Stir-Fry

  “Bad for your digestion.”

  “The stress of doing without would be infinitely worse for it.”

  Ten minutes later they were following the cobbled path up the hill. “You been up Bray Head before, Maria?” said Jael rather muffledly.

  “Never.”

  “It’s the most piddling of mountains, but the view over Dublin is good.” She tossed a chip to a low-swooping gull, who caught it. “I came here first on a Girl Guide mystery hike at the age of eleven.”

  “Was it fun?’”

  “Up to the point where I gave Angela Cowley a playful shove and she rolled down the hill and broke her collarbone.”

  “You’re taking the piss.”

  “I am not. I was suspended from Guides for six weeks for unladylike violence.” Jael bit a chip neatly in half.

  Shaking her head, Maria led the way up through the bracken. Her breathing grew harsher; after five minutes she leaned her back against a head-high boulder and looked out over the bay. “What’s that kidney-shaped island?”

  “Haven’t a clue,” said Jael, scrunching the greasy paper bag into a ball and rolling it down the rock.

  “Litterbug! Ruth’ll—” She stopped herself, and the wind carried off her words.

  “Mind yourself here, the pine needles are slippy.” Jael, one arm around a tree, offered Maria the other hand. They pulled themselves up through the steep wood, lunging from one tree to the next.

  “Is it far?” asked Maria glumly. “I think I’ve got a splinter in my palm.”

  “Just the big cairn to go now. See the cross?”

  They scrambled on all fours over the hillock of rounded boulders and landed on the granite base of the huge stone cross. Maria took a painful gulp of the pineapple juice, then passed it over.

  Jael retained her hand and turned it upward. “That’s not a splinter, it’s just a scratch. Should I kiss it better?”

  Suddenly chilly, Maria pulled her hand back. She craned upward. “Why is there a U2 T-shirt on the top of the cross?”

  “In case God gets cold,” said Jael succinctly, biting into her apple.

  The sun edged out from behind a muddy cloud, and the hill began to glint violet and copper. Maria glanced at Jael, pale-faced and eyes closed, leaning back against the granite. She leaned closer. “Is that a scar there, just on your hairline?”

  Jael rubbed her left temple with her thumb. “Have you never noticed my fractured skull before?”

  “Yer wha’?”

  “I was knocked off my bike when I was nine.”

  Maria was impressed. “I hope you sued the driver.”

  A reminiscent grin spread over Jael’s face. “My parents settled out of court for a hundred and fifty, which was megabucks at the time. I spent the money later on a portable television.” She started to chuckle and went on: “What none of them knew was that my brakes were cut.”

  “What do you mean, cut?”

  “It was a sort of game. I was spending the summer with my gran in Killiney, and on the first day of my holidays I cut my brake cords with the garden scissors. Every now and then I’d dare myself to ride down Killiney Hill.”

  Maria was not smiling. “You maniac. You could have been killed.”

  “That was the fun of it.”

  “Did nobody check your brakes after the accident?”

  Jael shook her shining fringe out of her face. “I remember when I woke up from my coma—”

  “You were in a coma?”

  “Well, state of unconsciousness, whatever, anyway I woke up with a blinding headache, and the first thought that struck me was, they’ll have found the brakes cut and I’m going to get lynched. But luckily the poor guy’s car had flattened my bike, so I got nothing but sympathy.”

  “And cash. You’re a fundamentally dishonest person, do you know that?”

  “That’s me.” Jael nibbled her apple.

  Maria was watching the sky. “Is that a hang-glider, that red thing? I’d like to do that once before I die.”

  “Better get moving then.”

  “No, seriously. I dream about it all the time. Only I’d never have the nerve.”

  “How can you tell?” Jael stretched her arm back and hurled her apple butt over the cross.

  “I know myself. When the time came for jumping off the mountain, I’d start crying and beg to be untied.”

  “You underestimate yourself.” Jael stood up, tall against the skyline, flapping her hands to restore circulation. “Hey, let’s go back along the cliff path. I love watching the trains rumble past two hundred feet below.”

  “It looks a bit crumbly,” Maria mentioned as they waded through deep heather to the barely visible path.

  “Just a little.” They flattened themselves to the rock to let a party of German backpackers go by.

  “Jael, you promise you won’t even threaten to give me one of your playful shoves?”

  She turned with a look of injured innocence. “Would I do a thing like that?”

  “What’s for dinner?” Jael stretched her feet toward the fire, yawning.

  Maria looked blank. “Are you hungry already? Suppose we could heat up something out of a tin.” The flat smelt empty already, and Ruth was gone only a day.

  “Why don’t I nip down for a takeaway?” Jael shot off, refusing to let Maria look for her purse.

  Six o’clock, and already the night was closing in. The window was a black square; not a star in sight, the smog blotted them all out. She would lie flat on her bed for twenty minutes. What was the yogic formula Ruth was always quoting? Ten minutes of deep relaxation was equivalent to three hours’ sleep. Maria peered down at her toes, wondering if they were deeply relaxed; she couldn’t feel them, but that might be the cold. She felt an itch on her sole and sat up to scratch it.

  In the bathroom the fluorescent bulb was flickering; she turned it off and splashed her face with cold water. The white outlines in the mirror looked lopsided. The front door slammed.

  “Maria? Where are you?” came the call, almost plaintive. For god’s sake, she thought, where could she be hidden in a four-room flat? Rummaging in the cupboard for the hand cream, she knocked over a clutter of bottles and cursed softly. Snapping on the light again, she stooped to pick them up, and her eyes were caught by a label. “Jael?”

  “What?”

  “Whose is the henna?”

  “Who the whatsit?” Her face appeared round the side of the door.

  “Rich Russet Henna Highlights,” Maria read out accusingly.

  “Mine,” said Jael placidly.

  “You mean it’s not real, your hair?”

  “It’s real, all right.”

  “No, I mean natural.” Maria pursued her down the corridor.

  “What’s natural?” asked Jael, setting down plates on the rug beside the sleepy fire.

  “I thought you were a real redhead.” Maria’s voice was stony.

  Jael looked up from the cartons, wide-eyed. “Last year my hair was brown, this year it’s red. Red’s about as real as I come, Maria.”

  “Will I ever get a straight answer from you?”

  “Eat your curry.” Jael sat cross-legged and poured herself a tumbler of whisky. “Are you partaking?”

  Maria settled herself. “Afraid not, I’m still unsophisticated enough to prefer tap water.”

  Jael shook her head in exasperation. “You’ve got such hang-ups!” she commented. “Like, what’s with this sophistication business?”

  “I don’t want to be ultrasophis, like the kind of person it’s hard to eat spaghetti in front of. Just sort of airily adult.”

  “Best ad for whisky I ever heard. Doesn’t make me feel airily anything. More like earthily irresponsible.” Then, after a minute, wonderingly, “I never found it hard to eat spaghetti in front of anyone, not even when I was seventeen.”

  “Maybe it’s character, then, not age.”

  “You could lay off my age once in a while.”

  “I mean it as a complime
nt. What I need,” said Maria through a mouthful of rice, “is for an experienced woman like yourself to write me out a little guide to life.”

  “You sure you want to end up like me? A lonely, middle-aged dyke, slugging unsophisticated whisky?”

  Maria stared over her poised fork. “Are you lonely?”

  “Not yet,” Jael admitted, slightly sheepish, “but give me a few days.”

  “You should be.” Maria let the words hang between them, without qualification.

  They were silent, finishing off the curry. “But that sketch you did this morning,” Jael remarked, as if continuing an unheard conversation, “it was actually good. You’re lucky to be one of those people who can make things.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, looking up from her plate.

  “You’re an achiever, a go-ahead person. Whereas I can only go other directions,” said Jael with a faint smirk.

  “What don’t you achieve?”

  “Ah, you know. Pictures, meals, college degrees, that sort of shit. I drift through existence just using things, never making any.”

  Maria was sceptical. “Since when have you passionately wanted any of those things?”

  “Oh, I don’t really. Just sometimes it seems a rather unproductive three decades.” As Jael reached down the side of the sofa cushion to retrieve her lighter, a smile flickered across her face.

  “What have you found, a half-eaten Yorkie?”

  Jael brandished a fistful of crumpled black cards. “My tarot pack! You’re in for it tonight.”

  “I don’t think I want to know my future,” said Maria doubtfully, but Jael was busy fishing cards out from under the cushion.

  “Well, I do. Here,” she ordered, splaying the deck to a broad fan on the hearth rug, “gimme three for your recent past, three for your present, and three for your recent future.”

  “How can a future be recent?”

  “Oh, shut up, Maria. Short-term future, then.”

  She picked out nine cards, her hands shaking. “This is creepy. What if I get Death?”

  “The death card only means a major trauma or loss,” Jael reassured her. Snatching the thin pile from Maria, she laid them face up in three tiers and leaned over them, peering at the pictures. “OK, let’s go.”

  “Hang on—”

  Jael looked up in exasperation. “What is it now?”

  “Surely they’re a completely random selection?”

  “Believe me, your subconscious was telling your hand which to pick. It’s all fated. Now, which do you want, a lecture on occult theory or your own story?”

  “My story.”

  Jael propped herself up on one elbow, perusing the cards. “OK. In the recent past we have the nine of swords, for guilt, nightmares, and a general heap o’ shit. Beside it is the seven, which means secrecy and discretion, or quarrels with friends. Then the High Priestess—I love this card, look at the white flowers falling out of her dress.”

  “What does she stand for?” Maria picked the card up for a closer look.

  “More secrets. She’s Persephone, emerging with hidden knowledge from your psychic underworld.”

  Maria failed to stifle a snort. “So, cutting through the jargon, my recent past is about the exposure of a guilty secret. Mine or someone else’s?”

  Jael shrugged; “It doesn’t say. Now your present: First is the Moon, for uncertainty and fickleness. See her three faces? She stands for someone you can’t trust—again, maybe yourself. In the middle we have the Fool, which is about risk. The Fool has come out of the safe cave and is dancing on the cliff edge. Then—oh, I like this one—the Tower. That’s about the breaking down of convention—a lightning bolt smashing your fortress. It can also mean punishment.”

  “Are you making this up off the top of your head?” Maria inquired.

  Jael turned her face with a look of genuine hurt. “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s just that I was flicking through a book on the tarot in the college library the other day, and I distinctly remember that the Tower meant divine inspiration.”

  “They mean lots of things,” said Jael coldly. “It’s not a mathematical formula. I’m the reader, so I’m using my intuition to pick the interpretations that fit this pattern. And I don’t think divine inspiration has a place in your story.”

  “Go on, I’m only slagging. So what’s my present again?”

  “You’re uncertain about taking a risk,” Jael summarised smoothly, “and it involves being unconventional, and maybe getting punished.”

  “And the future?”

  “Well, this just covers the next few months … Aha, here’s something spicy. Two of cups, the beginning of a relationship, blind young love.” She put her head back to laugh. “And look what’s beside it, the five of wands—marriage or alliance with a wealthy or powerful woman.”

  “What’s that last one?” Maria picked up the Wheel of Fortune and looked at it from several angles.

  “That’s easy, read it yourself.”

  “I can’t.” She tossed it into Jael’s lap.

  “Just look at the little people tied to the rim, being spun round like ball bearings. Bet they feel nauseated.”

  “So that’s what it means—nausea?”

  “It’s a change in your fortune—something big that just happens to you, and you feel you’ve no choice in the matter.”

  Maria yawned. “Well, the only wealthy woman I know is Yvonne’s mother, and she’s already hitched.”

  “Does the rest of the reading make any sense to you?”

  “Bits,” said Maria. She neatened the lines of the cards. Then a thought struck her. “Hey, hang on, didn’t you deal them out from the top down? Then weren’t the top three, not the bottom three, the ones I picked for my past?”

  “Don’t remember.” Jael was building a house of cards.

  Maria stared at her. “But that means the affair has already been and gone, and I’m in the uncertainty at the moment, so all the nightmares and secrets are yet to come?”

  “You never know.”

  She glared. “You’re after telling my story backward.”

  Jael nudged the bottom card to one side and watched the structure topple. “There’s no one way to tell a story. You take all the elements and rearrange them to suit yourself; my version is as good as any.” She began laying out the cards for a game of patience.

  “You’re a chancer, you know that?” Maria gave up and leaned back on the edge of the sofa. Her eyes were hypnotised by the fire, the room dwindling to a small red tongue. The coal was burning well; she wondered whether they had remembered to try out that new smokeless fuel over Christmas. She turned to Jael, who was motionless, staring back at her, a card between finger and thumb. They both drew breath, then stopped.

  “Go ahead,” said Jael.

  “No, it was only something about coal,” said Maria, then giggled, because it sounded such an unlikely topic of conversation. “No, seriously, it was nothing. What were you going to say?”

  Jael tossed down the cards and squeezed out the words. “I think it’s time to tell you—”

  “No.” The words moved before her brain did.

  Faintly pink, Jael asked, “No what? Did I ask you a question?”

  “Sorry. My mistake,” said Maria.

  “But what did you say no to?”

  “I thought there was something you were going to ask,” said Maria.

  “Like what?” Jael’s voice was innocent. “What would I have asked?”

  “Can we drop the subject?”

  “Too late for that.”

  “Oh, go on, then,” said Maria testily. Please no, please let her have guessed wrong.

  Jael made her wait. She poured herself another trickle of golden whisky. “What I wanted to say,” she murmured at last, “is that I want you.”

  A great weariness came over Maria. She longed to lie down on the coach and sleep for a hundred years. “I thought it might be that,” she said. Then, the silen
ce stiffening between them, she added, “Since when?”

  “Since now.” Jael’s eyes were glowing in the firelight.

  Maria avoided them. Stirring herself to anger, she went on. “Twenty hours is your idea of a decent interval, is it?”

  “I have been waiting quite a while,” she said in her most gentle tone.

  “It wouldn’t be worth the wait,” Maria protested.

  Instead of the expected denial, Jael said bluntly, “I don’t care what it’s like, I just want you.” To make matters worse, she slid over beside Maria and put her arm around her. Maria was furious to find herself dissolving into tears like the worst of Hollywood heroines, but it was unstoppable. No one had ever put a hand on the back of her neck like that. Gulping, she leaned against Jael’s warm frame.

  “Feeling better?” asked Jael gently when the sobs had lulled. She started running her fingers through Maria’s feathery hair, cutting little jungle paths of sensation.

  It would be so easy, thought Maria, to let her take over from here. For several long seconds she considered that option and let the sharp fingers bring her scalp alive. “No,” she said at last, barely loud enough to hear. The fingers slowed. She cleared her throat and stared into the coals. “I wish I knew what you see in me to want. You’re the first person who’s ever looked at me like that, like I was worth looking at.”

  The fingers burrowed deeper, taking a warm hold of her head. “I’m sure there’ve been others you never noticed, because they were less crude and obvious.”

  Maria grinned sadly. “Well, I’m grateful. But the answer is still no. You should have realised that it couldn’t happen,” she hurried on, gaining conviction. “You know I’m not—”

  Jael’s voice was shaking with vehemence. “You don’t know what you are.”

  “Don’t patronise me.” She shook her head free of Jael’s hand.

  “Maria, I’ve watched you for three months. You’ve changed under my eyes, you’ve come so far. You can’t be too afraid to jump off the mountain.”

  “It’s not fear, you stupid woman. I couldn’t care less whether I turn out to be a lesbian or whatever.” Maria blinked up at her in exasperation. “I just don’t want to go to bed with you. This isn’t the right mountain for me to jump off.”