In White Ink by Elske Rahill

Author:Elske Rahill [Rahill, Elske]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Apollo
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Right to Reply

HIS LATTE WAS tepid when it arrived, grease marbling on its surface; but Louis wasn’t going to make a fuss.

When the phone trilled he was standing by the penthouse window looking down on Galway Bay, rolling the wiry tassels of his moustache between thumb and forefinger. His face felt tight and sore, as though exposed too long to the elements. Lola wanted to walk on the beach today, and his skin had already registered the drudgery of it – the heavy sand; the salt-sharpened wind; the scribbles of crusty bladderwrack before the tide. And she would want to drink in a typical Irish pub. It was all such a waste of time, barely worth the pleasure of her unzippable pencil skirts and long, callow throat.

‘Your phone,’ said Lola.

She laid her fruit salad in a nest of bedsheets and unfolded her legs, curling her tongue over a bloated grape as she reached towards the bedside table. She brought the phone to him and rubbed his back too softly, pressed her lips to his shoulder. The girl was as clingy after sex as he was squeamish.

Louis held the phone to his ear and took a quiet mouthful of the latte. He always let the caller speak first. It was a technique he had learned at a seminar once. It was called ‘Keeping the Reins’.

‘Louis,’ said his sister. He pinched the milk scum from his moustache and stepped away from Lola, lowering his head. Mammy, he thought, and in an instant he could see his mother’s cheeks fall and flush with shame for him, the disappointment in her voice, Are you not ashamed?

‘Bertha.’

‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘You haven’t seen the paper then.’

*

It was a Sunday. Dine woke late to find eight missed calls on her phone. Sitting up in bed, her head knocking for caffeine, she rang back.

‘Bomama did you call me?’

‘Dine,’ said her grandmother. ‘Darling. When can you come?’

Her grandmother was never good on the phone. Her calls were generally just a summons, or a transfer of information, and she shouted down the receiver as though to cross the great distance between them. Before her husband’s final stroke, she often made calls like this, with no greeting, just ‘When can you come?’ For there were days when he was ‘very down’, and ‘it would do him good to see you.’ But by now Dine’s grandfather was two years dead.

‘Are you alright Bomama?’

‘Just come darling will you please? When can you come?’

‘I’m getting dressed now. I’ll get the next bus.’

‘Take a taxi.’ Her accent was agitated, clipping her English into a succession of hard, quick taps; tickataxi.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘They are saying things about Bompa. Disgusting things.’

*

They should have known him. If they could have known him they would be ashamed to say these disgusting things about her husband.

Where did they get that photo? Well he was handsome there: his lovely mouth with the lower lip that brimmed to a cliff before the swoop of his chin; his fine neck; his freshly razored jaw. She

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