Temptation

How long was it since anyone called her Ali? The nickname had only been used by a handful of people. It was a brief benchmark of freedom at eighteen when she got her first job away from Waterford. The mobile libraries were a stopgap until she started training as a nurse the following April. Everyone working there had a pet name that summer. The three lads sharing the top table all called themselves Harold. ‘Is Harold in yet, Harold?’ ‘No, I haven’t seen him, Harold.’ Betty was known as Sheila because she wanted to emigrate to Australia. Sharon was called Lucy because she phoned in sick to smoke dope in her bedsit and watch reruns of Here’s Lucy – a programme she swore she hated but not as much as she hated work. The nickname Ali had suited Alison back then, the bright sparkle of it as she floated like a butterfly through late–night library parties in bedsits.

In Dublin, being called Ali made her feel different from the child she became again when she took the train home each weekend. That’s what nicknames did, made you part of something special. It was why Peadar renamed her Alison within weeks of them meeting that summer, like her real name had turned full circle to become an intimate term of endearment between them. But she felt flustered in the steam room now and knew the man could sense it, because his voice changed, growing almost apologetic.

‘I hope I didn’t startle you,’ he said. ‘I saw you last night and couldn’t believe my eyes. I knew you hadn’t a clue who I was. You mightn’t remember me anyway. But, of course, the beard doesn’t help, or the absence of it. You used to joke that at twenty I looked forty with it and at forty I’d shave it off and look twenty again.’

‘Chris?’

Good Christ, she thought, not Chris Conway here, all of a slap, in the steam room at Fitzgerald’s. Chris had never needed a nickname. A manic explosion of jokes and gestures, he always stood out simply as Chris.

‘You’ve barely changed, Ali. You must have a portrait of yourself growing old in your attic.’

She laughed, flattered and embarrassed. The beard. That’s what had perturbed her about the face yesterday. Chris Conway. A dozen memories jostled together. Laughing as he persuaded her to take a piggyback off him all the way to the bank to cash her first pay cheque. The Friday afternoon himself and a driver went to do a stop in Tallaght and the mobile van was spotted on Sunday morning, still not returned from a remote pub car park up the Wicklow Mountains. His tricks to torment and thwart the old librarian who liked to bully female trainees. But Chris was right, the memories came from a different world. It was ten years since Peadar last mentioned him, something about the book trade. Alison didn’t know what to say, so she tried a joke.