Ronan is smoking like a crematorium chimney and muttering under his breath. “Sorcha’s arthur landing me in it, Rosser. She’s arthur landing me in it in a big toyum way.”
He’s not exaggerating either. Ronan’s been cheating on Shadden, telling her that he’s been staying in our gaff while working his way through the female student population of UCD like a cold wind across the Belfield campus. And I’m saying fair focks to him. It’s just that Sorcha sort of let it slip to Shadden that Ronan hasn’t been staying with us at all, and, in his effort to talk his way out of it, he found himself accidentally proposing to the girl. And now it’s all got away from him.
"Dordeen's arthur booking the function room in The Broken Arms for the engayuchment peerty," he goes. "She's arthur orderding a load of food from Lidl. "
“Lidl?” I go. “Jesus.”
“Why couldn’t Sorcha joost keep her bleaten mout shut?”
“Ro, I’m giving you this advice as your father. Women are a bit like Nando’s – they’re very, very tasty, but you’re never going to get your head around the rules, no matter how many times the floor staff tell you that you have to set the table yourself.”
“I caddent get maddied, Rosser.”
"I don't see any way out of it, Ro. Has she bought this food – from Lidl, I mean?"
“You can beerly close the freezer.”
Frozen food. I had literally no idea that people still live this way.
“Just tell Shadden you want a long engagement,” I go. “Say you don’t want to get married until after you graduate. That buys you, what, four years? That way, you can keep doing your little bits and pieces on the side. I’ll have a word with Sorcha as well – tell her to try to hold her wind in future.”
Speak of the devil – it’s at that exact moment that the woman arrives home. She must have been at her book club tonight. You can tell by how long it takes her to get the key in the lock. Eventually, she gains entry to the house – she’s nothing if not dogged – and she shuffles down the hallway to the kitchen.
“Ah, Sorcha,” I go. “I was just having one of my famous father-son chats with Ro here. I was saying he needs to play this one carefully. Best of both worlds and blah, blah, blah.”
But Sorcha doesn't react the way I expect. She suddenly flips and storts laying into Ronan. "I'm disgusted with you," she goes. "You total – oh my God total idiot!"
Ronan’s like, “Soddy?” and I have to say I agree with him.
She goes, “You’ve got a beautiful girlfriend and a beautiful daughter and you’re cheating on them. I never thought I’d say this about you, Ronan, but I’m like – oh my God – ashamed of you!”
I decide to intervene. “Sorcha,” I go, “you’ve been at the books tonight. You don’t want to say anything you’ll regret in the morning.”
“Shut up!” she literally roars at me. “This is you, Ross. This is your influence.”
I’m there, “What are you talking about?”
“Cheating. Lying. Behaving like a sleazebag. Where do you think he learned those things?”
“I’m not sure they’re things you actually learn. They’re handed down, Sorcha. Like the ability to evade a tackle or kick three points from an impossible angle. You’re the one with the A in Biology – you shouldn’t need me to explain DNA to you.”
Probably realizing that what I’m talking here is sense, she turns on poor Ro again. “I’m disgusted with you,” she goes. “I thought you were a better man than your father.”
Ro can't even look at her. He just sits there, with his head down and one of his famous rollies burning between his fingers. He goes, "I caddent help it, Sorcha. It's like Rosser said, it's in me. I caddent look at a beauriful geerdle wirrout feeling the need to thry to get her into bed."
"It's a gift and a curse," I go, just offering him a bit of moral support.
Sorcha’s having none of it, though. “There’s a thing called free will,” she tries to go. “Just because you’re attracted to someone, it doesn’t mean you have to try to sleep with her.”
Like I said, the girl’s not in her right mind. I’m there, “Maybe we should have this conversation again when you’ve slept off whatever book you were drinking tonight.”
But she’s not finished. She’s like, “You put me in a horrible position last week – you both did. Lying about Ronan staying here when he was off doing God knows what.”
“I was covering for him,” I go. “It’s called being a bro and it’s a lovely quality.”
“Well, I’m not going to be put in that position again. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Not really, no – keep going.”
“I’m saying Ronan has to make a choice. It’s either a life with Shadden or a life as a single man.”
“Well, we’re giving out conflicting signals here, because I was in the middle of telling him that he could have both, as long as he’s careful and Shadden doesn’t ask too many questions.”
"What, you mean like our marriage, Ross?"
And that's when I realize that this conversation isn't really about Ronan at all. Well, it's kind of about Ronan, but it's also kind of about me?
She goes, “I don’t want to see Shadden end up in a marriage like mine, where everyone feels sorry for her, where she has to keep turning a blind eye to her husband coming home in the early hours of the morning smelling of someone else’s perfume, or when he gets a text message in the middle of the night.”
Someone from her book club has told her something,
Ronan goes, “So what are you saying, Sorcha?”
And she’s like, “I won’t stand by while you make a fool of that lovely girl. What I’m saying is, either you stay faithful to her or I’m going to tell her what’s been going on.”
Then she wobbles out of the kitchen and upstairs to bed. Ronan looks at me, a young man bewildered.
“See what I mean?” I go. “Nando’s.”