Stir-Fry (19 page)

“Maria,” he called in a low voice when he noticed her standing in the shadows, and she ran up to the precarious structure he was straddling. “Could you possibly get that apple butt out of the way of my wheels?”

They sat round the fire swaddled in duvets, comparing flu symptoms. “My eyes are nearly too sore to read, even,” complained Maria.

“Did you finish that book I lent you?” asked Ruth.

“Halfway through,” said Maria, showing where the bookmark was. “I find it hard to get into short stories, even if they’re well written.”

Jael looked up from peering under the sofa. “Who’s trying to convert her now?”

“It’s good literature that happens to be by lesbian feminists.”

“Brainwasher!”

“I asked to borrow it,” Maria intervened. “I’d got
The Well of Loneliness
out of the library, but Ruth said it’d put anyone off.”

“You’re being recruited for the cause,” said Jael ominously. “Next thing you know, she’ll have you strapped to the kitchen table, showing you pictures of James Dean alternating with electric shocks.” She took the poker from Ruth and started raking under the sofa with it.

“What are you at now?”

“I’m positive my tarot cards are under here somewhere. I want to tell Maria’s fortune.”

“Don’t let her do it,” Ruth warned Maria. “She hasn’t a clue.”

“Are you impeaching my psychic powers?” Jael sat up, red-faced.

“Psychic knickers,” said Ruth, wrapping the duvet round her shoulders. “The tarot has to be studied for years to be properly understood.”

“I use intuition, not some scholarly shit—”

“If you can’t find the cards,” Maria interrupted, “why do we have to fight about them now?”

Jael reached for the bottle on the rug. “Ruth’s just ratty because she has to come out to five hundred strangers in an hour and a half.”

“No, I’m not,” snapped Ruth. “I’ve been looking forward to this debate all term.”

“Another hot whisky?” Jael asked Maria. “I’m on my third, and you two are still hugging your first.”

“I’m grand,” she said, helping herself to another slice of lemon. “I prefer to stay with the pleasant buzz; if I have any more, I’ll make a fool of myself.”

Jael’s eyes lit up. “Come on, let your hair down for once, it might be interesting.”

“I’ve no hair to let down.”

“What are you afraid of, Maria?”

She cradled the glass to her belly. “A hangover. And I want to be sober enough to understand the speeches tonight.”

“You’ve got to take some risks in life.” Jael reached over with the whisky bottle.

“I said no.”

“Leave her alone.” Ruth’s tone was harsh, startling them both.

“She can look after herself, Mumsie,” said Jael; “she’s not the teenager you treat her as.”

“Maria’s got double your ration of maturity anyway,” muttered Ruth, shutting her eyes and leaning back into the cushions.

“What about another little tot for you then, dotie?” Jael went on, poising the bottle over Ruth’s head. “You’re well past twenty-one and have never been known to mind making a fool of yourself.” Getting no response, she stood up and stretched, knocking into the light bulb and making shadows waltz from wall to wall. She slung on her leather jacket. “I’m off in search of better drinking company. Ta-ra,” she said as the door slammed.

Ruth’s eyes stayed shut.

The fire was sinking into orange embers. As Maria watched, a turf briquette fell apart in perfect layers, like a wafer biscuit. The occasional bright flame grew from a bed of blue, licked itself, and slunk away. Her sore eyes watered, but she stayed there, looking until she could see every hairline crack along the glowing briquettes. Very little mattered, she thought, when she really looked at a fire; the day’s collage of images was singed off her retina, and all her petty worries and indecisions baked away. Sharp voices were swallowed up in these lazy flames. There was nothing left but the pleasure of heat on the backs of hands, melting the eyes, the pleasure of orange flames going straight to the brain.

Ruth took a long, slightly ragged breath. Maria was alert again and reached for the radio dial, hoping that music would calm Ruth’s nerves, but all she could find was strident rap. “You’ll be grand,” she told her.

“What? Oh, the debate, yes.”

“I’ll be in the front row, and I’ll start clapping every time you dry up.”

Ruth pulled herself upright and started a deep breathing exercise. “I never dry up.”

“Touch wood.”

“Don’t be daft.” But her hand reached out to pat the arm of the rocking chair. “You should stay in the bar till eight, you know; the reading of the minutes is so tedious.” She stared into the fire. “All I’m afraid of is that the heckling might be so loud I’ll forget the order of my points.”

“Your points won’t matter,” said Maria, tidying up the lemon slices and glasses from the hearth. “People will be so impressed that you’ve got the guts to stand up there and say it.”

Ruth smiled faintly. “What if I develop a sudden lisp? ‘Ladieth and genthemen, I’m a lethbean.’”

“You can pretend lethbeans are a new oppressed minority who do it with kidney beans,” said Maria, kneeling on the arm of the sofa. “What’s the wording again?”

“That homosexuality is a blot on Irish society.”

Maria got up again and twiddled the knob of the radio, looking for soothing jazz. “It’ll be a doddle. That suede jacket of yours will stun them into silence.”

“Maybe it’s too dykey; I don’t want to confirm their clichés. Maybe if I put the silk scarf back on?”

“Stop fretting, you look lovely.” She clicked the radio off.

Ruth held her breath for a count of ten, then let it out slowly and noisily. “You never said what you thought of my picture.”

“Which? Oh, is that the one you framed yesterday?” It was an old sepia photograph of three suffragettes with defiant expressions, their arms round one another’s corsetted waists. “Where did you come across a treasure like that?”

“Mum’s basement. Apparently the middle one’s my great-aunt Lily.”

Maria turned to consider the picture. “Does it have to be
stuck square in the middle of that dark wall, like pictures of ships always are in a B&B?”

A hiss from Ruth, pretending to be wounded. “I can only apologize for having no visual sense whatsoever.”

“May I?”

Ruth gestured her toward the photograph.

“This other wall is best because it gets some natural light from the kitchen window. What if we put it here, so people can see it as they walk in? Two thirds of the way from the sideboard to the ceiling, I think; there, is that about eye level?”

Watching in admiration, Ruth asked, “How can you be so sure?”

“It just looks right. Doesn’t it?”

“Yes, even I can see that. You’re a genius. Though Jael would probably say that after a joint all the pictures look right.”

“I think”—should she chance it?—“maybe you worry too much about what Jael would think.”

“Oh, I’m not worried …” Her voice trailed off. “You’re right, actually.”

When Ruth had finished running through her speech notes one more time, Maria brought her a fresh cup of tea. On the saucer were poised two lemon puffs, for blood sugar. Maria thought Ruth could probably do with some distracting conversation too. “Had lunch with Galway today. I begin to think he’s a little bit interested in me.”

“Sounds lovely,” said Ruth abstractedly.

“I mean the majority of guys in college are sexist louts, but Galway’s all right.”

The corners of Ruth’s mouth twisted as she bit into a lemon puff. “Stop apologizing,” she mumbled, “the race needs a few breeders to perpetuate itself. Anyway, to coin a cliché, some of my best friends are men.”

“No, they’re not,” objected Maria.

“Well, colleagues; guys in my study group. We can have great arguments without anyone getting their feelings hurt. I just wouldn’t want to go to bed with one.”

Maria rocked precariously on the arm of the sofa.

“I’m a potential masochist anyway,” Ruth went on lightly; “it’s bad enough that I mammy the pair of you, but if I were with a man for a few weeks, I’d start washing his socks!”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” said Maria penitently. “We seem to have got into a sort of rut, with you doing practically all of the cooking and housework. I keep meaning to make a rota, but I forget.”

“Can you see Jael doing her share of a rota?”

“How could she not?” asked Maria, uncertain.

Leaning her head back onto a brocade cushion, Ruth explained. “In the first place, she’d claim the flat only needs a minimum amount of cleaning and that things like dusting are extras that I choose to waste my time on. And then she’d drag in her bad back—”

“Yeah, but it’s one thing your lover exploiting you, and another thing your flatmate doing it,” said Maria.

“Why is it all right to be exploited by a lover?” asked Ruth, her eyes shut.

“I didn’t mean it was all right.”

The flustered tone made Ruth look over. “I don’t feel exploited, exactly; I was just pushing the point. That’s what debaters do.”

“But it’s true, you put up with too much.”

“The fact is, I only do about the same cooking and tidying as before you moved in, and you’ve taken over some of my jobs, like vacuuming and washing up.”

Maria was a little comforted. “But I still don’t see why we can’t make Jael shift her lazy arse and do a bit of housework. I mean, you wear that ‘No Means No’ T-shirt to college all
the time, but you’re not much good at saying no once you come home.”

“I know.” Ruth rested her forehead on her hands. “But it’s not that kind of relationship, with negotiations and promises and rotas. We’re together as long as we both happen to want to be, and if I make life irksome to her, you know what’ll happen?”

“No,” Maria lied.

“She’ll walk out the door. Just like she did this evening, only more permanently.”

Maria’s voice was almost a whisper. “Why do you assume she’d be the one to go?”

“Ah, open your eyes, woman. Because I love her more than she loves me.” The hands gripped the head till the fingertips were lost in dark curls.

Failing to think of anything helpful to say, Maria asked, “Does that make you sad?”

“Not as sad as waking up on my own would.” Her face emerged. “Don’t worry about it. I do like cooking. Tell you what, you can clean out the oven from now on.”

“It’s a deal.” The heartiness jarred on their ears.

Ruth studied her watch and rose, straightening her jacket. “Must be on my way, pet. See you there.”

Maria reached up to push a wandering curl under Ruth’s black cap.

The bar was filling up with stragglers from late dinner at the canteen. Fresh smoke hung like a rumpled curtain along the row of barstools.

“She didn’t!”

“She did, I swear to god.” Jael finished her whisky with a gulp and waved at the bartender for another. “It was one in the morning on a rather seedy street near King’s Cross, and I heard something whack off the wall beside us. We hadn’t
been snogging or anything, just walking along arm in arm. Well the next thing I knew, Ruth spins around and hisses, Those bastards threw a stone at us!’ Then she takes off down the street after them.”

“Are you making this up?” asked Maria. “It sounds most unlike her.”

“I’m telling you, Ruth can be a tiger, especially on behalf of someone else. Though the stone hadn’t come within a yard of me. But off she goes hareing down the street like Christine Cagney. I was scared shitless.”

“Did you go after her?”

Sheepish, Jael spun a beer mat. “There didn’t seem much point, I was in really witchy new shoes, and my lungs can never keep up with hers. But I did yell after her to come back.”

“So what did the men do?”

“Luckily they just hurled a few unoriginal dyke baits and disappeared into a pub. She screamed at them for a minute, then came striding back to me.”

Maria was halfway down her new drink without realizing it. “So … were you proud of her?”

“Proud? The cretin could have got us knifed.” Then, sipping her whisky, Jael added, “She’s a tough cookie, is Ruth. Here’s to her.”

They clinked their glasses. Maria felt a slight unease; “How long have we been here, would you say? Do you think the speeches will have started?”

“No idea. Let’s have another quick—”

“I’d better ask the bartender just in case.”

It was twenty past eight. She rolled her eyes at Jael and made a dive for the door, wriggling through the smoky crowd.

By the time she made it to the lecture theatre, Ruth was back in her seat, with her note cards in a torn pile in her lap.
Maria stepped on several toes as she squeezed in beside her. “Did I miss it?” she whispered frantically. “I’m so sorry, I really am. I met Jael in the bar, and we forgot the time.”

Ruth blew her nose. “It doesn’t matter. Jael never comes to my debates.”

“Yes, but I’m not her, and I meant to be here.”

Ruth looked at her and let the corners of her mouth turn up.

“Were you brilliant?”

“It went all right. A Corkman called out, On a point of order: you are an abomination to God,’ but that’s routine.”

“You brave creature. I wish I’d heard you. I had no idea we’d been gabbing that long in the bar.” She added, “We were talking about you, if it’s any consolation.”

“Forget about it, it’s no big deal.” Ruth’s hot hand covered Maria’s for a moment. “Shh, listen to this one, she’s a journalist.”

After the debate, they looked for Jael in the bar, but she had disappeared. Shivering at the bus stop, they waited for the motionless number seven to open its doors. The sky had that tight-packed look that hinted at snow. Breath billowed momentarily into white speech bubbles from pale lips.

“Tell me, Maria,” Ruth asked softly, “am I boring?”

“No,” said Maria, startled. She tucked her gloved hands in her armpits for warmth. “Why do you ask?”

“I feel boring.”

“Well, you never bore me.” She hoped it sounded even half as true as it was.

Ruth leaned her head against the icy bus shelter. “I suppose I should rephrase my question then: Am I boring Jael?”

“I haven’t noticed. Do you think you are?” Jogging on the stop to loosen her numb feet, Maria remembered. “At the flat this evening, she was just having a wee tantrum. Is that what you meant?”