Chapter 25
AL
He’s had more than one round. Maybe closer to eight. There’s a trad band in the bar, things have gotten messy. The insults are flying, the memories, the laughter, the spittle. They’ve knocked over a few pints already and Mags behind the bar has handed them the mop to clean it themselves.
Al is happy.
The sadness of yesterday has left him, not completely, but doesn’t sit so close to his surface. Like the tide going out, with every passing aching moment, it pulls further away from him, retreating. Still coming in, but moving back out.
‘Glad you came,’ Beano says.
‘Me too. I would have come earlier but I was embarrassed.’
‘What have you got to be embarrassed for?’ he asks, surprised. ‘It’s them that should be embarrassed, not you. You’ve done nothing wrong. Relationships begin and end every day.’
‘It’s not just that. It’s that I didn’t see it, Beano. I was living with both of them and I didn’t sense a thing.’
‘People hide things all the time, you can’t be expected to see and know it all.’
Al feels a little better. He had been worried people would be thinking How the hell could you not have known? Because it’s been on a loop in his own mind.
‘And absolutely nobody would expect this of Walter,’ he adds.
‘He’s your best friend. What got into him?
Before there was Al and Tara, there was Al and Walter.
’ He shakes his head, his mouth set in a hard grim line.
‘I shouldn’t say any more, you could get back together and everything I say won’t be forgotten. ’
‘We’re not getting back together. For weeks I was hopeful.
I thought they’d both back out of it, get over whatever thing they thought they had together.
I would’ve taken her back, forgiven them both, the idiot that I am.
But they’re not getting weaker. They’re getting stronger.
Walter is thriving, and I’ve put him through hell.
’ Al fills him in on his revenge acts and Beano roars laughing.
‘Is there not a part of you that’s relieved? Because I’m relieved for you. I know you’re heartbroken, but at least you found out who they are before you got married, before there were children involved. Look at poor Stick.’
They look at their friend Stick, messy drunk and close to tears in a conversation with Brick, who’s going through the wars with his divorce. Al sighs. He’s beginning to accept that now too, that the worst thing that could happen could end up being the best.
‘And she was a bit of work, wasn’t she?’ Beano says, giving him side-eye.
Al didn’t realise it at the time, but yes he agrees with that and he’s not going to defend Tara any longer.
‘You don’t need the work. Don’t get me wrong, marriage is work. But it’s not all heavy lifting. Someone should be making you laugh. Putting a smile on your face.’
Al recalls the night with Melody. He hadn’t laughed so much in weeks, in years with a woman if he’s honest. Tara wasn’t a funny person; Melody is funny and he’s realising a strong sense of humour is a trait he wants in a partner.
‘There are other women. You may not think it now, but there are and there will be. There’ll be some point in your life, when you’re in a better place, you’ll look back and thank them, thank them for stopping you from going down that path.’
Al thinks about Melody and smiles. Her nineteen flights of stairs to get to him.
Later, Al stumbles as he moves away from the lads and out the side door to the bins and the crates in the alley.
He wants to text Melody who has come into his head, but he can’t see the screen properly, it’s blurred, and his fingers are too clumsy to hit the right letters.
He settles on a voice note which takes him far too long to access.
He watches the red squiggly recording line appear on the screen, which reminds him of a heart line on a monitor.
He watches it squiggle, then shoot up as it responds to the volume of his voice, as he clears his throat and heavy breathes.
He says nothing and it flatlines. ‘I’m dead,’ he says, and then it shoots up. ‘Oh, I’m alive again.’
He laughs at how funny that is. Then gets serious.
‘Okay. Hi. This is a message for Melody.’ It comes out as ‘Meddilly’.
‘It’s me, Al. The Stroke. I don’t know if I told you that I stroke.
That’s a rowing term. It would sound kind of pervy if you didn’t know.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you something.’
‘What’s going on here?’ His brother Séan appears at the door, doing up the buttons on his jeans, on his way back from the toilet. ‘You better not be calling her.’
‘I want to tell her how I feel. How she should believe in herself more,’ he says, closing one eye to focus on his brother. ‘She’s so great. But she’s so afraid.’
‘I don’t think Tara needs to hear that now. Tara is all gone,’ he says, with his hands out in the air, as if speaking to his baby brother.
‘Not Tara,’ Al says, almost falling over his feet and crashing into a crate of empty bottles.
‘Don’t be calling The Shadow either.’
Séan grabs the phone and Al suddenly doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain. The air has hit him and he’s very, very drunk.
‘I’ll be deleting that message, thank you very much,’ Séan says, clearing the voice note before tossing the phone to Brick. ‘We have a late-night caller. Put it behind the bar, Brick, he’s not getting that back until he sobers up and it won’t be tomorrow either. Let’s get you back inside, bro.’
Beano is sneaking off when they return, he’s been nursing a soft drink for the night. ‘It’s my turn to do the night feeds.’
‘Thanks for today, I can’t thank you enough.’ Beano has two heads and eight eyes. ‘I wish you could move to Dublin with me. I need a coxswain for my life. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going.’
‘None of us do. Sure isn’t that what we do best? We face away from the distance we’re heading in. And sometimes we win. You’ll be okay, Al, stay in touch, we miss you.’
He goes up on his tiptoes and reaches out to grab Al’s head. He pulls him down to his level, plants a kiss on his head, and leaves quietly and secretly through the side door before he’s locked in and held down against his will.
It’s only been a few hours with his friends but coming back here and being reminded of who he is has Al feeling lighter.