Emma Donoghue Two-Book Bundle (3 page)

The boy started to say something about turning down the sheets.

‘Get out of my room!’

The door crashed shut behind him.

Afterwards, when she had mopped herself up, Sarah scrubbed at the carpet with a damp facecloth. The mark was milky, unmistakable against the square of red wool. They’d think she and Padraic had done it right here on the floor.

She wanted to go down the corridor and find that porter. She longed to spit at another human being for the first time in her life. ‘Look, boyo,’ she would scream in his ear, ‘if I can make myself pregnant, I’m sure I can turn down my own sheets.’

But she hadn’t, had she? All she’d done was stained the carpet.

The funny thing was, now he’d started, the dirty thoughts wouldn’t stop coming. They raced merrily through his head. All the way down in the lift Padraic watched the other passenger in the mirrored wall. She was fifteen years too old for the red dress and black leather, but still, not bad at all. A hooker, or just somebody’s bit on the side? This hotel was a stranger place than it looked from the outside; behind all that fresh paint you’d never know what was going on. He shook his head to clear it as the lift glided to a stop. He let the woman get out first.

The Irish Bar was stuffed with people, singing rebel songs Padraic hadn’t heard in years; it seemed to be some sort of wake. After two whiskeys he felt superb. Relief and alcohol danced through his body together, while his hormones played ‘It Had to Be You’.

Tonight had demanded his all, and his all was what he had given. With a bit of luck, one lonely frustrated woman’s life would be transformed, and a little bit of his DNA would grow up next door to the Pacific Ocean. With a light tan and rollerblades …

There was his cousin, consulting a clipboard and talking to the barman. He shouldn’t have got so het up earlier; she was only taking an interest. He’d been in a bit of a state, he could admit that now. When he’d finished his third whiskey, Padraic gave a little wave, but Máire didn’t seem to see. He squeezed his way over and waited for a break in the conversation, then put his hand on her arm.

‘Hello again,’ she said.

‘It’s not what you think,’ he announced satirically.

‘Right.’ She seemed to be speaking to her clipboard.

‘No, really. I mean, yes, I’m here to meet a woman, obviously, but it’s about a hundred and eighty degrees opposite to what you’re obviously thinking.’

Máire looked up, and her eyes were hard. ‘Listen, Padraic, it’s none of my business.’

‘But the thing is, Carmel knows I’m here,’ he assured her, tugging at her sleeve. ‘Old school friend. Carmel set the whole thing up, in fact.’

His cousin looked slightly revolted, and he was just about to explain, when he remembered that he had promised both Carmel and Sarah never to tell a soul about their little arrangement. So he had to let go of Máire’s sleeve. She was out the door like a shot.

Knees against the bar, he idled over his next drink, planning how to describe the evening to his wife.
Oh, we got the business over with in the first ten minutes – nothing to it.
But he mustn’t make it sound like too much fun, either. Carmel was being remarkably kind to her friend, when you came to think about it – lending out her husband like a sort of pedigree stud. He savoured the image.

Funny, he thought. That old porter’s paging another Mr Dermott. Then two things occurred to Padraic: that it was him who was being paged, and that he was very nearly pissed. He’d only had a few, but then he’d forgotten to have dinner.

‘The lady upstairs would like to know when you’re coming back, sir,’ said the porter. A little too loudly and pointedly, Padraic thought.

He was up in room 101 in three minutes.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Sarah stuttered. ‘I can’t believe—’

He acted like a gentleman. He assured her it could happen to anyone. (Anyone, he mentally added, who made a habit of inseminating herself in hotel bedrooms.) He swore the stain would hoover out: ‘These people are professionals.’ (He could just imagine the chambermaid telling Máire that her cousin had spurted all over the carpet.) He grabbed the empty jar and headed back into the bathroom.

This time, Sarah said to herself, she’d stay calm. This time she’d lock the door. This time she’d get it right. And then tomorrow she’d be on her way back to Seattle, and …
Maybe. You never know. Carmel said it would happen.
This was still the right day. Her chances were pretty good.

Padraic popped his head out of the bathroom. Only now did she notice how dark red his face had gone. ‘I might be a little while.’

‘How many have you had?’ She didn’t mean it to sound quite so cutting, but she thought she had a right to know.

He leant on the doorjamb. All the softness went out of his voice. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

She shrugged.

‘I thought my shift was over, you know,’ he went on acidly. ‘As far as I knew you’d got what you wanted, you were finished with me, and I had the right to a drink.’

‘You’ve had more than one,’ she pointed out neutrally.

‘And if you’ll give me a minute,’ he shouted, ‘I can still fucking well get it up.’

They avoided each other’s eyes.

‘Jesus,’ he added, ‘no wonder …’

He turned to go back into the bathroom, but Sarah was on her feet. There was nothing she hated more than unfinished sentences. ‘No wonder what?’

‘No wonder you have to resort to this sort of carry-on.’

Her eyes stood out in her face. ‘You mean because no man would have me? Is that what you think?’

‘I never said that.’ Padraic was leaning his head against the doorjamb now. ‘It’s just, you must admit, you come on a bit strong.’

‘That’s because this is my last chance,’ she bawled at him.

He shifted on the spot. ‘Don’t say that. Sure, a fine-looking woman—’

‘Getting a man is easy,’ she spat.

He was taken aback. The pity in his eyes faded.

‘It’s having children with one that’s turned out to be impossible,’ she said between her teeth.

‘Why didn’t you and Eamonn—’

‘Because we were divorced by the time we were thirty. Then the guy I was with for six years after that didn’t happen to like children. You’re welcome to all the details.’ Sarah’s voice was shaking like a rope. ‘I’m thirty-eight years old. I’ve been paying a clinic thousands of dollars a month for fertility drugs that make me sick and frozen sperm that doesn’t work. What else do you suggest I do?’

He considered the carpet. ‘I was just … I suppose I was wondering why you left it so late.’

‘Oh, don’t give me that. Just don’t you dare.’ She felt breathless with rage. ‘How was I meant to know what I wanted at twenty-five? Men have no fucking idea. You’ll still be able to make a woman pregnant when you’re seventy!’

Padraic flinched at the thought.

After a minute, very quietly, he asked, ‘But sure … why me? Couldn’t you just have gone out one night and picked up a stranger?’

Sarah sat on the edge of the bed and wept. Her elbows dug into her thighs.

‘I didn’t want the child of some pickup,’ she said at last, very slowly, the words emerging like pebbles. ‘Quite apart from what else I might pick up from him.’ She waited till her voice had steadied enough for her to go on. ‘I wanted the child of a nice man, and all the nice men were taken.’

After a long minute, she felt the bed bounce as Padraic sat down beside her. ‘Not all, surely,’ he said after a minute. He sounded like a child who’d just been told the truth about Santa Claus.

Her smile came out a bit twisted. She turned her head. ‘Don’t worry about it, Padraic,’ she drawled. ‘I get by just fine without the husband and the SUV and the house in the suburbs.’

He didn’t know how to take that. She watched him staring at his shoes.

‘All I want is a child.’ Sarah said it softly. She was never so sure of anything in her life.

‘OK,’ he said after a minute. ‘I’ll have another bash.’ He stood up. ‘You haven’t seen me at my best tonight,’ he added hoarsely.

She gave a little sniff of amusement and wiped her eyes. ‘I suppose not.’

‘You try getting an erection in a toilet without so much as a copy of
Playboy.
I’m not seventeen any more, you know.’

Sarah giggled and blew her nose. ‘Sorry.’
Go on,
she told herself.
Make the offer.
‘Shall we just call the whole thing off, then?’

She could tell he was tempted. Just for a minute. Until he thought of what Carmel would say.

‘Not at all,’ said Padraic. He stood up. ‘A man’s gotta do.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m going back in there,’ he declared, ‘and I’m not coming back out empty-handed. You just lie down and think of Ireland.’

‘No,’ she said, jumping up, ‘I’ll go in the bathroom. You could do with a change of scenery.’

She handed him out his jar, then locked the door. She looked herself in the eye, then turned on the cold tap and washed the salt off her face.

Padraic stood before the wardrobe mirror and stared down into his trousers. Not an enticing sight. Visibly tired, old before its time. He eyed his face and counted his wrinkles. Salmon couldn’t eat after they mated, he remembered; they just shrivelled away. What was there left for him in this life, now he had served his time, genetically speaking?

But tonight’s job wasn’t quite over yet.

He felt utterly exhausted. Nerves, alcohol, and a fight to round it all off. But he had to rise to the occasion now.
Noblesse oblige.
He thought of Carmel’s last birthday. He’d been knackered from work, and half a bottle of champagne hadn’t helped, but he knew she wanted to be ravished, he could almost smell it off her. So he had claimed to be full of beans, and though it took an enormous effort, it was all right in the end. He’d known it would work. It always worked in the end, him and Carmel.

Padraic lay down on the bed. He wanted to be home in her arms.

This room had no more resources than the bathroom, really. He flicked through the TV channels (with the sound down, so Sarah wouldn’t think he was time wasting). Not a drop of tit-illation. After five minutes of
Dirty Dancing,
he realized he was finding Patrick Swayze far more appealing than the girl, and that raised such disturbance in the back of his head that he switched off the telly.

He lay down again and scanned the room. The prints were garish abstracts; nothing doing there. There was the phone, of course. If only he had memorized a number for one of those chat lines. He’d rung one once, in a hotel room much nastier than this one, somewhere in the North of England. All he remembered was that the woman on the line had a terribly royal-family accent, and spoke very, very slowly to bump up his bill.

If he rang downstairs and asked for the number of a chat line, he was sure to get Máire. She’d tell her mother. She’d probably tell
his
mother.

Padraic shut his eyes and tried out a couple of trusty old fantasies. Only they weren’t working any more. He wondered whether one traumatic evening had rendered him permanently impotent. He felt exhausted. Somehow the idea of having a voluntary sexual impulse seemed like a remnant of his youth. Maybe that was it, his lot.

All at once he knew what number to ring.

‘Hello there,’ said Carmel, and her voice was so warm he thought he could slip right into it and sleep. ‘Are you coming home soon?’

‘Any minute now. I just need a bit of help,’ he admitted.

‘Are you still at it?’

‘She spilt the first lot.’

Carmel let out a roar of laughter. ‘I should have warned you,’ she said. ‘When we shared a flat, Sarah was always knocking over cups of tea.’

‘Are you comparing my precious seed to a beverage, woman?’

‘The comparison is entirely in your favour.’ Her voice changed for a minute; her mouth moved away from the phone and he heard her say, ‘You go and brush your teeth, love. I’ll be up as soon as I’ve finished talking to Daddy.’

He wanted to tell her to say good night from him, but he wasn’t meant to be thinking like a daddy now.

Carmel’s voice was all his again now, going low like only she could do. For a respectable wife and mother she could sound like a shocking wee slut. ‘Are you ready for round two, big boy?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think I can.’

‘Can’t means won’t,’ she said in her best schoolmistress voice.

He laughed into the phone, very softly.

‘All right now,’ she crooned. ‘Enough of this nonsense. Shut your eyes.’

‘I just want to come home.’

‘You are home.’

‘I am?’

‘You’re home in your bed with me. Nothing fancy.’

‘Not a seedy motel?’

‘Not Finbar’s Hotel, either. We could never afford it. You’re home in bed with me and the kids are fast asleep and you’re flat on your back, with your hands above your head.’

‘Surrendering, like?’

‘Exactly.’

Carmel, he thought a few minutes later with the part of his mind that was overseeing the rest, should consider a career move. She could make a mint on one of those chat lines. And to think of all this lewdness being saved up for a big eejit like him. He kept his eyes squeezed shut and pretended his hands were hers. She always knew what to do. She was working him into a lather. She was going to make it all right.

Sarah was leaning against the sink, praying. It had been so long, she hardly remembered what to say. She got the words of the Hail Mary all arseways, she knew that much.
Blessed is the fruit
? Mostly what she said was
please.

The bathroom door opening made the loudest noise. Padraic’s grin split his face like a pumpkin. She seized the jar. Half as much as last time, but still, there must be a few million ambitious little wrigglers in there. She rushed over and lay down on the carpet.

‘Will you be all right now?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said, ‘you go on home.’

He gathered up the pile of presents for his boys. When he was at the door, he turned to give a little finger wave. She had already filled the syringe.

‘See you at Christmas, I suppose,’ he said. And then, ‘Fingers crossed.’

They both crossed their fingers and held them in the air.