– hers are positively double-jointed.’
‘That’s why it will be quite a laugh when Kate caves in and has a wedding day of her own with Pearse in tow,’ insists Eimear.
‘You’re mental, I’m going back to my exam papers.’
Kate’s a puzzle with her bouts of secretiveness and her offhand moods, thinks Eimear, as she drags out the vacuum cleaner to give her stair carpet the once-over. She’s never been as reliable as Gloria, as keen to maintain the threesome. Sometimes she seems to buck against their friendship.
Jack arrives home early as she’s replacing the machine in the cupboard and sets about persuading Eimear to take a shower with him.
Jack, in a bog accent: ‘Ah go on, go on, go on.’
Eimear: ‘I haven’t loaded the dishwasher yet.’
Jack: ‘I haven’t loaded you yet, for that matter, not since this morning.’
Eimear: ‘Jack! You never used to be so crude.’
Jack: ‘You know you like it.’
Eimear: ‘Well maybe I’ll step in and scrub your back when I’m finished in the kitchen.’
Jack: ‘Make sure you do or I’ll be down to find you, dripping water all over the hall carpet and exposing my virile body to the neighbours opposite.’
Eimear visits Gloria, convinced there can be no doubt she and Jack have made a child because she’s six days late and her period is never overdue. But her inner complacency – she attributes it to the premature onset of maternal serenity – is pockmarked by Mick and Gloria snapping at each other about trivia. It’s embarrassing being in the same room as them.
Mick has a habit of displaying a foot of lower calf when he sits down, his trousers ride up abnormally high. Today it seems to infuriate Gloria disproportionately, she’s forever telling him to pull them down.
‘Eimear doesn’t want to look at your hairy legs,’ she complains, and he hitches them down but up they creep again. After two or three times Gloria loses it.
‘Mick, would you ever put your legs away,’ she all but screams and he yells at her to have a bit of manners and then she really screeches, saying he’s not the man to teach her because he wouldn’t know manners if they stepped up and bid him good day. Back and forth they go, totally oblivious to Eimear.
They really are on the skids, thinks Eimear, they can’t even be bothered to hide their fights. Mick and Gloria are niggled by everything the other does. He pretends not to hear her and makes her repeat every request twice, while the box of Maltesers Eimear brings as a gift is material for a jibe from Gloria about his weight.
‘We’ll have to ration you to just a few of those, Michael, the bathroom scales can’t take much more abuse. You’ll be had up for cruelty to household appliances.’
Marriage can have a bizarre effect on love, shudders Eimear. Still, she’s not looking for romance, Jack’s sperm are enough and they’ve done their job. Thank heavens for athletic sperm and priapic husbands. Now what are the chances of her being able to slip out quietly and leave Mick and Gloria slinging insults like rocks?
Eimear’s period arrives on day eight. She’s awakened by the sensation of blood trickling down her leg and knows even before she’s conscious there’s a reason she should stay cocooned in sleep – her brain is telling her to enjoy her pregnancy a few minutes longer. Except it isn’t a pregnancy, it’s simply wistful thinking. She held off the bleeding for a week, that’s how determined she was, but she couldn’t postpone it forever. The period can’t be thwarted when there’s no baby to dam the flow and the blood comes slithering and blobbing. It repulses her, some of it smears on her hands and leaves a stale smell as though it were penned up too long in her body. She rummages for tampons but discovers her supplies have run out.
When her stomach cramps ease she phones in a sick call to Mrs Hardiman, the head librarian. It’s a mental health day, not one for lying in bed, so she catches a bus into town (when one finally arrives – Dublin Bus doesn’t believe in pampering its passengers with a regular service) and heads straight for the shopping mecca of Grafton Street and Brown Thomas.
Its basement houses her favourite lingerie department. She fondles the teddies and baby dolls – such innocuous names for such seriously wicked underwear – and holds them along her body to judge their impact. She’s determined to choose the wispiest silks and silkiest wisps she can lay her hands on, even some provocative cutaway pieces she’d normally dismiss as too high on the slagheap index to consider. She wants to be ready for Jack when her period’s over. Stripped for action. Eimear’s mouth twists as she reflects on Jack’s predilections. Nothing too tasteful, he’s indifferent to her café-au-lait camisoles. He prefers them red and lacy or black and sheer.
Brevity is the soul of underwear, he continually tells her; it’s not his rule of thumb in life, however, because his poetry rambles on interminably. Still, at least she knows how to press his buttons.
‘I’d almost despise you for being predictable if it weren’t so useful, Jack O’Brien,’ she remarks.
A middle-aged woman a few feet away starts putting considerably more distance between them. Steady, thinks Eimear, she’s speaking out loud again – it can only be a matter of time before the men in white coats arrive.
When she’s upset she comforts herself by shopping. Admittedly that’s her response to boredom or depression too. The best therapy is retail, she’s fond of saying – a new pair of shoes are cheaper than a visit to the shrink and you have something to show for your money to boot.
‘Can I help you, madam?’
An assistant with purple lips and matching nails interrupts Eimear’s meditation, she rouses herself and finds she’s wringing a push-up bra between her hands. No wonder the girl intervened, there’s a madwoman damaging the stock.
‘Yes, do you have this in any other colours?’ She makes an effort to seem normal.
‘No, only black. It comes with a choice of French knickers or a thong to match.’ She gestures to the alternatives.
Eimear looks at them. Very Jack. ‘I’ll take both.’
In for a penny, in for a pound.
Eimear catches sight of the swimwear as she pays at the till. A wave of nostalgia engulfs her for the cheap holiday packages to Corfu and Menorca she took with Gloria and Kate, before she and Jack discovered Tuscany and the South of France. The three girls used to scorch themselves on the beach by day and sizzle at waiters as they drank themselves senseless by night. Sublime holidays.
She’s suffused by a longing so acute, it’s akin to grief, for the days when boyfriends were temporary arrangements, babies were something they popped pills to avoid and all they wanted out of life was a doss of a job that paid megabucks. And maybe a ride from Aidan Quinn – all of them worshipped him.
‘He’s the only male the three of us fancied simultaneously,’ murmurs Eimear. ‘None of us has the same taste in fellows, it’s probably what’s kept us friends for so long.’
That’s one certainty: Gloria, Kate and herself will never fall out over a man.
‘Have you heard about hyacinth bulbs in olive oil – they’re supposed to be the ultimate aphrodisiac.’ Gloria is poking at her fettuccine.
‘Can’t say I have,’ replies Eimear. ‘But surely the best place for hyacinths is the flower-bed. What are you supposed to do, eat them? Rub them over your body? Over your lover’s?’
‘The article didn’t specify,’ admits Gloria. ‘Perhaps you chop them up and sneak them into his salad.’
‘Another wizard wheeze bites the dust.