Page 20 of To Hell With It
My memory of the night before was hazy, although I was glad I’d woken up on my own and fully clothed. Una had texted me so much I had to put my phone on silent. I’d had five missed calls from her since the early hours and one voicemail. I daren’t listen to it in case Jack heard it – Una had a habit of shouting when she was excited.
Besides, I didn’t have time to speak to Una. I had to figure out what the hell I was going to offer Jack for breakfast. I’d completely forgotten to buy any food and the only thing I had to offer was one of Sally’s period eggs that was still covered in chicken shite.
* * *
It turned out Jack didn’t eat eggs (he was allergic to them, thank God) so the only thing I could offer him was porridge and peanut butter.
I couldn’t take him into town because I wasn’t prepared enough for that. How would I open the shop doors for example without him noticing it wasn’t with my hands (I used my elbows), and what if he used a public toilet? What if he needed a shit? He’d have to sit on the seat and then what? How would I get him to wash himself before he came home and sat on mine? What if his trousers or belt touched the basin? What then? How would I wash his clothes without him knowing? How would I get him to have a shower? It was too much to think about. And I’d exhausted myself doing all of that the first time he’d gone into Clonmel; I didn’t have the energy to do it all again.
I scurried around my kitchen in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, I could offer him when it hit me – he was a tourist in Ireland, he’d be happy with anything Irish.
I got to work straight away. It was still early. I had time. I chucked the butter, flour, sugar and baking soda into a bowl, with a pinch of salt, and poured in the milk. I used my fingers – strangely, I had no issues getting them mucky – to knead the dough and I wondered if my grandmother had ever made Irish bread for her lover (not that Jack was my lover). My grandmother had been in love with another man, she’d told me before she died, and I’d often wondered what her life would have been like if she’d followed her heart and not her head.
My grandfather was a good man, a stable man. He’d worked hard all his life and provided for her the way a man of his generation did. He’d loved my grandmother in his own way and she’d loved him back in hers, but I don’t think she was ever in love with him. Not in the way she had wanted to be. How could she have been when she was in love with someone else?
When it was ready, I took the bread out of the oven, then poured us both a cup of tea and waited. I waited until the tea went cold and the bread went hard. But he didn’t come down, and in the end, after I’d sent Una a message telling her what was happening, she convinced me to go up to check on him, so I did.
Only when I got to the spare room, Jack wasn’t in it and neither was his stuff.
ChapterTwelve
‘Has he done a runner?’ Una laughed down the phone.
‘I don’t know. His bag has gone and the front door was locked – I hadn’t even noticed the key through the letter box until I stood on it.’
‘Didn’t he leave you a note?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Jesus, Pearl, you’ve really done it this time.’ Una sighed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you must have scared the poor guy off.’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘All that praying!’
‘Shut up.’
‘Something must have happened to make him leave without saying goodbye?’
‘I even made soda bread for breakfast.’
‘Jesus,’ Una muttered again.
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘You might as well stick a four-leaf clover on your head and do the Irish jig waving the Irish flag.’
‘That’s harsh.’
‘You’re twenty-seven, Pearl, not sixty-seven!’
‘He’s a tourist.’
‘Ah, don’t be daft. He’s a bloke looking for a good time before he goes back to the other side of the world. Let’s face it, you didn’t give it to him, and so he’s gone.’
