Balfe.
“I’ll show you out, Mr. Balfe,” he heard himself murmur. “That way, next time you’re back, you’ll know the way yourself.”
Minogue swung around South King Street and turned into Drury Street. He registered the plastic bottles and beer cans lying in the doorways, the pub doors wide open to admit more of the sultry air. Two men in shorts and copies of Ireland’s national soccer team’s t-shirts staggered by. He levered the car into Wicklow Street and parked it.
Back Then was dark. Hot air thick with the smell of cooking vegetables washed over his face. His eyes began to adjust to the light and he navigated toward a table against the wall. World music came on strong from the ceiling speakers. He ordered a tumbler of water and looked about. The restaurant could pass for a workshop or studio. Bold design with haphazard objets trouves seemed to state that this was a provisional set-up and would remain permanently provisional. Work in progress. Iseult was suddenly composing herself in a chair opposite.
“Will we stay?”
“Didn’t we decide to?”
“All right.” He watched the waitress approach, the glitter of something on her nostril.
“You don’t like it?”
“I’m not used to the idea that the restaurant is not finished but merely abandoned.”
“God, Da, the older you get! What’ll you eat now?”
“Your mother was asking for you.”
Iseult cocked an eye and held the glass of water to her cheek.
“I’ll phone her tonight,” she said.
“She’s excited about the wedding. So am I.”
Iseult searched his face for sarcasm. He kept his gaze on posters across the room.
“I suppose I should get her more involved. Plans and everything. It was to be the Registry Office, I hope you know.”
Was, thought Minogue. Her hands searched around the table, touching the vase and its single flower, the tumbler, the cutlery.
“‘Was,’ ” he said. Iseult arranged her knife, fork and spoon in overlapping patterns. “Did I hear you right?”
“Pat’s parents dug in their heels. They won’t go unless it’s in a church.”
She picked up the knife and stared at it.
“I had a monster row with him over it,” she said.
“And?”
She began to finger the handle of the knife. The tip held some fascination for her.
“I thought I knew him.”
Minogue said nothing. Thin, clear soup arrived.
“So what are you going to do?”
She blew on the spoon.
“What I told him I’d do.” She put down the spoon and joined her hands over her bowl.
“He comes home the other evening and starts hemming and hawing. I thought he was having me on.”
She sighed and returned to her soup. Minogue thought of Pat’s parents. He had met them half a dozen times. The mother, Helen Geraghty, was from Meath and was very active in community groups. She liked amateur theatre and took classes in writing. The father, Des, was a bank manager in Terenure. He liked golf and expressed keen interest in the Minogues’ visits to France. He had buttonholed Minogue after a few jars at the Christmas and spoken darkly of the state of the country’s coffers and conscience. We have to pull up our socks here in Ireland or we’d never be taken seriously in Europe-or anywhere else for that matter, according to Des. Minogue had become used to the prospect of knowing the Geraghtys better as in-laws. Kathleen and Helen maintained correct and cordial relations. Compliments were plentifully exchanged and neither woman allowed earnest discussions of politics and other contentious matters to blunder into argument. Both sets of parents were punctilious in maintaining the open secret that Pat and Iseult lived together.
“His parents are gone barking mad since the abortion referendum,” Iseult said.
Minogue had tired of the soup. Barking mad, he repeated within. Pat’s parents, those golfing, innocuous and charitable suburbanites, those people with generous and tolerant instincts, had declared themselves committed to following Church teaching. Helen Geraghty had referred to the matter with almost apologetic earnestness, he recalled, but he hadn’t missed the glint in her eye: “Really now, Matt. When it all comes down to it, there’s only one choice, isn’t there?” He’d been stunned later to hear Des Geraghty reading the lesson at Sunday mass broadcast on RTE. Was Des Geraghty in that thick with the Church, he’d spluttered to Kathleen. What did he mean “in that thick,” was her reply. He glanced at Iseult.
“Maybe Pat doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
“Oh, really, Da? I thought that principles are supposed to cost you something. I told him to sort himself out and then get in touch with me when he’s ready.”
The waitress laid down bowls of vegetable casserole. Minogue lost heart at the sight of the steam rising from them.
“Get in touch?” he asked. “Is he banished back home to think it over maybe?”
She poked at cauliflower with her fork.
“No. I left.”
Minogue looked down at her fork working. This food was too good for you, he thought: lentils, cauliflower, beans. Iseult’s moody excavations with her food brought him back twenty years. Ma, I hate cabbage, I hate it! Either by design or indifference, her hair was all over the place. Her mauve t-shirt and worn jeans looked like she’d worn them gardening. The heat had made her eyes glisten and brought colour to her cheeks. There was a smell of turpentine or paint around her. She glanced up at him.
“Don’t you like this stuff?”
He was too far gone to prevaricate.
“A lump of meat in the middle would do the job. A bit of a caveman, I’m afraid.”
Iseult began to describe the panels she was planning for an installation in the hall of a gallery. She wasn’t being paid. It would be great exposure.
“The idea is why we keep things to look at,” she said around a piece of carrot. “We kill them with our minds. We interpret them and we classify them. Do you get it?”
Minogue chewed on the half-cooked stalk of a legume he couldn’t identify. “Back Then” indeed: like starving peasants who’d eat roots and bushes during the Famine. Chic.
“Not really. Did you say you’d moved out of the flat?”
“No, I didn’t say.” She speared broccoli.
“So you have.”
“Temporarily.”
“Until your intended gets some sense.”
“Precisely.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“He can fuck off, so he can.”
Minogue dropped his fork. Iseult twisted away a smile.
“Listen to me, now. Maybe if we gave some thought to Pat’s reasoning?”
“I’m not going to analyse anything, Da. To hell with that. That’s just rationalizing.”
“Sorry for trying to be reasonable. I rather like Pat.”
“Good for you.”
“Well, where are you staying for the moment then? What’s the name of your friend, the photographer, I’m always forgetting her-”
“Aoife. No.”
“Which friend then?”
“I’m like you, Da. I’ve no real friends. Scared them off, I think.”
