Stains

RAIN bashed the battered exterior of the little blue fiat as if marbles were being dropped from the coal black sky above; playing the car like a snare drum as it limped up the Dublin Mountains. Shifting in the drivers’ seat, adjusting gear, Gael thought to himself how the word “mountain” never did these rolling rocky hills justice. It was a strong, formidable description which he associated with things along the scale of Kilimanjaro or Everest, geological giants of the globe keeping watch over us all and not the forest and granite dappled mounds that separated the green fields of Wicklow from the Irish capital.

     Sprayed by the little car’s headlamps, the winding stretch of wet tar ahead glistened. A river of oil through an infantry of trees, the ceiling of branches above bringing a shadow that engulfed the four wheeled trooper; which made sloshing around the hills at this late hour dangerous for those unfamiliar with the intricate weaves in their veins. It had been weeks since he had seen anyone, the social tides needing to steady. A leper almost, no one had even tried to contact him. Except Johnny of course, but he was often the exception; the clay-haired Scottish import was braided with an uncommon niceness that couldn’t allow him to be any degree of mean, it was just his way. But now Gael, clad in black jeans cut at one of the knees that crept down onto leather black All-Stars, an old white t-shirt with a collar stretched from time and his matted dark-blonde hair pushed back was almost at The Pale; where he would greet all the familiar glares in one stomach turning wash. It was Sinead who had asked him to come and he could not refuse.

      ‘The Pale’ he had replied with a forged calmness.

      ‘Just for a drink Gael’, she had sternly assured him, “to see the gang. ‘Don’t read too much into it ok.’ He had heard her smile through the phone warily.

      ‘Don’t fret a little some’, he came back. A little more humble in his tone. ‘I promise to be a cherub.’

      ‘That would certainly make a change.’

     For almost four months now, he had been trying to get in touch with her, slapping hard into dead ends and dial tones at every turn. It was that long since she had caught him with Julie during the farewell party to the summer without a word until now; whatever she asked he would obediently do.            

     Rising out of the woodland like steps to the sky, the moon showed itself. Bulging milky white with small curdled patches of beige, it gave enough light for Gael to drive a little faster. His boxer’s frame choreographing the little trooper instinctually with light hand movements and delicate peddle touches through the weathers torrential mood. Gently G, gently; he warned himself. Funnelling past cottages, knowing where to avoid potholes and to take carefully the corner which skirted a ditch eight-point-three kilometres into the route.

     It would, he told himself, be a cheap as chips excuse to blame the alcohol consumed that night or the blow that had been passed coyly around like folded notes in a classroom. Julie and he had a history that stretched back to two sand dusted teenagers on the Kerry shoreline. Though despite their relationship fizzling out before college graduation, it always seemed to reside in the peripheral. Slowly, straining to look through the rain he manoeuvred a sharp left out onto the mountain face passing two deer standing on the roads edge as if they were waiting for a bus of sorts, their eyes gleaming a shade of custard.

     As the wind let a loud moan, violently shaking the car and its thorny antenna, Gael glanced at the gauge; he had enough petrol left for twenty-five miles or so. He tried to focus on tomorrow’s presentation to the board. The blueprints are in order, he told himself. The calculations are … failing miserably.   

      Standing in the open door, a portal of light that projected out on to the back decking, Sinead had watched them. While she had been attempting to herd everyone for a group photo. He and Julie had stood at the end of the little wooden pier. Gael remembered moving his hand from her narrow waist, releasing her bottom lip from between both of his and looking into her deep set ochre eyes; a finger to her chin. It was a memory he couldn’t manage to keep on that shelf in the back of his mind. Julie’s short amber hair was ruffled and she tasted of brown sugar caramelised in cigarette smoke, they had both smiled promiscuously … confused … their knees touching. Neither of them had meant for it to happen but all it took was one conversation for them both to forget the six years since their last kiss and find another; and as they stepped apart, unsure, Gael turned and saw her.

     Sinead’s blurry green eyes shone out of her framed silhouette, holding an unyielding gaze as if trying hard to hurt the both of them with her desolate stare. Her face slickened by thin streams of tears that spread wide the closer they approached her jaw like the roots of a tree. Stupid, Gael lashed at himself, gripping the wheel tighter. As he had moved towards her he didn’t know what to do or say, hands raised as if  being held at gun point.

       ‘Shut up,’ she said. Stepping back into the noise. Colin, Julie’s bland flavour of the month appeared in Sinead’s place … snooping, unaware what had occurred, wearing an overcompensating look of childish toughness which Gael walked through like smoke, losing Sinead inside … bloody stupid.

     As the car approached the thatched pub slotted neatly at the peeks throat in a small cove of rock, Gael could hear the music ricocheting around its inner walls; a sociable glow reaching from the small box windows. The sturdy fiat whimpered into the tiny pebble dashed car-park that looked out across the ocean of suburban and city lights, winking like fairies caught under a glass floor, and stopped. Gael sighed heavily, turning off the engine. Through the flooded wind screen he could make out the plywood shelter hunched by the cliffs edge behind the collection of cars, a small shack for tourists to peer below with toasted sandwiches and Guinness on sunny afternoons and where collectively he and Sinead had spent days talking about nothing. Road trips they’d take on which they would only listen to Van Morrison records and eat ice-cream and take the odd sip of whiskey. Where they would plan nights of eating popcorn in bed watching movies between tumbles. He was roughly fifty-five yards from the bar now, one-hundred and fifty-five feet, a distance he could casually cover in under a minute but in this rain that wouldn’t matter. He got out into the wet and instead of running for the bar darted for the shelter, deciding it might be best to have a quick smoke instead.

     Taking a seat on the familiar wooden plank hammered in as a bench, he rattled the last cigarette from a worn pack. Be yourself, don’t pressure her, it’s her show, he instructed. During the first summer together Sinead had jumped in onto the little troopers’ passenger seat, nearly breaking it in half and brandished a ruby coloured bottle and a blush of fun and no good; this was where they came. Of all the places to meet, Gael mused. They had sat entwined under a blanket watching jet lights slide in and out of the sky before getting lost among the stars. As he struck a match Gael recalled how she kept stretching out her legs over the drop, flexing her ankles as if raising them out dripping from a lake and scrunching her toes.

      ‘Do you know how many lights are down there?’ She had asked.

      ‘No’, he sniggered in response. ‘It doesn’t work like that. But you have blinked thirty-seven times in the last twenty minutes.’

      ‘You’re a magnificent freak you know.’ She replied grinning mischievously.

      ‘I do indeed.’ He pulled deep and let drift a long cloud of smoke, his throat feeling rough and scalded. I miss you, he thought. But it was still time to move on.

     Looking out, dry within his perch somehow made Gael feel warmer than he should as the rain still blustered down around him. Down on the M50, a row of flashing ants crawled along, bright pin pricks of blue and red suggesting someone was having a worse night than he. Checking his watch he discarded the remains of his addiction to the grubby wooden floor and wrenched his collar over his head stepping out, striding towards the hum of the music.

      ‘Here we go,’ he uttered. Following the path of sanded stone slabs from the curb and filtering his way into the confined cobbled courtyard that the cottage pub hooked around, he shuddered with the cold as a chill made its way up from the dimples his unprotected lower back. The two picnic benches that normally housed small crowds of smokers like crows on an electrical pole were vacant and he contemplated rolling another cigarette, an act of procrastination he almost immediately dismissed. Get on with it, he pressed. Readjusting his shirt back down to his waste he stood in brace, blinking at the heavy door chequered with ancient glass; rich with ripples which twisted and distorted what moved on the other side. Rainwater ran down his brow forcing him to squint the trickles routes away from his salted grey eyes. He raised his hand and pulled hard.

      The thick heat stunned Gael momentarily as he walked in. The smell of a turf fire mixed with the familiar scent of Ireland’s most infamous stout was caught in the dim light between the low ceiling and hardwood floors. Shaking the rain from his head he negotiated his way through the crowd to the left where the bar began and continued out of sight while all to the right, large groups were squatted on stools around small tables with all eyes focused on the three man band that occupied the far corner strumming out a rendition of Muddy Walters. Just one pint, he reminded himself, you have any early start.

     Almost immediately through the revolving mesh of bodies he caught them all at two tables pushed together, his ears picking their laughter and conversation out of the mutter of the room and the strategic striking of a blues guitar. Joe, his curly mop shining with sweat, was leaning against Connor’s far bigger, muscular build. The two hanging on what Rob regaled them through his steamed spectacles whilst in perfect synchronicity tapping their feet under the table. Johnny as per usual was knotted amongst the four girls stringing them with his bad humour.  

      ‘I think everybody will agree that when it comes to lighters, they just inspire thievery from others.’ He bellowed at them, competing with the amplifiers. His pearly whites could be seen to be rusted from red wine like dried blood.

     Gael couldn’t see Sinead but Julie was there. Her toned sallow legs were crossed raising the seam of her olive green skirt attracting glances from all directions; a dark blue blouse buttoned loosely down to her hips. She sat at the edge tensely, her delicate features smiling politely as if on display; it appeared to be an evening for waging forgiveness Gael wondered. Catching the barman’s eye he shouted for a ‘pint of goo please Barry,’ slotting in beside a pair of aul gents with pipe breath who in grave whispers from under the peeks of their caps discussed the vicious snow that waited by November’s threshold.

     Palming the bar, lightly grazing the polish, Gael scanned the various shaped and coloured bottles that lined the shelves behind where the two bartenders sidestepped by each other as his half full glass settled by the tap. There were still eighty-eight. Fifty-four clear glass, six green in colour, seven crimson, eight brown and thirteen blue. There is far too much math in my brain, he scolded himself. And then his well trained ears found a laugh that dragged the breath out of him and kick started his nerves like an engine. Almost numb he turned and saw her, now sitting between Johnny and Julie, excitedly talking with her hands as much as her mouth. He had, he thought, prepared himself sufficiently for this; he was wrong.

     Her penny red hair hung shoulder length in slight waves framing her small face and long, elegant neck. She always looked natural, untainted with attempts of vanity. An innate beauty to go along with her exuberant … perfect … personality. He was wrong. A light pallid dress hung from her bare shoulders ending at her upper thigh where sandy coloured leggings took over in covering her slender stems down to a pair of scuffed boots that, Gael thought smiling to himself, could weigh her down through a tornado. He shot a quick glance at Julie, whose arms were now unnaturally bunched, eagerly listening, slowly reintegrating herself. Looking at everyone together, seeing the years of friendship in their laughs and gestures, his family. Gael knew that because of him there were sore unspoken rifts here that marked them all. Fissures of hurt chipped with awkwardness and regret that they would try, struggle, to seal. That there were hearts, badly stained by what he had done. You will fix this, he demanded of himself.

     A full glass thudded down which he swapped for a creased note and an appreciative nod. He gulped from his Guinness, pausing for a moment before starting for his friends. He began to walk slowly, against the tide of patrons. The moment appearing to hang in the air until after eight or nine paces, he stopped. A scrapping sound, like metal being slowly rubbed across stone, distracted him. The blade must have run along a rib as it went in deep before being followed with a twist. He looked down at it, still in him, wondering why he felt nothing but then the pain fastened when it was yanked out; a paralysing hurt.

     His cheek twitched, feeling breath and he turned to see Colin’s petty sober eyes. The bland flavour dropped the knife to the floor and began taking steps backwards, his lips trembling and eyes glossy. As the music stopped he turned for the door and ran, pushing through people as he went. Gael looked down at the patterns by his feet, the foamy black splattered around a thick red that ran off his right converse; he had dropped his glass. Feeling the blood run down him it began warm but got cold quickly, it made his his jeans and t-shirt stick to his skin. He bent down to study the spill, his palm now spread out in its wet centre. It looked like a painting that had been left out in the rain he thought, feeling his face empty. The sharpness in his gut was like one of hunger but growing fast and severely, pulling a harsh cold into his centre and twisting, his breathing frail.

      Gael didn’t know how but Sinead was down on her knees with him a moment later, horror in her green gems. Her arms grasped him, pulling him close. Her hand spread on his chest as if feeling for a heartbeat, saying something he couldn’t hear right now as all he heard was noise and the panic in his own head. She had jumped into his world like she did to the car that day, and became it before he could blink. I love you, he thought. ‘Good god I love you,’ Gael pushed the words out of him not sure if she would even understand him as the pain wrenched again forcing him to hold the wound with both hands, ‘and I am so…’. She pressed her nose to the side of his Gael’s  head and spoke into his ear, cradling his head with a strong tenderness. A crowd enclosed them in shade … he could feel her warm tears but couldn’t make out her mumbles. There was a smell of ice-cream … his eyes stung. There was no sound … his chin rattled with the cold. Heavy, Gael’s shoulders felt heavy. ‘I am so sorry.’