Chapter Eleven #5
Bobby’s little mouth sets stubbornly. “I won’t have them dirty fuckers slagging her,” he says. “You heard them. They’re filthy animals, so they are. If one of them says something about Róisín, I’ll have to put manners on him.” He clenches a fist to demonstrate.
“Lemme talk to them,” Cal says. “I’m not saying I can get them to back off altogether, but I can probably get them to dial it down enough that you won’t have to kick anyone’s ass.”
Bobby brightens. “They’ll listen to you,” he agrees. “If I tried, it’d only make them worse. Would you have a go?”
“Sure,” Cal says. “No problem.”
“ ’Cause I’d only love to bring her here.
I’m sick of driving all that way every weekend, and nothing but video chats in between, and the connection always dropping right when we’re at an important bit.
I’d only love to, you know…” Bobby is turning bright red.
He glances over his shoulder, to make sure none of the old guys are listening in, and leans across the table towards Cal.
“You know. Marry her, like. Sure, why not? I know the lads’d slag me, getting mixed up in that class of carry-on at my age, but they do slag me anyhow.
It’d be worth it, to have her there the whole time. ”
Cal thinks of Lena’s remoteness, dense as the silence prisoned under deep water. Don’t do it, he wants to tell Bobby. Don’t change a damn thing. Just freeze it right here, today, while everything’s great.
“Go for it,” he says. “Mazel tov.”
“That’s the thing, but,” Bobby says, worried again. “I wouldn’t know how to go about it. I wanted to ask you that. You’ve got experience with the aul’ proposals; how did you do it?”
“You’ve got experience,” Cal points out. He does kind of sympathize with the guys: it’s hard to resist teasing Bobby. “You asked Lena to marry you, before I came along and got in your way.”
Bobby blinks and flaps a hand at Cal, embarrassed. “Ah, no, that didn’t count. That wasn’t a proposal; I thought we’d get on grand, is all. This has to be…you know. Romantic.”
“I dunno how much help I’m gonna be with romance, man,” Cal says. “I just asked.”
“See, that’s what I thought,” Bobby says, pointing a finger earnestly at Cal.
“I thought all I hadta do was get a ring and go down on one knee. But then I looked online—just for a few tips, like—and, my God. People have photographers, and crowds singing songs, and trained doves, and fuckin’ helicopters.
I wouldn’t know where to get a helicopter, and Róisín’s not mad about loud noises anyhow. ”
“Listen,” Cal says. “I don’t know who these helicopter guys are—they sound like douchebags to me—but Róisín doesn’t want to marry any of them. From what you say, she wants to marry you. If just getting down on one knee in her living room is your style, then it’s gonna be hers.”
Bobby thinks that over, picking bits off his beermat. Then he glances up at Cal with a shy smile. “I’m going to do it,” he says. “Whenever I can get my courage up. Will you be a groomsman? If she says yes, like.”
“Sure,” Cal says, touched. “I’d be honored.” He hopes to God that Róisín says yes.
“I oughta invite Tommy Moynihan,” Bobby says, a little defiantly. “I know there’s people that’s got a grudge against the Moynihans these days, but I owe the man.”
Cal doesn’t particularly like this line of thinking, and he especially doesn’t like what will happen if Bobby airs it around the rest of the guys.
He’s almost impressed by the amount of damage Tommy is strewing around this place, grenades going off right and left, land mines under lifelong friendships, fuses merrily burning away. “You figure?” he asks.
“God, yeah. If he hadn’t bought that field off me, I’d never have gone to France. And then I’d never have met Róisín.” Bobby is round-eyed with the horror of the thought. “I owe that fella…” He gets stuck for words. “Everything,” he concludes simply.
“Well,” Cal says carefully. “Maybe, maybe not. You and Róisín only live a couple of hours’ drive apart; it’s not like she’s in Australia. You would’ve met one way or another.”
“Like Fate,” Bobby says, struck by the idea. He thinks it over. “Fate,” he repeats, warming to it. “D’you reckon?”
“Sure,” Cal says. “Tommy just happened to come in useful. If he hadn’t’ve bought your land, you’d’ve met her at someone’s wedding, or her car would’ve broke down when you were passing by, or something.”
“I’d rather ’twas Fate,” Bobby confides. “I’m not mad about Tommy.”
“Nope,” Cal says. “Me neither.”
Bobby settles back on the banquette, looking happier, and sinks a couple of inches of Guinness. “D’you reckon you and Lena were Fate?” he asks. “And that’s why she turned me down?”
Cal doesn’t believe in Fate, and right now he doesn’t know what he and Lena are. “Sure,” he says. “Probably.”
“That’s what I came in here about,” Bobby says. His face, when he glances over at Cal, is suddenly troubled. “Then we got onto Róisín and all. But I was looking to talk to you about Lena, like.”
“OK,” Cal says. He remembers Bobby’s quick blink when Lena’s name came up. He knocks back a fair amount of his own pint and prepares to explain calmly that he doesn’t beat Lena. “Shoot.”
“Sure, ’tis only a loada aul’ shite,” Bobby assures him. “I just thought you’d wanta know all the same.”
“Yep,” Cal says. “What’d you hear?”
Bobby looks like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world, but he’s determined to see this through. “You know how Rachel Holohan went to Lena’s house,” he says. “That evening.”
This is not what Cal was expecting. “Yeah,” he says.
“And you know what people are like round here. Sure, they’d say anything.”
“I noticed that,” Cal says. He sits still and waits for yet another damn shoe to drop.
“There’s a few of them saying…” Bobby has gone back to picking his beermat apart. “You know all that talk about Rachel, that she was doing the dirt on Eugene? I’d say there’s nothing in it, she always seemed like a lovely girl, but—”
“Right,” Cal says. “People’ll say anything.”
“Yeah, but Lena going around asking people about it…that’s not like her. Sure, you know yourself, she wouldn’t be the nosy type.”
“Nope,” Cal says. He had no idea that Lena was doing any such thing. “So people, what? They have a problem with that?”
“Not a problem, just…why would she care who Rachel was riding, like? Unless…” Bobby shoots Cal a glance of pure appeal, like he’s begging Cal to finish the sentence for him.
Cal says, “Unless what.”
“There’s people saying Lena got it in her head that Rachel was…you know. With, with you. Not saying it was true, like,” Bobby adds hastily, when Cal’s shoulders move, “just that Lena thought it.”
Cal notices he’s gripping his glass much too hard. He carefully lets go of it and folds his hands together on the table.
“And so she got Rachel over there,” Bobby says, to the beermat, “and she said to Rachel that she was going to tell Eugene. And that’s why Rachel done it.”
Cal bites down before he can say What the fuck. He catches Bobby’s quick glance, like he’s afraid Cal might flip the table.
“And,” Bobby says, taking a deep breath and speeding up to get it over and done with, “there’s a few people saying it was true all along, ’cause why would Rachel have kilt herself if it was all a loada shite? And that’s why Lena’s been asking around, to find out who else knew.”
Cal realizes that his whole body is ready to punch someone in the face, and that it probably shouldn’t be Bobby. He concentrates on sitting still and listening to the commentator’s voice jabbering endlessly from the TV.
Bobby is watching, his face crunched into a tight knot of wretchedness, to see how Cal is taking it.
“Maybe I oughta have kept my mouth shut,” he says.
“I didn’t wanta upset you, but…in case someone came at you or Lena, saying things, like, or looking at you funny, and you didn’t know what they were on about.
If it was me, I’d wanta be told. Should I have stayed quiet? ”
“You did right,” Cal says. “Thanks.” He doesn’t bother to ask Bobby who’s saying what. He already knows the part that matters. “Just so we’re clear: that’s the biggest load of horseshit I ever heard in my life.”
Bobby looks up at that. “You don’t haveta convince me,” he says simply.
“Sure, everyone with a titter of sense knows Lena wouldn’t hurt a fly.
She’s kind. When I asked her would she ever marry me, that time, she coulda laughed in my face and told the world I’d made an eejit of myself, but I knew she wouldn’t.
That’s why I done it. I thought to myself, I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life with someone that’s kind. ”
“She’s a good woman,” Cal says.
“And you’d never play offside on her. Specially not with some young one that’s barely older than your Trey. I told people that.”
They look at each other. “Thanks,” Cal says gently. He has just room enough in his mind to understand what Bobby was doing, by asking him to be a groomsman. “I appreciate that.”
“ ’Tis all just shite talk,” Bobby says earnestly. “It won’t last. Sure, there were rumors about you before, d’you remember? And then they blew over, and everything was grand.”
“Right,” Cal says. “Yeah.”
“ ’Tisn’t personal. Everyone gets a bit of it.
When I was only a little young lad, back in school”—Bobby leans in closer, turning his shoulder to the bar—“some fucker put it about that I was shagging the sheep. I never did, like,” he adds, for clarity.
“But I was getting terrible slaggings all the same. It got that bad, I thought about doing myself in. Only that woulda upset the mammy, so I didn’t do it, and in the end everything blew over. ”
He sits back and gazes hopefully at Cal. “Things mostly do,” Cal says. He stands up. “I gotta get going.”
Bobby looks alarmed. “Don’t worry, man,” Cal says, laying a hand on Bobby’s shoulder as he passes. “I’m not gonna kick anyone’s ass or anything. Small town like this, people make shit up, whatcha gonna do. Right?”