The Marble Collector

27

Cat is sitting at a table dressed in a white dress, white flowers pinned in her hair. She sips on a glass of white wine and throws her head back and laughs, a naughty dirty laugh which instantly makes the others laugh. That’s the way with Cat, it’s not always what she says that’s funny, it’s her reaction to it that is the hilarious part. It would be naïve to say she is always in flying form, she certainly is not, especially with her eldest daughter who gives her so much grief, a troubled young woman who is constantly problematic, not happy unless she is making her mam unhappy. Aside from that and almost in spite of that, Cat has the ability to put those things aside and enjoy life for what it is, or at least enjoy the other part of it. She never allows things to overlap, she separates her worries. Despite the way I have separated my life, I have never been able to do that. A problem in Hamish O’Neill’s life is a problem in Fergus Boggs’s life and vice versa. For example today, this beautiful day, she says, ‘To hell with all of life’s problems, let’s just enjoy now, this moment, what we are doing now.’

I both admire it and am driven crazy by it. How can she ignore problems? But she doesn’t, she puts them aside, chooses her moments to dwell on them. I have never been able to do that. I constantly dwell until they’re gone away. And where are we ignoring our problems today? Five thousand miles away in the central coast of California’s wine region at the wedding of Cat’s dearest friend. At fifty years of age and the groom at sixty they’re no spring chickens and it’s not the first time for either of them, though they appear like two love-struck teenagers, as in love as I feel with Cat when I’m in her company. It seems to be the year of second marriages, this is my third wedding this year, and I remember the first on all three occasions, especially as one of them was mine. I wasn’t invited to Gina’s wedding but it was the one which affected me greatly. I wasn’t expecting to be invited, Gina and I haven’t had a pleasant word to say to each other since our separation over fifteen years ago but still, despite boyfriends after me, I considered her my wife. Now she’s someone else’s and I think of all the things that I did wrong. How good it was at the beginning, how I looked up to her, worshipped her, and only ever wanted to please her. It was that thinking that ruined our relationship, that ruined me. Why couldn’t I just have seen her for what she is, known that she loved me for who I was? No matter how hard I tried to change myself, the roots of me were the same and she loved that. For a time at least. That sweet young woman with the freckle face is gone, now just a scornful woman who snaps at the slightest chance. Did I make her that way? Is it all my fault?

We are in Santa Barbara county, in July, in the sweltering heat. Cat, who is in her element, is bronzing herself in the full blaze of the sun, shoes off, manicured toes wiggling, cleavage big and tanned, jiggling when she laughs. She is the sunshine in my life and yet the greater she shines upon me the greater I feel the shadow cast behind me. Time is creeping up on me. I’m away from the sun, unable to take the heat. I have completely soaked my white shirt and because of that can’t take off my jacket, which makes me all the warmer. I’m in the shade as much as I can be, drinking gallons of water, but at the heaviest weight I have been. Four stone above my usual weight, I’m feeling the heat, the discomfort, the heat of my balls, my thighs sticking together, my shirt too tight around my neck. The man who has plonked himself next to me in a white casual suit and a white hat tells me he’s an art dealer, he talks of nothing but golf courses that he’s played all around the world in such detail I want to tell him to shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up. But I hold back, for Cat’s sake. I made the mistake of mentioning I played golf, which I once did, though it feels like many moons ago. I played mainly for work purposes, when I was a financial advisor and was keeping up with what was going on. I’ve had to sell my golf clubs, lose my membership as I couldn’t keep up with paying the fees and I don’t have the time for leisure any more. Anybody I played with has done the same and instead invested in Lycra and a bike and goes cycling on Sundays. Hearing about a game I had to give up does nothing to help my mood.

I didn’t want to come away. As soon as Cat told me of the invitation I didn’t want to come. I said as much, but she put her foot down. She insisted on paying. Whatever I felt when I was younger on honeymoon, I don’t feel it now. I don’t want anyone else paying my way. I want to pay my own way, but I couldn’t afford the flight and now that I’m here I can’t afford anything. Cat is covering it all. Every gesture, every kindness just makes me feel even worse, like my balls have been chopped off. And the company I’ve been in has been horrendous. I’m sure she’s wishing she left me behind after all.

She looks over at me and I see the concern in her eyes. I put on a fake cheery grin, fan myself comically to let her know why I’m over here in the shade. She smiles and rejoins the conversation, I even keep up an extremely animated conversation with the art dealer beside me so she can see I’m enjoying myself in the moments that she sneaks a peek at me, thinking I don’t notice.

Midway through talking about the par something on the eighth hole in Pebble Beach, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I’m happy to excuse myself and disappear inside to the air-conditioned reception of the vineyard. I take off my jacket, away from anyone’s view and sit down. It’s the text I was waiting for. Sonya Schiffer, a woman I contacted a few months ago as soon as I heard I was coming to Santa Barbara. Communicating with her behind Cat’s back has stirred those old feelings inside me that I used to get when arranging nights out or nights away from Gina, but when I feel the feeling it is accompanied by guilt. My conscience has grown since meeting her, but it doesn’t remove the need I have to get away and meet this other woman. I think hard about how to get away from here, I had a plan in action but now that I’m here I need to rethink it. Our hotel is further from the venue than I thought, it isn’t easy for me to slip away, I must arrange a shuttle bus or get a lift from somebody, and if I feign sickness I’m sure Cat will want to come too. The music will start shortly and Cat loves to dance. She’ll be up all night dancing non-stop with anyone and everyone, like she always does. She’s a beautiful dancer and usually I watch her, but perhaps that’s my time to escape. Wild horses couldn’t drag her away from a dance floor. I can say I’m jetlagged or that I’ve a dodgy stomach. I had oysters for my starter.

Our inn is twenty minutes away from here, the hotel I’ve arranged to meet Sonya in Santa Barbara is forty minutes away. I need to get to our hotel to get the car and drive to the city. Can I make it? Meet Sonya, and be back in time before the wedding is over, before Cat finds me gone? I don’t know, but the sooner I go the better the chances. When she sees me coming towards her she looks concerned. I rub my belly and explain to her, in a rush, that I must get back to our bedroom toilet. She knows I don’t like to use the toilet when I’m out and about. I tell her I won’t be long, I need to change my shirt too, I’m embarrassed; enjoy yourself, I’ll be fine, I’ll come back for the dancing. She wants to take care of me, of course. Cat is a nurturer but she also likes her space having lived alone for twenty years and is good at giving it to others and so I leave the party. I have a quick shower, change into a clean shirt and pants, take my overnight bag and drive to Santa Barbara.

The meeting place is a motel and I park in the car park and climb the stairs to the second floor. At the end of the corridor all the doors of the bedrooms have been left open as I was informed they would for the room trading. I know Sonya straight away, I recognise her from her photograph and also because she’s the only woman. At seventy-four years old she has published two books about marbles, playing and collecting, and is one of the leading experts in the marble world. I have asked her here to value my marbles, or rather Hamish O’Neill has, and after sharing photographs with her of my collection she was sufficiently intrigued to agree to come. At over three hundred pounds, and with arthritis in both knees, she is surrounded by fanatics eager to get a moment of her time. But as soon as I enter, it’s just me and her. She, like me, wants to get straight down to business. The four rooms on this floor are all involved in the room trading, where people can discuss, swap, value their marbles. I’ve been to marble conventions before as Hamish O’Neill and have always thrived on the pure buzz of being surrounded by people as committed to marbles as I am. Seeing their eyes light up at the sight of a mint condition Guinea cobra or a striped transparent or an exotic swirl or even at a sample box they haven’t seen before, or haven’t seen in the flesh, reminds me that I’m not alone in being mesmerised by this world. Of course some of the people are even nuttier than me, spending their entire lives and savings on collecting without ever playing, but I always feel among friends at these meets, like I can truly be myself, though it’s under my brother’s name.

I owned both of Sonya’s books before I contacted her. I had bought one in particular with the intention of trying to value my own collection but quickly realised I could be easily misled and tricked. I contacted her on the Internet, one of the most knowledgeable collectors there is. I haven’t brought my entire collection, I couldn’t have afforded the airline’s weight charges nor could I have fitted any more in my bag without Cat suspecting. I’ve brought what I think are the most valuable. I haven’t brought them to sell them – that I made abundantly clear to Sonya Schiffer. I don’t know if I’ll ever sell them or not; I always thought I never would, but the time is coming close. The banks are after me for an apartment I own in Roscommon, a stupid investment in an apartment block in the middle of nowhere that cost too much at the time and now is worth nothing. Because the school, shopping centre and anything else that was in the plans didn’t go ahead, I can’t let the apartment, never mind sell it, which leaves me in a difficult position of trying to pay the mortgage as well as my own.

I need to start gathering my pieces and seeing what I have in play.

Despite the fact that I have driven and need to drive back, Sonya insists that we drink whisky together. I have a feeling that my response has a great bearing on whether she values the pieces or not. She has come for a night out, not to be rushed. I can worry about the car tomorrow, give an excuse to Cat, I don’t know what yet. I’ll come up with something.

‘My, my, you have quite the collection,’ Sonya says as we sit down at a table in a bedroom. People swirl around us, talk, swap, play, even watch her at work, but they’re not registering in my mind. I keep my eye on her. She’s huge, so big her arse sticks out on both sides of the chair. She thinks I’m Hamish O’Neill, winner of the World Championship of 1994, individual best player in the same year. She wants to talk about that for a while and I don’t mind reliving my glory days when there are very few people I can tell the story to. I tell her all about it in detail, how we beat the Germans’ ten-in-a-row run and the bar fight that broke out afterwards between Spud on my team and one of the German teammates, and USA having to act as peacemakers. We laugh about it and I can tell that she’s impressed and we return to the marbles.

‘I bought your book to value them myself but I quickly learned there’s an art to it, one that I couldn’t master,’ I say. ‘I learned there are more reproductions out there than I thought.’

She looks at me intently. ‘I wouldn’t worry about reproductions as much as people want you to worry, Hamish. When it comes to the collectable world, reproductions are not a new thing. Sparklers and sunbursts were an attempt to mimic onionskins, cat’s eyes an attempt to mimic swirls. Bricks, slags, Akro and carnelian agates and ’ades were an attempt to mimic hand-cut stones, but despite this, all these marbles – except of course cat’s eyes – are highly collectable today.’

I smile, thinking of my joke with Cat about her not being collectable at all, though she is the most valuable thing in my life, and Sonya looks at me over her glasses which are low on her nose. She watches me, as if evaluating me and not the marbles, twirls them around with the 10x loupe in her thick fat fingers, gold rings squished down on most fingers, with fat gathering around them. Those suckers are never coming off. ‘But usually everyone and everything is mimicking something or other.’

I swallow, thinking it’s a direct evaluation of me. As if she knows I’m not Hamish O’Neill, but she couldn’t possibly.

After a time studying, during which I’ve downed too much whisky, she speaks, ‘You’ve got some reproductions here and this, this has been repaired to fix a fracture, see the tiny creases and the cloudiness in the marble?’

I nod.

‘That’s from re-heating the glass. And you’ve a few fantasies,’ she says, moving everything around. ‘Items that never existed in original form. Polyvinyl bags with old labels,’ she looks disgusted. ‘But no, you’re generally looking good here. You obviously have a good eye.’

‘I hope so. We’ll see, won’t we?’

‘Yes, we will.’ She looks at the collection and laughs wheezily. ‘Hope you’ve got time, because this will take all night.’

It is four a.m. when somebody called Bear drops me back at the inn in a pickup truck and speeds off. I can barely see straight after downing a bottle of whisky with Sonya. I try to concentrate on the path ahead of me and fall with my bag of marbles into the vines. Laughing, I pull myself out and stumble to the room.

As the pickup truck passed the vineyard I saw to my surprise that the wedding had wrapped up and there wasn’t a guest in sight, not even my Cat. Unusual for an Irish wedding, though I suppose we aren’t in Ireland and I should have known that it would be over early, with such a conservative bunch. I stumble into the inn, receiving angry glares from the owner who had to let me in at such an hour, and I bang into everything, door frames, furniture, on the way to the stairs. When I reach the bedroom, as if by magic Cat pulls the door open, hurt written all over her face.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

I know I’ve done it again. No matter what I think about myself, how I think I can change, I always slip back into hurting people. The Hamish in me comes out, but I can’t blame him any more, I never really could. It’s me. It’s always been me.