. Could you believe that anyone would do it? Emma believed that quite a lot of people could do it, and would if the occasion presented itself, or if the situation was as bad at home as hers was.

She heard Gerry come downstairs.

‘I brought down the tray,’ he said like a child expecting to be praised.

‘Oh, that’s grand, thanks.’ She took it from him. He hadn’t touched the grapefruit, nor the tea.

‘Look, I’m fine. Why don’t you go into work? Seriously, Emma, you’d only be half an hour late.’

‘Well, I might, if you’re sure …’

‘No, I’m in great shape now,’ he said.

‘What are you going to do this morning, follow up some of those letters?’

‘Yes, yes.’ He was impatient.

‘I might go in.’ She stood up. His face was pure relief.

‘Do. You’d feel better. I know you and your funny ways.’

‘Listen before I go. There’s a job going in Paddy’s business, only an assistant at the moment, but if you were interested he said that he’d be delighted for you to come in, for a year or two, say, until you got yourself straight.’ She looked at him hopefully.

He looked back restlessly. He didn’t know that so much of his future and hers rested on the reply he gave.

‘An assistant? A dogsbody to Paddy, Paddy of all people. Jesus, he must be mad to suggest it. He only suggested it so that he could crow. I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.’

‘Right. I just thought you should know.’

‘Oh, I’m not saying a word against you, it’s that eejit Paddy.’

‘Well, take it easy.’

‘You’re very good to me, not giving out, not telling me what an utter fool I made of myself, of both of us.’

‘There’s no point.’

‘I’ll make it up to you. Listen, I have to go into
town for a couple of things this morning, is there anything you …?’

She shook her head wordlessly and went to the garage to take out her bicycle. She wheeled it to the gate and looked back and waved. It didn’t matter that people would blame her. They blamed her already. A man doesn’t drink like that unless there’s something very wrong with his marriage. In a way her leaving would give Gerry more dignity. People would say that the poor divil must have had a lot to put up with over the years.

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