Читать книгу Temptation - Dermot Bolger - Страница 6

Sheila woke first. Alison could tell by the springs of the small bed and knew that her daughter was content to lie there, self–contained, savouring the wonder of waking in a hotel bedroom. Shane would sleep on, even feigning sleep for a time after he woke, but Danny would be out of bed once his eyes opened. Alison lay on her side, watching her elder son’s sleeping face, knowing that his eyelids would flicker automatically open at half past seven. Every morning the same so that she had stopped using an alarm clock.

She couldn’t tell if Peadar was awake or asleep. It had been late when he returned from the bar and she hadn’t turned over, forcing him to make the first move, if any. She knew that he had lain awake for a long time, with inches of sheet separating their skin. She turned towards him now. His breath was nasally and in a few years’ time he would snore. He looked older in the dawn light, worn out, although she knew that once he woke he would summon the energy to sparkle and make the children laugh. He was a morning person. Perhaps that was one of the contrasts which made their marriage work.

She spooned herself into his back and put an arm around him, her fingers luxuriating along his furry chest, then moving mischievously down to the untidy tangle of hair spilling out from his Y–fronts. He stirred, sleepily, as her fingers lightly brushed against the unsummoned stiffness he sometimes woke with.

‘I’ve told you, McCann,’ he murmured, ‘my wife is getting suspicious.’

It was an established joke between them. ‘Very suspicious,’ she whispered back, gently taking his earlobe between her teeth. Peadar turned towards her and the creak of their bed woke Danny who padded across to snuggle sleepily against her back, his eyes not even fully open. Peadar rolled over to disguise his stiffness as Danny leaned across to hug his father. All three lay in silence, then Peadar turned more fully onto his stomach as Sheila joined them on his side of the bed. Alison smiled, wondering what cold unerotic thoughts he was filtering through his head.

‘The plunge pool,’ she muttered to him.

‘What?’

‘Think of diving into the ice–cold plunge pool.’

Peadar shivered loudly. ‘I was thinking of McCann with Mother Teresa,’ he replied and stared across at Shane still feigning sleep and clutching his Paddington Bear.

‘I’ve an idea,’ he said. ‘Let’s all eat Paddington for breakfast.’

‘You will not.’ Shane uncoiled himself and landed with one spring on their bed. Peadar laughed and soon had the children laughing too, as he invented songs, with no trace of disappointment in his voice at the sexual tension which, just a few moments before, seemed about to spill over between them.

Alison was relieved some years back when Peadar stopped attempting to explain the rules of the Fitzgerald’s golfing scramble competition to her. It combined the complexity of Einstein’s theory of relativity with a propensity for appalling dress sense on the part of more serious disciples. For lesser mortals like Peadar it apparently consisted of three strangers teeing off, almost everybody picking their ball up again, everyone blaming the prevailing weather conditions or their hangovers and promising to buy each other a drink in the hotel bar that night.

However, she knew it kept Peadar happy for a few hours on the Monday morning, after which he was generally content to put his golf clubs away for the remainder of the holiday. The biggest cheer at the prizegiving every Thursday night was for the golfing competition, with scores calculated by a formula, based on points from individual rounds and a percentage of points from the scramble, which seemed better applied to nuclear physics. Alison could spot the men and women who spent whole days trying to better their scores, and evenings huddled at the bar working out minute calculations.

Every year Peadar simply put his name down to make up the numbers for some old couple’s scramble team and steered clear of everything else. Alison told him she didn’t mind if he entered the competition properly by playing a full solo round now that the children were older. But she knew how a sense of duty held him back from abandoning her for so long. His scramble partners this year, the Irwins, came from Northern Ireland. They hailed him at breakfast time, with Peadar jokingly saluting Mr Irwin as ‘captain’ and arranging to meet them on the first tee at eleven o’clock.

It was only after Peadar had left and she brought the children for their morning swim, that she realised Danny was now too big to be taken into the ladies’ changing room. She had to ask an attendant to stay in the gents’ locker room with him, and even then she was uneasy, not recognising him from any previous year.

She got Sheila and Shane changed quickly and brought them out to where Danny waited impatiently at the poolside. The attendant smiled and walked away to fix the pile of towels, making Alison feel guilty for harbouring suspicions about him.

There were two full–size pools, a kiddies’ one sloping to a depth of five feet and an eight–foot adult one nearly always empty. The sauna and steam rooms were hidden behind statues up steps beside the adult pool, with a plunge pool between them. Out on the terrace, once you braved the sea breeze and occasional rain, was an outdoor Canadian hot tub whose powerful jets of water made the indoor jacuzzi almost tepid by comparison.

Alison knew she would have to give these pleasures a miss this morning to keep an eye on the children. The boys dived straight into the kiddies’ pool. Sheila ran to the steps and waded in. Alison followed slowly, shivering and warning them to let her lower her body into the cold water in her own time. Either her bathing costume had shrunk or else her bottom was getting bigger. She needed to discreetly adjust it under the water. The kiddies’ pool was packed. She looked around, wondering if the boys would make friends this year and might Sheila be left out of things.

Parents took turns minding children while their partners lazed in the steam room or raced outdoors in their bare feet to chance the Canadian hot tub. Danny was a natural swimmer, although Shane stubbornly insisted on wearing one armband. Alison mainly played with Sheila, letting the boys invent chasing games of their own. Somebody switched the fountain on and a thin sheet of water spilled down as children splashed excitedly underneath it. She saw the man who had spoken to the Bennetts last night, just for a second among hordes of parents and children at the pool edge. Then Danny popped up before her, splashing water and looking for a chase. She swam after him in mock rage while Shane joined the pursuit and, from the corner of her eye, Alison noticed Sheila playing with a girl her own age. A powerful water jet burst into life, spraying out a current in the far corner of the pool. She caught Danny who wriggled free and threw himself headlong into the turbulent spray.

Alison turned as Shane followed his brother, knowing the jet would keep the boys busy. That man was watching her again, this time from the Jacuzzi overlooking the children’s pool. He had obviously left his own brood to be attended by his wife. Instinctively she knew he had been watching for a long time, but he didn’t look away, even when she stared back. Instead he nodded slightly. Maybe their families had shared a holiday here before but that didn’t give him the right to blatantly eyeball her. She thought about how her bathing costume had shrunk and wondered had he seen her enter the pool. Sheila swam towards her. Alison made a great fuss of picking her daughter up, annoyed at him and furious at herself for feeling vaguely flattered. But it was a while since any man had gazed at her like that.

When Alison allowed herself to gaze back after five minutes the man had left the Jacuzzi. She glanced around the pool, wondered which mother was his wife and whether she knew that her husband stared at strangers.

Someone was calling her name. She recognised the wild brood of kids jumping into the water before she saw Joan, a woman from Dundalk who had shared this same week as them for the last three years. Alison smiled, recalling Joan’s raucous laugh and how she loved to stay up half the night, gathering other women around her to tell blue jokes.

If they lived near each other in Dublin, then Alison suspected that Joan was the sort of woman she would spend her life avoiding. But here on holidays it was good to have a laugh, without knowing that everything you said would be spun out as exaggerated gossip in the local park. Alison’s two sisters–in–law in Waterford had the same small–town look, getting drunk together at Joe Dolan concerts one night, falling out with each other the next. But at least they were there for one another, even though increasingly distant towards Alison every time she went back to Waterford.

Joan dived in, shivering with the sudden cold. She swam towards Alison, happily complaining in her usual torrent of words: ‘Is your Peadar beating the bushes on the golf course for lost balls like my Joey? I keep telling him, “Joey, you can’t piss in a straight line never mind hit a golf ball.” Joey’s version of course management is not falling into a lake and drowning himself.’

Joan aimed a palmful of water at her eldest son who threatened to swim too near.

‘Would you look at Jason there and him so sick last night we had to eat in our room. I saw Peadar at the bar when I finally got down but you were tucked away out of sight. He must have shagged you out, you know these schoolmasters and their big sticks. Here, off you go and have a sauna while I’ll keep an eye on your three.’

Alison went to protest but Joan raised a mock fist.

‘Away with you.’ She turned towards Danny who had swum over, recognising her and knowing a chase was on the cards. ‘Look at the size of you, Danny! They must be stretching you each night to make sure you make the right height for the cops. Come here till I squash you back to your proper size!’

Alison clambered out, listening to his mock screams and grateful for a few moments’ peace. Neither Shane nor Sheila noticed her slip away. She stood over the adult pool, knowing the water there was even colder. That man still hadn’t relieved his wife of her childminding duties. Alison saw him emerge from the sauna and stand beside the plunge pool. She never got down into it herself, despite Peadar’s protestations that a sauna was useless without icy water afterwards to close over the pores. But even Peadar himself always climbed down gingerly, shivering as she teased him. Alison watched the man, with his back to her, as he looked into the freezing water, then suddenly let his body fall with a splash. She shuddered, and panicked when there seemed no sign of his head reappearing. The plunge pool was seven foot deep, with a ladder going only half way down.

She looked around but nobody else was paying any attention. She had taken a step towards the plunge pool when his head resurfaced, spraying out drops of water as he shook his hair like a drenched dog. He turned, catching sight of her and nodded again. Alison found herself looking away as if caught spying. She dived into the adult pool, shivering but then enjoying its childfree waters. She swam towards the deep end, as far as possible from his eyes. She couldn’t be sure if her sense of still being watched was instinct or paranoia.

Alison swam lengths until her arms ached, then discreetly checked that the children weren’t missing her. A young mother held a crying baby in the crowded pool, glaring angrily towards the sauna, obviously waiting for her overdue husband. Alison smiled, imagining the reception that awaited him. Joan spied her and waved her away again. She checked the clock, allowing herself ten minutes before getting the kids changed for lunch.

The teenage Dublin girls had just arrived in bikinis and dived in unison into the adult pool. They climbed out again to repeat the exercise, in case any man present had missed it. Their father was heading into the sauna with the RTE executive who had cornered Peadar last night. She imagined them ladling more water onto the hot coals, anxious to outdo each other in the macho stakes as they discussed horsepower, horse–trading and horse shit.

She chose the steam room instead which was empty or at first appeared to be. She stretched out on the upper tier of hot tiles, adjusting her bathing costume, and stared up at the slow drip–drip of water converging and falling from the corners of tiles in the curved roof. It took several moments for her eyes to adjust to the steam and for the blurred outline of a man sitting against the far wall to register. She knew without being able to distinguish any features that it was him. Alison cursed herself for picking the steam room, then became angry. She had often shared this space with men before without it costing her a thought. If he was a voyeur that was his problem not hers. Besides he couldn’t get more steamed up than he was already. Alison lay back, closed her eyes and decided to ignore him.

‘They say five minutes in here earns you five years off purgatory.’ His voice broke the silence, as if he knew she had only now become aware of him. Alison made a non–committal noise, hoping to discourage him. But he laughed instead, wryly and familiarly. ‘We could have used some of this heat, stuck out at night in that mobile library in Skerries.’

Alison lay perfectly still. Mentally she checked her bathing costume, the state of her hair, a half dozen inconsequential things as she tried to place his voice. She felt naked, stripped of her anonymity. It was twenty years since she had briefly worked in the mobile libraries. She opened her eyes and tried to peer across through the steam.

‘Do I know you?’ she asked.

‘A different time, Ali, a different world.’

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.