Smile

  I’d already told Rachel; my mother cleaned offices. She got the bus into town every workday evening with a gang of her neighbours.

  —I like the company, she told Rachel.

  —You’d have company with me too, said Rachel.

  —Yes, said my mother.

  She laughed.

  —Young ones like you, she said.—Gorgeous.

  She patted Rachel’s arm.

  —I’m happier with girls my own age, she said.—I can hold my own in the middle of them. But I’d look like a bloody banshee beside your ones.

  —Banshees are cool.

  —They are in their eye, love. I’ve heard them often enough.

  She patted Rachel’s arm again and looked across at me. She was smiling, almost tearful.

  —My God, she said.

  * * *

  Rachel had moved in with me. She wouldn’t live in the same house as her father any more. We fucked till we were starving. But it was awkward. It was only one room – two windows, two chairs, one table, one single, sagging bed. The typewriter had to be shifted if we were going to eat at the table. I had to add new pages every day to the pile beside the typewriter. I had to let her see that the book was growing. I got a key cut for her and I didn’t bother telling the landlord; I knew we wouldn’t be staying. We needed somewhere bigger – a shower of our own, a toilet, a proper cooker, a bed made for two. I needed an office to hide in.

  I loved falling asleep against her. I loved the smell in the room. I loved watching her move, any movement at all, her steps across to the tap or just scratching her ankle. She saw me watching, and smiled.

  —What?

  We put the telly on the floor beside the bed and lay on our sides, watching Remington Steele. I was behind Rachel, with my chin on her shoulder. The ads came on. Rachel leaned out and turned down the sound. She let herself fall back, and felt my erection tapping her.

  —Oh dear.

  She kicked off the sheet, lifted her left leg high and put me inside her.

  —Quick, before Pierce comes back.

  She loved Remington Steele, one woman’s cheerful fight against male domination and Pierce Brosnan. We were kind of proud of Pierce, an Irishman holding his own in the middle of all that Americanness. That was where we were headed, I thought. America, or at least a bigger place. We were publicly together now, the gorgeous young businesswoman and the pup who kept shocking the nation by saying words like ‘condoms’ and ‘atheist’.

  But we were photographed just once before the loft, for the Sunday Independent. We were in an apartment that Rachel borrowed for the afternoon from a school friend’s mother. Dalkey Island was behind us. Rachel wore black, including the apron. I refused to dress up; I tried to look like I’d been hauled from my study. I refused to look at the camera. I even held some sheets of A4 paper. In the shot they used, I stared at a page – it was blank – while Rachel leaned against me and pointed at an invisible sentence with a white plastic spatula.

  —Interesting, she whispered.

  —Spatula, I whispered back.

  She’d told me what it was called just a minute before. We helped the photographer and his assistant pack the gear; we bullied them out the door. Then we fucked for the half-hour we had before the school friend’s mammy came home. Rachel picked up the blank pages and looked at them.

  —No work done today, Victor. You have been a naughty boy.

  She sat back on the leather couch – she looked quite small on it – and patted her knees. I lay over her and she whacked me on the arse with her spatula.

  —For fuck sake, Rachel!

  She pressed an elbow into my back to hold me down, and whacked again. I broke away. Come on, Victor, don’t be shy, you want to kill me. I pushed her elbow aside, and stood.

  —That hurt!

  —So fuck me, she said.

  She took my anger and made me laugh. The glory of it – her legs around me. Me. I don’t think I ever quite believed it. Or accepted it.

  * * *

  The drum kit was a surprise. I hadn’t known about the boy in the house. I knew about Rachel’s sisters and I’d been looking forward to having a gawk at them, and I’d been dreading it too. But she hadn’t told me anything about a brother.

  There wasn’t one.

  —It’s his, she told me quietly.

  —Whose?

  —Dad’s.

  —Your da plays the drums?

  —No, she said.—Not really. He just owns them.

  We’d come into the house through the back door. The kitchen was empty, and that was weird. The smells were right but I don’t think I’d been in an empty kitchen in daylight before. It wasn’t the room where the living was done. The door to the rest of the house was shut.

  Rachel opened it.

  —Hi!

  We stood in the hall. Tiles, rugs, dark tables, seven shut doors, a wide stairs, and the drum kit. A door opened to my left, then another to my right. In five or six seconds, I was facing Rachel’s family. They’d all come from different directions. A sister – Maeve – was first, a ringer for Rachel, except not. She was too tall, too toothy, too nearly like Rachel. Then there was the mother. She was drunk. I wasn’t used to observing the efforts of people who drank secretly. But I knew. It was the deliberate quality of every move. She opened the door – her door, then shut the door. Then she looked and smiled, at Rachel, at me, at Maeve, at Rachel again. Then she spoke.

  —Well, hello.

  Well – hello.

  Then she moved. She took the edge of the rug like Becher’s Brook; she didn’t trip or lunge.

  —You must be Victor.

  You – mustbe – Victor.

  —This is Mum.

  She shook my hand and reminded herself to let go. She was doing very well.

  Then the other sister. Esther. This one was older, and angry. She carried a book like it was a hammer.

  —So, she said, and stared at me.

  She wanted to fight. She wanted me to lean out and push her, so she could push me back. We’d grab each other and throw ourselves onto the drums. She’d beat my face to mush with her hardback copy of Lord of the Rings.

  Then came Dad. Everything about him said rugby player. Everything about him said rugby player who had not been good enough. Rugby player who had never been any good. Rugby player who would take it out on the world with a smile on his square face until he exploded and died. He stood in front of me, beside his wife. She was pissed and slightly sideways but she was the nearest thing to Rachel in the hall. He was protecting her. She’s mine – I used to fuck her, she feeds me. And he smiled. I’m going to pound you and then I’m going to shove you under the rug with the side of my foot.

  —The notorious Victor, he said.

  —Hello, Mister Carey.

  —Jim.

  It was a threat, a verb. He was going to Jim me and it was going to hurt.

  Suddenly, the hall was full of screeches and laughter. Years of money and good food – these people knew how to behave. Dad – fuckin’ Jim – was a prick because he was expected to be. It was the job. He was good at it; he excelled.

  —What sort of a name is Victor?

  —Dad – !

  —I mean, where does it come from? What’s the history?

  —It’s just a name, I said.

  It was the best I could do. My notoriety, my adult credentials, were hiding behind the drum kit, shivering.

  —Leave him alone, said Rachel.

  She patted my arm and patted her father’s arm. We headed for one of the rooms at the front of the house. She patted my arse. She didn’t pat his. I was ahead.

  Meat was carved and matching bowls of vegetables were passed around. Mum held on to my shoulder as she leaned in and lowered a strange jug of gravy, a thing like a potty, onto the table. There was a t
it in my ear. I didn’t look at Jim. He carved right through to the dish. I half expected Mum – her weight there on my shoulder – to keep going, to topple across me onto the table. But she didn’t. She let go of me and sat, thank Christ, a few stops down the way.

  —Yummy.

  Someone said Yummy. My girlfriend said Yummy. Her siblings agreed, her father grunted. My mother cooked a decent Sunday dinner. There was a great consistency to everything she did. The chicken always tasted like her chicken. Given a pheasant, she’d have turned it into chicken. Sunday in our house was one smell, one taste, one quite happy memory. This, though, was wild and unrepeatable. There were things in this gravy. An onion – a whole onion – slid over the lip of the potty when I poured some of it onto my plate. I’d never had to pour my own gravy before. The onion – I didn’t know what it was at first – fell onto the plate. I was sitting alone; there were empty chairs on either side of me. I looked across at Rachel. She grinned at me and chewed. She gave me a little wave with the hand that held her fork. But the gravy – it was black. It was alive. The onion was the blood-covered head of one of the unborn babies I’d been writing and talking about. I stuck some of the gravy to the side of a carrot – glazed – and managed to get it to my mouth without lowering my head too far. And, Jesus – the taste. This was the Southside. This was what it was all about. There was wine in there, and history. This stuff went back to the Norsemen. It went straight to the blood. I wanted to beat my chest.

  —Every – thing alright? Mum asked the table.

  —Fab.

  —Yumm-eee.

  —Do you have Sunday dinner at home – Vic –

  She looked at me.

  —tor?

  —On Sundays, I said.—Yeah.

  Dad stared at me, hard. He was going to Jim me till I bled. But I had the secret now: I was filling myself with his gravy. I’d Jim him right back.

  —So, he said.—You’re in favour of abortion and all that, are you?

  —Dad –

  —It’s a question.

  And fair enough, it was a question. But I had a whole onion in my mouth for the first time in my life. A dead baby’s head, and I’d just bitten into it. It was full of boiling water that was now melting my gums and peeling the roof off my mouth.

  —Yes, I said, but no one understood me.

  I’d decided that I’d charge straight at Dad when he declared war. But my courage had gone unnoticed. My Yes sounded nothing like Yes. It sounded like a quick death.

  —Are you alright, Victor?

  —What’s wrong with him?

  I’d swallowed the onion – my decision. I couldn’t bite into it again and I couldn’t let it drop from my mouth back into the gravy. A scalding lump was moving down my throat. It was getting no less hot and I wasn’t convinced it was moving at all. I picked up the glass of red that Dad had poured before we’d sat down, and knocked back most of it. It must have done something. The outer layers of the onion contracted, and I was able to swallow the thing. I could feel the wine rushing after it.

  Rachel rubbed my back. I didn’t know how she’d got there, from the far side of the table to right beside me.

  —Okay?

  I wasn’t. I was far from okay. I’d never be okay. I wiped my eyes.

  —Okay?

  I could feel the onion, defeated but still evil, waiting to leap back out. Rachel’s hand was gone. She patted my head and went back to Esther and Maeve at the other side of the table. I wiped my eyes. I could see better now.

  —Is he alright?

  —Is it something he does?

  I smiled.

  —Sorry about that, I said.

  I’d forgotten about abortion. Everyone had. Except Dad. His frown couldn’t mask his delight. His daughter had got herself stuck with an eejit, a Northside gutty who couldn’t even eat.

  —Tell us a bit about your book.

  The attack didn’t come from Jim this time. It came from Esther. In her bid to become Dad’s little girl. I could feel the onion turning. Dad’s little onion.

  —Well – , I said.

  —It’s great, said Rachel.

  She wasn’t defending me; I knew that immediately. She’d looked through the stack of pages on the table in the flat. She’d found four pages, maybe five, that were coherent, or could have been called an extract. I knew I’d been caught and I couldn’t feel grateful. She wasn’t backing me up; she was hiding me. She was actually making me up. I couldn’t be grateful, but I was. I smiled at Rachel. She smiled at me. Mum smiled. Maeve smiled.

  Esther didn’t smile.

  —What’s it about? she asked again.

  —Well, I said.—Ireland.

  —Oh, terrific, said Dad.—Another book about Ireland. Badly needed, I say.

  —About what’s wrong with Ireland, I said.

  I could look straight at him, wait for the next attack. I’d be writing the book; it was in me.

  —So, he said.

  He pushed a chunk of beef into his mouth and chewed, and stared, and smiled, and swallowed.

  —Tell us, he said.—What’s wrong with Ireland?

  —It’s a book, Dad, said Rachel.—Not a list.

  —I was talking to your boyfriend, said Jim.

  He didn’t look at her.

  —I haven’t had the benefit of being able to read the work in progress while sitting up in bed.

  There was a gap then for a gasp. But no one gasped. Maeve nudged Rachel. It was the nicest thing I witnessed all day.

  —What is wrong with Ireland? he asked.—Victor.

  That was the problem. ‘I don’t really know,’ should have been my answer. Or ‘I don’t really know yet.’ The Church, politics, inequality, being stuck in the past, the political clout of the farmers. These were my targets but I hadn’t been able to do much with them. I’d been felt up by a Christian Brother but I didn’t blame the Church for that. I didn’t know how to blame the Church; that came decades later. I knew the dominance of the Catholic Church was a bad thing but I didn’t know how to expand on that, or even start. But: this is important: I was going to write the book: I was writing the book. I believed that. I knew it.

  It was the word ‘boyfriend’, the way her father had used it. The nudge, the push. It was a silly word, and childish. It was an order: ditch him. So I asked her, later.

  —Will we get married?

  She looked at me. She giggled – she giggled.

  —Yes, she said.—We will.

  Then she laughed like a woman.

  —Why are we doing this? she asked.

  And I told her the truth.

  —Because I love you.

  —And I love you, she said.

  And that was true too.

  She saved me. That was what Rachel did. She saved me and, later, she carried me. Her assertiveness, the way she grabbed me, pulled me into her, turned her back and remained the boss, her willingness to cry, the way she took sex, took and gave – I can see now that it saved me. It stunned me and made me. I’d fallen in love with an adult. I wasn’t a fraud; I was a slow starter.

  * * *

  We moved into the loft soon after. It was right over Rachel’s kitchen, in Temple Bar. Temple Bar then wasn’t Temple Bar now. People puked and shouted, but far less of them. There was a local population, working-class people. There were a few good pubs, a couple of restaurants. There was the Project Arts Centre. There were artists and chancers. The cobblestones were genuine; they hadn’t been left there for their charm. It was easy to feel special in Temple Bar. It was easy to think of Berlin or Prague.

  Rachel unlocked the door. She pushed it open a few feet and we waited for the noises inside to stop. We said nothing. She pushed again but there was something inside, in the way. I leaned in, past her, and looked for the light switch. But it was bright enough already. We
could see the line of windows, a whole wall of them. There were no blinds or curtains. It was late morning, about midday. I stepped in. I looked behind the door, to see what had been blocking it.

  —Oh, God –

  —What?

  It was a dead pigeon. He was stiff but uneaten – a big grey lad.

  —Is it a rat? she asked, although she was right behind me and the prospect wasn’t slowing her down.

  —No, I said.

  The place was full of pigeons. Two of the windows were open and two more were missing their glass. There were white streaks of shit on the floorboards. We walked to the middle of the room. It was quite a stroll; the place seemed vast. There were no hiding places, just four empty corners and the windows. There was nothing indoors about the place. We might as well have been standing in the middle of a park. And we were living there a week later. There was no escape. I had to work.

  And I did. Because she did. Rachel isn’t a television invention. One thing you’ll have noticed about Rachel if you’ve been following her career, if you’ve been watching her hair get slightly shorter by the year: she never says she works hard. She never boasts. She never spoofs. She claims nothing special, nothing God- or blood-given. She never claims an interesting history, or a struggle to get to the top. Those of you who watch carefully will know that quite often Rachel says nothing. Not because she’s letting the men at it, but because she doesn’t need to. They hate her, the men. They love her and hate her. Because they need her. They’re expendable; Rachel isn’t. The show will go on without them but there’s no show without Rachel. The producers have tried to find her match. It’s part of the show’s appeal, why Hit the Ground Running comes back every autumn. Is there an entrepreneur out there who will knock Rachel Carey off her fuckin’ perch? So far, no, there isn’t.

  I woke to Rachel clattering below me. I could measure her day while I lay on the mattress – we’d no bed for a while – in the centre of our huge room and heard the added voices and smelled the recipes climbing in through the gaps in the painted floorboards. There was Rachel and then there were other women – girls – down there. This is true: Rachel was the first person in Ireland to refer to her employees as ‘the team’. Never ‘my team’. And the team got bigger.