Tender (30 page)

But they found it, and they fixed on it. They touched hands, but they did not hold hands; that was not what they were doing with their hands. With their hands, they tipped and they glanced and they slid, loose and confident; they knew when to fasten and when to let go. They stepped and they spun, locking and pivoting; they linked and they turned and they released. Often, Catherine had been hauled out onto this very dance floor, and it had always been mortifying, the mess she had made of dancing with whichever neighbor of her grandfather’s had thought it a friendly notion to give her a spin; always, it had been a disaster of knocking limbs, and sweaty hands, and of her inability to understand when it was time to twirl and when it was time to stay, and her arm wrenching at the wrong time, and her feet shuffling against his, and no rhythm, no glide, and a hectic, wincing farce, then, when it did come time to twirl, and the dissatisfaction in the man’s face, that she did not know the steps, could not give the pleasure, could not be relied upon even for the three minutes of forgetting that a good dance could allow. A young one who had not been taught to dance, she could see it in their eyes; what was the point of that? Forget college. Forget Europe. Forget everything that was coming, everything that had been promised yet to come. If a young one could not jive, what was the use of sending her out into the world?

Three hours later, they were back in her grandfather’s house. Catherine’s mother was in the kitchen with Monica and Fidelma, making tea and pouring lagers and pushing cloves into half-slices of lemon for hot whiskies. Her grandfather had decided that he wanted a bowl of soup; Catherine’s mother, complaining about him, was making it out of a can from the press. Catherine walked through with drinks to the sitting room, handing them out and settling beside her grandfather a moment.

What was James doing now? Catherine checked her watch again: it was ten to three. They had been in Murphy’s until two in the morning, and then the natural thing to do had been to come back here. So here they were, sitting around the room, her grandfather’s sheepdog asleep under the table. Often, she noticed, her grandfather glanced towards the slumped form.

“Shep’s tired,” she said. “He’s not used to company at this hour.”

“He’s put out of his usual spot,” her grandfather said, gesturing across to the armchair. “Ah, he’ll survive for one night.”

He hauled himself out of his own chair now and went through to the hallway; she could hear him heading slowly upstairs to the bathroom.

On the radio, 2FM was playing. Someone had moved the dial from Shannonside, where a repeat of one of the daytime chat shows had been playing;
Turn off that bloody bollox,
her grandfather had said, and so now it was this, the sad violins of The Verve.

It was Saturday night, early Sunday morning, in Dublin too, although it felt as though it could be a few time zones away, as though it could be midmorning there, a beautiful Sunday morning at eleven, people going about their business in the sunshine. But no: it was ten to three in Dublin, too. The late buses lining up around the walls of college. The walk home beginning for most people. The pubs spilling out, the drunks howling. Where would he be? Was he at home? Fast asleep now? Alone?

She stood.

She went through to the hallway, where the phone was. She did not have to turn on the light; she had, anyway, the moonlight spilling through the hall window.

She dialed his number in Thomas Street, let it ring once, hung up. Dialed it again, hung up. The third time, she let it ring longer, and just before she hung up, she heard it click and knew that he had answered, or that someone had. She tried again, but this time there was no answer, and when the long beeps came in to signal that it would ring no longer, she swore aloud and slammed the handset down.

From the stairs, a noise: a rustle. She jumped, and a bolt of cold shot down her spine. It was her grandmother she thought of, though that was impossible.

“My God, child,” a voice said. “You’re in a bad way, aren’t you?”

Her grandfather’s shadow; that was who was speaking, it seemed to her.

But that was impossible too.

Was there any line as magnificent?

That had been about the newborn Frieda, that poem. Frieda, who would grow up to send the red and yellow blisters across the cover of her father’s book.

None of this was any of Catherine’s business.

Hughes, in “Epiphany,” his own poem about that same newborn, written that same London spring, described how he had almost bought a baby fox. A man on a bridge had the animal stuffed down his coat front, the tiny face staring out between the lapels.

Cheap enough at a pound, the man with the fox said.

But no.

Inevitable.

What happened between herself and James was inevitable.

Was that true? Was that a reality?

Was a reality something you arrived at, or something you made?

Or something you just forced onto things?

L
overs.

As though
—what was it Julia Doonan had said?

As though the rest of us are only going to Mass together.

And now, it seemed, they were
lovers
. At least in private.

At least, that was, where other people could not see them.

And, well, at the end of all, all love was private, wasn’t it?

(This was what Catherine told herself.)

Catherine wanted him every minute. Catherine wanted him to fuck her and fuck her until she dissolved.

James—

James was another story.

O
nce, as a small girl, she had gone with the wrong mother from the shop. She had not realized it was the wrong mother. The woman was tall, and moved with purpose, and wore boots and carried a handbag and had a winter coat. Her mother, on that day, had also had all of these things.

Catherine walked along, chatting and chatting.

The woman did not even notice the child at her knee.

How could you not even notice?

Her mother, calling and calling from the door.

James laughed at her when she told him that story. James was right to laugh.

“You knew damn well what you were up to, Reilly,” he said, stretched out on her bed, smoking. “You liked the cut of that other woman’s jib.”

His hand resting on his naked stomach. His nipples pink and pricked and hard. His dick, ten minutes earlier, had kept making her gag, but the throat was where you were meant to take it, wasn’t it? The throat was how you had the best chance of getting it again.

And anyway, why on earth was she telling him that story now?

James had made it happen, the second time. Catherine not quite able to believe it. His hands, the way they changed from stroking fondly to stroking slow—

His tongue, full and supple against hers. The hardness of him, already waiting, already there—

And surely
that
meant something? Surely that said—?

But no.

Because the way they got through this—got away with this—was by laughing about it.

Their great joke.

Their great mischief.

Their great addition to the long, long list of things that, together, they could do.

And afterwards: the slagging. The innuendo. Like they were meeting for breakfast after their separate, hilarious one-night stands.

“You’re terrible, Muriel.”

“
You’re
terrible.”

And where does the blood go when it is making you weak, when it is making you want to fall? Does it go to the brain first, and from there to the cunt, or is it the other way around? Is it the brain or the cunt that says it to you, over and over, no matter how you try to reason with it, no matter how you try to roar at it; is it the brain or the cunt that hisses those words?

Hissing,
Get him. Bring him here.

His hands. His tongue. The fullness of him, tensed and pleading in her hand.

His eyes, closed. The lids the color of sand.

Packed sand, trodden over.

(Why did such things come to her mind?)

And for Catherine, just the touch of him was always enough. Just the fact of him. That this was
James
.

He was a long, low shudder that started deep in her spine.

And yes, probably, when he put his hand to her there, it should feel different. Yes. Probably, it should not feel like it felt: like he had lost something down there, like he was searching down there, impatiently casting about. And yes, probably, when he put his mouth there, probably he found it—

All of that—how would he think of it?

Architecture?

And was it her fault, if he looked to her more beautiful every day?

Was it her business?

Because it was only a lark.

Only a plunge.

Catherine and James. Catherine and James.

And the things they could do.

W
hat are you up to these days, Citóg? I never see you anymore.”

“Busy.”

Nothing that was not him was anything that she could see.

And James’s gaze in the street now: not something of which Catherine could afford to allow herself to be aware.

Still walking the streets as they were, the taunting bastards; still everywhere, with their untouchable, insolently beautiful stares—

(This was how she thought of them now: as stares, not as the stared-at. Dublin, for her now: the house of the stare.)

And so if, beside her, he saw someone—if, beside her, he sighed or muttered in that way—well, Catherine simply had not heard. Catherine simply had not noticed it, that pulse of pain and longing, that shrapnel through skin of what could not be had—

From “Tulips”:
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.

Amy, wanting to know if she should add Catherine’s name to the pot one night for dinner.

“No. I’ll be at James’s. I’ll probably crash on his couch.”

And Amy nodding, saying nothing. Amy, who had heard Catherine and James, the noise of them, through her own bedroom wall.

You know, I was always close to Amy,
he had said to her, that day by the canal.
You know that.

(That day now so long, long ago.)

Because nobody knew.

Amy, and that dividing wall just chipboard, really—and nobody knew.

Lorraine walking in on the two of them in the sitting room, one night—and nobody knew.

Zoe, and whatever it was that Zoe saw, or Zoe intuited—and nobody knew.

Because silence. Because pretending.

Because these were the things they all knew, so well, how to do.

Zoe:

Zoe, growing friendly, now, with PhotoSoc Lisa and with Nordie Liam, as she called them, always off for coffee or lunch or pints.

“You can’t call him Nordie Liam,” Catherine told her, but Zoe just laughed.

“He doesn’t mind. He’s a sweetheart. I’m trying to get him and Lisa together. They’d be so cute, the pair of them.”

And what would that be like? To be so cute, the pair of you?

Everything was jealousy. Everything was longing for a life that she could not have. It was as though she had taken his pain, the pain he had talked to her about, and inverted it.

No. It was as though she had been jealous, even, of his pain. That was what it was.

That was how far it had gone with her.

Aidan, one day on the ramp pretending to eye them suspiciously as they passed, Catherine’s arm locked in James’s:

“Where are
you
two sneaking off to?”

And Aidan, it struck her as James peeled away from her, going over to him for a brief, laughing exchange about something—she did not even pay attention to what—Aidan—was Aidan, after all, to be trusted, really?

And probably not.

Because he was older, Aidan; he was worldly, wasn’t he? He had told her, hadn’t he, that night that she had been with him, during the course of their long, snuggled-up conversation (how far away that conversation seemed now, how unbelievable) that he had done everything there was to do? Catherine had assumed that he was talking about travel, about the fact that he had been to South America, and Australia, and the fact that he had lived in London for years—but no, probably, it had been sex, actually, that he had been talking about that night—probably it had been his way of letting her know that he had been with not just women but also men—

And James had said he was sexy, Aidan. James had said it to her, that first day she had introduced them; James had mouthed it to her, making her cringe with his obviousness, with the way that Aidan could so easily see him—

And, so, had that been James’s intention, then, that day?

And, so, was there any way she could trust them, the two of them in such close, dangerous proximity?

“We have to go,” she said to Aidan, and she pulled James, still laughing, away.

And:

“James, baby!” said PhotoSoc Lisa, greeting him one day, her arms thrown open at the sight of him.

Catherine’s eyes became, suddenly, blades. Rounding on her, staring at her; unblinking. Lisa, maybe noticing; seeming to stumble in confusion a moment, before James hugged her, seeming to stagger a little with the worry that she had done something wrong—

Which she had. Which she
very
much had.

James, baby!
Catherine mimicked in her head, angrily, all night.
James, baby!

Because how could Lisa be trusted either?

No.

Nor woman neither.

Though by your smiling—

(Everyone could fuck off with their smiling.)

Emmet, one day up in the publications office, gave her a heart.

Joke heart. A discarded, forgotten-about charity heart. One of those lapel pins sold on the street to make money for the Irish Heart Association; he had found it, probably, in a pen tray or a drawer. Red velveteen blob of it scuffed now, stenciled, smiling face faded.

All of his polished, grinning irony, as he handed it to her.

All of hers, taking it as casually as though it was a memo or a fax.

She put it in the drawer of her bedside table.

(She said nothing about this to Zoe.)

(Nothing about this to James.)

A cigarette, tipping against the darkness. The sound of his breath, languid and weighed. His skin pressed to hers, damp, as they fell asleep together.

And in the morning, they made a joke of it, because that was the only way, Catherine knew, to make sure that it could happen again.

(Thinking of him all day. Thinking,
What now?
Thinking,
When next?
)

Thinking,
Love, love
—

Dreaming that she could make them a cave.

She was a miner. The light burning blue.

She wrote:
Plummet. Breakage. Loss.

She wrote:
He must have been a beautiful boy.

Down home one weekend, and so tempted to spill everything to Ellen.

But no.

(And how was it even possible, to miss a sister you already had?)

Or her mother’s sigh; her mother’s sigh that said,
I know damn well you’re up to something, but I don’t know what.
Sensing something, like a cat hunting, moving from garden into field. Blind hedge, and she could not see beyond it, but she had the scent. She had the sigh.

But the sigh could not get at Catherine now.

“No news,” was all she said.