This Charming Man (44 page)

Cigarettes punctuated everything; they declared things started and they declared things completed. Whenever I sat down to write an article, my starting ritualwas to have a cigarette. Since I’d given up, I hadn’t been able to type anything without a nagging feeling that I’d sneaked in ahead of the starter’s gun, that I shouldn’t have started
yet
. And when I finished the job, I had no sense of completion because a cigarette wasn’t there to declare the task done. In the seven long weeks since I’d become a non-smoker, I was perpetually troubled by the weight of unfinishedness, a sense that I was dragging around all of the jobs that weren’t properly completed.

But hard as it was, I couldn’t give in because even though I wasn’t a superstitious person, I couldn’t shake the black fear that if I went back on the cigarettes, Bid would die.

After I’d – eventually – filed my stories on Dee, I stopped off at the cinema – they have the biggest range – and bought Damien a big bag of pick’n’mix, shovelling in a hefty selection of cola bottles, gummy dinosaurs and jelly strawberries, to make up for abandoning him on a Sunday when he had a banjaxed knee, nicotine withdrawaland no sweets.

He was on the couch, looking grumpy and watching the twenty-four-hour World War Two Channel – not its officialname but, whatever it was, it seemed to run round-the-clock documentaries on the Nuremberg rallies and the bombing of Dresden – with his knee stretched out on a chair.

He looked up from the grainy images of troops landing in Normandy. ‘I tried ringing you!’

‘Sorry. I switched my phone off. I needed to focus.’

‘Did you bring me anything?’

I dropped the bag into his lap. ‘Present for you.’

‘For real?’ he said, his face creasing into a smile. ‘I was only joking, you never bring me anything.’

‘No wonder, when you’re so ungrateful.’

He rooted through the bag. ‘Top class, Grace. Fizzy pigs! A rare delicacy. They’re hard to come by.’

‘How’s the knee?’

‘Agony,’ he said through a mouthfulof pink pigs. ‘Have we any ice for it? Hey, catch.’ He tossed me a jelly bat from his bag and I lunged and actually managed to catch it between my teeth.

‘Christ,’ he said, clearly impressed. ‘I take it all back.’

He ran his eyes over me and something changed. He was looking at me, the way he perhaps hadn’t looked for a while: like he’d like to have sex with me. Feelings moved inside me, relief replacing anxiety.

‘Come here,’ he said, his eyes full of intent, and instead of telling him not to order me about, like I usually would, I moved closer.

The air was charged with the promise of sex – then Damien interrupted, ‘Hey, Bomber Command, while I think of it, how’re we fixed next Friday night?’

Alarm rose in me. ‘Why?’

‘Dinner with Juno and her husband.’

The sentence hung between us. We could really do without this.

A month ago, he’d actually gone to his school reunion – Damien, the man who’d often said that he ‘pitied’ those who felt such a need – and apparently had a great old wander down memory lane with Juno, laughing mistily eyed about all the arguments they’d had when he’d insisted on working but she’d wanted to go out and get scuttered.

All fairly harmless and the only thing that made me nervous – and no, it wasn’t the fact that they were once in love and married – was that Juno smoked.

A lot, according to Damien, who’d staggered in from the reunion drunk and sentimental, waxing lyrical about Juno’s forty-a-day habit, and relating a rambling, incoherent story about how she’d sneaked a cigarette at the dinner table and set off an overhead sprinkler and drenched some poor sap called ‘No-balls Nolan’ and lied to the hotel manager when he asked if she’d been smoking, and how it was all so funny, he’d thought he was going to be sick…

Since we’d had our nicotine supply cut off at the knees, we were both irritable from withdrawal but, in addition, I suspected that Damien resented me: it was my aunt who had lung cancer, it was my mother who’d shamed us into stopping.

Suddenly, like a lifeline, I thought of something. ‘Won’t you be in Hungary on Friday?’ Covering the elections there.

‘I’ll be just back. Flying in Friday afternoon.

Ah feck
.

‘Grace, are you okay?’ he asked. ‘You look a bit…‘

‘I’m fine.’

He patted the couch. ‘Sit down beside me here and have some cola bottles – I can offer you both the fizzy and the non-fizzy variety.’

My mood hovered on a knife edge, it could have gone either way – butter-side up, butter-side down – but I decided to smile. I was being paranoid. Not something I was prone to (except sometimes when I was premenstrualand turned into
The Last Days of Stalin)
. I rewound my day seeking the nub of the badness: Paddy de Courcy.

‘And when you’ve eaten your fill of sugar and E numbers,’ Damien said, ‘might I suggest some light sexual activity?’

He kissed me. He tasted of artificialstrawberry flavouring. Then he tasted of him. A spark lit inside me. I was overtaken by a sudden rush of need and I felt an answering hunger in him.

He stopped and looked into my eyes, my dirty desire mirrored in his. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘What happened there?’

He kissed me again and we were snogging like teenagers. Neck twists and direction changes and clawing at clothing, almost unable to decide what to take off first.

He reached for his belt buckle, and pulled himself out, already erect. I tore off my sweatshirt and unclipped my bra.

He reached for my nipples and said, ‘Christ! My knee.’

‘Stay still.’ What was the best way to do this? Because there was no way we weren’t. ‘I’ll go on top.’

‘How do people have sex when they’re in plaster?’ he gasped.

‘Some people actually have a fetish about it.’ I got up and pulled off my trackie bottoms and pants. ‘About being encased in a full-body plaster cast. They’re called “casties”. Remember, I did a story on them.’

I didn’t know why I was telling him this, I couldn’t care less.

He took my hips in his hands, to guide me down onto him. ‘Could we get a fetish?’

‘Right now?’ My knees straddled his thighs. My breath was coming in shallow pants. ‘You pick your moments.’

‘Not now. Sometime.’

‘Sure. Anything in mind?’ The tip of him was just touching me.

‘Nothing off the top of my head.’

‘Well, have a think.’ He was pushing up into me, I was pushing down
onto him. Just enough resistance to make me feel swollen and tight. He moaned. He was filling me up and out and in. ‘Get back to me if you come up with anything good.’

‘Where are you going?’ Damien asked, as I tiptoed out of the bedroom.

‘Why aren’t you asleep?’

‘Just getting a nicotine patch.’

In the darkened living room, I rummaged in my bag and switched my phone on. I knew he’d ring me. That’s why I’d kept my mobile off all day.

There were three voicemails. I put the phone to my ear and listened. Two were from Damien, wondering where I was.

Then I heard his voice. Just three terse words. ‘Call me. Please.’

In a way, the green-handbag days were the worst. Although black (unrelenting negativity; a proclivity for despair) was bad, as indeed was red (unfettered rage), at least you knew where you were. Not that beige was exactly pleasant – benign though the colour was, it made her over-breezy and smart-alecy.

But green – green was an unknown quantity. Green warned us to expect dark, cryptic mutterings, abrupt reversals of opinion, continually shifting goalposts. On a green-handbag day she could praise you and mean it. Or she could praise you and then screech, ‘And if you believe that, you still believe in the tooth fairy!’ Which wasn’t so bad when she shouted it at me or TC – we could take it – but it had been uncomfortable to witness when she’d yelled it at Oscar, her five-year-old, on Bring Your Son To Work Day.

Monday morning and my byline was on the front page of the
Spokesman
– admittedly shared with Jonno Fido from news, but that didn’t take the lustre off it. Getting your byline on the front page was like having a number-one record. Obviously the hard-news journos were the Westlife of the newspaper world – any old shite would bag them the top spot. But for features writers like me it happened less frequently, which made it all the more satisfying.

In addition, spread over pages two and three, I had an in-depth profile of Dee.
And
for page five I’d written a spirited opinion piece headed, ‘It Would Never Happen To A Man.’

TC watched me make my way to my desk. ‘The
Spokesman
by Grace Gildee,’ he said.

‘You’re flavour of the day,’ Lorraine observed. ‘Jacinta will be thrilled for you.’

We all snorted at the unlikeliness of that, but nothing could bring me down. I was in love with my job. I was thrilled by it all – the sound of phones ringing, keys clicking, voices chatting. I was so in the moment I was convinced I actually felt the hum of activity in my veins.

‘What colour handbag?’ TC asked.

‘Are we putting money on this?’ Lorraine asked. ‘Or is it just for fun?’

‘Fun.’

‘Green,’ Lorraine said.

‘Green,’ Tara agreed.

‘Not yellow?’ My little joke. Yellow meant ice-cream, sometimes even Coke floats.

‘Black,’ Clare said.

‘Ah no,’ TC said. ‘No, no. She’s Head of Features. Grace doing so well is good for her empire.’

‘But it kills her to have to acknowledge someone else’s success, even one of her own,’ Clare said. ‘I’m not saying she’s a bad person…’

‘Not now you’re not,’ Tara said. ‘But you’d want to hear you in Dinnegans on a Friday night after three vodka and tonics.’

‘I’m going for green,’ Lorraine said.

‘Me too,’ said Tara.

‘And me,’ said TC.

‘And me,’ I said.

‘I’m sticking with black,’ Clare said.

‘I think you’re all being silly,’ Joanne said. ‘It’s only a handbag.’

Everyone seemed to withdraw a little from Joanne. She’d never really fit in.

∗

Madonna’s PR had already asked for examples of my work. Then she’d asked for a few more. Then I’d had to write an essay on why I loved
Madonna. If she’d moved on to checking circulation figures, I must have done okay. This was looking very positive. God! I was seized by a mixture of terror and elation. What if it happened? What if it actually, really happened? I would meet Madonna. I mean, Madonna!

‘Here’s Jacinta,’ TC whispered.

‘I can’t see the bag, the photocopier is in the way.’

‘And she’s got her coat over it.’

‘I think it’s green.’

‘No, it’s black.’

‘No, it’s green.’

It was green.

‘Very well done on the Dee Rossini coverage,’ Jacinta said briskly.

In silence I waited for the stinger.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘So what happened to “thank you”?‘

‘Thank you.’

I followed her into her office.

‘You needn’t think you can sit back on your laurels and freewheel today. You’re only as good as your next story. What’ve you got for me?’

‘Romance at office Christmas part – ’

‘It’s only the seventeenth of November!’

‘The average spend on Christmas pres –’

‘No!’

‘The homeless at Christmas.’

‘Is it uplifting?’

‘… No. They’re homeless.’

‘And it’s still only the seventeenth of November. No! This is what I mean –’ she muttered. Her eyes slid past me and whatever she saw caused her to freeze as though she’d been turned into a pillar of salt.

I looked behind me. It was Casey Kaplan, in his tight black jeans and tangled hair.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Jacinta quivered with murky emotion.

‘I work here.’ He smiled a wide, cocksure smile.

‘I thought you were allergic to daylight. We’ve never had the pleasure of your company at this hour of the morning before.’

Casey brought with him an aura of cigarettes and pubs and good times. He’d obviously come straight from a party or club.

His slipstream wafted through the office and when the smell reached Jacinta, she leapt to her feet. ‘Get back!’ She flapped her arms. ‘You’re smelly!’

‘Someone wound your top too tight this morning, Jacinta.’ Casey laughed and lounged away.

‘Thanks, Casey,’ TC muttered. ‘That’ll definitely calm her down.’

From the far side of the office, I heard Casey ask, ‘Morning, Rose. Coleman in?’

‘Yes,’ Rose said nervously. She was Big Daddy’s PA and guardian of the gateway. ‘But he’s not to be disturbed.’

‘It’s okay. He just texted me. He’s expecting me.’

My phone rang. It was my parents’ number. I didn’t know how, but whenever they called, they seemed to be able to make the ringing sound more urgent than normal. They always got my attention.

‘It’s Bingo,’ Dad said.

‘For the love of Christ.’

‘He’s in Wales.’

‘Wales? Wales the country? Across the sea? How?’

‘He got the ferry.’

‘How?’

‘We assume he made his way to the terminaland boarded when everyone else did. And got off when everyone else did. A civic-minded Welsh citizen, male, found him on the open road, headed for Caernarvon and rang the number on his collar.’

‘Didn’t they ask to see his ticket when he got on the boat?’

‘We’re assuming that he attached himself to a family group, passed himself off as one of their members and slipped in on their group boarding pass.’

I was silent. You had to admire the dog. They should change his name to Marco Polo.

‘The fast ferry leaves from Dun Laoghaire at four,’ Dad said. ‘It takes only ninety-nine minutes to reach Holyhead. Or so they say. I suspect that that is a Stakhanovite ideal, formulated to entice the credulous ferry-goer. I’d put money – if I had any – that, in actuality, human error, inefficiencies, inclement weather conditions, etc., extend that estimate indefinitely.’