adds. ‘He seems more your meat-and-two-veg character.’
‘He won’t slip on the nosebag unless there’s spuds on the table,’ confirms Gloria. ‘And nobody can cook them like the real Mrs McDermott. Mick and she belong to a mutual admiration society. He even notices when she has a different coloured rinse in her hair – I could get a skinhead crop and it wouldn’t register, but she slams in some lowlights and it’s: “Mammy, all the fellows at the bank will be asking for an introduction to my good-looking sister.”’
She stabs at the pasta.
‘They say a man who’s kind to his mother will be kind to his wife.’ Eimear essays diplomacy.
‘Who’s “they”?’ demands Gloria. ‘They’ve obviously never been married.’
The pair are having lunch in an Italian restaurant opposite the library where Eimear works, to cheer Gloria up – Mick’s mother’s been staying for the weekend and she needs to let off steam. It’s not that she dislikes her mother-in-law but she resents the way Mick behaves around her. Every visit is marked by an incident; this time it centred around a takeaway fish supper Gloria fed her the first night she arrived.
‘I was only back teaching a week and I could just about manage that, I wasn’t able to face the supermarket as well so there was no food in the house to cook,’ wails Gloria. ‘The real Mrs McDermott didn’t mind, she said it made a change from proper food. But Mick claimed it was an insult to his mother to serve a carry-out and he sulked at me all weekend.’
Pig, thinks Eimear.
‘He only wants the best for his mother,’ says Eimear.
‘If that wasn’t bad enough, the real Mrs McDermott insisted on going out into the front garden every time she wanted a cigarette. I kept telling her I didn’t mind if she smoked in the house but she said my lovely home would reek for days afterwards. She stood on the doorstep in full view of the neighbours puffing away. It made me look like a house-proud harridan.’
‘You used to like her.’
‘I used to like Mick,’ responds Gloria.
‘She’s gone now.’
‘Mick isn’t.’ Gloria beheads a mushroom.
Eimear pushes away her spaghetti carbonara and lights up a cigarette.
‘You could try lingerie,’ she suggests. ‘Hyacinth bulbs in olive oil sound like a long shot but satin works every time for me.’
She pictures, with satisfaction, the keyhole-cut number she has lined up for active service that night.
‘Sounds like you and Jack are enjoying a second honeymoon.’ Gloria looks wistfully across the table, her pallor pronounced against the dark shoulder-length hair.
‘He’s being very … attentive.’ Eimear tries not to smile like a cat at the cream.
Gloria wants to say something but has trouble finding the words, all she manages is a lame, ‘Just don’t take him for granted, Eimear.’
Eimear is flippant, remembering their passion last night – and the night before that.
‘He’s putty in my hands, Glo. You want to get yourself up to Brown Thomas, they’ve slinky numbers there that Saint Patrick himself couldn’t resist. He’d be inviting back all the snakes to Ireland as the lesser of two evils.’
‘Can’t be bothered. I couldn’t care less if Mick never laid a finger on me again. I used to be mad for it but now I’d rather take Hello! magazine to bed – who needs jiggery pokery with all those celebrity home interiors to drool over.’
‘We must mention it to their marketing people,’ suggests Eimear. ‘They can emblazon “Better Than Sex” across the cover, it should double their sales. And on that high note I must clock back in at the salt mines. Michelle can’t go off on her lunch break until I’m back from mine.’
‘Is that the Michelle who always has a copy of Wuthering Heights in her bag?’
‘The same. She says Emily Brontë’s characters are so wretched they cheer her up – her own life seems blessed by comparison. Any time she feels depressed she takes out the novel and dips into Heathcliffe and Cathy’s gaping voids instead.’
As they leave the restaurant, Eimear sees a bus that passes by Trinity College. Impulsively she decides to skip work for the afternoon – she’ll ring in with an imaginary migraine – and boards the bus, deciding to surprise Jack. She’s spurred by the thought of Heathcliff and Cathy; there’s no need for her and Jack to behave like star-crossed lovers over one lapse.
Dodging the traffic, she crosses College Green and heads in through the front arch, past the inevitable knots of students and tourists congregated there. By the porter’s office she almost collides with Kate.
‘Eimear, what are you doing here?’
‘Snap.’
Kate shuffles her feet shiftily and Eimear notices she’s perched on high heels – self-conscious about her height, she usually wears loafers.
‘I wanted to buy some Book of Kells postcards in the shop – I thought I’d frame them and hang them in the hallway of the flat,’ says Kate finally.
‘In your monument to minimalism?’
Well might she look evasive.
‘Give us a look at them,’ prods Eimear.
‘Wait till they’re framed, you’ll see the full effect then,’ promises Kate. ‘You should stop by the shop and have a look at their Book of Kells computer mouse-pads – talk about the ninth century colliding with the twenty-first. I nearly bought one just for the heck of it. But then I thought better not – it’ll only encourage their suppliers. Next they’ll be flogging us video games with Vikings attacking monasteries and the scribes scrambling to find hidey-holes for their manuscripts.’
Eimear purses her lips. ‘Works for me. Do you fancy grabbing a coffee and we can plan the game out and try to patent the rights?’
‘No time, Mulligan, I’m late for a meeting.’ And Kate blows a kiss and bolts.
Eimear clatters across the cobblestones, towards the campanile under which Jack proposed to her one star-strewn night after a ball at the college. He looked like a matinee idol in his dinner suit and she hired a silver dress with a fishtail train that tripped her up when they danced. Jack told her she shimmered like a nereid in the moonlight and produced from his pocket a diamond solitaire that fitted her ring finger to perfection.
She’s suffused by a rush of joy as she passes their bell-tower and veers right towards the English department.
On the ramp outside the door, where the students throng for cigarettes between lectures, she spies Jack’s distinctive tall frame. He doesn’t see her – he’s short-sighted but too vain to wear glasses. Eimear is about to call his name when she notices he’s deep in conversation with a petite dark girl of maybe twenty with a nose stud. She’s wearing an ankle-length Indian dress and the mirrors sewn into the lavender cloth sparkle in the sunshine. Books are clutched against her chest and she’s so dainty she has to bend her head back at an awkward angle to gaze into his face.
Eimear watches them. She could simply be one of his students and yet there’s an intimacy in their stance, as bodies surge around them, that disquietens her. Jack lifts one of her arms away from the books, pushes up the loose sleeve and checks her watch. Eimear’s stomach somersaults: it’s a meaningless gesture and yet eloquent. He holds on to the wrist, stroking it gently, smiling down at the chest-high dark head.
Eimear wheels around and tramps away, past the campanile, past the porter’s office, past the bus stop. Walking, walking, walking.