Somebody Loves Us All (23 page)

‘Hey, Dora,’ he said, ‘we’ll put you on the first plane to Mururoa, I promise.’

Helena, moving to mollify, started explaining about the scan and what Murray Blanchford had told them but Paddy raised his hand in Lant’s direction as if acknowledging his call and, apologising to Helena, he walked quickly away from them.

He’d expected the musicians in Lant’s band to need a drink after their gig but they all had young children and it was mid-week. The men simply packed up their instruments and left in their cars. A couple of them were picked up outside the school by their wives, which made Paddy think of mothers collecting their kids after school. A few times he’d had to get Isabelle, his niece, when Stephanie couldn’t make it.

It was dark and only a few helpers remained at the barbecue, clearing up rubbish and putting away chairs and tables. He’d used the toilets and then he’d spoken with one of the teachers
he met inside and when he came out, Helena, Dora and Medbh had gone. He had his phone but for some reason he didn’t text Helena. She could text him if she wanted to tell him anything. Besides, she was the one who’d left the school, although perhaps she’d looked for him when he was in the toilet and not seeing him, had assumed he’d gone home.

He suggested to Lant that they go to a bar in Courtney Place. Lant said he was keen. Paddy watched him talking to his ex-wife and kissing his daughter, and when they left they walked to the bar. Lant was carrying his violin case. He’d taken off the string tie and put it in his pocket. His boots made crunching sounds when he stepped on gravel. Neither of them said much. Paddy found himself preoccupied with thoughts of Helena and Dora. By now Helena would have been home and found the place empty. Why didn’t she text? Perhaps he’d annoyed her by walking away in the middle of the conversation. But surely she understood how offensive her daughter had been. To walk away had been the best option. He asked Lant whether his current girlfriend, whose name he’d forgotten, had seen the band play and Lant claimed not to know for sure whether she had or not. Her name, he admitted when asked, was Alice. She was forty-three.

‘A younger woman,’ said Paddy.

‘Not that young,’ said Lant. They walked on in silence after that.

Once they’d sat down with their pints, Paddy wondered whether they’d done the right thing and if either of them really wanted to be there. This was unusual. They met regularly. Maybe Lant was suddenly thinking about his girlfriend and hoping to see her that night, or perhaps it was connected with Melinda, his ex-wife, who’d told him in front of everyone to go and comfort their daughter when she’d fallen in the soccer game. He’d placed his violin case on the table beside their drinks. Paddy had suggested putting the case on the floor to avoid spilling anything on it but Lant had said the table was better because if he put it on the floor, he’d forget it. Paddy told him that seemed unlikely but Lant didn’t move the case.

Not being a member of his band, or a musician of any kind, Paddy felt that on this night he was the wrong person for the job. Probably on any other night, by tomorrow even, there wouldn’t have been an issue, but Lant’s fresh triumph at the school, which was how Paddy saw it, made things awkward. Lant was in a kind of shock from his performance. Words were no good. He needed time. He needed his violin case in view.

Paddy raised his glass. ‘To the National government.’

‘To prosperity,’ said Lant, keeping his glass on the table but tipping it forward a little.

‘And equality.’

One of the bar staff, a young woman, carried a plate of fried calamari past their table.

‘Hungry?’ said Paddy.

Lant shook his head. He kept looking in the direction of the door as if expecting someone. His band-mates? But they were at home with their families. Paddy anyway was insufficient, and he was already thinking about heading back to the apartment. Was it too late to check on his mother? For the first time since his ride to the Hutt, his legs began to ache. He rubbed at his thigh under the table.

Had Dora and Medbh been here with their camera, they would have secured footage. Here was the silence between old friends, but not exactly a companionable one, a new one, of uncertain quality and duration.

The bar wasn’t crowded. They sat in an alcove as far away from the big TV screen as possible. Golf was on, and the green drew them in no matter how strongly they resisted it.

The other unsatisfactory thing was that Paddy seemed to have recently lost his taste for alcohol. The beer didn’t interest him though he’d looked forward to it. Since he’d begun to bike, alcohol was not what his body required. Even after rehydrating, and several hours after a ride, he found wine and spirits to be strangely unappealing. Water was about all he could take. He had a more or less constant thirst and a single means of addressing it. He’d never been a big water drinker before and it gave him no
great pleasure. He was just stuck with it. He mentioned it now to Lant, who grunted and muttered something about rehydration, as if he’d missed that part of Paddy’s explanation. Paddy said he wondered whether he should try PowerAde or something like it. The flavours might help him back to his normal likes. Lant said he didn’t advise it. Too expensive, unproven results, no. Then he looked up and said, ‘Did you ride today?’

For a moment Paddy considered telling the truth. ‘No.’

‘Why are you sitting like that then?’

‘Like what?’

‘You look stiff. Where’d you go?’

‘I didn’t go anywhere.’

He studied Paddy. ‘Okay, where didn’t you go?’

‘Where didn’t I go? A quick blatt out to the Hutt. I didn’t go there.’

‘You didn’t go on the motorway.’

‘That’s right.’

Lant breathed through his nose. He sat back in his chair and moved the violin case a little by pressing his beer glass against it. Paddy didn’t know how he would take this. For a moment Lant looked on the point of some outburst. The trip along the motorway was something they said they’d do together. Lant, as a novice last year, had been taken out there by a more experienced rider, and it was his task to pass on the knowledge to Paddy. That was how cycling worked, through a careful series of initiation rites, through the obvious hierarchy of expertise. One rider handing down to another. It was collegial in this way. It was safe and efficient and moral and humble. In other words, profoundly adult. They both believed that. This was how cycling worked. Not through stupid whim, not through overreaching and arrogance. Not through one man against the world. Paddy was guilty of all of this, he knew. Lant saw it. ‘Was your heart pounding?’ he said.

‘It was all right,’ said Paddy.

‘To the point of nausea?’

‘It passed.’

‘Did you imagine yourself knocked off, being killed?’

‘Not all the time.’

‘You would have deserved it.’

The distant sound of cries and applause came from the TV on the far wall.

‘I wasn’t planning on doing the motorway at all.’

‘What happened, you went over the bridge and you couldn’t turn back?’

‘Pretty much.’

Lant lifted his beer. He was still undecided about Paddy’s punishment. ‘Card, have you got yourself a pair of magic glasses yet?’

‘I have.’

‘I think they saved you.’

‘Was that it?’

‘I think so. Something did.’

For the first time, they both took long decent drinks from their glasses and put them back on the table. The beer still failed to do any of the beery things Paddy had enjoyed in the past but simply the idea of its level going down in his glass was satisfying. Lant moved the violin case off the table, resting it by his feet, and leaning forward towards him. ‘What will you do about your mother?’

‘What do you think I should do?’

‘Murray Blanchford’s a good guy,’ said Lant. ‘For a mountain-biker.’

‘He bikes too?’

‘He tears up nature. He rips through trees. But he retains, for all that, some skill. I don’t know how he gets the dirt out from under his fingernails though.’

‘We may not need Blanchford’s skill or his fingernails.’

Lant finished his beer in one long gulp. Paddy followed him.

‘Aspies do it, you know,’ said Lant.

‘Who? What?’

‘Asperger’s people, they adopt foreign accents. They mimic the accents of people they’re with. A lot of them do it. They have
to work hard not to do it because they think it’s insulting to the people they’re with, that they’ll be accused of making fun of them. It’s quite a common issue.’

‘My mother’s not aspergic.’

‘No.’

They both looked over at the golf on the huge TV. The cameras were flying over a hole, zooming in on bunkers, then pulling out again. They were briefly mesmerised. Endless lawn. Endless lawnmowers. Then the screen filled with names and numbers they couldn’t read from their table.

‘France produces fewer top twenty professional male golfers than any other major nation in the world, and a whole lot of small ones too,’ said Lant.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Name one. Name a French professional golfer.’

‘I can’t.’

‘See.’

‘There must be one.’

‘Where’s their Ballesteros? Where’s their Vijay Singh? Where’s their Padraig Harrington? Where’s their Michael bloody Campbell?’

‘It’s not their tradition, golf,’ said Paddy.

‘Interesting, isn’t it?’

‘They like clay court tennis, pétanque.’

‘Where are their track and field athletes?’

‘Not a strength. Good at soccer though, football. Handball.’

‘Handball? Already that sounds like a mistake, you get penalised for handball. Where are their sailors for God’s sake? All that water.’

‘Where?’

‘Around them.’

‘A lot of the place is landlocked, then it’s the English Channel and the Mediterranean, I guess. But wait on, I think they do have sailors.’

‘Well.’ Lant examined the dregs at the bottom of his glass. ‘I’ll tell you what they do like. Cycling.’

‘Right.’

‘Bikes.’

‘Tour de France, yes.’

‘Cycling around their own country, through beautiful mountain villages.’

‘Ah.’

‘Last year I watched it for hours and hours on the television. I was addicted.’ Lant seemed to have forgotten Paddy’s hubris on the motorway.

‘I can see that happening.’

‘Card, it was beautiful. A very human spectacle, very simple and with all its skill somehow invisible. Men on bikes, that’s all. In their coloured jerseys. Riding in the country, which just—sparkled. They went past a woman milking a cow!’

‘Wow.’

‘Supporters suddenly run out of the crowd, on the hill-climbs, and push their favourites, to give them help! Big fat rustic guys puffing away for a few seconds, shoving these sleek athletes, trying to make a difference. Some of them fall flat on their faces afterwards, happy.’

‘Is that legal?’

‘This is France we’re talking about.’

‘Right.’

‘That lovely sound of a mass of bikes. Teams working together. Heaven.’

They sat for a moment, enjoying the image. Then Lant slapped the table. ‘Doped to the eyeballs naturellement!’ They both laughed. ‘Do you feel like another one of these?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Paddy. ‘But I could go a whisky. I need to find the thing that will get me back in love with alcohol.’

After two more whiskies at the first place, they went to another one nearby, up a narrow flight of stairs, less pub-like, no TVs, and drank spirits whose names Paddy forgot as soon as the barman announced them. The drinks tended to be colourful, blue or green, and oily. He felt them on his lips, a coating that needed to be licked off.

They’d not been out like this together in years, serious drinking. They sat in half-darkness in a corner booth. Chinese lanterns hung from the ceiling and low dubby music vibrated the air—he could feel it in his elbows when they rested on the table. A few couples spoke together in whispery voices and occasionally Paddy heard the electronic bleep of the cash register, which sounded within the music almost like an added synthesised effect. The barman moved soundlessly between the tables, whispering the names of the drinks, laughing quietly with some of the couples. They were the oldest people there by some margin.

‘Okay, let’s end the torment,’ said Lant. ‘What did you think of the band?’

Paddy was genuinely surprised. Hadn’t this been covered? ‘Like I said at the school, very nice.’

‘Nice?’ He made a face. ‘We can play better than that, you know.’

‘Harmonies too.’

‘I think we were off a couple of times.’

‘Didn’t notice.’

‘Huh.’ Lant bent down and adjusted something on his boot. Maybe they were pinching. ‘
Nice
? I don’t know if I’m happy with
nice
.’

‘You were pretty good.’

‘Jesus, I’m going to start blushing soon.’

‘You can really play.’

‘Well.’ Lant’s head drooped. ‘Anyway, I was surprised Helena liked it.’

‘Why?’

‘I find her hard to please.’

‘How strange.’

‘Because she’s never liked me.’

Paddy weakly denied this. Lant waved a hand: Let’s move on, I don’t care.

They were tired now, slumped against the deep red cushioned seats. Lant started talking about the other band members,
what they did that annoyed him. Paddy didn’t interrupt. Each successive drink produced a softening, a luxurious feeling of fatigue that was special in that it didn’t seem to promise sleep but a sort of endlessness. It was now very late, easily into the next day, yet they seemed to have hours ahead of them and this was deeply pleasurable. Paddy was aware that at certain moments each of them nodded off. Clearly they were close to that end. But these little breaks in consciousness didn’t appear damaging. They woke revived and picked things up again at once. As often happened, they had begun to talk about their hospital days, the same stories.

When they’d worked at the hospital together all those years ago, it was natural for them to hang out with the junior doctors coming off their shifts. Lant and Paddy tended to work regular hours but were pulled into the off-kilter worlds of their colleagues, and this was where they learned to drink. The content of these sessions was fairly standard issue. Someone was usually in tears, someone was having a crisis about being a doctor, someone was angry about something or someone—an injustice had been done—someone else was extremely happy, revenge had been enacted or was being plotted. Paddy saw no violence though from time to time it was threatened.