"More than there always is?" Jude looked at him levelly.
"Fair enough. Sorry for the interrogation." He gave her an uneasy grin. "I get edgy, meeting Síle's girlfriends."
"How many—"
"Only two ... no, three," Marcus decided. "Ger was a good laugh, and the pilot was fun but just too neurotic—the thing was, none of them seemed quite worthy. And Kathleen was too ... unruffled," he added before Jude could bring herself to say the name.
Jude snorted slightly. "She accosted me last night, at a club."
"No!"
"Ruffled wasn't the word. I thought she was going to whap me."
Marcus stared. "Well, I suppose pain brings out hidden traits. Like invisible ink and a hot iron."
Jude tried to smile at the image.
"Síle and I always joke that back in the bad old days, we'd have had one of those theatrical marriages of convenience—silver cufflinks, Noël Coward dialogue, cocktails at five..."
She grinned properly, then. "Listen, Marcus, I don't know if I'm worthy, but I promise I'll treat her right."
"Okay, that's a deal. My boyfriend wears cufflinks with his silk shirts," Marcus said abstractedly, "that's why they're on my mind. Mostly reds and greens—the shirts—but I think he'd look better in cream. Speaking of the devil—" He half stood and waved across the crowd.
Pedro was a small, beautiful, olive-skinned man who kissed Jude on both cheeks.
"So you guys are living pretty far apart too," she said to kick off the conversation.
"Isn't everyone," said Pedro, sliding in beside Marcus.
"Madness, " said Marcus in what she deduced must be a Noël Coward voice, "sheer madness!"
"You liking Dublin?" asked the Spaniard.
"Very much," Jude assured him.
"She hates cities," commented Síle, arriving back with the drinks.
"I guess I'll have to make an exception," said Jude, looking up at her.
"And you've been together how long?" asked Pedro.
"Counting from when?" Marcus objected. "If it's consummation, that was only in April."
"New Year's Day," said Jude, decisive.
"Oh yeah?" asked Síle, grinning.
"For me, anyway. That's when the big ol' rock dropped into the pond."
"Six months, then," said Pedro judiciously. "So you should come here," he told Jude.
Wasn't she here? "Uh..." Was this a language problem?
"To live."
She laughed. Then she felt bad, because it wasn't as if she'd been scoffing at the notion, she was just startled.
Síle was nodding back at Pedro. "A splendid notion." Her tone was slightly sarcastic, but then it often was. Jude couldn't read her face.
"Well, that's them sorted, anyone for a packet of crisps?" asked Marcus, which raised a general laugh.
Later, Jude and Síle stood in a queue for cabs with rain drizzling into their collars. "Oh, and when you were getting drinks," Jude remembered, "Marcus grilled me about my long-term intentions."
Síle groaned. "I'm so sorry. Total strangers harassing you to emigrate on the spot." A strand of her hair was slicked against her cheek. "I'd never—I mean, in an ideal world," she corrected herself, "of course I'd love to find you in my four-poster every time I came home! But I know you have your own life."
Was that a way of saying, Don't intrude on mine? Jude kept her tone light. "Well, not entirely my own, since Belgium got overrun."
Síle kissed her, rain-chilled mouth to mouth. Somewhere in the line behind them, drunken lads started making mwah-mwah sounds. Jude flinched. Síle kept on kissing her. Now one of the guys was pretending to puke. Síle tucked her arm tightly through Jude's and stared ahead at the taxis.
On Sunday, Jude woke up with no idea where she was. Then she recognized the tiny square room she'd gone to bed in, the glittering hangings nailed to the wall.
"We don't have to shift for another hour, Da's not expecting us till noon," murmured Síle through her hair, and Jude's stomach formed a knot.
Driving to Shay O'Shaughnessy's house, Síle flipped between CDs. "Bhangra, Sharon Shannon, Dolly, or Franz Ferdinand?"
"Eh, whatever."
Síle narrowed her eyes. "Since when have you taken to saying, like, whatever, dude?"
Jude sighed. "Full disclosure: I haven't heard of any of them."
"Ha! You may have turned heads on the dance floor the other night, but I shall have to take your musical education in hand," said Síle, and put on some country and western singer who turned out to be Dolly Parton.
"Am I the youngest woman you've ever brought home?" Jude asked. She meant it as a quip, but it came out anxious.
"Oh no, when I turned up with Carmel, we were both about nineteen."
"The biggest age gap, I suppose I mean. And the poorest?"
"We don't charge admission to Sunday dinner," Síle murmured.
"The most foreign, then?"
"Not at all. Ger was only from Liverpool, but Da could barely understand her."
"The most likely to be called Sir in a women's washroom?"
"The most beautiful," said Síle, holding her gaze.
All Jude had going for her was the look in her lover's eyes. I should have saved the coke for meeting the family, she thought. Jude was the invader, the evil fairy, the thirteenth at the table. All the havoc was her doing.
Shay O'Shaughnessy's house was alarmingly grand, a three-story gray terrace looking straight out at the sea. Only the father and sister were there; the brother-in-law had taken all four boys to somewhere called Croke Park to watch a game. Damn: Jude had been hoping the kids would provide some kind of protective cover.
Shay was as pink-pale and white-haired as Orla was dark—she had Síle's skin and hair, Jude thought, but harder features. Father and daughters had exactly the same mannerism of pursing their lips. Lunch was roast lamb, and in her eagerness to show appreciation Jude ate far too much of it.
"Scrambled animal vaults nicely, in twelve..." murmured Síle in the living room, examining an almost-finished crossword.
"Oh leave it, it's been tormenting me all weekend. It'll come to me in my sleep," said her father, lighting another cigarette. "Jude, I understand you've only recently thrown off the shackles?"
Did he mean marriage? Jude blinked, startled. Was he calling her a greedy little home-wrecker?
"Yeah, and you're not helping," said Síle, swatting at the smoke.
"He insisted, as the kids aren't here," Orla apologized. "Though technically this house comes under the workplace ban, Da," she added slyly, "now you've got a cleaner."
Did no one in this family mop their own floors, Jude wondered? Perhaps the O'Shaughnessys could be described as—what was that great phrase she'd heard at Jael's the other night?—smoked salmon socialists, that was it.
Shay took a long suck and held the cigarette behind his chair, like a teenager. "I apologize for tempting you, Jude. I'm full of admiration."
"That's okay," she assured him. "I really only get the craving late at night." Curled up on the porch swing, insomniac, holding to the thought of her faraway lover. What did Orla and Shay think she and Síle were up to? Did they imagine that it was nothing but sex, or did they prefer not to imagine it at all?
"You tried to give it up once, Da, didn't you?" asked Orla.
"Mm. Nineteen sixty-nine, when I turned forty: the worst eleven days of my life. Barring your mother's death, of course," he added quietly. "But you know, the demon weed doesn't harm everyone."
"That is such bollocks," said Síle.
"At my last checkup," he confided in Jude, "Dr. Brady said he didn't know how it was possible, but I have the lungs of a teenage mountaineer."
The father was a charmer—and he showed no signs of bearing a grudge against Jude, she had to admit through her fog of paranoia. The sister was harder work, but Jude warmed her up by asking about her Ireland of the Welcomes drop-in centre.
Orla went off on a rant about the denial of citizenship to
children of non-nationals born on Irish soil. "The day we voted to deny citizenship to children born on Irish soil to non-nationals—I was mortified! It's not like people arrive on a whim! This family I know left Bosnia the day the war broke out, without so much as nappies, and one of our volunteers arrived from Rwanda missing a hand."
"The irony is that we're all boat people," said Jude. Orla stared. "If you go back a generation or two, I mean."
"True enough."
"In Canada, you can't help being aware you're on stolen ground."
"Whereas here, an Irishman like me—a pale one, at least," Shay added jokily—"tends to imagine his ancestors sprang up out of the bog."
Jude shrugged. "Everybody's from somewhere else, originally. Even my friend Rizla—he's from the biggest native community in Canada, the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, but I tease him about the fact that they're actually blow-ins from New York State."
"Really," Shay marveled.
Síle was smiling, and Jude wondered whether she was being a bore. She turned back to Shay and asked about the age of the house.
"1850 or thereabouts. But Monkstown dates back to the thirteenth century, when the Cistercians built the Castle."
"It must have been a thrill to grow up here."
Orla made a face. "I used to long for a new house like my best friend's, with cupboards that shut properly and a swing set in the garden."
"My daughters have a tin ear for history," Shay lamented to Jude. "And Sunita—my wife—she didn't much care for it either. They have a different conception of time in India, of course. Did you know, the Sanskrit word for the world literally means 'that which moves, that which changes'? Hindus believe things happen over and over again. For Brahma a single day is—hold on, I used to know this—"
"Four million human years," Síle supplied.
"Good girl," he said, gratified. "And each Brahma day starts with creation and ends with dissolution, and has fourteen subdivisions, each ended by a deluge."
Jude was experiencing something like vertigo.
"And lunch is ended by strawberries," said Orla, heading for the kitchen.
They were small, and sweeter than Jude had ever tasted. By now the June sun had come out weak and clear, so Shay proposed that Síle drive them down the coast to a spot called Greystones.
"I get it, gray stones. I like it when names make sense," Jude told Síle on the pebbled beach.
"Ah, but these are all English names, foisted on our landscape," she said with a touch of mockery, as she crunched along.
"How can you move in those heels?"
"Don't you like them?" asked Síle, doing a Marilyn Monroe as the breeze whipped up her skirt.
"More than you know," said Jude, grinning.
"I've worn heels so long, flatties would make me feel I was falling backwards!"
Orla and Shay were having a serious skimming match, and Síle and Jude joined them. Jude tried not to show off, but she was the best by far. Had Kathleen come here with the family, every Sunday, before she'd been banished with no warning? Had she skimmed well, or found it a childish game?
"You throw like a girl," Orla told her sister.
"I'm just out of practice." Síle spun a pebble at Orla, hitting her on the leg.
"Now, children. Behave, or you won't get an ice cream," said Shay.
"Ah, now I feel thirty-nine again," said Síle heavily, "because there's no way I could make room for an ice cream."
Nobody had slipped up yet by mentioning Kathleen's name, Jude realized. That meant they were all being very careful. Facing the cobalt waves, she breathed in deeply. "You're a lucky guy to live by the sea," she told Shay.
He sniffed. "Clears the old head out."
"It must be weird to swim in salt water, though."
"If you've any little cuts they sting like the devil," he told her, "but when you come out you're tingling all over."
"The Indian Ocean is the best," Síle put in; "it's so saline, it's easier to float."
"I can't imagine it ever getting hot enough to swim here," said Jude with a little shiver.
Síle laughed. "I'll have you know, this is high summer! But it can be a bit of an endurance test on a windy day. Da used to put up a prize of tenpence for the first one in up to her neck."
"Who won?"
"Usually me," put in Orla.
"Yeah, she's more of a stoic. But Da's an old softy," said Síle, tucking her hand into her father's arm, "so whoever came second got fivepence."
Síle could feel the minutes dripping away like a leaky tap. Back in Stoneybatter, she took Jude around the corner to buy fish and chips, "the best of Irish cuisine."
On the way back they passed some kids sitting on a wall. "Are yiz lezzies?" sneered a girl.
"We are," Síle called back with a steely smile, "and thanks for asking."
"Kiss her, then, would you," contributed a boy.
"Kiss her yourself!"
They turned the corner. "That's twice in one weekend," said Jude under her breath. "You don't seem to let it bug you."
"Sticks and stones," said Síle with a shrug.
That night, their last night, the rain came down in sheets. Síle fingered the wooden slats of the blind to one side; the street was as black as an oil slick, and a passing car made a long hissing splash. Jude lay on her side, looking like a statue of a sleeping faun. But her eyes were open, and caught the streetlight.
Síle was tired but didn't mean to waste a moment of it on sleep. She let herself demand and insist. She banged her ankle on a bedpost. She forgot she lived in a row of terraced houses, and cried out like a banshee in the night.
She fell asleep without meaning to, between one hard hold and the next, and woke to the alarm at seven on Monday morning, feeling like a child who didn't want to go to school.
Through the living room blinds came the lights of the waiting taxi. "I wish I could drive you," she told Jude. "If only I didn't have to do recruitment at this bloody Graduate Fair—"
"Maybe it's better this way."
"Yeah. The good-byes are killers, aren't they?" She pressed her face to Jude's small breasts, and roared, "I demand asylum from a harsh world! I claim this as my true homeland!"
Jude managed to laugh.
As Síle stood on her doorstep in her cream satin kimono, watching the taxi turn the corner, Deirdre popped her head out.
"How are you, Síle love? Y'all right?"
"I'm grand."
The older woman took a step nearer. Her face was tight. "If you ever need anything, just knock on the wall."
"Sure, thanks," said Síle, wondering whether Deirdre had been shocked by the youth of her visitor.
"No, but ... if there's ever any problem, don't hesitate, just bang on the wall. Any hour of the day or night at all!"
"Will do." And Síle gave her frowning neighbour a little wave and stepped inside, wondering what to have for breakfast.
Only when she was halfway through her third slice of stone-ground toast and gooseberry jam did she figure it out. Perched on her kitchen stool, she felt mortification and delight shaken together like a cocktail. She remembered the sounds Jude had squeezed out of her, cries that must have sounded as much like suffering as pleasure. Great, she thought, now it'll be all round Stoneybatter that the air hostess is getting battered by her little bit of rough. She started laughing, sitting alone in her kitchen, and couldn't stop.
"I'd give you two another couple of months, at the most," was one of the things Kathleen had said to her in the club the other night. "My curse on the pair of you," was another.
Songs of Absence
Put your sweet lips
A little closer to the phone.
We'll pretend that
We're together, all alone.
—JIM REEVES
"Put Your Sweet Lips a Little
Closer to the Phone"
When Jude opened her backpack on the plane home, she found a white rose from Síle's tiny yard inside the cover of The
Way the Crow Flies. It was huge, creamy, with yellow at the heart. Half a dozen times during the flight she lifted it out to bury her nose in its cool satin. It smelled like lime juice, like light. By the time she landed in Toronto the rose was only a clump of bruised, dog-eared petals.
On the phone, her father teased Jude a little sadly about the fact that she'd only visited him once in the five years he'd been in Florida, the time she'd driven down for his wedding. "You know, there's courses you can take to tackle the fear of flying."
All of a sudden Jude regretted her reserve; if Ben Turner knew nothing about his daughter's life, whose fault was that but her own? "Actually," she said, "I'm getting over that. I just got back from Ireland."
"What do you mean? You live in Ireland."
"No, Ireland the country. I've been—I'm seeing this woman, her name is Síle."
Ben whistled. "It must be a big deal, to make you go all that way."
"Actually, yeah." She steeled herself: He might be annoyed that she hadn't mentioned this before, or hurt that she'd fly to Dublin but not to Tampa.
"That's wonderful, honey."
Was that relief in his tone? Gratitude that his peculiar daughter, her marriage over before her nineteenth birthday, had found someone to be serious about at last? Jude told herself to stop being so perverse.
Re: Toute Seule
You're only gone three days, Jude, and I'm missing you sorely. Ring me tomorrow morning, as soon as you're up?
Jael just texted to say "girl seems right stuff even if temporarily nonsmoking and born in Eighties" (grr, I've told her twice it was '79!).
Re: Chez Moi
Síle, I swear when I close my eyes I can still feel your hands.
In half an hour I'm due in my professional capacity at the Clinton Fair, which features team penning, area youth showing calves, mutton busting, round bale rolling, porcelain pony races and a hoedown/jamboree. Am I ringing your bells yet?
I was just filing the following clipping from the Irish Clarion (9 February 1861) and thought I'd include it as a heavy hint...
Urgent!
Thousands of nice girls are wanted in Canada. Tens of thousands of men are sighing for what they cannot get--Wives!
Shame!