Offcomer (28 page)

“Coming,” he said again, and turned the doorlatch.

It was so bright outside. The trees were so green and the sky was so blue that they stung his eyes. And warm. Much warmer than the flat. He blinked, dragged his glasses off his nose, pulled a corner of his T-shirt out from underneath his jumper and wiped the lenses. The air smelt clean and dry. He pushed his specs back up onto the bridge of his nose. He blinked.

Claire. She’d cut her hair again, or grown it, or lost weight or done something to herself, he wasn’t sure what. He didn’t know what to say.

She laughed; a startling, unfamiliar sound, almost as bad as the doorbell, and Alan, quite understandably, jumped.

“How are you, Alan?” she said, and smiled.

Why was she here, and smiling at him, when last thing was she’d hated him and he’d hurt her. He winced. The memory of blood and goosepimples and her floundering hopelessly in the bath came back to him, and tacked onto it the unexpected
image of a spindly, longlegged crab he’d seen in the Ulster Museum when he was little, that couldn’t move without water to hold it up. Why was she here? Was she going to insist on
them
again, ask him “what about me” again, slip past him into the flat and then be there, just
be
there, all the time? When he went to bed at night, when he got up in the morning. While he fried his eggs in lard, while he cut his toenails in the living room. The thought made him shiver with guilt. He reached out across the doorway, placed his hand flat against the doorjamb, arm barring the way. She wouldn’t get past him easily. He would put up a fight this time.

“I just called round,” she was saying, “to collect my stuff.”

“Oh.” Alan straightened. “Is that all?”

She smiled at him. Broadly, sunnily. What was it? Was that a new top? Had she got a tan? Had she grown? She was too old to grow, of course. How old was she? He couldn’t remember. As he looked down at her, Alan realised he should be feeling something else. Different emotions jostled inside him uncomfortably. A sense of satisfaction glowing underneath the unmistakable burn of indignation and the creeping nauseous consciousness of loss. He was left feeling slightly sweaty. He had been right about her: that should make him happy. She had slept with Paul: that was the unpleasant corollary of being right. He realised he might rather have been wrong. He found that uniquely upsetting.

“Yes,” she was saying, almost laughing again, and he found himself lowering his arm. She stepped past him, into the hall.

She laughed because she was nervous. She could hear it in her laugh. It sounded thin, tinny, like a bad recording. And
Alan must be able to hear it too. And if he had noticed, was that better than if he thought that she was laughing at him? It kind of depended on how he felt already. Whether he was angry and wanted to be more angry, or whether he was hurt and didn’t want to be hurt any more. She felt her face freeze over as she looked up at him. Her grimace was beginning to make her cheeks ache. He wasn’t just hurt or angry: he was right. That night, when she had sat and rolled till receipts up like cigarettes, had twisted her hair into knots, had turned the rings round and round on her fingers, she had wanted to lean across the table and say to Paul,
this is not me
. And that, in itself, was bad enough.

“Oh,” Alan said. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” and she didn’t know why she almost laughed again.

His arm sank to his side and she slipped past him, into the communal hallway. Dark, musty and familiar. She stepped over the scattering of flyers and junkmail, almost shivered. Quick as possible, she told herself. Grab the bags and go. Don’t talk. Don’t get tangled up in anything. Get back out into the sunshine. March up to Gareth’s and don’t look round. She put a hand against the door to the flat, pushed through.

That slight sour smell of old onions. She remembered the weight of Alan’s body, his damp skin. She mustn’t wince. He mustn’t see her wince.

She came to a halt in the middle of the bedroom, trying not to see the crumpled bedlinen, the soiled heaps of clothing. She couldn’t see her bags. They weren’t there. He’d dumped them in the skip. His breath frosting the early spring air. Rubbing his hands together as he walked back towards the flat. Job well done.

“They’re in the wardrobe,” Alan said. He was behind her;
he had followed her in. He stood between her and the wardrobe. She couldn’t turn and go past him. She couldn’t stay where she was. One way or another he would trip her, tangle her up. He would talk.

“Right.”

She walked pointlessly over to the dresser, put a hand down on the surface, stood there.

“I’m surprised you came,” he said.

Beside Alan’s black and bitty comb was the plastic cap of his deodorant, the aerosol elsewhere. She flicked it; it spun around in a circle. Don’t answer, she thought. Don’t say a word. Grab the bags and run. Fuck the bags. Just go. Don’t get sucked in. Don’t start
discussing
.

“I mean,” he said, voice heavy, slowish, thinking as he spoke. “I’d begun to think you wouldn’t ever bother.” He came across the room, passed her, sat down on the edge of the bed. The springs creaked. She turned her head a little to look at him. He smiled. “You’ve managed all this time without them,” he said. “So it’s a bit of a surprise that you should decide you need them now.”

She stared at him a moment in silence, watching his smile falter, his lips begin to twitch and quiver. Go, she thought. It’s not too late. Walk out through the door and into the sunshine and keep on going. You don’t have to explain yourself.

She turned towards the wardrobe and tugged on the door. Her bags were on the floor, underneath fallen ties, winter boots, and greying trainers. She grabbed the straps, heaved them out in a muddle of laces, belts and ties. She turned to go. Alan was still perched on the unmade bed, still smiling, and the smile was still unsteady, flickering. He blinked.

“I think at least you owe me an explanation,” he began. His voice sounded unnaturally deep and dusty.

Claire hesitated, looking at him. His lips were, she realised, actually beginning to tremble, his eyes were wet.

“I think it’s probably best if we just leave it.”

He stood up. “This isn’t like you,” he said.

She hefted one bag onto her shoulder, gripped the straps of the other. She watched his fingers flutter slowly at his sides, like butterflies, watched his eyelids bat gently till they became still. She shifted the weight in her hand but didn’t put the bag down.

He had made sure there was somewhere for her when she’d left. Made sure she wasn’t completely lost. And she remembered also,
I think I made him go out with me
and Gareth’s
Poor soul
, and the cold, outside emptiness of Oxford, and the fog, and how she’d stumbled upon him, and clung to him. It wasn’t, she knew, his fault. Certainly no more than it was hers.

“Yes,” she said, and blushing, she tried to find something that might do, might move some way towards him.

“How are you?” she said eventually. “How’s work?”

Which was, Alan thought, a final kick in the head. How the fuck did she think work was? How could it be? With already too many students to teach, and hassle from faculty that there weren’t enough students applying, with the tidal floods of marking, the endless admin, and the increasing, ear-popping pressure to publish. And the conferences. He shivered, pressed his hands against his thighs. The conferences. Why did he always let himself down in a crisis? When that wee git from Trinity had suggested that Alan’s paper said nothing that had not been said twenty years ago and better, Alan should have—he should’ve told him—he should’ve told him to—Alan still wasn’t quite sure what he should have said, but it
definitely wasn’t “Where?” because that had just meant the wee git from Trinity could reel off a list of sources and preen himself and look smug.

“Fine,” he squinted at her. “What about you?”

“Few days off,” she said, still weighted with her bags. “Getting myself sorted out. I got promoted.”

Ah. Alan almost said it out loud. So that was it. She’d come round here to brag. To show off about her crappy little promotion in her crappy little job.

“What to?” he said, his smile reinstating itself. For once he wasn’t lost for a witticism. “Bouncer?”

She smiled.

“Barperson. Pulled my first pint of Guinness the other day. Perfect, it was.”

“Whoopee doo,” Alan said, and felt unexpectedly foolish. He blushed, looked down at her feet. Her shoes looked worn and old.

“I’m thinking about going back to college,” she said brightly. “Art College, this time.”

He found himself bristling, but wasn’t sure why.

“You can’t draw. You always said you were crap.”

She shrugged. “I know.” She shifted the bagstrap, settling it more comfortably on her shoulder. “Listen,” she said. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

Alan looked up, opened his mouth, but couldn’t work out what to say.

“No worries,” he said.

“I only just found out,” she said.

“Ah.”

“Grainne never told me.”

“Oh.”

“That’s why I never said before. I would’ve.” She looked, he realised, a little uncomfortable. She looked slightly tearful. Grateful, even. Actually grateful. He felt himself expand. It was familiar, he could remember it from somewhere, this sense of warmth now spreading out across his chest. It was a long time since he’d felt like that.

“Right,” he said, and rolled back on his heels, enjoying the sensation diffusing through his body. “Well. Don’t mention it.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, smiled proudly. “Think nothing of it.” Whatever it was.

It was only after she had left, and he had returned to his computer, and shuffled the mouse around to get rid of the screensaver, and reread his final paragraph, that it occurred to him he should have offered to help her with her bags.

Through the open sash of her window, Claire could hear the music of the pipe bands. They had been marching past the end of the street for half an hour now, one after the other, but she hadn’t recognised a single tune. Until this one. Played by boys in blue braided uniforms and peaked caps. It seemed to want to be the theme from
Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em
, but it couldn’t be, surely. The tune had, in any case, brought to mind a memory of childhood evenings, of soft cotton pyjamas and the smell of soap, and the drowsy warmth of her father’s encircling arm, the awareness of him there, watching TV over her head.

The house still smelt faintly of smoke and alcohol. Two days ago now, after shutting up Conroys for the Twelfth, they had come back there, the whole staff. Cracked into the beer, passed round a couple of spliffs. Later on, slumped into the
sofa beside her, whiskey glass in one hand, cigarette in the other, feet on the coffee table, Gareth had asked blurredly:

“You going to be okay all on your own here?”

Claire, caught with a mouthful of beer, had not been able to answer.

“I don’t just mean the marching, now, you know.”

She swallowed.

“I’ll be fine.”

He had looked at her a moment longer, then nodded.

“That’s all I wanted to hear.”

Blinking, he had dragged on his cigarette, blown the smoke away, smiled. “If you get bored while we’re away, you know, feel free to get on with landscaping the garden.” He grinned at her. “I think there’s a trowel out there somewhere, rusting away on the back lawn.”

The next day, he and Dermot had driven off to the airport together, looking pale and sickly, Gareth’s hands shaking slightly on the steering wheel.

Claire shifted, felt the sun warm on the back of her neck. They would be on the beach. Baking under the dark sky. Baring their pale bellies to the sun. Blistering slightly, pinking; rubbing in lotion and wincing. Or, shirts flapping open, they would be wandering along the promenade, glancing into souvenir shops, on the unacknowledged sniff for English-language newspapers. Silently eyeing the turned-down TV in the corner of a cool dim bar, sipping cold beer as they waited for the sight of dark familiar streets, fire, and the metal hulk of armoured vehicles. Along with everyone else. The whole vast migratory crowd. Crowding around hotel lounge TVs, passing round a copy of yesterday’s useless
Mail
, dismissing gossip but passing it on anyway. And in Malone mansions
and riverside apartments and damp flats and back-to-backs the stayers-on held their breath and waited. Because no one, really, knew what was going to happen. No more than she did.

Claire shifted again. The cushion wasn’t really comfortable and the windowsill was digging into her back, but from where she sat she could see all the way up the street, all the way down. The warmth of the sun was pleasant, the breeze was stirring her hair. She took a swig of coffee. It was cold. She spat it back. She glanced into the half-full cup, wondered how many times she had done that already this morning. She pushed the cup away, picked up the A3 sheet again. Unpacking, she had found it zipped up in the side pocket of her rucksack. It had been sitting there, unnoticed, since Oxford; she had been carrying it around all this time.

Folded into halves, quarters, eighths, it was frail along its creases. The image was dirty, smudged and unclear. The whole thing looked much older than she knew it could be; it seemed, despite everything, to have no connection with her at all. The perspective was terrible. No one’s legs could lie like that, unbroken. The black scrawl in the centre of the belly looked more like a gunshot wound than a navel. And those were not her breasts. Not remotely. Hers weren’t nearly that big. And hard or soft, no nipples could have looked like those nipples. Not without needing medical attention. And the arms were different lengths, they buckled at the elbow, tapered into spikes instead of hands. And the face, roughly ovoid, blank, featureless, didn’t stare back at her: it couldn’t.

She folded the picture up along its creases, weighed it in her hand, then skimmed the fattish square out across the floor. It landed near the wastepaper basket. Alan had tried. He had really tried. He had sat and scraped away at his A3 sheet with
energy and determination. It was just a shame he couldn’t draw. The picture was terrible, empty. It said nothing.