Malarky (10 page)

Card Man meandered on and on with snippets and jingles from life on the road until the kettle needed tipping and he paused to unplug and lift it. I'm very tired, she said in the middle of an anecdote about how badly repaired the roads were at some obscure roundabout in Cork, but if you've something specific in mind you'd like to ask me, please do, for I have a feeling I know what it is. But no, the silly man hopped backwards and threw his hands up at her in all politeness. No, nothing, not at all. Except did she take sugar?

She counted thirty seconds of his faffing and then undid her neat cardigan in a practical and deliberate manner, opened her blouse, removed it and laid it out, so it would not sustain wrinkles. Only her thermal vest remained, but since he was clearly thick, she left nowt to suggestion raised it over her head and tossed it on the floor in a move redolent of saucy ballroom dancing. An obvious flounce. She lay back on the bed and said nothing further. She considered that she must look very funny to him, a middle-aged woman in her tan tights and her triangular skirt, and her top-half naked, except for her Dunnes Store bra and the holy medal hanging round her neck. He hopped and tripped his way over to her: smothering her with the nonsense she was a lovely woman, wasn't she, instead of remaining, rightly silent. He commented on the remaining bits of clothes on her, that's a good quality skirt, rather than the body she'd unwrapped. He then remarked, somewhat absently, he'd been thinking of going on a day trip to Wales. Had she ever been to Wales?

No she had not been to Wales.

She longed for the silly fella to shut up and the only thing that would shut him up was to put an obstacle near his mouth,
so she stuck her hand up in a gesture to cover it, but like much of their conversation, he missed the plot, offering his hand to help rise her up. When she did not lift up, he rolled over her, nearly flattened her before apologizing and finally, praise God, put his hand on her belly.

The skin along her thighs virtually peeled, in the clumsy struggle to unroll her tights. Once or twice she actively winced, but he appeared a bit deaf and simply added even more pressured determination to the task.

Ought she to somehow involve herself? Yet her mind was concerned with the inappropriate angle of him for the task she needed to attempt. She should have obtained specific location of the postage stamp lick as described by Red the Twit, so she'd have some kind of ordnance to work from.

She certainly understood her husband. If this encounter was anything to go by – at least this man had the manners to share his kettle – the encounter with the red-nailed twit must have been unpleasant indeed, for she was not about to believe that women were any smoother at this business than the butter fingered poking happening below her navel.

She watched the radiator on the wall, as he tottered about, still muttering how beautiful she was for her age, which emerged stilted in his language, a monotonous drone had anyone ever told her she was
a fine looking woman.
It made her think of a crumpet, a stale one left in the packet and removed, inspected and remarked upon for having survived with no mould. She allowed the thought to pass, only to hear him yet again inquire
whether it
was ok, like ya know? And he wished to inform her lest there be any misunderstanding that he was not a married man.

She could not understand these men at all. Her husband could not be trotting out these kinds of apologies, so she found it flabbergasting to imagine him making conversation, until she concluded that like her in these situations her husband
said very, very little. They were entirely alike. Together in this situation they said nothing. Apart they said nothing.

He, the card man, was not what the teenagers would call a ride. Frumpish and struggled with his belt, it was nearly sad to be troubling him. It would have been more appropriate to say a prayer with him, since he was clearly in need of an explanation, and had twice asked when did her husband die?

—He didn't, she replied. She restrained from adding she didn't have one, they'd sold out of them at the shops. I'd be much obliged to you, was all she offered.

Instead of obliging, he retreated into marital counselling. Marriage
is full of ups and downs
, he said, still struggling with his belt. I'd advise you t-go to Accord, it's a great service through the church. Belt off. Very understanding people, so it is. A wiggle, trousers lowering. I'd go
meself if
I had those kinda problems. I'm not a married man. Yet. Hah. He huffed and puffed on top of her and said you're great, great, you're a great girl the same affectionate way farmers talk to their cows – go on there and hup hup hup ya, hup there – and eventually as he moved about inside her, there was something heavy, flat and wedged about him. She tried to replace the two of them with her husband and the Red woman. It was not an enticing picture, for she could imagine the pallid state of her husband's engorged stomach flopping about unsavorily against the younger woman's tighter skin, yet she could also smell the reek of cigarettes off the woman, and knew her husband wouldn't like that. Nothing worse than the sight of a woman and a cigarette he'd say. In a minute and a half, she gained some understanding as to what may have driven him to it: different people inside different places at different times. That was all it was. She had had a different man inside her at a different place and different time and now she was going home to put the potatoes on and think about it as they boiled.

As the potatoes hopped in the pan, she thought about it. Small spuds that day, she'd reached the end of the bag. She still had a sticky patch on her stomach from the afternoon's antics that she intended to scrub off, but watching the spuds boil she thought better of it. She would observe her husband come in from the fields and see whether he registered anything different about her despite the only evidence being hid beneath a tired looking jumper. It was the kind of thing after this many years of marriage that a couple should be able to track. If he figured it out, I will believe in God, she vowed. She definitely washed her hands. Five times. On the fourth time, she noticed the bathroom window was cracked. There was new information to tell her husband and she was very glad of it.

There was a brief lapse in time between them when she settled into bed that night beside Himself. He stared at the ceiling as though his eyes are searching for a new planet to rest on, betraying an allergy to the current one.

—I'll be late tomorrow, he said blankly, I'm going to Swinford to look at a trailer, don't wait on the dinner for me.

—Will you be back before dark so?

—I don't think so.

He had to have been back at Red. There it was. He was up her alright.

She turned off the lamp and the electric blanket beneath them.

He had noticed nothing because he was back up Red.

Himself started in on Jimmy. Small digs. Bigger digs.

—How much was it costing to have that fella at college? And if he was to be calling down so often wouldn't it be cheaper have him here at home, and put him to work about the place?

It was an awful peculiar stance he adopted with the lad already two years into his course.

—Wouldn't it be better to have him useful about here? Wouldn't it be better if he earned his own way to an education?

Himself sat in the chair by the fire. Increasingly.

Nightly he read the paper, remarked abstractedly that nothing was worth anything. Everything pointed to the fact that every young fella and girl had a degree and at one time it was worth something, but these days . . . Silence. You can see by it, when a man can't get a fair price for his cattle, you know something has gone off. It's not gone away off in isolation. Everything, everything is lost once a fella cannot sell his cow for a fair price.

An unconscious look about him, like he was in another place, shouting back in the distance after cars that had run over him.

Whatever was the cause of it, his father disliked Jimmy in a way he had not objected to him before. He was ungraceful in
his attack. Our Woman can see that he has moved in on Jimmy because Jimmy did the very thing she made him promise he wouldn't do.

In turn she was no longer going to keep a cow for Jimmy. She dismissed the idea.

I was shocked. Shocked for his father's sake. I liked the fella. And then I didn't like him. I want you to get a look at him. He was stringy looking. Tall, with a mop of curly hair. He was a quiet man. It wasn't that I expected he'd bring a man waving pompoms. But this fella was way too up in his head and it was not what Joanie said about the gays. See, he asked very few questions, so he did. I wished he'd asked more. We couldn't be sure at first why Jimmy brought him to us. That night my husband spoke to me in bed which was rare, usually he either reached for me or he didn't. As he'd say himself, I don't get into bed to get into a heated debate if I want that I'll turn on the radio where's there's plenty people with nothing to do but talk all day.