Prompt Side

Nobody in Kilmoran could have told you exactly when it started, but everybody had a theory, and Maureen at the post office had the best one.

Her theory was that it began at the Christmas raffle, when the new pharmacist from Dublin won a goose and handed it straight to Fintan Daly with the words “I’ve nowhere to put it,” and Fintan, who had been a builder for forty years and a bachelor for fifty-six, said “Neither have I,” and took it home anyway. Her sister-in-law held that it began with the hurling final. The vet said it began in March, when Fintan was seen carrying a ladder into the pharmacy at half seven on a Tuesday evening for no reason that the pharmacy’s light bulbs could account for. The vet was a notorious liar, but on this occasion nobody argued. The parish priest, consulted, said it was a matter for the Players’ committee, which met on Wednesdays and had never once reached the end of its agenda.

What everybody agreed on was that the Kilmoran Players’ spring production had made it worse.

Cormac had come down from Dublin two years before with a separation, a cat and a licence to dispense, and had spent the first winter being so polite to everybody that the village thought he was ill. Then he joined the Players, which was how Kilmoran dealt with all its strangers.

It was a farce. It had six doors, a vicar, a missing trouser-press and a plot nobody could follow by the second act, and Cormac Tierney had been cast as the husband who spends two hours hiding from his own wife. He had a hopeless memory for lines and a habit of pushing his glasses up his nose whenever anyone looked at him, which in a farce was constantly. Fintan, who couldn’t act for toffee, was the stage manager, set builder and keeper of the keys. He sat every Tuesday and Thursday in the prompt corner on the left of the stage with the script open on his knee, feeding Cormac his lines in a flat voice like a man reading out a sum.

By the Sunday of the tech rehearsal Cormac knew all of his lines when he was alone in the pharmacy and none of them when Fintan was in the room.

The worst of it was the scene in the second act where the husband, caught in the vicar’s study, has to press the vicar against the door with both hands and whisper, “Not a word, Father, or the pair of us are ruined.” Cormac did it with the delicacy of a man defusing a bomb. He stood in front of the retired schoolmaster who was playing the vicar, and could not get his hands to land on the shoulders. Twice he stopped to push up his glasses. Once he stopped to apologise.

“You’re pinning him,” the director said, rubbing her eyes. “Not asking him to dance, Cormac. Fintan, show him.”

Fintan got up out of the prompt corner with a long-suffering sigh and walked onto the set, and put both hands on the vicar’s shoulders, and leaned. The vicar’s feet left the floor. The door shook in its frame.

“Like that,” said Fintan, and set him down again, and looked across the stage at Cormac.

Cormac’s script fell out of his hand.

“He’d sooner look at Fintan than at the script,” the director said, giving up at ten past three. “Right. Lighting reset, everyone. Forty minutes. Mrs. Cahill has scones across the road.”

The cast went out in a noisy herd and the hall door banged behind them. Under the stage lights, the six doors of the set stood in a row. The silence was enormous.

“I’ll get my script,” Cormac said, to no one, and didn’t move.

Fintan closed the prompt book and hung it on its nail. He rolled his sleeves back over forearms that had carried a great deal of block, and crossed the stage with the stomach that had been a point of pride in the village for decades leading the way. He stopped at the third door from the left, the one that opened onto nothing, which he had hung himself over the real doorway to the props store, and put his hand flat against it.

“Cormac,” he said. “I’ve a key to the props store and forty minutes.”

Cormac’s glasses slid down his nose. He pushed them up.

“For what?”

“I’d say you know for what.” Fintan’s ears had gone red. “But I’ll be sorry if I’m wrong, so say it.”

“Fintan Daly.” It came out half a laugh, half a croak. “I have wanted to be locked in a cupboard with you since the goose.”

---

The props store was a narrow room with a concrete floor and a skylight and shelves of fake fruit and papier-mâché bishops’ hats, and it smelled of old paint and mothballs. Fintan got the door locked behind them with the key he’d had in his pocket since half past one, which made Cormac laugh again, because it meant he’d planned it, and Cormac was still laughing when Fintan turned round, took the glasses off his face, and kissed him against the shelves.

It went on a good while. Fintan kissed like he built, in no hurry and with attention to the corners. He had one big square hand cradling Cormac’s skull and the other flat on his arse, pulling him in, and Cormac made small helpless noises into his mouth, standing on tiptoe, gripping his jumper. A hat-box fell off a shelf. Neither of them looked down.

“We established a few things on Tuesday,” Fintan said, a bit out of breath, when they stopped. “In the car park. Tests, and nobody else. Have you something? Because I haven’t thought past the door.”

Cormac, who ran the pharmacy, went red in turn. He reached into the pocket of his good cardigan and held up a sample tube of water-based lubricant, still sealed. “I’ve been carrying that since March,” he said. “I didn’t have the nerve to put it down.”

Fintan took it from him and looked at it for a moment. Then he laughed, a big warm gust of a laugh, and unbuttoned the cardigan and pushed it off Cormac’s shoulders.

They stripped each other in a jumble, with a few apologies. Cormac stood under the skylight in his socks, pale and stooped, one hand drifting to cover his soft stomach until Fintan moved it away and kissed him there instead. What Fintan thought, with the whole length of him under his hands, was that forty years of working with his hands had never once felt like this. Then Cormac undid Fintan’s belt with trembling fingers, and Fintan’s cock came out thick and heavy over the waistband of his boxers. “Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Cormac said, with total sincerity.

“You can pray after,” Fintan said.

Cormac went down on his knees on the cold concrete and took it into his mouth. He was a careful man by trade. He took his time measuring, and when he had measured he took as much as he could, and the sound that came out of Fintan was a long low groan that shook the cardboard shelves. One broad hand went flat on the wall over Cormac’s head and the other settled on his neck, not pushing.

“Ah, sweet Christ. Pet. That mouth.” His belly heaved. “You’ve been holding out on me. All of Lent and not a hint.”

Cormac pulled off with a wet sound, panting, spit on his chin. “Say that word again.”

“Pet,” Fintan said, with a slow grin that went all the way up his face. “My pet. Up with you. It’s my turn.”

He hauled Cormac to his feet, backed him against the shelves and went down himself, a slow business with the knees and a muttered remark about the concrete, and took him down in one smooth swallow.

“Oh. Oh, no. Oh, Fintan.” Cormac’s head hit the shelf behind him and a papier-mâché bishop swayed. “Oh, you’re very good at that.”

Fintan hummed around him, and the hum went up Cormac’s spine like a plucked wire. Then he drew off with a gasp and a string of spit and said, “Not like this. I want you to remember where you were when it happened.”

---

Across the road, Mrs. Cahill’s scones went round for the second time. Maureen from the post office had taken the chair by the window, where she remarked to nobody in particular that the hall lights were still on and the hall door had not opened in a quarter of an hour. The vet said the lights proved nothing, the wiring in that hall was a disgrace. Mrs. Cahill said she had known since the goose, and went for more tea.

---

Fintan got up with a grunt, turned Cormac round by the arms as if he weighed no more than a flat, and walked him two steps until his forehead met the back wall of the props store, which was the back wall of the whole hall, brick, cold and rough and painted white decades ago by someone’s grandfather. Cormac put both palms against it. Fintan stood close behind him, and Cormac felt every inch of that big furred body along his back, the cock hot and heavy in the cleft of his arse, a mouth at his ear.

“If it’s wrong, you say so. If it’s right, say that too. Loud as you like. There’s nobody to hear but a couple of bishops.”

“It’s right,” Cormac said, shaking all over. “Please.”

Fintan opened him with great patience and the better part of the sample tube, two thick fingers first, and a third when Cormac cried out and rocked back on them, shameless. You’re grand. You’re doing grand. A little more.

“I need you in me,” Cormac said into the brick. “I’ve waited since March.”

“So have I, pet.” Fintan slicked himself with a long fist and lined up the head against the loosened hole. “Tell me when. Bear down a little.”

Cormac bore down. Fintan pushed.

It was a big cock and a slow entrance, a stretch like something being unfolded. Cormac’s mouth fell open against the brick as the thick head breached him and the long shaft slid deeper, inch by inch, until the big belly settled warm and soft against his spine, and neither of them moved.

“There,” Fintan said. “You’ve the whole of it now. Well done, pet.”

“You’re enormous.”

“I’m in proportion.” It came out hoarse and pleased. Then Cormac pushed back on him, rolling his hips, and Fintan growled and began to move.

He took him standing, with his feet planted wide and his big hands locked on Cormac’s hips and the whole slope of his belly slapping against Cormac’s spine with each stroke. It was the long, hard, steady rhythm of forty years of nails. Every thrust pushed Cormac a little up the wall and Fintan hauled him back down by the hips, and the big cock dragged against his prostate on every pass until the brick blurred in front of him.

“Oh, fuck. Fintan, there. There. Keep going.”

“I’m not stopping, pet. I’ll have you roaring before we’re done. Say it for me. What are you getting?”

“Your cock.” The word came out of Cormac in a hoarse whisper. “It’s so deep. It’s in my stomach. I’ll be feeling this over the counter tomorrow.”

“Ah, that’s very grand.” Fintan thrust harder, and the shelves shuddered, and somewhere a bishop’s hat slid to the floor. “Louder. They’ll hear you in Ennis. I want them to.”

He pulled out slowly, and Cormac nearly wept at the emptiness of it. Fintan dragged an old steamer trunk over to the wall with his foot, lifted Cormac’s left leg and set the knee on the lid, so that he stood open with his chest to the brick and his arse offered. Then he slid back in, deeper than before, and Cormac felt the head of him find the place that made the whole room go bright.

“That’s the one,” Fintan said, watching his face turn in profile against the wall. “Jesus, the face on you.”

Cormac had spent thirty-nine years being polite. He opened his mouth and shouted, a long hoarse wail that went up to the skylight, and Fintan swore with delight and drove into him harder. One arm held Cormac up by the chest and the other hand slid down to cup his balls, and Fintan’s voice was in his ear, low and rough, a steady filthy stream. You’ve the loveliest arse in County Clare. I’m going to fuck you every Sunday till the Lord calls me. I’m going to bend you over the prompt desk. Say you want that.

“I want it. I want all of it. Every Sunday, every night, Fintan, God, harder.”

“That’s the voice.” A hand like a shovel cracked against Cormac’s arse, and he yelped and then groaned, and shoved back for more, and the sound rang off the brick. Cormac’s cock was throbbing, untouched, slick and leaking down the wall, and he felt it climbing through his whole body from the place where Fintan was hammering into him.

“Ah, no,” Fintan said, in a voice gone high with astonishment. “Ah, Cormac, pet, I’ll not last. Not with that noise out of you.” His fingers locked on Cormac’s hips, and he gave a great shout into the nape of his neck and spilled in him in thick pulses, grinding deep.

Cormac didn’t say a word. He felt the heat of it and the helpless shuddering weight of the man, and that was all it took. He came with his forehead on the white brick and his mouth open, no hand laid on him, clamping so hard round the man inside him that Fintan swore again, and went through all of it in perfect silence, which Fintan told him afterwards was the most shocking part.

They stood there shaking, propped against the wall like two men holding it up. Fintan pulled out with a hiss and turned Cormac round and kissed him for a long time, with his thumbs under his jaw, and said into his mouth, “Ah, you’re a gift, you’re an absolute gift,” and Cormac, dazed and laughing, said he’d like that on the programme.

Fintan cleaned them both up with a prop napkin from the banquet scene, two feet of crimson velvet, folded with great seriousness into quarters. Cormac got dressed the wrong way round and had to start again. Fintan found the glasses on the second shelf, between a plaster goose and a papier-mâché bishop, and put them back on his face with both hands, like he was setting a pane.

---

Across the road, the director looked at her watch and said, “Where’s Cormac gone?”

“Fintan isn’t here either,” said Maureen from the post office, who had been looking out of Mrs. Cahill’s window for twenty minutes, “and he has the only key to the props store. I’d say they’re doing the trousers.”

“The trousers are in the second act,” the director said. “I’ll go and get them.”

“I’d give them five minutes,” said Maureen.

They gave it ten. The cast was filing back into the hall, scone-crumbed and noisy, when the third door from the left, the one that opened onto nothing, opened onto something for the first time that afternoon, and Cormac Tierney stepped out of it with his glasses on crooked, his hair standing on end and his cardigan buttoned wrong all the way up. Fintan came after him with the prompt book under his arm and a look of heavy innocence, as if he’d been repairing the flats. Behind them the door swung slowly shut, and the whole painted wall rocked on its brace.

“Mind that flat,” the director said.

“It’s a bit loose,” said Fintan. “I’ll tack it.”

He sat in the prompt corner, on the left of the stage. Cormac took his mark in the middle of the set, in front of all six doors, and pushed his glasses up his nose. The director said “From the top of the second act, please,” and the lights came up, and Cormac Tierney opened his mouth and delivered four pages of dialogue without a single mistake, in a clear steady voice, looking straight at the prompt corner the entire time.

Nobody gave him a line. Fintan sat with the script open on his knee and said nothing at all, and he was smiling.

Maureen at the post office was seen to take out her notebook, and to write, in the margin of the programme, the single word Sunday.