Barefoot Over Stones (14 page)

Alison took a little sip. It wasn’t very strong, she had to admit. Maybe it was even a bit pleasant.

‘To a good life,’ Ciara toasted.

‘To good men!’ Alison ventured.

‘To a life without arseholes or at least to having damn fine shoes to step over them,’ Ciara countered as they clinked their glasses.

Leda wasn’t sure exactly what kind of flat she had been expecting but she knew that this definitely wasn’t it. The basement flat of a dilapidated house off Leeson Street that Con had given her the keys to was a huge disappointment. She had imagined somewhere that Con would want to come to relax, somewhere to unwind with her at the end of a stressful day. She couldn’t picture him here at all, but maybe somewhere simple was what he craved. Everyone said that the bag he was married to took it very badly if you walked on her carpets after they had been vacuumed so he could probably do with a rest from that. If she was honest with herself, she had listened to him talking about the apartment he lived in near the Burlington when he was attending the Dáil and it was something along those lines she had been looking forward to. Obviously she knew she could not actually stay there. Con had been adamant about the need for discretion. No one would understand their feelings for one another, he had explained, and what they had was so special that it needed to be protected from prying eyes. She had to hand it to him, he was an expert at talking the talk. She had been hoping to hide out in his apartment for a little while to get used to being away from home but he hadn’t even shown it to her, insisting that she move in straight away to the flat he had earmarked for her.

Although she was terrified at the thought of living alone, she didn’t admit that to Con. Her mother had always been at the house at home so she seldom had to use her key to get in late at night. Aggie Clancy had long since learned that Ted would sooner break glass and knock down the door than put his hands in his pockets to find a key when he was drunk. An unlocked door was now something of pure terror to Leda and the first nights in the flat she slept fitfully with the keys clenched to her chest. Every noise was cause for utter panic, outside the banging of a car door, the sounds of dustbin lids clanging, and within the rustle of old pipes creaking and faceless voices from other layers of the house muffled and whispering behind strangers’ doors. Leda was determined that she wouldn’t run home scared but it took every ounce of spirit that she had to stay.

Every day she expected a visit from Con. He was, after all, the reason she was here, but the first evenings passed and she only had the bare, stained walls for company. Ciara was in Dublin,
of course, only about two miles away, but Leda couldn’t face meeting her yet. She would be first with the lecture and her little sister knew she could not deal with that right now. Nagging, and Ciara was a champion nagger, was not going to improve anything at all. She had heard Ciara complaining about the flat that she had rented in one of Con Abernethy’s houses in the same area. To be honest, knowing how much Ciara detested him, she had more or less decided that if he had presented Ciara with the keys to the Mansion House her sister would likely have said it was not fit for human habitation. Ciara hadn’t even wanted to stay there in the first place, but their father had been adamant that Con had done her a huge favour and anyone from the country looking for a flat would give their eye-teeth to be set up without having to trudge the streets looking for a place themselves. Ciara relented and accepted the flat but, as with most things, she got her own way in the end.

Leda had bought flowers from a stand outside a newsagent’s on Leeson Street, thinking that a few blooms might brighten the place up. Looking at them now on the kitchen counter rammed into a pint glass, the only thing resembling a vase in the place, she had to admit that flowers weren’t going to fix the smell or the damp patches that leered from every wall or the depressing glow of the bare bulbs that hung like fractured limbs from the ceilings. The toilet bowl was stained and smelt as if it had been lifted from the toilets at Shanahan’s after a particularly late and drunken night. There was much to be depressed about when she looked around but Leda was not about to complain. She had just worked a whole week at a job that Con had fixed her up with in a solicitor’s office. The lawyer looked after a lot of Con’s property dealings and had made it plain to Leda that as long as Con kept his business with the office her job was as safe as houses. The money was good too and not a penny of it had to go towards rent, so for the first time in her life Leda could see independence looming and that made her very pleased indeed. Con told her father about her move to Dublin and explained why there was no reason she should stay in school to do her Leaving. Leda had been loading the glasses into the pub dishwasher and wondering what her mam would actually do if she ever got one to free her from the interminable washing-up when she overheard Con’s flood of conviction that swayed her father.

‘Sure that girl there has brains to burn, Ted. She doesn’t need a slip of paper to prove that to anyone. She will be in a job, a well-paying job at that mind, the Monday morning after she gets to Dublin.’ That conversation had ended with her father clapping Con Abernethy on the back and insisting on buying him a drink to thank him for looking out for yet another of his daughters.

‘I wouldn’t doubt you, Con Abernethy. I won’t forget this for you and I’ll make sure my girls will never forget it either.’

She had expected her mother to barely register that she was going but for some reason Aggie Clancy seemed more with it than normal when Leda told her of her plans to give up school and head for Dublin.

‘Leda, would you not wait? Another twelve months and you would have your Leaving behind you. Who knows, you might get to college like Ciara? It makes me so happy to think of Ciara making choices for herself and opening up the world. I want the same for you. Leda, for me, will you please stay and do your exams?’

Leda was surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had mentioned her schoolwork or plans for her future. Couldn’t remember maybe because it had never happened. Well, she wasn’t about to let this belated bout of parental concern trip her up now.

‘Look, Mam, I know you mean well but don’t you see this is my chance? I’m never going to college. Let’s face it, Ciara got the brains when they were dishing them out. Maybe Michael will end up going too, but I think that if he got to score a few goals for Leachlara, that’s all he wants.’ Michael was a shy teenager, overwhelmed by the powerful disinterest of his father. Leda worried about him, the same way, she realized, that Ciara had worried about her, but not enough to stay and change her plans, any more than Ciara would have stayed for Leda’s benefit. When she told
her mother she was definitely going, her mother wished her luck and pressed some folded notes into her palm.

‘You need this, Mam, more than I do. Keep it, for God’s sake. I will be grand.’ Leda was not about to fleece her mother for money on the way out of the door, knowing how tight things were, but Aggie was insistent.

‘I will gladly take it back if you never have call to use it. It’s safer in your hands than in this house. It would last your father a few foolish nights in Shanahan’s standing drink to people who could buy a brewery and not notice a wrinkle in their wallet.’

Leda put the money in her jeans pocket, vowing not to spend a penny of it and to return with it and more besides. She hugged her mother for the first time in ages and noticed how small and frail she felt. Her plumpness had disappeared and her bones stood proud of her meagre flesh. Aggie pulled away from her daughter’s embrace. There was something else she had to say.

‘You will mind yourself from Con, won’t you?’

‘What do you mean? Mind myself? Sure if it wasn’t for Con none of this would be happening for me.’

‘I know he means well, Leda love, but he has had a hard life with Mary. I can see it in him. He is not the gentle sort of man now that I remember when we were younger. He is bitter, feels hard done by and let down by life, and sometimes that makes people do things they shouldn’t. Just remember you owe him nothing but to do well with the opportunities he has given you. Everything else you must keep for yourself.’

Con’s visits fell into a pattern that Leda came to depend on to salve the loneliness she felt in the flat. He never came before 11 p.m. and he would ring from a phone box just as he was at the end of the road, presumably so he wouldn’t have to stand around at the door waiting to be let in. He sometimes brought a takeaway, Chinese or Indian, food that Leda rarely touched. He always brought alcohol and usually drank most of what he brought before he began to fondle Leda and, from that moment until he rolled off her on to the quilt she had laid out on the sitting-room floor, she knew it would be about half an hour before he left. He never spent the night and he never carried her to her bed, feeling more comfortable with the sex he could have quickly and casually on a floor lit by the harsh oranges and reds of the miserable gas fire. She would hear the rustle of his clothes as he put them back on, the hard click of his belt buckle, his shirt being tucked in and finally the clanking of his keys in his pocket, a signal that it was time for him to be at home. He would drain his glass of wine, lean down and kiss her on the forehead, and always his final words were: ‘Night, pet.’ When the door closed after him she would pick herself and the quilt up from the floor and go to the door to push over the shooting bolt. From there she would go to the cold sheets of her bed and will herself to sleep a mercifully dreamless sleep.

About a month after she arrived in Dublin she was walking up Kildare Street on her way home from work. She saw Con dart in through the gates of Leinster House with another suited man whom she didn’t recognize. She called out his name but he seemed not to hear her. If he had time maybe they could have dinner, out somewhere this time, somewhere swanky and not in her flat, which she was thoroughly sick of. Through the black railings she shouted after him. ‘Con, wait up! Con, it’s me. Con!’

He stopped and looked in her direction but her smile was not returned. He curtailed his conversation with the other man and when he nodded in Leda’s direction they both laughed. He made his way back to the gate, saluting the security man on duty at the cabin. When he finally addressed Leda his tone was cold and cutting. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I was just passing on my way from work. I saw you and I wanted to say hello. I just thought
that we might go for something to eat or a drink maybe if you are at a loose end.’

‘Well, I am very glad that I got you such a cushy job that you are finished work at teatime, but I have another few hours to go before I can call my day even half finished, so take yourself off home and don’t ever bother me at work again.’

‘Con, I was only passing—’

‘Well, don’t pass this way again. This is serious shit, Leda, and you have no business meddling where I don’t want you. I’ll say it one more time. Go home and make sure to stay away from here. Don’t ruin everything when it is going so well.’

‘Will I see you later?’ she asked, although she regretted immediately how weak she sounded.

‘I have loads on this evening. I can’t say for sure.’

‘Well, if you do get finished early . . .’ Leda countered, attempting a casual tone.

‘I know where to find you.’ He headed back in the direction of the Dáil with a vigorous stride.

Leda turned away from the railing eventually, several minutes after Con had disappeared inside. She changed her route home and vowed never to pass that way again. As she walked the streets that led to the flat she gave herself a serious lecture. She had become clingy and dependent on Con because she had found it miserable being away from home, however unlikely an eventuality that had seemed the day she left her parents’ house in Leachlara. The prospect of freedom and independence had intoxicated her and she chided herself now for being unable to handle what she had craved for so long. Well, from now on things would change. She would go out more for a start. There were a few girls at the solicitor’s office who seemed up for a laugh. They had asked her out for drinks a few times and she had always declined, wanting to be at the flat in case Con would choose those nights to visit. There was going to be no more of that kind of stupidity. It would shake him up a bit if she was not always at his beck and call. He might even hurry up and set up that credit card account that he had been promising her since she arrived. She looked forward to spending his money because Dublin had a lot of shops that were currently out of her league. Definitely time to renegotiate, she decided. What’s more, if she met a cute man there was nothing to stop her doing whatever she liked with him. It’s not as if sex with Con was actually all that pleasant. She always felt grotty afterwards. If there was better on offer Leda Clancy was going to have it. Buoyed with renewed determination, she walked down the steps leading to her basement flat only to spot Ciara sitting on the stoop waiting for her return.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure, Ciara?’ Leda asked sharply, although she was glad she had pulled herself together on the way home. No point in Ciara knowing she’d had a wobble of confidence.

‘Just thought I would check out where he had you holed up. Good God, I thought the place he gave me to rent was bad but Con obviously had worse to offer. Mammy keeps saying that you are going to visit me but you have no intention, have you?’ Ciara was doing her best to scrutinize how Leda was doing and she had to admit she looked as if she had come to no harm. She had lost a bit of weight that she could not afford to lose, but otherwise she looked pretty good. She was smartly dressed in what was definitely a new coat that made her look more grown up than she was.

‘I have a lot on, Ciara, and running around to see you and your little flatmate has not been top of my agenda. I doubt much has changed in your set-up anyway.’