Headstone (8 page)

“Maura, just great to see you.”

Offering the port in the same frenzied tone. She

was taken aback but I was already inside and I

knew she wasn’t sure how the hell that happened. I

upped the bullshite.

“You look great alanna.”

Paused to let the flattery sink in, then rushed,

“I’m so sorry it’s been a while but I promised

Loyola I’d call the minute I got back.”

Still perplexed, she led me into the sitting room. A

large portrait of the Sacred Heart was perched

above a roaring turf fire. Is there a finer sight? I

saw some framed photos of a benign smiling

priest, thought,

“I’ll be having me one of those.” I said,

“God, I’m perished.”

Meaning……..frozen.

She took the hint and went to make hot ports. I

followed her into the kitchen. It was spotless and I

startled her all over again.

Good.

I wanted her to be on the precipice continuously.

I said,

“In you go and sit by the fire, I’ll make the hot

port.”

She left reluctantly, her look saying,

“Should I call the Guards now…………..or

call…… after……….the port?”

The port won.

The kettle was boiled and I added lethal amounts

of port to her mug, then pulled out the Jameson in

me other pocket and added a serious dollop to hers

and just the Jay for me own self.

Found the sugar, ladled in three spoons to hers.

Brought out the two mugs, she was sitting on the

edge of the armchair, ready to flee.

I handed her the mug, said,

“Loyola loved a wee drop of port.”

Toasted,

“Sláinte.”

And she took a homicidal swallow of the drink.

Her eyes danced in her head. I apologized with,

“I’m so sorry, I probably shouldn’t have overdone

the sugar.”

She gasped,

“Oh no, ’tis lovely.”

She took another large dose and I could see it

physically relax her. I said,

“Ah, Loyola, those were the days, and when I

entered the Guards and he the Seminary, we still

stayed in touch.”

She managed,

“You’re a Guard?”

She was relaxing, I said,

“Retired now but I do miss it.”

The latter being the only truth I told.

I asked,

“So where is the bold man himself?”

Her eyes kept flicking to the small framed photo

that was near hidden behind the host of other

frames. I rattled on about the great times we’d had

fishing and other nonsense. Finishing her drink, she

asked,

“Another?”

“Lovely,”

I said.

Soon as she headed for the kitchen, a barely

noticeable stagger in her walk, I was up and

grabbed the frame, put it in my pocket.

On returning back, she said,

“I left out the sugar, is that all right?”

I nodded, asked,

“So where do I find my old friend?”

She looked to her left, i.e.,
lying
.

I’d watched Season One of
Lie to Me
.

She said, and slowly, that careful dance among

your words you know are trying to be slurred,

“He’s away on parish business.”

I acted irritated, pulled my phone from my pocket,

looked at the screen, said,

“Please excuse me Maura, I’ll have to take this.”

That she hadn’t heard the ringtone was overridden

by the booze.

I said to the silent phone,

“What? Now?”

I nearly believed there was someone at the other

end, acted like

I’d rung off , said,

“Emergency at home, I’ll have to run I’m afraid.”

I was up and leaving, the drink had her rooted to

the chair, she tried to rise, failed,

I said,

“I’ll be back next week and we can have a proper

chat.”

And I was outta there.

We must get into step, a lockstep

toward

the prison of death.

There is no escape.

The weather will not change.

—Henry Miller,
Tropic of Cancer

Ridge knew her marriage was over. As a gay

woman, she’d married Anthony because of who he

was.

He had serious clout. Played golf with the people

who ran the city. Anthony simply wanted a mother

for his teenage daughter and a lady of the manor for

functions. Sex just wasn’t in the picture. Ridge

looked good, knew how to behave, and he

believed, like breaking in a horse, he could train

her into some semblance of aristocracy.

Before the marriage, Ridge had lived in a small

house at the bottom of Devon Park. On a quiet day,

you could almost hear the ocean. It was an oasis of

gentility between Salthill and the city. She loved

that house and just couldn’t bear to sell it. She

rented it to an ex-lover named Jenny. More and

more, she was drawn back to her old life, to

intimacy and some remnants of integrity.

Two years ago, as a favor to Jack, she’d gone on a

routine call. Some girls were bullying a Down

syndrome child and she intended to give a quiet

caution to the girls in this family. Neither she nor

Jack realized their father was an up-and-coming

thug. He’d beaten Ridge senseless, put her in the

hospital.

The mastectomy she’d undergone a year before

worsened her condition. She’d heard that Jack

went after the thug in his own inimitable fashion

and, for once, she was glad. Her recovery was

slow and painful. She resolved never to be

defenceless again. The hypocrisy of her life had

begun in earnest then. Jack’s treatment of the thug

was never legal, she knew that. She never openly

acknowledged it. She was still a Guard and Jack

persisted with his philosophy of the law being for

courtrooms and justice being for alleyways.

Her marriage had paid dividends, she was almost .

. . almost ashamed to get the rank of sergeant. Torn

asunder by that incident and the coldness of her

marriage, she had three times a week begun to

drive to Devon Park and park outside her old

house. Same time those three days. Jack had

always warned: never set up a routine; makes you

a target. When her shift finished, it was as though

her car headed for Devon Park. With a deep

longing, she imagined Jenny, curled up on the sofa,

dressed in her old track suit, eating chicken curry

and watching reruns of
The L Word
. Her visits

became so regular she began to notice the

neighbors. Two men, in their late sixties, bang on

nine, they’d walk their dogs, head for the Bal, have

one pint and stroll back. There was something very

comforting in the regularity of their habit.

When the floods came, Ridge, like all the Public

Sectors, was stretched to the limit. One Tuesday,

after a day of ferocious depression, dealing with

people who’d lost everything, she just could not

face Anthony, who’d ask, without the slightest

interest,

“How was work dear?”

And before she could spill all the pain and

distress, he’d add,

“A dry sherry perhaps, my sweet?”

She’d want to scream,

“Wake the fuck up, people’s homes are being

washed away.”

But he never actually asked about her work. Once,

bone weary from the day, she’d tried,

“Don’t you ever wonder about what I do?”

Anything to break the impression of living in a

Jane Austen novel.

He’d raised one eyebrow in that infuriating

manner, his tone one of mild reproach, said,

“My dear, I’m sure you do it awfully well.”

Then took out his pocket watch,

a fucking pocket watch!

uttered,

“Gosh, is that the time? I must to my chamber,

we’re riding with the Athenry Hunt at seven.”

The country was submerged in water but these

barbarians insisted on hunting down and allowing

a pack of hounds to tear asunder a terrorized fox.

She’d jumped up, not quite startling him but

definitely getting his attention. His eyes met hers.

Usually he’d gaze at a spot just above her right

shoulder. She stomped to the drinks cabinet and

near shouted,

“Jesus Christ, you’ve every spirit on the planet

except Jameson.”

He said,

“There’s a rather fine claret I fetched from the

cellar.”

She glared at him, wanting to bury him in the

fucking cellar.

Grabbing a bottle of Glenfiddich, she poured it

into a large, beautiful, handcrafted crystal tumbler.

An heirloom from sweet old Mumsie!

Turned to him, drained the glass, tried not to

shudder when it hit her raw stomach, asked,

“Guess what I got in the post this morning?”

Paused.

“Darling?”

With that tolerant smile as outrider, he answered,

“Not the foggiest
dear
.”

Her head was awash in reptiles of

resentment,

rage,

confusion.

She bored into his eyes, said,

“A headstone.”

He was slightly bemused, tried,

“A silly prank, no doubt.”

Oh, Christ, she thought. She really needed to talk to

Jack. Anthony was waiting expectantly, geared for

some mildly verbal chess. Her anger drained

away. She finished the whiskey, turned on her heel,

and went to her room. When Anthony’s daughter

had been around, it had been easier. You could put

a Band-Aid on a seeping wound. But the girl was

at finishing school in yeah . . . Switzerland.

Ridge had barely finished any school.

To aid her recovery from the savage beating, to

vent and to try to restore her shattered confidence,

she’d enrolled in a grueling kickboxing class. She

was next to hopeless for a few weeks and the other

students sneered at her. Drove her on. Then one

day, it began to click. She took down the best

student, and the Master, who claimed to be from

Tibet, but was actually from Shantalla, actually

bowed to her.

Not only did it get her in shape, it emptied the

simmering anger. On days when her muscles ached

and her spirit cried,

“Stop!”

she’d mutter,

“By all that’s holy, no man is ever . . . ever going

to put his fucking hands on me again.”

After the encounter with Anthony, after a fierce day

of families in deep distress over the flooding, she

was exhausted. When she left work, her spirits

were as low as the final decade of the rosary. She

longed for intimacy and her car just took its own

self to Devon Park. She thought she’d just sit for an

hour, let misery wash over her. Seeing the two

regulars walking their dogs began the balm. She

thought of Jack and, God knows, he was no angel,

as maddening as Anthony, but he did listen to her,

attentively. Despite their long decade of bruised,

compromising, caring skirmishes, he remained an

enigma. As likely to give twenty euros to a

homeless person as bring his hurley to a bully. The

time a guy had been verbally abusing his young boy

in broad daylight, and Jack, oh sweet Jesus, Jack,

he’d put the guy through a plate glass window.

Or

Those awful days when she’d been terrorized by a

stalker, who’d she call?

Jack.

And he……..took care of business.

Or

His stricken face when his surrogate son took the

bullets meant for him.

Jesus.

How was he still getting out of bed in the morning?

Or

When Serena-May went out the window on Jack’s

watch, he’d gone to bits, even ended up in a mental

hospital. And, God knew, he was a hopeless drunk,

and, she suspected, addicted to every illegal

substance available but no matter, your back was

to the wall, it was this aging, hearing-aid, limping

wreck that you called.

And………………he showed up, always.

Anthony despised him, not only because he’d been

reared in the wrong side of town but because of his

total lack of respect for his
betters
. Anthony had

described him once, in a fit of pique, as an alkie

vigilante with notions above his station. To her

eternal shame, she’d said nothing.

Silent affirmation.

In an effort to understand Jack, she’d borrowed

some of his mystery novels. Jack was always on

about mystery being the literature of the street. No

Booker literature shite for him. Whatever else,

Ridge was a cop of the streets. He’d given her

James Lee Burke, commenting in that way he had,