To The Hills

      The way it is in this country, he said, someone sees you out walking a hill and you’re a fucking eejit. Just because you’re not in the pub or in front of the television watching crap. I will tell you one thing, Teresa, I would rather be walking the hills than listening to some of the fuckers around this place.

      Teresa nodded, sighed, mewed.

      It was a good old hike today, he said. You kept up well, the two of you. You found the North Faces did the job? Yes, well, what did I tell you? The North Face is an excellent boot. A good boot is something it’s worth your while you spend a few quid on. There is no point codding yourself with cheap boots, Teresa. The Goretex is an outstanding material, we know that, anybody can tell you that. Reliable, I wouldn’t be caught dead with anything else. You found the dried fruit a help? Good. It beats a Mars Bar, you know? With the dried fruit and the nuts, you see, it’s a slow release of energy that you get, just what you need at the tail end of a grade five.

      He had furious eyebrows perched up top of a dismal nose. He wore a helmet of sandy, wiry hair. He was the guts of six foot.

      Well, Teresa, he said, this is Wicklow, this is March, what were you expecting exactly? This isn’t the Canaries we’re talking about. Anyway, you don’t feel it with the fleece on you. From the way you were going on, the two of you, I thought you were well used to the hills. Hah? This is what I was led to believe, Teresa.

      They had met at the hillwalking club in Dublin that winter. The club put leaflets in outdoorsy shops and sometimes a small ad in the paper. It met Tuesdays, year-round, at a well-lit suburban lounge bar: all welcome. It was mostly country people that showed up, and most of them were past the first flush. There would be two hours of shy talk over stretched drinks. Truth be told, Teresa and her friend, Marie, didn’t have that much of an interest in hills but they had an interest in healthy men and Brian seemed steady, he had a good job in the labs on the campus, he didn’t drink much, he was tall and slim. He wouldn’t have figured himself for a catch but there you go.

      I suppose you could say that I’m not great with people, Teresa, he said. I’ll be straight with you now, women have always been difficult for me. It’s a long time since I’ve been in a relationship of any kind. Which is a word I hate, by the way. The people at work we’re having a drink or at lunchtime, what have you, it’s my relationship this, my relationship that, blah blah blah. Another one is partner. Jesus! I hate that word. My partner this, my partner that, you can bring your partner, do you have a partner. Fuck off. Do you know what I’m saying to you? Fuck off! Partner, I don’t know, it makes it sound like a badminton team.

      They were naked together in bed, having not had sex.

      I’ll be perfectly straight with you, Teresa, why shouldn’t I be? I haven’t been with a woman for fourteen years. Drought isn’t the word, Teresa. You’ll be getting worried now, of course. You’ll be thinking, what’s with your man? But no, don’t, listen, please. This is an absolutely amazing thing for me. It’s like I don’t know what’s going on. Just to be lying here with you is unbelievable to me.

      The plan had been: park in Wicklow town, walk the grade five to Tobar Pass, a bite to eat, a few drinks, stay the night at a B&B, walk back the next morning. They had booked three rooms. This had been complicated. Brian, obviously, was going to have a room to himself, but what were the girls going to do? If they shared a room, it meant they were marking each other for the night and what if something happened? They booked a room each. We might as well get a room each, they said, it’s cheap. This was an unspoken declaration of combat. Two channels had thus opened up for Brian, though he was not at all sure that this was the case.

      The B&B was run by a tiny woman who conversed in the small hours of the night—every night—with an aunt dead twenty years. In the afternoon, when they got in, she put on her glasses and with a show of great ritual opened her bookings ledger. The bookings ledger gave her a tingling pleasure. It made her feel giddy and playful. When she opened that ledger she was like a cat with a ball of twine. She asked Marie and Teresa were they sure they didn’t want to share a room, she had a fine double out back, it would be cheaper. The girls glared at her, they said no, thank you, no, we’ll take the two. Brian flushed.

      More money than sense! he said.

      Crazy, said the tiny woman.

      They went to their rooms, and each was glad of a short reprieve from company. These were single people, in their forties, each of them had lived alone for many years, and such a long morning of company was a trial. The rooms were pretty much identical. Each had a narrow bed with a lumpy mattress. Each had a wardrobe, a dresser, a tumbler, a cup and saucer, a kettle and teabags, sachets of Bewley’s coffee that had lain there since the previous millennium. Each room had an en-suite bathroom that had been haphazardly plastered by the tiny woman’s middle-aged nephew, a man who had savage dependency on drink, an addiction to cough bottles and a sullen, thyroidal glare. Marie’s view was of a galvanised tin roof on a shed at the back of the house. She sat on the bed and stared at the green wallpaper. The wallpaper showed a jungle scene. It was green for calm. She could hear the shower running in Teresa’s room next door.

      Watch that bitch like a hawk, she said to herself.

      If you were to ask me what it all goes back to, Teresa, said Brian, if you were to put me on the couch and say, well now, where does it all go back to? Tell me about your childhood, all that crap? Okay, fine, it’s obviously all rooted down there.

      Is that right? said Teresa

      My father died suddenly, he said, when I was eight years of age. Yeah, I know, boo-hoo. But the way of it was the worst thing. It was shockingly sudden. A brain haemorrhage. We were on our holidays. We were at the beach! Yeah. One minute he’s lying there in his togs, the next he’s lying there dead. My brother and myself were playing in the dunes. Were you ever in Lahinch, Teresa? Unbelievable dunes and there we are, rolling around in the sand, pretending to be Buck Rogers on the moon, or what have you, and after a while we said we’ll go back to Mam and Dad for the coke and crisps, you know, and when we go back, she’s kneeling in the sand, bawling. She’s going, John! Oh John! John! And my father is lying there on the towel with blood all over his neck. An amount of blood you would not believe.

      Did you know that, he said, did you know, Teresa, that blood actually comes out the ears?

      Go ’way? said Teresa.

      Actually my most vivid memory isn’t the beach but going back to Sligo the next day. My brother and myself, we were in shock I suppose but innocent—all we could talk about when they were putting him in the hearse in Lahinch is how long is a hearse going to take to get to Sligo? We worked it out. If a hearse goes five miles an hour and