Modern Gods

She didn’t want to hear it but he kept on.

“Well, it’s not fine.”

“No.”

“I was just—it was an accident. We’ll have to get separate beds if we get married.”

She looked up and he was trying to smile. She nodded.

“If we get married? You haven’t left yourself much time to pull out.”

“Sure, it would only take a minute.” He was grinning, knowing that the worst of it was over now; she was coming round.

“You planning on standing me up at the altar?”

“Course not,” he said, but then widened his eyes and nodded.

“Stephen!”

He shook his head.

“Not funny. What were you dreaming?”

“For the life of me I can’t even remember. I think I thought I was being attacked. You know sometimes how you can’t even tell where you are or what’s happening …”

She didn’t.

Stephen stood up and sighed again and said I’m sorry again and finally left.

The frozen sweetcorn were still too cold on her hand, even wrapped in a tea towel. There was a hook by the bathroom door behind her and she reached up and pulled a purple towel off it and down onto her.

The towel knocked off his wash bag and she lifted it back onto the side of the bath. It rattled and she opened it. Just to see. A bottle of diazepam—they were tranquilizers, weren’t they?—and one of zopiclone. And one of paroxetine. What did they do? And why did they all have parts of the labels, where his name should have been, ripped off? She’d ask him about the tablets in the morning. Or maybe google the names to see. In the eight months she’d known him, she’d never once seen him sick.

She got back into bed. Stephen, dead to the world, gave a low intermittent wheeze. A few minutes later she opened her eyes and there stood a miniature person staring at her a few feet from the bed, naked but for Cinderella underpants. She lifted her side of the covers and Isobel climbed in, pressing her warm back against Alison’s body.

“Can I ask you something? Are witches real?”

“No, honey. Go to sleep.”

“Are goblins real?”

“Shush.”

“Are they?”

“No.”

“Are dragons real?”

“No. Go to sleep.”

“Are robbers real?”

“No. Sort of. But no one’s going to rob us.”

“Are bad men real?”

“Honey, please.”

“Are bad men real?”

“Sleep!”

A rustle and sigh. Another rustle. The tempo of her breath loosening and loosening.

(i) Patrick Creighton, 19

The smell was on his clothes, on his hands, in his hair. He’d washed before he left the plant, but it hung around, that metallic taint. Maybe it was the iron in all the animal blood. He liked to go and spend a good long while at the silver trough scrubbing his hands and under his nails before punching out; it was not, in fact, allowed, but who cared. Of course Morrison had noticed, in the locker room announcing in his wee high voice that standard practice was everyone clocked off before washing up, all the while staring directly at him, but he’d just looked right back and through him. Later, in their red boilersuits and white wellies and hairnets, he’d stood beside him at the urinals. Morrison kept on sighing and sighing as if he might start up with the weeping. The man was a fucken freak show. It was creepy.

He wound down the car window. Someone was spreading slurry out the Ardrum Road. Pearl Jam came on Downtown and he turned it up. You’re still alive, she said. Oh, and do I deserve to be?… There would be some crack had tonight. The Cotton Mountain Boys were booked so there’d be a big crowd in. There was a point in having two jobs, as he’d explained to Gerry at lunchtime. You didn’t get a motorbike given to you. You couldn’t win one or steal one or build one from fucken twigs. You had to just buy it, and by Christmas he’d have eighteen hundred quid in the Ulster Bank, which would be enough to get a Suzuki RGV250, probably from late ’88 or early ’89.

He parked outside the house and went down to the yard, fed the dogs, then went in and had his own tea of a gammon and a half, a couple of eggs, some boiled potatoes. His sister Majella was in fine form; she’d sold three engagement rings in two hours and Francie Lennon had told her she was in line for a proper bonus. She kept winding him up about Veronica, who she said he should really think about asking out. What was wrong with him? She was a pretty girl, and it wasn’t like he had them queuing up outside his fucken bedroom door. A little later, in the shower, he made his list. The bad: this weird raised redness round the mole on his thigh, and the length of the fence he had to bitumen tomorrow down by McAleer’s. The good: Portrush with the boys next Saturday night, and Damon’s uncle having that caravan they were going to crash in on the site behind Kelly’s nightclub. The crack would be mighty altogether. Altogether mighty. It would be something else again. And it also meant skipping Mass on Sunday. Oh, he could handle that!

He got to the bar before Hugh turned up. It was unreal why Hugh insisted on him arriving at 6:30 p.m., when he himself never bothered showing up till a quarter to seven. If he wanted him to open up he would, he would be happy to, but he was fed up to the back teeth with sitting out in the car, watching an empty Tayto’s crisp bag scraping across the tarmac, waiting on Hugh to show his fucken face.

Two of the barrels needed changing, which meant Seamus D hadn’t bothered closing up properly. Plus, the drip trays in the lounge bar hadn’t been washed out. It was best just to get on with it. Stickiness. Stickiness here by the Tennant’s mats. Stickiness here on the top of the mixers fridge. Lazy fuckers. He rolled a barrel of Tennant’s in from the store, then a barrel of Murphy’s. The band was to arrive at 7:30 p.m., and Hugh was mucking around with the lights for the stage. He flicked on the tap for the Tennant’s and heard the air whistling out, and then a low gurgle, and caught the splutter of foam with a pint glass.

The Cotton Mountain Boys—Derek and Padraig and Alfie—had a combined age of two hundred and something, and they offset their different plaid lumberjack shirts with the same black leather waistcoats and bootlace ties. It was slow starting off, but around 8:00 p.m. or so a whole pile of customers arrived at once, and by 8:15 p.m. the place was packed. The Boys were doing “The Gambler” and the chorus had been gradually taken up by the customers, so when they got to “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em” for the third time, the whole place joined in and you could feel it go through your body, the sound of it. Then they started on the one about the man who’s constantly sorry or something and Derek’s voice cut through the pub like a hot knife. The man could still hold a note, no doubt. Paddy was reaching up for a few empties on top of the quiz machine when it started, the shouting, and that sound like firecrackers. He felt a sharp pain in his shoulder and looked down to see the sleeve of his blue shirt gone dark with wet.

CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_0ef8426a-6fa4-50f7-a994-375cf19e1b59)

It must be him. Short and severe with his hand held out. Unimpressive, Liz thought. Blotchy stonewashed jeans and a black fleece. She shook the hand and immediately afterwards swung the bag round on her shoulder and unzipped it, but a small dog did not poke its head out. She put her fingers in and stroked the skull until Atlantic gave a thin disgruntled moan and her squirrelly head arose, eyes half shut. Stephen, startled, laughed and cupped Atty’s head in his hands. Tattoos on his wrists. A gold signet ring.

“Hello, och, who have we here?”

Liz set the bag down and the dog hopped neatly out. Stretched her front legs, her back. When Stephen tried to pet her from above, she pushed her soft nose up into his fingers, pulled back, and looked at him a little formally, then gave the fingers a confirming swipe with her pink clean tongue.

“They let you take him on the plane?”

“Sort of.”

As the dog began olfactory investigations of the column they stood beside, Stephen gave a little grimace of pain.

“He’s not about to piss on that, is he?”

“It’s a she. We should head outside.”

Liz looked at his profile as they tramped down the corridor to the exit. The small sharp nose that reached from his small round face seemed permanently primed for smelling something foul in the atmosphere. There was a slight anxious squint to his whole aspect and an awful softness in the large brown eyes. Some neediness or base want. Alison always had a weakness for weakness. But Liz had nothing against him. That was the phrase she held up in her mind for Stephen. I have nothing against you. You seem fine. Your fingernails are short and clean. You wear an analog watch with a white face and a black leather strap. You seem like hundreds of men I might walk past: shrunken, tired, aligned to some faction that has suffered defeat.