The lessons were bloody terrifying. She was an atrociously bad driver. After the first lesson, I had to remove a hedge from the front grille of my car, my pride and joy. I was even more afraid for myself than I was for the car, but somehow it was worth it. She had become more relaxed with me, a bit chatty even. Still shy and all and not exactly flirty or anything like that, but good fun all the same, and afterwards we would often have a coffee and some cake in a cafe. Susan wasn’t wrong about her appetite.
I was sort of worried that the mother would take against me because, you know, Villas and Avenue and all that, but fair play to her, she was very nice to me and Eugene was always wanting an arm-wrestle off me. I grew fond of him as well. It wasn’t his fault that he was peculiar, but he had a way of laughing like a donkey that was hilarious, even though I didn’t know what he was laughing about. Neither did he, I’m sure.
At the end of her third lesson, I kissed her and asked her to marry me. She laughed but she kissed me back, so that wasn’t too bad. We started having proper dates then, but she never talked about the proposal again. I think she thought I was joking, but I wasn’t. I didn’t have the nerve to ask her again, not for a while. I got to know her inasmuch as anyone could back then.
I think I was good for Alice, when everyone else probably thought it was the other way round. We would go to local discos and dance halls. She made herself a dress of pink silk. She said it was ‘ashes of roses’, but if you ask me, it was pink. We began to have a bit of fumbling, if you know what I mean, nothing too heavy. I was afraid of pushing it too much with her in case I scared her off, and I reckoned she was pretty religious like her ma. We were all a bit religious in them days, I suppose. Not like now.
We could have gone all the way once when we went to the races in Galway. We drove down in the Granada. I booked us into a small hotel for the night, in separate rooms, obviously. Alice must have been a charm because I won big on three races. I’d never had a day’s luck before that. After our day out, I ordered a bottle of wine with our meal (she had seconds of everything). I wasn’t used to wine then, only knew that there was red or white and that red seemed more sophisticated, so I pointed to the most expensive bottle of that on the menu (I’d had a few pints of plain already and was feeling generous). The uppity waiter asked if I was sure. I was, I said. Alice wasn’t used to wine either. Within half an hour, she was talking nonsense about wanting to live in a house made of books or some such. Unusually for Alice, she began to get a bit sexy with me, a bit loose limbed. I hardly knew what to do, but then she leaned across the table in a kind of wanton way and kissed me loudly on the lips. I was in heaven, but the waiter came over and killed the moment by telling us that we were disturbing the other diners. The other diners consisted of a middle-aged couple and two old ladies. I think they were disturbed all right, but I didn’t care.
We floated up the stairs arm in arm. I deposited her at the door of her room where we kissed passionately for a few moments. She asked if I wanted to spend the night in her room. Well, I was hardly likely to argue, was I? She flopped herself down on the bed and catapulted her shoes one after another with a steady aim towards the waste bin, missing both times by miles. My God, she was fabulous. I excused myself and ran to the bathroom at the end of the hall (well, let’s just say it wasn’t the Four Seasons). I stood in a plastic shower tray, soaping myself in a frenzy of preparation. I rinsed myself repeatedly under the trickle of lukewarm water dribbling out of the rusted shower head, and dried myself off in a fierce hurry using a towel so stiff and thin that I practically sanded myself. I threw my dressing gown around me and headed back towards the room. I caught myself in the mirror halfway down the landing. My teeth and lips were coated in reddish-grey scum from the wine. I thought that Dracula might make a better impression than me. Thundering back into the bathroom in search of my toothbrush, I skidded cartoon-style in the puddle I had left behind me and, grabbing the washbasin on the way down, landed on my right elbow with water gushing over me from the detached pipe which had come away from the wall. Jesus, the pain. And the humiliation – when I looked up to see the manager and the elderly ladies and realized that my robe had flapped open, thereby exposing me to the four winds.
To make things worse, every penny I’d won had to be paid over to the hotel and the local doctor. When I eventually got back to Alice’s room at 3.30 in the morning, she was in exactly the same place as I’d left her, fully clothed but snoring lightly. I was too tired and hung-over, not to mention suffering from the pain of my newly relocated elbow, to feel anything else. I went back to my own room and had an uncomfortable night’s sleep.
The journey home was horrendous. Alice was purple with embarrassment at what she saw as her disgraceful behaviour, and I couldn’t drive because of my arm, which meant that she had to take the wheel. I nearly fell out of love with her on the way home. We had five near-death experiences. I thought my shoulders would be permanently lodged in my ears, and to this day I get flashbacks to that corner in Kinnegad. There was a distinct cooling of our relationship after that.
A week later, I was giving my friend Gerry the highlights of what had happened in the hotel, showing him the hotel bill so that he could see how much the night had cost me. He took the almighty piss out of me for ordering a whole bottle of port.
Gradually, Alice and I got back to normal, though the question of spending a night together out of town was never raised again. When I eventually admitted to her that I had mistakenly ordered port instead of wine, it broke the ice and allowed us to blame the drink for the events of that night.
My mam was delighted that the two of us were going out. She often invited Alice for tea. Occasionally, Alice would bring Eugene with her and then Mam would make too big a fuss, making it awkward for me and roaring at Eugene as if he was deaf. Eugene would laugh at her. He never minded what anyone said to him.
I got on like a house on fire with Eugene. If you ask me, he was a great fella altogether really. He was a funny, happy child in a grown-up body. Always smiling. Now, I’m not saying he couldn’t be difficult sometimes. For instance, he liked to dance. In public, at Mass or in the Quinnsworth usually, in front of everyone. But people understood that he was only a harmless eejit, God help him. We got into this game, him and me, where he’d be in his favourite chair and I’d come up behind him and lift up his arms and we’d pretend to be flying around the sitting room. He loved that game, so he did, and never got tired of it, and do you know what, it was a joy to be playing and to hear the laugh out of him like that. There’s not many that could lift Eugene, I can tell you. I’m as strong as an ox and he’s no lightweight.
Eugene’s bedtime was a lovely routine at the O’Reillys’. There’d be a pot of tea for us and a glass of milk for Eugene and a plate of buttered bread would go round. And then when it was washed up and the table scrubbed, there were prayers, everyone on their knees at the kitchen table saying the rosary, and after that Alice would read a story to Eugene, usually a fairy tale or maybe a nursery rhyme of some kind. She had a brilliant way of reading. She made all the people in the stories come alive with different voices and accents and all. I loved to listen to her almost as much as Eugene did.
After a while, Mam started quizzing me. Was I serious about Alice? Did I know what I’d be taking on? I think Mam meant well, but we had a few rows about it. It wasn’t her business, after all. Mam thought it was great when I took Alice out the odd time and bought her cake, but she wanted to remind me that Alice would be responsible for Eugene when the mother died. If I married her, I’d be taking on the two of them. I made up my mind that that was fine with me. I really loved Alice by now, and if anything, Eugene would be a bonus.
Although nothing was ever said, I believed we had an understanding. We had been together for over a year. I hadn’t reckoned with Oliver. Alice could be walking around now, hale and hearty, if I had reckoned with Oliver.
3. Michael