The glorious heresies, p.9
The Glorious Heresies, page 9
Of course hunni xxx Dont worry. My mom’s just come home brb. Don’t start without me plz luv u.
Don let her get to u baby. B strong.
“Online chat?” he said. “I thought your daughter was in bed?”
“She was up a while ago, like.”
He grinned and leaned forward. “Her ‘mom’ just came home and sent her to bed, was it? Was she up all night talking to nobbers? And drinking tea with labels on it; ah, she’s pure sophisticated.”
“Can I help you with something, Jimmy?”
“Probably,” he said. She went to fold her arms and changed her mind, for one brief moment falling into the chicken dance.
“Tara,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I’m obviously looking for someone.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where the fuck he is?”
“Tony Cusack?”
“That’d be the man. I have the right house so.”
“Why are you looking for Tony Cusack?”
“Why are you asking me?”
Her hands made fists. She tucked each into its opposite armpit.
“Seriously, Tara? Trying to ascertain what I know before choosing your best answer is only going to make me very pissy.”
She pouted. “He’s drying out.”
“He’s what?”
“Drying out. You know. Some residential programme. The kids are with his sisters and he hasn’t been home in weeks.”
“I didn’t see Cusack as the health-conscious type,” he said.
“He’s not,” she said. “It was court-ordered.”
“Court-ordered? Fuck me—what did he do to deserve that?”
“What didn’t he do to deserve it?”
“Seems a harmless sort, is all.”
She seethed. “He’s not harmless. He’s a horrible man. Violent. Very violent.”
“We are talking about the right Tony Cusack, aren’t we? Scruffy fella, big brown peepers, married a dago lasher with knockers out to here?”
“Some people are just bad,” she said. “No matter how often you get lost in their eyes.”
Her peevishness tickled him. “That doesn’t sound like the bleeding-heart Tara Duane I know.”
“He’s a child abuser.”
“Holy fuck, anything else?”
“Yeah, actually. He put my front window in. With a hurley. Beat the glass through. And I have to live beside him after all that and I frightened of me life of him.”
“Tony Cusack put your front window in.”
“Yeah. So I’d advise you to have nothing to do with him.”
“Why’d he put your window in?”
“Why do you care?” she said.
“I don’t.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Lovers tiff?” he asked. “Were you fucking him, Tara?”
“Excuse me, I was not.”
“Why else would a man blow your house down? Did you put the wrong tags on the bins? Stay up too late bawling along to ABBA? Come on, Tara. Why’d you fall out with him?”
“Are you looking for him or questioning me?”
“First one, then the other.”
The light from the laptop screen dimmed as it switched to screensaver. Jimmy stretched and shifted back on the couch.
“His oldest is a boy,” Tara said. “Sixteen. Last year he thought I was…”
It was pause enough to draw out his laughter.
“Jesus Christ, Tara. You’re fucking children now?”
“I am not,” she hissed. “He’s paranoid with the drink and the drugs. You’d want to be, wouldn’t you, to accuse a young mum of something like that? Especially one like me.”
“One like you?”
“I’m a good person!” she snapped. “And that man is a nutjob.”
“If he caught you with your legs round his young fella’s ears I’d say he had good reason.”
“Don’t be disgusting.”
He was close to paroxysms. “Oh come on, Tara. I work at a conveyer belt of deviants and I know for a fact you failed quality control. The man knocked your window in because you’ve been playing Hide the Underage Sausage.”
“I didn’t! I did not! I tried offering the kid a friendly ear and he obviously took it the wrong way, all right? And I had to offer that friendly ear because his father’s a lunatic and living beside him has lopped years off my life.”
“If only living with him put years on, eh?”
“Yeah, getting back to it, OK? I don’t know where he is,” she said. “Drying out. Court-ordered.”
“For what?”
“Drunk and disorderly. So taking into account his unprovoked attack on my glazing, that was enough for a judge to decide he had a problem. He’s got too many kids for gaol, I guess.”
“That part sounds like Cusack,” he said.
“It all sounds like Cusack. You obviously don’t know him very well.”
“I don’t,” Jimmy said, and clucked his tongue, and put his hands on the couch, readying himself to get up again. Tara thought to exhale. He laughed.
“Christ, Tara. You’d swear you were the one up to no good.”
She sucked her lips in.
“I’ll be on my way,” he said. “You’ve been useless. Still, I get you have more important things to be doing, like pretending to Mr. Internet there that you’re his little wet dream soulmate. Sorry I haven’t been a better mom to you.”
She followed him to the front door.
The pavement glistened under a sky indigo and low. Jimmy rolled his shoulders.
“One more question,” he said. “Do you know a fella by the name of Robbie O’Donovan?”
Her eyes widened. “No.”
“Think now. He’d know Cusack.”
She shook her head.
“Maybe thirty. Foxy hair. A right hand-me-down-the-moon. You couldn’t miss him, but that’s of no benefit to sore eyes.”
“I guess that’s what you want Tony for?”
Jimmy stepped out the door and onto the driveway.
“So much guesswork, Tara. I’ll take my leave of you. Stay weird.”
He walked towards the front gate. Wasted journeys tended to put him in bad form, and he could see that mass ahead of him, maybe five minutes into his future, maybe ten, a private tantrum that would fuck the rest of his afternoon. He had things to be doing. Much bigger things than chasing Tony Cusack around the city.
Behind him, Tara Duane called “Wait!”
He turned.
She was nodding. “Robbie O’Donovan. A tall ginger guy, whippet-thin, no great shakes, yeah, yeah.”
“Oh, it’s come to you! Tell me: what do you know about him?”
She stepped onto the driveway and closed out the door behind her. Beyond her front wall, two bickering girls played on scooters, oblivious to the building pressure above them, the carillon hum of the imminent squall.
“He’s with one of the…working girls,” she said. “You know.”
“One of the whores? Which whore?”
“I don’t know what she calls herself but I know her as Georgie Fitzsimons.”
“Irish?”
“They do exist,” she said.
“And where does she work? What does she look like?”
“Oh, she’s one of the unfortunates. She’s on the streets. Not hard to miss; she’s usually down the quay. She’s short but, y’know, chesty.” She gestured extravagantly. “Dark hair down her back. Skinny now, like, but she was pretty once. I think the term is ‘gone to shit.’ ”
“I know the sort.”
“She used to work for you,” she said. “In the house at the end of Bachelor’s Quay.”
“Really.” Well, now the langer’s being there made sense. The insignificant other of one of the whores, probably a junkie, probably thinking the house was empty, probably looking to rip the copper out of the walls or the carpet up. Probably the kind of company that eejit Tony Cusack was used to keeping. The issue of the corpse’s exposed identity quickly shrivelled.
“Does he owe you money or something?” Tara asked.
“Who?”
“Robbie O’Donovan. I get the feeling he skipped town, is all.”
Jimmy chewed the air.
“You ask too many questions, Tara.”
“I’m just trying to help…”
“It’d be more in your line to try zipping your trap, because the day will come when someone will solder it shut for you.”
“OK. Jesus,” she said, and held on to the wall dividing her property from Cusack’s, and put her other hand to her chest.
“Just a pointer.” He dismissed her with a casual wave and returned to his car.
She reappeared at her front window, peeked out from behind the curtain, disappeared as soon as she saw him watching. He snorted.
One of the squabbling girls pushed her companion off her scooter. The deposed one screamed. Tara Duane glimpsed out again. Jimmy considered another wave.
The distraught girl’s screams were met and matched by a yowl from one of the gardens across the way. A man with gym-sculpted shoulders pitched towards them, snarling at Sarah or Sasha or whoever she was. Jimmy couldn’t tell whether it was the victim or the perpetrator that had drawn out the yowls, but the chap was coming for them, hard, and when he reached them he picked up the screaming one with one hand and slapped the offender with the other. The one who’d been pushed was set upright. The culpable one was spun around by her wrist. She went white with shock. The judgement kept coming.
Hot day, though. Short tempers.
A woman in lilac with a stretched-out seahorse tattoo waddled towards the scene. She stood back from the spitting man, the bawling children, and threatened to call the guards. The man raised his hand.
Still there was no rain. Jimmy smiled out at the olive light and the drama and drew Tony Cusack’s indiscretion from catastrophe to conspiracy to clanger.
We’re going out later. Nothing much happening, but we’re going to get some cans and go gatting with Joseph and the lads, have a few smokes, a bit of a laugh. Karine, though, she’d get dolled up for the opening of an eye. We’re up in Dan Kane’s stash house and she’s “getting ready.” Getting ready, like. So that if she pulls a whitey at least she’ll look gorgeous gawking all over my runners.
I’m at the bottom of the bed, rolling a joint, and she’s sitting up against the pillows watching telly and painting her toenails baby-blue.
It’s one of them dancing competition shows that’s on. She loves them. She does hip-hop twice a week and enters competitions with a proper crew and everything. She can do the splits. She can rest her calves on my shoulders. Yeah, it’s fucking awesome.
“Your manno’s amazing,” she says, all goo-eyed at this fella lepping around in front of the judges in a pair of leggings.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, he’s got moves like.”
She’s completely gripped. She finishes her toenails and leans back, a finger in her mouth as she stares at the screen. I hold the joint up in invitation but she pays me no heed.
Her toes are splayed in case she ruins the paint job.
I take a pinch of tobacco and slowly, slowly stretch over.
She sighs as the judges give a standing ovation. She gets very wrapped up in the feelgoods.
I sprinkle some of the loose tobacco over the nails on her right foot and it sticks to the polish, flecking it baby-blue and bog-water brown.
She doesn’t notice.
I do the other foot. She pulls her knees towards her just as I finish.
“He is like super talented,” she says.
I spark up.
She looks over at me, mouth open, ready to tell me something else mind-blowing about the steamer on the screen when she lamps her piebald toes.
“Oh my God! Ryan!”
I’m breaking my hole laughing.
“Ryan Cusack, you are fucking LOUSY!” She jumps up and throws a pillow at me and practically has a fit right there on the floor. “You gowl! I don’t even have varnish remover with me, like. They’re ruined! What am I gonna do? Oh my God, you break my melt, d’you know that?”
She is beetroot with fury but I can’t say anything, I’m choked.
She stomps into the bathroom and just before she slams the door she screams, “I wish I was a fucking LESBIAN!”
On the screen yer man in leggings is standing with his hands joined in a silent prayer. I wipe the tears from my eyes. The judges call yer man’s name and he jumps out onto the stage like he’s got a wazzie down his drawers.
She comes out again a couple of minutes later.
“Your boyfriend got through,” I tell her.
She scowls. “My boyfriend better get his jacket on coz he’s going to get me nail polish remover right now. I honestly don’t know why I put up with you, Ryan. You’re such a child.”
It was beautiful down at the lakeside in the early morning. The air was cold, stripped of the fragments it had picked up the day before, though it would be stale by midday and offering mouthfuls of flies by dusk.
Georgie had made a habit out of coming down to the water before breakfast. In the great expanse of hill and sky, it stayed early for longer. Back in the city there was traffic and torment from dawn. Out here, so long as the air held that chill, the limbo between then and now stretched as far as she needed.
She sat on a flat rock by the water’s edge and closed her eyes to the milky-blue sky, and the breeze that coaxed tresses onto her cheeks and over her lashes. The birds could be raucous near the water, but this morning their song was spiralling light. Beyond that, nothing. Later, when duties began, there’d be car engines and noises of cooperation as people grouped off to deny the devil idle hands.
David’s voice, behind her: “You weren’t wrong.”
She neither turned nor opened her eyes. “You’re so negative, David. You weren’t wrong. You could have said instead, You were right. Turn the negative into the positive, remember? Break free of sour processes. Turn that frown. Upside down.”
His shoes crunched on the shingle. When she opened her eyes, he was standing at the water’s edge, his back to her, hands on his hips.
“You look like you’re appraising the plantation,” she said. “Lord and Master of all you survey.”
“Only one Lord,” he said. “And no possessions. Isn’t that right?”
She laughed, and he turned to smile. He was neatly proportioned, moulded by good fortune rather than hard work. He had a trimmed beard, which tickled, and eyes blue as the mountain sky.
“I didn’t think you were one for getting up early,” she teased.
“You said it would be worth my while,” he said.
Gambling was David’s vice. He used to hole himself up for entire weeks, just him and his laptop, losing shirt after shirt in landscapes of flashing lights and vivid green. You wouldn’t think it to look at him. He seemed more like the lead in an IKEA ad. When his parents got divorced, his father had turned to pastors new, and this rekindling of faith led him to deposit his youngest son at a lakeside refuge run by Christian soldiers whose military tactics amounted to communal porridge pots and long walks in the woods.
Georgie’s first thought had been that it was all very American, but the mission leader was Irish. William Tobin was his name and he called his organisation CAIL, which she had since discovered, with a hastily stifled snigger, stood for Christians Active In Light. Try as she might she couldn’t find an ulterior motive to William’s decency; he was too gentle a soul for trickery. He had a grey ponytail and a wife called Clover to whom he displayed a very non-cultlike monogamous devotion. He had found Georgie in need and had given freely.
What that need had been was nobody else’s business. William had told her that what she disclosed to his knot of volunteers was entirely up to her. So she’d told them she was an alcoholic, which was probably true, even if it was the least of her problems.
It wasn’t rehab in the traditional sense. William Tobin’s West Cork property was more drop-out than check-in. Bed and board in exchange for a little light farming and daily sermons about the loving grace of Jesus Christ. Georgie hadn’t yet found the Lord—in His defence, she hadn’t been looking very hard—but they seemed an honest bunch, she had always liked porridge and she loved the lakeside air.
“You’re sure you’re set for later?” David said.
“Oh yeah. That won’t be a problem.”
“I guess it’s handy they’re bringing you.”
“They must trust me not to run off into the nearest pub, screaming for a Jägerbomb.”
“You think they’re right to trust you?” he smiled.
“Please. Booze is so last month.”
He sat beside her on her boulder perch and as he stretched an arm around her he looked back, in the direction of the centre, just in case.
William and Clover didn’t like to make rules not already enshrined in the teachings of Himself, but He probably wasn’t keen on fraternisation and, if Georgie remembered her religion classes correctly, thought fallen women only handy for washing His trotters. The fact that she had embarked on a quiet affair with David would no doubt have been a deal-breaker, at the very least an incitement to proper spluttering Bible-thumping.
But there was something so perversely pure about it. Georgie hadn’t told David about the career path that brought her to William’s door, and his blind attraction was quite the aphrodisiac. And though she had long lost the notion that she would be dragged out of perdition by the clammy hands of a man, there was something therapeutic in the nature of their bond. The secrecy reminded her of the first few stolen kisses as a girl back at home; furtive pecks at the back of the hurling pitch, the fluttering excitement of a hand sliding under her top. So there was a kind of rebirth to it, she supposed.
She leaned into David’s shoulder and they kissed.
The first time had been a revelation. They had been talking late in the common room about his converted father and her stubbornly pious mother. Without warning he’d lurched forward, an action as clumsy as its resulting kiss was tender, and as his mouth worked hers open she’d felt heat spreading, belly to hips to thighs. Like a blossoming, a poet might have said, but at the time she had linked it to the idea of an opening tomb. Something that would stir a pharaoh’s wrath and unleash a plague of locusts. It had been a diversion from genuine butterflies.
