The two big lads squeezed into groaning chairs in the snug. Regulars compared the pair to two large teddy bears in a broom cupboard.
‘A couple of babes on the go; how did I get myself into this mess? ’ McDonagh said, palming sweat from his pale forehead.
O’ Shaughnessy took his first slurp of Murphys which formed a cream ring around his mouth and said, ‘There are worse problems.’
‘I’m sinking, so I am.’
‘Monday Mary, Tuesday Theresa, Wednesday Mary again?’
‘Both of them are wanting to get serious. What do I do, Jack?’
‘Have you a preference?’
‘I’m nineteen, brought up to believe I can have whatever I want. And now I’ve got more than I can handle.’
‘A preference, Tony?’
‘Neither! I can’t do serious. At nineteen? Come back in ten years, maybe I’ll be ready to commit. I’m a bairn in arms.’
‘Just tell them that. Level with them.’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘You can’t tell them or you don’t want to?’
‘Texts from them, like a buzz of hornets, day and night. I’m cracking under the strain of my duplicitous folly.’
‘Text one of them and tell her you’ve died.’
‘Aren’t they both with the bank’s head office in town. One or the other rings me everyday in Bray about some spurious customer business. They’re nice girls. I can’t be cruel to them.’
‘There was a young man from Bray, whose only hope was to pray.’
‘I need an escape plan. Something written on the parchment of human kindness with the nib of empathy.’
‘Tell them you’re for the priesthood.’
‘While continuing to work at the bank?’
‘Discuss your employment worries with human resources.’
‘They’ll fire me.’
‘Come out as gay.’
‘Do you think they’d fall for that?’
‘Join my brother for a few evenings in the gay haunts of Temple Bar. He’ll be grand about having a straight fellow alongside.’
‘How will that…?’
‘Bray’s a small town. The word will percolate out from Dublin.’
‘Desperate times, desperate measures.’
/
‘The pair of them have stopped ringing.’
‘Grand.’
‘So kind to me the pair of them were. Both said they were proud I’d found my real self.’
‘Sweet women.’
‘You were right. One night down Temple Bar and the next morning at work, I was the talk of the bank.’
‘I gave the boat a bit of a steer.’
‘How so?’
‘I rang your head office. Left my number for Mary and Theresa in my capacity as Tony McDonagh’s best pal.’
‘Whatever you said, you’ve steered me out of deep water. Another decade of adolescence for yours truly. What did you say?’
‘I told each one what an immature eejit you were and that any man worth his salt would be in thrall to them. They’ve asked to meet me.’
‘You mean…?’
‘Mary on Monday, Theresa on Tuesday. Strictly platonic. On the other hand I don’t see my adolescence lasting till I’m thirty.’
‘Twenty nine?’
‘I’ll give it a week.’
