Fanning caught the 11A on O Connell Street Reflexively, he stayed on the lower level of the bus, and headed down the aisle toward the back seats. Sitting down, he had the sensation that he was actually falling in upon himself, even collapsing. It was as though his frame had been unhooked and he was now tumbling into a collection of limbs and aching joints. The ache in his neck and his shoulders was like a big bruise.
How often he had sat into a bus, all his life practically, and let the familiar streets and buildings go by the windows. There was a different quality to what he saw now, some strangeness about things that unsettled him. A fever, he thought. Food poisoning, the flu? Images flared insistently in his mind — the fear in that man’s face, the way that West Ham calmly and savagely went about his business.
He distracted himself by checking his mobile. There was nothing. Again he considered phoning the Guards. They could track mobile though, couldn’t they? He wished he knew more about that technical stuff.
He felt the phone slide from his fingers and knew he couldn’t catch it. It slid down his lap and stopped on the seat. He wiped his palms and his fingertips on his trouser leg. The bus lurched and righted itself, the traffic slowed. His hands were sweaty again. He took out his notebook, but before he opened it, he tried to settle his mind by planning the evening ahead. That was the only way to get through this.
He had the fish thawing out in the fridge, yes. Broccoli — yes again! — and mash the spuds from yesterday. Milk? Had it — oh: yogurt for Aisling, the raspberry. She’d have her noodles as usual, and then he’d bring her out in the buggy. Brid could decompress, have a bath, a cup of tea on her own — whatever she wanted.
Three women got on just as the driver was about to close the doors and drive off. They were breathless and smiling after their dash, and like sailors in rough seas, the three made their way down the passageway. The one with the head-scarf didn’t look Arab at all. She looked more, well, white, he supposed. The other two had frizzy hair and glowing, muddy-coloured skin. They giggled and sat, and they began speaking in French. Fanning decided they were North Africans, and words cartwheeled gently through his thoughts: Sahel, Berber, Toureg.
… One laughed, revealed gums over snow white teeth before she covered her mouth with her hand.
O’Connell Bridge wasn’t crowded. Maybe it was a bit early in the season for the hawkers to be selling their Celtic beadwork and jewellery shite. A lone, middleaged duo dressed in the fawn and khaki colours that Fanning pegged as German was taking pictures. The Liffey was at full tide, and its dull, coral green swill did nothing to awaken the colours about, or the seamless grey sky settled over the city.
He tried to imagine himself in a market, in Morocco say, where these women must have come from. Shadows cut on the high stone walls by a sun in a cloudless sky, stalls, awnings, fruit, coffee and cigarette smoke, and roasting lamb, donkeys waiting in the shadows. A land of simple, harsh choices, stark in its beauty, with burning sands leading south to the empty Sahara. This was where the world outside the city was medieval. Or so he had read in National Geographic probably. At least the tightness in his chest was easing now.
He began to make up a story then. Leaving their country would have changed these women utterly. Then, when they went back to visit, to a cousin’s wedding, say, there’d be the clash with the old world… a marriage arranged by their families, an instruction to come home… a former boyfriend who…?
He took the pencil from the spine of his notebook. Scanning the notes he had from yesterday, he realized that he barely recognized his own writing. Shot: like a door slam? Like heavy books falling on a floor? Blood: lines, gouts? Wet fur, maroon. Smell: B.O., raw meat, cigarettes. Whiskey? Dust, oil? Disinfectant?
A long, deep yawn overtook him, and he gave into it. The tension was ebbing then, and the adrenaline gone. He could almost fall asleep here on the bus. His eyes slid out of focus, and he leaned his head against the window. Outside the glass, Westmoreland Street teemed with traffic and people. Three cranes stood out against the sky of the railings at Trinity College. The bus staggered and braked, wallowed and jerked as the driver fought to get into the lane around College Green. Fanning’s gaze slid over the faces gathered by the bus stops and at the traffic lights. They looked expectant, listless, distracted. He had done this since the time he started university, grabbing images and scenes from the city and dropping them as words in his notebook. Which reminded him.
His fumbled with the notebook and it slid away from him. Dropping everything today, he was. He caught it before it went over the edge of the seat. The sudden movement had caught the eye of one of the three women, the one who sat sideways in her seat, fingering a small earring as she listened to her friends. She seemed so happy, he thought, so at ease with herself. Caramel skin: he must write that down too, caramel. Was caramel from Africa originally?
The closest he had ever gotten to Africa was Spain, that winter with Brid. They taught English in Barcelona before it was a big deal, and then headed for the coast and Majorca — Robert Graves territory. Then in the new year they’d moved to the south of France, and later down to Siena. Returning to plain contradictable Dublin had been a strange pleasure. Unemployment, pasty-faced people, begrudgers and whingers galore, and a shocking lack of colour.
The writing really started after that. Glory years soon followed as Irish film became known. Soon there were film production companies springing up everywhere. Some serious money showed up. The script for Jack of Diamonds took him ten days, and put him in touch with Breen for the first time. He thought of moving to L.A. Brid persuaded him that Ireland was the place to be. She was right, but it became the place to be for financial types and computer scientists — not self-taught scriptwriters.
Things went a bit sideways then, into writing articles on film for a weekend paper. He took it seriously. He wrote about Die Hard and Werner Herzog, Rambo 2 and Bunuel. He and Brid kept at it, Bohemian-style, she teaching English at the institute on Westmoreland Street, he doing his articles and writing on the side. They lived in a flat on the second floor of a house near Beggar’s Bush.
Things had crept up on them somehow. It was a new Dublin, a new Ireland, roaring and heaving all around them. The house they rented was sold, they had to leave. They tried to keep to the city centre but it was hard to find places now. Brid’s friends were starting families. She herself became pregnant when she was studying for her H Dip. She told him only when three months had gone by. He tried to push the gig he had at the paper but he had no leverage. After all, there were plenty of people who could turn a phrase in Dublin. He was glad when his half-hearted plans there came to nothing.
They staggered through six months after Aisling was born until the Blow Up. One night there wasn’t any milk. It had nothing to do with the baby, but it was for a cup of tea and the breakfast in the morning. Hard things were said over a lack of milk. It passed. Things changed a bit. He did some columns for the suburban papers on green spaces and traffic. Brid’s aunt, a Holy Faith nun, got Brid a start at a school the far side of Bray. They needed a car then…
The bus was stopped for more than a minute now. He leaned out into the passageway and saw that traffic as far as the Canal Bridge ahead was stationary. The three women had lapsed into silence, only putting out a word or a phrase occasionally. Those words brought a wry smile, a nod, even a yawn, but seldom replies. They were tired. He imagined them working in restaurant kitchens or McDonald’s, wearily going through the motions, all the while thinking of their village on a stony hillside flattened by the sunlight of North Africa. A bit much, he knew.
But how could they ever make a go of it in Dublin on those wages? Had these women asked to be born poor, to be second-class citizens in some stupid religion they’d probably defend to their dying breaths? To be refugees here, to be homesick, barely getting by? There was no fairness, no justice.
“You don’t get rich from working.”
It was Tony Morrissey who had told him that a few years ago, when he had bumped into him after a film. But then Tony, who had left Political Science in second year and had gone to Economics, climbed into a Beemer — this after nodding and smiling his way through the five-minute walk they shared heading back to Pearse Street. Fanning had thought about that evening a lot afterward, and over time it revealed things to him. Tony and so many more like him were in exactly the right place at the right time. They got on board when the boom started and they surfed it. They seemed to know the ropes, how to get on.
Yes, Tony had said how much he enjoyed reading his reviews, and he had made a little joke too about knowing someone famous like Fanning. Fanning was sure it had been a genuine compliment. If Tony knew how little Mr. Film Reviewer was paid, how precarious this little gig was, how close he was to losing it because he was not twenty-three or twenty-four anymore, how the column only drained him too often of a will to write anything worthwhile. Ideas were nothing. “Creative” meant nothing.
A Garda car went by in a hurry. Fanning thought about getting off and legging it. Forty-five minutes would do it if he moved smartly. But he still felt jaded, spent. He couldn’t decide. He opened his notebook again. The bus began to move.
One of the women had been dozing. Fanning watched her eyelids flutter, and then she frowned. What was it like, he wondered to be shaken awake to find you’re in some strange country? Hardly the promised… That would be the title, and he must write it down: The Promised Land.
She drew her fingers across her eyes, rubbing them slowly. She yawned. Fanning imagined her face on the pillow next to him, her nipples dark against her skin. She let her eyes open slowly. Yes, he said within, you had a dream, but you are still here in this bus, in this strange city.
Her eyes met his. He nodded and made a small smile that he hoped conveyed understanding that she, like he, was tired. Her gaze stayed on him longer than he expected, and it sent a small current around his chest. Maybe she was wondering if she was really awake. Cheer up, he thought. She might have it bad waking up so far from home, but he was continually waking up in this strange place too.
She looked away. The others were craning their necks now to see what the flashing blue lights ahead could mean. Fanning looked down at the car next to the bus. A woman was driving — or rather not driving: she was on her mobile. In the back seat he saw a child with one of those Nintendos. An ambulance passed on the wrong side of the road.
This Promised Land idea could turn into the kind of thing that Breen expended cliches on: quirky, fresh, heart-felt. There’d be plenty of comedy available in the wings, of course, with Ireland meets the Maghreb. Maybe one of the three would fall for an Irish fella, and the other two would try to persuade her to go back and marry whoever had been picked for her…?
The women were talking again. He stopped writing and looked over. The one who had been dozing was murmuring something to the others. One of the two began to turn her head, but she stopped. When he looked down at the notebook again he was sure that he was now being watched. The dozy one laughed and the others joined her.
Embarrassment flared up in him. So they were amused at him being curious about them. They might even think he was giving them the eye. It was a major crime where they come from, no doubt. He turned back to his notebook and pretended to read what he had written.
One rose slowly and pressed the bell. The others got to their feet then, and followed her to the door. Fanning watched them shifting their grip from the bars overhead to the upright ones by the door, and back. The bus driver braked hard, and the doors hissed open even before the bus came to a full stop. The trio detached themselves from the railings and from one another after their stumbles. One giggled a bit. They stepped gingerly onto the footpath, and then began to walk back alongside the bus. Fanning pretended to be intent on his notebook.
The woman who had been dozing in the bus seemed fresh and energetic now. She cast him a quick glance, a mischievous one, he was certain, in passing. He abandoned his ruse with the notebook, caught her eye and smiled. She tried hard not to laugh outright and skipped ahead followed by the others. Something else began to leak into his thoughts now.
The bus moved off and he turned to look out the back window. They were having a great time of it now, staggering with laughter. They did not bother to hide their glances.
He turned back and closed his notebook. It wasn’t embarrassment now, it was more like a draining feeling.
It was a while before the traffic finally moved again.