followed me out to the car. 'What's up, Benedict? Is this about McKelvey again?'
I took the ring out of my pocket and held it up between my thumb and forefinger.
'Cashell's ring,' he said. 'So what?' Then he saw the photograph which I took from my pocket and he said simply, 'Ah.'
'Who was Mary Knox?' I asked, making it sound more personal than I had intended.
'Let's go for a drive,' he said.
In 1976, Ollie Costello was a sergeant with Lifford Garda. He had been married for ten years. On a June night, when the sky was royal blue and the moon was white and low above the hills, he was passing the Coachman Inn nearly an hour after closing time and noticed lights shining from the gap under the closed doors.
He hammered on the double doors and was finally admitted. As the noise of the revellers died around him, he saw a group of men crowded around the edge of a platform which doubled as a stage for the local auctions. None of the group had noticed Costello yet, for their attention was fixed on a woman who stood on the stage above them in the process of peeling her petticoat and underwear from her sweating body. The men cheered as inch after inch of white flesh was exposed, while the woman writhed and wriggled to some silent music that pounded in her head. It was a spectacle both ridiculous and strangely sensual.
'Right, madam, that's enough,' Costello said finally, banging on the wooden platform with his truncheon as the gathered spectators hastily dispersed.
'Ain't never been called a madam before,' she said, winking down at him while she continued to gyrate, almost naked. He climbed onto the stage, struggling to shift his weight sufficiently to pull himself up, then removed his jacket and put it around her, suddenly conscious of the half-moon of sweat which had darkened the underarms of his shirt.
She wrapped his jacket around her, holding it closed with her hands, and swayed slightly, dizzy as a result of both her dancing and the drink she had taken. Costello put his arms around her to steady her, and took her to the Ladies, where he stood guard while she got dressed. Then he led her out to his car before returning to the bar and cautioning the owner, Harry Toland, for his breach of license.
When he got back to his car, the woman who had said her name was Mary, was sprawled in the back seat, pulling the foot of her tights down slightly to shift the hole in them from her big toe to one of the smaller ones. The car smelt of cigarette smoke and drink and sweat and feet and worn stockings. Costello wound down the window and took out his notebook. He flicked on the light in the car and asked the woman for details. He cautioned her that she could be charged with lewd behaviour and asked if she had someone she wanted to contact. As he did so, he watched her in the rear- view mirror, suddenly aware that the beads of perspiration clinging to her face and chest were making him vaguely excited.
She said she'd heard there were men in Lifford who liked to dance with single women. She told him she was alone. Then she took out her cigarettes and lit one. He told her she was not allowed to smoke in a Garda car and she smiled at him with her eyes. She asked him if he smoked and he said, 'Sometimes'. She took the cigarette from her lips, her lipstick thick around the brown filter, and extended it towards him. He resisted as it touched his mouth, then dragged from it, smiling at her as he exhaled.
She lit another cigarette for herself and told him of her children, a boy named Sean and a girl called Aoibhinn. She spoke of how worried they would be when she did not come home that night. Finally she suggested to Costello that if he let her go home, instead of arresting her, she would perform an act on him which he'd enjoy.
He sat in the front of the car, suddenly cold and warm, excited and scared and unable to reach a decision that would calm the rush of adrenaline he felt. And for a few moments, all thoughts of his wife and children left him and he convinced himself that he deserved some fun in life. He told himself that Emily would never know and so would not be hurt.
He started the engine and drove to the area of waste ground where the old asylum used to stand. He sat in the darkness while she climbed between the two seats and sat beside him. He turned his face away from the streetlamps and closed his eyes and thought only of his breaths that quickened and shallowed until he swore he would hyperventilate. When she was finished, he opened his eyes again and started the ignition, while she put on her seatbelt and fixed her make-up in the vanity mirror. Then he drove her the quarter mile to the border and let her out of the car. She thanked him, and he almost reciprocated. Then she closed the door, waved in at him sadly through the side window, and turned and walked into the shadow of the Camel's Hump, the massive British Army checkpoint which had dominated the area for most of the Troubles.
Costello returned to the station where he went to the toilet and washed himself several times and strained until he forced himself to urinate. He looked at himself in the mirror, water dripping off the fringes of his hair and off his nose and for a moment he thought he would vomit. But the wave of nausea passed, or he swallowed it down; he smoothed his hair back on his scalp, replaced his cap and walked home, allowing the breeze which was rising off the river to cool the redness in his cheeks.
Costello woke the following morning early and sat at his kitchen table in silence while the air around him lightened. He took a walk into Lifford town just after 8.00 a.m. and bought fresh bread and orange juice and a bunch of cut flowers from a bucket outside the local supermarket. He made Emily breakfast in bed and laughed a little too loudly at her jokes. He studied her face carefully and reminded himself of all the things about her which he loved, all the reasons he had married her.
Two weeks later, when he could stand no more, he sat in his car at the customs point and flicked through his notebook until he found Mary Knox's name and address. He wore plain clothes so he could cross the border. He sat outside her house on Canal View, watching the windows for what seemed an eternity. Finally, he went over and knocked on the door. Butterflies fluttered around his insides. A knot thick as a fist caught in the centre of his gut. The door was opened and she was looking at him, standing on her doorstep, his hair brushed, a bunch of flowers bought from the same bucket as his wife's clasped so tightly in his sweating hand that the green paper was staining his skin.
Later, as he left the house, he placed a twenty pound note on the phone table in the hall, while she dressed quietly in the living room.
Over the following months he visited Mary Knox with increasing frequency. Their routine did not change. He sat and waited in his car until she was ready for him. He stood at her door like a child approaching an adult, fear and excitement tightening inside him. He always brought her flowers, even when those from the night before were still fresh.
At Christmas he bought Mary Knox a gold chain which cost more than the gift he bought for his wife. He bought the Knox children a train set and a doll, but was not allowed to present them personally. She bought him nothing and he thought she might give him a free turn, but as he crept out the front door that night she called him back and asked him had he forgotten something. He was so angry he swore he would never go back to her, but he returned four nights later.
One night he saw a figure – another customer – emerge from her door, glancing furtively up and down the street, the orange lamplight glistening off his wedding ring. Costello could do nothing and Knox made no apology.
On his way home he picked up a drunk who was staggering over the bridge towards Lifford and beat him so severely with his nightstick that when the man left the drunk-tank the following morning, his ribs and back were ribboned with purple and red welts, though he could not recall how he had received them.
More and more often, Costello found himself waiting until a man left Mary Knox's house before he could enter. Finally, on one such night in May, as the evening freshened and the last blue faded from the sky, he hit on the idea of a trip to Donegal. He would take her away for the weekend, spend two whole days with her, with no distractions – no other men, no Emily, no twenty-pound payment. He could say he had to attend a conference. He could book under the name Smith, as he had seen it done in the movies. For the first time in months, he felt again the nauseating wave of nerves and excitement return.
It took three weeks to convince Mary Knox. He promised to pay for everything if she would come. He promised to arrange it so no one would know. Finally he promised to buy her something to compensate for the loss of earnings she would suffer over one weekend. She smiled and allowed him to kiss her and agreed. She said she would leave her children with a neighbour; they had an understanding.
It was on that trip that Costello bought Mary Knox the ring which I now held. And, he believed, it was that trip which had signalled the start of the end of their relationship: perhaps because Mary Knox realized how possessive he had become.
