Robert Wilson - Eureka Street - A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

And there was much time after that.There was a broken time in big rooms where the walls were cold as floors and no one spoke to her. It was like headaches she had had when she was a girl. She knew that there was a thing to endure and only by thinking of its end would she see it out.

She was only truly frightened when they told her that the child had lived. She wept and chided them. That night she dreamt of monstrous births and repulsive babies. The thing had seemed like a virus in her. She had expelled it. That was enough. They could expect no more of her.

For a week or more, she refused to see the child. The nice doctor, his face still scarred from her nails, made a list of all that she had taken when pregnant. As his hand had written down the second page, she understood what she had done. The child would be a monster, made of chemicals and nightmare. One nurse let it slip that the baby had been born addicted and her fears were confirmed. She saw the loathsome little thing with its lizard eyes glittering with greed and narcotic hunger.

When they brought it to her, she wept as if to die. Her heart was glass and broken. That wizened thing was all that she was. She had made it so.

And it seemed that when her baby died only she was surprised.

This was why she ran back to America when she discovered that she was carrying Chuckie's child. When she finished talking, Chuckie simply asked her, gently, caringly, what that had to do with anything. That was then and this was now. He had found it a simple task to persuade her that leaving him was not an option. He found it a simple task to tell her he loved her. He found it a simple task to look at her flawless belly and hope that the child would not, eventually, come to look like him.

The old lady neighbour came round for a while, keen to stay as long as Chuckie. She fought it out for an hour or two but when she looked at the acquiescence in Max's face, she decided it wasn't worth getting tired for. Chuckie spent the next hour and a half gauging the weight of Max's now placid breasts and asking her again to marry him.

He spent a short week there, pitilessly uxorious. He followed Max around the house and yard. He practically helped her to sit and stand. The old lady openly tittered at his excessive attentions. Sometimes Max grew vexed at his solicitude. One night, after the old lady had gone home, she snapped at Chuckie that he should stop clucking. But it was impossible to be long angry with him and within ten minutes she was rolling on top of his comprehensive belly, urgently whispering, Cluck me, cluck me, in his ear.

It was a joyous, absurd, consequential week. They spent those days more happily than Chuckie could have thought possible. He was drawn deep into all manner of metaphysical speculation. He found himself considering his own mortality for the first time.

By the time the week had passed Chuckie had grown abashed by such thoughts. He knew himself to be a pragmatic man (actually, he knew himself to be a fat, lazy bastard but he was now too rich to merit that summation). Mystical profundities ill-suited him.

There was something appropriate in his new situation. Something that he felt was more his speed. He was about to have a Ulster Protestant in him guaranteed it would be a son. It was time to provide for his international family. It was time to make some more money.

Chuckie saw Max walking across the parking lot towards him. He felt his customary surge of pleasure to think that this spring-heeled, healthy American woman was his. Her genetic contribution to the child would dilute much of the unwelcome Lurgan inheritance.

Max opened the Subaru's passenger door. `No chocolate croissants,' she said morosely.

'OK, we'll drive out to Shaneton.You said there was a mall there'

'Chuck, that's forty miles from here.'

'So what?'

Max glared at him. `I bought some croissants and I bought some chocolate.'

Chuckie looked question marks.

`We can put them together, Chuck. Or you can have a bite of one and then a bite of the other in quick succession. Mix them in your mouth and it's the same thing!

`Don't get humpy. This was your craving.,

'It wasn't a craving. I just fancied some'

'Fair enough.'

'Chuck, stop that. Not in the parking lot.'

Chuckie moved back into his own seat.

'Jesus, Chuck, for a fat guy you're always surprisingly horny.'

He smiled. `For a horny guy, I'm always surprisingly fat.'

He stared at her. She failed to fall off her seat at his comedy. Max and her mother were the only Americans who did not find him hilarious. `You love me,' said Chuckie.

`Don't I know it?' replied Max.

That night they talked about the future. They talked about where they would live. Chuckie knew that a return to Belfast was not assured. He would go anywhere that Max took him.

`Here or there. That's the big question, I suppose,' she said, trying to remove his lips from her nipple and bring him back to the point.

He looked up at her vaguely. `Here, there, makes no difference to me.' He smiled. `I can turn a buck anywhere. The world's my can of Tennant's: He moved back to her breast. Max sighed at the thought that she would marry this man. She rubbed her hand on the back of his sparse, almost sandy head. She wondered if this was how it had been for Peggy Lurgan.

`Yeah,' she said, suddenly mindful. `You should call your mother.!

That night Chuckie called Eureka Street. Caroline Causton answered. She told him that Peggy was out shopping. Chuckie felt a momentary thrill that his mother felt so much better. This brief pleasure was quickly replaced by bewilderment that Caroline should be answering his telephone.

'You think it's better that you still hang around for a while longer?' he hazarded, as vaguely as he could.

`What do you mean?' Her tone was exacting.

Chuckie grew tense. `Relax, Caroline. I was just asking a question.!

`Am I not welcome or something, Chuckie?'

'Don't be stupid. I'm just trying to work out how my mother

There was a brief silence.

`She's much better but she wants me to be with her. Is that all right with you?'

There was something in her tone that Chuckie didn't like. There was something in her tone that he hated.

'OK, take it easy.'

'I will if you will.'

'Tell her I called, will you? I haven't spoken to her since I left.'

'I'll tell her. She's fine. Don't worry.'

There was another silence. Chuckie had wanted to tell his mother. Now he wished he could wait but he found that the news was too big inside him.

'Caroline, I'm going to be a father'

'I know.'

'What?'

'Peggy told me.'

'Who told her?'

'That American girl of yours. The night before she left.'

'That's nice'

'You getting married, then?'

'Aye'

'Congratulations, son. I've got to go now. You take it easy. 'Bye'

She hung up. Chuckie felt deflated. His big news had depreciated in value on its first telling. And, although Caroline's tone had been warmer towards the end, there had still been something in it that Chuckie had not liked.

He called the office immediately. He told Luke instead. He hadn't known Luke very long and wasn't yet sure how entirely he liked him but at least the man was graciously animated at Chuckle's momentous news.

'John Evans has been calling again,' Luke told him.

'Who?'

'The billionaire you met on the plane. Jesus, Chuckle, what did you tell him?'

'Why?'

'You must have given him the best snowjob in history. He wants a part of everything we're doing. He calls every day. He's even threatening to fly over. He wants to know what our action is, or something transatlantic like that.'

`What have you told him?'

`Nothing. I was too embarrassed to tell him. This man is a very big cheese. I'd heard of him. He's famous. I wasn't going to tell this Rockefeller about our twig-dipping franchises. I still have a reputation: