A shaft of light across the bed in the dark before dawn, and she’d come back in, fully dressed, and nestled down beside him to say goodbye. He turned away, groaning, and her small body curled against his back. Kisses on the nape of his neck and his shoulder. Whispers by his ear.
“Bye bye, sweetie. I left you a note. Don’t forget to turn everything off.” She stroked his cheek, tracing a line with her fingers down to his chin. He burrowed deeper into the quilt. Buried his head. She leaned over and kissed his ear. “Merry Christmas.”
Now he sat on the couch, huddled in the dressing-gown she gave him last year, nursing the mug of coffee, tending intermittently to the flagging glow of his cigarette, puffing it back into life for a moment and then setting it down again in the tiny ashtray. The sky outside the high windows was glowing a paler grey above the black silhouettes of the roofline. The only other illumination in the apartment came from the lonely, shadowy blink of the coloured fairy-lights on the Christmas tree in the corner. The white bulbs steady, the coloured on-off, on-off. Faint, dim shadows, then multiplied and complicated, then faint and dim once more. He scruffed his wild bed-hair. Under the tree, a little pile of sweetly wrapped presents, with ribbons and bows. They looked like props, for a Christmas with fake snow. They were presents the way presents on stage had to be presents. Possibly empty. But the surface, archetypal. She had taken hers with her, wrapped in newspaper, like fish and chips. But with care, with care. He’d even chosen the articles especially. An interview with a singer she liked, and pictures of an exhibition at the Grand Palais. He fired up her computer, on the writing-table by the window, and opened the playlist she’d made. “Christmas Songs!!” Clicked on the section that were carols rather than pop songs, and went into the kitchen as “O, holy night” came on. He took her note from the kitchen counter. Some loopy handwriting, a list, lots of xxx’s at the end. He read the list. Checked it twice. Nice. He ought to be nice. She must be in the air by now.
He looked at one of the items on the list again. In the study, the tiny book-crammed room where he would shut himself away when he was pretending to work, on the desk, sitting on top of his old, chunky laptop, was a pale blue envelope. He tore it open, and spread a fan of crisp new notes out of it. A pantomimed reaction briefly flashed through his bleary mind’s eye: “Cash! My favourite! How did you know?” clasping the wad to the chest, fluttering the eyelids. In reality, he pushed them carefully back into the envelope, and silently blessed her for not handing them to him in person. More coffee, he thought. What he actually thought was: “More coffee, he thought”. This happened to him a lot.
He took out the old leather shoulder bag, and put the laptop into it, then stowed the envelope safely in an inside zipped pocket. A small pile of books rapidly grew on the desk. Weighing them, looking at one in each hand, eliminating, remembering, choosing. Dante’s Inferno, the side-by-side bilingual version that she used for university, not his Penguin Classics one. Infuriatingly, she spoke French, Italian, Spanish, as well as her native New York English, and read Latin like it was nothing special. He had done German in school. Could still ask the way to the train-station, but that was about it. Wie komme ich am besten zum Bahnhof, bitte? Zum Bahnhof? Gehen Sie hier gerade aus, dann nehmen Sie die erste Strasse rechts … It had come in handy on the Interrailing trip with the boys, but that was years ago now. It was enough to juggle English and his mistake-ridden but slangy French. He’d worked on that. Kept his own accent. They liked it, he knew. Other books. His notebooks. Be prepared. Like a literary boyscout. Ha!
Back upstairs, in the bedroom off the mezzanine with his second mug of coffee, he contemplated the enormity of having to pack, to wash, to dress, to leave. He turned on the bedside lamp, and saw what he had missed when stumbling, eyes almost closed, out of bed, too late to say goodbye, just as the echoes of the slammed door faded. A small pile of clothes, neatly folded. A lumpy red Christmas stocking, with white trim round the top. He’d told her Santa Claus was invented by Coca-Cola. She’d retorted that Christmas was a Christian assimilation of pagan Winter festivals, and that Saint Nicholas was just an iteration of a dark Winter God riding a Wild Hunt across the sky, collecting souls. He had confessed himself beaten. The stocking had a magazine, chocolate, aftershave, a trashy thriller, some clementines, and a candy-cane in it. And a small bottle of cognac. Tied with a ribbon. He picked up the clothes without disturbing the pile, and slotted them into his small rucksack. Around them, a layer of books, around that, a towel to protect them.
All packed by the door, presents for him and his family in a big Le Bon Marché bag, computer satchel, rucksack, leaning together conspiratorially. Conspiratorially? Drunkenly. He frowned, and decided he’d come back to that one (thinking, “He frowned, and decided he’d come back to that one.”). But speaking of which. A quick nip from the brandy, now transferred to the hip-flask. Which she’d given him last year. And back into the inside pocket of his overcoat. Nowhere near his hip. How would you …? Never mind. His other pockets, he filled carefully, transferring this, nestling that. Passport, left breast pocket, cigarettes right. Lighter, keys, phone, right jeans pocket. Wallet left. Ah! Holding up one finger, “Wait a second …” Then he looked at his held up finger, and tutted, curled it back into his fist and put it away. He rifled the satchel, extracted a few of the notes from the envelope, from the zipper pocket, put it back, zipped it up. Patted it. Then looked at his hand in disgust. The notes, he tucked into his stuffed wallet. Now it had money in it, as well as everything else. He went back to the kitchen, and checked the list again, and turned everything off. The Christmas-tree lights were last. Across the street, lighted windows glowed now. Other people’s lives took their quiet course, home … No, not quiet. Why quiet? Because of the silence here? How lonely, the unplugged Christmas lights. The tinsel and the baubles, with only the tiny reflections of the windows from across the street to strike sparkle from them now. The playlist had moved on to the songs that he had added afterwards. “Wish I was at home, for Christmas … dum da dum dum dum da dum …” He crossed back from the open door and turned all that off too. Now. We’re off.
Nelly was waiting at the airport, among the decorations and the milling crowds of relatives, among the hugs and kisses, as the Arrivals dispersed into the excited groups, with their trolleys laden with presents. Children were swept off their feet. Fáilte romhat abhaile, in big tinselly letters above. Her two kids were with her, and Fionn, the older one, barrelled into his legs as he rounded the barrier to meet them. Nelly held back a little, away from the traffic-jam of other family reunions.
“Uncle Micky!” he roared. Mick didn’t like being called that, and Fionn took great pleasure in the fact. He had discovered the double entendre with a five-year-old’s delight. Not to worry. There’d be more bad things to teach him, presently. Wicked Uncle Mick, home for the holidays.
“Heya Mick.” She kissed him a cool kiss on the cheek. “Say hi to Mick, Saoirse.”
Little Saoirse, her fingers in her mouth, wrapped round her mother’s leg, shook her head vigorously, and hid her face in Nelly’s skirt.
“Hello Sis. Hello Squirt.” He ducked down on his haunches, and tried to tickle her under the chin. She half-giggled, half-squealed, and dodged behind Nelly. They’d be friends again before too long. Fionn hung onto his leg, with his whole not-inconsiderable weight.
“Where’s my present, Micky?”
“If you keep calling me that, I’ll give it to Saoirse.”
“But she wouldn’t like it. You’re messing. I know you are.”
“Come on,” said Nelly. “Caoimhín’s waiting in the car. Let go of his leg, Fionn. Now!”
Nelly’s thickset, balding husband bounced out of the driver’s seat as they arrived. He was sitting in the taxi-lane, keeping an eye out for the traffic-wardens. He grabbed Mick’s free hand, the one that Fionn wasn’t hanging off, and squeezed it firmly in both of his.
“How’s yourself, Micheál? Conas a tá tú?”
“I’m grand, Kevin, how are you?”
Kevin bristled slightly. Well, two can play at that game. And he was always Kevin when they were growing up. The two of them had embraced the gaeilgeoir gospel like born-agains. How much of it was to get their kids into the local gaelscoil, Mick didn’t know. What’s the betting she spelled her name Neilí now?
Coming down the airport road, the lights were already on across the valley, strung around the city’s bowl, the dark clouds above only just still visible against the dark blue sky. He’d left in the Paris dawn, spent the light hours between buses, terminals, and the blaring shops of Dublin airport. Now, night falling, Christmas Eve. The two kids snuggled on either side of him, and he ruffled their blond hair absent-mindedly. Kevin and Nell spoke in soft voices about something that sounded vaguely serious, but the Christmas music on the radio drowned out most of what they were saying. And what are the chances? Same song : “Wish I could be dancing now, In the arms of the girl I love. Mary Bradley waits at home. She’s been waiting two years long … Wish I was at home … for Christmas”. What’s the name of the guy who sang it? It makes him think of wandering through Blarney Woollen Mills, nose at the height of the tables piled with Christmas bargains, while Mum did last minute shopping. He found a table with books, and got forty pages into one before she came back. He remembered that, but the visit to Santa’s Grotto beforehand was completely blank. Nell says he asked for an Action Force Secret Fortress as he sat on Santa’s lap. Santa, seeing their mother frowning and shaking her head, had told him that they’d run out of them already at the North Pole. Nelly asked for a Barbie Stable Set. She didn’t get that either. They both got books. Didn’t do them any harm, he thought now. At the time, it had been quite a blow, if Nell were to be believed. But she told it as a funny story now. And look where it had got them. She had a PhD in Medieval Irish poetry. He lived in Paris. That’s what his mother told people now, when they asked what he did. “He lives in Paris.” “Oh, you must be so proud!”. It took the heat off, somewhat. And in a way, he thought she was proud. She’d always pushed them to fail as elegantly as possible in life.
Dinner was wolfed down, with his mother’s usual mild teasing about not eating properly, his weight (not enough), his hair (too much), his general unkemptness (as per usual). Nelly winked at him across the table; none of these were new issues. Their mother was just about to launch – he could feel it coming – into something heartfelt and seasonal about how nice it was to have them all together around the table for Christmas when the doorbell went. He was already standing and draining his glass of wine. Wine in Ireland always tasted unsubtle to him now. He’d been spoilt.
“Right. Here come the cavalry!” He went to kiss his mother goodbye.
“You’ll be joining us for Midnight Mass, will you Mick?” she asked sceptically.
“If there’s no room at the inn, I’ll be over like a shot, yeah.”
“Take care, Mick. We want you semi-conscious in the morning for the presents.” His sister nodded significantly at Fionn and Saoirse. “And remember, Santa doesn’t come if you aren’t in bed early.”
“It’ll be all lumps of coal for me anyway. I’ll see ye later.”
He flipped a flippant salute at Kevin, who was chewing his way manfully through a second helping of the over-cooked beef-steak pie, and raised his eyebrows slightly in acknowledgement.
“Do you not want to ask the boys in for a drink or something?” their mother asked.
The doorbell rang again. “They sound thirsty alright. But I’d say they’ll last ‘til town. You’ll see them while I’m here.”
He waved to the room, swinging round the door into the hall, unhooking his coat from the bannister and tossing it to catch in a swish with his other hand. The door swung open: the boys.
Seamus and Ollie were standing there, stark-frozen in the porchlight. Ollie’s hand raised, going for the bell again, Seamus behind and below, one foot on the porch, hands in pockets. Ollie had a fringed scarf wrapped in a complex knot around his neck. Seamus wore a woollen cap. Both were in long dark coats. Mick slung his on, arm at a time, and pulled the door shut behind him before pulling them each in turn into a swift, firm hug.
“How’re the lads?”
“Peachy, thank you Michael,” offered Ollie.
“All the better for seeing you,” was Seamus’s. “Where to?”
“Where’s left?” Mick fell in on the left of Seamus, Ollie on the right, as they walked briskly off down College Road. The car windscreens glittered in the fast falling frost. Without further discussion, they headed in the direction of Barrack Street.
In their first port of call of the night, they found a round table in the corner, recently abandoned, covered in torn up beer-mats. Middle-aged taxi-drivers and a raucous group of women who’d just come from work somewhere laughed around the bar. A coal fire burned in one corner. Seamus carried back three pints of Beamish at once, their creamy heads just sending a slight dribble down over his fingers. He set them on the table, and dealt them, one each.
“Merry Christmas, gentlemen.”
“God bless us every one!” Ollie said in his Cockney urchin voice, and raised his glass to meet the other two that were meeting over the centre of the table, with a thick clink.
There were moments of quietness. Not exactly awkward, but empty of the right words. It was hard to know where to start. Ollie and Seamus, he had understood some time ago, saw each other quite often now, in London, their new lives having brought them both there. And he had not been to see them, nor they him. But every Christmas, always the same, everyone home. Seamus started walking first, from Bishopstown. He could have got a bus, but preferred to breathe the damp, chilly night deep as he set out striding. He would meet Ollie by the corner near St Finbarre’s Cemetery (“so let’s go where we’re happy and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates, Keats and Yeats …” etcetera), and they threaded the smaller streets between Glasheen Road and College Road to get to his mother’s house. He called it that now. Every time, he stumbled over it, almost said “home”. Every time, he caught himself. Have you no homes to go to, they’d shout at kicking out time. Early tonight, like it used to be. Half-eleven. Christmas Eve. Time to get a skinful before Midnight Mass, stand at the wrong times, sit at the wrong times. Stand swaying. A drunk in a midnight choir. Everything sparked a brief snatch of one of the old songs, when he was back.
The taxi-men at the bar were bursting with seasonal merriment and mirth. Red faces creased and crinkled, eyes twinkled. He tried to compose an observation, something about never hearing that in France, the sound of grown men laughing together, roaring, joking. The bunch of plump, bleach-blonde women, cackling and carousing, drinking pints and giving as good as they got, teasing the taxi-men right back at them. He turned back to Seamus and Ollie, to casually throw this, small but perfectly formed, this aperçu … yes, that was the word … into the … The conversation had moved on, without him, to something he didn’t know anything about, which was someone the other two knew in common in London. He took a long, smooth pull from his pint, creamy and heavy and black as ruination. It had a taste of more off it. Much more. The others were still talking. Someone called Safia, who one of them worked with? Seamus caught his eye, trying to turn the talk towards him, but Mick picked up his pint again, tilted it back, drained it.
“Same again?” He stood, feeling in his pockets, picking up his empty glass. The others followed suit and downed theirs, and he took three glasses back to the bar.
From there, they went round the corner to Barrack Street, and a pub that had become an old favourite, though it wasn’t even there back when they were in college. It felt like it had been though. So much else had changed. In through the narrow, stiff door, to a warm damp fug of bodies packed along the bar, three barmaids whirling pints out into outstretched hands, spinning round with change, ducking under each other’s arms, coming up smiling, still somehow smiling. The boys looked at each other, shrugged, and plunged through the crowd, elbows first. Ollie’s round. He squirmed towards the bar.
Out the back, in the beer garden, crowds stood around wooden tables, shivering in their coats, under the strung-up fairy lights. Glasses built up in precarious stacks. Babble babble babble. Mick looked around suspiciously. Here was where you were likely to … too late.
“How’re the men?” A small, bespectacled, red-cheeked, buzz-cut, what? Man? He looked thirty. Fuck. We are thirty. Seamus had already recognised him and shook his hand and was making boisterous conversation. Mick lit a cigarette.
“And Mick! Long time no see, boy!” Red-cheeks turned to him, gripped his shoulder and gave it a shake. “Still over in Pa-a-aris, are ya? How’s that going for ya?”
“Grand. Grand. It’s … good.” Words fail. Who was this person? Probably from school.
“PJ was telling me he’s out in Pfizer’s now.” Seamus threw in the name, seeing the blank.
“For my sins, boy, for my sins,” chortled PJ. He had been at school with them.
“Right. Well, good to see you.” Mick nodded as he moved off, as if he’d been waylaid en route to somewhere important, looking back over his shoulder as Seamus took the cue and followed, with some last words to PJ, who had been on his way in for a piss anyway, not a bother boy.
“You’ve only got more charming with time, Mick,” as he caught up with him.
“I didn’t like him in school, and now I just don’t care. There’s no need for that kind of hypocritical joviality just because it’s Christmas.”
Ollie arrived next to them with three more pints, expertly trapped between his spread fingers. “What did I miss?”
“It’s not because it’s Christmas, Mick,” Seamus sounded strangely sad as he said it. “It’s because it’s Cork.”
“It’s Cork-town, Jack,” Ollie said, in another voice. “Forget about it.”
“Right. Christmas in Cork. Welcome home and all that.”
They touched glasses together again. Three wise men, soon to lose their wits. A long sup, all three at once, and smiles as they lowered their glasses, licking foam from upper lips.
“Does anyone else think this has an awful taste of more off it?”
Mick grinned back and forth at his friends. They grinned back. By the third pint or so, they were always friends again. They were both nodding. Half-eleven closing, have to work fast.
Time for one more, one more pub. Here was a late bar, normally, but tonight it was just packed, packed with people who would normally only make it there after hours, after possibilities had been exhausted elsewhere, after the lowest common denominator started to seem appealing. When you knew that a breast-in-a-bun was probably on the cards for later, before you tried the taxi bases to get home. Tonight there was no need for the late bar, but the night was telescoped, and eleven o’clock was half past one, to all intents and purposes. They edged their way through the heaving crowd of teenagers, they looked like, feeling hot and bothered in their heavy coats. Lots of young women, lots of flesh, the music so loud that conversation was not an option, and people were moving straight to the next stage: drunkenness or heavy petting. Seamus looked around approvingly. Mick looked around disgustedly. Ollie scanned the room briefly, and then made a beeline for the bar. The other two were left standing in a nook.
“This place has changed.” Mick tried to lean casually. Failed. Stood awkwardly instead.
“I think they’ve knocked three pubs together to get what it is now … When we used to come here, it was like a corridor. Now it’s like a warren. Full of drunk, nubile …”
“Yeah, drunk, overweight, pasty little teenagers in …”
Seamus’s look cut him off. A very ironic look.
“You’re giving me a very ironic look. What’s that about, then?”
“Oh, nothing. I feel you’re uncomfortable with the amount of young female flesh on show? Would that be fair to say? You old prude you.”
“No, but do you ever look around and wonder where the hell they all come from? Remember when we used to come in here and we’d more or less know everyone?”
“We never knew everyone. You’re imagining it.”
“I think I came in here once and knew everyone. That said, there were only about six people here. But I knew them all.”
“Well anyway, all that’s happening is that the little children from back then have turned into real people while our backs were turned.”
Mick looked around. “Real people? Never. Foetuses.”
Ollie came back. More drinks. Mick left immediately. He wanted whiskey. He came back with doubles each. Seamus went for more pints. The music was so loud that all comments had to be repeated, shouted, into the ear of one person at a time. The music was sometimes things they knew, more than well. They looked at the pierced and hairdyed kids dancing and singing along around them, and shook their heads. They were in nappies when … Sometimes it was things that they didn’t recognise at all, and that everyone else obviously knew. They avoided each other’s eyes, while thinking that it was just a pale reflection anyway …
There were more pints. And then something else. A girl, she arrived at their nook. She was somehow taller, somehow more what? Filled out. Somehow what? Older. Somehow recogniseable. She pushed Seamus back by the shoulder, against the wall.
“Seamus Lynch! How the fuck are ya?” Her voice was hoarse and melodic, if that’s possible. There was something slightly impossible about her.
“Hey! How are you doing?” Seamus looked like a rabbit in the headlights. Of a tank.
“You don’t even fuckin remember me, do you?”
The three boys looked at each other, and then there was another round of looks, and this time she was included, and they all burst out laughing. She bought the next round. Ollie remembered her name, and fed it to the others. She was good craic. That’s what they said. And then there was another round. The walls revolved, the children boogied. They were bemused. Things moved faster. There was another round. Some drinks were spilled, voices were raised, friends were made. Names were exchanged and immediately forgotten. They were sucked back in, if only for the night.
On the stagger home, the lights around the Lough, they stumbled in the grass, the swans must be asleep … on the lake, on the island, the crib all lit. Away in a manger … Ollie as a choirboy. No! They grabbed for him and he set off running, running, threw his bag of chips in the air as he ran and they rained behind him. Cold swish of the frosty grass, heart thumping, dash dash dash. They tackled him, brought him down, all three rolled in a heap. Back towards the water, damp and bruised patches now, knee, elbow, quietly Seamus started up “Fairytale of New York”, and they took it up and took it up a notch, until they were bawling the chorus, standing on the low wall in a line, as they pissed in long steaming arcs that bubbled where they hit the water, rippling reflections of the lights. “AND THE BOYS FROM THE NYPD CHOIR WERE SINGING GALWAY BAY … AND THE BELLS WERE RINGING OUT, FOR CHRISTMAS DAY …”
And then, breathless and rosy-cheeked, weaving their way, back towards home eventually, at the corner, the corner of Hartland’s Avenue and Glasheen Road, the corner they would linger on, once, and perhaps now, where they had to say good bye, go separate ways, there Seamus stopped his merry men.
“I want to tell you both something. I want to make an announcement.”
Ollie made a drum-roll noise.
“No, I’m serious. I have something to tell you.”
They stood and waited. Mick blew a plume of white smoke from his cigarette, up into the light from the streetlamp. A white plume, that drifted on the no-wind, billowed, dispersed, before Seamus spoke again.
“Liz and I. We’re. I asked Liz to marry me.”
They both looked at him, then each other, then back to him.
“She said yes?” Ollie through a slowly spreading smile.
The three of them howled, and bounced together in a drunken hug, like they had just scored a goal.
Michael Twomey
Gloomy Doomy Twomey
Nihilist Existentialist Hedonist
Dionysiac Hanged Horned Wolf
