It took sleet to rouse me from my lonely vigil. I looked skyward and stuck out my tongue to taste the icy slush. How long had I been standing there? Ten minutes? Twenty? It was time to move. I turned away from the river. With each step I took, the bridge lit up beneath the handrails. Not magic, it was the architect’s joke. It made me smile, usually.
I crossed the Coal Quay and passed the Bridewell Garda Station – which reminded me that I needed to call my friend Sadie O’Riordan to arrange a meeting. I had the Carneys’ permission to talk to her now. But I couldn’t do any more on the case tonight. I had hit a wall. In the days before Sunday, at a time like this, I would have called Davy and we would have gone for something to eat or watched a film together and I’d have talked a little, never much, about what was bothering me. He had a way of listening that made everything seem okay again. But I was starting to see that my friendship with him was an unfair bargain. I called him when it suited me, avoided him when it didn’t.
On North Main Street, I took shelter in Bradley’s doorway. I reached into my bag to check my phone. Still nothing from Davy, no contact from him since Sunday, though I had two text messages from my mother, one from Sadie and another from Alice, all asking me to call. I’d leave them till morning. Without thinking too much about it, I texted Davy, one word: ‘Sorry’.
Aimlessly, I went into Bradley’s. I hadn’t had anything since the latte at lunchtime and, though I didn’t feel like it, I knew that I needed to eat. I wandered around, failing to decide on anything, eventually picking up a Gubbeen salami, one of the finger-thin skinny ones, a box of penne and six tomatoes. I had onions and garlic at home and a few ends of Parmesan. I could make some kind of a sauce out of what I had. Whether I’d eat it or not, I’d decide later. I grabbed a bag of West Cork mixed winter leaves before I went up to pay. Not exactly salad weather, but I wasn’t up to preparing vegetables. I glanced down the back of the shop. Bradley’s has the best range of premium drinks and craft beers in the city. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to get drunk, to forget everything for a while. Mostly, I was glad I didn’t know what I was missing. Maybe, like my birth mother, if I started I wouldn’t stop.
Back home, I brought the groceries upstairs and left them on the kitchen worktop while I selected music to play. Though, feeling this lonely, it had to be wall-to-wall Gillian Welch. I’d start with Revival, its opening track ‘Orphan Girl’ never more apt, and work my way through. From the moment Dave Rawlings’s guitar started, I began to feel calmer. I took two onions and a head of garlic from the press and poured olive oil into a saucepan. And tried not to think about Davy and Deirdre and Jeremy Gill.
Hearing a ping, I grabbed my handbag from the sofa where I’d thrown it.
‘What exactly are you sorry for?’ Davy’s message said.
How about that I was sorry for using him? Sorry for being a bad friend? But I wasn’t going to say any of that by text.
‘We need to talk. If you’re still talking to me?’
Pause.
‘Might be.’
A sliver of light.
‘What you doing?’
‘Just out of meeting. Need food.’
Pause.
‘Come here. Just home. Making pasta.’
Pause.
Pause.
‘You sure?’
‘Sure,’ I typed, though I wasn’t.
‘We can talk and eat,’ I added, and pressed send.
Instant reply: ‘See you in 10.’
I could get the sauce on before he arrived if I worked fast. I chopped the onions and put them on to soften while I crushed garlic and cut the salami into rounds. I put the garlic and the salami into the saucepan with the onions and turned down the heat, giving the fragrant mixture a quick stir. I roughly chopped the tomatoes and left them on the chopping board while I ran down to the yard to get rosemary. I had just broken off a couple of fronds when the doorbell rang. I went to the gate and opened it. Davy had been expecting to be buzzed in from upstairs and my sudden appearance surprised him, though he said nothing at first, then:
‘Hey, how’s it going?’
‘I was getting herbs,’ I said.
I waved the rosemary at him in greeting.
‘I … I mean, hello, hiya, em, come in.’
But Davy made no move and I wondered if he’d changed his mind.
‘It’s dark here in the lane,’ he said. ‘You should get one of those security lights. If I didn’t know where the door was, I’d have a hard time finding it.’
‘That’s the idea.’
That came out all wrong. It sounds like I didn’t want him to find me.
Silence. Then Davy spoke.
‘What you said in the text. Well, I’m sorry too, you know. I shouldn’t’ve just gone off like that on Sunday.’
The sleet had turned to drizzle and my white shirt was getting soaked as the two of us stood in the circle of light cast by the garden lamp. I felt the buzz between us. It was always there, that electricity, but it seemed stronger now.
‘I missed you,’ I said, after a time.
I turned to walk into the house, afraid I’d said too much. And then I felt Davy’s hand on my shoulder and turned back to him. We were centimetres apart, and I looked up into his eyes, and he looked down at me. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss me.
‘I missed you too,’ he said instead.
I could hardly breathe.
‘Now where’s me dinner, missus?’ he said.
I laughed. And caught my breath.
‘Caveman,’ I said, heading for the stairs, Davy following along behind.
‘I try,’ he said.
He was laughing too. It was going to be all right. But something had changed between us, though I didn’t yet know what, or how much.
Upstairs, I threw the chopped tomatoes in on top of the salami-onion-garlic mix and stirred it all together. I used a mezzaluna to chop the rosemary spikes, and added them to the saucepan along with a little sea salt, a few twists of black pepper and a pinch of sugar. Then I put a pot of water on to boil and put some of the washed leaves into a wooden salad bowl.
‘Not long now,’ I said.
‘Smells great,’ Davy said. ‘You’re listening to Gillian. Things must be bad, so, are they?’
‘Yeah, kinda bad all right. Change the music if you want?’
‘Nah, Gillian’s good.’
Spending time with me meant that Davy inevitably heard a lot of Americana and country music. He tried to like it, though he didn’t get rhinestones and dog songs and Tammy Wynette. And he definitely didn’t get Willie Nelson.
Without a word, I handed cutlery and napkins to Davy and he brought them to the table, while I followed with glasses and a jug of water. I had positioned the table where it was likely to catch the best light for the longest amount of the day, on the south-west side of the living room. Oval and made of Irish oak, it had been hand-carved to fit the space by Jack Lehane, Sadie’s husband. A matching bench ran along the outer edge of the table, and in summer the windows behind the bench folded back giving access to a balcony, a metre-and-a-half-wide perforated steel ledge with a glass wall and a steel handrail, that circled the tower. On the room side of the table there were four wide oak stools, one at each end and two along the length. The table seated six. It was fully occupied once or twice a year.
I went back to the kitchen area, a curved island of cupboards, worktop, sink, cooker and fridge. I put on the penne and made a dressing for the salad. The air in the room felt thick and heavy and the pasta was taking for ever. I walked to the far side of the island and looked south-east, towards Douglas and Rochestown and Monkstown and Cork Harbour and the open sea. After a time, I turned towards the stovetop again.
‘A watched pot …’ I said, breaking the silence.
‘It’ll cook. Anyway, it’s only twenty to ten. Imagine we’re in Seville or somewhere. We’d be eating early, if we were,’ Davy said.
‘Gracias. Though, hang on a second, it might be done, I think. Take the salad there and I’ll be over with the pasta.’
The salami had added substance to the simple sauce. After a couple of bites, Davy said, ‘Tasty,’ like he meant it, and kept on eating. I ate too, more than I’d expected. The rain was heavier now and the drops hammered like warnings on the glass. We had hardly said a word to each other during dinner but I was the one who had asked Davy around, and I had said that we needed to talk. I got up from the table.
‘Thanks for calling in, though, well, what I mean is that, like, now that you’re here I don’t know what to say.’
I walked to the sofa and sat on the arm. Davy got up from the table and went to the far side of the room. Facing me, and backlit by the city, he had a golden aura. He was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt under an open blue and white checked shirt and his hair was still damp from the rain. And maybe sometime, or somewhere, I might have seen him looking better than he did right now, but if I had, I couldn’t remember.
I got up and walked to where Davy Keenan was standing. I stood in front of him and put my hands in his hair, and pulled his mouth towards mine.