He stared at his face in the mirror. His hair was still auburn, although faded, the curls flecked here and there with grey, and his blue eyes were crinkled around the corners. He lathered his face with shaving soap and smiled at his white-bearded reflection – a paternal face, like Santa Claus. He imagined how it would be to dress as Father Christmas, surrounded by four children. He’d always thought he’d like two of each: two boys who liked football, a sporty girl, maybe a surfer or a swimmer, and then one for Maura. A chirpy cheeky one with Maura’s soft shining eyes.
He lifted the razor and swiped it smoothly across his cheek, then screamed. Thin red blood seeped through his fingers and spattered on the pale tiles of the floor. He swore and dropped his razor in the basin, reaching for toilet roll to plug the small leak in his neck. He looked in the bathroom mirror: sallow face with a foaming beard and eyes round as a fish’s. His crisp shirt was going to have to come off. Maura would not be pleased.
He threw the paper in the toilet and applied more, torn into squares, folded urgently. He stiffened and strained his ears. A rustling sound like a cold breeze warned him of Maura’s approach; the linen-clad thighs were rubbing together with a soft hiss, a stalking reptile.
He heard her voice before he saw her. It rang ice clear.
‘Brendan, for the love of God …?’ She rounded the corner, looked him up and down and snorted.
Brendan looked her up and down in turn and snorted too, but discreetly. Her cleavage tippled over the top of her V-neck jumper, revealing the tentative lace of a beige bra. The orbs he had first coveted and then caressed now held less fascination for him. The tight slacks and high heels accentuated her curves, and her face, now stern, was topped with little blonde curls pinned high on her head. He mopped his wound and waited for the onslaught to begin.
‘Will you look at your shirt? It is completely ruined. I will have to get you another one. The blue one won’t go as well with those trousers but never mind, it will have to do.’
Her pause for breath was punctuated by his placatory ‘OK, my love’ – but even as he said it, he felt a pang of regret that it wasn’t OK and there wasn’t any love.
She stared at him for a second and he wondered if she was having the same thoughts, then she sighed and started up again. ‘Brendan, it’s always the same every Saturday afternoon. You know these visits upset me.’
Brendan couldn’t help noticing the lines that puckered perfectly around the mouth as she spoke. She has the mouth of an arsehole, he thought to himself. As she stared at Brendan, her eyes were like bullets, small, blue-grey, ready to fire. Any attempt to pass her would be a battle manoeuvre in the making, so he stayed fixed, bloody paper in hand.
Maura rustled away, her heels tapping like nails to the brain. Brendan flushed the toilet and watched the paper, its perfect whiteness blotched with red spots, as it gurgled, dissolved and disappeared.
Brendan was sitting in the yellow Fiat Panda on his driveway. A wafting fragment of toilet paper was still attached to the dried blood on his neck. The engine thrummed gently.
He listened to the DJ on the radio: ‘The birds are singing and summer is blooming here in Dublin, and so let’s have the Beach Boys, bringing us “Good Vibrations”.’
He banged his head softly against the steering wheel. Harder. Harder still. There were definitely no good vibrations to be had anywhere here. Still no sign of Maura.
He saw a young woman and her child who emerged from their front door. It was Erin from number 27 and little Colm. Erin found her phone and started to chatter. The little boy moved from one foot to another, kicking stones. He only had on a thin jacket. The wind ruffled his hair, shaking the flags of his trouser legs, and he looked cold. He sat down on the kerb, dangling his fingers in the dirt. He scrabbled purposefully in the gravel, found something and picked it up. It was a discarded cigarette. Colm held it in his two fingers, raising his hand in an imitation of an adult pose, pulling a haughty face.
They’d both wanted children, him and Maura. The doctor in the hospital in Dublin said there was nothing wrong with the pair of them, and they should both just relax. That was ten years ago. He was nearly forty. Too late now. It was around that time that Maura’s soft eyes hardened. Her sweet smile became pursed lips, puckered and hard. Maura was always the love of his life. Now she was just his wife, who sat across the table at breakfast in a tight suit, her hair pulled back and pinned up and her brow tight with a frown. She used to gaze up into his eyes and promise to love him for ever. Now she slammed his coffee on the table at breakfast and told him not to let it go cold. He sighed. Perhaps that was what love was now; like coffee, it starts hot and strong, only to become tepid and cool.
Outside the car, the child looked up at his mother, who was talking and waving the arm carrying the handbag. Colm put one end of the cigarette in his mouth. He began to smoke as he had seen his mother smoke, as he had seen other adults smoke. He had it off to perfection, inhaling deeply, holding his breath while he smiled like the Bisto kid and then blowing out the imaginary smoke in a steady stream. Brendan laughed, a quiet chuckle. Erin stopped talking, pushed her phone into her bag, turned to the boy and gave him a slap across the head.
Colm dropped the cigarette butt and screamed, his face reddening with furious tears. He looked like a comic book character. Erin grabbed his hand and with a swift pull she yanked him to mobility. His little feet moved in the air, then landed in a run to keep time with his mother. Brendan thought that was no way to treat a kiddie; his hands clutched the steering wheel harder as the Panda shuddered when Maura leapt in. She swung the carrier bags of cakes into the space behind her and looked sharply at Brendan.
‘Are we ready to go, Brendan? Do we have everything?’
He nodded. ‘I think so, my love.’
Maura stared straight at him, her eyebrows making a deep V in her forehead, her mouth pursed. He knew the expression like he knew his own reflection.
‘Brendan, what in the name of God is this stuck on your neck? Toilet paper. Now look at the state of you.’
She reached in her handbag for a tissue. He knew what was coming. Her pink tongue poked through her lips, dampened the paper and scrubbed the hard tissue against his neck. Like a dutiful child, Brendan kept still and closed his eyes and thought that he could feel the love leaking from his life.
She looked at him, breathing out sharply, the moist hanky in her fist. She paused and, for a second, her eyes were soft again. She ruffled his hair, her fingers snagging in his curls. She touched his neck with the tenderness she’d have bestowed on a child. ‘There, Brendan, you’re all done. Much better. Shall we go?’
The Panda engine was still humming softly. Maura was sandwiched inside a brown checked jacket with a faux-fur collar; she had the red lipstick and crimson nails of a ferocious hunter that had just skinned and swallowed its prey whole. ‘What are we waiting for?’
He gulped. ‘Maura, I don’t think Mammy likes Sheldon Lodge. I mean, she hasn’t settled—’
‘She is in the best place, Brendan. They can do Tai Chi and cookery classes for the aged. They can give her a good life. Better than she was, by herself.’
‘She looks miserable, to tell the truth.’
Maura thought for a second. ‘Nonsense. I’m sure she’ll be happy as a lark. Come on, let’s get moving. Traffic will be terrible in Dublin centre.’
His hands were squeezing the steering wheel. He glanced at the faux-fur collar around Maura’s throat. He moved the gears into first. The DJ on the radio was excitedly talking about the heyday of Oasis and the 1990s, then the chords struck out and the song began: ‘Wonderwall’. It was a song that was playing all the time, the year they’d met.
The tune epitomised the ecstasy of their young love. Brendan had taken Maura, slender and soft, in his arms, as they kissed and whispered and planned for the future. They had both been just eighteen and she had gazed at his face as if he was a blessed saint. He had felt that he could achieve anything, for her sake. And the voice sang the words just for them. Words which promised undying love, love beyond measure, love so vast it would last for ever.
As Brendan smoothly turned the Panda towards the edge of the estate, Maura’s eyes were half closed in a glaze and she began to sing, in her thin, cheese-grater voice:
‘Wonderwaaaaall …’
She was in her own world, and he had no idea what she was thinking. He wondered if she remembered the happy times; if she recalled their many walks by the River Liffey, how he gave her his anorak once when the rain started, how she squeezed his fingers and smiled into his face. He wondered if she was thinking anything at all. His fingers made deep grooves on the fabric on the wheel, wondering where she had gone, the sweet, soft-skinned girl of his past. He sighed from somewhere, lost fathoms inside him, and looked at the traffic ahead, nose to bumper, grumbling to a halt.