Gold. Who Was That Guy That Touched Everything And, ‘ting!’ Pure Gold? All That Money Thrown At Education

bear with me, I’m returning from a year off and feel like Bambi learning to stand again.

MY FUCKING BABY????

♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HONEY!!!! 💖🥳

Thank you sm my BABY ♥️♥️♥️

Long fingers prodded at aching joints, she just didn’t move the way she used to and yet her brain told her she could still rise to the occasion if push came to shove. West end trained, she was, and Darragh had supported her at every juncture, save how much he whinged at the London smog and the hovel of a flat they called home for a few years, a wee one bedroom crammed into a Victorian on the outskirts of Notting Hill. Men like him weren’t destined to be hemmed in, he was forever scratching at the walls and stomping the green of Hampstead Heath, but even that felt like a cattle shed compared with home and it’s vast expanses of nothing. But her, she slotted into the chaos as if it was a second skin, the volume of bodies, stacked on top of one another, the noise - it felt right. Dutifully, he was either front row, or stage door every night, and for his efforts she dug a little deeper into the little life they shared.

He tried, for her, to stay - paying more than they could afford back then to size up once Connor came along, adding a wriggling pink baby in among the sequins and sparkle worked for a time, but even she had to admit trying to raise him in the din, parcelling him up for school on the tube was not the kitsch childhood she had envisioned for her family. 

Oh, but the sickly sweet smell of sweat mixed with perfume, the bruises that mottled her skin - rehearsal after rehearsal, the life was addictive, she adored it, and it her. When they left to go back to Ireland it snuffed a light out in her, swapped spotlights and dance shoes for nappies, homework and toddler classes. 

Saoirse taught children’s ballet classes for a while, in the small town hall, peppered with flyers for mum and baby groups, the local food bank, bin collection days. It wasn’t enough. Instead she felt a rot in her gut, stirring within the hole she couldn’t fill. The only thing that compared was the scent at the crown of her children’s heads. Their innocence, the pure light they emitted felt almost as intoxicating as the warmth of the stage light. Some would say being a mother was the making of you, but for her, she had been made and moulded years ago. Married to the game, and Darragh was aware and all too happy to allow it, but he’d be remiss if he didn’t admit he cherished the time he had her all to himself.

When Blair came back with her airy fairy idea for a new club, it wasn’t crazy enough that it didn’t curl its talons into Saoirse almost immediately. Something she lost sleep over, and sometimes she’d put on the costumes just to feel the scratch of the sequins against pale flesh, relishing in the red welts it drew over her skin. She’d had two children, so the zip strained and her hips pushed at the fabric. Darragh used to watch her, and all at once he’d remember how the stage split those ruby red lips in two, and she’d beam. The notion of being able to have a hand in it all over again had ripped jagged holes in her stony façade, letting light tough parts of her that had gone dark years ago. 

Opening Absinthe re-ignited something in her, a warmth spreading through her, Darragh wasn’t ready to lose her to the city, and so he bankrolled it in Spiriod, and though he hadn’t considered it at the time, he got his wife back immediately, a flurry of red hair and sparkle and all at once they were 20 again, except this time, they were home.

There’s a light, and it flickers - philip watched his wife circle it, a look of exasperation mottling her face, and yet the image let solemn lips crack open into a smile. Be it that his gut tells him she is his wife, but the commitment says otherwise…or be it the idiocy he finds in watching her struggle rather than her asking for help, it curls the corners of slack maw all the same.

The hallway lightbulb, it was another something he had promised and not gotten around to. He watched her turn it on and off, each glow of the bulb illuminating a new line of frustration. Their house had so many knocks and notches now from a variety of fuckery and now it bore the scars of their life there. In truth, he liked it that way, in every crack lay a memory.

Both of them had the money to fix it and then some, but there was an unspoken understanding that they’d get around to it, the thin veneer of perfection was undone with a closer look, but it was them. It was their space and it illustrated every fight and every make up. Every kiss, every shag - the 𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 in the oak floor, the creak in a floorboard set free the laughter they forgot about when times felt too tough to bear.

Albeit it was a ‘man’ way to think of things. For his wife, it was merely something else for her to bleet at him for. It ignited the ever present need in her; to nest, and home make, regardless of whether or not there were children present. Their lives had never been any different, even after all this time. It held the ever present guilt that he hadn’t been able to give her children; they both blamed themselves but took care not to dwell.

He watched her ferret from room to room, and knew by now the exact moment she’d snap and call him out for the useless son of a bitch he knew he could be. Philip was his 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫’𝐬 son, god rest her soul, and there was something in him that loved the banter, the opportunity to rise and fulfil the husband character he so 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲. To prove his point; to make it upto her and force them back into the small box in which they just were : in love with each other and each of their imperfections.

He knew the life they shared wasn’t perfect, it was hardly the shit fairy tales were made of but it suited them.

The smile grew wider over the lines in his face, and he relished in the ache. Philip rubbed grubby mit through the mop of inky locks at his scalp, stubbing out puthering tab end in waiting ashtray. Blair was made for him, and he her.

Crossing one boot over the other, he leant back in his chair, and he watched as his dainty wife shot a look over her shoulder, blonde tendrils tumbling past her shoulder blade, he wanted to 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧, he thought.

𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞. Everyone said he used to laugh, and with her, with her there was still some cause to. To cat and mouse, to play house like children would.

Cerulean irises fluttered to the banal on the television, a ticking wheel of some bullshit American dream game show. “Feck me, Shirley, the answers fuckin’ 𝐛𝐥𝐮𝐞.”

It was just enough, a whisper of change in the air and he watched dainty palm make contact with the living room door. Blair crackled, an electricity to their coupling. To be sure, she was on the ceiling now and in probability rules she could have shorted the electrics in the whole house with her temper alone.

His eyes flickered again to meet hers.

“What’s wrong bird?” Door handle met drywall and slotted into the last fight hole it made. Long fingers reached for the next cigarette, running the filter over his lower lip, he lifts struck match to tobacco.

“Are ye’ yankin’ my fuckin’ dick Lip?”

He blinked, raising a playful eyebrow. Shaking the match out, he watches grey smoke meet the blue of his cigarette, curling around one another, and allows himself a moment to dwell on glowing embers.

“And why would I be doin’ that?” He inhaled, slowly, measured, turning his head back towards the tv. “M’ just watchin’ television, love.”

Anger meets television screen as she launches the laundry basket perched on her hip at blue glow. “Catch Phrase?! Ya kiddin’ love- you ain’t watched this with any degree of seriousness ever, n’ Stephen fuckin’ Mulhern turns me stomach the diddy wee cunt.”

She sighed, exasperated, and pottered to the hallway. He pressed his lips together, brimming with adoration for the fire in her, comical that her reactions were always gigantic even in the face of the smallest inconvenience.

This was it. The 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐞 - she’d make to do it herself, teetering delicately on step stool, he watched every curve of her and resigned himself to the fact she’d ruined him for all other women. To be sure - he was more than okay with that.

He sighed, hauling himself up off the chair on which he had sunk. “Baby.”

“Fuck off will ya? I’ll do it myself.”

“Baby.” He moves towards her. “Son of a bitch B, let me do it would ya? You’re gonna fall and snap ye chuffing neck, and then ye'd definitely be no use at all.”

“Philip, I mean it, go away.”

He laughs, a low chuckle; and she blows, swinging for him, but she stumbles, he grasps her hips. And he couldn’t be happier to be right it fills him with a warm glow, same as the one he feels at the crown of his head as flat palm meets it. Still - he clings to wriggling woman.

Slowly, he props her onto her feet on the floor, and moves to twist flickering bulb from its mount. “Let me do it, darlin’, a’ said I would didn’ I?”

She sniffs, resigned, an unexplained smirk on her face. For a second he thinks he’s won, before thumb and forefinger find the heat in the bulb.

“Mother fucker.” He spits and she crumples beside him. Shaking his hand he turns. “You little bitch.”

Laughter breaks and he scowls. “Ya fuckin’ useless with me even now love. Cmon, rinse ya fingers and do it with a rag next time.” She takes his hand in hers and leads him to the sink, tending to the growing redness on his fingertips.

Fuckin’ perfection. P’haps it was time after all these years to make an honest woman of her, neither of them even mentioned it much anymore.

She won, even when she didn’t. His wife. His Blair, she was a force of nature and would outsmart him even in 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡.

“M’ tired.”

Her voice is small, and sinks into the ripples of the surf in front of them, syllables sticking to the chill in the breeze. The sun sinking below the waves, throwing splotches of pink and orange into the tide. Saoirse and Darragh had run to the edge of Spiriod, tensions in camp Shea were bubbling over and they needed respite, or out all together, but the closer they got to the edge of town, the wearier their limbs became. Leaving them with the next best thing; the coast. 

“I know love.” He sniffed, the scent of sticky sweet doughnuts wafted over and his stomach rumbled. They had come all this way and just sat. Sat, and talked. The quiet Shea needed a break too sometimes. Peeping at him through salty tendrils of hair, plaited sloppily at her breast, she studied him, Derry was weathered as the cliffs overshadowing the bay, lines set into his face peppered with the dying embers of the auburn in his facial hair, it had all been snuffed out. It suited him, age, getting older, a mop of white hair at furrowed brow. Though she supposed neither of them could say they were wiser or better off for it. For all the troubles they were determined to turn their backs on, the need to help their family seemed to be the thing pulling them under. Part of them wanted to go back to being the kids in the caravan park, a town girl on the wrong side of the tracks. Her parents had fuckin’ despaired at the time, but they just didn’t see what she did, and he hadn’t failed her yet. They got off that site, and as the business grew, so did their fortune.

The tide was coming in, salty blue trickling closer and closer to sandy toes. Saoirse found herself making bets with the water, daring it to slip under her and soak the fabric of their clothes. Wash away a multitude of stresses, pull it from their pores and yet, as she looked back to her right, her husband had shuffled further back and was smiling at her, hand outstretched. 

Irises tracked the length of his arm and she reached for it, allowing him to pull her closer. The smell of stale beer on his breath and the aftershave she had bought him for Christmas last year; cinnamon, vanilla, bourbon sat in the crook of his neck. The warmth of his skin and the scent of it was home to her. Not where they were. He had given her everything, a home, a platform to have a career, beautiful children. His family were different, not all of them - steadfast as they were to protect their own, they had no desire to cut the cord, only to drink themselves deeper into wonderland - but it wasn’t wonderland at all, and none of them were Alice. Instead they were ensnared in a cocaine powdered trap and the more they wriggled, the deeper the teeth sank. It puzzled her, putting things on the line in the name of wealth and perpetual success. Sure, they did it as a team, won and lost together, lived and died by the Shea name, but sitting on the outside, she could see the toll it had taken over the years, the lost opportunities, the missed connections, any honest passions. Anything they had was tangled within the brambles Michael had grown around himself. 

Far be it past her to say, but it was too far gone for them to release them - best they could do she supposed was to chop them off at the ankle, bloodied and alive than risk watching them be mauled one by one by the stark reality of this life they had woven. Win or lose. 

Darragh would be the one to tell the tale at the end of it all, she had no doubt, and whilst his moral compass flickered from time to time, he had never lost sight of the simple pleasures and achievements the rest of his kin had. 

Long finger wandered into the breeze to tap the end of his nose, beet red in the fading sunlight. “Doughnut Mr. Shea?” He caught the end of her finger between his teeth and let it go to replace with a kiss. 

“Ye spoil me, Mrs Shea.” 

“Don’t forget it.”

There they sat, on a cool sand, faces smothered in powder kisses. Sticky and indulgent they pulled at a grease stained bag for beige wonderment. Enjoying sweet treats as a child would. Gulls whirring near by as if vultures looking for their carcass. Flat yellow feet pattering wanting prints in the sand, getting deeper with each pace. Everything deserved minute indulgence from time to time, and so she stood, scattering sugar crumbs among the birds, wings catching the wind to land, beady eyes not meeting hers for even a second as beaks picked at gooey dessert. 

Grinning widely, she turned to Darragh and her heart sank, his blue eyes nestled in his phone. It wasn’t like him, to be sure, but as his eyes scanned mystery text, she too felt the pull, the itch in her feet to return home to duty. To pop the bubble. 

Just then she shivered, and phone screen went dark, birds flew away. 

“We’d better go, love.” He murmured, the disappointment evident on his slumped shoulders, sticky hands thrust into the sand he shook it off as he stood as if a snake shedding skin. His features had darkened but he reached for her, as he always did and planted a kiss at her temple - cinnamon, vanilla, bourbon. He would always be hers, first and foremost, before any other familial duty. 

“Mick’s had Absinthe done over, a warnin’ m’ guessin’.”

In another life, Sundays are slow, waking up to peer through fogged windows at the morning frost, warm brew prickling red blotches onto alabaster skin. A white carpet of prickles, succumbing to morning warmth, the scent of expectant snow on the air and the hush of sheets and tangled bodies. They could be unassuming and undone. Nowhere to be. No business to attend to, no one needed them. A law unto themselves, as it should be. 

In another life, the warm glow of Christmas lights is accompanied by hot breath on cold air, cinnamon spices rushing over hot tongue. Mulled wine and laughter. Coins in charity buckets for local rugby teams dressed as Santa Claus, festive cheer given too generously, papercuts from wrapping too many presents and midnight mass, Irish lilt in community buzz, Gavin and Stacey Christmas specials and too many brandys. Still faces scan over joyous children, anxiously awaiting morn, Christmas lists fulfilled. Cerulean gaze watches his wife potter at the stove, pulled away only by the jingling laughter and giddy feet of his daughters, clumsy clambering into his lap. Hands that held them steady, free of the quiver he has become so used to, tremors he is told God has gifted him as punishment for being a cunt. 

In another life, she gets to feel the fattening swell of life in her womb. Of growth. Tiny hands and feet and thick dark curls. The piercing cry they so desperately wanted to get up for in the wee hours. Tiny life. Tiny perfect life. He dreamt of daughters that were every bit their mother. Daughters that would crawl into bed between them after bad dreams, daughters who craved to be held, . He had always wanted daughters, too aware of how most sons he had met had turned out. 

Slow living is what he thinks of, simplicity, of nights sprawled in front of the television, rain on the windows and salty air on long beach walks. Beautiful chaos in blissful weekends, Sunday roasts and teaching his kids to ride a bike. He wished for hard working hands, callouses from honest work, to plunge sore knuckles through morning ice, feel the burn of ice water. Philip liked to be outside, as a wee ‘un had seen himself working with animals, or in farming. It was something just beyond his reach, the promise of another life, of a stronger bond - whispers and dreams that had never come true. Except for one. Her. 

He had her to be grateful for, among all the mess and destruction. He still prayed. Still a god fearing man, adopting the good and forgiving parts of Catholicism at least and he really did recognise the irony seen as he was far beyond saving. He had tried - when he was younger, when the harsh realities of the world they had moved into became apparent, so culturally different from blighty, where hidden putrefaction grew like a mould instead under the banner of conservative catholicism, stringent godliness - to do the right thing. A sort of exchange in his head, for every rotten thing he did, he would attempt an act of good. 

The Magdalene laundries had been a culture shock, and something that twisted his gut, an ugly bleeding wound on the landscape he had come to call home. The cruelty of those nuns, the coldness in their eyes - and the way those girls exhibited fear had been something that still haunted him. Part of his bond with the Sheas was the understanding on both sides, that to better oneself, they could no longer be privy to ugliness and still stick to the status quo. He thought, selfishly perhaps, that if he could save them, it would cancel out what his family had done to their parents. 

Every now and then, he would let himself slip into the life he could’ve had, doing all the things he had been made very aware he was above. His privilege was one built on the sacrifice of others, and in a funny sort of way he felt he should honor them. And so he cleaned, built, grafted - mucked out Blair’s horses and shovelled coal for the fires, donated to church and the local schools. He thought everyone should be humble, even in the face of overblown wealth, on god given rights, on power - and so he enjoyed every second he and Orla spent in those places…putting the fear of god where they thought right, those feckin’ wizened nuns.

His woman was, though he was biased, everything a woman should be. Soft at heart, and giving in nature, a true mother without the children she so deserved. They had had their indiscretions, and been unfortunately cruel to one another - pain did ugly things to people - but their love had never waned and to him that counted for something. 

He still hoped for that other life, and would do everything in his power to give it to her.

Now, he watched her, listening to the turning pages as she read - nimble fingers creeping over the paper's edge. He had things to be doing, but he wanted to watch her, to be kept suspended within the fleeting moments they had at the moment. He had counted down from ten, and told himself five more minutes for over an hour now. The only sound the fire, muffled voices from the television he now only used for noise to pierce the quiet and her, as she moved, existed, breathed life into their home. She would never understand, he suspected, how much he depended on her presence, on how much he truly needed her. Needed her to be there, to be alright, to have the things she deserved. 

She noticed him, then, a smile crackling over her calm visage and she pulled herself upright from her perch, gliding across the room to thread long fingers through his hair, resting at his scalp and without a word, she pulled him to her chest. 

“I know that look.” She knows.

“M’grand, bird. I love you, I do.”

They had moved a long way from exchanging bad for good, the balance had tipped some time ago and he reached desperate claws out to pull it back. He swore it. 

“You need to slow down, love - does too much ill to have a finger in every pie nowadays, some greedy bastard will eat everyone. Remember tha’.” 

Her voice is like bird song and he sinks into her, raising his arms to pull her closer, inhaling her scent. 

In another life.