Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
T he pub was heaving.
That was a lie. It was busy but not heaving. If it had been heaving – well, I wouldn’t have gone in for a start – but there wouldn’t have been so many eyes on me. What was it with small villages? Why did everyone have to know everyone’s business? It wouldn’t be like that in London, for example. Not that I would know. I’d never actually been to London.
When I went to England with my parents, it was to a place called Bath to see Aunty Bridie. Aunty Bridie wasn’t actually my aunty, she was my mum’s cousin, but that’s just what we called her. She had black hair like me, but it was as straight as a poker. Aunty Bridie had moved to Bath when she was a girl because her mother (my mum’s actual aunty) had got a job as a teacher in one of those posh secondary schools where the girls wore long pleated tartan skirts that they couldn’t roll up even if they wanted to.
I used to roll my skirt up in secondary school all the time. It would bunch up at my waist and I’d tie my jumper around it so that no one knew, and then roll it back down again before I got home.
I liked the buildings in Bath. They were all creamy and old, with huge windows and cobbled streets but it took us ages to get anywhere because I had to walk on the cobbles not the lines between them. We stayed for a week, in a bed and breakfast, and I hadn’t left Ireland since.
My parents were never ones for holidays. They preferred to stay at home. Some might say they were content with what they had; others might say they hadn’t seen the world. But they were happy. And I was too. And that was all that mattered at the end of the day.
My mum had texted to say there was live music before the quiz, which was a godsend because it meant I could fill the afternoon. Everyone looked at us when we walked in, including Carmel, who was sat next to Poor Richie, their clipboards at the ready. Even Ian had given me a wink at the bar like I’d just passed some kind of invisible milestone.
I must admit, I felt smug with Jack on my arm. He wasn’t literally on my arm but he did place his hand behind my back when he bought me a drink. God that felt good. To feel like I was in a couple.
I had expected Una to drop the condoms off at my house rather than the pub. So when she arrived shortly after us with a grin on her face that was impossible to ignore, my heart literally stopped. She sauntered over and pushed them into my hand. She thought she was being discreet, but it was about as discreet as an elephant walking into the bar. In that moment, I literally hated her.
When Jack took the change from the drinks and placed it loose in his back pocket, I’d watched on in horror as he’d passed me my drink. I could see Una in the corner of my eye. She knew I’d hate it, and she knew I’d not be able to wipe my glass with Jack there.
It wasn’t Jack’s hand that I minded. It was the money, the coins, the contamination. It was the thought of someone else’s dirty, sweaty, sneezed-on hands or nose-picking fingers touching them.
It wasn’t an irrational thought as far as I was concerned. I’d seen programmes where they showed how germs could be transferred from hands to objects. It wasn’t that I was worried about getting ill. I had never really worried about that. It was deeper than that and impossible to explain. It was the thought of someone else’s bodily secretions on me. I had tried to explain it to Una many times and she had tried to understand it. But how could you explain something that doesn’t make sense in words? To Una’s annoyance, I made my excuses to use the loo and directed Jack, with my drink, to one of the tables closest to the door (I liked to know my exits). When I came back my hands were covered in sanitiser so that when I picked up my drink it cleaned the glass.
Una was sat down at our table with her vodka-lime-and-soda, and I’d shot her daggers. When Niall walked in and joined us, I knew the night was over. Because how was I going to seduce Jack with my best friend and Niall next to me?
* * *
It turned out I didn’t need to seduce Jack. He seduced me. He’d kept his hand on my thigh the entire time – it started on my knee, he’d put it there subtly when Ian had begun to read out the quiz questions and we’d got one right. It stayed there for a while, and I hadn’t dared look down just in case he’d thought I didn’t want it there and moved it. But it didn’t matter because he moved it anyway – further up my leg.
I had felt the inside of my thighs tingle in a way I had never experienced, and my leg hairs pricked up through my leggings. I’d spent the entire time praying he hadn’t felt them because in my excitement I’d forgotten to shave them. Actually, the truth was I hadn’t shaved them for over a month, I didn’t see the point to be honest, no one ever saw them.
Una had seen his hand there too, and I’d tried not to notice the delight that danced in her eyes through fear of her ruining it all for me and saying something completely embarrassing, like I hadn’t slept with a guy for nearly two years.
Niall must have seen it too because he’d shifted in his chair uncomfortably, and in the end he was the only one answering the questions because we’d moved on to shots and Una was doing her best moon dance while telling Jack all about our life in Drangan and how she’d been trying to get me to leave ever since she’d arrived.
Then she took out her Polaroid camera and snapped a photo of Jack just as he leant in to kiss my cheek.
* * *
When we got back, I didn’t shut the gate, I’d planned on doing it later, when Jack was asleep, and I didn’t have to worry about being seen. I left him in the kitchen pouring us a whisky and I’d run upstairs so quickly I actually forgot to count. (Another sign that him being here was good for me.)
I shut the bathroom door, grabbed my shaver, pulled down my leggings and splashed some water on my hands before I ran it over my legs in a desperate attempt to make them smoother.
I scanned my bedroom as I walked past, the bed was made, the sheets were clean, there was nothing that might embarrass me on show. Then I made my way back down, with nothing else but Jack’s penis on my mind.
Jack was in the kitchen, stood where my grandmother used to peel the wild mushrooms she’d picked. She didn’t cook with them. She ate them raw. My eyes dropped to the condoms I’d shoved in my bag. They’d fallen out onto the counter and I could see Una’s name in bold print.
‘Do you make a habit of carrying your friend’s condom’s around?’ he asked with a smirk.
‘They’re not Una’s,’ I said quickly. ‘They’re mine. I mean … they were mine, but I gave them to her.’
‘Bit strange to put her name on a pack of your condoms,’ he said.
‘She is strange. Very strange.’ I grabbed them and pushed them back into my bag.
I could feel my heart thud in my ears and my cheeks heat up, but before I could change the subject, Jack took my hand and pulled me into him so that I was so close I couldn’t tell whose breath was whose. And just when I thought he was going to finally kiss me again, he yanked down my leggings so that my bare bottom was exposed under the cup of his hands (I didn’t have pants on, did I mention I hated wearing them? Something about the feel of another layer against my skin irritated me).
We stayed there like that for just a moment – long enough for me to feel the throb of his cock through his jeans against my naked skin. And then, keeping his eyes on mine, he slowly sunk down, and all I could do was swallow hard and bite my lips as I waited for his to reach mine.
* * *
I had every intention of having sex with Jack. Every intention. But I couldn’t get the thought of the woodlice out of my head, so when he reappeared next to me after what felt like, well, what felt like forever and pulled off my top to reveal my bra, I made some excuses that I needed to shut the gate before it blew off in the wind (thank God it was actually windy) and promised Jack that I’d meet him upstairs as soon as I was done.
I grabbed Jack’s T-shirt because I wanted to feel like I was his – like in the films when the girlfriend wears the boyfriend’s oversized T-shirt. I wanted to feel like that. Then, when I was sure he’d gone upstairs, I made my way outside and onto the drive. I cast my eyes down to the lane, the moon made it look silvery grey and I could see my breath like I was smoking. I had never smoked but had often wondered if I should have at least tried it. Una used to offer me hers when we were younger but the smell of it made me want to be sick and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want that in their lungs.
Una wasn’t a real smoker, she just did it when she was at the pub so that she could stand outside and watch Shaun did everything but from the window to see if he flirted with Carmel. I think he still wanted Una, but she would never go back. She said she couldn’t kiss him again after his tongue had been in Carmel’s vagina. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I thought his penis had been in there too.
I shone my phone light along the wooden post where the woodlice gathered. They only came out at night; it was like they did it on purpose to torment me. Niall had said it was because woodlice were crustaceans, which meant they were related to shrimps and crabs and that was why they had to hide in places that were cool and damp, like my gate latch, and only came out at night.
Niall had taught me some other facts about woodlice too. Like they ate their own poo and could even bite, if provoked. And that the mother woodlouse laid her eggs in a pouch, like a kangaroo, and then stayed close to the babies for a few months until they were old enough to leave.
I brushed all twelve of them off gently and watched them disappear to the ground. They’d find their way back again but at least they wouldn’t be squashed. I ran my finger over the wooden post.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.’
Ten was a good number. It was safe. I scanned the post again and stared at it until my eyes blurred over and started to water.
‘Gone, gone, gone,’ I reassured myself under my breath as I latched the gate shut.
I had to be quick, I didn’t want Jack to look out of the window because, under the moonlight, he would have seen me easily from my room, even with my torch off.
I turned and made my way back with quick steps to the porch and pulled the door closed behind me. I took off my shoes and hung my coat on the hooks that had been there since I was a little girl.
My grandmother used to leave her wellington boots caked in mud from the field under her coat that hung above, with her plum hat perched on top like she was underneath it. She’d be out in the fields most days in September. After she died, I left her coat and hat there and sometimes, when I’d come home from the shop, I’d forget, just for a flash, that she wasn’t inside.
I wanted my grandmother to be cremated so we could scatter her with the mushrooms and let the wind take her away to Slievenamon, because she loved the mountain as much as I did, but my mum was adamant she had to be buried in the same grave with my great-grandmother. So that’s where she was, and I took comfort in that too because she was tucked away, nice and safe, and I could visit her whenever I wanted.
I pulled the handle that Jack had fixed but it didn’t move so I yanked it again, but it still didn’t move. I tugged it one more time but I already knew what I’d done. I’d locked myself out.
So I stood there in my grandmother’s porch, next to her old coat and plum hat, wearing nothing but my pants and Jack’s T-shirt.