Carmel took a tiny breath and nodded, like she was bracing for something. “Right,” she said, almost to herself, and lifted her glass to her lips.
“I’m telling you. Don’t be worrying.”
“Ah, no, you’re grand. God knows you deserve your chance. The way you’ve been the last while, sure, I knew you’d something up your sleeve; I just didn’t . . . I’m delighted for you. Congratulations.”
“Carmel,” Shay said. “Look at me. Would I do that to you?”
“Here,” Jackie said. “What’s the story?”
Shay put a finger on Carmel’s glass and moved it down so he could see her face. I’d never seen him tender before, and I found it even less soothing than Carmel did. “Listen to me. All the doctors said there’s only a few months in it. Six, max. By the time I buy, he’ll be in a home or in a chair, or anyway too weak to do any damage.”
“God forgive us,” Carmel said softly. “Hoping for . . .”
I said, “What’s going on?”
They turned to stare at me, two identical pairs of expressionless blue eyes. It was the first time I’d seen them look alike. I said, “Are you telling me Da still hits Ma?”
A fast twitch like an electric shock went round the table, a tiny hiss of indrawn breath. “You mind your business,” Shay said, “and we’ll mind ours.”
“Who elected you spokesgobshite?”
Carmel said, “We’d rather there was someone around, is all. In case Da has a fall.”
I said, “Jackie told me that had stopped. Years back.”
Shay said, “Like I told you. Jackie hasn’t a clue. None of yous lot ever did. So fuck off out of it.”
I said, “Do you know something? I’m getting just a tiny bit sick of you acting like you’re the only one who ever had to take Da’s shit.”
Nobody was breathing. Shay laughed, a low ugly sound. He said, “You think you took shit from him?”
“I’ve got the scars to prove it. You and me lived in the same house, mate, remember? The only difference is that me, now I’m a big boy, I can go an entire conversation without whingeing about it.”
“You took fuck-all, pal. Sweet fuck-all. And we didn’t live in the same house, not for a single day. You lived in the lap of luxury, you and Jackie and Kevin, compared to what me and Carmel got.”
I said, “Don’t you ever tell me I got off easy.”
Carmel was trying to look daggers at Shay, but he didn’t notice; his eyes were fixed on me. “Spoilt rotten, the whole bloody three of yous. You think you had it bad? That’s because we made sure you never found out what bad was like.”
“If you want to go ask the barman for a tape measure,” I said, “we can compare scar sizes, or dick sizes, or whatever the hell has your knickers in a knot. Otherwise, we’ll have a much nicer night if you keep the martyr complex on your own side of the table and don’t try to tell me what my life’s been like.”
“Cute. You always did think you were smarter than the rest of us, didn’t you?”
“Only than you, sunshine. I just go with the evidence.”
“What makes you any smarter? Just because me and Carmel were out of school the second we turned sixteen? Did you think that was because we were too thick to stay?” Shay was leaning forward, hands clenched on the edge of the table, and there was a patchy fever-red flush coming up on his cheekbones. “It was so we’d be putting our wages on the table when Da wasn’t. So you could eat. So the three of you could buy your schoolbooks and your little uniforms and get your Leaving Certs.”
“Christ,” Kevin muttered, to his pint. “And he’s off.”
“Without me, you wouldn’t be a cop today. You’d be nothing. You thought I was just mouthing off when I said I’d die for family? I damn near did it. I lost my education. I gave up every chance I had.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Because otherwise you’d have been a college professor? Don’t give me the giggles. You lost bugger-all.”
“I’ll never know what I lost. What did you ever give up? What did this family ever take off you? Name me one thing. One.”
I said, “This fucking family lost me Rosie Daly.”
Absolute, frozen silence. The others were all staring at me; Jackie had her glass raised and her mouth half open, caught in midsip. I realized, slowly, that I was on my feet, swaying a little, and that my voice had been right on the edge of a roar. I said, “Leaving school is nothing; a few slaps are nothing. I’d have taken all that, begged for it, sooner than lose Rosie. And she’s gone.”
Carmel said, in a flat stunned voice, “You think she left you because of us?”
I knew there was something wrong with what I had said, something that had shifted, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. As soon as I stood up, the booze had hit me right in the backs of the knees. I said, “What the hell do you think happened, Carmel? One day we were mad about each other, true love forever and ever, amen. We were going to get married. We had the tickets bought. I swear to God we would have done anything, Melly, anything, anything in this wide world to be together. The next day, the next bloody day, she ran off on me.”
The regulars were starting to glance over, conversations falling away, but I couldn’t get my voice back down. I always have the coolest head in any fight and the lowest blood-alcohol level in any pub. This evening was way off course, and it was much too late to salvage it. “What’s the only thing that changed in between? Da went on a bender and tried to break into the Dalys’ gaff at two in the morning, and then the whole classy bunch of yous had a screaming knock-down-drag-out row in the middle of the street. You remember that night, Melly. The whole Place remembers that night. Why wouldn’t Rosie back out, after that? Who wants that for in-laws? Who wants that kind of blood in her children?”
Carmel said, very quietly and still with no expression at all, “Is that why you never came home? Because you’ve thought that all this time?”
“If Da had been decent,” I said. “If he hadn’t been a drunk, or even if he’d just bothered to be discreet about it. If Ma hadn’t been Ma. If Shay hadn’t been in and out of trouble every day of the week. If we’d been different.”
Kevin said, bewildered, “But if Rosie didn’t go anywhere—”
I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. The whole day had hit me, all of a sudden, and I was so exhausted that I felt like my legs were melting into the ratty carpet. I said, “Rosie dumped me because my family was a bunch of animals. And I don’t blame her.”
Jackie said, and I heard the hurt in her voice, “Ah, that’s not on, Francis. That’s not fair.”
Shay said, “Rosie Daly had no problems with me, pal. Trust me on that.”
He had himself back under control; he had eased back in his chair, and the red had faded off his cheekbones. It was the way he said it: that arrogant spark in his eyes, that lazy little smirk curving around the corners of his mouth. I said, “What are you talking about?”
“She was a lovely girl, was Rosie. Very friendly; very sociable, is that the word I’m after?”
I wasn’t tired any more. I said, “If you’re going to talk dirt about a girl who’s not here to fight her own corner, at least do it straight out, like a man. If you don’t have the guts to do that, then shut your gob.”
The barman brought down a glass on the bar with a bang. “Hey! Yous lot! That’ll do. Settle down now or you’re all barred.”
Shay said, “I’m only complimenting your taste. Great tits, great arse and a great attitude. She was a right little goer, wasn’t she? Zero to sixty in no time flat.”
A sharp voice somewhere at the back of my brain was warning me to walk away, but it reached me fuzzy and vague through all those layers of booze. I said, “Rosie wouldn’t have touched you with someone else’s.”
“Think again, pal. She did a lot more than touch. Did you never smell me off her, once you got her stripped down?”
I had him hauled up off his chair by his shirtfront and I had my fist pulled back for the punch when the others swung into action, with that instant, clenched efficiency that only drunks’ kids have. Carmel got in between us, Kevin grabbed my punching arm and Jackie whipped drinks out of harm’s way. Shay wrenched my other hand off his shirt—I heard something rip—and we both went stumbling backwards. Carmel got Shay by the shoulders, sat him neatly back down and held him there, blocking his view of me and talking soothing crap into his face. Kevin and Jackie caught me under the arms and had me turned around and halfway to the door before I got my balance back and figured out what was happening.
I said, “Get off. Get off me,” but they kept moving. I tried to shake them away, but Jackie had made sure she was stuck to me tightly enough that I couldn’t get rid of her without hurting her, and I was still a lot of drink away from that. Shay shouted something vicious over Carmel’s shoulder, she upped the shushing noises, and then Kevin and Jackie had maneuvered me expertly around the tables and stools and the blank-faced regulars and we were outside, in the rush of cold sharp air on the street corner, with the door slamming behind us.
I said, “What the fuck?”
Jackie said peacefully, like she was talking to a child, “Ah, Francis. Sure, you know yous can’t be fighting in there.”
“That arsehole was asking for a punch in the gob, Jackie. Begging for it. You heard him. Tell me he doesn’t deserve everything I can dish out.”
“He does, of course, but you can’t be wrecking the place. Will we go for a walk?”
“So what are you dragging me out for? Shay’s the one who—”
They linked my arms and started walking. “You’ll feel better out here in the fresh air,” Jackie told me reassuringly.
“No. No. I was having a quiet pint on my own, doing no harm to anyone, till that prick walked in and started causing hassle. Did you hear what he said?”