Lifesaving for Beginners (5 page)

13 July 2011; Dublin

I am being driven insane.
Insanity fuelled by Thomas’s care.
His consideration.
His gentleness.
It’s on a loop: the care, the consideration, the gentleness.
Like supermarket music.
It’s driving me crazy.
The nicer he is, the crazier I feel.

And since he’s living in my apartment, we’re way past the third-date stage.
The date when I get to say, ‘It’s not you.
It’s me.’
Even though it’s never me.
Hardly ever.

If I said that now, he’d ask, ‘What do you mean?’
and I’d have to have something to say, because if I didn’t, he’d say, ‘I’m entitled to an explanation at the very least.’
And he’s right.
He’s right about everything.
Except me.
He said everybody is ready to settle down at some stage or another.
But I’m not.
I’m pretty sure I never will be.
It’s not something I want.

Everything was fine before.
Before the accident.
The bloody miracle.
Now he keeps saying how lucky we are and how nothing should be taken for granted and how we need to appreciate everything we have and .
.
.
Christ, it’s enough to drive me to drink only I’m practically most of the way there already.

This evening takes the biscuit.
Takes the biscuits, in fact.
The lemon and ginger biscuits that Thomas has baked.
From scratch.
He has to buy most of the ingredients because there’s never any call for flour or baking powder or what have you in my apartment.
He buys some weighing scales too.
And a spatula and a mixing bowl.
He doesn’t have to get a rolling pin.
I have an empty wine bottle he can use.

I say, ‘I thought we were going out?’
when I come down from my office.
I’d said I was writing but what I was really doing was playing Angry Birds on the iPad.

Thomas says, ‘We’re staying in!’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re celebrating.’

‘What are we celebrating?’

‘The day we met.’

‘It’s not the anniversary.
Is it?’

‘No.’

‘Then why are we celebrating it?’

Thomas hands me a glass of champagne.
‘It’s the only excuse I could come up with for drinking bubbly on a week night.’

I nod because that’s fair enough.
We clink.
Thomas says, ‘To Aer Lingus.
Where romance takes off.’
And then he laughs because he happens to think that’s pretty funny.

I only noticed Thomas after the pilot made the announcement.
Something about the discovery of a ‘suspicious package’ in a cubicle of the mens’ toilets in Terminal Two.
I was in the aisle seat.
I always pick an aisle seat so I can get in and out without having to talk to anybody.

We were sitting on the runway at Dublin airport.
I lifted my head and looked out of the window for the first time since I’d boarded at Heathrow, and that’s when I saw him.
In the window seat.
I don’t know how I’d missed him before.
The height of him.
The top of his head nearly brushing against the call button.
He was wearing a well-cut suit that suggested a banker or a broker but there were spatters of muck at the ends of the trousers.
His tie had been yanked away from his neck, like it had been choking him.
It was a sombre navy with tiny pink sheep dotted up and down it.
His smile was superfluous, I felt, given our situation.
His hair was long, curly ropes of grey, all different lengths, as if it had been cut with shears by someone who may not have been a qualified hairdresser.
He had a thick fringe that fell to curious grey eyes.
His face wasn’t just weather-beaten.
It was much worse than that.
It looked like it had been attacked by a gale-force wind.
He had one of those ‘Irish’ noses: long and narrow.
He had one of those ‘full’ mouths: wide and fleshy.
The
Farmers Journal
was stuffed into his laptop bag and he was holding a copy of
Dirty Little Secret
,
which happens to be the first of the Declan Darker books.
A dart of something like electricity shot through me.
I didn’t know why.
I had seen lots of people reading my books over the years.

That’s when he looked up and caught me staring.
He smiled.
He said, ‘Are you going to finish that?’
His voice was unexpected.
The tone of it.
It made me think about Wispa bars, for some reason.

He nodded at the remains of the sandwich I had ordered from the steward earlier.

I shook my head.

‘Would you mind if I have it?
It’s just .
.
.
they’ve stopped serving here and it’s past teatime and I’m maddened with the hunger.
I had dinner at one o’clock.’

I looked at my watch.
It was thirteen minutes past five in the evening.

He said, ‘I’m sorry.
I wouldn’t normally ask but there’s no telling when we’ll get off this bird, with the situation inside.’
He nodded towards the terminal building.

I handed him the box.
I said, ‘It’s not very fresh but .
.
.’

The remains of the sandwich were gone in two bites.
He took a bottle of wine out of his bag, unscrewed the cap and took a long swig from it.
Then he offered it to me.

I said, ‘No thank you,’ in a voice that suggested I wouldn’t dream of drinking at such an ungodly hour.

He said, ‘Oh, hang on a second,’ and he rummaged around in his bag again.
This time, he brought out a crumpled paper cup into which he poured a good measure of wine.
He set it on my table top, thrust one of his enormous hands towards me and said, ‘Cunningham.
Thomas Cunningham.’
His accent was midlands.
Cavan, maybe.
Or, worse, Monaghan.

I said, ‘Kavanagh.
Kat Kavanagh.’
Not even Katherine.

He said, ‘What decade are you on?’

‘I beg your pardon?’
Was this some new way of asking people their age?
The cheek.

He said, ‘Of the rosary.
There’re four of them.
Or five.
I was just wondering which one you were on.’
I had forgotten about the rosary beads threaded round my fingers.
I do that sometimes.
On planes.
And trains.
In queues.
They’re a great deterrent.

‘Oh.’
I stuffed the beads into my handbag.

He said nothing then and I’d say that would have been that, which would have suited me fine.
But then I said, ‘Is that one of those Declan Darker books?’
And, just like that, I turned into one of those people I have spent my life avoiding.
People who strike up conversations with strangers on planes and trains and in queues.

He nodded and picked up the book.
He said, ‘Have you read them?’

I nodded.
He opened the book.
Inside the jacket was a photograph of Killian Kobain.
Well, a photograph of an actor posing as the reclusive Killian Kobain.

Thomas looked at the photograph.
‘It’s funny, you know .
.
.’

‘What?’

He shook his head and smiled.
‘I read this one years ago.
A friend gave it to me.
It didn’t have the author’s photograph on the jacket and I just read the book without really paying any attention to who wrote it and I just assumed that the book was written by a woman.’

‘Why?’
Nobody had ever questioned Killian Kobain’s gender.
His sexuality, yes.
Of course.
You don’t get to have bone structure like Kobain’s without the occasional allusion to sides and which one you might be batting for.

Without skipping a beat, Cunningham-Thomas-Cunningham said, ‘Because of the hands.’

‘The hands?’

‘The way he describes people’s hands.
He’s always at it.
Men don’t describe hands.
And certainly not fingers.
Here, try me.’

He clamped the book over his eyes and said, ‘Go ahead.’

‘What?’

‘Go ahead and ask me.’

‘Ask you what?’

‘Ask me to describe your hands.’

It was obvious he wasn’t going to let up so I said, ‘Er, what do my hands look like?’

And he said, ‘No idea,’ and he lowered the book from his face.
‘See?
Now it’s your turn.’

And there I was, sitting on a plane that was squatting on a runway at Dublin airport on a wet, dreary Friday evening in August, with my hand over my eyes and, beside me, a man I’d just met saying, ‘Go on, go on, give it a go, sure.’

I said, ‘Big.
Hairy.
Gold band on the little finger of the left hand.
Long scar running down the palm of the right hand.’
I lowered my hand.

He examined his hands.
Then looked at me, shaking his head.
‘That’s un-bel-eeev-able,’ he said and I almost felt a sense of achievement, the way he said it.

‘It’s not.
It’s easy.
Especially with your paws.
No offence.’

He smiled.
‘None taken.
Hands like shovels.
That’s what the mammy says.’

He took out the wine bottle, refilled my cup.
He said, ‘I mean, Kobain once described a man as having smokers’ nails.’

I remembered the character.
Luka Brown.
Second victim of Malcolm Beeston, a serial killer with a fondness for strangulation by washing line.
If Malcolm hadn’t killed Luka, the fags would have got him.
Sooner rather than later, I’d say.
He was a two-pack-a-day man.

‘So .
.
.
do you .
.
.
ah .
.
.
like the Declan Darker books?’
I couldn’t believe I was doing this.
I never did this.

He nodded and said, ‘Keep you guessing till the end.
That’s what I like about them.’

When we were eventually allowed to disembark, there was a mad scramble for the exits.
Cunningham-Thomas-Cunningham stayed in his seat.
I stood up.
I said, ‘We can get out now.’

He said, ‘I always wait till the crowd disperses.’

When Thomas smiled, his eyes lightened and I noticed the ring of green round the grey, except the grey wasn’t all that grey anymore.
It was more like a pale blue.
Like the sea when the cloud breaks and the sun filters through.

He said, ‘It was nice meeting you, Kat.’

‘You too.’
The weird thing was, I meant it.
That was strange.

I moved into the queue of people standing in the aisle of the plane.
Thomas said, ‘Goodbye now,’ before he settled himself in his seat, opened his book – my book – and began to read.
As the queue of people inched forward, I wondered, for the first time, why I do this.
Why do I stand up as soon as the plane doors open and join the queue instead of waiting till everyone gets off before collecting my belongings and ambling off the plane?
I’ve never ambled.
Not once.

I looked back.
Thomas was still there, still sitting down, still reading his book – my book.