When Roisin returned, the kitchen table was askew with newspaper clippings; the pad in front of MacBride was heavily crossed out.
Roisin read over his shoulder. “Not another one of those!”
“Those what?”
“Atrocity denouncements,” she groaned. “I know you don’t overly absorb yourself in my work, but you really should read this one. It’s new.” She delivered him a sheaf from her purse:
MULTIPLE CHOICE
We would like to express our horror at the sheer savagery and ruthless calculation of this gruesome act. This appalling atrocity absolutely beggars the imagination.
1. The spirit that motivated today’s brutal massacre can only be decried as (a) satanic, (b) obscene, (c) brazenly hypocritical.
2. Such hell-inspired monsters will stoop to the lowest depths of (a) barbarity, (b) callousness and inhumanity, (c) vicious cowardice, having descended to (a) the worst kind of sacrilege, (b) a specially refined brand of depravity, (c) desecration beyond human sensibility.
3. These (a) diseased minds, (b) debased creatures, (c) malicious animals and their campaign of terror are a blot on (a) mankind, (b) the face of this country, (c) the name of Ireland.
4. We are repelled by this (a) fiendish Sabbath of bloodlust, (b) viperous bloodletting, (c) dark carnage of blood, consumed by a wave of revulsion beyond the limits of (a) disgust, (b) indignation, (c) contempt.
5. It is difficult to conceive of a more (a) cruel and cold-heartedly sadistic act, (b) blackhearted slaughter so defying the bounds of civilized decency that the people who did it have no human thoughtfulness or kindness or sensitivity at all.
6. We are so (a) extremely, (b) completely, (c) wildly, (d) unspeakably, (e) unutterably outraged that (a) it’s hard to find words to describe, (b) mere words cannot describe, (c) no condemnation is adequate to describe our (a) repugnance, (b) antipathy, (c) lack of enthusiasm.
“What’s this supposed to mean?” MacBride bristled.
“It’s all from the papers after Enniskillen. Did you know Tom King used the words appalling five and outrage six times in a single denouncement? And surely you recognize some of your own lines. I thought you could recycle them. No one would know the difference.”
“I don’t issue poems, Rosebud, just humble party statements. And since when do you write about the Troubles, anyway?”
“I’m not allowed?”
“Back to the old purple heather and blooming gorse. More up your street.”
She folded it back. “Well, some people think it’s grand.”
“It’s a dose, Rose. I don’t get it.”
“It simply means you might react honestly for once. The whole Six Counties would fall off its chair.”
“You’re on,” said MacBride, fetching a drooping carrot from Roisin’s icebox and speaking into the stem. “I’m delighted to announce to our Channel One audience that mourners in West Belfast have just ripped limb from limb two off-duty British soldiers. This is a great boost to the UUU, since we can finally move on from our unconvincing defense of shooting three unarmed Republicans in the back. More, the incident provides a prompt antidote to Michael Stone’s lunatic attack on these same mourners two days earlier, for we have a kindergartner’s attention span and will attend only to the last bad thing that happened to our side. Further, we are thrilled to confirm for our sectarian viewers that Catholics in Northern Ireland are the bloodthirsty barbarians we always suspected. We would like to express our special thanks to the neighborhood for performing so vividly in front of international TV cameras, though we would like to protest that British helicopter pilots were given exclusive rights to film the actual execution—think how much more toothpaste they will sell than the BBC. And on a more personal note, I would clarify that I did not know either of these young men personally and have no real emotional response to their deaths, that they merely represent a political windfall I intend to exploit.
“Until next time, when I’m sure to cash in on the grief of strangers with just the same ruthless opportunism as ever, this is Angus MacBride. Sure you’ll see plenty of me soon enough at my next election, when I will broadcast a slew of half-truths about my essentially limp religious convictions and my sham of a marriage, neglecting to mention that I’m bumping the daylights out of a dishy Fenian poet whose father was a notorious Republican arms trader.
“Better?”
Roisin smiled distantly. “Angus, you’re a horror.”
“You see my point, love. What am I supposed to say? Brilliant?”
“It’s no joke.”
“Och, it was. You just didn’t laugh.”
“But all those denouncements—they’re mouthing. They seem to be so sympathetic and humanitarian, when they really just stir up a taste for more blood. Or they do nothing. Maybe that’s worse. Sometimes I hear you on Ulster Newstime decrying this or that bombing, and you could as well be reading the phone book. I do my ironing. I slice a piece of cheese.”
“You’ve yet to suggest the statement I should make.”
“Maybe none! Silence is better than fraud.”
“Silence is not an option.”
“It is, too. Maybe politically risky. But at least it would be emotionally true.”
“Who sodding cares what’s emotionally true? Women! There are other things in the world important besides feelings.”
“Like what?”
“Principles.”
Roisin shook her head sadly. “Maybe ambition. I don’t believe you hold any principle particularly dear.”
“What’s got into you? What kind of ogre do you think I am?”
“I suppose I wonder.”
“Damn it to hell, woman! I don’t want to talk about this anyway. You came in here, I was in fine form. Now look.”
“You didn’t get much work done.”
“I was thinking. That is my work.” Angus dragged the phone over by the cord and dialed sulkily. He stood up and paced the scullery and stared into the next room. He kicked the baseboard. He snorted. He sighed and sat back down and leaned his head over the back of the chair, looking at the ceiling, tapping the receiver. He shrieked the chair out and again stalked the lino, a caged bear; then he laughed and laughed and slammed the receiver down, his skin now red and moist and his breath deep, as if he’d just walked off a squash court. He splashed his face at the sink.
Roisin rolled the carrot microphone pensively around the table.
“That dunderhead . . .” Angus toweled down. “Light goes on in that bastard’s brain, he thinks the rest is technicalities. Which MacBride, of course, is to tinker up.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This frigging conference. Don’t you breathe a word of it now.”
“Angus,” said Roisin. “I’ve got used to keeping secrets.”
So had Angus, but with that wanker on his mind all afternoon he felt in the middle of a conversation he needed to finish, and not with Karen. He’d talked so much about O’Phelan to his wife that, no, they weren’t talked out exactly, but they’d arrived at their positions; though MacBride would be hard-pressed to describe hers. Whenever your man came up, Karen went dry. The distinctive wry smile on her needled him, the way she’d look down with her mouth cocked and keep peeling spuds or seeming to read.
“O’Phelan and me’s staging this conference, see—”
“What for?”
“To solve everything, of course.” He chuckled. “Now, were it a public conference, every party in the Province would be beating down doors to be the first to withdraw.”
“Passive-aggressive abstensionism,” Roisin filled in: an old discussion.
“Oh, aye. All we ever need do here is hold the Troubles official, like, and you’d have your IRA folding their arms and not deigning to participate. If they ever gave a war and nobody came, Ulster’s the place. So the conference is secret, see, and like any exclusive do, everyone and his brother wants to crash the gate. We’ve even suggested there’s something a wee bit illegal about it. And dead off the record. No press, no recordings, no cameras.
“Anyway, it’s all to mobilize consensus on the power-sharing referendum. Hash out the particulars. Not till the end of the year, but the idea’s to run it right up to the election if necessary. Lock them all in a room. Pour enough gargle down their throats, they’ll come round.”
“They hardly need more muddled thinking.”
Angus looked up sharply. ‘Where is my whiskey?”
The carrot now converted from mike to rosary, which Roisin clutched to give her strength. “I poured it out.”
Even under his short beard she could see his jaw muscles bulging. “Your drain was clogged?”
“You’re drinking too much, Angus,” she rushed through. “It worries me. Listen to you, thinking the answer to our problems here is for the Irish to drink more? And your health—”
“When I collapse stone dead on top of you upstairs, you’re to worry about my health, because only then will it be your business, understand?”
This was not going as she’d planned. In Roisin’s version Angus ended up in tears in her lap, and then they sat down to a sober, thoughtful cup of tea. MacBride made vows.
Roisin’s fantasies were incompetent.
“Now, you’re to buy a new bottle and I’ll shelve it past your reach, since you’re obviously given to fits. Discussion closed.”
Roisin felt a wisp of disappointment and stirred uncomfortably. It seems there had been an alternative vision. Not that she was one of those who claimed women secretly crave a bit of rough trade. But she did not mind the picture of nursing her face in her hands, weeping bravely, and all to protect him from killing himself. She wasn’t fussed by bruises later as long as no permanent damage was done. And she adored his remorse. She relished telling the story afterward, though it jarred her to whom she would wish to tell it first.
For while she might not enjoy being beaten, she had just been beaten anyway, hadn’t she? Angus had adjured her and closed the argument, and she had a sick feeling she might very well replace that bottle. But this beating was worse. Physical brutality was a relief. In its readily apparent ugliness a victim could find a mean little victory of her own. But when he oppressed her with his condescension, his willfulness, his big voice and sheer masculinity, she could not return with see-what-you’ve-done-to-me-you-animal. No, this was just defeat, because she was weak and too quiet, not as pushy or clever, and a girl.
“Point is, this bloody conference.” Angus manhandled the conversation back to his work. “I’m to get Unionists to sit down with Sinn Feín. And after the lynching in Andytown! O’Phelan thinks I can waggle a finger and the Prods will come running.”
“Impossible.”
He laughed. “Not at all. You just don’t send them the guest list!”
“Won’t Unionists walk out when they see who’s coming to dinner?”
“No, by the end of the year no one’s going to want to be left behind. We’re sorting this out, love, making history! And once power is devolved, we’ve got more than a wink and a nod says Tom’s out and they put in a local. Your friend and mine looks to be a shoo-in.”
She started. “Farrell?”
“Lord, no! Your humble servant Angus MacBride. So: vigorous campaigning, a fair lot of backroom fiddle, argy-bargy over Bush and conference engineers consensus; referendum passes; government devolves. New Secretary of State arranges IRA cease-fire.”
“I think I missed something there.”
“The cease-fire? We have plans A and B. A is nicey-nicey. Sheer bribery. Offer Sinn Feín a piece of Stormont. They’ve just enough greed and pretensions to being statesmen they might take the bait.”
Roisin shook her head. “Sinn Feín is not the IRA and wouldn’t have the power to call a cease-fire even if they wanted to. Britain would never include them in a power-sharing government unless they denounced violence sincerely. And if Sinn Feín abandons violence, they’re one more tiny no-account Socialist Party, they might as well throw themselves into the Irish Sea. Besides, you’re going to get Ian Paisley to share power with Gerry Adams? On what planet?”
Angus nodded with a funny satisfaction. By God, that lass had been listening of late. She never used to talk like this before. “Dead on. Hence: Plan B. Slam the lot in the blocks. Make internment look like a slumber party. Eliminate the grot. Been done before, could do it again. We know who they are. They call it a war; all right, then, fight one back. And win. Make them cry uncle.” He smiled. “Uncle Angus.”
“How would you manage that with power-sharing?”
“I said share. Not give it away.”
Roisin found she was shaking. “I’m a Republican. Would you lock me in Long Kesh?”
“For writing wee poems about Enniskillen? Hardly. But should you start up the family business again, I’d drive you to Maze myself.”
“Your cronies don’t know the difference. They’d take one look at my address and go straight to the strip search. My God,” she mumbled to herself, “I’m the lover of a Nazi.”
“Typical melodramatic Republican overstatement.”
“You’re talking about a police state, aren’t you? When you violate the rules of democratic process, you undermine its whole foundation. You’re on a slippery slope to the Reichstag.”
“Bloody hell, Northern Ireland isn’t a democracy, this is supposed to be your line! Army on the streets, Diplock courts—Britain runs this place like an only so benevolent summer camp. Be good wee campers, or have your privileges revoked at any time. What you’re always saying, and with which I, very privately, agree. I’ve told Tom myself, toe the line and keep your nose clean and look pretty for the Boston Globe OR be a shite. Britain waffles back and forth. A kangaroo-court system, unwarranted searches, detention without charge; a little censorship here, the odd murder there, and then they let the blight get elected to public office and give speeches in City Hall! If you’re going to be a shite, be a brilliant shite, right? Because what’s so grand about democracies anyway, when they elect prats? And even democracies aren’t democracies, you know that! Where’s all your cynical socialist rhetoric when I need it, that capitalism-media manipulation guff you grew up with? Look at America now: sure they ‘choose’ their President, but do they choose whom they choose from? And do they ‘choose’ what they know about those characters? No! Do they have the remotest idea why they vote for whom they do? Not a freaking chance! But does it matter, long as the place doesn’t go to hell? Frankly, democracy is awkward and reliably a sham. It doesn’t work very well. Where dictatorship can be a highly efficient form of government. It’s underrated.”
It flickered through Roisin’s head that maybe he was having her on. Sometimes Angus exercised out loud. He liked to see what he could get away with.
“I prefer a government that doesn’t work very well. Inefflcacy is protection. Efficient? Efficiently what? Does it matter that the trains are on time if they’re on their way to Treblinka?”
“Spare me, Rosebud, there’s few things I despair of more than dragging out concentration camps every time a discussion gets sticky. Leave the poor dead Jews in peace. Can we get back on track here? I’m a decent person, and so is O’Phelan, though he’d never admit it to your face. But I just think there’s a place for results. I live in a world with this table, that carrot. Solid, see. Not a bunch of what-ifs and therefores. I see it all the time, the RUC getting so tangled up in its due process, mincing around West Belfast, well, we can’t do this, we can’t do that, and are the Provies following any such rules? No sir! Someone’s fighting dirty, you fight dirty back. It’s practical. I’m practical. Okay, Gibraltar. You flush out a murderer, he’d just as soon shoot you as blink, and you shoot him first. Simple. And you save people’s lives. You can’t wring your hands your whole life. You were right, calling me on that: principle’s only so important to me. It’s a slippery bugger anyway, ’cause you can turn any principle around to support what you please. So I stick with reality. I care about what happens. And put in my hands, I could make Northern Ireland a bloody decent place to live.”
Angus was breathing hard.
“When you sink to a terrorist’s level, there’s no difference between you and him anymore.”
“Am I threatening to plant a bomb in your courthouse if I don’t get what I want? Were the Allies the same as the Axis just because they fought back? There’s plenty of difference. That’s just the kind of ooh-worms aphorism comes from liberal castrati have lost the power to act in the world.”
Roisin’s eyelids matted. “I wish you’d let me differ with you without mocking me like that.”
“Don’t get personal, Rosebud! How are we ever to discuss anything if you take it personal?” He ruffled her head and pressed it to his coat. “I know you’re just taking the other side, and sure you should, it’s good steam. But you’ve your own sensible bits or I couldn’t stand the sight of you. It’s O’Phelan’s on my mind, see. Any idea the times we’ve been through this palaver? He has to hair-tear and screw everything apart until you’re left with fuck-all—like tinkering with your car until it’s strewn along the road in wee pieces, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put your Peugeot together again. I couldn’t count the times we’ve started into some simple, tangible problem like how to win this election or even which pub to crawl, and in five minutes we’re paralyzed over how morality is pure defense of self-interest, and that would be important if anything was important, but it’s not because meaning is socially created, but then if you can see that, there is no meaning until the two of us are plopped in the middle of the footpath with our heads in our hands, like the three sillies can’t fish the moon from the lake.”
“There’s something to be said for self-examination.”
“You won’t catch me saying it. It’s bleeding dangerous. I think? You stick with your common sense, your gut. Goodness? It’s good to pay a call on your old gran. O’Phelan will tell you now, you don’t visit the biddy because it’s good but because it makes you feel good, so it’s bad. So he doesn’t go. That’s improvement? And turn it around enough times, you call on her all right, but to Raskolnikov the bird in the back of her head with a meat ax. That’s your self-examination for you.”
“Angus—do you like Farrell?”
MacBride laughed. “That’s like asking do I like my mother. You love her or hate her, there’s no in between.”
“So, do you love him or hate him?” she pressed.
The question sat him down. “Haven’t a clue,” he admitted. “Between O’Phelan and me, it’s something bigger. I don’t think there’s a name for it.” He laughed. “But don’t I sound like the lad himself, now? You’ve never met him, have you?”
“You’ve not introduced us,” said Roisin.
“I should, I should . . .”
Angus had repeatedly promised to introduce Roisin to Farrell for over a year now, but had never, strangely, come across. In the meantime, O’Phelan had surfaced so constantly in Mac-Bride’s conversation she felt long ago she knew the man. “Why do you want me to meet him?”
“The bastard would sure make a play for you. It would exhilarate me to watch you turn him down.”
She curved the subject. “You know, I can’t imagine Farrell supporting internment.”
“Farrell O’Phelan would support the Spanish Inquisition if it suited his purposes. He may twist his hankie in his leisure time, but he’s the second most ruthless man I’ve ever known. Where he got the reputation as St. Francis is beyond me.”
“Second most.”
Angus beamed.
“I know West Belfast and you don’t,” said Roisin. “You won’t keep those people down. Put a husband in jail, three sons will take his place.”
Angus nosed into the icebox again, as if his steak and eggs might meanwhile have been generated by the sheer force of his hunger. “O’Phelan agrees with you. He doesn’t go for Plan B, not because it’s immoral, but because it won’t work. Claims we’ll never do a truly reputable job of oppression here. Opts for Plan C. Drab, but possible. Move, anywhere—power-sharing, integration, doesn’t matter, just close the book, so it doesn’t seem like if you kick and scream enough you might well get your way. Internal solution, we say. Then do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Take precautions, but let them blow up this station and that soldier and ignore it. Don’t try for a cease-fire, don’t pay them that much attention. Don’t react. They’ll get bored. The IRA will never quite go away, that’s too much to expect, but they could simmer back down to lunatic fringe. Besides, O’Phelan says we’d miss them.”
“You certainly would. Raving about the Provisionals is about the only time I see you completely happy outside of bed.”
“Then eventually, should it be economically advantageous,” he carried on, “you may get your united Ireland. And between you and me, I hope it happens. Just for revenge. Mean-spirited, vicious Proddie revenge.”
“You lost me.”
“Rosalita, I could taste it! Sure there’d be dancing in West Belfast to ‘The Fields of Athenrye.’ But the whole of the Bogside and south Armagh would wake up the next morning with a throbbing headache, in a right blue funk. Still on the dole, still married to a fat girn, and someone still has to fetch out for milk and a loaf. Except no more freaking riots. No more sonorous funerals, just your ordinary dead people. And those poor Provos, all used to sneaking off to Libya like your da, or riding Semtex under car seats, hearts whomping though checkpoints across the border—what are they to do now, go for drives on the Antrim coast and pick bluebells? Och, Rose darling, I would rub my hands, I would laugh myself silly. Stick ’em with what they want, I say. Just for revenge.”
“Then why not get it now? Give over.”
“Simple. Fact is—and you must never let this out—I don’t give a tuppenny damn, really, which way this place tips. Makes no practical difference. But I won’t have bad behavior rewarded. When a child throws a wobbler you don’t hand it a sweet. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom is a farce and will shrink to plain old England in the end. Republicans will get this island at the end of the day, so why not let the Loyalists win in the short run.”
“They’ve had it for three hundred years!”
“So what’s fifty more? Besides, it comes down to this: I will not lose. If I were Catholic, I suppose I’d feel the same way. So it’s all a matter of who’s cagier. Ask O’Phelan, there are no issues here. Winning and losing, it’s one of the only political scenarios on earth with any purity left.”
Angus had been ranging the kitchen rummaging cupboards like a full patrol of Brits; next thing he’d be prying up the floor. Much as snarling over the Provisionals was his most cherished pastime, he did not seem quite focused on this last part. His eyes narrowed off, his hand pulled at his tie, until he wheeled abruptly to his briefcase and rustled out a magazine. “Here.” He mashed his big forefinger on the face of a bleary photo. “Tell me. That’s talent? You find that attractive?”
Roisin took the Fortnight with a long, shrewd look at Angus before turning to the picture: an intent, inclined head with crazed eyes.
Angus recognized Roisin’s smile as the same one Karen used and snatched the magazine back. “Well? That’s Romeo?”
“No,” she said slowly, unable to dispose of the smile right away. “More Peter O’Toole.”
“You’re codding me.”
“No, early O’Toole. Just a little. And yes, he is rather attractive.”
Angus crumpled the Fortnight back in his briefcase. “Don’t see it. Never have. Skinny creature. No shoulders. Looks reasonable in a suit, I suppose. In the buff? Ridiculous. Arms too long. A glype. Should have seen him at nineteen. Covered in spots. A wonder even now his face doesn’t look like a strip mine.” Angus kept fussing with the clasp and it wouldn’t close. Roisin looked amused. “Well, I can’t comprehend it!” he exploded. “Even in university, you put O’Phelan in the same room with a girl, he lit out for the Cave Hill and she booked for America! And later, sure, he had his nutty romances, not with the barkiest items, mind you, but dead stupid, always trying to take care of him and coming to me on the sly to get him off the brew—”
Roisin’s little laugh was of an obscure complexion.
“—Och, you know those motherly Catholic sorts spend their whole lives banging themselves up on a cross, as if a soul will give them credit later, when I don’t figure even God himself gives them a glance. All that happens, really, is a lad takes their money and cakes and pot roasts and snuggles between their big overgenerous breasts, and walks off, pockets jingling with the silver. Well, if you were a glutton for suffering, O’Phelan was your man. They’d fix him breakfast, he’d call them names, but I understood—some women are like that. And then there was that deranged marriage after knowing the kid two days or something, which isn’t even long enough to get her pregnant and have a reasonable excuse. Now, she was a looker all right, but they both thought they were making a bloody film, they did, because in real life two days of courting doesn’t wash, thank you very much, which I figure they discovered about day three.
“Fair enough, those were rough times here; just walking down the road was dicey, and you never knew when the Seville with the Christmas tree air freshener dangling from the mirror would be your last parked car on earth; it made women do loopy things, though this one was Norwegian or something . . . In those days, the Norwegians were everywhere. All this, all right, but the last five years! The boy’s a regular fancy man! And all I see is Gumby. About as sexy as the Harland and Wolff cranes.”
“There’s more than looks to attractiveness, isn’t there? And everything I’ve ever heard about Farrell O’Phelan, from you or anyone, makes him sound a terribly fascinating man.”
“FASCINATING?” It was so much the perfect word to set him afire that Angus might have stopped to consider she had chosen it with incendiary care. “Is it fascinating not to know what you want, to be morbidly afraid of sex? Is it fascinating to be unhappy? Sure doesn’t that cover most of the world? And is it even useful, in a place as polarized as this, to be against everyone, when the one relief of having a war is being on somebody’s side? And is failure fascinating? Because what’s Farrell ever done, what’s he amounted to? Fine, he’s a hotelier, and by sheer luck, mind you, so he can get his shirts made with wee initials on the collar and order twenty-quid French wines. But your man dropped out of university! Not a term before earning his degree! And that’s typical, of course, not deigning to take part, quite, in ordinary people’s education, when who knows, maybe he got one bad mark! He’s like that, you know. All or nothing. Well, pretty reliable, isn’t it, in a world you have to share with a few other folks, that means the choice is going to be nothing?
“But I matriculated, with a first, and went to law school; I worked hard and nights, and finagled my way up the political ladder during bloody hard times in this country. That’s pedestrian somehow, knowing what you want and working for it and getting it? Because what’s so dead fascinating about going from pundit philosopher to curbside dipso? That’s what Farrell was up to while I was in the stacks: splayed out on the lawn of Queen’s, where he no longer attended class, screaming at marches too stocious to stand up or even to get out of the rain. Still, didn’t I give the kid a hand anyway, digs here, tea there, the only meals the boyo ever saw save the rashers from the women he lived off? And how many of my tenners went down that throat? While things were right tight those years, and every note I gave him went to Talisker—Rose, I won’t touch that brand now, can’t even stand the sound of it. Christ, is there anything less fascinating than a drunk?
“But right, now the women flutter around him, Trinity and Oxford ask him to speak, Panorama has him on TV. And why? Because of that rinkydink bomb-disposal business, when by all rights that should have landed him not on the BBC but in a private room in the Maze. It was illegal! He withheld evidence from the RUC and willfully destroyed it! How many terrorists are still on the loose thanks to Mister Helpful?
“But that’s Farrell, renegade risk taker, and it must make every female’s heart go pitter-pat. And, you know, I could handle Sinn Feín if I had to, long as I held my nose, but I leave them to Farrell, because he likes consorting with scuts—”
“Oh, Angus,” Roisin sighed.
“I just mean O’Phelan’s worse than the tourists! And then he’s so unstable. That’s the attraction, too, of those stories you’ve heard? Why, O’Phelan himself will slip into any conversation in the first five minutes what a horlicks he once made of his life, and never without hinting that he might do it again while you’re watching. Almost a promise, like. When what’s wrong with being reliable, what makes that so flat? Couldn’t we all fall apart now?”
“No,” decided Roisin. “It takes a certain integrity to fall apart.”
“Rubbish! All that precariousness is self-indulgent! And so is expecting some lovely will always come along and warm your broth and hold your hand!”
Roisin had started to laugh. Hard. She was clutching her stomach. It was the laugh that always melted him, the descending tin whistle, the eternal schoolgirl.
“Really!” Angus persisted, but her laugh was contagious, and his own mouth tugged. “Couldn’t I be a perfectly marvelous piss artist? Couldn’t I loll around on the floor from ten in the morning as well as the best of them?”
“No, no, no—” Tears trailed her cheeks. “No, you couldn’t. You don’t have it in you, teddy bear. So I’m sorry I poured out your whiskey. You’d never make a drunk, Angus. I’ll buy you another bottle. It was all a mistake.”
Angus chortled and agreed, but somehow felt—insulted, all the same.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she sighed, stroking his face. “I wonder if you ever talk so passionately about me.”