Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

Tony had a quick cigarette under the wind-rippled canopy and went back into the bar.

Catherine Barrett was sending a text. When she saw him on the way back over she smiled, and her mouth split her face in two.

‘I thought you’d gone and left me!’ she cawed.

He saw her plan in her twinkling eyes. They would drink up, drink up a couple more, she’d get frisky and they’d go back to her house and have a joyless fuck on her living-room couch, provided he could get it up and she didn’t throw up over the edge of the armrest.

It was half an hour shy of midday. The barwoman continued with the clean-up from the night before, stretching out in the narcoleptic presence of her early drinkers: Tony; Catherine Barrett; Seamie O’Driscoll with the bent, bulbous nose; a couple of flushed ould fellas on whose pints the heads had turned the colour of straw; one crumpled ould wan whose name Tony had never learned, sitting alone at the end of the bar with a glass of crème de menthe. Tony had taken care with his disguise since his tumble from the wagon; today he was clean-shaven, fragrant and ironed. He was close to charming the knickers off Catherine Barrett, whose long coral nails and ornate necklace made a decent equivalent to his get-up. He was a morning drinker, but of a different kind to the horde. He could have been heading to a wedding, or a business meeting.

He drained his glass, and Catherine Barrett looked at him with vicious dismay.

‘Have to go, Kitty Cat,’ he said, and she tried a cartoonish pout and said, ‘Ah, Tony. But weren’t we having the craic?’

‘Another time,’ and he considered adding Something’s come up , but he didn’t think he could bear the innuendo.

Tony arrived home with a slab of lager and a bag of rubbish — crisps, chocolate, fags. What else would the young fella need? Nothing, sure; he’d left the place in such a State-enforced hurry that he’d not even packed himself a bag, knowledge that had hit his father like a knock to the neck when he’d returned from the court. After that first weekend he’d made the trip to Dublin with the few things the lad was allowed and the shock still hadn’t rolled off him. The kid had pretty much stayed in that state for the whole nine months, as far as Tony could tell. He’d banked on it; once he’d fallen for the Demon again, he’d fretted about Ryan twigging it on visits.

Later on there’d be words, if it still mattered to the young fella. Tony was hoping to circumvent that. Share a couple of pints with him, rip away the hard feelings.

He opened a can while he cleaned the house.

Bedrooms, bathroom, hall. He cleaned out the fridge and made space for the lager. He retrieved the laptop from Kelly’s room and left it back on Ryan’s bed. He hoovered the stairs. He had a second can while he rang his mother; she had received word already, through Fiona, that the boy had been released. A text message confirmed that Fiona had met Ryan at the prison and was taking him for something to eat before dropping him to his train. And that was it — nine months passed in the blink of an eye, and all that could happen within.

He texted back: Is he OK?

Fiona’s reply: Not a bother on him. All he wants is a Big Mac.

Tony was, like the gaff, in tip-top shape by the time Ronan, Niamh and Cathal arrived in from school, and, off their reactions, in even better form by the time Cian and Kelly wandered in an hour later. He met them in the hall. Kelly dropped her bag by the door and glared at him, giddy in the kitchen door frame with a third can snapped open in celebration.

‘Your brother’s on the way home.’

She curled her lip and said, ‘I’m sure he’s only desperate to see you.’

‘Do you ever take a day off, Kelly?’

Cian waited until his sister had stalked away and cheered, ‘That’s pure brilliant!’

‘It is, isn’t it?’

Cian reflected, ‘It flew.’

‘Ask your brother whether it flew and I’m sure we’ll get a different story.’

There were plans to be made. Dinners: there had been a quiet complaint about boiled spuds and cheap chops, so none of that muck. Should he ferry the lad over to see his grandparents? Maybe tomorrow; they’d likely nag but he might get a present of twenty quid out of it, and that’d keep him going for phone credit at least. It might have been an idea to put together a list of schools that might take him in, if he were to return to do his Leaving Cert. What else, what else? He didn’t know. The drink was going down well.

The train was due at 5.30. He pulled on his coat and stood in the hall. Did Ryan have a coat with him? Had he been wearing one for court? Funny how memories you’d swear burnt tattoos on you dissolved into nothing when you needed to examine them. He remembered the judge, disastrously businesslike; the solicitor, who’d turned magenta with the indignity of having been so fucking wrong. He remembered Ryan, turning to face him, eyes like dinner plates, going, ‘Dad…’ but as to what he was wearing, his father couldn’t remember.

What had Maria been wearing the night she had sworn to take her children to the other side? Those were the details he didn’t wish to remember, they were of no practical purpose. Here she was though, in the hall with him, threatening to wake the lot of them up and leave him in an empty shell. She went for the stairs, he dragged her back. She kicked his shin, he made a grab for her ankle and missed, he caught her only at the bedroom door where she was heading for chubby little Ronan, he slapped her, he caught her wrists, she screamed in rage. Black jeans, a trim grey Nike T-shirt, ivory ballet slippers dirty and worn, her hair kinked from heat and fury.

He came back to himself and shook his head like a swimmer dislodging a trickle.

He hunted through the coats under the stairs and found Ryan’s hooded jacket, which he balled up under his own. He left the house distended and frightened Tara Duane, who was coming out her front door at the same time.

‘Tony!’

He set his jaw and started down his driveway, but she hurried to reach the gate and hopped out in front of him.

‘Tony, please stop.’

He stepped off the footpath to swing around her and she babbled, ‘I know we haven’t spoken in months and months, Tony, but now that all that unpleasantness has died down I thought we could mend some bridges.’

He stopped. ‘What’s died down?’ he snarled. ‘Your fucking paedophilia?’

‘Jesus, that is so insulting. I tried to be pleasant to Ryan — to all of your children — because we’re neighbours. What’s wrong with you that you have to twist that?’

‘Get away from me, Duane.’

‘You smashed my front window, Tony. You terrorised me. You embarrassed me in front of the whole terrace for giving you a friendly heads-up about Ryan’s advances. And I’m the one trying to make peace; will you not even give me credit for that?’

‘You’re full of shit and I hope you die roaring,’ he said. ‘And no fucking unpleasantness has died down ; if you think I’m ever going to forget what you did with that girl…’

He shoved past and she threw her arms up and marched alongside.

‘What girl, Tony?’

‘You know what girl,’ he said. ‘The pregnant girl. The one you sent up here on a watery promise that Tony Cusack would know where her boyfriend had gone. The one that came into my house and accused me of killing the prick in front of my fucking kids!’

‘I had nothing to do with that, Tony, I swear.’

‘If you had nothing to do with it, Duane, then why was the girl so sure that you did? Where’d she get your name? She string it out of her arse? Must be the same place she got my son’s name when she was looking for a bit of dope, isn’t that right?’