Windward, Oriana wasn’t mentioned at all that evening. Instead, the Bedwell brothers drank beer and watched sport and shouted at the teams on the television. It was innocuous and boorish, akin to watching in the pub, commentating on the game with people they hardly knew. And Malachy and Jed should have steered clear of Scotch. But the match was over and the beer was gone, so out came the Laphroaig which took the pub philosophizing to the next level as they spouted argumentatively on politics and policies, each brother taking a turn at pulling on the garb of the devil’s advocate and wrestling each other for it.
Jed should have said no to whisky. He didn’t have the stomach for it, especially not after European lager and the disappointment of a two–nil defeat. Consequently, he became very drunk, very quickly and, after decimating bankers, Russian oligarchs and the Tories, he staggered off to bed mid-sentence, only to throw up later in the early hours.
Malachy heard his brother chucking his guts up. Malachy should have said no to whisky too. It didn’t make him paralytic, it made him insomniac and introspective. He hadn’t yet slept when Jed went stumbling to the bathroom. He’d been sitting up in bed, initially comforted by the pitch darkness making him equally blind in his good eye. Velvet black and even. He just sat in bed, appreciating the sensation of both eyes being open and both eyes seeing nothing; feeling that peculiar warmth that came with night-time silence and obscurity, nothing material to see, to imagine, to tax the eye – either eye. But then, the undeniable sense that darkness is not a constant but a flux; forms beginning to emerge as his good eye told his lost eye what they were. Mahogany chest. Flung shirt. Door frame. Right shoe. Something else – wallet. What’s my wallet doing on the floor? Left shoe. Handles on the wardrobe doors that look like cartoon eyes.
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