We haven’t seen much of Genghis this last while as he has been courting an American woman who is besotted with him.
I certainly don’t miss him but Fionnuala does, moaning about how he didn’t show up at this or that or looking out the window when she thinks she hears his car on the lane.
“Why are you jealous of Genghis’s new woman?” I was fixing a bicycle tyre in the utility room.
“Can you do that outside please? And I’m not jealous; he’s my uncle for goodness sake. I just hate the way that as soon as someone gets in a relationship, they abandon everybody. He wasn’t at Aunt Kate’s 80th and even you were there.”
I had to laugh. Genghis and Fionnuala were unlikely best buddies and I could never get to the bottom of it. He was the opposite of her in so many ways: she was thoughtful, he, thoughtless; she was pretty, he, buck ugly; she was intelligent, he, thick as a spud.
But despite his stony silence with everyone else, when Genghis was with Fionnuala, they cooed away like two pigeons. Contended little gossipers putting the world to rights over a cup of milky tea. I would steal a listen as I passed the room with the washing or the like and hear the golden chatter and hearty giggles.
All that changed when this American girl came on the scene. I know Fionnuala had a chat with him and he clammed up and became sullen. I asked her had they a falling out but she near took a fit.
“You don’t fall out with family, unless they’ve done something really bad. And even then…”
I was on the brink of speaking to the man personally but I’m sacred of him.
Anyway, this all became academic after Genghis returned from holiday with bot-fly larvae – “just below his bikini line”, his girlfriend informed us.
They had been to Cancun in Mexico for “some beach time” (another American idiom) when Genghis got bitten by mosquitos.
“Cancun?” Fionnuala had scoffed at the time. “The furthest Genghis has been on holiday is Coalisland.”
He didn’t think too much of it at the time, but apparently there was one bite mark that didn’t go away and became more and more itchy and painful. While he was supposedly sunbathing with his beautiful girl, he was secretly going to the toilet to examine the ever-increasing lump.
He didn’t want a fuss but when he suddenly lost his amorous inclinations, she put her hands on her hips and had it out.
“Are you not attracted to me? Have I become a turn-off?”
“God no. It’s not you, hi, it’s me.”
He had to confess the festering bite and she insisted on examining it. Oh, to have witnessed that scene: Genghis with legs akimbo; her short-sighted peering; her shriek when she saw the lump move.
Genghis then started getting severe pains and spent the last few days holed up in a darkened room, refusing to go the “third-world” hospital, and walking like John Wayne after a six-day gallop across Montana. The concierge said it could be bot-fly larvae and would they like him to try to slice it out?
The flight home was a long-haul endurance test and Genghis was as cheery as a wolf in a bear trap. His “date” sat at the back, exhausted and afraid, and when they landed he went straight to Craigavon A&E. The Indonesian doctor had seen it before and drew it out with tweezers: three inches of white, wriggling grub.
“So, I’m sure he’s happy now?” I noticed Fionnuala’s sparkling mood.
“Yes, about that dreadful monster no longer living inside him. But he’s also sad because his romance has broken down. Probably because of all that.”
I saw not a smile as she glanced out the window to see if a car was coming up the lane.