This Charming Man

  ‘What is it?’ I asked Damien.

  ‘Scholl foot rub.’

  Even the Green Party offered Dee a bottle of lavender oil for her cellulite.

  ‘Nothing from the Socialist Workers’ Party,’ I remarked, touched by their forbearance and wondering if I should vote for them at the next election.

  ‘Probably because they didn’t have the funds,’ Damien said. ‘If they could have raised the price of a tub of foot cream between them, you can be sure they would have.’

  Dee’s eyes were suspiciously shiny, but she stood there and took it, she even managed to smile and, as a result, the government survived.

  ‘But she’s on her last chance,’ Damien said. ‘One more drama and she’s a goner. And if she’s gone, so’s the Nappies’ coalition partner. Which means the government is gone. How many pairs of socks do I need to pack?’

  ‘How many nights are you going for?’

  ‘Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – three.’

  ‘So how many pairs do you need?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Excellent. Catch.’ One after the other, I lobbed three pairs of balled-up socks across the room. Gracefully he caught each of them one-handed, and dropped them into his bag, one, two, three.

  ‘Poor Dee,’ Damien said.

  ‘Who’s doing that stuff to her?’ I asked.

  ‘The Chrisps, obviously. They’re the only ones who stand to benefit.’

  ‘But do you know individualnames? Like, is it Bangers? Is it coming from the top down or what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But even if you did, you wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’ He had to protect his source.

  ‘Why are they picking specifically on Dee?’

  ‘Because they’ve already tried a direct hit on the Nappies with Teddy’s “loans”.’

  The leader of the Nationalist Party of Ireland had been caught accepting personal ‘loans’ that ran into tens of thousands, ‘loans’ that he’d had for over a decade and hadn’t made one repayment on. But he had toughed it out and simply refused to go.

  ‘The Nappies and Teddy are Teflon-coated. The only way left for the opposition to attack them is to go for their coalition partner. And unlike the rest of them, Dee is honourable. If she’s pushed enough, she will resign. How cold will it be in Hungary?’

  ‘What am I? The weather channel?’

  He shook his head, almost in pride. ‘You’re so narky.’

  It made us both laugh. ‘You’ve taught me everything I know,’ I said. ‘It’s November. Leave your shorts at home.’

  ‘… God, look, Grace.’ He was staring at the telly.

  A juggernaut carrying cigarettes had been hijacked. The two thieves had shoved the driver out of his high seat into the road and screeched away, heading north, no doubt laughing their heads off.

  ‘That could have been us,’ Damien said, his expression aglow with cigarette hunger. ‘A whole lorryload. Once we were sure we’d shaken them, we could have pulled into a lay-by and climbed into the cargo bit of the lorry and smoked ourselves sick.’

  ‘We could have opened hundreds of packs –’ I cried.

  ‘– and thrown handfuls of cigarettes up in the air and covered ourselves in them –’

  ‘– and lit dozens and only half-smoked them –’

  ‘– or smoked six at the one time –’

  ‘– and had mad nicotiney sex, rolling around on a bed of cigarettes. God…’ My words trailed away and I sighed.

  Then he sighed and, with resignation, returned to the business of packing. It reminded me of The Little Matchgirl, when her flame goes out and the beautifulvision disappears.

  I put an emergency stash of sweets in his suitcase and, for a moment, considered adding a note saying, ‘I love you,’ but that was so out of character for me that I thought it might scare him.

  ‘Charity.’

  ‘No!’ Jacinta said it automatically now, no matter what I proposed. ‘You’ve gone so… do-goodery. With your abused women and your homeless people and now your charity.’

  ‘Three or four profiles on the different faces of charity.’ I just carried on as if she was fizzing over with enthusiasm. ‘The society woman who goes to all the fund-raisers; the administrator who controls funding for developing countries; the compassionate individualwho gives up her job for six months to feed the starving.’

  She liked it. I had her at ‘the society woman.’

  ‘Hey, Declan, who’s the hottest charity queen?’ she called.

  Declan O’Dowd (‘He never gets out’) squinted at us. ‘Rosalind Croft. Wife of Maxwell Croft.’

  ‘I knew that,’ Jacinta hissed in triumph. ‘I’ll spend the day with her, shadowing her every move. I hear she’s very generous. She might give me a handbag. Set it up, Grace.’

  ‘And I’ll do the dull ones?’

  ‘Yes, yes, you’llhave a wonderfultime with the bleeding heart who goes to Africa. You can have a good old rant together about globalism – you’ll enjoy it! Try to find someone who’s not too minging for the photo.’

  ‘And the administrator?’

  ‘Send TC if you want. Or you can do it. But get a looker. Where are you going?’

  ‘Funeral.’

  ∗

  The church was packed and sombre. The two daughters, Susan and Nicola, neat in dark coats and formalshoes, sat in the front row beside a white-faced man whom I assumed was their father. My head ached with unshed tears.

  Mr Singer spoke with great tenderness about his wife. Then Susan and Nicola stood on the altar and said formal words of goodbye to their mum, and it was so very sad that I thought my skullbones would burst apart from the pressure. It was a crying shame that the profile on Mrs Singer had never been published. It wouldn’t have cured her, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but it might have made the girls feel a tiny bit better.

  ‘We stand up now,’ the old man beside me whispered. He had taken it upon himself to prompt me because I didn’t know the sitting/standing/ kneeling sequence of Mass.

  The sound of shoes scuffing the wooden floor echoed in the church as we all got to our feet, and in the gap briefly opened up by the moving bodies I saw, several rows in front of me, his unmistakable shoulders. But it couldn’t be him, what would he be doing here?

  A wall of backs faced me and I could see nothing else until the old man whispered, ‘Now we kneel.’

  The congregation dropped to their knees and I stayed standing long enough to see that it was definitely Paddy.

  ‘Kneel, kneel!’ the old man said. ‘Get down!’

  I dropped to my knees before the old man had apoplexy.

  What was Paddy doing here with the Singers? How did he know them? Then it dawned on me: this was his constituency. Politicians always showed up for their constituents’ funerals, in an effort to make voters think they were human.

  Outside the church, I watched him, with his overcoat and his height and his charisma, bending his head down to offer words of sympathy to the girls. I remembered Mrs Singer saying that they were fourteen and fifteen – around the age Paddy had been when his mother died.

  You could see that even though their mother was dead, it was nonetheless a thrill that the famous Paddy de Courcy had come to her funeral.

  Poor little girl-women, to be deprived of their mum at such a vulnerable age. But at least they seemed to have a loving dad. Not like Paddy.

  ‘Oh my God…’ Marnie had stopped, like she’d banged up against a force field.

  It had been a bright June evening, the night before Marnie’s and my Leaving Cert history exam and Ma and Dad were forcing us to walk Dun Laoghaire pier, in the hope that the fresh air would give us a boost in the exam hall the following day.

  Business on the pier was brisk; the sunny evenings always brought out the crowds and lots of other parents had had the same idea as Ma and Dad.

  ‘The Marshall Plan was dressed up as aid but it was a perfidious plot to…??
? Dad was ‘helping us revise.’ He came to a halt and looked back at Marnie, a few feet behind him. ‘Why’ve you stopped, Marnie? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Her face was suddenly bloodless.

  ‘What? You can’t just say “nothing”. Are you going to faint?’

  ‘Don’t look,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t say anything, but it’s Paddy’s dad.’

  ‘Where?’ Ma and Dad’s eyes sought drunkards on benches, enjoying the last rays of the sun.

  ‘Over there, but please don’t look!’ Marnie indicated a tall erect man, with tightly cut, bristly grey hair, a creaseless tan-coloured shirt and pair of matching trousers. He could have been an army officer.

  ‘Him?’ This picture of military-like respectability was not what Ma and Dad had been expecting. They’d known from Paddy’s impoverished, hungry demeanour that Mr de Courcy was a mostly absent parent, but as Paddy had never gone into detail they’d drawn the not-outlandish conclusion that drink was the trouble.

  Marnie stepped behind me. ‘Don’t let him see me.’

  ‘He looks pleasant enough,’ Ma said.

  ‘You mean clean,’ Marnie said.

  ‘I do not!’ Ma was wounded. ‘When did I ever like clean people?’

  ‘He looks like he’s in the army. But is he?’ Dad checked.

  Marnie shook her head.

  Satisfied that he wouldn’t be fraternizing with fascists, Dad took Ma by the elbow. ‘We should introduce ourselves.’

  ‘No, don’t. Please!’ Marnie said. She pulled them back.

  ‘Why not? His son and our daughter have been “going” with each other for the last year. It’s only polite.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Wait a minute.’ She corralled us into a tight circle. ‘Don’t look! Don’t let him see you looking!’

  We flicked discreet glances at Mr de Courcy.

  ‘What is it?’ Dad asked. ‘I see he’s carrying a microphone. Does he sing?’

  Marnie paused, swallowed, then said, ‘Yes, sometimes, I believe.’

  ‘So he’s a singer,’ Ma said. She liked singers, musicians, people in the arts, basically anyone without a regular income. ‘Paddy never said.’

  ‘He’s not a singer.’

  Marnie had told me about Mr de Courcy but she’d threatened that if I ever breathed a word, she’d tell everyone that I hadn’t yet lost my virginity. (Mortifying at almost eighteen.)

  I understood why she was so protective of Paddy. Marnie and I were embarrassed by our parents: Dad and his nose and his commie notions; Ma and her bluestocking chic and her do-gooding tendencies. But Paddy’s father was in a different league.

  Personally, it was electrifying to finally get a look at the man that I’d heard so much about. He had a massive jaw, which he kept working, like he was crushing raw potatoes between his back teeth. His skin had a tender-looking rawness to it, as though he’d shaved off three or four extra layers, just to teach his face a lesson. His eyes were the same long-distance blue as Paddy’s but his had a staring glassiness to them.

  ‘He takes them out at night and polishes them,’ Marnie said, reading my mind. ‘Can we go back? We’ve walked enough.’

  ‘Let’s just go and say hello.’

  ‘No, Ma. You wouldn’t like him.’

  ‘You can’t decide that,’ Dad said.

  ‘We like everyone,’ Ma insisted. ‘Look, he’s switching on his microphone. He must be about to start his act.’

  ‘He’s not a busker,’ Marnie said somewhat desperately.

  ‘Ssh, let’s hear the man,’ Dad said, turning an expectant face in Mr de Courcy’s direction.

  What had Dad been expecting? Jokes? Ballads? Sinatra covers?

  He got the last thing on earth he’d imagined.

  Mr de Courcy clenched his back teeth nine or ten times, held the microphone with white-knuckled fingers before his mouth and barked, ‘Now hear this! God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to save us. His only son. To save us miserable sinners. Yes, you, that woman right there in the blue anorak, and you, sir, there. And are we grateful? Are you?’ he asked a startled jogger. ‘No, you most certainly are not. How do we repay this great act of sacrifice? By sinning. Sins of the flesh. Lust! Greed, gluttony, anger, envy, but mostly lust!’

  Men walking their dogs, young mothers wheeling their babies, family groups enjoying the last hour of daylight – the invective reached them all. They looked variously surprised, alarmed, sometimes offended. Such freelance God-bothering was highly unusual. Ireland had officialchannels for this sort of thing – an army of priests who ran a closed shop.

  Ma and Dad were rooted to the spot. Their expressions were so radiant with shock, they looked like converts.

  ‘Can we go?’ Marnie pleaded, shaking Ma’s elbow. ‘I’m afraid he’ll see me and shout at me about lust.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Protectively Ma and Dad hurried us towards home and eventually Mr de Courcy’s voice faded away. Perhaps it was the curve of the pier or the direction of the wind, but when we were almost at the end, Marnie whispered, ‘He’s singing now.’

  We cocked our ears and heard – very clearly – carried to us on the wind, ‘She’s just a devilwoman, with evilon her mind.’ He sang in a lumbering, dirge-like fashion, divesting the song of any jauntiness. ‘Beware the devil woman, she’s going to get you from behiiiind.’

  Dad stared in the direction of the noise. ‘It’s a downright tragedy,’ he said.

  ‘I must admit I’d been expecting a waster who drank,’ Ma said. ‘If only.’

  ‘But he is a waster,’ Marnie said. ‘He got sacked from his job and didn’t try to get another. He doesn’t earn any money. This is all he does now.’

  ‘Poor Paddy. And his mother is dead. No one to take care of him.’

  ‘Poor Paddy.’

  ‘Poor Paddy.’

  ‘Poor Paddy.’

  ‘Damien! Damien Stapleton! You great, big, sexy ride, over here!’

  ‘Ah there she is,’ Damien said.

  A woman at a faraway table was standing up and waving: tall, busty, blonde, loud; the type who yelled greetings from four miles away.

  ‘That’s Juno?’

  ‘That’s her,’ he said happily, grasping my hand and hurrying us across the restaurant. ‘Don’t worry. You’re really alike. You’re going to get on great.’

  She wasn’t what I’d expected and this made me very anxious. I hate to have my prejudices overturned. The picture in my head had Juno as a lady-who-lunches type, who wore a lot of white and starved herself into early-onset osteoporosis. I mean, she’d worked in PR, for Browning and Eagle no less, could you blame me? But she was hale and hearty, and dressed in jeans and a rugby shirt worn with the collar flicked up. Many things annoy me – I’d be the first to admit that I’m deeply intolerant – but rugby shirts worn with the collars flicked up make rage boil up inside me like toxic black smoke.

  ‘Still the latest man in Ireland,’ she chided, giving him a quick peck – to my alarm – on the lips.

  ‘It was Grace’s fault,’ Damien said. ‘She was stuck at work.’

  Thanks, you disloyal fucker.

  ‘Earthquake in Pakistan,’ I said. ‘Mostly women and children killed. So thoughtless of them to die on a Friday evening when I’m on my way out for dinner. Ahahaha,’ I added mirthlessly, in a fruitless attempt to seem good-humoured.

  ‘Work,’ Juno exclaimed. ‘Give it up, I say! Send the men out to graft and let us women stay home and spend the money!’

  She was trying to be friendly – shocked as I was, I could see that – and this was my chance to show good faith by replying in kind: Yes, men, lazy bastards! Good enough for them. That’ll teach them to throw their dirty socks on the bedroom floor!

  But I couldn’t.

  I looked at the empty chair beside her. ‘So where is your husband?’

  ‘God knows,’ she said, throwing her head back and hooting.

  ‘… What do you mean?’

&n
bsp; ‘On a corporate jolly in the Curragh. Cristal tent. Been down there all afternoon. Just had a call from him.’ She held up her mobile. ‘Too drunk to drive. He might make it later, but fuck alone knows what state he’ll be in. He’s in big trouble with me, he lost two grand on the horses. If I don’t get some decent diamonds as an apology, guess who’ll be sleeping in the spare room for the next month!’ She roared with laughter – and so did Damien.

  Her husband wasn’t coming?

  I hadn’t wanted to have this dinner. In these nicotine-free days it was a complication I could have done without. However, a group event, including me and Juno’s husband, had seemed a benign enough proposition. Now everything had changed and I knew I’d be spending the next four hours sitting like a big plank while Damien and Juno played Do You Remember The Time We…

  And why had Juno arranged a night out when Miles was on a jolly?

  And why hadn’t she apologized?

  Was that not… rude?

  I’d suddenly come over all polite.

  The waiter appeared. ‘An aperitif?’

  ‘A pint of Guinness,’ Damien said.

  ‘Make it two,’ Juno said.

  She drank pints? I’ll tell you, it was a novelty to feel girly and prim.

  ‘You and your pints of Guinness,’ Damien said happily. ‘I’m getting flashbacks to our misspent youth. Remember? When we had no money and had to make drinks last as long as possible.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember having to do that too. And the cheapest pint you could buy was –’

  ‘Grace?’ Damien indicated the waiter. ‘Drink?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I’d been so desperately trying to fit in that I forgot he was still there. ‘Gin and tonic, please.’

  ‘Large?’

  ‘Oh why not?’

  ‘I’m just popping out for a cancer stick. I can’t tempt you…’ Juno slanted a smile at Damien.

  He shook his head ruefully.

  ‘How are you two getting on since you stopped smoking?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, at the same time as Damien said, ‘We’re at each other’s throats.’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ I said.

  ‘We are. We’re not getting on at all,’ he insisted.

  ‘Aren’t we?’

  ‘No. We’re not.’