Some upright part of his mind carried his body to the door. He hailed a taxi. “It’s a bloody great city,” he told the driver. “You think so?” answered the driver without conviction. “Well, sometimes,” said Jack. “Try living here,” the driver replied. Jack entered the small theatre, and ordered a glass of wine. He ordered another because he couldn’t taste the first. Suddenly out of the corner of his eye he saw Maisie Adams enter, dolled up in fur. Jesus, he heard himself say. He sat at the back. Later, at a great distance from him, Catherine stepped onto the stage. The lines she’d been practising with him night after night took on a new life of their own.

Onto the record player he put Billie Holiday. Then Van Morrison. He sat on the sofa and looked round, wondering where he had left his cigarettes. Laboriously he searched each room in the house.

At last he found a cigarette. Blatant images and crazy thoughts went through his head. The room was stone cold. When Catherine came home, she found him in the study on the spare bed.

In the typewriter was a sheet of paper filled with gibberish.

She tried waking him.

“You were great, Catherine,” he mumbled.

“Why did you not join us?” she asked. “Don’t you know my mother was there. We went for a meal. We waited and waited for you.”

“I came home.”

“Where were you before the show?” she demanded.

At last he answered. “I was drinking in a pub off Our Lady’s Road,” he said.

“It’s not Our Lady’s Road,” she shouted. “It’s My Lady’s Road. It’s My Lady’s Road, Jack. My Lady’s Road, do you hear?”

“My Lady’s Road,” he repeated.

“What were you doing down there?”

“I went walking,” he said. “Walking and walking.”

“Oh, Jack,” said Catherine.

24. Madame George

24

Madame George

“Hey Jack,” asked Christopher, “are you a Republican?”

“No.”

“It’s all right, then.”

“I’m just a dancer.”

“Yeah, mate. But you have to admit the IRA have got it sussed.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“They have the hardware. They have the men.”

“I don’t know anything about those things.”

“These UVF blokes here don’t have sweet fuck all. They have only the one bleedin’ shooter. It’s the same bloody gat does all the damage. I don’t know. The Provies, they’re something else, aren’t they, Jackie?”

“Look, Chris, I don’t know, right.”

“Well, you know I was in the British army.”

“It makes no difference to me.”

“I did my term, Jackie. And you learn things. You get to know that the Provies know more than you do. Fucking hell. They’re fucking technicians, right?” He drank a shot of vodka. “An’ you know what we discovered at Ballymena?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“A fucking witches’ coven.”

“What?”