Breakfast on Pluto (17 page)

At which point her eyes snapped open, vengeance totally incomplete! ‘O no!’ she cries. To find there – Routledge! – with a big tin mug of steaming tea
and a beaming smile that said: ‘You’re free!’

Which was a bad thing, of course (from now on I think I’ll just be honest and write for myself – somehow I have this sneaking feeling my doctor won’t be in
this morning – ha ha!), because although I did dream a lot of nutty stuff and get real vengeance thoughts and trails of retribution into my head, at least in jail the sedatives weighed me
down a little and I didn’t feel like I did the very minute I got outside – yes! – stuffed into a ballista and sent rocketing a couple of million miles across the sky with not the
faintest idea as to where I was going to land, and worse still, knowing when I got there, my legs would be like string again and there’d be someone there to say: ‘What do
you
want here?’

But, try as I might, my protests came to nothing, with the result that Routledge and Wallis, they literally had to push me out of the station, dressed like Gilbert O’Sullivan, the pop
singer, in a pile of old ex-prisoner’s hand-me-downs they’d found in a locker and saying: ‘You stay off the game now, you hear us, Pat?’

Which of course they knew I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing, not only because I had to earn some fast cash to do myself up a treat (I felt horrible in those rags!) but I think
because I was secretly hoping that one of these days I’d look up and there they’d be, Routledge and old Wallis, suddenly bursting into a run and going: ‘After him!’ dragging
me back to prison to make me feel cosy and rooted and snug and always on hand, my two custodians to say: ‘Well, at least he can say
we
know him!’

As off I went about my business – to ply my trade, in other words – and you should have seen the face of the city gent when he saw me in my trousers!

‘Why it’s like making love to Charlie Chaplin!’ he says and as I took the crisp notes, assured him I had to agree.

Quite what I was doing entertaining so many baldy chaps to get the money for my fare home to Tyreelin, there is no point in me trying to explain because I was as high as a kite and that was all
there was to it! I think my prison dreams had turned my head and I was seriously beginning to think I
was
about to embark on some crazy hallucinatory vengeance trail!

One thing
was
certain – I definitely did look a treat, for the fellow who was sitting beside me on the aeroplane (Yes! I said – why not! Blow the ugly ferry!
As I’d made an absolute fortune in just one week!) couldn’t do enough for me, leaning over nearly every minute asking me was I enjoying the flight and would I like something, another
drink perhaps and what did I think of London and God knows what else! What didn’t occur to me, so excited was I by everything and the speed with which it seemed to be happening, was that I
was long out of the ballista spoon and indeed had been fired a lot higher and further than I had ever dreamt of, even in my giddiest and most anxious moments! For although I knew that the act I was
putting on for him, fiddling with rings and batting lashes and so forth, whilst I might have done it in
hotel-room
privacy with a customer, up until then, would never have, in a million
years, in public, never never never! (At least I’d had that much sense!) Now I just couldn’t sit still, plucking at my nylons, my earrings. And the puckering! Then when he said:
‘You know something?’ You look just like Lynsey de Paul.’ (I had pencilled in a beauty spot!) – why it drove me absolutely wild!

And why in a way I was possibly the worst person Charlie could have got in with at that particular time, because I was completely – I don’t deny it – obsessed
with myself – changing my clothes three times a day for heaven’s sake, sometimes so busy drawing lip-lines I wouldn’t hear a word she said.

But in another way that isn’t true – it isn’t true at all in fact! Because only for me, she wouldn’t have had
anyone
, never mind a place to stay! Who was it went
to the auctioneers and rented out the bungalow? The poor man couldn’t believe it when he saw the amount of money I had! The eyes nearly popped out of his head! ‘Who do you want it
for?’ he said, as he counted out the notes. ‘Oh, just me and Charlie,’ I said, not passing the slightest bit of notice, which I soon regretted when I saw the way he looked at me
but fortunately I had the good sense to, straight away, interject: ‘Oh – and a few others too – bank girls!’

Which I’m sure he didn’t believe, of course – as indeed why should he when it was naught but a pack of lies! I knew no bank girls! But what I did know was that Charlie Kane
needed somewhere to live and quick too because if she stayed out any more nights, the silly cow would die of hypothermia!

What happened, you see, was that after Irwin’s murder she was so bad she’d missed all her exams and then when she went back to repeat the year got involved with drugs which they
found out about and asked her to leave the college – after which there was another furious row with her parents, ending up with her being thrown out of the house. It really is hard to believe
that’s how it happened, just as it was to believe that the half-scarecrow I’d met tumbling around the village with a bottle of vodka was the same old Charlie I’d known all my life
– but it was!

You should have seen the face of her mother when we went down looking for her belongings! She turned as white as a ghost when she saw me and backed off as if I was going to assault her or
something. ‘Is that you, Patrick?’ she said. ‘Patrick Braden?’ and when I said yes, dropped her voice and said, shakily, but still looking me up and down: ‘I’ll
get them for you.’ I just stood there on the doorstep, adjusting my skirt and twisting buttons on my blouse, waiting for her to invite me in – which she didn’t!

The best thing I ever did for Charlie was buying her the dog to keep her company because it worked like I knew it would – it really did. He was a little cross-bred terrier (Pomeranian and
Jack Russell, they told me) with bat ears that she called ‘Squire’, after Chris Squire who played bass with Yes, and who, before the wicked bastards killed him, had given her hours and
hours of pleasure!

Because that’s what they are – wicked! Wicked, wicked, wicked – all of them – to do a thing like that!

No matter, like I said to Terence, what misunderstandings there might have been about Martina Sheridan, and these things can happen – everyone knows they can! – they’re one
thing! But to do the like of that – strangle a poor little dog with barbed wire!

Except that, as Terence got me to see – how much I have to thank that man for, I can’t begin to tell you – it makes no sense to keep going: ‘
Them!
’

(Was it the whole town who had it in for you and who arranged to do such a terrible thing to the dog?)

Of course it wasn’t! A small minority was responsible for that – the sort of people who weren’t happy themselves and seemed to have nothing better to do than dedicate their
lives to making sure no one else was either. What is particularly sad is that up to that, myself and Charlie were having an absolute ball – we were having a wonderful time, we really were!
Night, noon and morning I’d spend scrubbing and polishing the place until it was absolutely spotless, then sit down and read my magazines and have my coffee or whatever.

Despite the fact that we were having what I have described as a really good time, it was still very hard to get really what you might call an awful lot of sense out of Charlie because she was
still drinking you see and sometimes, to tell you the truth, I would have to go upstairs and tell her to turn off the record player, one time actually losing my temper so much I shouted: ‘I
think we’ve had enough Yes for a while, Charlie, don’t you think we’ve had enough for God’s sake!’ After which I was sorry because she looked at me with those hurt,
bewildered eyes.

Which means I must have been on edge, I suppose, without realizing it, and maybe, with so much time on my hands – I mean, most of my housework was done by midday – did, perhaps, as
Terence suggested – and I don’t blame him for doing it because he was only trying to help me – become a bit of a busybody.

All I can really remember about those days is sitting there by the window, suddenly seeing a spot on the Venetian blind and running out to get a cloth to clean it and suddenly bursting into
tears whenever I took my coffee up again. What this was all about, I hadn’t the faintest idea because, as I say, I should have been as happy as Larry – it wasn’t as if I’d
been through anything like Charlie, having to look at someone I loved with a hole in his head that you could put your fist into. But still I couldn’t stop feeling weepy.

Maybe that explains why I couldn’t get Martina Sheridan out of my mind. If it’s all just an excuse and if I was only using her as an excuse to take my weepiness out on, I don’t
know. All I know is, I didn’t mean to shout at her, or poke my nose into her business, I just wanted to help her. To make her see what she was getting into. I knew Tommy McNamee cared nothing
for her. He was a married man and whenever he’d got what he wanted would just leave her there, probably not even remember her name. But she couldn’t know that. She was too young, how
could she have known? She couldn’t understand!

What I
am
sorry about is that I shook her behind the creamery that day and I know now that I did, I must have because that was why she started crying. I am deeply sorry that that had to
happen. Not because it spoiled everything and started the whole commotion around the village but because after that,
I
got excited too and didn’t know what I was saying. I was in such
a state by the end of it that I am sure my voice was so shrill she didn’t know
what
I was saying, so the whole purpose of it was defeated.

‘Tommy McNamee’s only taking advantage of you!’ I kept crying. ‘He’ll only use you and then leave you! Can’t you see that? Why can’t you, Martina!
Why?’

I was so depressed after that I can’t tell you, so bad that even Charlie could see I was worse than her, putting her arm around me and saying it would be all right but I knew it
wouldn’t be all right, if it was, why were half the young girls of the village going around pushing buggies, with babies they never bothered to wash, never even lifted them out to cuddle once
in a while, why because they didn’t want them!

‘And never did, Charlie, never wanted them in the first place!’ I said and started sniffling then, seeing it all as plain as day, the nun making her sign the papers, Martina hardly
more than a child herself and the baby, with a tag on its ankle, being taken away and given to complete strangers, taken away from its village and its home (Home? Ha!) and never be seen again.

It was so predictable that by the time I had the tissue Charlie gave me frittered away to shreds, there was nothing else I could do but hold her wrist so as it would sort of hold
me
down
and say to her: ‘O Charlie! Charlie! Charlie Kane! The states I get myself into!’

Which from the highest rooftops you could loudly cry for every word of it was true, except that where I’d been with tears and giddy walkings through the nights was as
nothing to what was about to happen now! Every woman, young girl’s longing – that each morning she’ll awake to rolling tummy, blinking stars! Each time thinking: ‘Oh, but
this is silly! It can’t be me! It really can’t be me!’ Only to find, with a swooning so delicious, that not only
can
it,
may
it, but
is
! And
is
! And
is
!

And why I cried: ‘At last it’s happened! I’m in love! I’ve found my Home-Loving Man!’

Oh, I know Terence says that I was floating far away and this was the time I should have left Tyreelin village again but he has no idea – he really cannot know what it was like that day it
happened, the very first day I felt it in me, shimmering inside like sunlight! Most extraordinary of all is that so many times I’d seen him – strolling about in his denim jacket,
loitering about the betting shop, flicking a match to the wind.

But not until that night in Mulvey’s, when I felt it in my stomach, turning, tumbling, rolling around, had I ever dreamed it was meant to be. What encouraged me most was that I knew
he
noticed
me
– even though I was wearing only a simple brown suede skirt, black ribbed tights and a pink, lambswool cardigan with some flowers on the front. I had asked Charlie
to come down with me but she was so far gone I couldn’t get a word out of her so I just said: ‘Oh, Charlie! Bother you then!’ and went off about my business.

I was so excited after it happened that when I got home, I woke Charlie up and couldn’t stop my heart thumping as I cried: ‘It’s happened, Charlie! At last, it’s
happened! It’s happened! I’m home! Home!’ as I climbed in beside her and hugged her and hugged her and hugged her and sang: ‘Up on the moon/ We’ll all be there soon/
Watching the earth down below/ We’ll visit the stars/ And journey to Mars/ Finding our breakfast on Pluto!’ and then crying ‘Charlie! I’m so happy!’

As I lay there with the moon on the window and my fingers entwined with Charlie’s, I couldn’t stop thinking about him as he got up off his stool to go to the gent’s, his keys
rattling on his belt as he scratched his big dark sideburns and tossed back his head to laugh at some joke that his drinking pal had just told him. ‘My Huggy Bear,’ I lay there
repeating (that was his nickname – from
Starsky and Hutch
– because he was so big and tall!) to myself the whole night long.

By the time morning came, I had my nails bitten down to the quick and no sooner was I out of bed than I was over at the wardrobe bundling out slips and dresses, already in a right state in case
I’d have the wrong thing on if I met him!