I was coming back from lunch when I thought a pint would be the best idea. Anyway, it was too hot to work. Days of loping around, exhausted, climbing stairs, swatting flies with newspapers and novels at the rented desk. I feared I’d smash a window in the process. I was getting air. But the streets were baked, forgotten, thirsty. I felt sorry for the world.
There was a pub so I pushed the door and slipped inside.
It was the first pub I’d seen, right next to a betting shop, along Marlborough Street or into Summerhill, I don’t know where. I’ve never found the place again, it’s gone. What you had was a plain roomful of men, seated in pairs or drinking alone. No modern touches, just the horse racing on two small televisions. No sunshine had come near this place or ever would. It seemed like somewhere you could safely disappear, or at least, until 6.25pm. Then I had to take the tram so I could be home for seven.
An old man was bent over the bar, one hand on his walking frame, his face drawn up towards the leaping horses. I asked the barman for a pint and stood there loosening my shirt. The fabric couldn’t handle the sweat under my arms and I had a very grimy feeling. I stank. My hair was sticking to my face. What I wanted was to climb up to some jutting rock and jump into the sea in all my clothes. Plunge and splash around the water until sunset. I’d stand under a sprinkler just to get wet.
READ MORE
I was doing summer wrong, all over again. It happened every year. As a person I had failed and I felt it strongly, regularly, but then, who cared. It didn’t matter if you weren’t delighted with your life, I had to keep remembering that.
The barman put a pint of beer into my hand, and the cold glass seemed to touch me to my depths. I carried it to a table, pretending to know the place. A young guy coming towards me nodded, lifting his pint. It was comradely, the way he did it. He took the next table. I knew I’d come to the wrong place but that it hardly mattered. The walls were covered with faded pictures of Italia ’90, framed jerseys, the football manager Jack Charlton pouring himself a pint. Young Paul McGrath, and Packie Bonner, all ecstatic for the camera.
I cooled my cheek a moment with the beaded glass, and it almost slid out of my hand. Then my first big sip. It tasted delicious. I wished it could go on forever, this moment here, alone.
Underneath me a piece of foam burst through a rip in the flowery brown sofa. I sat back, brushing a few scattered crisps on to the floor. A scratch card poked out of the arm crevice, the green and gold one that costs €2, with half of it torn off. The first column was intact, a €5000, a €5000 and – I assumed it was a €50, but the way it was torn it could have been the winning €5000, accidentally discarded. The guy at the next table had caught me examining a scratch card so I stuck it back into the seat. I took out my laptop.
The heatwave had been arranged around my most appalling deadline. An unending document, call it a piece of writing. Weird, irrelevant, incomprehensible the more I messed with it. My work was very badly paid. When you added in the rent and overheads, the transport, coffees, salad lunches, the odd shopping indiscretion, it turned out I was emptying my wallet every month just so I could sit around, cutting and pasting paragraphs. It did nothing for me in the long run.
I worried about terminal physical decline. My skin was suffering. My poor back. The life of my mind, gone. Not to think about the city where I was supposed to live, the people the world was passing by.
Could you even call us a society? I wondered this in flashes of despair. And how could I be part of it? If I couldn’t let go of my outrageous tribulations. My bourgeois troubles. I’d always assumed that I’d contribute something. Get off my backside, maybe start by volunteering. These days it seemed highly inappropriate that I should even try and get involved. Too often, I wished I could sever ties with my own self, and start again, but I had no idea how.
“Hard at it there?” It was the guy at the next table. I knew how eccentric I must look. Fingers crouched like frightened spiders on the greasy keys. I stretched my arms. “Oh yeah, deadlines.”
A lanyard hung from a mustard ribbon around his neck. His hands were stained at the cracks with an inky substance. His fingernails too. He had a tabloid open on his raised knee. SISTER TAKES BITE FROM CHEATING LOVER’S ARM. Across the page a woman on a white throne, surrounded by puppy dogs. I smiled tightly and resumed looking at my document.
A tram dinged outside and clanged along. It had to be before seven and not after when I got inside. I’d been late before, and it was never worth it. The way the atmosphere would change. Chaos would erupt and the consequences would take days to deal with.
I took a luxurious sip, glancing sidelong. He was drumming with his fingers on his right knee, looking without interest at his phone. The paper was now folded at the edge of the table. FEARED GANGLAND BOSS STEPS IN AS FATHER OF BRIDE SHOT. I wondered if I should plan something for later. Ice cream, surely. Everyone was at the Forty Foot I guessed, or lighting up their barbecues. Or in the South of France. There had been too much talk and pictures lately of the South of France.
“Are you not having another?” It was your man, talking to me again.
“Oh no. I’m only having one.” I gripped my glass.
“One?” he said.
“Just the one.”
“Grand so.”
But it wasn’t grand. I had to explain myself.
“Another would get me – locked. We can’t drink as much as you.”
“How do you mean, we?”
“Girls. Women.”
He smiled awkwardly, as if I’d told a bad joke. The word women had embarrassed him. I caught myself looking pleased in the streaked mirror of the laptop screen.
“I don’t normally drink during the day, by the way,” I told him. “It’s the heat.”
“I’m not judging. Sorry.” He told me his name. So it was my turn.
“Arabella,” I spoofed.
“Ar-a-bell-er,” he said, carefully mispronouncing it. “Yeah. Okay, fair enough.”
We drank, flicking away the flies.
“Sounds like a made-up name,” he said.
I laughed, but hated giving him attention, because he was so good looking. Of course I’d noticed it. Not that I found this kind of thing important, but I could see that other people would. And it had aroused, I’d also noticed, resentment in me, jealousy too. His brown hair was thick and long around the sides, so that when a tiny gold stud glinted from his left ear lobe, he struck me as a genius. The back of his neck was tanned. He wore a light blue T-shirt with vague holes around the collar, and those hard-wearing work trousers lined with dusty pockets and holsters. He probably kept nails and screwdrivers in those, all kinds of tools, and cigarettes or loose change. I finished my beer in two ugly gulps and it tasted great.
“What are you up to anyway?” he asked, nodding at the laptop. “In the pub like?”
“Oh. That’s nothing.”
“Let me guess, you’re a student.”
I gave him a stern look.
“Thanks. No, I’m a journalist.”
“Like a crime journalist?”
“No, I don’t do much crime.” I found myself opening the buttons of my sleeves for no reason. “Business, economics. Lots of business.” I faced him. “I’ve just been up in the financial quarter. Interviewing a billionaire lady. This oligarch who’s bought the big hotel at Grand Canal. She had a security detail.”
“Fair play, financial quarter,” he nodded, musing. We looked at the horses galloping on the screen above. The commentator was blaring out the names in an accelerated frenzy. Desert Spring. Boundless Joy. Heart Star. Let’s Get Lucky. Bout de Souffle. Follower of Fashion. Brandy Snap. Bet Your Ass. Some race I had no knowledge of, no clue how to follow as the gloss of thundering legs and bouncing jockeys whipped towards the finish. I guessed I should have put a bet on Boundless Joy, who came first.
“Do you want a drink anyway?” my pub friend asked and I regarded him a moment. His ease and restfulness. His face was a deep tanned pink, from too much sun, or maybe daytime drinking.
“Go on then.”
He got up. And why not, I thought. Why. Not. We had all afternoon. I heard the bright horn of the tram and tried not to worry as it gasped along without me. I tried to master a single clear thought about the situation. To set aside the dread. Because here was the problem. Going home. The worst moment in my day was arriving home. It was walking up the driveway, putting my key in the door, hearing the metal cut the metal, opening the lock. I just never knew what I was going to find. I didn’t want to live this way much longer. I lacked insight, clairvoyance, but I imagined this could be compared to great unhappiness. This fear. These nerves that nestled in me. You could not continue in this vein forever.
Pub friend came back with two pints, his laden, chalky swagger. He paused over the table.
“Would I join you there?”
“Okay.”
“Well. What are you doing in the pub on your own then?” he asked, taking the further end of the sofa.
“Do I have to have a reason?”
“It’s just that you seem like a very civilised lady.”
I laughed loudly. “That’s nice of you. I’m meeting my husband.”
He tilted his head towards the doorway.
“But he won’t be here for a while. We’re not actually married yet. What are you doing here?”
“I was passing through. It’s the end of the month isn’t it? I got paid today.”
I closed up my laptop and put it in my bag.
“What do you do?”
“I’m an electrician. Working in a data centre the past year.”
I sipped as he explained what a data centre is, because I’d gone this long without really knowing. I knew they were some way bad, maybe very bad, but that not everybody thought so. Like iPhones; some people loved their iPhone.
The beer was heavy in my hand. If I drank it all I would be useless to the world. Another race had finished and the tired horses were being led away. Sugar Coat. No Tomorrow. Runaway Bridle. The old man at the bar got up and slowly rolled his walking frame along the floor, out the door, on to the street.
Pub friend didn’t trust the place he worked in, but then, the money. Work started at 7am, he was up at six. He pulled off his lanyard, ruffling the back of his hair. “I need one of these to open every single door. Can you imagine the power? They are hiding everything.”
“Like what?”
“All our information. State security. I don’t know. Everything. You must know, you’re the journalist. Do you do like, investigations?”
“Always chipping away, yeah.’ I gulped my beer. ‘So where do you live?”
With his parents, he said. Swords.
“Swords, wow!” This made him laugh.
“Shocking, right? Swords. You’ve never been to Swords, have you?”
“Never in my life.”
“You should. I’ll show you Swords.” I looked at my feet, and he shifted around and sighed. “It’s all right you know. There’s nature there, and history. We have a medieval castle. A river. The airport! Why, what have you heard?”
He had no time these days anyway, working Monday to Friday for the company. On Saturdays, he helped his dad, a painter decorator, and sometimes Sundays. He put up with it because he was saving for a mortgage. “Mortgage,” I said, from a dream space. I was woozier than ever, listening to him, in love with beer, excited by the possibility of feeling this tremendous all the time. I wanted to come back again tomorrow and do it again, and then the next day and live life under the influence of such an enhancing nectar.
“I’ll start off with a one-bed apartment, get a foot in,” he went on. “I can do it up, sell it on quick. And then who knows, I might buy a nice house. I might plant some trees, and flowers.” He mimed a sprinkling action with his fingertips. “Stranger things have happened. I only have to meet the right woman.”
He rested his head back and looked at me. His eyes were icy blue, like two sweet lozenges.
“I live in a house,” I said. “And I have three children. And I’m married – or, I have a fiance.”
“Oh. A fiance.” He said it in a quiet but outlandish, mocking voice.
“We met when I was young.” A papery black fly was crawling around my wallet. It paused, turned left and right, and rubbed two scheming front legs together. The back of a hand crashed on to the table just as it took off. Pub friend cursed.
“You don’t look old,” he said.
I told him my real age and he made a good show of surprise.
He was 26, he said. And it was pay-day. “How about a last beer?”
“Absolutely not. My husband – he’s coming.”
He looked at the doorway.
“Now she tells me.”
“Not immediately. But in the next hour, he’ll be here.”
Pub friend went off. More people had come in. A thin guy in a dark, wide-brimmed hat who didn’t look well, a blonde woman with bagged eyes. Four older guys sitting around a table. Pub friend had a pint in each hand when he came back.
“You don’t have to drink that. I just thought you might want it. So. Is it a date?”
“A date?”
“Like, is he bringing you out?”
“I don’t know. He might surprise me. There’s a new rooftop bar in Ranelagh. Nothing too fancy.”
“I’d like to go on a date with you,” pub friend said.
The beer filled the back of my throat in a needling ball. I swallowed and laughed out a lame titter. Had anybody noticed what was going on here? The barman was impervious, pulling at the taps. Today had got completely out of hand. I couldn’t remember why I’d done a thing like come in here. Refreshment, initially. One of the old guys was telling a story now. Another was talking over him, with pointing, and something in this knot of bonhomie made me want to leave. Drink was stupid. Pub friend was annoying.
“Okay, just because you have some kind of fetish,” I told him. “I have responsibilities. And I’m getting married.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about that. I forget anything I don’t like the sound of.”
“And anyway you should be going out with some foxy 26-year-old. Hey, show me.” I thought he might deny me the pleasure, but he handed me his phone.
“I need your passcode, please.”
Raising an eyebrow, he punched it in. I pressed on the first app I could find. Women named Denise, Lauren, Benedicta, Katelynn. They wore multiple lavish earrings. A crystal pendant winked from a bust. “Beauty’s only skin deep, you better go deeper,” read Lauren’s caption.
“Headcase,” he said. “Have to get away from her.”
“How about Lily, look there’s a knockout. Wow. And a degree in pharmacy. Ask her out. Let’s message her.”
“But what could be better,” he said, facing me, “than a woman with a bit of experience?”
I told him he had lost his mind and gathered up my stuff and downed my drink. It was good to get back outside, though the day had barely cooled. A sunburned, shirtless guy came along the path, looking desperately for something. Pub friend beckoned me aside. He nodded up the road. I followed him.
We stood at the corner of a narrow laneway of black industrial bins with their lids raised high over puffy rubbish bags. “I’d take your number, but I don’t know that someone wouldn’t come and try and kill me,” he said. I chuckled. Really, though, it meant the world. We were somewhere. Sackville Row, or Sackville Place, who could tell. We were so close it would have taken nothing. Scandal. A torrid love affair, I saw it. It was all I wanted and how good it would have felt. I raised a hand in goodbye. He patted his pockets. “Got your key card?” I asked him, my voice a husk. “I do,” he said. ‘Nice one. And goodbye, eh.”
“Arabella.”
I walked quickly towards the river, past the Abbey Theatre, Earl Place, Old Abbey Street. On the pavement, arid stumps of dogshit, a litter of pistachio nuts. I breathed in pleasant drifts of hash. Then a kind of smorgasbord of leftovers and takeaway boxes, a ring of seagulls feasting, with eager, disapproving eyes, beaks plucking greedily around the shreds and spoils. Across the road, a mother in a black headscarf pushed a sleeping boy in a pram, two more children trailing along behind her. The only other people left.
The sky was brilliant blue with just two airy streaks of cloud where a plane had been. I threw my head back and looked straight into the wicked gold coin of the sun. My lies should have been a worry to me, instead they were exhilarating, soothing as tea or nightfall. I’d just never thought of an alternative to being this way. The powerful wind of saltwater blew, and the river rippled by in vast majestic threads. Seagulls keened in heavy flocks, drowning out everything. I’d missed the tram. It was the perfect evening for a stroll.
Maggie Armstrong’s debut collection, Old Romantics was published by Tramp Press in 2024 and in Canada by Biblioasiss in 2025. She has been shortlisted at the Irish Book Awards for Short Story of the Year and Newcomer of the Year, and shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award.
