G03 - Resolution (8 page)

“I dunno. Somewhere with a casualty ward? The Albert probably.”

Leslie was waiting for her when she got back to the stall and Maureen told her what Trish had said. “Poor thing,” said Leslie. She was very pale and her lips were turning blue.

“Have you eaten anything since that roll yesterday?”

“No,” said Leslie, and looked as if she might cry again.

“Poor wee henny-hen,” said Maureen, wrapping a jumper around Leslie’s shoulders and sitting her down on her stool. “You stay here and I’ll go and get you a roll ‘n’ sausage and a juice.”

Leslie nodded miserably at the floor, wrapping her arms around her stomach.

“Peter,” said Maureen, “keep your eye on her.”

Peter pointed at Maureen uncertainly. “Seen ye,” he said, surprised and respectful. Maureen frowned at him. He thumbed over his shoulder. “In the paper yesterday. Good for you.”

She didn’t understand why people were so impressed. No one seemed to have read the story or clocked that she’d been having an affair with a married man and was a suspect when he was brutally mutilated in her living room. Everyone seemed pleased for her anyway.

At the back of the tunnel nearest the river, through a rickety green door, was the cafe. It was owned and run by Blond Mary and her daughter Lara, who added a glamorous touch to the market. Both women were tall and slim with honey blond hair and soft voices. They cooked and took the money behind a shallow counter, frying on an open griddle and serving mince and potatoes and peas from a well-stocked steaming bain-marie, universally referred to as the “bamburri.” Inside, the tunnel was dripping with damp and would probably be next to be shut down and bricked up. The cafe looked like a well-tended cave: they had disguised the damp ceiling with tastefully draped silver tarpaulin, and faded Formica tables were scattered across the uneven floor.

“Two rolls and sausage and two tins of cola, please,” said Maureen.

“Onion on both?” said Lara, sliding two squares of sausage onto the spitting hot griddle.

“Aye, please,” said Maureen, counting out her change.

As she stood waiting Maureen gradually became conscious of a looming presence at her shoulder. Mark Doyle was standing behind her, dressed in an incongruous black overcoat, buttoned up to the neck as though he had just come in from the rain. “Fuck, you gave me a scare.” She grinned and clasped her hand to her chest. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m on my way home. I wanted a roll.”

Maureen caught Lara’s eye. “And a roll as well.” She turned back to Doyle. “Is that all ye want? D’ye not want sausage on it?”

“Naw, just a roll and butter.”

“Not want bacon?”

“Naw, just the roll,” said Doyle quietly. His eczema was so extreme that he looked as if he were rotting. Patches of raw and dried skin marred what might have been a handsome face.

“What are you doing up at this time in the morning?”

“Havenae been home. Been out,” he said, and looked away.

Doyle wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t stoned. Wherever he had spent the evening it hadn’t been at a party. Maureen suspected that he gambled and lost but she didn’t know what he did with his time. He traveled a lot and she had noticed only recently that his shoes were expensive but badly looked after, with dusty black uppers and pale leather soles. It made her smile when she thought about it. He might be an eccentric millionaire for all she knew, jet-setting around the world, and leaving his conservatory of rare orchids to come to Paddy’s and nag her. He looked tired today. “You should look after yourself better,” she said.

Doyle seemed a little bewildered by her concern. “How?” he said.

“Well,” she said, “get sleep and eat better.”

He scratched his head, covering his face and his embarrassment at being fussed over. “I eat fine,” he said sulkily.

“I only ever see you when there’s no one else here,” she said, and smiled.

He didn’t smile back. She could tell she had offended him by talking about his diet. He thought she was blaming him for the eczema, as if fruit would have stopped his skin trying to fall away from him. His thick dark hair was always clotted with white lumps lifting from his scalp. Maureen saw Mary and Lara stealing sneaky glances. As if he could feel their eyes on him, he turned away and sat at a table, gesturing for Maureen to join him.

Mark Doyle had met Maureen at his sister’s cremation. Pauline’s funeral had been a grim, harrowing affair, as suicide endings always are. Pauline’s father stood next to his unknowing wife in the pew, squeezing her shoulder and keeping his eyes down. Her two brothers stood side by side and hurried outside as the coffin slid away, missing the lineup by the door in their eagerness to have a fag. When they followed the other mourners over the motorway bridge to a dark pub they spoke to no one but each other and even then said little. They were both tall and broad across the shoulders, drank fast and smoked without pleasure.

It was years later when she saw Doyle again. They were in a grimy pub, looking for a friend of Leslie’s, and he approached them, asking where he knew Maureen from. His skin had got a lot worse since the funeral. He had a brutalized aura about him, war-veteran eyes and scars on his knuckles. He drawled his words like a hard man and when he looked at Maureen, his gaze fell short, settling on her cheek, her nose, her chin, but never meeting her eyes. As she looked at him in the pub she firmly believed he’d been the brother who’d raped Pauline, maybe even wanked onto her back as she lay dying. She’d wanted to hurt him for Pauline and run away from the scarred eyes and the raw skin.

It wasn’t until she was in London, being dragged down Brixton High Street by a man with fists like mallets, that she began to doubt it. Doyle came out of nowhere, knocked the guy down and picked her up, carrying her through the fruit market and taking her to safety in his attic bedsit. As they sat and talked in the bare room Doyle told her that his father and brother were dead. He wouldn’t talk about what had happened to them, wouldn’t openly admit that he had killed them, but Maureen knew. He said it brought him no peace.

She’d tried to be a friend to him but Doyle didn’t want a friend. He never wanted to talk about himself or what he did or how he lived. His sole purpose in seeing Maureen was to dissuade her from doing anything to Michael. It was all he ever talked about. He was adamant about it. Maureen tried to imagine how it must have been for him, growing up in a house with two men raping and assaulting his twelve-year-old wee sister, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine the recrimination or the self-loathing but she knew he was trying to avert another disaster, trying to stop her killing Michael and becoming like him. Sheila said it was easier to save other people. Maureen looked at him, hunched over the far table, his back to the crowd, hiding himself, and she felt for him. He was half dead already.

“Three roll, two ‘n’ sausage,” said Lara, handing over the cans and a brown paper bag, one corner already clear with grease.

Maureen paid and walked over to the table, reaching into the bag for Doyle’s roll. “Here ye are.”

Doyle took the roll and bit it automatically, keeping his eye on the door as if he was watching for someone.

“I’ll need to go,” said Maureen, holding up the bag. “I’ve got my pal’s roll.”

Doyle looked at her as if remembering she was there. He nodded her closer to him. “What’s happening?” he muttered.

“About Michael?”

Doyle nodded. The oil from the bag was burning Maureen’s hand but she held on to it tightly. “Baby’s due any day,” she said, and thought of Sheila.

Doyle picked up a plastic sauce bottle and squeezed watery red juice onto his roll, pressing the bottle too hard with his big hand, causing a little hiss from beneath the lid. “Promise,” he said, “you’ll tell me before you do anything.” He ate and watched her, waiting for her to nod assent. He reached into his overcoat pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. Awkwardly, he handed it to her. It had a long number written on it, pressed twice into the paper where the Biro had dried out and been replaced. “Phone me before.”

Maureen folded her arms and looked at him reproachfully. “Mark” — he almost flinched at her use of his name, as if he couldn’t bear to hear it—”we’ve talked about this. If I’m gonnae do it, I’m gonnae do it.”

Doyle finished his roll and slipped his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. “Just phone me, okay?”

“Once I make my mind up, you’re not going to convince me otherwise,” she said quietly.

Doyle rubbed his forehead with his open hand. It sounded like sandpaper over parchment. He looked terribly sad for her. “Please phone.” He stood up and ducked through the low doorway without looking back at her.

She watched him go, the hot oil nibbling her skin. The baby seemed suddenly very real and imminent. The hairs on the back of her neck shimmered awake. She shut her eyes, lifting her face to the sagging silver ceiling and, rolling her head from side to side, bullied the hairs back into place. The baby wasn’t born yet, not just yet. She turned round to face the tunnel and put it out of her mind.

Back at the stall Leslie was still slumped on her stool, blinking hard to stay awake. Peter’s eyes lit up when he spied the greasy parcel Maureen was carrying. “Is that rolls and sausage?”

Leslie took the bag from Maureen and held it away from Peter as if he might pounce at it. “Away and eat a pear, sick boy,” she said. “You want to be careful.”

“I’ve ruined myself already,” said Peter, watching Leslie take out the roll and bite into it. A trickle of salty oil escaped from the side of her mouth and she grinned at him as she licked it back. “It’s you who should be careful,” he said. “Hear about the A-level results? The girls getting better results than the boys?”

Peter had discovered through no particular intellectual effort that Leslie was a feminist and he liked to wind her up. Maureen could tell that he liked Leslie and meant to flirt and tease her. Leslie could not.

“It’s not right, is it?” he said, smiling to himself. “What’s the point in letting them do exams? They’re just going to sit at home eating Milk Tray and watching the telly.”

“You know, Peter” — Leslie raised her voice and her tired eyes flushed red at the rims, and Maureen could tell she was getting disproportionately angry—”I doubt whether you’ve ever satisfied a full grown woman.”

Peter frowned. “I’ve never had any complaints,” he muttered.

“But do ye have an effective complaints procedure?” said Maureen, trying to lighten the tone.

“Do ye hate women?” said Leslie aggressively.

“No,” said Peter, disconcerted. “No, I love women.”

“Is that right?” said Leslie. “D’ye love everything about us, or d’ye just like us when we’re sitting about in our knickers waiting for a shag?”

Peter smiled nervously at Maureen. Leslie stood up and sidled over to him, looking around as if she was about to confide in him. “Peter,” she said slowly, her mouth a couple of inches from his ear, “I’m menstruating. Heavily.”

Peter shut his eyes and shuddered with disgust as Leslie swaggered back to her seat. He looked at her as if she’d hit him and turned his back, pretending to have an interesting and engaging conversation with Lenny, as if such a thing were possible.

Leslie lowered herself onto her stool. “What d’ye do that for?” said Maureen.

“I like scaring them with our big leaky bodies.” Leslie grinned. “That’s cheered me right up.”

“Yeah, well, good one,” said Maureen. “Let’s attack all the men with chronic angina. That’ll learn ‘em.”

Leslie liked to put up an aggressive front but she was a bit cowardly, really. When they had lured Angus to Millport she had crapped it and stayed downstairs with Siobhain while Maureen went to meet him. It was a sore point. They’d argued about it but never talked about it and Maureen had noticed that knowing she was impotent had made Leslie even more aggressive.

“So,” said Maureen as she sat down, “ye’d a bad night?”

“Aye.” Leslie hung her head and rubbed the back of her neck. “It was fucking terrible. He wouldn’t go away.”

“Ye know, ye could do the deed and move in with me for a couple of weeks. Let him cool off a bit.” Maureen hoped she wouldn’t need to. Leslie was hard work at the best of times and this wasn’t the best of times.

“Yeah. He’s convinced I’m seeing someone else so he wants us to have a kid.”

“How do those two things fit together?”

“He doesn’t want kids at all, he just wants to tie me down and control me. It’s a twenty-year commitment for me and he’s a guy so he can piss off and come back when it suits him.”

“I think you’re right.”

“What a situation to bring a wee life into. He’s not working, I’m here and God knows how long that’ll last for.” They nodded to each other. “And he wants a family. I said to him, I said, ‘Cammy, fuck off.”

Maureen chuckled to herself. “You’re a great negotiator, Leslie.”

“Yeah, well, he can fuck off. Tell ye what else: it sharpens the mind when ye think about someone else listening to the ‘Fields of fucking Athenrye’ five times a week.” She smiled at Maureen. “I’ll think about moving in, if that’s all right?”

“Anytime,” said Maureen, and lit a cigarette to mask her reluctance.

Angus Farrell sipped his cold tea, closing his eyes tight, trying to shake the sore head that had plagued him since breakfast. He had taken a painkiller bought from the trustee the night before because he wanted a sleep but there had been something wrong with it — maybe it clashed with his other medication. A shrill, hot pain had been flaring up behind his eyes since morning. Drug taking was the central recreation of the ward but he couldn’t give himself to it. He pushed aside the sandwich.

A clatter against the metal door made him jump, and as the door swung open into the bright, sunny corridor Angus sat upright, straightening his face, getting ready to be seen by the warden. “Solicitor’s here,” said the officer. “You’re going through to Alpha block.”

Angus picked up his cup of tea and the food tray with the uneaten sandwich on it and stood, looking at the guard.

“Is that you ready?” said the guard.