‘So what did he want?’
Leela sighed. ‘I think he’s just lonely. And weird. He wanted to talk about his wife, who’s leaving him. He can’t see his son and daughter, he’s upset about that, naturally. He tried to persuade me to go for a drink with him.’
‘I hope you didn’t say yes?’ Stella said.
‘No, ugh, no. I told him it’s against the rules of the school. He tried to argue and stuff but I said I had to go. I didn’t want to walk towards my house, just in case. So I came back this way, and that’s when –’ Leela indicated Patrick ‘– I phoned. I hope I’m not intruding.’
‘Leela, not at all. It sounds like a horrible day.’ Patrick was as warm as ever, in as generalised a way; Stella too, in a way that both comforted and desolated Leela, for Stella sat close to Patrick and an unspoken complicity was between them. She was half aware also of Simon, watching her steadily and with some amusement. She looked at Patrick’s hands on the table, square, reddish (‘I have Irish farmer’s hands,’ he would declare) and at Simon’s, curled around his glass. She couldn’t read his expression; it was neither sympathetic nor indifferent, and this drew her to him.
‘Leela, we were thinking of going out for a drink when you called. How does that sound?’
‘Uh, yeah, sure.’
‘We were thinking of going down the road to the Lizard Lounge.’
‘Okay,’ Leela said. She’d passed the bar, and marked it as too fashionable for her. But they walked down in pairs, Stella and Leela ahead, and Patrick and Simon behind, smoking. Leela was aware of Patrick talking and Simon laughing, then responding, and Patrick guffawing. She envied their ease. Stella was being sweet, though. She tucked her hair behind one ear and touched Leela’s arm. ‘I hope you’re not feeling too weirded out by that creep,’ she said. Leela wondered how much to play up the incident. Would it work? Would being wronged or vulnerable endear her to Patrick?
‘It was a bit creepy,’ she said. ‘Especially because it happened near where I live. But I think it’ll be all right.’
‘That sort of thing keeps happening when you first move away,’ Stella was saying as they neared the bar, from which dance music could be heard thumping. ‘I remember when I was in South America –’
They were inside now, looking for a place to sit, and though the bar was dark and the music loud, the atmosphere was essentially civilised. The table was small, and cuboid leather stools were wedged around it. Stella threaded her way in, then Patrick. Leela sat next to Simon, their legs folded like jackknives, knees touching.
‘What are you drinking?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure. What are you drinking?’
‘A beer.’
‘Is it weird to have a kir after drinking whisky?’
He looked down at her, amused. ‘Not if you want to.’
She asked the waitress for a vodka tonic. Simon and she sat watching her slender back as she walked away.
A song Leela knew came on. She began to hum along indistinctly. Simon grinned. She grinned back. ‘Shit. Shouldn’t sing in public. I may be slightly drunk.’ He laughed, and patted her knee, a brief touch of a warm dry hand. The drinks arrived.
Simon was saying something, and she was distracted, smiling and leaning closer to hear, and also looking across the table where Patrick was partly hidden by Stella. He was laughing. Leela half closed her eyes to hear what Simon was saying. She glanced up to see Patrick looking at the two of them. He smiled at her, a smile so depressing that a hard resolve formed in her.
‘There’s something in your voice – a slight Irish accent,’ she told Simon.
‘Really?’ He looked sceptical. ‘I did live in Dublin for a couple of years, but that was a long time ago.’
‘No, but the way you pronounce some words – something you just said, I can’t place it but it was there. Dublin, how was that? I’d love to live there.’
‘Have you been?’
‘No … I’ve just read lots of books set there.’
‘Joyce?’
‘Joyce, and Beckett, and a couple of more recent things. This writer called Dermot Bolger.’
‘The Journey Home? It’s a great book.’
‘It really is.’ She was carried away with enthusiasm, a quiet part of her noting that the music had faded, and the bar seemed darker, or the lights travelling through space more blurry, slowing on their way to her. But if that’s what he wants, she thought vindictively of Patrick, then decided to forget him. ‘I’ve never met anyone else who’s read it. Such a good book.’
‘It is. And this other book I read when I was there – I suppose a sort of dumbed-down version of Joyce in a way,’ he said. ‘But I had a friend who read a lot and recommended it to me, very funny, The Ginger Man.’
‘I loved it. That scene where he’s trying to leave his wife and he’s wearing her sweater …’
‘And it’s unravelling?’
‘Yes.’ She laughed. ‘I read that when he was writing it he went to pubs and cafés with people and wrote down their stories and that’s what he used for the book.’
Simon smiled at her. She smelled something, perhaps his scent – cologne, and under that, a fundamental smell of musk and perspiration, not unpleasant. An excited if uninvolved part of her noted it: You are smelling a new man. Another part, more sceptical, preserved a silence. Meanwhile, she was still talking. ‘… when I was younger, I mostly used to read American writers. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joseph Heller. A bit of Saul Bellow. I loved Salinger.’
‘There’s a perfect age to read all of that,’ Simon was saying. She looked up at his face, skin a little tanned, lines around his eyes and mouth; he had delicate European skin that couldn’t stand the sun. And his hair, sandy and thick, was tangled, a bit dry. His shirt looked unironed. But he was tall, broad-shouldered. She made these observations to herself, and a delight rose up in her: this was a reasonably handsome man, and he appeared to be interested in her. She coaxed herself: isn’t this a good thing?
‘So what were you doing in Dublin?’ she was asking him, but the bar was closing. Or they were leaving. Definitely they were leaving. The bill appeared, and Simon, still talking to her, paid it. They were now outside, where the air was colder. Patrick lit a cigarette. He and his dark woollen jacket made a tall, familiar presence that caused Leela to ache.
Stella came up and patted Patrick’s elbow. ‘You’ll walk me home, won’t you?’ she said.
‘Of course.’ He took a puff of his cigarette and smiled at Simon.
‘I’ll make sure Leela gets home,’ Simon said.
How well they were arranging everything. Leela smiled, unsure whether to feel touched or irritated.
Stella came forward, smiling with genuine warmth. She kissed Leela on both cheeks, and said, ‘Bye. It’s been a horrible day, but it’s over now. Just forget it.’
How