Flowers of Loyalty

‘Ah buddy, I’m sorry...’ whispered Larry.

He spoke softly, for fear a passer-by would notice a forbidden intimate moment between two Irish men. Seosamh stayed silent. He was sunk into a graffiti riddled wooden bench. The impact of such heart-breaking news triggered an emotional reflex of his – inappropriate humour. He looked to his right and examined the boorish and hurried markings on the wooden slats of the bench. He pointed to a swastika made of crudely drawn penis’ adjacent to a phone number, with ‘txt 4 gay sex’ written below it.

‘Look at this Lar, imagine Hitler was gay! What d’you think his type would be?’

‘I know what his type wouldn’t be’ chuckled Larry, whilst towering over his defeated friend. He went to place his hand on his shoulder but hesitated and decided against it.

‘Can you imagine Hitler’s Grindr bio? Blue eyes, blonde hair and foreskin a must! Dog person preferred’ cackled Seosamh whilst simultaneously collecting the tears perched on the cusp of his eye lids with his thumb.

This time, Lar gripped his best-friends shoulder without hesitation and sat beside him. They remained silent for a number of minutes, it was difficult to estimate how long, as time had become futile to Seosamh.

‘What use is time, when you have no future?’ he thought.

The somnolent plonking of stones from children attempting to upset the stillness of the lake was almost hypnotic to the two friends. It was like a therapist’s pocket watch distracting a distraught client. The crunch and crackle of gravel beneath the feet of speed-walking mammies interrupted their brief daze.

‘What do you want to do?’

To Seosamh, Larry’s deep voice was like the sombre knell from a church tower. The bearer of bad news.

‘You just go back to the apartment… back to her… please say nothing ‘til I figure this out… I’ll be along soon’

Larry started a sentence but didn’t finish it. He was reluctant to leave his friend in such a vulnerable state but he knew his protests would be pointless.

‘Right so… I’ll… eh…I’ll just leave this with you so…don’t be too long bud’ he muttered. Larry slowly stood up from the bench and placed a creased piece of paper on the trembling lap of his oldest friend. He walked towards the road with his hands buried in his pockets.

At least twenty or thirty minutes had passed before Seosamh lifted himself up from that dreadfully uncomfortable bench. Before doing so, he folded the piece of paper given to him by Larry and shoved into the back pocket of his jeans. A series of clinks startled him after slinging his mustard yellow backpack over his shoulder, as he had forgotten its fragile contents. It was two bottles of Amarone Tedeschi 2013 - Sara’s favourite wine. He began to stroll aimlessly around the perimeter of Trout Lake. Seosamh had always loved this lake, although modest, it emitted vibrations of peace and tranquillity. Unfortunately, the placid and calm waters lying in front of him were antithetical to the thunderous storm raging between his ears. His thoughts resembled an emergency parliamentary session, as the bellowing brays of cynics trying to make sense of a catastrophe echoed and bounced off the walls of his brain. There were ministers calling for mercy, ministers calling for pragmatism and ministers calling for war. Dismally, there sat Seosamh wallowing in the chamber of his own panic whilst frantically assessing each outburst and shriek hoping that one would automatically illuminate the answer to his crisis. So many thoughts of regret, sadness and anger filled his head that every so often they would clamber over the inner walls of his psyche and materialize as random outbursts.

‘AGH! NO! NOW! FUCK!’ he spluttered.

This was followed by an intense wave of embarrassment for talking to himself like a crazy person. Before he knew it, he was standing at the very edge of a rickety old pontoon staring down into a dark abyss acting as a mirror. It was hard for him to make eye contact with himself, even if it was just a reflection off the water. He began to ponder on the idea that perhaps he had wronged her.

‘This isn’t something she would do? So then why? Hurt people hurt people, so I must have hurt her. How typical of me, I find something…someone…who can stand to be around me and I drive them away’ he thought.

Seosamh once suspected he had a natural surrounding orbit of repulsion that would restrict him from having any sort of meaningful relationship. In the same breath he could accuse himself of being too talkative, too quiet, too outgoing, too timid or even too undeserving. Then Sara came into his life and these pressure points were alleviated and his scars were allowed to heal. Sadly, the crinkled piece of paper resting in his back pocket acted as a scalpel and with one clean swoop, it carved a fresh laceration so deep that recovery seems impossible to him.

‘Forget Larry and forget these pictures… I burn the evidence here and now and just go back home…I just want to go back home’

The back of his shirt became damp and heavy as he lay down on the bobbing pontoon. The cold shiver reminded him of a ski trip he went on with Sara for their six-year anniversary. He recollected how impatient she was, he reminisced how happy he was and he could pinpoint the moment he realised he wanted to marry her. Seosamh sat up abruptly and reached over for his rucksack.

‘I know exactly what I need to do’ he said to himself as he pulled one of the bottles of wine and a pen out of his damp bag.

‘Cheers for the tay pet! It’s freezing out there, I’m sure Sha will be back once he helps that badger out of the river’

Larry was always a bad liar. He reached over and gently lifted his cup of tea from the gleaming clean coffee table on which it lay. He made sure not to spill a drop. Larry had not been back to Ireland, let alone 6043 Fraser Street in quite a while, but he certainly had not forgotten its stringent rules. He remembered that, staining Sara’s furnishings is synonymous to kicking her mother down the stairs.

‘Cream carpet…’ thought Larry, while invisibly throwing his eyes to heaven.

Such a choice of aesthetic was mind-boggling to him. In his younger years, Larry Doyle genuinely considered installing the kind of floor slats you see in cattle sheds into his two-bedroom apartment. He thinks of himself as being rather logical, Sara thinks of him as being rather braindead. Larry took a substantial gulp of his tea before making polite eye contact with his host and exhaling a manufactured and poorly executed groan of pleasure. This broke the silence, somewhat.

‘Canadians must be so nice?’ asked Sara, hoping for a short answer.

‘Ah they’re grand I suppose’ he muttered.

‘You don’t sound too convinced?’

‘No no, they’re lovely people annawl but they can be frustrating as fu…hell!’ Larry adjusted his position on the plastic protected sofa causing a ghastly screech. He crossed his legs and interlocked his fingers as if he was just asked about his new movie on the Late Late Show. ‘Frustrating?’ enquired Sara, looking puzzled.

‘Yeah like, they by no means want an argument witch’ah but love to throw their opinions in, you know, and this of course does not sit well with the Irish appetite for a scrap’

Sara giggled, even though she didn’t want to. She then slowly lifted the ivory-like tea cup and gently drizzled the tea passed her lips. Regrettably, Larry continued.

‘Yeah, it’s a sickener you know, one minute you’re about to clear the air then they say Ok, I’m sorry sir and have a good day. Very unsatisfying. It’s the very same as being tugged off by a wan and her fuckin’…I mean feckin’… hands fall off right before you blow!’

Sara’s face twisted and scrunched up as if she was attempting to spell out the words, ‘leave my house you culchie basterd’ with her brow. Larry had a bad case of ‘foot-in-mouth disease’. Obviously, he did not encounter a cure during his time in Vancouver. She stood up from her squeaky condom couch and strutted over to the kitchen. She flung open a long and narrow cupboard and pulled out a bottle of wine so big that Larry feared she was about to cave his skull in with a glass baseball bat. She poured herself a teeming glass of rich red wine and notably did not offer one for her guest. Sara requires alcohol to converse with Seosamh’s friends, as she has told him many times before. Larry was impressed by the look of her. She was small, slim and would always dress to impress. Unlike Larry, whose mantra is dress to not be naked. The chequered shirt and boot cut jean combo is timeless he assumed. Alas, he was mistaken.

‘Lovely apartment’ he announced.

Sara did not respond as she was too busy inspecting what the bottom of her wine glass looked like. It seems her elegance while drinking is limited to hot beverages only, Larry thought. ‘How long are you and Seosamh together now?’ he poked.

‘Seven years…’ she sighed. ‘…and still no ring on my finger Lawrence’

‘Ahhh now, our Sha just has bad knees is all Sara’

Larry laughed, Sara did not.

‘So what were you working at, over there? Still throwing shit in a mixer’ she scoffed.

‘Well actually because I got my degree before I went over, I was working as a genealogical researcher...’

‘Like rocks and stuff?’ she interrupted.

‘No, like family trees and stuff…’ he said candidly.

‘…but I ended up getting head hunted by a different organisation and I’m now a qualified Private Investigator’

Sara’s usual scowl blossomed into a smug smirk, revealing a set of perfectly straight teeth with sporadic blotches of maroon.

‘So Lawrence, you went from shovelling shit to digging it up, yeah?’

‘Yah, you said it’ sighed Larry.

Suddenly, there was a flaccid thud on the door of the apartment. Sara rolled her eyes whilst sinking the rest of the wine. She placed her hand on the doorknob and hurriedly checked her appearance on the selfie camera angle on her phone. Realising the discolour of her expensive teeth, she employed her tongue as a makeshift window wiper and moped up the evidence of her alcoholism. She shoved her phone back in her bra before fidgeting and plumping her breasts, like a maid would do to a hotel room bed in the pursuit of creating a perception of class and care. Sara swung the door open and unleashed a shrill and fabricated shriek of delight at the sight of her long-time partner – it was as if he was returning from months on the field of battle.

‘Oh fuck…here we go…’ thought Larry.

Given the information he provided Seosamh, Larry was expecting a furious and scorned man to greet his lying bitch of a girlfriend with such an animalistic roar of rage that it would blow through their apartment, gathering all of her fur coats, pointless handbags and excessive cushions and scattering them right out the window onto the street. Yet, he heard no roar, he saw no rage and he felt as if he knew how this was going to go down. Larry didn’t see fury, he saw fear. He saw a defeated Seosamh shuffle into his own home, barely lifting each foot as if the pain and futility of confronting Sara weighed upon him like a lead apron. Larry was concerned this would happen, but he never thought it would. The roots of her manipulation ran too deep into his soul, feeding on his insecurities and subsequentially allowing her to blossom flowers of fake love and loyalty.

‘He’s not going to do it…’ thought Larry ‘…he’s going to bury his head in the sand’

‘I have something to ask you Sara and I’m delighted Lar is here with us to see it’ announced Seosamh.

Sara looked perplexed. Larry looked sick. Wrapped and hidden in his winter coat, Seosamh revealed an uncorked bottle of Amarone Tedeschi 2013 – Sara’s favourite. He dropped down to one knee like a servant paying tribute to a murderous King. Larry’s eyes were wide and his tongue heavy.

‘Eh…eh…Sha…wha???’

‘Whist up Lar, I want to…I have to do this’ he responded tenderly.

Larry sat back with his fingers interlocked behind his head with a rare expression splattered across his face - an expression that Seosamh has only seen when Larry has lumped a triple figure bet on a horse who has just fell at the first hurdle. Seosamh slowly averted his gaze from his childhood mate to a trembling Sara looking down at him with tears in her eyes. ‘Sara…love…you know me better than most…telling people how I feel isn’t exactly easy for me…’

She was covering her quivering lip with her hand and swaying side to side. She was in utter disbelief. Finally, she was getting what she had been campaigning for. Meanwhile, Larry’s eyes were darting around the room in search of a fire alarm to pull. Still on one knee, Seosamh raised the bottle of wine up to her like Rafiki did to Simba. Noticeably, there was a scrunched-up piece of paper shoved into the top of the bottle.

‘…so I wrote something down to show you exactly how I feel my love’ he continued.

Sara slowly took the beautifully curved black bottle from him with one hand and slipped the piece of paper out with the other. Placing the bottle beside Seosamh’s soaked foot, she began to unravel the note. The room was void of noise except for the soft sobs of the bride to be. She straightened out the page with genuine care and tenderness, as if it were an ancient scripture from a Pharaohs temple. Once the page lay flat in the palms of her hands, Sara’s sobbing ceased, her vibrating limbs turned stiff and her mouth hung open speechless. To her horror, she was not looking at a love sonnet or a decree of affection but a printed-out image of her entering a hotel room with a rather handsome man, accompanied with numerous threads of emails from Sara, detailing her affair cropped in below. It has to be said that the evidence was beautifully laid out by Lawrence Doyle PI. She slowly flipped the page as she could see an imprint of writing on the other side. The sentence read: Sara McGuigan, will you please NEVER marry me?