Part 9 (1/2)

'One on Capel Street.'

'My dad wasn't an alcoholic,' I say to her, though I don't really know this. I don't know his life in detail but I think I'd have known that, wouldn't I?

'Oh I know that,' she laughs, and I feel stupid, my cheeks burn. 'My daddy was an alcoholic. Believe me, I couldn't spend two minutes with one. But they had some things in common. Fergus lied about most places he went to. About visiting his mother, about going to the pub, about going to watch matches, about being at meetings, or being away for a weekend. He didn't lie because he was going somewhere more exciting or more daring, or to be with another woman. The life he escaped to was not exotic. He was sitting in a pub. He didn't even need to lie to me, I wasn't trying to pin him down.' She leans in, hands clasped, matter-of-fact, eyes alight like she's enjoying every moment of the revelation. 'Sabrina, your dad lied all the time. He lied because he wanted to, because he liked to, because he got some kind of buzz out of it. He lied because that's the kind of person he chose to be, and that was the kind of life he chose to live. And that's it.'

'What was the name of the pub?' I ask, refusing to believe her explanation. I know that Dad lied, but he lied for a reason. And I want to find out what that reason was.

Regina looks as though she's trying to decide whether to tell me or not, like a cat playing with a mouse, one last game with me before she knows I'll never see her again. 'The Marble Cat,' she says finally.

'Aidan,' I say loudly, pulling the car out of my parking s.p.a.ce.

'How are you doing?' he asks.

'Just met with Regina,' I say confidently, feeling like I'm flying now.

'v.a.g.i.n.a? I didn't think you'd go through with it. I thought that woman gave you nightmares?'

'Not any more,' I say confidently. 'Not any more.'

'So where to next?' he asks.

'A pub on Capel Street. The Marble Cat. I think I'm close to something.'

He pauses. 'Okay, baby, okay. If you think it will help.'

He sounds so uncertain, so nervous but too afraid to express it, that we both laugh.

I'm lying on a picnic blanket though I can still feel the b.u.mpy ground beneath me, earth and broken rock. I'm roasting in my suit. My tie is off, my sleeves rolled up, my legs feel like they're burning in my black pants beneath the heat of the summer sun. There's a bottle of white wine beside us, half of it already drunk, I doubt we'll make it back to the office at all. Friday afternoon, the boss probably won't return from lunch as usual, pretending to be at a meeting but instead sitting in the Stag's Head and downing the Guinness, thinking n.o.body knows he's there.

I'm with the new girl. Our first sales trip together, this one took us to Limerick. I'm helping her to settle in, though she's currently straddling me, and slowly opening the b.u.t.tons on her silk blouse. I'd say she's settling in just fine.

No one will see us, she insists, though I don't know how she can be so sure. I'm guessing she's done this before, if not here, somewhere like this. She leaves the blouse on, a salmon peach colour, but undoes her strapless bra which falls to the blanket. It topples off the blanket and on to the soil. Her panties are off already, I know this because my hands are where the fabric should be.

Her skin is a colour I've never seen before, a milky white, so white she glows, so pale I'm surprised she hasn't sizzled under the sun's blaze by now. Her hair is strawberry blonde, but if she'd told me it was peach I would have believed her. Her lips are peach, her cheeks are peach. She's like a doll, one of Sabrina's china dolls. Fragile. Delicate looking. But she's not fragile, nor angelic; she is self-a.s.sured and has a glimmer of mischief in her hazel brown eyes, an almost sly lick of her lips as she sees what she wants and takes it.

It is ironic that we are lying in this cabbage field on a Friday afternoon, the day when my ma would serve us up cabbage soup. The word soup was an exaggeration, it was hot water with slithery slimy over-boiled strips of cabbage at the bottom. Salty hot water. The money would always run out by Friday and Ma would save for a big roast on a Sunday. Sat.u.r.day we would be left to our own devices, have to fend for ourselves. We would go to the orchard and laze in the trees eating whatever apples we could, or beg and bother Mrs Lynch next door, or we'd rob something on Moore Street, but they were quick catching on to us so we couldn't go there much.

It is doubly ironic that we're lying in this cabbage field because in a game of marbles the banned practice of moving your marble closer to the target marbles is called 'cabbaging', which is cheating. This is no great coincidence, of course. I tell her this fact as we pa.s.s the fields; not of my involvement, no, only the men I play with know this and nothing much else about me. I simply share the term with her as we pa.s.s fields of cabbage, me in the pa.s.senger seat, her driving on her insistence, which is fine with me as I'm drinking from the wine bottle, which she occasionally reaches for and takes a swig from. She's wild, she's dangerous, she's the one who will get me in trouble. Maybe I want this. I want to be found out, I don't want to pretend any more, I'm tired. Maybe the mere mention of a marble term is the beginning of my undoing. She looks at me when I say it, then slams her foot on the brake, spilling my wine, then does a U-turn and heads back the way we came. She pulls in beside the cabbage field, kills the engine, gets out of the car, grabs a blanket from the back seat and heads for the field. She hitches her skirt up to climb over the wall, high up on her skinny pale thighs, and then she's gone.

I jump out of the car and scurry after her, bottle in hand. I find her lying on the ground, back to the soil, looking up at me with a satisfied grin on her face.

'I want a part of this cabbaging business. What do you think, Fergus?'

I look down at her, drink from the bottle of wine, and look around the field. There's no one around, pa.s.sing cars can't see.

'You know what it means?'

'You just told me: cheating.'

'No no, what it means exactly, is when you shoot from an incorrect spot.'

She arches her back and spreads her legs as she laughs. 'Shoot away.'

I join her on the blanket. Gina's at home in Dublin, at Sabrina's parentteacher meeting, but despite the thought of her, this opportunity really doesn't offer much of a challenge to me and my morals. This electric peach girl isn't the first woman I've been with since I married Gina.

Apart from the day baby Victoria was stillborn and I cheated at Conqueror to win Angus's corkscrew marble on the road outside of our house, I have never since cheated in a game of marbles in my whole life. I don't need reminding from anyone, not even as I enter her and she cries out, that in the marble world I am a man of my word, a perfect rule-abiding man, but the man without the marbles? His whole life has been about cabbaging.

'h.e.l.lo,' I hear a woman say to me suddenly. She's in a chair beside me. I wasn't aware of her before now, not even of an empty chair, but all of a sudden there she is.

The sun is back out again, eclipse over, everybody's eclipse gla.s.ses are off, mine too though I don't recall doing that either. I feel like my ma, in her final years, dithery and forgetful with her gla.s.ses, when she was always previously spot on. I don't like this part of ageing, I always prided myself on my memory. I'd a good head for names and faces, could tell you where and how I knew them, where we first met, the conversation we had and if it was a woman, the clothes that she was wearing. It works sometimes like this, my memory, but not always. I know that comes with age and I know the stroke contributed to it too, but at least I'm here being looked after, not at work having to remember things and not being able to. That happens to people and I wouldn't like that.

'h.e.l.lo,' I say to her politely.

'Are you okay?' she asks. 'I notice you seem a bit upset. I hope you didn't get a bad phone call.'

I look down and see I'm still holding the mobile phone. 'No, not at all.' But was it? Who was it? Think, Fergus. 'It was my daughter. I was worried about her, but she's okay.' I can't quite remember what we talked about, I got lost in a daydream after that but my feeling is that it's fine, she's fine. 'Why do you think I was sad?' I ask.

'You had tears on your cheeks,' she says, softly. 'I sat here because I was concerned. I can leave if you like.'

'No, no,' I say quickly, not wanting her to leave. I try to remember why I would have been so sad speaking to Sabrina. I look over at Lea, who's watching me, worrying, and then up at the sky and I remember the moon, the miniature marbles that would fit in her dimples and then I remember the marble up Sabrina's nose and tell the concerned lady the story. I chuckle, picturing Sabrina's bold face as a two-year-old, red cheeks, stubborn as anything. No to everything and everyone. She could do with learning that word now, running around after three boys all the time.

The lady's eyes have widened as though in fright.

'Oh, don't be alarmed, we got the marble out. She's fine.'

'It's just that ... the marble story ... do you ...' She seems fl.u.s.tered. 'Do you have any more marble stories?'

I smile at her, amused; what an unusual question, but it's kind of her to show interest. I wrack my brain for marble stories, not imagining that I will have any, but I'd like to please her and she seems eager to talk. There it is again, the haze, the shutters of my mind firmly down. I sigh.

'Did you grow up with marbles, as a boy?' she prompts.

And then a sudden memory pops up, just like that. I smile. 'I'll tell you what I do remember: growing up with my brothers. There were seven of us, and my ma, who was a tough woman, introduced a marble swearing jar. Any time someone swore they had to put a marble in the jar, which in our house was the worst kind of punishment. We were all marble mad.' Were we? Yes, we were. I laugh. 'I remember my ma lining us up in the room, wooden spoon in her hand and pointing it in our faces. ”If one of you f.u.c.king swears, you'll have to put one of those f.u.c.king marbles in here. Do you hear?” Well, sure, how could we keep a straight face to that? Hamish started laughing first, then I went. Then it was all of us. I don't remember Joe there, if Joe was born at all, I don't remember him around much. Probably too young. And that was it, in the first minute of its inception there were six marbles in the jar. They were our least favourites, of course, clearies that were chipped and scratched, Ma hadn't a clue. And even though we didn't own those marbles it would still bother us, me anyway, seeing them sitting up high on a shelf so that we couldn't touch them.'

'What did your mother do with them?' she asks, eyes glistening like there's tears in them.'

I study her for a bit. 'Your accent. It's peculiar.'

She laughs. 'Thank you very much.'

'No, not in a bad way. It's nice. It's a mix of something.'

'Germany. And Cork. I moved there in my twenties.'

'Ah.'

I look down at her hands. No wedding ring, but a ring on her engagement finger, that she keeps playing with. Rolling it back and forth on her finger.

She sees me looking and stops fiddling with it.

'What did your mother do with the marble jar? Did you ever get them back?'