Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

‘Aw, fuck,’ he breathed.

Tony tried again.

‘Ryan, I—’

‘I’ll sort this,’ Ryan said. He went back to the worktop and picked up his phone. Tony shook his head. His mouth warped and changed his grimace into something faintly ludicrous, like the painted melancholy of an old clown.

‘How “sort it”, boy? What’s that mean?’

‘It means I’m going to fucking sort it, Dad.’

‘Ryan, you can’t bargain with Jimmy Phelan—’

‘I’m not going to bargain with him.’

‘Aw Jesus Christ—’

‘Aw Jesus Christ what, Dad? What? It has to be sorted, doesn’t it?’

Tony got to his feet.

‘Ryan… I can’t let you do this.’

‘That’s grand coz I amn’t asking your permission, am I?’

He turned back at the hall door.

‘Don’t bring this up with me again,’ he said.

He watched his father’s pallor wash out against the smudged eggshell blue of the kitchen walls, and couldn’t decide whether it was the right tone at last that had done it, or the right words or the right height or the right criminal trajectory. Or the right emergency. What the name of the magic trick was that turned Tony Cusack from one kind of man to no man at all.

He made the decision but it sat with him for a while, and he ended up driving from one end of the city to the other, smoking, and asking himself who the fuck he was.

He picked up Karine at the hospital at clocking-off time and she jumped into the passenger seat with the post-work high she denied and he was addicted to.

‘Hey, baby boy!’

There was an even blanket of mist over the city. Karine shivered. ‘So dark,’ she complained, turning up the heat. ‘It’s like December.’ Out of the corner of his eye he noticed her narrow hers and smile. ‘You’re cranky, are you?’

‘Not really,’ he said.

‘You OK?’

‘Course I am.’ They were at the car park exit; he leaned over the steering wheel and stared into the traffic. ‘How was work?’ he said.

‘Mental. Like, we’re supposed to be learning and the only thing they’re teaching us is how not to explode with stress. I swear to God, that’s the number one nursing skill.’

‘Someone’s got to do it,’ he said.

She shimmied in her seat. ‘Yeah! Someone’s gotta patch ’em all up.’

It wasn’t a dig at him. It might have looked perverse to the uninitiated, him doing what he did for money and her being nearly-a-nurse, but they both knew, well, you’ve got to be realistic. Someone’s got to do it: the mantra applied to both paths. He was glad of that shared pragmatism, though when he was hungover he worried that it was as down to rebelling against her parents, who hated him, as it was to her urban ethics.

He dropped her home to her parents’ terrace, and she leaned over and into a slow kiss.

‘Will you come and get me later?’ she whispered.

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t be too long.’

Before she pulled away he framed her face in an open hand.

‘Tell me you love me,’ he said.

‘Duh. I love you.’

‘Really, though?’

‘Oh my God, is my word not good enough?’ She smiled, then the smile faded, and she cocked her head. ‘Have you done something?’

‘No.’

‘You’re talking like you’ve done something.’

‘I haven’t.’

‘Coz I’m all done forgiving you, Ryan.’

‘I know.’

She let him kiss her again. ‘I’m just a bit off,’ he said. ‘I was up with my dad earlier. You know how it goes. He gives me the emos.’

‘I should have guessed.’

‘I’ve a small job to do. I’ll be back later for you. We’ll go to mine. Watch a film or something. Listen to some tunes. I dunno. Have fucking tea and Jaffa Cakes.’

‘OK,’ she said, soft as the rain.

‘And you can tell me about work,’ he said. ‘Tell me plans, and tell me stories.’

He crossed the river for the fifth time and turned onto the quay, and traffic lights quivered through the mist on the windscreen.

She was there. He pulled up alongside her and rolled down the window. If I’m caught doing this , he thought, how the fuck will I ever explain it?

‘Get in, Georgie.’

She looked at him like a cornered teenager, slid towards the passenger door, and slouched in.

‘What?’ she said.

The mist had teased her hair into a tangle, and its volume made her face even more gaunt. She pulled her jacket sleeves over her fists. Her skirt was short and her legs bare; he’d had the GTI only a month, and was still obsessively odd about anything dirtying the seats. He recognised his revulsion to her naked skin as irrational. Possibly essential, if he was going to be smart about it. He pulled back onto the road and drove towards the Mall. ‘How the mighty have fallen,’ Georgie muttered.

Over her right wrist she was wearing a piece of brown cloth, wound and knotted; it kept catching as she yanked at her sleeve.

‘That’s the best you can come up with?’ he said. ‘Mumbling something snippy to shame me? Fucking hell, Georgie. You’ve no fight in you.’

‘I’m supposed to fight you?’

‘You think I’m a hypocrite, don’t you? You think I’ve some nerve picking you up after what happened Saturday. You think it all boils down to whether or not I’m horny.’ He snorted. ‘And you get in anyway, and you’d let me, wouldn’t you? After everything.’

‘See, that’s what happened to the decent kid,’ she said. ‘He turned into a man.’

‘But you’d let him fuck you, though.’

‘It’s a job, Ryan. It’s not personal.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not.’

He had to contact his father afterwards for Jimmy Phelan’s number, and he could only do so via text; he didn’t want to talk to Tony. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, but he managed it with Phelan. A quick introduction and a quick confirmation. Phelan wasn’t satisfied.

‘Come meet with me,’ he said.

So Ryan did, down in the cellar of a Barrack Street pub with a facade that had not so much seen better days as decayed the street on which it stood. They weren’t alone down there, though he doubted a man like Jimmy Phelan was used to being alone. There were a number of lads in the far corner playing cards, one of them Tim Dougan, whose legend had long served Ryan both as warning and inspiration. Though Phelan kept him standing near the door and talking to the floor, he had no doubt the men around them were all ears. They glanced up at intervals, sniffing, scowling, sucking their teeth.

The room was lit by two low, bare bulbs. This was for function and for show, and Ryan was just as scared as he should have been.

‘You had two days,’ said Phelan.

‘Couldn’t put something like that off,’ Ryan said.

‘No? Plenty who would. Though I don’t recommend it myself.’

Phelan’s words, low, smooth and cold, crept up on him like a trippy pill. He flushed, felt the sweat break on his forehead, and the butterflies push against the walls of his stomach. Two of the card players turned to stare. Ryan looked away. There was a point of pain, suddenly, on each side of his nose. He pinched the bridge.

‘Am I supposed to just take for granted that you came through for me?’ Phelan said.

‘Pretty much.’

‘What if I ask you for proof?’

‘What d’you want, a fucking photograph? Are you assuming I wasn’t taking you seriously in the first place? With my father’s neck on the line?’

Phelan smiled thinly. ‘Did you ever ask yourself, Ryan, if he doesn’t deserve you?’

Ryan said, ‘Are we done here?’

Phelan looked away. ‘I did my research a long time back, of course. How’s the apprenticeship going? How’s Dan Kane treating you?’