Cheating at Canasta (8 page)

Falling in with this, Mallory asked them if it was their first time in Venice. Embarrassment was still there, but they somehow managed to make it seem like their reproval of themselves for inflicting their bickering on him.

‘Oh, very much so,’ they said together, each seeming instinctively to know how their answer should be given.

‘Not yours, I guess?’ the husband added, and Mallory shook his head. He’d been coming to Venice since first he’d been able to afford it, he said. And then he told them why he was here alone.

While he did so Mallory sensed in his voice an echo of his regret that foolishness had brought him here. He did not say it. He did not say that he was here to honour a whim that would have been forgotten as soon as it was expressed. He did not deplore a tiresome, futile journey. But he’d come close to doing so and felt ashamed in turn. His manner had dismissed the scratchiness he’d eavesdropped on as the unseemly stuff of marriage. It was more difficult to dismiss his own sly aberration, and shame still nagged.

‘I’m sorry about your wife.’ The girl’s smile was gentle. ‘I’m very sorry.’

‘Ah, well.’ Belittling melancholy, he shook his head.

Again the playing cards fall. Again he picks them up. She wins and then is happy, not knowing why.

The party at the corner table came to an end, its chatter louder, then subdued. A handbag left behind was rescued by a waiter. Other people came.

Tomorrow what has been lost in recollection’s collapse will be restored as she has known it: the pink and gold of Sant Giobbe’s
Annunciation
, its dove, its Virgin’s features, its little trees, its God. Tomorrow the silenced music will play in the piazza of San Marco, and tourists shufflein the
calles
, and the boats go out to the islands. Tomorrow the cats of Venice will be fed by ladies in the dried-out parks, and there’ll be coffee on the Zattere.

‘No, no,’ he murmured when the husband said he was sorry too. ‘No, no.’

He watched the couple go, and smiled across the crowded restaurant when they reached the door. Shame isn’t bad, her voice from somewhere else insists. Nor the humility that is its gift.

Bravado

The leaves had begun to fall. All along Sunderland Avenue on the pavement beneath the beech trees there was a sprinkling, not yet the mushy inconvenience they would become when more fell and rain came, which inevitably would be soon. Not many people were about; it was after midnight, almost one o’clock, the widely spaced lampposts casting pools of misty yellow illumination. A man walked his dog in Blenning Road in the same blotchy lamplight, the first of autumn’s leaves gathering there also. An upstairs window opened in Verdun Crescent, hands clapped to dismiss a cat rooting in a flowerbed. A car turned into Sunderland Avenue, its headlights dimmed and then extinguished, its alarm set for the night with a flurry of flashing orange and red. The traffic of the city was a hum that only faintly reached these leisurely streets, the occasional distant shriek of a police siren or an ambulance more urgently disturbing their peace.

Less than half a mile away, the night was different. Young people prowled about outside the Star nightclub, its band—Big City—taking a break. A late shop was still open, a watchful Indian at the door noting who came and went. A few cars drew away, but more remained. Then, with a thump of such suddenness that for a moment it might have been taken as a warning of emergency or disaster, music again burst from the Star nightclub.

By half past one this neighbourhood, too, had quietened. The bouncers at the Star drove off, couples made their way to the dark seclusion of the nearby canal bank. Others stood about, groups forming and dispersing. Locking up his shop, the Indian was argued with, and abused when demands for alcohol and potato crisps were refused. The last of the parked cars were driven off.

Two youths who were friends went together, undaunted by the prospect of an hour’s walk to where they lived. One was in shirtsleeves although it was chilly, the arms of a red anorak tied around his shoulders; the other wore a black woollen jersey above ragged jeans. They talked about the girls they had come across on the dance-floor, one in particular, well known to them both, the others strangers. They talked about their intentions for the future: in the Merchant Navy and in car sales, an uncle’s business. These were the changes that were soon to come about, when education ended, when so much they had known for so long was to be left behind for ever: the Brothers and the lay teachers, the cramped desks scratched with entwined initials and hearts and arrows, all they had learned of self-preservation and of survival’s cunning. There was, in their conversation, an absence of regret.

They paused in their walk while the anorak was unknotted and put on, zipped up and buttoned. Their evening out had been a good one, they agreed while this was being done. ‘Kicking,’ one said. ‘Big City can do it.’ They walked on, talking about that band’s touch of genius.

With his mobile telephone close to his mouth, the Indian loudly demanded the police: his usual ploy at this hour, speaking to no one. His tormentors swore at him, then tired of their invective and went away. Five there were, two of them girls, neither of whom had taken part in the abuse of the Indian; which had surprised him, for girls were often the worst. He kept an eye on the five when they moved off in a bunch, causing an oncoming car to slow down to a crawl as they crossed the street. Then he locked his shop, thankful that there hadn’t been an incident.

‘Howya doin’?’ Manning shouted at the driver of the car. He drummed on the bonnet with his fists and, joining in, his companions—but not the girls—did the same. The car kept moving, then stopped and reversed. It went another way.

‘Could you beat that?’ Manning laughed, watching the car from the middle of the road. He was tallest of the bunch, his reddish hair falling over his forehead in a floppy shock that he was said to be proud of. An air of insouciance distinguished his manner, was there again in the lazy saunter of his walk, in his smile. Manning led when he was with Donovan and Kilroy, which he was most of the time, and was tonight. Aisling was his girl, fair-haired and pretty, with expressive blue eyes, younger than Manning by more than a year. The second girl wasn’t known to the others; earlier she had asked which way they were going and then asked if she could go with them because she lived in that direction. Francie she was called.

Aisling clung to Manning as they walked. With his arm round Francie, Kilroy tried to slow her down, in the hope of setting up an opportunity for something when they had fallen far enough behind. But Francie, aware of his intention, kept up a steady pace. She was small, often called a little thing, but deliberate and determined in her manner. She, too, was pretty, but less dramatically so than Aisling, whom Manning liked to describe as drop-dead gorgeous. She denied that she was, but Manning’s regular repetition of the compliment did not displease her.

She listened to him now, saying he didn’t intend to set foot in the Star again, objecting to the way the shaven-headed bouncers had frisked him for miniatures. They had taken one from him and afterwards said they hadn’t: they thought they owned you, louts like that. ‘Did you ever do a line, cowboy?’ he called across Aisling to Donovan.

‘Amn’t I doing one with Emir Flynn?’

‘You eejit!’

Laughing again, Manning sounded drunk. Not very, Aisling thought, but a little. She’d been drunk once or twice herself but hadn’t liked it, everything slipping about, and the way you felt in the morning.

‘Did you ever, though?’ Manning pressed, offering Donovan a cigarette.

Donovan said he had of course, many a time, and Aisling knew all this was for her and for the girl who’d tagged along, whose name she had forgotten. ‘Fanbloody-tastic,’ Donovan said, he and Manning lighting their cigarettes, sharing the match. No one else was a smoker.

They were going by the dyeworks now, where Manning had once climbed over the high spiked railings. That had been for Aisling too, and a girl called Maura Bannerman. The security lights had been triggered and through the railings they had watched Manning roaming about, from time to time peering in at the downstairs windows of the lumpy red-brick building that was said to have been a lunatic asylum once.

Behind her Aisling heard Kilroy telling the girl he had monopolized about that night. At the top of the railings, razor-wire was woven through the spikes, adding to the hazards: none of them knew how Manning had done it, but somehow he had, even though he was a bit drunk then too.

Kilroy had slit eyes that aptly suggested an untrustworthy nature. Donovan was considered to be dense: almost as tall as Manning, he was bulkier, clumsy in his movements, slow of speech. Kilroy had a stunted appearance, accentuated by oiled black hair sleekly brushed straight back, making the top of his head seem flat. Aisling didn’t much like either of them.

The first time she’d been in the Star—the first time she’d seen Manning, no more than a face in the crowd—she had admired him. He’d noticed her interest, he told her afterwards; he said she was his kind, and she didn’t hesitate when he asked her to go out with him. Mano he was called in the Dublin manner, Martin John his given names. Martin was what his family called him and Aisling thought of him as that when she was in her convent classroom, and every night before she went to sleep. She and he were an item, he said, which Aisling had never been with anyone before.

‘I’d give a thousand bucks for a snort,’ he was saying now, his voice slightly raised, a laugh in it again. ‘Where’d we get ourselves a snort, cowboy?’

Donovan said maybe Dirty Doyle’s, Kilroy suggested Capel Street. It was a kind of play; Martin Manning doing the big fellow, her father would have said. Aisling had become used to it ages ago.

They reached the quiet streets, St Stephen’s Church at the corner of Goodchild Street, the shadowy sprawl of trees on either side of Sunderland Avenue ahead of them.

‘Who’re those geeks?’ Donovan suddenly exclaimed and they all stopped, not knowing where to look at first. But when Francie pointed they saw the red anorak.

‘It’s bloody Dalgety,’ Manning said.

The two parted in Sunderland Avenue, Dalgety turning into Blenning Road. On his own, he went a little faster, but paused when he noticed that one of the garden gates he was passing was invitingly open. He went through it and crossed a lawn to a corner near the house where he couldn’t be seen from the windows. He urinated in the shadow of an eleagnus bush.

Once or twice, making their way from the nightclub, they had been aware of voices behind them but, engrossed in conversation themselves, they hadn’t looked round to see whose they were. Dalgety couldn’t hear the voices now and imagined that whoever they belonged to had gone in some other direction. A light hadn’t come on in the house, which sometimes happened when you found a garden that was convenient for the purpose he had used it for. He unzipped his anorak because he’d noticed that the teeth of the zip hadn’t been properly aligned. While he was zipping it up again he was struck, a blow on the right side of his head. He thought that someone had come out of the house, and was thinking he hadn’t heard the front door opening when the next blow came. He stumbled and fell, and a foot smashed into his jaw when he was lying on the grass. He tried to stand up but couldn’t.

Aisling had watched, not wanting to but she had. Francie had looked away when she saw what was happening. In the garden, standing back at first, not taking part, Donovan moved forward when the boy was lying on the grass. Kilroy stayed with the girl, calculating that he’d lose out with her if he joined in. Nobody spoke while the assault was taking place, not in the garden, not on the road. Nobody did when they all moved on, in a bunch again.

Aisling wondered what the boy had done, what insults had been exchanged in the Star or before that, how the boy had offended. Something of the headiness of the nightclub seemed to be there again, something of the music’s energy, of the wildness that was often in a face as it went by on the dance-floor before it was sucked into the suffocating closeness of the crowd.

‘Oh, leave me be!’ Francie suddenly cried out. ‘Just leave me, would you!’

‘Behave yourself, cowboy.’ Manning’s rebuke came lightly, and for a moment Aisling saw the white gleam of his teeth.

Kilroy muttered, and desisted for a few minutes before he tried again and was again shaken off. In Charleston Road Francie parted from them, scuttling off, not saying goodnight. Kilroy hesitated, but didn’t follow her.

‘Dalgety’s a tit,’ Manning said when Aisling asked why Dalgety had been duffed up. ‘Forget it,’ he said.

‘I never heard that name before,’ Aisling said. ‘Dalgety.’

‘Yeah, a nerd’s.’

Conversation lapsed then, but passing the entrance to the Greenbanks Hotel Donovan began on a story about his sister, how she was going to a shrink, and hated it so much she often didn’t turn up for her weekly sessions.

‘Some guy comes on heavy,’ Donovan said. ‘You end up with a shrink.’

Nobody commented. Donovan did not go on; the interrupted silence held. So that was it, Aisling thought, and felt relieved, aware of a relaxation in her body, as if her nerves had been strung up and no longer were. This Dalgety had upset Donovan’s sister, going too far when she didn’t want him to, whatever form his persistence took putting her in need of psychiatric care. And the anger Aisling had witnessed in the garden touched her, what had happened seeming different, less than it had been while she watched.

‘See you, Mano,’ Donovan said. ‘Cheers, Aisling.’

She said goodnight. Donovan turned into Cambridge Road, and soon afterwards Kilroy turned off, too.

‘All right, was he?’ Aisling asked then.

‘Who’s this?’

‘Dalgety.’

‘Christ, of course he was.’

They went to Spire View Lane, where they always went when it was as late as this. ‘You’re a dazzler tonight,’ Manning whispered, slipping his hands beneath her clothes.

She closed her eyes, kissing him back, his early-morning stubble harsh on her chin. The first time she had experienced that roughness it had excited her, and every time since it had. ‘I’d best be getting back,’ she said, not that she wanted to get back anywhere.