Cowboys and Indians by Joseph O'Connor

Author:Joseph O'Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

Half an hour later, Eddie caught up with her down in Rathmines. She tried to get away from him, but he held her arms and wouldn’t let her go. She said she’d scream but she didn’t. Not at first. Only when he said that she wouldn’t dare. Then she hollered like a madwoman. An old woman with a zimmer frame stared at them, as they roared at each other in the middle of the street.

‘You’re a fucking fool, Eddie, all your friends say it about you, behind your back, they’re wise to your act.’

Eddie told her she could make things up and scream as much as she liked, that this would have to be sorted out.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he kept saying, ‘are you sick or something? Is something on your mind?’ Marion began to cry again, and she wept like a baby, and her face twisted in choking tears. ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘you know that, come on, I love you.’

Marion said she thought she was cracking up.

‘I feel so awful,’ she wept, tugging wildly at her hair, ‘something’s going on in my head.’ She wanted to go see a doctor. She said she really didn’t feel well and she wasn’t putting it on.

So Eddie sat in the lobby of Saint Vincent’s hospital for a couple of hours, wondering how the fuck he had ever got into this and how he was ever going to get out. When she came out she felt better. She’d had a good chat with one of the nurses. ‘It was just a women’s thing,’ she said. ‘Hormones. I don’t want to talk about it. Just a small thing. You wouldn’t want to know about it.’

Eddie told her that if she needed a prescription he’d go get it, but she said no, she didn’t, she just wanted some fresh air.

They bussed into town and sat on the crisp grass in Stephen’s Green, watching an overweight brass band up on the bandstand. Later a troop of little girls in ornate green dresses spangled with harps and Celtic swirls came on and did some Irish dancing. Husbands and wives strolled down the damp paths, with children being dragged reluctantly along, and forced into feeding the ducks.

Eddie said he wasn’t sure exactly where they were going any more. He sometimes wondered whether she really knew exactly who she was, and if they still wanted the same things from a relationship.

She said, ‘Does that mean you want to break up?’ He told her no, he wasn’t saying that at all, he was just running a few ideas around the block, and how come any time he said anything, that was the first response? ‘You just haven’t the guts to walk out,’ she said, ‘that’s your problem.’ He looked her in the eye.

‘This relationship means heaps to me,’ he said, meaningfully, ‘I don’t want to give up on it now.’

But he knew he was a liar. They sat in the snug of Kehoe’s, where Marion laced into the gin and tonic like it was about to go out of fashion, and Eddie felt dog-tired.

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