ours. What does he have to be jealous of? No, I think the mentality has its origins in the Puritan moral framework: the emphasis on fitting into a strict hierarchical structure, the element of self-loathing, the horror of anything pleasurable or artistic or unregimented… But I’ve always wondered how that paradigm made the transition to become the boundary, not just of virtue, but of reality itself. Could you put it on speakerphone, Rafe? I’m interested to hear what he has to say.”
Rafe gave him a wide-eyed, are-you-insane stare and shook his head; Daniel looked vaguely puzzled. The rest of us were starting to get the giggles.
“Of course,” Daniel said politely, “if you’d prefer… What’s so funny, Lexie?”
“Lunatics,” Rafe told the ceiling in a fervent undertone, spreading his arms to take in the phone and Daniel and the rest of us, who by now had our hands over our mouths. “I’m surrounded by wall-to-wall lunatics. What have I done to deserve this? Did I pick on the afflicted in a previous life?”
The phone, which was obviously working up to a big finish, informed Rafe that he could have a Lifestyle. “Guzzling champagne in the City,” Rafe translated, for us, “and shagging my secretary.”
“What the fuck is wrong with that?” the phone shouted, loud enough that Daniel, startled, reared back in his chair with a look of sheer astounded disapproval. Justin exploded with a noise somewhere between a snort and a yelp; Abby was hanging over the back of her chair with her knuckles stuffed in her mouth, and I was laughing so hard I had to stick my head under the table.
The phone, with a magnificent disregard for basic anatomy, called us all a bunch of limp-dicked hippies. By the time I pulled myself together and came up for air, Rafe had flipped over a pair of jacks and was scooping in the pot, pumping one fist in the air and grinning. I realized something. Rafe’s mobile had gone off about two feet from my ear, and I hadn’t even flinched.
“You know what it is?” Abby said out of nowhere, a few hands later. “It’s the contentment.”
“Who said which to the what now?” inquired Rafe, narrowing his eyes to examine Daniel’s stack. He had switched his phone off.
“The real-world thing.” She leaned sideways across me to pull the ashtray closer. Justin had put on Debussy, blending with the faint rush of rain on the grass outside. “Our entire society’s based on discontent: people wanting more and more and more, being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their decor, their clothes, everything. Taking it for granted that that’s the whole point of life, never to be satisfied. If you’re perfectly happy with what you’ve got-specially if what you’ve got isn’t even all that spectacular-then you’re dangerous. You’re breaking all the rules, you’re undermining the sacred economy, you’re challenging every assumption that society’s built on. That’s why Rafe’s dad throws a mickey fit whenever Rafe says he’s happy where he is. The way he sees it, we’re all subversives. We’re traitors.”
“I think you’ve got something there,” said Daniel. “Not jealousy, after all: fear. It’s a fascinating state of affairs. Throughout history-even a hundred years ago, even fifty-it was discontent that was considered the threat to society, the defiance of natural law, the danger that had to be exterminated at all costs. Now it’s contentment. What a strange reversal.”
“We’re revolutionaries,” Justin said happily, poking a Dorito around in the salsa jar and looking phenomenally unrevolutionary. “I never realized it was this easy.”
“We’re stealth guerrillas,” I said with relish.
“You’re a stealth chimpanzee,” Rafe told me, flipping three coins into the middle.
“Yes, but a contented one,” said Daniel, smiling across at me. “Aren’t you?”
“If Rafe would just quit hogging the garlic dip, I’d be the most contented stealth chimpanzee in the whole of Ireland.”
“Good,” Daniel said, giving me a little nod. “That’s what I like to hear.”
Sam never asked. “How’s it going?” he would say, in our late-night phone calls, and when I said, “Fine,” he would move on to something else. At first he told me bits about his side of the investigation-carefully checking out my old cases, the local uniforms’ list of troublemakers, Lexie’s students and professors. The more he got nowhere, though, the less he talked about it. Instead he told me about other things, small homey things. He had been over at my flat a couple of times, to air it out and make sure it didn’t look too obviously empty; the next-door cat had had kittens at the bottom of the garden, he said, and awful Mrs. Moloney downstairs had left a snotty note on his car informing him that Parking was for Residents Only. I didn’t tell him this, but it all seemed a million miles away, off in some long-ago world so chaotic that even thinking about it made me tired. Sometimes it took me a moment to remember who he was talking about.
Only once, on the Saturday night, he asked about the others. I was hanging out in my lurk lane, leaning back into a hawthorn hedge and keeping one eye on the cottage. I had a kneesock of Lexie’s bundled around the mike, which gave me an attractive three-boobed look but meant that Frank and his gang would only pick up about 10 percent of the conversation.
I was keeping my voice down anyway. Almost since I went out the back gate, I’d had the feeling that someone was following me. Nothing concrete, nothing that couldn’t be explained away by the wind and moon shadows and countryside night noises; just that low-level electrical current at the back of your neck, where your skull meets your spine, that only comes from someone’s eyes. It took a lot of willpower not to whip around, but if by any chance there really was someone out there, I didn’t want him knowing he’d been sussed, not till I decided what I was going to do about it.
“Do ye never go to the pub?” Sam asked.
I wasn’t sure what he was asking. Sam knew exactly what I did with my time. According to Frank, he got into work at six every morning to go through the tapes. This made me itch, in small unreasonable ways, but the thought of bringing it up itched even worse. “Rafe and Justin and I went to the Buttery on Tuesday, after tutorials,” I said. “Remember?”
“I meant your local-what’s it called, Regan’s, down in the village. Do they never go there?”
We passed Regan’s in the car, on our way to and from college: a dilapidated little country pub, sandwiched between the butcher’s and the news-agent’s, with bikes leaning unlocked against the wall in the evenings. Nobody had ever suggested going in there.
“It’s simpler to have a few drinks at home, if we want them,” I said. “It’s a walk to the village, and everyone but Justin smokes.” Pubs have always been the heart of Irish social life, but when the smoking ban came in, a lot of people moved to drinking at home. The ban doesn’t bother me, although I’m confused by the idea that you shouldn’t go into a pub and do anything that might be bad for you, but the level of obedience does. To the Irish, rules always used to count as challenges-see who can come up with the best way round this one-and this sudden switch to sheep mode makes me worry that we’re turning into someone else, possibly Switzerland.
Sam laughed. “You’ve been up in the big city too long. I’ll guarantee you Regan’s doesn’t stop anyone smoking. And it’s less than a mile by the back roads. Do you not think it’s odd, them never going in there?”
I shrugged. “They are odd. They’re not all that sociable, in case you haven’t noticed. And maybe Regan’s sucks.”
“Maybe,” Sam said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “You went to Dunne’s in the Stephen’s Green Centre when it was your turn to buy food, am I right? Where do the others go?”
“How would I know? Justin went to Marks and Sparks yesterday; I haven’t a clue about the others. Frank said Lexie shopped at Dunne’s, so I shop at Dunne’s.”
“What about the newsagent’s in the village? Anyone been there?”
I thought about that. Rafe had done a cigarette run one evening, but he had gone out the back gate, towards the late-night petrol station on the Rathowen road, not towards Glenskehy. “Not since I got here. What are you thinking?”
“I was just wondering,” Sam said, slowly. “About the village. You’re up at the Big House, you know. Daniel’s from the Big House family. In most places nobody cares about that, any more; but every now and then, depending on history… I was just wondering if there’s any bad feeling there.”
