GRIPPING MY PINT, I SITall on my own at the big table in Doyle’s. A ceaseless rain falls, and with each minute, the pub grows dimmer. The radio catches a broadcast before losing signal again. I pretend not to notice it playing ‘I Feel Fine’, coming in and out and in. All on my own. This evening, I fear things have reached a breaking point. I have reached a breaking point.
No sign of any customers calling in. No sign of Teresa, either. Maybe she knew the bad weather would put people off and so she decided to stay upstairs. Maybe she knew I would be in another haunted mood, and she has run out of the patience she thought she had for me. She could be out in town. She could be upstairs, wandering right above my head, keeping her distance from me. And this evening, I need her.
She will be along soon, I hope, and she will turn off the radio and put on a record. She will light the room up and make the rain stop, and make me feel better. She won’t mind that I’ve let myself in to drink, not to work. She will still like me.
Ger is outside the back, cutting wood in the shed. I know by the metronome of his falling axe. I suppose if I was any sort of man, I’d go out and give him a hand. The sort of man that Teresa thinks I am. That you thought I was.
For an empty pub, the air is awfully close. I feel the collar of myshirt tightening, choking me. Sharp and sudden, I stand up. So sharp and sudden, I startle myself, and I sit back down again, where the thick air and shirt collar come back around me, and I stand up once more. Heaven forbid Teresa was to come in now and find me this way. Rising and falling to the rhythm of her father’s axe.
Right. Stop it now. Stand still a minute, Jacky.
And then the door opens. The lights come on. And she is here. Just as I first saw her, coming in from the rain. Green dress, close to her body, hair pulled into a ponytail.
‘Only me!’
She looks at me for a long moment. And I look back at her, waiting for whatever she will do next. Then, catching herself staring, she does as I had hoped: turns off the radio and chooses a record.
‘Not a sinner here, on a rainy evening like this! Isn’t that strange? Sure what else have people to be doing?’
She asks, flipping through the records.
‘What is it you’re up to?’
She glances over her shoulder, and I feel I’ve been caught dossing. But she said it herself, there isn’t a sinner here. What else is a man to do in the pub all on his own? I hold my glass up to her. She rolls her eyes as she turns back to the record player. It’s all too much. Lately, especially with Teresa, I’ve found myself experiencing the thoughts and feelings of a hundred men at once.
‘Anything but The Beatles, Teresa. I can’t hear any more of them eejits.’
She pauses for a moment, and goes back to her selection. I don’t have the energy to consider whether I was rude.
If I could only find a way to tell her that there are feelings from last year that I haven’t touched. And everything that I’ve felt since then has just been piling up. All these emotions, building to the point wherethey are beginning to reach my throat. That I fear if I don’t start to let them out, they will suffocate me. And that each moment with her only adds to the pile.
She puts on Roy Orbison. I don’t know why, but it’s the last thing I was expecting. Just as she sits down at the table with me, I move closer to the window. She’s looking down at her hands, it’s clear she thinks I’m moving away from her. I don’t know if I am.
She takes a deep breath and smiles at me again, and I want so much to smile back at her. But I fear that if I move my mouth, it will tremble and I will tumble into tears. I fear that if I open it to speak, I wouldn’t make a sound.
‘Are you alright?’
I’m not alright. Not even nearly. It would appear that I have reached the end of my rope. It’s hard to find the right words to cut me open and let all the dark drain out of me.
‘Grand, girl. I’m grand.’
I wish Teresa would say there is a curse on Doyle’s that brings out the worst parts of a man’s mind and forces him to confront them. The sort of thing my mother would once have said.
But the trouble is, all of this has been before me, ready to be confronted, long before I ever stepped foot in Doyle’s. The trouble is, I have awareness. That’s the real trouble. I would give everything to be the sort of man who can tackle his problems head on. Rather, I am the type of man – that most men are – who knows all of his problems are about to surface, and yet refuses to surface with them. Why should I be burdened with all of these bulky feelings and not be shown a way to deal with them?
She sighs. She reaches for my hands, but stops herself, unsure of where she stands. How I am tormenting this poor girl.
She gets up to pour us both a drink. As she moves, I take in thesmell of her soap. Her patience has not run out. For the first time in a very long time, that I have found somebody who I could trust with my fragilities.
If she would just start with a few of her own problems, to get things going. The cost of nylons, and Mary losing the lipstick she stole from the dresser. The absence of her father, always choosing the pub over the home. The death of her mother. Her unspoken longing for me.
That soap. The sheen of the nylons. I wonder would Teresa handle me well.
Just as I let myself drift into the smell of her, I am reminded of the smell of you. Of your perfume, your living room, your jam cooking on the stove.
There was a time when I would have died for a catch of your scent in the air. Now, I feel the scent of you is smothering, and I can’t get out from under it. I can’t get out from under you. Teresa sets two wet glasses of Jameson on the table. The sky outside is lowering and the rain picks up. I feel the oxygen is being squeezed out of the town. Soon, there will be nothing left to breathe but the smell of you. Sweet suffocation. I fear I will never fully enjoy Teresa. I don’t think I will ever fully enjoy anything ever again unless I knock it all out of my way. Darling, please, let me knock you clean out of my way, so that I might move forward with my life.
‘There’s things I never told you, Teresa, about my life before I knew you.’
