The Price of Blood

'Don't you judge me. You're no one to judge me, you fucking…you've the morals of a beast in the fields, Ed Loy, you'd fuck your own shadow.'

'I'm not judging you.'

'You fucking are. The look on your face-'

'What do you expect? Dave's my friend, and you betray him, fine, you're right, I'm no one to judge, but you could pick your moment, Carmel, and you could pick your man: Jesus, of all people, Myles fucking Geraghty, talk about rubbing a man's face in it, do you not know what a nightmare he's made Dave's life since he joined the Bureau?'

'No, I don't know, how would I know? Do you think he talks to me about it? Any of it? Of course he tells you, men only, noble beasts grunt out your pain to each other, then down the next whiskey and get on with things, don't tell the little woman, she'd only get upset, or worse, think you were human.'

'He said if he brought his troubles home, you'd think he was weak.'

Carmel 's face nearly gave, she looked so hurt; she twisted it into a snarl and a harsh laugh.

'Weak? Christ, he thinks that of me? And he said it to you? Who's betraying who, Ed? Who do you think I am, Lady Mac-fuckingbeth? Let me tell you about Dave's mother's funeral: after the removal, I found him in the garage, crying his eyes out. I went to him, arms out, you know. He backed away from me. He left the house, he drove around, I don't know where, he came back when I was asleep, that was the last tear he let me see. I'd think he was weak? I'd think he was a human being. It's got worse since you came back. He thinks you're…I don't know what, he's always sniggering like a teenager about what you get up to…it's as if he thinks you're cool, that's what it is.'

'I'm not cool.'

'Do you think I don't know that? Misery knows misery. I see you, Ed Loy. The same fucked-up woman in one guise after another. The booze, the fights. You're so in love with your own fucking pain, you need to keep the wound fresh and flowing to feel half alive. Don't take Dave down with you. He's got like that: the job is everything, but he can't talk about it, what he goes through, what he suffers, he removes himself from my life, from our lives. Absent. And then he shows up, expecting us to be like a family in a movie, he wants me to fuck him, the kids to adore him. Frolic along the beach with a big furry dog. We don't even know him.'

Carmel was shivering, maybe crying. I took off my coat and tried to put it on her shoulders, but she wouldn't let me. She pushed me away, and then hung on my lapel, her hand on my shoulder. I knew that nothing like this happened for no reason, that making a family wasn't easy, that Carmel and Dave were very far from the couple I'd idealized. But I'd seen her with Myles Geraghty, and I felt it in my gut, and I couldn't let it go.

'I hear all that, Carmel, and fair enough, I don't really know what it's like…I was only married a short while, and I didn't make a great go of it. But…sorry, I can't get away from this, in front of all his colleagues, and if they didn't see, you can be fucking sure they'll be told, Myles Geraghty. I think Dave knows something is going on-'

'Of course he knows. There's not much point to it unless he knows. Do you think I like Myles Geraghty? Do you think I want to do this? Turns out it's all I have, after fifteen years of kids, these legs, these tits, and I won't have them for long, not in this shape anyway. Getting old, Ed, and I don't want to wait around to die. I've tried talking to him, tried warning him. Nothing. Calls for desperate measures. Rub his face in it? Yes. Demean myself? Yes. What next? I know what you'd do. Walk away. School of Ed Loy says, just walk away. But you don't put twenty years into what I've built up to walk away. You can't.'

A breath at the corner, a foot snap on frost, and there was Dave. Carmel turned to him, and nodded, and turned back to me.

'I'm sorry if what I said hurt you,' she said.

'That's 'Happy Christmas' in Irish, is it?'

'Some things are more important than who fucked who. You know that.'

I thought of my daughter, how she hadn't been mine, not in blood, yet I called her mine and always would and knew it to be true. I nodded, and Carmel gave me a kiss, and walked up to Dave and put an arm around his waist and put her head on his shoulder. Dave raised his hand in the air, and I returned his salute, and they walked back down to their house, and their family, and their life, about which, it turned out, I knew next to nothing.

The roads had frosted up, powder bright in the moonlight; I drove back slowly, wondering how this would affect the Leopardstown Festival: Irish racing did not like firm ground, and would cancel a meeting rather than risk the horses.

When I got back to Quarry Fields, I found Tommy Owens's key on my kitchen table and Miranda Hart in my bed. Better than the other way round, I remember thinking as I got in beside her, trying not to wake her, but not trying too hard. She awoke, and her breath smelled of oranges, and the rest of her smelt just as good.

'Merry Christmas, Edward Loy,' she said, and for a while, it was.

EIGHTEEN

The door creak again, and the rustle of straw, of paper, and the bolt run with a crack, and her dark head turning, Miranda Hart, and then the bolt again, or the sound of it, like a pistol shot, like the slam of a door, my Spanish girl, my ex-wife, now the rustle of straw, the pistol crack, the turning head, my mother, dark-headed, too, as she was when I was a boy, rustle, crack, door, turning head, Regina Tyrrell, fear in her eyes, and another, someone else, I can't make out his face, rustle, crack, door, head turn: Karen Tyrrell, one eye blue, one eye brown, and the hand closing on her, the hand about to touch her, I can't see his face, Karen, Miranda, Regina, my wife, my mother, rustle, crack, door, the turning head, the reaching hand…

I woke up alone, bathed in sweat, with Carmel Donnelly's words burning in my ears. You're so in love with your own pain. The same fucked-up woman over and over again. It didn't have to be that way. I wouldn't let it be that way. I went out on the landing, and smelt breakfast being cooked downstairs, bacon and eggs, or something that good. I remembered how I'd felt yesterday, before the trip to Tyrrellscourt, when I heard Miranda's footfall and felt the promise of a future. But as I showered, it all came back to me: not just what Tommy had told me about her operating as a prostitute, not just the drugs, not just Bomber Folan or Jack Proby, but what it all amounted to: that she knew so much more than she had told me. What I saw in the bathroom mirror as I shaved was not promise; it was resignation, and something worse than that: betrayal, and the fear of betrayal. The Judas Kiss.

I didn't think I owned as many pots and pans, plates and cooking utensils, as Miranda Hart had used to make a breakfast fry; she emerged from the debris with two plates as I sat down; I wanted to greet her smile with something more than the polite nod I managed, but found that I couldn't. We ate in silence. Miranda broke it.

'I suppose Tommy told you, did he?'

I nodded.

'Well, he probably remembers it all better than I do. I was pretty far gone, most of the time. What did he say?'

'That you took money for sex. That you were available to a whole circle of men that formed itself around Leo Halligan and Jack Proby. He said he didn't know whether you were doing it of your own free will or not. That you were doing so much heroin you maybe didn't even know yourself.'

I found myself trying to make it easy for her. To her credit, she didn't want that. She popped some gum in her mouth, lit a cigarette and exhaled.

'No, I wasn't forced. The opposite. I was with Jack Proby at the time, nothing serious, just for laughs-funny how relationships that are just for laughs quickly run out of them-and we were doing a lot of drugs, too much coke, and then I got into smack to take me down, I couldn't sleep, and then I needed the coke to get me back up, and that became a cycle. And that became expensive. And it had gotten so I didn't much care what I did-I can't quite explain how that happens, but when it does, it seems so simple and so realistic, you know: there's a rich golfer, or a trainer, or a jockey, why don't I just fuck him for five hundred quid, or spend the night for a grand. I won't feel anything anyway, the smack guaranteed that, so why not make a profit, you know?'