Belinda McKeon - Solace

McCabe was a good-looking guy. If it had to be someone, if it had to be some guy, he wouldn’t mind it being McCabe.

‘There’s the farm, too, of course,’ Tom said, his voice stronger, surer now. ‘Charlie’s getting to the stage where he could do with his son to help him. Not much chance of that buck coming down and putting on his wellingtons.’

Mark felt his jaw clamp. He had walked into it. ‘Ah, for fuck’s sake,’ he said, loudly enough for the three or four drinkers in the bar to look up and take notice. ‘Don’t start.’

‘I’m only saying it’s hard on Charlie.’

‘Charlie seems to manage well enough by himself.’

‘Ah, you think that.’

Mark sighed. This was going exactly where he had suspected it would go. And there was a long way to go yet. They always stayed until closing time on these nights in Keogh’s. He could try to shut the conversation down, or he could face up to it. It was probably time he told his father a few things. It was time he spoke to him directly. He cleared his throat. ‘Charlie’s son has his own life, and his own career, and I’m sure Charlie is glad about that,’ he said.

‘Ah, he is, he is, of course he is,’ Tom said. ‘Apart from the worry of the other thing.’

‘So why would he want his son to give his own life up to run a farm of less than sixty acres?’

‘He could run the farm and still have his own life. The farm wouldn’t stop him.’

Mark snorted. ‘Brian McCabe is a software engineer in one of the biggest companies in the world. He lives in an apartment on one of the most expensive streets in the city. He goes to New York and London and God knows where else several times a year. He eats in the best restaurants and drinks in the best bars.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t see him in Dublin?’

‘I don’t.’ Mark sighed. ‘I’m just saying, that’s the kind of lifestyle you can expect someone like him to be having.’

‘Because he’s queer?’

‘Because he’s rich.’

‘Ah,’ Tom shrugged.

‘And so, tell me, how would a life like that be compatible with running a farm like Charlie’s? How would he do both at once? Spend every weekend to his oxters in cowshit, is that it?’

‘There wouldn’t be any need of that.’

‘So how?’

‘There’s ways.’

Mark laughed. ‘Tell me the ways. Go on. I’m interested.’ At this, he saw, his father himself grew interested.

He turned to face Mark. ‘There’s jobs around here too, you know,’ he said.

‘Not jobs that Brian McCabe would want,’ Mark said slowly. ‘Not jobs that anyone, really, would want.’

His father was unruffled. ‘Athlone or Sligo, then,’ he said. ‘There’s everything there — they’ve factories, businesses, universities, the whole lot. A man could easily be living down here and doing whatever he wanted to do with the time he wasn’t at work.’

‘It’s not the same.’

‘How is it not?’

‘It’s just not.’

‘And that’s a great answer,’ his father said, a line he had been using on Mark since he was a child. He was on his feet and heading for the toilet before Mark could reply.

‘Two more, Mark?’ said Paddy Keogh, who had, Mark realized, been standing close enough to hear the last few minutes of the exchange. Charlie McCabe had a gay son now, whether he liked it or not.

‘Two more, please,’ said Mark.

‘That’s the stuff,’ said Keogh, with a slow smile. ‘But if I’m not mistaken, it’s your father’s round.’

On warm summer evenings a crowd always surrounded the pub on the corner of South Anne Street, not trying to get in, but taking pleasure in being outside, drinks in hand, soaking up the last of the sun. Suit jackets were shrugged off, ties were loosened, the work day done, the night stretching out ahead. The atmosphere was at its most elated on Fridays, when a communal sense of liberation descended, so that proximity could lead to banter, and banter could lead to bed, but evenings like this were so rare in Dublin — so balmy, so beautiful, the low sunlight burnishing the deep red brick of the buildings — that a weekday could seem like a Friday, and nobody would say a thing to shatter the illusion.

Inside it was cool and dim, and few of the tables were occupied. The pub was made up of several small rooms, and a rickety staircase, lined with old photographs of writers and musicians, led to more narrow rooms and a second bar. Mark moved through them quickly, his gaze taking in every table. Several of the drinkers looked at him, out of boredom or curiosity, as he passed. She was not upstairs. He checked downstairs again, stuck his head into the snug at the front of the pub. He had to elbow through an animated throng at the door, and then he saw her. She was in a skirt, and heels, and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She was talking to some guy who hadn’t taken off his jacket or his tie. She looked up and saw Mark, and she excused herself from the gathering and came towards him, smiling, the beginnings of a blush spreading on her face.

She leaned in for a kiss, not on the lips but on the cheek; he was thankful he’d figured that out in time.

‘So you’re good for another winter?’ she said.

He didn’t have a clue what she was on about, but he wasn’t going to let her see that: he’d muddle through it, whatever it was. He didn’t want his first sober words to her to suggest that either she was making no sense or that he was a bit slow. ‘Yeah,’ he said enthusiastically.

‘So everything’s saved?’

Shit , he thought. This one he couldn’t just nod and guffaw his way through. ‘How do you mean?’ he said apologetically.

She laughed. ‘Some farmer you are. The hay, obviously. That’s what you went down to do, isn’t it? You saved the hay?’

‘Oh. Right. Yeah. All in safe and sound.’ And that’s the last thing I plan to say about hay for at least another twelve months, he added silently. ‘Drink?’ he said, and she said yes.

‘Don’t go away,’ he said, as he turned.

As the booze kicked in, he started to lean back into the evening properly, to watch her as she talked, to take pleasure in the sight and nearness of her, instead of trying to think of the right thing to say. She was talking, now, about the case she was working on — something about feuding Ascendancy throwbacks, as far as he could tell — and she was gesturing like crazy, which gave him an excuse to look at all of her. He looked at her arms, trailed by freckles, a mole nestled in the shadowy veins of her inner elbow. He looked at her throat, smooth and lightly tanned, and at the top two buttons of her blouse, how they were undone, and how, intermittently, an arc of dark lace at her left breast revealed itself, hid itself, hinted at itself. She had a small nose, and she was wearing lipstick, but it seemed to be the same shade as her lips — or was that the point of all lipstick? The green of her eyes was flecked with copper. As she talked, she turned her palms upward, spread them wide, stiffened them as though to catch something falling from above.

‘She’s unbelievable,’ she said — he raced backwards through the last couple of things he’d heard, and worked out that she was talking about her colleague.

He nodded. ‘She sounds it.’

She jiggled the ice in her glass. ‘So, how about you?’ she said, glancing at him. ‘What have you been up to?’

What had he been up to? Tugs of war with his father over every little thing. Tense encounters with his mother as she tried, like always, to encourage him to do two contradictory things: go back to Dublin as soon as he wanted and yet stick around in Dorvaragh for another few days. And there’d been the night in Keogh’s, and a conversation with Sammy Stewart from over the road about baler pins, and a conversation with another neighbour about what the neighbour referred to as ‘global warning’, and there’d been farcical attempts to read.