Bullfighting (15 page)

He dated it back to then. Five years, four years – he wasn't sure. When they stopped growing old together.

He'd shaved it off. He'd never had a moustache and he didn't want one now, growing on his ear. He'd taken his glasses off to do it – he'd had to. He needed the glasses but sometimes he could see better without them. He took them off to read the paper. He had to put them on to find the fuckin' paper.

She was still taking her coat off. It looked new. He didn't think he'd seen it on her before. It was nice, soft-looking. He didn't know what to call the colour of that, either. She was being careful. It must have been new. He said nothing.

Her knickers came after his ear. His revenge, he supposed, but he hadn't meant it that way. It had just happened. He'd been sitting up in the bed, reading.
Berlin: The Downfall 1945
, or
Stalingrad
– one of those big books he always liked, about a city getting hammered in the Second World War. He loved history. He could hear her locking the doors downstairs, and coming up the stairs, shoving the bedroom door open, coming in. It must have been the Stalingrad book, because he'd got to the bit about people eating the rats, and he'd looked away from the page. She was taking her jeans off, her back to him. She was kind of vague there, so he put his glasses back on, and saw them. Her knickers – her thong. New, and black. She was bending, to get her feet out of the jeans. Four decades of arse parked inside a piece of string.

He pretended he was going to vomit. He still regretted it. He made the gagging sound, and leaned over the side of the bed and let on he was emptying himself. He'd done it before, and she'd always laughed. Not this time.

He hadn't meant to hurt her. He'd thought he was just being funny. She'd said nothing about it.

He googled
menopause
, but he soon gave up.
Age of onset, cessation of menses
; it was boring.
Hot flushes
– he had one of them every time he went up the stairs. But he kept an eye on her. He clucked sympathetically when he saw her sweating. He brought her a glass of water and put it beside the bed. She stared at him before she thanked him.

The chest hair was next. His. He woke up sweating one morning. The room was bright. The sun was already pushing through the curtains. She was leaning right over him, looking straight down at his chest.

—Grey, she said.

—What?

There was something there, a pain – the memory. She'd done something to him while he was asleep.

—There's grey in your hair.

He was sure of it. She'd pulled the hair on his chest. She looked now like she was going to peck him, the way she was hanging there. It felt like she already had.

—Did you pull my hair? he said.

He could hear himself ask the question, almost like he wasn't the one talking. He wasn't sure he was awake.

She didn't answer.

—And white, she said.

—Did you?

—What?

—Pull my hair.

—What? Why would I do that?

She said it like she was miles away, or on the phone to someone else. Someone she didn't think much of.

He got up on one of his elbows. He looked down at his chest; he tried to see it properly. His eyes swam a bit. Her back was to him; she was getting up. She held her nightdress down as she stood out of the bed.

—It's not really something you think about, is it? she said.—What happens you when you get older.

She was standing now, looking behind the curtain, out the window.

—It's a bit horrible, she said.

—It's only hair.

He'd had grey hair for a good while. It had started in his early thirties, on his head. A few at the side, just above his ears. She'd liked it; so she'd said. She'd said it made him look distinguished. A bit like Bill Clinton. You expected the hair on your head to change; you knew it was coming. But not the chest hair, or the pubic stuff. So she was right; it was a bit horrible.

He'd examined himself that morning. He'd looked no different. He took his glasses off so he could look at his face properly. He was still there, the same man. It was frightening, though, how little time you got. You only became yourself when you were twenty-three or twenty-four. A few years later, you had an old man's chest hair. It wasn't worth it. He put his glasses back on.

He didn't decide to throw out the statue. One of the saints – he couldn't remember which one, a woman. A present from one of her aunts. He'd just picked it up, walking past it in the hall. Kept walking, into the kitchen, threw it in the bin. Tied the bag, brought it out to the wheelie, dropped it in. Went back to the kitchen and put a new biodegradable bag into the bin. The mark was there on the table, where the statue had been; the varnish was much darker, like a badge – ‘Something Used To Be Here'. She'd never asked about it; she'd never said anything. He'd never felt guilty. She'd never tried to cover the mark; she'd never rearranged the crap on the table, and neither had he.

But she'd thrown out his medal. Not that he gave a fuck. But she had.

The statue first. They'd both laughed at it, when the aunt was in the taxi, going home, the night she'd given it to them. The saint's big blue eyes, the snakes at her plaster feet. He'd put it on the table in the hall; he'd made room for it. It was him who'd done it. He'd made a ceremony of it. This was the first Christmas they'd been in the house, two years after the wedding. They'd laughed, and she'd kissed him.

He just picked it up and threw it in the bin. He didn't know he was going to do it. He just did. He'd often hoped she'd ask him about it, because he could have told her. It could have been the beginning of something; they'd have talked. But she didn't, and he didn't.

The medal. It was the only one he'd ever won. The Community Games, football. Under-10s. North Dublin. Runners-up. He remembered the final, losing three – nil, and not caring once he had the medal. And not caring much about the medal either. His mother had put it away, in the glass cabinet in the front room. She'd given it to him when he'd moved into his own house, along with all his old school reports and his Inter and Leaving Certs, and a few photographs: the team in their stripy jerseys, him at the front, smiling and freezing; him and his big sister on the back of a donkey-and-cart, both of them squinting; him in his first suit, the flared trousers, grinning and squinting, the day before his first real job. He could remember his father with the camera. ‘Smile, smile. Stop bloody squinting.' He'd told his father to fuck off and walked straight out to the street. He could remember the noise of the trouser legs rubbing against each other.

She hadn't taken anything else. Just the medal. He hadn't been looking for it. He'd just noticed it, gone. He'd kept the stuff his mother gave him in the big envelope she'd put it into, with ‘Joe' in her shaky writing on it. He'd kept it in a drawer in the bedroom, under socks and T-shirts. Over the years, the shape of the medal had been pressed into the paper of the envelope. Not the little footballer, or the ‘1969', or any of the other details. Just the circular shape. He'd been looking for a sock to match another one, and – he didn't know why

– he'd put his finger on the circle and realised there was nothing under it. He took out the envelope and opened it. The medal was gone.

He searched the drawer. More than once. He took everything out. He shook all the socks. He slid the whole lot out of the envelope, and put it all back, one thing at a time. He tried the other drawers. He pulled the chest of drawers away from the wall and looked behind it. He took all the drawers out to see if the medal had slipped to the side, if it was standing on its edge on one of the plywood slats that held the drawers in place.

He put everything back.

He had no doubt at all: she'd done it.

 

But then the dog came into the house. They got a dog. She got the dog. A Jack Russell, a thoroughbred, papers and all. A mad little thing. It was there yapping at his heels when he got home from work.

—What's this? he said.

—What's it look like?

—A dog.

—There you go.

—Whose is it?

—Ours, she said.—Mine.

—Serious?

—Yeah.

He looked down at it.

—Let go of me fuckin' trousers, he said.

But he'd liked it, immediately. He'd had dogs when he was a kid. There'd always been a dog. Dogs were alright.

She gave it the name. Emma. From a book she liked, and the film, by Jane Austen. But it still ran around the kitchen in circles and knocked its head against the rungs beneath the chairs. It never stopped. It was always charging around the gaff, or asleep, beside its mat at the back door. Never on the mat, always right beside it. It was a great dog. Didn't shed too much hair, was too small to jump onto the good furniture, learnt to scratch at the door and yap when it wanted to get outside. Only shat in the kitchen now and again, and always looked apologetic. So, it was grand. But he soon began to realise that they weren't living with the same animal. She talked to it; she had a special voice she used. She'd buy a bag of jelly babies and share them, one for her, one for the dog. There was a child in the house, before he really understood.

He got up one morning and she was down there before him, filling the kettle. The dog had taken a dump beside the mat.

—Emma had an accident, she said.

—As long as it wasn't you, he said.

She laughed and he bent down, got the dog by the scruff, and pushed its snout into the shite. He unlocked the back door with his free hand and threw the dog outside, lobbed it gently, so it would land on its feet.

And she exploded. She actually hit him. She smacked him on the back, a loud whack that didn't hurt but shocked him. She hit him again. More of a thump this time – his shoulder.

—What was that for?

—What d'you think you're doing?

The two of them breathing hard.

He didn't hit her back. He didn't even think about it, or lift his hand or anything.

He knew immediately what she meant, and why she was furious. Now that she was. He could see.

—That's how you train them, he said.

—No, it isn't.

—It is.

It was how they'd trained their dogs at home, when he was a kid. Nose in the dirt, out the door. It had always worked.

—What other way is there?

He never mentioned the fact that she'd hit him. He never brought it up again, that the only one who'd ever been violent was her.

She signed them up for training classes. One evening a week, for eight weeks. They brought the dog to a big barn of a place, an actual barn beside an abandoned farmhouse, at the back of the airport. It was a strange, flat landscape. There was the ruin of a castle on one side of the road and the airport runway on the other, just a couple of fields away. He could look straight up at the bellies of the planes. The dog trainers were lovely, three soft-spoken girls who loved the dogs and the racket and the smell. He enjoyed it. They both did. The dog was quick on the uptake, all the sits and the stays, and she was fine with the other dogs. He enjoyed getting there, and coming home. They had to drive through Ballymun and over the M50 motorway. They'd comment on the changes, all the old tower blocks knocked down, the new buildings going up. There was once, on the road that ran right beside the runway, they saw something ahead – two things – getting clearer and sharper. It was two horses, pulling buggies, racing, on both sides of the road. He drove onto the hard shoulder, and they watched the horses trot past, and two Traveller kids in the buggies – they didn't even look at the car as they flew by.

—Jesus.

—That's disgraceful.

—Is it?

—It's dangerous.

—That's for sure.

He got out of the car – she did too – and they watched the buggies till they were too far away, waiting to see if any other cars or trucks came at them. But the road was empty.

—I wonder who won, she said.

—Don't know, he said.—A draw. I'd love to do it myself.

—Yeah, she said.—Not here, though.

—No.

They got back in and went on to the training centre.

Another time, they drove past a family of Romanians, gypsies, about seven of them, walking along the same road, beside the runway. It was like they'd just climbed over the perimeter fence and they were making a break for the city. But, really, they were strolling along and he'd no idea where to. He couldn't even imagine. There wasn't a shop or a house.