Meet Gaia

Saturday came, and by then he’d managed retrospectively to keep his promise to acquire the van from Caomhin. As he wasn't willing to walk home the trio had to walk across town to pick it up, making an arrangement that Grainne and Jenny would come round to the house of Seamus, who’d been entrusted with the keys. Needless to mention, when they got there, he was still in bed, the sound of the doorbell integrating itself into one of his dreams. He buzzed them in, then started making a frantic effort to get dressed. By the time the girls got in, he was just tying his shoelaces. Jenny who was visiting Seamus’ humble abode for the first time, was looking around curiously, reading the spines of his books with the detached curiosity of someone who doesn’t read that much, while Grainne concentrated on berating Seamus for his sloth.
“C’mon, we gotta go soon if we’re to beat the traffic.”
“Um... could you start making me breakfast?”, he asked, rubbing his eyes, to which Grainne, feigning disgust, headed out towards the kitchen, leaving Seamus alone with Jenny. If he was a little more together, he’d have realised that this was the first time that he was talking to her alone without being under the influence of some sort of drug. Rubbing some tiger balm on his neck, he asked if Grainne ever acted this way towards her.
“No, but then I never do anything to piss her off.”
Seamus looked about as stunned as it was possible for him to be at this hour of the morning, and asked if rolling an E down her boyfriends throat with her tongue didn't piss her off. Jenny laughed, realising what an absurd thing she’d said, but then added, “well, since then, anyway.” This made Seamus remember one of the overpopulated places where he’d lived, where the males and females grouped themselves into power blocks, though the lads were way too laddish for Seamus which left him as the odd man out. He guessed that females tendency to always take each other’s side had something to do with the support they needed from each other when they were giving birth, but the idea of a bisexual threesome being socially acceptable was such a new one that it was anyone’s guess how this solidarity would affect their relationship. This reverie was interrupted[MP1] by Grainne calling him to tell him that his toast was ready, at which he gulped down the last of his vitamins and staggered out to the kitchen, where Grainne and some toast that wasn't margined quite the way he liked it was waiting for him, to be followed by some incredibly strong guarana tea. As he was chewing on the toast, Grainne pointed out that the house hadn't been cleaned since her last visit, to which Seamus responded by giving a knowing glance in Jenny’s direction. She smiled in response, seemingly on the verge of giggling like a pubescent schoolgirl. It probably wasn't that wise to play the two of them off against each other like this, and if he gave the matter serious consideration he would have played the part of conciliator, but it wasn't serious consideration of anything that got him into this position, but giving in to raw animal passions.
After they’d made their way across town, past the beggars and the disorientated tourists and the shops that were just opening their shutters, Seamus handed over the keys, they threw their stuff in the back, and Seamus sat down in the back seat, hoping to be allowed curl into a foetal position and go to sleep while Grainne and Jenny gossiped about him. But, to his surprise, and Grainne’s chagrin, she actually sat in the back seat with Seamus.
“Dontcha want to come and sit in the front?”, she asked, looking over in Jenny’s direction.
“No, I’m Okay here”, she replied, more focused on Seamus, though she could catch a glimpse of Grainne’s face in the mirror. When the van started moving she took hold of Seamus’ hand, which he gradually started stroking. By the time they were out of the city, they were in a fully-fledged embrace. It should have been embarrassing, but the fact that both of them were equally complicit seemed to make it acceptable to both of them. Grainne, in an apparent effort to ignore them, put the radio on loud, though this only seemed to provide a soundtrack for their lovemaking. This continued for a while, always seeming to be on the cusp of something more intimate, but after about half an hour Seamus suddenly lifted his head and burst out laughing, drawing the attention of Grainne, who’d been resolutely trying to ignore them up till now, back on them.
“What’s so funny?”, she asked, trying to sound dispassionate.
“I just realised that every car that we pass will think there’s a bunch of terrorists inside, but instead it’s just the two of us canoodling.” Like in Madame Bovary, he thought of adding but didn't.
“Make love not war”, added Jenny, making a two-fingered peace sign, while Grainne just smiled politely. Having got up into a seated position, Seamus was in a position to admire the countryside. Grainne asked him if they thought they were going in the right direction. Seamus replied flippantly that it was such a small island that if you drove in a straight line in any direction you’d eventually hit a beach, to which Jenny laughed a bit more than Grainne did. Their destination was a place Seamus used to go as a child, a secluded place that the incongruously warm gulf stream cut into one of the many craggy peninsula on the Irish coast. It was the sort of rocky stretch of coastline that reminded Seamus of how small his place was in the universe, though others would see it as proof of a benign god’s caring for his children. Seamus took a look outside and figured that they were indeed going in the right direction, more from his instinctive male homing instinct than from any recognition of the features on the landscape. He figured he may as well enjoy the scenery as the road was getting too bumpy for them to indulge in any hanky-panky. He made it look like he was watching out for landmarks when he was really just feeling too awkward to make any conversation. Yet the landscape was as fascinating to him as it was to the most wide-eyed German backpackers or gee-Harry American package tourists, with the abandoned stone houses and the little villages by the side of roads with two houses and a pub and the donkeys tied to sticks and the cows munching forlornly, impervious to the fact that it was the methane they were emitting that was making it so hot for them. There was one place in Kerry where the only way the cows could get home was by walking along the beach, or so he’d heard, but he was a member of a race adept at making up wacky stories, nach bhfuil?
They got to the beach pretty soon, the roads being quiet. Jenny seemed a bit disappointed, perhaps expecting a long, sandy beach instead of the little cove where they’d ended up, but Grainne seemed elated, rushing to park the car so that she could breath deeply of the saline air and let the sea breeze run through her hair. Then she asked Seamus where they’d put the tent, he assured her that he’d take care of it, though he’d never completed the whole boy scout thing, feeling he already had enough discipline at home and at school. He pointed to a place on the side of the hill leading down to the beach, it was owned by a farmer, he imagined, and the grass was long and lush, though the incline was so steep that none of today’s hormone-fed cows would be able to keep their balance. Seamus thought he saw a flat spot, though, and allowed the girls to walk down to the beach and work on their tans and catch up on the gossip Grainne had been planning to discuss on the way down.
Putting up the tent wasn't easy for Seamus. Secretly he knew that Grainne, and perhaps Jenny as well, knew that he wasn't very good at this sort of thing but some atavistic machismo compelled him to do it solo. At least it was still early and there was no-one else around to see the manic contortions he was allowing his body to be wielded into, as if by some cosmic puppeteer. When he was finished he didn't fancy going down to the beach, just testing out the tent for comfort. He made a pillow of his bag and then let himself fall into a deep slumber.
When he woke up a few more people had found there way to the beach. It wasn't a well kept secret, nothing in the external world was, these days, the only secrets were inside our skulls in the dark part of our psyches, where no-one hopefully would ever come, and which he’d ration out carefully like flakes of soap to beggars in Nepal if and when he got round to writing his memoirs, assuming he thought anyone would care enough to read them.
At least right now there were two girls who probably cared where he was and he made his way out of the tent. He hadn't made an effort to buy any summery clothes, always thinking that he was tempting a malign fate by doing so. It didn't bother him that he looked incongruous in his heavy shoes, the same ones, that like the clingy, fetishistic guy he was, wore both on the campaign trail and on the dancefloor, probably moulded to his feet the same sort of way that his jackets sort of anthropomorphic slouched on any chair he let them rest on. They were probably more well equipped for walking on this rocky beach than the flip-flops he didn't buy, he rationalised.
Jenny and Grainne had chosen a nice spot to enhance with their youthful beauty, as John Locke might have put it. They saw Seamus coming and waved conspicuously as if concerned that their supple bodies which Seamus had lusted after every inch of weren't familiar enough to him already. When he reached them he looked into his reflection in Jenny’s reflective shades and saw just what an incongruous figure he cut. This didn't seem to concern Grainne, who asked where Seamus had been all this time.
He adopted a contrite tone and replied, “Asleep”. Jenny made a gesture of handing over some money to Grainne, as if having lost a bet. They all laughed, as if in some glossy American sitcom where everything gets resolved after twenty-four minutes, and Seamus sat down. While rolling up the legs of his trousers and exposing his white, hairy legs, he pointed out that he had been working very hard lately, though he knew in his heart that campaigning for election was a pretty cushy number compared to, say, working on an assembly line in a sausage factory. Jenny reasoned that at least he wouldn’t get sunburnt in the tent.
“I don't really get sunburnt. I...” he couldn't remember if he’d discussed the part-Jewish thing with her, and wasn't in the mood to start talking about it now. “.... have pretty dark skin.
“Maybe your da was really a black man”, Jenny giggled in response, which Seamus took as a coded compliment about the size of his genitals, but just laughed mildly in response, and said, “not quite.” Grainne, who knew that he was a member of one of the lost tribes of Israel, felt her position as being his main woman reaffirmed. It was getting to be the hottest part of the day and Seamus felt compelled to ask if either of them had already been for a swim. They said they both had but that they wouldn’t mind going in again, which Seamus took as a cue to start getting undressed. After putting himself through another set of contortions, they were walking hand in hand towards the shore as if in some ad for some saccharine-laden soft drink, at the very least, no-one would guess that they were the people in the Sinn Fein van. Seamus knew that, though neither of them would think of this consciously, any display of cowardice might lead to their choosing to lick each other’s carpets rather than pleasure him. So he gritted his teeth and followed them into the water. Yes, he would have reasoned, if the sheer shock of the cold water splashing against his legs hadn't momentarily paralysed his intellect, people had a point in being scared of the sea for all those years. Yet he made a machoistic effort, almost pathetic in it’s insecurity, to ensure that he led rather than followed the people who didn't have any scrota to be tightened. But, like having to shave and constantly deny being a terrorist, the cold water was something he got used to after a while. Pretty soon he was floating out on his back, letting himself slowly drift out to sea like a piece of driftwood, while Jenny was breaststroking out towards him. Without her make-up her natural beauty was even more evident than it normally was, beguiling and seductive. While Seamus and Grainne laid a towel on the rocks and opened the books they brought down, Jenny immediatiately started splashing around in the water. Inevitably they started talking about her.
After the initial jousting Grainne decided that it was time to get down to business.
“How do you see your relationship with the two of us?”
“I think you’re both amazing”, he replied, not really expecting to get away that easily.
“You seem to have lots of fun when you’re with her, whereas when you’re with me you become more serious.”
Seamus hadn't thought about this before, but after taking a second or two to think it over, he realised it was true, but averred, diplomatically, that that was because he knew Grainne better and felt that she was better at communicating with him, whereas Jenny always seemed focused on the physical stuff.
Grainne couldn't have agreed more, and told Seamus how ironic it was that Seamus was the one she bonded with more while Jenny wanted only to tip the velvet. Then she added that she didn't mean this as any aspersion towards Seamus’ lovemaking abilities, though he was far too complacent in this regard right now to have taken any offence. He only replied,
“I guess I want different things from both of you as well, you’re more like a wife to me while she’s more like a mistress.” Seamus was hardly finished uttering this sentence before he realised that it could be taken as some sort of promise of commitment, but her face remained inscrutable, and she preferred to keep the conversation focused on Jenny.
“So do you think we should take her to Dublin with us?”
“I don't know what we should do with her”, he replied, as if she was some orphan that had been left in their doorway. “I don't really know what she wants out of life, apart from sex.”
“Well, she’s young”, replied Grainne, conscious that they were starting to sound more like her parents than her lovers, “She might need some time. You didn't know what the hell you were going to do with your life before the whole Sinn Fein thing happened either.”
Seamus nodded forlornly, but added that his real problem with Jenny was that he never felt that he was really getting to know her.
“That’s generally not so much of a problem with guys, Seamus.”
“Yeah, but I’m not like most guys, am I?”
“No, I don't suppose you are.”
They both laughed at how cliched the dialogue had become, as if they were both gratifying their Australian soap-opera fantasies of going to the beach to resolve their problems. Then they became more serious again, Grainne asking Seamus what Jenny might do if she came to Dublin with them. Knowing that the maid thing was a definite non-runner, he suggested, only partly facetiously, that she could become a lap lancer, to which Grainne’s only reply was a sceptical stare.
“No, I think she’s more comfortable about her body than about anything else, she enjoys giving physical pleasure to people, she’s erotic and sensual...” he looked over at Grainne and saw she was having none of this.
“I think we need to find a way into her mind, find out what she really wants.”
“As far as I can see, the only way to get her to open up is by using drugs.”
Grainne considered this for about a second and then asked if he’d brought any here. He replied that he was way too paranoid about how the Examiner or the Independent might react if he was caught with any illegal narcotics.
“Well... there must be some dope or some mushies growing around here somewhere.”
“Well, if there are, I’m not going looking for them. I’ve had so many crazy adventures already this year that I’m actually looking forward to the boring daily grind of being a TD. Besides, Jenny probably brought down her own drugs with her.” They both looked at her, splashing around in the water like a Seal in the Zoo, and Grainne recognised that that might be true, and suggested they call her. Seamus, who had stuck approximately a thousand images of himself to telephone polls in the last few months, said he didn't want to draw attention to himself, and said he’d prefer to handle it more subtly.
He left Grainne either to dive back into her book or be a passive spectator, and went into the water with Jenny. As there were a few other people around, he suggested that they swim out a bit.
They did, and when they were confident that they were out of everyone’s earshot, he asked,
“Did you bring some drugs with you?” he finally spluttered.
“No”, she replied, a little surprised, “Grainne doesn’t like them.”
“That’s not really true. She just doesn’t like having them round the house when she has a child. Actually, she was kind of hoping that we might all get high tonight.”
“I don't, Seamus, but maybe we could find some mushies growing around the place.”
“Yeah, I s’pose we could.” Strange, he reflected, as he breaststroked desultarily towards the shore, the idea of seeking out a natural high directly from the Earth should have been right up his philosophical street, but what he was looking for this weekend was a quiet piece of non-eventful lazing on the beach, to keep the Sabbath wholly free of anything that involved consuming too much energy.
Half an hour later they were all walking along the cliffs, hoping that Gaia would reward them for recycling all their compostable waste by pushing some hallucenigenics through her epidermis. They didn't know whose land this was, or even if they could be prosecuted for walking here, as the right-of-way laws in Ireland were some of the worst in the west. It was quite possible that the only others who could enjoy this view were the farmer and his family and anyone who owned a helicopter and could hover over. And the birds and the occasional fox that might find his way down here, as, while animals didn't have the same rights as us, they didn't have the same responsibilities either.
They all seemed to be relying on each other to find the mushies. From Seamus’ viewpoint, the other two were women and should be closer to the Earth, but Seamus was the one who went down to a hippy commune regularly. It was Jenny, though, who found the drugs. Whether she’d been hunting for them before or whether this was the result of some narcophilic instinct was something Seamus wasn't willing to contemplate. As she gently took hold of the plant and nurtured it out of the ground like a new-born child, Seamus and Grainne witnessed a whole ‘nother side to her character. She held it in her palms and said, “I think we’re all gonna get high tonight.”
A couple of hours later, after they’d eaten their baked beans and Seamus had had a walk in an effort to disperse some of the more unpleasant side effects of that camping staple on his metabolism, he made his way back into the tent to watch the two women boiling the mushroom tea like witches in MacBeth. They both blew on it as if conjuring up some icy breeze from the Earth’s frozen extremities. Then they drank. Jenny didn't say a word, just closed her eyes and drew some zeros on the air with her nose, and ran out of the tent, to dance with the setting sun at her back. Grainne followed her out, and taking a sip, said, “this isn't quite what we had in mind.” Then her eyes started to look vacant in a way that he’d never seen before and grabbed his hips and kissed him, and said, “your turn”. Having found out the hard way how extreme his long term reaction to drugs could be, he took only a small, acquiescent sip. Then they both lay on the grass and watched Jenny do her cosmic dance, waiting for her to tire out and hopefully open her heavily stimulated heart to them. The sunset became redder than Seamus had ever seen before, a shade of red that didn't exist in nature or even in Gilbert and George installations, though as colour was basically only a matter of perception, any colour was natural. Then Grainne asked, “Who do you love?”
Normally Seamus would have been fazed by such a question, but right now, he could reply that he loved her, loved Jenny, loved the birds flying over them and the insects they were sitting on, even that he loved his family, and not feel a bit self-conscious. It seemed petty to respond to the logorrhoeac torrent of word that he spewed out by asking for something more committal, so she just kissed him.
They were still kissing when a jaded Jenny approached them from the west and cast a long, German-Expressionist movie shadow over them. Seamus looked up and told her that he’d loved to have danced with her, but, fuck it, he was just too tired and too old.
“I wish we had a video camera with us”, added Grainne, and, in a tentative attempt to swing the conversation round to their future, added that it might be something to treasure when they were older.
“Yeah, well maybe next time”, replied Jenny.
“You think there’ll be a next time?”, asked Seamus.
“Yeah, why not?”
“Well, I’ll more than likely be moving up to Dublin in a few months time. I’ll be coming down here of course, but I won’t have much free time so Grainne and Diarmuid will more than likely come up and live with me.” He paused, staring into the crimson sunset, before adding, “You can come with us, if we’re important enough to you.” He gave a glance in Grainne’s direction in an attempt to ensure that he was speaking for both of them. Jenny, for her part looked like she’d been brought back down to Earth like a clay pigeon.
“I guess I wouldn’t mind moving up to Dublin”, she replied, clutching one shoulder with the opposite hand as if trying to reassemble the fragments of herself. “I’m not really sure what I’d do up there, though.”
“Oh, don't worry ‘bout that, I’ll be able to find a job for you, no hassle.”
“Really?”, she asked, surprised that they’d given her situation so much thought. Seamus just nodded in response, uncomfortable with the paternal role he’d cast himself in, then asked how her family would feel about it.
“I guess they’d be cool”, she said in that grating non-committal, Swedish Chef way that was the source of many of the difficulties in their relationship. Seamus took a deep breath and told her not to tell them anything until after the election, to which she nodded in response, seemingly impervious to the gravity of the decision she’d just made. Then she asked Seamus and Grainne if they wanted to come dance with her, to which they shook their heads.
When she was out of earshot, Grainne remarked to Seamus that she seemed to take that choice very lightly.
“Yeah... I noticed that too, but I guess she’s a bit younger than us.”
“Not that much younger.”
“No... but I think we might still have been brought up in an era when people expected to have a job for life, when it was much more expensive to travel... it’s probably the reason why we aren’t as spontaneous as her.”
“She’s probably never really suffered as a result of making a poor decision either.”
“Yeah... well I guess your youth is the best time to make mistakes.”
“I hope she isn't making too big a one by moving to Dublin with us.”
“I hope she isn't dancing too close to the side of that cliff.” For some reason the image made him think of The Catcher in The Rye, he saw the cliff as being her youth and the rocks below as the perils of adulthood. And then the mushies really started to kick in, the colours of the sunset became brighter, Jenny’s dance became a cosmic, psychedelic blur and his mind turned in upon itself.
For a while they both lay there in the crucifix position looking up vacantly at the sky. Then Jenny returned and told them that she thought it was time they went back to the tent.
“I s’pose ‘tis” replied Seamus in the tone of a weary but tolerant parent. He got up, and grabbing Grainne’s reluctant hand pulled her up from the ground, then took Jenny’s hand with his other and led them back to the tent, though by rights it was her that should have been leading the other two as she had so much greater a tolerance to any form of narcotics.
They all slept surprisingly well that night, at least Seamus did, though when the other two assured him that it was Morpheus’s arms they were sleeping in he detected a glint in at least three of their eyes that suggested while he’d been sleeping on the ground one of them had her head on the carpet. He could tell it was a nice day out though his head was so sore that a large part of him dreaded going out into it. It was around eleven O clock on a Sunday morning, many of his natural constituency would be at mass. He was at an age when many lapsed Catholics would think about coming back into the fold, but for him the idea of a life of adhesion to dogma in return for the hope of eternal life seemed less appealing than ever. There were some who could only attribute his remarkable run of extreme good fortune to an omnipotent deity, but he always imagined that any such deity would have far more important things on her mind, like fixing Bangladesh.
As planned, they spent the day lazing around in the sun. Seamus reflected on how lucky they were to be able to enjoy such a simple, sublime pleasure; a couple of hundred years before they would have been scared of the sea, fifty hence and they’d probably die of skin cancer. Seamus and Grainne hoped patiently that Jenny might be able to detail her plans more concretely, but she seemed content to splash around in the water and flirt from a safe distance with some of the teenagers on the beach. Seamus reflected that he was also keeping no end of things from Grainne, who though she fancied herself the dominant one in the relationship, she was actually the one who’d exposed herself the most to the other two, and the one who was most vulnerable to any fissure in the relationship. For this reason, Seamus argued to himself, perhaps he should let her resolve the whole Jenny issue. It seemed almost Islamically sexist, but expedient and pertinent to the here-and-now circumstances of his existence.
Actually none of them talked very much all day. Seamus would have liked to have thought that they’d ascended into some Schopenhauerian realm beyond mere words but the basic Occamian truth was that they were tired and hangover, though Seamus would have traded the tedious slog of the campaign trail for this dolce far niente sloth any day. When evening did come he had to tear himself away from the beach with the same tenacious reluctance that attended his first days and school, and every day at every 9-to-5 job he’d ever done.
He slept most of the way home in the back of the van, as did Jenny. He imagined more days like this in the future, when he’d grab a few hours shut-eye on the road or the tracks, enjoying a brief, transient respite from the burdensome duties of office. When the warehouses orbiting the city like cosmic debri came into view, he asked Grainne to let him off at his place, giving the other two a licence to indulge in whatever sapphic indulgences that took their fancy. Grainne kissed him goodbye, while Jenny merely lifted her head from the bag she was resting it on and mumbled goodbye.
As ever in such situations, his flat looked even lonelier and drearier than it normally did, though he was grateful for the chance to make some herbal tea and catch up with some TV. He though about picking up the remote control and reading some news on teletext, but it just seemed like too much of an effort and he drifted into slumber.
He ended up sleeping so much that night that he was able to get up quite early the next morning, much to Caomhin’s surprise. The heatwave was continuing and everyone he passed on the street gave the impression of being trapped in an open prison of regular 9-to-5 work or else good old, pure and simple poverty. It was reaching the sort of temperature where people would soon be jumping into the river or would have been messing with fire hydrants if there were any around. Seamus wondered what happened to all the fire hydrants that used to be there and then figured out that there were never any there, he just imagined that there ought to have been because there were fire hydrants in the cities he saw in primary school text books and comics. But then his whole life had become an attempt to sell an idealised, platonic version of the past before those perfidious sassenachs ripped the life and soul out of our country.
Caomhin was wondering what had gotten Seamus out of bed so bright and early. He would have been lying if he’d said that it was any enthusiasm for the campaign trail, he had to conclude that he’d just been energised by his weekend away, and that the busy old sun couldn't just be told to go chide late school boys and sour pretences. Caomhin nodded, then suddenly remembered that the green candidate had wanted to talk to Seamus about some vote transfer agreement they’d apparently struck. Seamus racked his brains and then remembered the fateful day of that radio show, the story of which he related to Caomhin, who suddenly became like a James Bond villain pressing his fingers together reflecting on how the tide had turned. Seamus felt like warning him that it didn't do to be so complacent but merely asked if he’d left any number at which he could be contacted. Caomhin muttered something about having left it somewhere, which led Seamus to decide that he’d have to contact him himself. Then he asked Caomhin where they were heading that day. Caomhin told him that they’d actually covered everywhere, pointing proudly to a map of the constituency which was covered in various pencil marks, but with the exams coming up in less than a fortnight they’d have to go through a pretty intense period of cramming revision, a metaphor Seamus enjoyed. Oh, and by the way, Caomhin added, the Examiner were going to send someone to follow them round on the campaign trail on Thursday, so that day they’d concentrate on their heartlands.
“Whoa, whoa, some journos are going to follow us round?”
“Just one. And a photographer. It’s no big deal. They do it to everyone.”
“When did you agree to this?”
“Over the weekend. I would have told you before but you were down on the beach, and you made a big point of not bringing your mobile with you.”
Seamus realised this was true but it didn't endear him to the prospect of being followed around all day and having to watch everything he said. Caomhin could sense his apprehension and reassured him that everything would go fine.
The exam nerves continued for the next three days. Although, wisely, Caomhin had decided to campaign in rural areas of the constituency, they were campaigning late into the evening every night and he was always too tired to want to go to Grainne’s place. Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, he put his foot down and said that if he was going to be interviewed for de paper tomorrow he’d have to get some rest and, he didn't add, some tail that night. Caomhin acquiesced, which put such a spring in Seamus’ step that Caomhin regretted ever making him work harder than he’d wanted to, perhaps cursing the fact that he’d ever took on such a loose cannon and wondering if he’d ever be able to contain him if and when he got into power.
He turned up on Grainne’s doorstep at around dinner time that evening, a mixture of lust and affection radiating from his bleary eyes. He apologised for not being able to make it the last few days, and warned that this might be the last time he could see her before he became a TD. He noticed her face drop when she said this. After silently serving him dinner, she told him that she’d finally discussed the possibility of moving to Dublin with Diarmuid and that the idea didn't appeal to him at all, that he’d rather stay here. Knowing Diarmuid the way he did, this didn't surprise him, but he was hoping that this news would avoid him as if it was a debt collector.
“So what do you want to do?”
She took a deep breath before responding. “I really want to go up to Dublin, but I don't think we’d be happy if Diarmuid came with us. If it were up to me then you’d just get a small place in Dublin, I’d come up some weekends, other weekends, or when you have your local clinics, you could come down here.”
This seemed like a reasonable compromise, but there was one thing he wasn't clear about.
“What about Jenny?”
“She still wants to go to Dublin and live with you.”
“If she came up to live with me and I came down here the odd weekend to stay with you then she’d look like my wife and you’d look more like my mistress.”
She closed her eyes and sighed in response, perhaps not appreciating that level of devastating candour.
“I know, it’s not the way I want things to be. I just have to think of my child.”
“What do you think the papers will make of such an arrangement?”
“Will you stop worrying about the fucking newspapers? You’ve gotten no support from the media, and here you are on the cusp of getting elected. Just think about what this means for us.”
He took a deep breath and realised how deeply attached he’d become to Grainne. Two months ago this would have been an ideal solution that would have allowed him to gradually disengage from her life as he fulfilled his plans of fucking off to Asia, with the added possibility that he could bring Jenny in her place. Now, the idea of separating from her filled him only with anguish. They were indeed an ‘us’. His only response could be that of the diplomatic pol he had become.
“Try and talk it over with him. I know all his friends are here, it’s really hard starting over and everything, but he might like it.” As Seamus listened to himself, he realised that there was a part of him that wanted to bring up children, possibly even to breed himself. It shouldn’t have shocked him that much, as it was a pretty normal human urge, but he’d always thought that by eating from the tree of knowledge that he’d eliminated it from his own psyche. He decided to go on a different tack.
“Of course, if it’s not what he wants, I guess I’ll just have to accept it.” He felt that this may have been one of those two roads diverged in a yellow wood moments, but also that he’d put his fate in the hands of a snotty, half-English eleven year old boy. Grainne gave him a look that suggested that she’d been dreading having this conversation just as much as he had and was glad to have gotten it out of the way. She tried to bring it to Hollywood ending by concluding, “Look, whatever happens, the time I’ve spent with you has probably been the best time in my life”, which only reinforced his regret at the possibility of having to part from her. But he just looked into her eyes and told her the feeling was mutual, and within a few minutes they were back in the bedroom.
He was holding her more tightly than usual, as if manifesting some visceral desire to keep her in his life, perhaps the way soldiers did when they were off to some war where they were likely to return home from in a body bag. But on yet another level, he knew he didn't really want to bring up the half-English Diarmuid, he didn't want to be tied down, and he didn't want to spend the rest of his life on this cold island that was going to be covered in either golf courses or suburbs before he died. He tried to think about their relationship objectively, as if he was some omniscient bourgeois realist author who understood both of them equally well. She’d given him the confidence and swagger to get elected, he’d allowed her to get over her fear of men. Hopefully she’d find someone to take care of her and Diarmuid, why wouldn’t she? She was still sexy, and he’d find someone to come to Asia with him. Whether that person would be Jenny or not was something that remained to be seen. Just at the moment he was thinking this, he heard the door open. He took his tongue out of Grainne’s mouth and asked her if that was Diarmuid coming in. She looked at her watch and said it was more likely to be Jenny, who’d gotten her own key on Monday. They disengaged in anticipation of her entry. She looked better than ever, wearing a short skirt that exposed her thin, tanned legs and a tank top that showed off her firm, toned stomach. On the flip side, she didn't seem like she was prepared for the grave discussion that Seamus and Grainne were about to have with her. They looked at each other as if trying to delegate the responsibility of passing on the news to her to one another. Finally Grainne grasped the nettle and told Jenny to come and sit down with them. They sat up, she sat down, all assuming the lotus position like Earth mothers in a feminist support group.
“I’m probably not going to move up to Dublin with Seamus. I think it’s better for Diarmuid. He’s probably going to get a small flat up there and you can move up there if that’s what you want. He’s going to come down here a lot and you’re welcome to as well.”
Jenny made a face that suggested that she was making an effort to take all of that in, and replied, “‘Course I want to come up to Dublin. I’m just surprised that you don’t.”
“I do. It’s just that the choice isn't entirely in my hands.”
Jenny looked disappointed. Seamus guessed that this was because she was more attached on an emotional level to Grainne and felt she would have made a better anchor for her if she did move up here. Actually, Seamus felt the same way about her, who he always saw more as fuck-buddy than soul mate. But the die had been cast, kismet, etc., etc. Yet he knew the prospect of a more exciting life in Dublin would sway her, especially with the knowledge that the grounding that either Grainne or her family could provide was only an expensive, shaky train ride away. Yet it was Jenny, the scatty, unfocussed one who uttered the harsh truth that the other two had been tiptoeing around.
“So this might be one of the last times we’re all together for a while?”
The other two nodded forlornly and drew closer, beginning a valedictory night of passion. Pragmatically, Jenny realised what was happening and decided to leave, though by the time she did, the other two hardly noticed her going, Grainne giving her a brief wave and Seamus looking up a few seconds later wondering who was coming in or out the door, then figuring out that Jenny had chosen to leave them by themselves, which he chose to interpret as a signal that she was becoming more mature and less egocentric. Yet his own ego had to be placated as well, there was a part of him that wanted to show her the best time that she’d ever had, to make himself the person to which all of Grainne’s other lovers would be compared. But he kept seeing Jenny’s face in his mind, kept imagining that it was her firm, pert breasts he was feeling, as if one part of him was focused on the uncertain future they had together. Who knows, perhaps she was thinking of some idealised fantasy figure as well, it was one of the many things they’d never gotten round to discussing, and now wouldn’t be a good time. After about half an hour of intimacy, he realised he was bringing his campaigning skills to the bedroom, tentatively searching out new erogenous zones in her body, a body whose secrets he thought he knew but which was always capable of yielding new pleasures if he approached it in the right way. And yet, and yet, she was bound to try to find someone else to represent her, to stand up and be firm for her interests. But would anyone else ever canvass her as comprehensively, give her the same coverage? Sadly for her, her thought not. But this knowledge only reaffirmed his determination to give her a night to remember when her future lovers parachuted themselves in. And, in spite of his fatigue and his melancholy, in spite of the rings around his eyes and the pain in the back of his throat, he thought at the end of the night, as he lay prostrate with his seed spilled into a rubber bag and she lay energised, shivering with post-coital ecstasy, that he might have succeeded. And yet he could think of nothing better to say than to ask if she’d enjoyed that, as if what they’d enjoyed was in a whole different realm from the transient, ephemeral world of words. And wasn't that the truth, that none of the words used to describe what they’d just done, neither the vulgar ones like fucking, shagging, bonking, porking, nor the elegant ones like concupiscence, nor the dull, technical ones like coitus or intercourse, nor the euphemistic ones like love-making did any justice to what they’d just done. He turned back to embrace her, knowing that he’d have to climb down from this ecstatic place beyond speech to a grey, mundane world where words were all he had to work with in the morning.
They sat up and talked in whispers for a while, fearing that Diarmuid might have come in without their hearing. He was actually more open with her than he’d ever been before, though he always stopped short of admitting his plans to leave the country, or just how much he’d miss her when he was gone. But he did share some extremely intimate stuff, like how late it was before he lost his virginity and why he thought that was the case, illuminated largely by his first-year psychology course. It took him a while to overcome her incredulity, though when he did he suddenly started to think of what the consequences of this information might be if it ever got into the wrong hands. For the moment, it only made her more melancholy to have to part with him as she realised he had even more in common than she’d thought before; as if they were their country in microcosm, staggering along with wounds that would never heal.
They spent the night together, and it was almost certain, he thought, to be the last time. He watched her get out of bed in the morning, watched the summer sun’s rays cast their light on her body, her hair glisten. She asked him if he wanted to have breakfast, and even though he knew this would be one of his last times in the house, he didn't want to do anything that would wake Diarmuid, whose very existence he was now cursing, and that of his father, who he felt like tracking down and killing. It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?
She kissed him on the cheek and asked if he’d be able to stay again before the election. He told her it was unlikely, that Caomhin was unlikely to give him adequate time off. She didn't answer, just appeared to notice that he was looking way too bleary-eyed to convince any waverers that he might be the answer to their prayers. Then he watched her taut hips wiggle their way out the door and decided to get some more sleep.
He couldn't remember his dreams, though when he woke up an hour and a half later he was holding the pillow tightly, so he imagined Grainne was involved. He made his way down to the kitchen quietly, hating the fact that he was drawing attention to the fact that Diarmuid was in the house, a cursed, malign presence like a Victorian gentleman’s id. With a mixture of haste and an effort not to make noise, he put some margarine on some brown bread and gobbled it down and rushed out of the house, convincing himself that he could get some proper food later on. On the way down he took a last look at the house where so many sublime pleasures had occurred and tried to convince himself that nothing lasted forever.
When he got to Caomhin’s office he found his mentor looking up from behind the Examiner and tapping his watch. Seamus said I know I know and promised to be up bright and early every day for the next two weeks.
“You’d better be”, replied Caomhin, “These people” - he stretched out the Examiner by way of indicating the journos that would be following him around - are coming on Thursday and it won’t reflect well on you if they’re sitting around waiting.” Seamus imagined some of the headlines the wags in the sub-editorial department in Academy Street might come up with - Sleep Fein, Tiocfaidh ar oiche, or Sinn Faineant, though that last one might go over the average readers head. He knew, though, that no matter how much sleep he got or what ungodly hour he was up at, that he’d be on auto-pilot and that his mind would be elsewhere, most likely in Grainne’s bedroom. “Oh yeah”, added Caomhin, that green man was on again”, making the environmentalist candidate sound like the incredible hulk or a character in a 1957 British movie played by Alistair Sim. Seamus asked what he had to say, Caomhin replied that it was Seamus that he really wanted to talk to and that he was distrustful of handlers and spin doctors.
“Well, why wouldn’t he be?”, asked Seamus, attempting to sound jocular.
Caomhin replied with a look that acknowledged that Seamus was trying to be funny but consciously displayed a lack of amusement. “I told him if he came round the same time tomorrow you’d be there.” Seamus gave a suitably chastened look in response and thought about setting his alarm for early the next morning. Then he realised that he didn't want Caomhin to be there when they were having their discussion and tried to figure out some way to meet him in Caomhin’s absence. As Caomhin was going to be clinging to him like a leech for the rest of the day, that wasn't going to be easy, a bit like trying to sneak off for a fag while on a school tour. He didn't used to have a bicycle shed where he went to school, just a bicycle rack, which didn't afford much concealment, but as he didn't smoke, that wasn't much of an issue. When he used to work on building sites he used to sneak into any nook or cranny he could find to grab some respite from the tedious grind of whatever work it was they were trying to make him do in return for his exiguous pay packet, so the sneaking-off instinct was there somewhere alright.
Seamus’ tactic on the campaign trail that day was to pretend that every woman he was talking to was either Grainne or Jenny. It wasn't a hard bifurcation to make, the Grainnes were the mothers whose husbands were out doing some boring, unrewarding job and whose kids were out playing soccer on the streets. The Jennys were the single girls that he passed on the streets in tank tops and mini-skirts, made up like ancient Celtic warriors. It was a version of what would have been called the Madonna/Whore dichotomy before that egomaniacal slut from Michigan gave a different connotation to both of those terms. And yet it was Jenny who’d be coming to Dublin to live with him while Grainne would have to go out to nightclubs and make herself look sexy.
He got into a few sustained arguments with some of them and once or twice, trying to get a point across said “Look Gr...” the sort of thing that rattled Caomhin’s already fragile nerves. Being the man who everybody seemed to be talking about since his good showing in the polls, radiating that confidence that that gave him, it seemed like he could have any woman he wanted except the one that he did want. It was probably just as well that Caomhin was there with him, as it was hard for him to keep his libido in check, but the thought that being a politician was like being an alpha male in primitive society didn't fail to show up on his radar. He was going around, sizing women up, seeing where they were coming from, then implanting not his sperm, but support for his candidacy, though it was they who’d put their votes in his ballot box, something he always thought of as splendidly coital. This seemed to cast Caomhin in the role of a Eunuch that followed the emperor around on his search for comely maidens to fill his harem, though he wouldn’t have dared share that with him.
Eventually Seamus did find the time and space to contact his green friend, though he didn't know who to ring on his mobile. Embarrassingly, the only people who he could think of to help him track him down were the Examiner, who he rang trying to sound as anonymous as possible. This, combined with the fact that he was standing behind a wall constantly looking over his shoulder for Caomhin lent the whole affair a cloak-and-dagger quality out of any reasonable proportion to it’s significance in the bigger scheme of things. When he finally found who he was looking for, he somehow expected him to recognise Seamus’ voice, thought they’d only spoken once and briefly. When Seamus did make him aware of who he was, he was told that Seamus’ ostensible place of work had already been visited that morning.
“Yeah... about that... how much did you tell Caomhin, the man in the office?”
“Not a whole lot, just who I was and that I was looking for you. Listen, is that vote transfer pact still on?”
Feeling that he held all the aces, Seamus replied that he didn't remember any such deal being formally agreed.
“I know, I’m sorry, I treated you a bit brusquely there, I can understand, but I think you really do care about green issues and you’d love to see us both get elected.” Seamus knew there was only an outside chance of this happening but he couldn't forgive himself if his interlocutor lost by a small margin, especially if it meant they could hold the overall balance of power. But he knew that Caomhin had little sympathy for the green cause, and he’d have to broach the matter subtly.
“I can’t make any promises. I have to talk to Caomhin. I’ll get back to you before the week is out.” He listened to the unenthusiastic expression of gratitude and then switched the phone off.
Feeling emboldened by all the flirtation he was getting from women, his positive showings in the polls, or maybe just giddy from the sun, he decided to find out how Caomhin would react to an informal vote transfer pact. So when they came to one of their more enthusiastic supporters, who didn't challenge them on any issues but merely asked who they should transfer to, Seamus looked over in Caomhin’s direction and then back at the canvasee and said they should avoid the main parties and that the only party his party had anything in common with were the greens. Behind Caomhin’s polite nod he could see anger and betrayal, and sure enough, when they were back on the street Caomhin let himself get as angry as it was possible to get without drawing attention to himself.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? We didn't make no voting pact with the greens!”
“Well, I did, sort of, informally”, said Seamus, sounding a little more smug than he wanted to.
“Listen Seamus” replied Caomhin, visibly restraining Donald Duck histrionics, “You don't make those sort of decisions, I do. I made you, I can break you.” Immediately, her realised that with that cliché he’d overstepped the mark and made moves to draw himself back into the centre.
“I’m sorry. I’m not going to break you, physically or otherwise. I just think you should know where the boundaries are. I’ve been pretty indulgent towards you, don't make too much of a fuss when you come in late, let you flirt with women, I even gave you a weekend off, only a fortnight before the election, all because you’re doing so well in the polls. But when you do stuff like this, it worries the fuck out of me. If you say anything flaky, I could get into all sorts of trouble with head office. Will you promise me, for the love of god, that you’ll stay on-message tomorrow?”
He’d put that in such a reasonable way that it was impossible for Seamus to argue, so he acquiesced mildly. Yet the threat Caomhin had made drove a bit of a wedge between them, in a way it wouldn’t have done if he wasn't from a party that was associated with violence. This took some of the brio from his campaign and must have left Caomhin wondering what the best way of dealing with Seamus was.
Later on that evening, after he’d rung Grainne and Jenny to tell them he wouldn’t be coming round, he rang the green candidate again. He told him he’d tried to tried to initiate a transfer pact but that his spin doctor wasn't having any of it.
“Oh. To be honest I’m not really that surprised. Your party isn't called ourselves alone for nothing.”
“Yeah, they do like to see themselves as outsiders.”
“Why do you refer to them as ‘they’ and not us?”
“Oh, Lord. How I got involved with Sinn Fein is a really complicated story. If I told you I’d use up all the credit on my phone. I didn't plan to be a politician. If I did the ‘us’ I’d be a member of would be you and not them.” Seamus went back over those last words in his mind to see if they made sense, his reply was a simple “really?”
“Yeah, I’m an environmentalist at heart. I really was at an organic farm just before I met you, and just after as well. But y’know, since I’ve been involved with Sinn Fein I’ve realised that most of our sad, troubled history is a result of the way the British treated this country, both economically and environmentally.”
“Well, that may be true, but today the biggest challenges come from multinationals, the EU and from our government.”
“Well, yeah, but only because they subscribe to the whole Anglo-Saxon Protestant work ethic anthropocentric John Locke culture. Everybody in the green movement seems to think we need some sort of new eco-ethic, but I think we just need to go back to the Earth-worship ethic we had before the country was Christianised.”
“Do other people in the party feel the same way?”, he was asked with a hint of incredulity.
“Well, no, I can’t say they do. But I’m trying to channel people’s nationalism into something more earth-friendly.”
“And how’s that going?”
“Well, right now Caomhin has me on a leash, I have to stay on message. Hopefully after the election I’ll be able to wield more influence.”
“You sound pretty sure you’re going to be elected.”
“Well, opinion polls don't lie. Not by more than 2-3% anyway.”
“Well, if they’re telling the truth, we’ll have a TD in the Southside.”
“You should have one up here as well, you probably would if there weren't so many single-issue candidates taking all the anti-establishment vote.”
“Yeah, well, I think it goes with the territory. I think civil war politics will eventually die and it’ll be a straight left-right fight in the future. I just don't know how far into the future.”
“Probably after we’re both dead.”
“Hmm, yeah. Listen, I’m really sorry I dissed you that day. You seemed like a bit of a yobbo, but now I see how easy it is to get rattled by those smug creeps. We should meet up some day, after the election.”
“Yeah, give me a call.”
He put the phone down with only a slight feeling of regret that he didn't share his plan to fuck off to Asia with him. He had no idea why the green man seemed so trustworthy, just seemed to give off a vibe of integrity. He’d have to tell Jenny sooner or later, but maybe he’d get a chance to go on a foreign holiday some day and tell it to a complete stranger before he got a brain haemorrhage.
He kept his promise to be up early the next day. Caomhin was twiddling his thumbs nervously when he got there, Seamus by contrast was a model of calm, having resolved a major issue in his life the night before, almost as if by making friends with the green man he’d made peace with Gaia. So contented he felt that he felt compelled to ask Caomhin why he didn't share the Zen-like feeling.
“I think you probably know”, he replied, tetchily. “I know what a history you have of flying off the handle and I know how hostile the Examiner are to us.”
“Why did you agree to this interview then?”
“Can’t do without the oxygen of publicity. We need to keep your profile up. But promise you won’t say anything flaky?”
“Hey, I can only be myself.”
This did nothing to settle Caomhin’s already fraught nerves, so he just went back into the newspaper, studying the polls with the same intensity that some people devote to football score or stock market statistics. Seamus used to love numbers as well, was mental arithmetic champion in school, but somewhere along the way the ardour died, other flames came along, they drifted apart. He picked up another paper, made sure that Caomhin didn't see that it was the sports and arts pages he was reading, but it was hardly five minutes before the doorbell rang and Caomhin was running to the door like a girl being picked up for her first date. Before he’d even gotten up out of his chair he was being photographed looking up from the paper. He had a sense that he might be looking at this photo of himself reading the paper in the following day’s paper, he hoped it made him look intellectual rather than desultory. He shook hands with them both, that sort of brief but firm handshake he’d been working on. Before he was a pol he used to just rub fists, so this gesture still sort of made him a little uncomfortable and self-conscious. Soon the two journos were in the back of their van, the photographer’s eyes’ straying around looking for images to capture, the guy with the dictaphone asking all the usual questions. After the usual denials that he was a terrorist, he started to ask him about the proposed new police force in the north. Naturally, Seamus was in favour, though then the journalist threw in a McGuffin.
“If the republic were eventually to have a minority as big as that of the North, would you be in favour of quotas of ethnic minorities in the Gardai?”
“Certainly. I think we’re going have sizeable ethnic communities in a few years and it would be really unhealthy for them to feel they weren't represented in the police force.”
“Is this what you tell people on the campaign trail up in the Northside?”
Caomhin took one nervous eye off the road to watch his reaction, which was, “You know, it never really comes up.” Caomhin breathed a sigh of relief, the journalist got a bit rattled.
“Well, given that your party has a long history of stirring up racial hatred, isn't it ironic that you’ve suddenly become so tolerant of ethnic minorities, at least when you’re talking to me?”
“Our policies are all down there in black and white in our manifesto. I think people know what they’re voting for when they vote for Sinn Fein, they’re voting for a party that’s always stood up to oppression, whether it comes from outside or inside the state.”
“So... if a member of an ethnic minority was attacked physically and came to you for assistance, what would you do?”
Seamus gritted his teeth and replied that he’d advise them to go to the gardai.
“So you wouldn’t be tempted to try to enforce justice yourself?” Caomhin bristled visibly while waiting for Seamus’ reaction.
“I think the gardai have a difficult job to do, which they don't make any easier by wasting so much of their resources against peaceful protesters, small time drug users, and late-night drinkers. I think that there is a feeling that not enough is being done to deal with violent criminals then vigilantism is going to become more common. But that’s not to say we condone it.”
Now it was the journalist who was gritting his teeth, frustrated at his inability to get a straight answer out of Seamus.
“So you’re saying that Sinn Fein has never involved itself in any sort of vigilantism”
“Y’know, I don't know why you focus so much on some of the alleged crimes we’ve allegedly committed when so many members of the government have taken bribes, evaded taxes, and allowed such a huge transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. I think that if they governed in a more responsible way that there wouldn’t be such an epidemic of crime in the first place.”
“Seamus, can you please give me a straight answer. Have you ever been involved in vigilantism?”
He took a deep breath, looked out the window, then back at the journalist and said, “I’ve never done anything of which I should be ashamed.” He noticed Caomhin’s face drop and the journo’s hand become more active. For the rest of the day they seemed to go easier on him, giving Seamus the horrible feeling that they’d already got their scoop. He could sense, too, that Caomhin was just waiting to get him on his own to reprimand him. He didn't know what he was going to say, it would probably be easiest just to tell the truth. In the meantime he tried to provide the journalists with as many photo-opportunities as possible, playing football with kids in the street, shaking hands with old-age pensioners and single mothers, though he suspected, deep down, that none of these things would make it into the following day’s paper.
When evening came and the journalists finally left them alone, the moment that Seamus had been dreading came. He was worn out like a leather football that children had been playing with on the streets, Caomhin was wound up like a spring waiting to uncoil.
“What the fuck were you doing back there? You know the answer to the vigilantism question - it’s not yes, it’s not maybe, it’s not I don't know, it’s fucking NO! No, no, no, no. No. No.” He put his head in his hands, when he took it out again it was spluttering wildly. “This could destroy all the work we’ve done. Why couldn't you have told that one little lie?”
“I don't know”, he replied, rubbing his temples with his fingertips as if pleading exhaustion as a mitigating factor. “I’d have been telling a really big lie, he’d have known I was lying, I’d have known that he knew that I was lying...”
“Don't give me that Friends spiel. It doesn’t matter what they know. It’s what they have on record.”
“Well, they don't have me on record as saying that I do support vigilantism.”
“Well, that’s true, but that may not be enough.” His tone became ominous, Seamus tried to conciliate him.
“Look, the vast majority of our supporters know what we do and still support us. They know everything I implied about the Gardai is true, that they’re incompetent and corrupt. We may scare a few potential middle-class liberals away, but how many of them are there in the Northside?”
“I hope for your sake that your hubris is justified”, he replied in the same dark tone.
“I don't think this is the right moment to do the sinister thing”, replied Seamus.
Caomhin merely told him that if he didn't like his company he could walk home, then got into the van and drove away, paving the way for another long dusky evening of the soul. He was suffering from the by now familiar paranoia, the feeling that everybody knew his face and thought that his face was the face of a murderer. He had that other feeling of demfamiliarisation, that weird combination of knowing exactly where he was but no idea where he was going. A part of him wanted to go home, to wallow in his fear and self-hatred like some mediaeval monk, or to put on some music and/or look at some pornography to take his mind of his troubles. Another part of him wanted to be held close, to have a warm bosom to cry on. He didn't know who to ring. His last conversation with Grainne had had such an air of finality about it that it would seem strange to seek her company right now. But he knew also that if he went to Jenny he’d just get a blank or apathetic response to his brooding. So he rang Grainne, who he guessed would either be grateful for another last chance to be together, if she wasn't making use of his absence to spend some quality time with Diarmuid.
She was surprised to hear from him, thinking he was going to be campaigning 24/7 for the next week and a half.
“Yeah, well, I got cut short today”, he replied in the sort of doom-laden tone that Grainne recognised only too well.
“Oh no, what did you do this time?”, she asked, in a tone that wavered between perturbation and stoicism like a delicately played violin.
“I don't really want to talk about it over the phone. Is there anyone else there right now?”
“No, I’m just doing a bit of reading.”
“Is it okay if I come over then?”
“Well, I wasn't really expecting you, but Okay.” She sounded like she was doing this more out of some residual loyalty to him than any desire to see him again, and after he put the phone down he realised that he might have given the impression that he only wanted to see her because he couldn't think of anyone else to call. As he walked down the grubby streets, passed the disused warehouses and the boarded-up terraces, the over-made-up and under-clothed teenage girls, he thought that maybe he was missing an opportunity to take his relationship with Jenny to the next level, that he was looking to the past rather than the future by going back to Grainne. But then he was a former history student who was standing for Sinn Fein, wasn't he?
When Grainne opened her door there were none of the passionate embraces of that time whose aching joys and dizzy raptures were no more. She greeted him more like a postman or some other civil servant who’d always kept cordial relationships with all his clients, or a second cousin who she saw every six months or so. But when they were seated, her manner became more like that of a psychiatrist who knew she was very attractive physically and was conscious of what an issue that could be in her profession.
“So”, she began, “why didn't you go to Jenny?”
Seamus, intrigued by the formal manner in which the conversation was unfolding, told her much the same thing he’d told himself, and Grainne nodded in agreement, and Seamus thought he detected a fear that their relationship would never work out, and that she could perhaps have one with him if it wasn't for that blasted son of hers. But she had cast him as the patient on the couch, and proceeded to ask him what had brought him here. He asked if she’d listened to the radio, unaware himself of whether the Examiner journos had leaked the story to any other section of the media. She shook her head, then Seamus proceeded to tell her of his latest faux-pas. She shook her head again, this time, Seamus sensed, with the conviction that, even in this putative age of equality, she might be the great woman who this above-average-in-some-ways man needed to keep himself grounded.
“Seamus, you have to lie to be a pol. And you’re going to have to lie if you want to make things work with Jenny. If you can’t tell a small little lie like this, how’re you ever going to succeed?” More than anything else, this made him feel the pain that their inevitable split would cause. He knew he wouldn’t be able to open his heart to Jenny the way he’d laid it bare for Grainne, that she’d just react apathetically and the anti-climax that resulted would be too agonising to bear. If he stayed with Grainne, he could pretend to be someone else during the day, and be someone like his real self at night. With Jenny, he’d have to adopt two different, false personae. But he couldn't be with Grainne, that was the way the die were cast. But he tried to focus his mind back to the matter at hand.
“Well, it would have been a pretty big lie, really.”
Grainne nodded, asked how Caomhin reacted to his honesty.
“He wasn't best pleased. He refused to give me a ride home. I’m afraid to go in tomorrow until after I’ve read the Examiner.”
“And what if the spin on the story is bad? You’re going to have to face him sometime.”
“Yeah, I know”, he replied, pressing the back of his neck with his wrist, the sort of unphotogenic gesture which he felt liberated to do when the cameras were off his back. “And he knows where I live.”
“Well, don't run off like you did the last time. That’ll only make you look guilty.”
“I am guilty. Guilty as hell.”
Grainne looked disconsolate and told him that that was just his Celtic-Catholic guilt complex talking, that those murderers on bloody Sunday, or the people who engineered the famine never felt that sort of guilt, just a conviction that they were doing the right thing. She told him it wasn't really Caomhin he was running from the last time, but himself. She told him that she wished she could do an It’s a Wonderful Life thing and show him how much worse the world would be if the nazi and the cunt were still alive, the men they would have assaulted and the women they would raped. Seamus smiled, though he’d always found that movie’s politics at odds with his own.
“If I did the right thing, why do I have to keep denying it?”
“Not everyone can face the truth. You’re smart enough to know that. If you were to say that there were so many English thugs coming over here and so few prison places you’d look like a monster, not to mention scaring the hell out of them. You know what it’s like today, the press and the media are so hungry for scare stories that people don't let them get out unless it’s totally necessary. It shouldn’t be any different with vigilantism. It’s just something that should be kept quiet.”
She expressed that in such a logical, dispassionate way that he felt more in love with her than he ever had before. He edged closer to her, giving her the seductive look that used to drive her wild, but she drew back.
“I’m sorry, Seamus. I’m afraid advice is all I can give you from now on. If you want sex, you’ll have to go to Jenny.
Seamus withdrew, acquiescently, having half-expected her to respond this way. He told her it wasn't really sex he wanted, but just to hold her. She acted as if she already knew that, then he asked her if he’d had any luck in replacing him.
“It’s going to be hard. I wasn't really looking before I met you, you just sort of fell into my lap. I really don't even know how to go about it.
This infuriated Seamus, who always though that being a beautiful woman was the best, easiest thing in the world. He told her if she went to any nightclub in town she’d be surrounded by guys.
“Yeah, but, none of them would be...”
They both knew that the next thing she was going to say was “you” though they both knew it was better left unsaid. They knew, too, that they were not the first Irish people in history to be sitting around fretting about the consequences of a Englishman’s greedy, arrogant, self-motivated action. The one thing Seamus didn't know, and didn't dare ask, was the level of resentment Grainne felt towards Diarmuid, though his feeling was that it was no more than that that Seamus’ mother felt towards him for taking so much of her youth away, though his birth was as planned as the Prussian invasion of France in 1870. Or Bloody Sunday, though Seamus was born on a Saturday.
He knew it would be tortuous to them both for him to stay longer, but he also knew that the only thing that would get him a good night’s sleep would be a good lay. He told her he was going to call Jenny, and as he turned to leave he thought could see a tear beginning to well up in her eye.
When he was a sufficient distance from Grainne’s aura, he took out his phone and made the call. The first thing she said was that he sounded a bit sad, and he agreed, though ‘tremulous’ was the word he would have chosen. He told her that he didn't have much credit, the sort of little lie that he couldn't tell earlier, and that he’d like her to call round. She sounded pleasantly surprised, and asked why he wasn't working late that night. He told her he’d discuss it later, she said she was on his way.
He got home, made dinner, and was just about to masturbate when the doorbell rang.
Knowing it was Jenny he scrambled to stuff all the magazines back under the mattress and press stop in his video and zip up his pants again and briefly look in the mirror to check he wasn't looking too flustered and rushed to the door knowing that he’d be unable to stop comparing her form to that of the fantasy girls but knowing too somewhere in the back of his mind that the rich cornucopia of sensations that a real woman could provide would give him more pleasure.
“Hey”, he asked, as he opened the door and sized her up lecherously, trying to suppress the instincts that the pornography had inspired. “What kept you?”
“I met a friend of mine on the way and we shared some gossip. Before I knew what time it was we’d been chatting for half an hour.”
Seamus gave a rueful smile as he realised how gender determinist an account of the events in their lives over the last few hours would appear to anyone reading it. He led her into the bedroom, where she put her handbag on a chair and told him that she thought he’d be busy until after the election.
“I thought so too. It seems I have a bit of a break tonight, so I thought I should make use of it.” She nodded in that infuriatingly ambiguous way of hers, and then he asked her if she’d told her parents that she was planning to move to Dublin with him.
“No, I haven’t gotten round to it yet. I think I’m going to wait until it’s for definite.”
“But you still definitely want to do it?”
“Of course”, she replied, sitting down next to him on the bed and starting to stroke his hair, “why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, it’s a really big decision. Have you given any thought to what’ll happen if it doesn’t work out?”
“I’ll say you raped me and sue you for loads of money and then live on the beach in Thailand.”
He took a massive, codliveroilswallowing gulp and stared at her and asked her what she just said. She told him that she was just joking and that she’d never do anything like that really.
He shook his head and said “No, no, I mean the bit about Thailand.”
“Oh... I heard about a friend of a friend who got a big compo settlement and was able to buy a place in Thailand and live by the beach for the rest of his life. Wouldn’t that be great?”
He wondered if he’d been shunted out of the real, decaying, morally neutral world and into a glossy sitcom written by people on prozac where everything worked out in the end, where we weren't just collections of atoms bouncing off each other but souls in search of their mate. But he didn't communicate any of this with her.
“Maybe you’ll get to go somewhere like that sometime as well”, he suggested, lying back on the bed and beckoning her to follow. She climbed on top of him and her eyes lit up as she asked if they’d be able to go there on their holidays. He thought of explaining his plan to her, but just said, yeah, maybe, and put his hands gently round her neck and pressed her lips against his own. His erection, which had been flagging, suddenly bounced back like someone waking from a scary dream, his sperm presumably as confused as Woody Allen in that movie. He felt a pain, the same pain he imagined women felt when they were breastfeeding, though he really knew that this was a pain he’d never know. This pain was familiar, though, as he’d once had a girlfriend who never seemed to know if she wanted to have sex or not, another sensation he’d never know. He knew the pain wouldn’t go away until he was in her, so he switched himself onto rapid bake cycle. He’d once seen a woman on TV give herself an orgasm in eighteen seconds, he wasn't going for quite that speed, but he was kissing and fondling her with as much alacrity and dexterity as he could muster, and trying to think where the condoms were at the same time. Thankfully for him, she didn't bid him take love any easier, as if she was just as eager to fuck so they could lie down and talk afterwards. It was something he’d noticed about her, that she opened up more, as it were, after the thrusting, moaning deed had been done, perhaps her focus on coitus was the one thing that was masculine about her, and if it was, it was preferable to excessive body hair or a liking for Irvine Welsh books.
When all the moaning and shaking was over, when his penis was trying to shrivel back out of it’s rubber encasing and her long, smooth legs had gotten reacquainted, he asked her if she thought she’d really like it spending the rest of her life sitting on the beach.
“Fuck, yeah, why wouldn’t I?”, she asked, looking up at the ceiling, feeling the tips of his fingers caress her stomach.
“I don't know, maybe it’d get boring after a while.” He was relieved to be able to have this conversation with someone else as he could never seem to get round to having it with himself.
“Maybe.. but we could always travel around, and I heard there’s a big party every month there and...”
“We? Who’s ‘We’?”
“Oh, am, me and whoever comes with me”, she gulped, seeming to have realised that she’d made a Freudian slip, which left Seamus wondering about what her real intentions towards him were. The way he’d recalled it, she was motivated by pure animal lust and had no idea who he was, but then he thought that she must have seen his photo on one of the many posters. But he dispelled these fears from his head, convincing himself that he was being paranoid and misogynist, that it was the real him that she was interested in. He tried to keep the conversation going as much as possible as a buffer to these fears coming back, hoping that if he ignored them they’d go away and find some other poor, tortured soul to torment. He asked what she thought her life in Dublin would be like, not surprisingly it seemed like something out of the pages of OK! magazine, full of shopping and parties. He warned that the salary of a TD wasn't that high compared to say, a stock broker, though he didn't think that stock brokers got a regular salary, and that the costs of living were high in Dublin and that he might only serve one term and be back in the mendicant house with only a sizeable pension to live on and that if they wanted to ever go to Thailand or anywhere else they’d have to be careful with the funds. His disappointment that she seemed so materialistic was left unspoken, and he knew the fears that she was only after his money weren’t going to go away.
He asked her if she wanted to stay the night, hoping to god she’d say no, which she did. He offered to walk her home, deliberately yawning and generally seeming to lack any sort of conviction which she picked up on and told him that it wasn't that far home and that she’d ring him when she got home and she hoped she’d be able to see him again before the election and they kissed and she walked off into the humid, dusky streets.
He went back to the room and used his admittedly exiguous forensic skills to piece together what had happened that night. He thought of how little he really knew about her, of how evasive and reticent she was, and thought that it was quite possible that she was just using him to ameliorate her wealth and status. Just like he was using Caomhin. Oh, fuck, he thought, realising that there were a whole ‘nother set of issues to be confronted in the morning, which was going to come round in only about seven or eight hours. About three of those were taken up tossing and turning, so that, when his alarm went off, his first instinct was to huddle back under the sheets. But he got up and made his bleary eyed way to the kitchen, where he cut a piece of raw ginger for himself. He chewed and swallowed and shuddered like Donald Duck and then, feeling a little more invigorated made a tarry, barely liquid cup of guarana tea. He went to the shop across the road to get a copy of the Examiner, which he decided he’d have to have looked at before he faced Caomhin that morning. His first impression was positive, as the story hadn't made the front page, at least the top half. He picked it up and looked at the bottom half, which was also clear. He paid his money and left, scanning the inner pages as he walked across the street, confident that his peripheral vision would save him from any passing cars and that the gentle summer zephyrs wouldn’t turn the neatly folded pages into an unholy mess. He was almost home before he found the relevant article, thankfully relegated to the wasteland of page 8 or 9. Forgetting about breakfast, he rested his vestigial tail against a neighbouring window sill and adopting the posture of James Joyce looking like a question mark, read the following:












































Sinn Fein Candidate refuses to deny Vigilantism Accusations

One of the features of this election campaign has been the surprisingly strong showing by hitherto unknown Sinn Fein candidate Seamus MacIonnractaigh, standing in the nationalist stronghold of Cork North Central. Recent polls give him as much as 16% of the vote, which, with a few favourable transfers would almost certainly give him a Dail seat after next week. He kindly allowed me to follow him on the campaign trail.
I was eager to know if his positive showing was due to personal charisma or merely a reflection of the party’s current popularity throughout the nation. I was also eager to see if the negative image he managed to present on a recent radio show was a fair reflection on his character and whether his outburst had done him more harm than good, as some commentators had speculated.
When I first met him in Sinn Fein’s dusty office on the Southside he seemed determined to present an image of reason and affability. He treated my questions about terrorism with the a sort of resignation that suggested he was sick to death of such inquiries, but I got a genuine sense that he was being honest. Unsurprisingly, he tried to steer the conversation around to the other topics in which Sinn Fein are becoming interested in order to broaden their support; health, education, and the environment, in which he seems to have a particular interest.
However, I sensed a responsibility towards my readers to clarify his position on violence. While his denials on the subject of terrorism are vehement, he becomes much reserved on the question of vigilantism, refusing to ever come straight out and deny that he’s ever been involved.
The funny thing is, had this seemingly mild-mannered, youthful-looking 29-year-old made an unequivocal denial of any involvement in such activities, I’d probably have believed him. It’s hard to imagine him trampling on a fly, indeed he claims to be a vegan. So what, if any, was his involvement with the baseball bat squads that Sinn Fein allegedly employs? Between now and the election, Mr. McIonnractaigth will face a barrage of questions on the issue, and most of you will feel he owes you some answers.
In Sinn Fein’s Gurannabraher and Knocknaheeny heartlands, his supporters seem unfazed, claiming variously that many of the thugs who slip through the cracks in the justice system could use a good beating, though none of them can recall Seamus offering any support for it on their doorsteps.
In the course of the day, I got a sense of why this unknown was picked to campaign for the party: with his youthful good looks, his pleasant demeanour and his middle class accent, he could almost be a poster child for the new, squeaky-clean Sinn Fein. It’s even possible that his refusal to deny any involvement in vigilantism is an attempt to shore up the party’s extremist base. But I’m left suspecting there’s some skeletons jostling for space with the designer casuals in this affable young man’s cupboard.


















Seamus took a second look at that final paragraph and felt like running down the street shouting ‘eureka’, which wouldn’t have been a particularly good PR move. Then he reflected on how ironic it was that the solidly blueshirt Examiner was doing Sinn Fein’s spinning for it. From now on he would continue to give ambiguous answers to the vigilantism question. It would be a game of brinkmanship which may prove dangerous for a man of his short temper, though he had one thing in his favour: there wasn't a shred of evidence, as far as he knew linking him with the death of the cunt and the nazi, whom the cops were assuming were back in England.
He felt emboldened by this and folded up the paper and went back into the house and got ready to go to the office. He was confident that if Caomhin didn't interpret that report the same way then he could easily mollify him. He was affable, mild-mannered and reasonable, according to Cork’s paper of record.
Yet as he got closer to the office, he became more nervous, recognising that he saw Caomhin the way everyone else would now see him, as someone who they were never sure had a dark, violent past or not. If he got elected and his face was on the TV, every other person he passed on Grafton Street would wonder if they were walking past a murderous thug.
Yet, to some extent he’d been here before. After his father died he did some crazy shit and a lot of people he used to know cold-shouldered him on the street. Some had never forgiven him, this Sinn Fein thing wouldn’t help.
When he tentatively entered the office, he found Caomhin greeting him as if they were lovers after a tiff, with a mixture of contriteness and resentment.
“I’m sorry I got angry with you yesterday, but...”
“But what?”
“But... Jesus, I wish you’d be more careful. Did you see this?”
Seamus looked at the paper he was pointing to and said that he had and that it wasn't nearly as bad as he expected.
“Yeah... well, when you get to Dublin not everyone else is going to be as smitten with your Cork charm.”
He looked a little flattered, Caomhin went on to ask him how he was going to handle the issue for the next week and a half.
“I’ll just say there are far more important things to discuss.”
“But you won’t deny it?”
“Not when I could alienate our base by doing do.”
“I hope you can manage to stay on this tightrope that you’ve walked half-way across.”
“I think life is one big tightrope walk”, he replied in a way that, if this were a movie, the camera would close up on his face from below and then there’d be a pregnant pause.
The next ten days were a bit of a blur, a largely sleepless whirlwind of endless canvassing, shaking hands, kissing babies, being chased away by dogs, having his fingers caught in more than one door, where he got only the occasional chance to phone Jenny and discuss their uncertain future that he was carving out for himself. He became more and more sure that he was going to be elected, an Irish Times poll gave him 17%, and no-one seemed all that bothered that he might be some sort of criminal, almost leading him to believe that people might think he was the people’s sort of criminal, not one of the white-collar shysters that he criticised endlessly on the stump. As election day drew closer, he became increasingly worried about the consequences of failure, of going back to his aimless, impoverished, almost sex-free life. He had to ring Grainne constantly for reassurance, though she kept trying to pass the responsibility on to Jenny. He often wished he could ring his mother, who he’d have to make up with before he died if he was ever to regain any sort of psychological balance. He figured that after his term was over, when he was on the beach in Thailand, he’d email her and tell her that he took Sinn Fein for a ride and the whole family could come over and they’d all meet up and everything would be okay again. If he trusted her to keep her mouth shut, then he’d tell her straight away.
As the day drew closer he was focused more and more on this small little part of his world. The hazy, bleary-eyed hyperreality recalled his leaving cert days.
Every other election since he was young he’d get up early the next morning to start to watch the results come in. He had a lot of interest, and some faith in democracy before, and though the latter had dissipated he still found the drama exhilarating. This time it was his first time to have a lie-in in a fortnight, and he slept till two O clock. He made the short walk to the Neptune Stadium, a venue that when it was first built seemed like a bright, gleaming vision of the future but now seemed, in its back-street Blackpool location and it’s grubby, forlorn, few wooden seats, a tacky reminder of Cork’s status as a small provincial city. Today, though, it was buzzing with the kind of frenetic activity that only an election could bring. This would probably be the last time, as in future the counting process would be handed over to computers. He could see a few TV cameras outside, and until one of them saw him as well, he failed to realise that he might be an object of attention to them.
He’d read somewhere that when Hitler’s propaganda film maker Leni Refienstahl was making Olympia in Greece she found a boy who seemed to her to embody the classical Hellenic idea of beauty. He felt initially like Seamus did now, bewildered by the attention from the camera, but in no time was asking for freshly squeezed organic carrot juice before each take. That was seventy years before the 24/7 reality TV culture in which Seamus lived, and Seamus had little difficulty adjusting to the scrum of cameras and microphones all around him. Asked why he thought he was doing so well in the tallies, he offered the usual media-friendly platitudes, and as if talking to royalty, he didn't talk about the troubles until asked. Then someone asked him how many seats he thought Sinn Fein would end up with, and he decided to do the honest thing and said he really didn't know and they should really ask the psephologists in Dublin. He thought of asking one of them, off the record, just how well he was doing, but instead decided to seek out Caomhin.
He climbed up to the top of the stands to give himself a panoramic view of the count, and democracy’s little worker bees would have made a good Gursky shot for anyone with a wide angled lens. He didn't think how sinister he might look up there, representing a party that many people still thought of as being violent thugs, surveying all he thought he owned. Then he caught sight of Caomhin with some other party workers, waving and beckoning him to come down in the same seamless, sweeping movement. Seamus sensed from the look on his face that the news was good. Becoming gradually aware that the cameras might be on him, he tried to look statesmanlike, his eyes pointed ever-so-slightly aloof, as if towards some benign deity who’s wise counsel he was invoking. He tried not to pick his nose, or scratch his ass, or do anything else that might look bad on camera. Such were the responsibilities of office.
When he came close to Caomhin their paths started to converge as the latter broke away from the joyous throng of party members, some of whom he knew only to see, and greeted him with the words, “Eighteen percent”
Trying not to sound smug, he replied, “Ah, sure you never doubted me, did you?”, to which Caomhin gave a wry smile. Then he asked about transfers, about how the party were doing in the rest of the country and how the election was going as a whole.
“I think we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of civil war politics”, he replied, portentously.
“Well, I guess if that’s something I helped bring about, that’s something I can tell my grandchildren about.”
“I thought you weren't going to have any kids.”
“It’s just an expression.”
“Where is your cailin, by the way?”
Seamus didn't know whether to invite Grainne or Jenny down here, though at least he knew that if both of them came the Examiner hacks would start whispering about irregularities in his love life and he didn't want that. He just said she was still at work, ‘she’ could have truthfully referred to either of them. Then Caomhin brought them over to a TV, where he realised that there was indeed a blueshirt holocaust going on, as Fine Gael, the party that had always wanted Ireland to be more like England, were losing seats right across the country. It was a symptom of increasing national pride brought about by the prosperity of the Celtic Tiger years, which were accomplished largely by mimicking Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies, though the irony would be lost on most Irish people. Fianna Fail were holding steady, and so were their Thatcherite partners, the P.Ds, so the chance that Seamus’s party would hold the balance of power had receded, at least for another four or five years. Another thing he noticed was the number of local single-issue candidates which he saw as being a throwback to the days of local chieftains fighting for their fiefdoms. But why was he thinking about this? This ought to be his moment, the moment where he went from being a slacking non-entity to being a national figure, and his passport to a better life in early retirement when all this was over. Perhaps this was his Robert Redford in The Candidate moment, the liminal moment between one existence and another, when he asked himself what was going to happen now.
What was going to happen, right here, right now, was another eight or nine hours, watching the labyrinthine complexities of the Irish electoral system. It would be at least another hour before the first count results came in, when his arch-enemy from Fianna Fail would be elected with votes to spare. Seamus had caught sight of him, with his clique from his local cumann that followed him around with dog-like devotion, this Napoleon of the Northside who was too extreme to ever be let near the Soldiers of Destiny’s front benches. Seamus thought he saw him casting a dirty look in his direction, even if he didn't, he was sure he’d come in for some sort of criticism before the night was out.
Sure enough, after the first count results were read out, and Seamus came an astonishingly high third, only about two thousand short of a quota, and the exultation had passed, the Fianna Fail man was being set up for a telecast, and Seamus and Caomhin and the other party members were huddled round the TV, though he was talking in the same building, the sort of surreal sort of moment he’d have to get used to if he was going to be a pol. After he’d denied that he was a racist in the most convoluted, illogical ways, they tried to pin him down on the subject of Seamus’ extraordinary success.
He looked straight at the camera and told the plain people of Ireland the following:
“I think that while the vast majority of people in the Northside of Cork are decent, law-abiding citizens, there’s always a section in every society that’s attracted to violence and I’m afraid that they all seemed to come out to vote today. But I’m confident that, while he’s only a small number of votes short of a quota, that Mr McIonnractaigh won’t take that many transfers from the democratic parties, and the best interests of democracy will prevail. I only hope that his supporters will accept the consequences if this happens.”
They stood around the TV looking dumbfounded at this breathtaking display of hypocrisy, but while Seamus’ mouth was agape on the outside, inside his blood was boiling. When his anger subsided, he started working on a measured riposte. He looked up to the lofty position where the Fianna Fail man had given the interview and gave him a look that suggested he was going to get what he had given.
They sat around for a few more hours, watching the monitor, and while everyone else had at lest one eye on the results, Seamus was more interested in the body language, the semiotics and the hidden signals. After the second count he got enough transfers from the green man to ensure he’d get elected. He tried to find a spot to ring him quietly and thank him but had to settle for a noisy one, and had to keep the conversation brief. In keeping with the dance-with-them-that-brung-you principal, he asked if there was anything he could do.
“Stop the incinerator”, was his reply. He didn't know what it meant but vowed to find out.
He went back to the cluster from the Sinn Fein cumann around the TV, who were cheering at the result of almost every count they heard, while in between casting anxious glances at their watches as if that would speed up the count that was going on right there. Seamus sat down behind them, quietly, wondering what hopes they had for his term of office, what they hoped to get in return for the time and energy they put into getting him into Leinster House, and what he was going to say when the TV cameras and the boom microphones were pointed in his face.
When the moment did come, time, as if in some cheesy sci-fi movie, really did seem to stand still. When the returning officer told the world, or at least the 26 counties, how many transfers he got, it must’ve only taken them a second to do the arithmetic, but they had to wait for what seemed an eternity before he was officially declared elected. As this wasn't the yUKky, there was no need for any pretence of decorum, and Seamus was being borne aloft, surfing the crowd of his supporters, waving at the TV cameras. Strange, but his first thought was that if he was doing the same thing in a nightclub the bouncers would be magnetically drawn towards him and he’d be strong-armed onto the floor, but here he was seeming to float above the law, waving at thousands of people, of whom his family were undoubtedly some. The other strange thing was the symbolism, that these people who were carrying him had almost literally carried him where he was going but they had a better idea of where that place was than he did. What would happen now, when the count resumed, and the TV cameras had moved onto something else? Would the positions be reversed, with the people who were carrying him aloft right now crushing him with the weight of their demands?
They seemed to stop like a deer in the headlights when the camera got close to him, to throw him down in front of the media goat fuck as if to say that he wasn't really with them, they didn't know where he came from, guard. He straightened his tie and rubbed his temples as if looking for some sort of charm switch that would mollify the viewers fears about him and his party like some Ophean lute.
When everything was in place, he found himself having to respond to this typically challenging RTE interviewer’s question:
“Seamus McIonnractaigh, one of the other T.Ds elected today has raised some questions about your fitness for office. How do you respond to them?”
“Well, the only people I have to answer to are the thousands of decent, hard-working people who voted for me. I think the fact that you’re repeating his questions with such dog-like devotion epitomises the cosy relationship that RTE has with Fianna Fail. I think that’s a far bigger danger to democracy than my election, and the people that voted for me all know that, and the same is true right across the country.”
There were a few seconds of silence, which, if he’d had the prescience to tape the whole process, would have given him so much pleasure with each repeated viewing. Then, needless to mention, the interviewer fell back onto his safety net.
“Well, in the interests of democracy, perhaps you’d like to tell us if you’ve ever had any involvement with paramilitary organisations?”
“I think that’s an insult to the many people that voted for me and the people who’ve worked so hard to support my campaign, who all know that I’m committed to a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the North, and to progressive solutions to the many social problems in the south.”
“Is vigilantism one of those solutions?”
“I actually don't think crime is that big a problem here, it’s actually far lower than in England. I think the problem is deliberately being exaggerated as an excuse to trample on the few civil liberties we have left.”
“So that’s a ‘no’?”
“Well, d’uh!”
His supporters giggled in the background, the interviewer took a deep breath which revealed his growing impatience to the nation, and then asked,
“So, when all this is over, is there a possibility that you’ll be willing to go into coalition with Fianna Fail?”
Unsure of what the final result would be, he took a chance with the following answer:
“Well, you might know from the history books that they split from us in 1927. If they’re willing to change their ways and become a transparent, open, and non-corrupt party then we might be able to accept them back.”
A loud cheer went up behind him, so loud that when the interviewer thanked Seamus as graciously as he could and slinked off like a guy who’d been rejected by a girl in a nightclub the nation couldn't have heard him. Caomhin made his way to the front of the posse and shook Seamus’ hand.
“That was a really good interview. Spiky but erudite. That 1927 thing - pure class.”
“ You don't think I was antagonising Fianna Fail too much?”
“Nah, I don't think there’s too much chance us coalescing with them anyway. C’mon, we’re all going to go and celebrate.
A few minutes later they were a bar in one of the staunchly nationalist areas of the city, where tricolours hung next to drawings of Michael Collins and photos of the Sinn Fein leaders with Bill Clinton and a stash of LPs of rebel songs sat behind the bar. Everyone seemed to be jostling like paparazzi for the chance to be the first to buy the man a drink, the first man in the rebel city to represent Sinn Fein in the Dail. But Caomhin put his arm around him and told everyone that his protégé didn't drink and that if anyone was going to buy him the first mineral water it was going to be him. Seamus didn't mind being called his protégé but some people seemed surprised and perhaps a little betrayed by his status as a teetotaller, as if it meant on some level that he wasn't really one of them. When everyone had been served, the bartender asked what song Seamus would like to hear, Caomhin looked nervous, but without flinching Seamus asked for “A nation once again”, which he’d taken the time and trouble to learn for just such situations as this.
Being asked to sing gratified some of the Rock Star fantasies he had a teenager, which he’d never let his teacher’s assessments of his vocal abilities get in the way of. The truth was, that while he was no John McCormach, the relatively narrow vocal range of most Irish rebel songs wasn't completely beyond him and all the attention, instead of making him nervous, gave him an adrenaline rush. He sung quite a few more, all of which he’d been studying with an sedulity that he hadn't known since his early college days. It helped to postpone the moment when he’d have to talk to some of these zealots about what he was going to do to help take back that fourth green field he was singing about.
He actually kept singing until after Jenny and Grainne finished work, so, embarrassingly, his mobile went off in the middle of “Deep in Canadian Woods”, and it was Grainne.
He climbed off the table and out of the smoky bar-room into the relatively quiet but far from clean toilet and started to apologise.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I got so caught up in the whole thing that I forgot to ring you or Jenny.”
“Has she rung you yet?”
“Ah, maybe she has, I might not have heard her.”
There followed a Chekovian or McGahernian silence which Seamus tried to fill in like someone listening to Cages’ 4’33. Was the obtumescence expressing regret that Seamus was going to make a long-term commitment with the wrong girl, when the right girl was clearly her? Was it a cri-de-croi at the sad future that had been carved out for her when she got pregnant with Diarmuid? Or was it just what it sounded like, silence, the silence in a world war II graveyard on a chilly January day, the silence that might or might not get broken when a tree falls in a wood but there’s no-one there to hear it, the silence that exists in the rest of the universe where there’s no air, the silence that makes the lead singer from Rage Against the Machine sick? Whatever the reason for the aphony, he felt compelled to bring it to a close by saying that he was going to ring Jenny but that that he’d see her again before they moved to Dublin. She said OK and put the phone down. He thought he heard a note of acedia creep into her voice, as if, just after putting down the phone, she had burst into tears. Yet he didn't want to find out for certain, as he knew that this would ruin his big day, so he took a deep, deep breath and called Jenny instead.
She replied nonchalantly and he asked her if she’d seen the results.
“No, I only just got home from work. How’d you get on?”
He took a look at his watch and wondered why it could have taken her so long to get home, but told her that he’d won and what bar he was in. She replied, “that’s brilliant”, in the sort of tone that a child would use when hearing what one of their friends got for Christmas, then told her that she was on her way. He put the phone back in his pocket and took a few seconds to wish that it was really Grainne that was coming and then went out to sing some more. He was feeling queasy, as he was any time that he had to be anywhere other than in bed having his post-prandial nap at this time of day. The party was getting raucous, and despite the fact that it was nominally Seamus that was the cause of he revelry, no-one seemed to notice that he wasn't as revelrous as the rest of them. It was like his first communion or confirmation party all over again. But he got back up on the table and sang, though if it was his choice they would have celebrated by going down to the beach rather than stuffing themselves into this smoky bar. There was a part of him that enjoyed being the centre of attention, though, relished knowing that whatever song he sang the couple of hundred people spilling their pints on top of one another would join in. His spell over them wasn't broken until Jenny walked in, wearing a short denim skirt and high heels, and a tank top. While everyone else stood back in awe of her, as they would for a member of the royal family in the yUKky, Seamus wondered if he should sit down with her and explain the decorum required of a politician’s wife, or if he should let her be her own comfortable-with-her-sexuality-but-by-no-means-slutty self and let those gossip columnists up there in Dublin make what they will of her. All publicity was good publicity, after all.
He beckoned her up onto the table with her, like a caliph inviting the most beautiful woman in his seraglio. Those who were wondering what a nice-looking girl like her was doing in a dump like this soon found out, and from what Seamus could tell the expressions indicated a mixture of jealousy and admiration, as if he was some sort of ubermencsh that none of them could ever be, but at least he was their ubermensch, who’d fight for them like a Celtic warrior of old. He sang some more, but Jenny didn't know any of the words and was standing there feeling like a piece of eye-candy that everyone was staring lecherously at. Feeling uncomfortable, he apologised for monopolising the stage, then thanked everyone who made this day possible, etc., etc., and then sought out a quite place to sit. There actually was a vacant seat, as everyone was gathered round the stage, near the TV where Caomhin and a few other armchair psephologists were trying to predict what the final outcome was going to be. Seamus was just about to sit down quietly with Jenny when Caomhin caught sight of the two of them and asked him to introduce her to them. It was a moment he dreaded, though it couldn't have come at a better time, basking as he was in their reverence. Caomhin wanted to discuss a few things with Seamus, so unwisely, he left Jenny fend for herself among people who’s company she wouldn’t necessarily have chosen herself.
Apparently he’d have to go up to Dublin on Monday to get sworn in. He felt like ringing up whoever’s bright idea it was to have elections on Thursday and the count on Friday and thanking them. Caomhin was predicting that Sinn Fein would get 7 or 8 seats which would mean that they were a real political party in the south for the first time ever, and Seamus would have to be spokesman on something. He though about this for a few seconds and said he’d like Environment. Caomhin was a bit taken aback, hoping Seamus would be aiming his sights higher, like justice or foreign affairs. He said that this was what he was really interested in, and where he could make the biggest impact, and Caomhin nodded acquiesently. Then he asked Caomhin if he knew what rituals were involved in the swearing in process.
“It’s not like England. You don't have to make an oath of allegiance to the Queen or anything. That’s why Fianna Fail broke away from us in 1927, remember?”
Seamus laughed but then asked Caomhin how often he’d have to meet his constituents and what he’d have to do for them and how much time he’d have to spend in Cork and how much in Dublin and...
Caomhin stopped him in his tracks and told him that he wasn't really sure himself, that this was all new to him as well, as if he was a Jehovah’s witness and he’d been left in the door for the first time. He was confident though, that when they went up to Dublin on Monday that everything would get ironed out. He asked if what’s her name was coming too, Seamus told him her name and said they’d want to check out some properties, which he realised would be an awkward melange. Then he noticed that what’s her name was looking increasingly uncomfortable and making gestures that she’d be happier somewhere else. He excused himself and she followed. When they got somewhere quiet, she burst out with the following:
“These people creep me out. They keep asking me about the North, and when I say I’m not interested in politics they won’t accept it. Some of them keep staring at me as well.”
“Well, can you blame them?”
She gave him a look and asked if they could just leave. Seamus went over to Caomhin and asked him for a ride home, he was surprised Seamus wanted to go so early but must’ve rationalised that he was tired and agreed but said that Seamus would have to make another speech before he left, which he agreed reluctantly to do. It went something like this:
“Ladies and Gentleman, the last few weeks have been the most exhilarating time of my life. I’ve met many decent, hard-working people, many of whom are in this room right now. When I get to Dublin on Monday, I’m going to be fighting for your interests, and for the interests of our compatriots in the North. Thanks for voting for me, thanks for coming out tonight, thanks for giving me the chance to repay your faith in me. Tiocfaidh ar la. Oiche Mhaith.”
Next thing he knew they were in Caomhin’s van, feeling like rock stars who’d escaped from their adoring fans. Caomhin was offering to drive them up to Dublin on Monday, but Seamus said he’d rather get the train. They arranged to meet at the train station at a certain time, but before they could leave the van Caomhin insisted on giving Seamus a hug which went on for an embarrassingly long time. When he finally let go they both left the van. Caomhin gave a tight-fisted salute which Seamus returned, though he might have got a glimpse of a tear in Caomhin’s eye.
When they got inside the first thing Seamus did was to lie down on his bed, arms stretched in crucifix position. Jenny stood over him and asked if he’d eaten yet, he shook his head groggily, displaying the sort of pleasant fatigue that he normally associated with post-coital feelings. The thought struck him that he could get the breakdown of his votes by age and gender from Caomhin on Monday. Jenny offered to cook him something, he accepted, feeling that this would be what his life would be like when they moved to Dublin, though one of the first things he’d have to do would be to buy her some recipe books.
He thought he’d be able to lie down and relax but the smell of smoke and drink from his clothes was annoying him so much that he was forced to get up and change into something more fragrant. It just occurred to him that he’d probably have to keep this place, as he’d have to come down to Cork regularly, though if he’d been able to stay with Grainne he’d be able to give this place up. He thought up some plans to convert it into a constituency office and claim expenses to pay the rent, the sort of incoherent, racing thoughts that would come into his strained, undernourished head.
Pretty soon Seamus was pleasantly surprised by her culinary efforts, she’d managed to put together a pretty appetising-looking stir-fry with plum sauce, which she served on one big plate, which they lay together and ate from. Jenny apologised for leaving the pub, Seamus said that he’d prefer to be here alone with her anyway, to which she responded with her trademark flirtatious smile, but then after giving the matter a little thought said he appeared to be enjoying himself back there. He told her that he was a politician and that she shouldn’t believe everything he said or did.
They talked about what their life in Dublin would be like, he didn't want to dampen down her expectations of living the high life too much; he reminded her that while his new job was well paid, that he might only have it for five years and that they would have to be careful. She tried not to look too fraught, as if knowing that an excessive display of disappointment would reveal an avaricious motive for wanting to be with him. But he was in no mood to be captious, the world, it seemed, had decided to stop fucking him over and he was in the mood to make an offering of gratitude in return.
“We’ll have a better life alright... but you just have to trust me... if I seem tight-fisted at any time it’s because that fear that I might not get re-elected will always be there, in the back of my head... but don't worry, we’ll still be enjoying life more, you’ll have nicer clothes, I mean, no, sorry, that sounds so patronising...”
She put her finger to his lips and told him to stop talking, that she totally trusted him, that if she didn't meet him she’d still be living at home with her family and working in a shitty job in a shop.
“When am I going to meet your family, by the way?”, he asked.
“When am I going to meet yours?”
Touché. At least he wasn't representing Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, or any party that espoused family values.
Soon the dinner plate was cast to one side and they were making love again, almost as if this was their wedding night. He’d been saving himself for this night, not for his whole life, exactly, but for a fortnight, which was a long time to go without even masturbating. He didn't know for sure that she’d been doing the same, for all he knew she could have been going through some sort of flesh-fest before settling down with him. In spite of all the weights and supplements he’d been doing before the election, he hadn't become so alpha that it really mattered. As he was so tired, he let her take the lead, brushing her breasts against his chest and letting her hair rub against his face, almost as if to assert, silently and implicitly, that the bedroom was going to be her domain. Eventually she pulled down his pants and climbed onto his groin, taking it upon herself to provide the thrust, almost squeezing the life essence out him like an anaconda. When they were finished, he lay back and asked, in jaded, drained, but serene tones, for her to make some herbal tea. When she was gone, he leaned over to his stereo and put on some Billie Holliday.
The next thing he remembered it was two or three hours later, he was waking up to really knowing where he was. She’d tucked him under the sheets and fallen asleep herself. He took a sup of the camomile tea she’d made and sat up admiring her beautiful form and wondering what their life together would be like, whether she’d have the skill and the patience to de-stress him every evening, and whether he’d have to share his secret plan with her eventually. Eventually he felt sleep returning and put his arms around her in the nurturing position and dozed off.
















The next day they didn't get up till late and then talked a bit more about the things that had interrupted his sleep but never really achieved any closure. Then, filled with the conviction that everyone they passed would be asking themselves if the man with the beauty on his arm really was their new TD, he took her shopping for some new clothes for her. To her disbelief the first place they went was a charity shop.
“You’ve got to be joking”, was her incredulous response.
“No, you can get some really good stuff in here. And it’s only going to be incinerated if it doesn’t get bought.
“Yeah... but... you’ve got loads of money now... haven’t you?”
“Well, no actually. I’m not going to get paid ‘till the end of the month, the bank refused to extend my overdraft as they said they weren't sure that I was going to get elected... I’ll have just enough to pay for a deposit when we get to Dublin.”
“Wait... wait... pay a deposit... you mean we’re going to be renting up there?”
“Yeah, like I said, I might only have this job for Five years, I can’t afford the risk of being burdened with a mortgage when that’s the case.”
Spluttering, she replied that house prices would probably double in the next years. Rather than contradict her, her told her it wouldn’t be good for his image to be seen arguing in the street. She reluctantly followed him, and before long he’d found a sensibly long skirt in her size, which he pressed up against her waist to see how it would look. She told him that it wasn't really her style, he replied that she’d have some more responsibilities if she was a T.Ds partner.
“I’m beginning to think it’s all responsibilities and no privileges.” He promised that as soon as he got his first pay-check he’d take her on a big spending spree, which palliated her for the moment but made him realise that he’d never be able to keep his plan a secret for five years. While she went to try on the skirt he looked around for a suit that would fit him, even after all the weights he’s been doing lately he knew they’d all make him look like a sack of potatoes. He faced with dread the possibility of having to get one specially fitted for him. She came out of the dressing room with a catwalk flourish, and at that moment the idea of getting onto the Dublin A-list and being photographed in OK magazine and her picking up some modelling work suddenly didn't seem all that remote. And, for all his ancient Celtic, crypto-Buddhist, eco-boy live-simply philosophy, there was a side of him to which this prospect was enormously appealing. There was a time, a time that sometimes seemed like yesterday and at other times seemed like a lost, forgotten age when woolly mammoth roamed the Earth, when his parents and their friends seemed to badger him endlessly about what he wanted to do when he ‘grew up’ and he told them that he wanted to be a journalist, partly because that was the sort of aspirational, high-status job that he thought they’d want for him, but also because it would allow him to mingle with the people who’d, by whatever means, reached the top of society, and now, by the weirdest, most aleatory means, he’d found another path to the same end. But his father was no longer alive to see him finally become successful enough to befriend the people they idly gossiped about over Sunday breakfast and his mother was shunning him like the skinniest runt in the litter. But he tried to shun these thoughts, tried to remember what the apposite quote from the Gita was, tried to convince himself that his relationship with Jenny had nothing to do with ego and everything to do with pleasure, that given the Wife of Bath’s dilemma, he would choose foul by day but fair by night. But he was secretly glad that, with Jenny, he didn't have to make such a choice.
He told her she looked hot, feeling a sort of relief as he did so, which he couldn't understand at the time but figured out later on the way home was because this was the first time in a fortnight he could tell the pure, unadulterated truth to anyone. It felt like a sort of moral placebo, like sprinkling a dash of olive oil on a McDonalds hamburger, or planting a single rose in a Delhi slum; it just drew attention to all the other immoral, duplicitous stuff he’d been doing. Then he took her round to a few more shops, holding her hand and looking smugly aloof the whole time, looking as if he could absorb the envy from all the people leering at Jenny and wishing it could be them placing their arms around her slender waist and sublimate that negative energy into something positive, by some strange, hitherto unknown alchemy.
They went round to a few a health shops to buy the things Seamus was planning to cook for dinner. Seamus’ face had been recognised in these places long before it was plastered on walls all over the city, but lately the welcome he was getting had become more muted, suggesting that his candidacy wasn't receiving 100% support from them. But his money was as good as anyone else’s, so they tolerated his custom as if he was the town drunk and times were hard. Jenny, for her part, asked Seamus why he felt compelled to go round to so many shops instead of just going to a supermarket. He was in no mood to give her the anti-supermarket spiel, so he told her instead that he was trying to show her off to as many people as possible, effortlessly slipping back into his duplicitous politician ways.
“Will you be the same when we move to Dublin?”, she asked
“But of course, my love”, he replied, kissing her hand as if in some Jane Austen novel. She giggled as if embarrassed though Seamus secretly suspected that she was actually doing it to draw attention to them, to do something that would set them apart from the crowd of shaven-headed drones in this dull grey city, as if they could become Cork’s own royalty, or their Posh n’ Becks. But everyone just walked on by, the best they got was a recognition that maybe they’d seen his face before, nobody was really sure if he was from the house of Leinster.
Soon evening came and the crowds of teenage girls migrated to wherever their mobile phone messages were summoning them to, the middle-aged couples stuffed their plastic bags into the boots of their cars and made their way out of the multi-story car parks and back into the sticks, leaving only a trail of litter and empty supermarket shelves and stressed employees as evidence that they’d ever been there and the city seemed to take a snooze before it would rise again and the thin blonde girls who he never saw during the day would come out from wherever they came from and their male counterparts would drink and talk about football and women; and Seamus and Jenny made their way home. Seamus was carrying the shopping, Jenny was on the phone to her parents, explaining that she wouldn’t be home that night, and Seamus was listening intently, trying to infer what they might be saying on the other side and what the implications might be for him.
“Look, hang a minute, I’ll see what I can do.” She put the phone to her chest, just above her ample bosom, and asked Seamus if he’d mind if she went to their place for dinner the following day. Seamus said he wouldn’t mind, but that he’d prefer if he could come as well. She gave an I’ll-see-what-I-can-do-but-I-can’t-promise-anything grimace, then stopped in her tracks and beckoned Seamus to keep moving. He did, but turned his head back and saw her talking into the phone in a mixture of a yell and a whisper that, chillingly, reminded him of his mother, then when she caught sight of him, urged him to keep his eyes on the footpath. A few minutes later she caught up with him, running in that awkward way that women did when they were wearing high heels. She wasn't smiling.
“So they don't want to see me?”
She gritted her teeth and shook her head. Seamus asked if it was because of his politics, she nodded, guiltily, and they spoke no more of the issue, both seeming to agree that it was a can of worms that they didn't want to open. Seamus tried to look on the bright side, he’d have one more lazy Sunday afternoon to himself, reading the newspapers and seeing what, if anything, the opinion-formers in Dublin were saying about him.