Living Death (18 page)

Katie gave Barney an affectionate pat on the head and tugged at his ears. ‘You’ve been a good boy for Auntie Bridie, have you?’

‘Oh, he’s the best-trained dog I ever came across,’ said Bridie. ‘If he could get up on his hind legs, and if he had hands instead of paws, I swear to God he’d make a cup of tea for me and bring it in on a tray. With biscuits.’

Katie nodded towards the nursery. ‘And how’s himself? Sleeping, is he?’

‘I put him to bed about an hour ago. He’s still suffering fierce pain in those imaginary feet of his. He said it’s so bad that if they hadn’t been ampumatated already, he’d have them cut off.’

Katie went through into the living-room. She was tempted to pour herself a drink but she decided to wait until Bridie had gone home. She didn’t want her gossiping around Cobh that she was an alcoholic.

‘Listen, Bridie,’ she said. ‘Something has come up at work. Something important which I really can’t get out of. I won’t be able to come with you to the hospital tomorrow morning. If you could just make a note for me of what the doctor says about John’s progress, I’d be more than grateful.’

‘Oh, dear, that’s scalding,’ said Bridie, as she raised the hood on her raincoat. ‘John will be pure disappointed. Like he talks about almost nothing else all day but you, and how excited he is that you’re both back together again. He says he can’t wait for the day when he’s able to walk down the street arm-in-arm with you, and nobody will know that he has the prosthetic legs. All they’ll be thinking is, “Would you look at that handsome couple”?’

‘He’s been saying that to you?’ asked Katie.

‘Over and over. Never stops. Once he has his prosthetic legs, he said, he’s going to ask you to marry him. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that, but that’s what keeps his spirits up. He’s even talking about the children that you’re going to be having together, and what you’re going to call them.’

Katie started to smile but then found that she couldn’t. She opened the front door and outside the rain was still clattering down from an overflowing gutter.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Bridie. Take good care driving home.’

Once Bridie had gone, Katie went back into the living-room. She stood there for a while, with Barney looking up at her and wagging his tail very slowly as if he could sense that she was thinking and wasn’t in the mood for play.

‘What am I going to do, Barns?’ she asked him. ‘Jesus. If anybody ever made a rod for their own back.’

She went across to the drinks table and poured herself a large glass of vodka, and then she went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and topped it up with tonic water. Three bottles of John’s medicines were in the fridge, too, as well as three slices of leftover pizza. She bit her lip with frustration and guilt and exhaustion. It stopped her eyes from filling with tears.

Back in the living-room, she sat down and switched on the television so that she could watch the late news. She caught the last few seconds of an item about the new shopping centre that was being built on the site of Cork’s old Capitol Cinema, and then a picture of a smiling young dark-haired girl came on to the screen.

‘Cork City Garda are appealing for anybody who knows of the whereabouts of nineteen-year-old Siobhán O’Donohue to contact them as soon as possible. Siobhán has not been seen since leaving the Eclipse Club on Oliver Plunkett Street on Hallowe’en night. Her friends say that she had a disagreement with her boyfriend before leaving the club and may be deliberately hiding in order to worry him. However Superintendent Michael Pearse said that after three days her family were deeply concerned about her wellbeing, and she would not be in any trouble if she were to contact the Garda to reassure them that she is safe and has come to no harm.’

Katie made a mental note to talk to Superintendent Pearse tomorrow about this girl. There had only been three abductions in the city in the past eighteen months, mostly because women were being more careful when they went out at night, and in each case the victims had been found alive, although two of them had been raped and one had been badly beaten.

She was listening to a breaking news report about gang warfare between the Kinahans and the Hutches in Dublin when she heard a bell tinkling. It took her a moment to remember that Bridie had told her that she would bring in a bell for John to ring when he needed to go to the toilet, or other assistance. The bell tinkled again, more plaintive than urgent.

She pressed
mute
on the TV’s remote and went across to the nursery. The door was already slightly ajar but she pushed it open wider. John had switched on his bedside lamp and he was sitting almost upright in bed, propped up by three large pillows. He smelled strongly of the Boss aftershave that she had given him, as if he had sprayed it on only a few seconds ago.

‘Hi, darling,’ he smiled, and held out his hand to her. She went over and kissed his cheek and then sat on the bed beside him and took hold of his hand. His fingers were very cold, even though the room was warm, and Katie thought that he was looking very white, like an over-exposed photograph of himself.

‘How was your day?’ he asked her.

‘Oh, the usual mixture of scummers and bureaucrats. How was yours?’

‘Bridie took me out for a push, when the showers eased off. We went as far as the Rushbrooke Commercial Park but then it started to rain again so we came back. I had the waterproof cover on so I managed to stay dry until we got home and Barney shook himself all over me.’

‘How’s the pain?’

‘It was bad this morning but Bridie gave me enough oxycodone to fell an army.’

‘Listen – tomorrow, when you have your appointment with Doctor Kashani – I’m afraid I won’t be able to come with you.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m truly sorry, John, believe me, but I have to go and meet somebody about a serious case. I would have postponed it if I could, but I simply can’t.’

John shrugged and said, ‘Okay. I know you have your priorities. Bridie and me will manage, I’m sure.’

Katie gave his hand a quick squeeze and then stood up. ‘I’m going to take a shower. Is there anything I can get you?’

‘No, no thanks. Bridie fed me earlier – sausages and colcannon. I’m stuffed.’

Katie went to her own bedroom and undressed. In her wardrobe mirror she thought she had an accusing frown on her face, as if there were another woman on the other side of the mirror who disapproved of the way she was treating John.

Do you love him or not? If you don’t love him any more, you shouldn’t let him keep his hopes up, just because you feel so guilty. The longer you leave it, the more pain he’s going to feel when you finally tell him that it’s over. In comparison with your ditching him, the pain he feels in his missing feet is going to be nothing at all.

She couldn’t help thinking of the way the Vizsla had looked at her when she had pointed her revolver at its head, not realising that she could end its life with one squeeze of the double-action trigger. John had looked at her in the same trusting way.

She took a long hot shower, as if that could wash away her tiredness and her indecision, and when she stepped out and dried herself and wrapped herself up in her pink towelling bathrobe, she did feel a little better. Her father had always said that it was no coincidence that ‘crime’ rhymed with ‘grime’. ‘I’ll tell you, Katie – after I’d been rubbing shoulders with sublas all day, I couldn’t wait to get into the bath and scrub myself all their muck off me.’

Katie was combing back her wet hair in the steamed-up mirror when John’s bell rang.

‘
Coming!
’ she called out. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to grow her hair longer or have it cut very short. She liked the crimson streaks that her hair stylist had given her. Her hair was dark red naturally, but these gave it more depth. She was still thinking about it when John’s bell rang again.

She went into the nursery. ‘Sorry, John,’ she smiled. ‘I was just getting myself dry. Is there something I can bring you? Cup of tea, maybe?’

John’s eyes were oddly unfocused. She had the feeling that he was remembering the way they were when they had first got together, when he had been tall and muscular and he hadn’t been dependent on her.

‘Katie…’ he said. ‘I just want
you
.’

‘I’m here. What do you want to do? Talk? We can go into the living-room and watch TV together if you like. Or play some music.’

‘I want to see you,’ he said, with a slight catch in his throat. ‘It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.’

Katie opened out her arms. ‘Here I am. I’m not going away. I live here.’

John’s eyes still looked unfocused. Katie could almost have believed that he was hypnotised. Maybe it was all the painkillers that Bridie given him. Oxycodone was almost as powerful as morphine.

‘Can you—’ he began, and gestured with his hands as if he were taking off his pyjama jacket. ‘Can I see you without your bathrobe?’

Katie didn’t know how to react to that. What was she going to say?
No
? They had been lovers for months, until he had left her to start a new job in San Francisco. Passionate lovers – always hungry for each other. They had made love in her back garden on warm summer nights. They had made love in the woods when they had stayed at the Parknasilla hotel in Kerry. They had even made love in her office, in Anglesea Street. And now she wasn’t even going to let him see her without her bathrobe?

‘You know how much I adore you, don’t you, Katie?’ said John. ‘You’re everything I ever could have wished for.’

Katie loosened her tie-belt. She pushed her bathrobe off her shoulders, although she hesitated for a moment before she let it drop to the floor. When she did, there was silence between them. She simply stood there, naked, with her arms by her sides, while John stared at her.

At last, he said, ‘Let me feel you, Katie. I haven’t felt you for so long.’

She approached his bed, and stood close enough for him to touch her. She didn’t know if she ought to be doing this or not. In one way she felt as if he were treating her like a goddess. In another way, she felt as if he were treating her like a slave-girl, or a slut. Did she want to show herself off to him? Did she want him to touch her? Was there something about this that excited her, or did she simply feel that she owed it to him, because of him losing his legs?

For a split-second she felt like turning away, picking up her bathrobe and leaving the room. But then he reached up and cupped her right breast, gently weighing it in the palm of his hand, and rotating the ball of his thumb around her nipple. He had always been a very strong lover, and even though his hand was cold now, she found that coldness arousing.

He caressed her left nipple, too, between finger and thumb, until it stiffened, and her areola crinkled. She closed her eyes for a moment, but when she opened them again John still had that strange detached expression, as if he were thinking about the way they used to be, rather than the way they were now, tonight, in what had once been the nursery.

He lightly ran his fingers down her sides, right down to her hips, and that made her shiver. Then he stroked the smooth mound of her vulva, and slid his fingertip between her lips, stroking her clitoris. She was wet now, and she could not only feel her wetness but hear it, as her lips faintly clicked.

It was then that he pulled back the bedcover. His penis was sticking out of his pyjamas, purple-headed and hard and already glistening with juice. He didn’t say anything, but reached with his right hand around the small of Katie’s back and pulled her even closer, so that she nearly overbalanced and fell on top of him.

‘Climb on to me,’ he panted. ‘Climb on to me, I’ll be all right.’

But Katie suddenly thought:
This is madness. What am I doing? I’m frustrated and I’m guilty but John’s drugged up to the eyeballs with painkillers and God alone knows what this could do to his stumps. He’s only a few weeks out of surgery. What if one of his femoral arteries burst and he bled to death
?

Much more than that – you simply don’t have the same feelings for him any more.

She looked down at John’s face and she was sure now that she didn’t love him. She might be responsible for the mutilated state he was in, but he was too weak and too needy and he was expecting too much from her, and she realised now that he always had expected too much. Perhaps she was being callous, but it was almost impossible to serve in the Garda for as long as she had, and not become callous, or thick-skinned, at least. Certainly it had made her self-protective.

She took hold of his right arm and carefully levered it away from her back.

‘What?’ he said.

She stepped away from the side of the bed. ‘We can’t do this, John. I appreciate how you feel but you’re not ready yet. This could kill you.’

‘What are you talking about?
Kill
me? Of course it wouldn’t. Besides – you think I’d want to die any other way? Please, Katie. I need you. Look at me. I’m dreaming about you every night and daydreaming about you every day.’

‘John, you’re not ready. Not physically, and not emotionally, either. And I’m not either.’

‘I don’t understand. You wanted me here, didn’t you?’

She picked up her bathrobe and put it on again, tying the belt up tight. Then she went back to the bed and folded back the duvet to cover John.

John held on to her arm. ‘What do you mean you’re not ready?’ he asked her. ‘You felt as if you were.’

‘John – it’s not easy for me to come to terms with what’s happened to you. You’ve changed more than you think, and it’s not just your legs.’

‘How? How I have changed?’

‘I don’t know exactly. But after what’s happened to you, how could you not be different?’

‘I still love you. That hasn’t changed.’

‘Well, maybe it’s me, then. I’m finding this too hard to deal with. On top of that, I’m totally stressed out at work. There’s a flood of drugs coming into the city and because of that the crime rate’s gone up through the roof. We’re having a struggle to cope with it, and every day it gets worse.’

‘Please, Katie. I’m aching for you.’