‘I hear he goes walkabout, our little altar boy. He’s a bit of a night bird, inclined to roam about like he doesn’t quite know which way to go. Personally I think it’s those apple tarts he has to take back to his room. I mean could you sleep, never knowing if some granny with no teeth and a black bra was going to jump out from inside one of them?’
‘I’ve never heard nobody sing with that accent before,’ Garth said.
‘It’s pure Drogheda,’ the Irishman said. ‘A class of knacker accent. You know knackers … cream crackers … tinkers? Travellers is the term we’re meant to use now. God looks down when a knacker is born and says: “I ordained that this child be born on the side of the road in a freezing trailer that will be burnt out by the locals before Christmas is over, but just in case he survives I’ll give him a Drogheda accent as well”’.
‘And is he one?’ I nodded towards the singer who had started an embarrassing line dancing routine while the crowd cheered. The Irishman laughed and used the opportunity to place his fingers for a second on my shoulder as if I were a child.
‘They wouldn’t let him through this door if he was,’ he said. ‘If he sneaked in they’d smash the glass he drank from before anyone here would use it. He’s from a wee house in Drogheda.’ He nodded to the barman who had assembled the massive round of drinks, then looked at Garth. ‘Our singer friend always stays at the Irish Club in Eaton Square. There’s an all night coffee shop across from the tube station in Sloane Square. I’ve come across him there at three in the morning. A man passing might do the same himself.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ Garth’s tone was guarded. The barman stood, waiting to be paid.
‘Bring lots of whipped cream.’ The Irishman reached for his wallet. ‘Apple tarts need a little extra something to help them go down.’
He handed a fistful of notes to the barman who began to pass the drinks across. Garth sat back. The Irishman ignored us as he relayed pints and shorts into the willing hands of family members who came forward to help. The table where his family sat was crammed with stacked glasses and crumpled cigarette packets. They were obviously the rump left over from a wedding reception. He rejoined them and bent to say something with his back to us. People laughed and some glanced in our direction. The Irishman didn’t look back but I felt nervous. Nobody talked to total strangers like that. Was he winding us up or setting us up? Garth had turned to the bar, nodding at the barman to fetch us two more drinks.
‘I hope I’m wrong,’ I said quietly, ‘but I get this feeling you’re going to walk out the door and have your head kicked in.’
‘Sweetheart, I have that feeling every morning I go to buy a newspaper,’ Garth replied. ‘I get that feeling so often that I stopped noticing years ago I ever had it. If you’re worried, Tracey, just take your coat and go.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m not leaving you.’
‘I don’t need no babysitting from here on in. The dude seems a bit odd but all right. Still you never can tell.’ Garth tossed a fiver on to the counter. ‘It’s my round, but I’ve got to shake hands with the unemployed.’
The encounter had left me agitated, but it wasn’t just concern about Garth. The man’s words made me feel uneasy about myself. If they knew that my father had been a tinker they wouldn’t use this glass again. I hated them and their half-assed sentimental music. I’d only come for a laugh but it didn’t feel right being here. We were drinking doubles but I got the barman to put an extra vodka into my glass. The Irishman peeled off from his family. I might have been nervous but I wasn’t going to show it when he approached again.
‘Luke is my name,’ he said. ‘I’ve been watching you.
‘So?’
‘All evening just watching and sitting there thinking.’
‘Thinking what?’
‘That if pigs could fly.’
He had eyes which demanded you stare back into them. They were salesman’s eyes, I thought, and I wasn’t buying.
‘Pigs can’t,’ I said.
‘If they could,’ he replied, ‘your black friend might get an early tube to Sloane Square and leave you sitting here alone.’
‘What’s it to you if he did?’
‘I’ve been watching ever since you came in. I can’t stop. You hate this place more than I do.’
‘Why are you here then?’
‘Duty, guilt, habit.’ He glanced back. ‘You know yourself, family life is never easy.’
I followed his glance. It was obviously a rare coming together of relations, animated and yet fitting uneasily together.
‘When was the wedding?’
‘Yesterday morning,’ he said. ‘Yesterday evening was the family fight and tonight is the kiss and make up.’
‘Do they ever change their clothes?’
‘That’s tomorrow when they keel over and are carried home,’ he said. ‘To Dublin mainly, although a few have flung themselves as far as Coventry and Birmingham. The blonde girl in the blue outfit, she’s the bride. You’d think she’d feck off on her honeymoon, but there’s no fear of her letting us off the hook. She’s heading back to America on Tuesday, where she’s after getting born again. The first time was because of an accident down a lane off Camden Street. You’d think that second time around she might have got it right.’
The reference to hair wasn’t much of a guide because there seemed hardly a woman in his family not bleached blonde. But the bride stood out, beaming with zest and vitamins. She seemed as incapable of being quiet as she was oblivious to the irritation she caused around her.
‘She’s after getting hitched to some lad from Blackheath she met in Houston and nothing would do her but to be married in London so her new in-laws could meet her old out-laws.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘I don’t think she informed them in advance that her grandfather Kevin was the biggest thug in the Animal Gang in Dublin.’
There was a family resemblance within some of them. The man who dominated the circle seemed a stockier version of Luke, like a crude police photo-fit. Squeezed into a dress suit, he looked dangerous and comic. He snapped at the bride who went quiet, as if struck. The conversation abated, then resumed as an older woman took her hand. The man who’d ferried most of the drinks passed behind the bride to ruffle her hair, coaxing a smile from her as he made peace all round. He was well into his thirties yet there was something baby-faced about him. As he passed us, heading for the gents, I knew he was another brother. He nodded.
‘All right, Luke?’
‘Hanging in there, Shane.’
He walked on with a glance at me.
‘They’re a surly-looking bunch,’ I sneered, hoping Luke would follow his brother.
‘Unpredictable too.’ He played up the insult. ‘Still you can’t swap your family after the January sales. You only get born with one, you have to love them and get on with it.’
But he showed no interest in rejoining them. I took a sip of vodka and wished Garth would return. I liked to choose my Sunday night men, not the other way round. Yet this Irishman had a come on I’d never encountered before. He seemed almost anxious to sell himself short. I revised his age to thirty eight and tried to decide if he was utterly drunk or sober.
‘Seeing as you love your family don’t let me detain you from them,’ I snorted, hoping to blow him off.
‘Like most families, you’d sooner love them from a distance.’
The way he said it made me laugh. For all his physical strength and expensive clothes, as he smiled wryly he suddenly seemed the most miserable trapped