Ma doesn’t allow smoking in the house. Shay and Jackie and I took our habit outside; Kevin and Carmel drifted after us. We sat on the front steps, the way we used to when we were kids sucking ice pops after tea and waiting for something interesting to happen. It took me a little while to realize that I was still waiting for the action—kids with a football, a couple yelling, a woman hurrying across the road to swap gossip for tea bags, anything—and that it wasn’t coming. In Number 11 a couple of hairy students were cooking something and playing Keane, not even that loudly, and in Number 7 Sallie Hearne was ironing and someone was watching TV. This was apparently as active as the Place got, these days.
We’d gravitated straight to our old spots: Shay and Carmel at opposite ends of the top step, Kevin and me below them, Jackie at the bottom between us. We had personal arse-prints worn in those steps. “Jaysus, it’s warm, all the same,” Carmel said. “It’s not like December at all, sure it’s not? Feels all wrong.”
“Global warming,” Kevin said. “Someone give us a smoke?”
Jackie handed up her packet. “Don’t be starting on them. Filthy habit.”
“Only on special occasions.”
I flicked my lighter and he leaned across to me. The flame sent the shadows of his lashes down his cheeks so that for a second there he looked like a kid asleep, rosy and innocent. Kevin worshipped me, back in the day; followed me everywhere. I gave Zippy Hearne a bloody nose because he took Kevin’s Jelly Tots off him. Now he smelled of aftershave.
“Sallie,” I said, nodding up at her. “How many kids did she have in the end?”
Jackie reached a hand over her shoulder to take her smokes back off Kevin. “Fourteen. Me fanny’s sore just thinking about it.” I snickered, caught Kevin’s eye and got a grin off him.
After a moment Carmel said, to me, “I’ve four of my own now. Darren and Louise and Donna and Ashley.”
“Jackie told me. Fair play to you. Who do they look like?”
“Louise is like me, God help her. Darren’s like his daddy.”
“Donna’s the spit of Jackie,” Kevin said. “Buckteeth and all.”
Jackie hit him. “Shut up, you.”
“They must be getting big now,” I said.
“Ah, they are, yeah. Darren’s doing his Leaving Cert this year. He wants to do engineering at UCD, if you don’t mind.”
No one asked about Holly. Maybe I’d been underrating Jackie; maybe she did know how to keep her mouth shut. “Here,” Carmel said, rummaging in her bag. She found her mobile phone, fiddled with it and held it out to me. “D’you want to see them?”
I flipped through the photos. Four plain, freckly kids; Trevor, the same as always, except for the hairline; a pebble-dashed seventies semi-d in I couldn’t remember which depressing sub-suburb. Carmel was exactly what she’d always dreamed of being. Very few people ever get to say that. Fair play to her, even if her dream did make me want to slit my throat.
“They look like great kids,” I said, handing the phone back. “Congrats, Melly.”
A tiny catch of breath, above me. “Melly. God . . . Haven’t heard that in years.”
In that light they looked like themselves again. It erased the wrinkles and the gray streaks, fined the heaviness off Kevin’s jaw and wiped the makeup off Jackie, till it was the five of us, fresh and cat-eyed and restless in the dark, spinning our different dreams. If Sallie Hearne looked out her window she’d see us: the Mackey kids, sitting on their steps. For one lunatic second I was glad to be there.
“Ow,” Carmel said, shifting. Carmel was never good with silence. “Me arse is killing me. Are you sure that’s what happened, Francis, what you said inside? About Rosie meaning to come back for that case?”
A low hiss that might have been a laugh, as Shay sent out smoke through his teeth. “It’s a load of shite. He knows that as well as I do.”
Carmel smacked his knee. “Language, you.” Shay didn’t move. “What are you on about? Why would it be a load of shite?” He shrugged.
“I’m not sure about anything,” I said. “But yeah, I think there’s a good chance she’s over in England living happily ever after.”
Shay said, “With no ticket and no ID?”
“She had money saved up. If she couldn’t get hold of her ticket, she could’ve bought another one. And you didn’t need ID to go to England, back then.” All of which was true enough. We were bringing our birth certs along because we knew we might need to sign on the dole while we looked for work, and because we were going to get married.
Jackie asked quietly, “Was I right to ring you, all the same? Or should I have just . . . ?”
The air tightened up. “Left well enough alone,” Shay said.
“No,” I said. “You were dead right all the way, babe. Your instincts are diamond, you know that?”
Jackie stretched out her legs and examined her high heels. I could only see the back of her head. “Maybe,” she said.
We sat and smoked for a while. The smell of malt and burnt hops was gone; Guinness’s did something eco-correct back in the nineties, so now the Liberties smell of diesel fumes, which apparently is an improvement. Moths were looping the loop around the street lamp at the end of the road. Someone had taken down the rope that used to be tied to the top of it, for kids to swing on.
There was one thing I wanted to know. “Da looks all right,” I said.
Silence. Kevin shrugged.
“His back’s not great,” Carmel said. “Did Jackie . . . ?”
“She told me he’s got problems. He’s better than I expected to find him.”
She sighed. “He gets good days and bad days, sure. Today’s a good day; he’s grand. On bad days . . .”
Shay drew on his smoke; he still held it between thumb and finger, like an old-movie gangster. He said flatly, “On bad days I’ve to carry him to the jacks.”
I asked, “Do they know what’s wrong?”
“Nah. Maybe something he did on the job, maybe . . . They can’t work it out. Either way, it’s getting worse.”
“Is he off the drink?”
Shay said, “What’s that got to do with you?”
I said, “Is Da off the drink?”
Carmel moved. “Ah, he’s all right.”
Shay laughed, a sharp bark.
“Is he treating Ma OK?”
Shay said, “That’s none of your fucking business.”
The other three held their breath and waited to see if we were going to go for each other. When I was twelve Shay split my head open on those same steps; I still have the scar. Not long afterwards, I got bigger than him. He’s got scars too.
I turned round, taking my time, to face him. “I’m asking you a civil question,” I said.
“That you haven’t bothered asking in twenty years.”
“He’s asked me,” Jackie said, quietly. “Loads of times.”
“So? You don’t live here either, any more. You’ve no more of a clue than he has.”
“That’s why I’m asking you now,” I said. “Does Da treat Ma all right these days?”
We stared each other out of it, in the half dark. I got ready to throw my smoke away fast.
“If I say no,” Shay said, “are you going to leave your fancy bachelor pad and move in here to look after her?”
“Downstairs from you? Ah, Shay. D’you miss me that much?”
A window shot up, above us, and Ma shouted down, “Francis! Kevin! Are yous coming in or not?”
“In a minute!” we all yelled back. Jackie laughed, a high, frantic little sound: “Listen to us . . .”
Ma slammed the window down. After a second Shay eased back and spat through the railings. The moment his eyes moved off me, everyone relaxed.
“I’ve to go anyway,” Carmel said. “Ashley likes to have her mammy there when she goes to bed. She won’t go for Trevor; gives him terrible hassle. She thinks it’s funny.”
Kevin asked, “How are you getting home?”
“I’ve the Kia parked round the corner. The Kia’s mine,” she explained, to me. “Trevor has the Range Rover.”
Trevor always was a depressing little fucker. It was nice to know he’d turned out according to spec. “That’s lovely,” I said.
“Give us a lift?” Jackie asked. “I came straight from work, and today was Gav’s turn for the car.”
Carmel tucked in her chin and clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Will he not pick you up?”
“Not at all. The car’s at home by now, and he’s in the pub with the lads.”
Carmel hauled herself up by the railing and tugged her skirt down primly. “I’ll drop you home, so. Tell that Gavin, if he’s going to let you work, he could at least buy you a car of your own to get you there. What are yous lot laughing at?”
“Women’s lib is alive and well,” I said.
“I never had any use for that carry-on. I like a good sturdy bra. You, missus, stop laughing and come on before I leave you here with this shower.”
“I’m coming, hang on—” Jackie stuffed her smokes back into her bag, threw the strap over her shoulder. “I’ll call round tomorrow. Will I see you then, Francis?”
“You never know your luck. Otherwise we’ll talk.”
She reached up a hand and caught mine, squeezed it tight. “I’m glad I rang you, anyway,” she said, in a defiant, semiprivate undertone. “And I’m glad you came down. You’re a gem, so you are. Look after yourself. All right?”
“You’re a good girl yourself. Seeya, Jackie.”
Carmel said, hovering, “Francis, will we . . . ? Are you going to call round again, like? Now that . . .”
“Let’s get this thing over with,” I said, smiling up at her. “Then we’ll see where we are, yeah?”
Carmel picked her way down the steps and the three of us watched them head up the Place, the taps of Jackie’s spike heels echoing off the houses, Carmel clumping along next to her, trying to keep up. Jackie is a lot taller than Carmel, even before you add hair and heels, but on the other hand Carmel has her beat several times over on circumference. The mismatch made them look like some goofy cartoon team, off to have painful comic accidents till they finally caught the villain and saved the day.
“They’re sound women,” I said quietly.
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “They are.”
Shay said, “If you want to do those two a favor, you won’t call round again.”
I figured he was probably right, but I ignored him anyway. Ma did her window number again: “Francis! Kevin! I’ve to lock this door. Yous can come in now, or yous can sleep where yous are.”
“Go in,” Shay said. “Before she has the whole road awake.”
Kevin got up, stretching and cracking his neck. “Are you coming?”
“Nah,” Shay said. “Having another smoke.” When I shut the hall door, he was still sitting on the steps with his back to us, snapping his lighter and watching the flame.