The Lesser Bohemians (34 page)

In the close night I wake alone in bed but, across the dark, he is at his desk. Streetlight filleting the bones in his back. Cigarette, of course. So I get up and go put my arms around him. What
are you doing, my love? Just thinking, he says And looking at this picture of my mother again. I can just about remember her looking like this. Who could’ve imagined what would come next? Or guessed the girl in this photograph would starve herself to death? Or that on hearing it all I’d be able to think of was   how much I loved her   when I was a little boy. In our quiet warm world we think on that. Then he drops the photo. Stubs out his cigarette. Says Come on, and takes me back to bed. We make ourselves comfortable in each other’s arms there, then go to sleep.

Strings of sunlight all through my hair as I make on up Haverstock Hill. Quick, for he almost has me late. Shit! Nearly ten! Run down Prince of Wales Road. Front steps bereft of the usual herd, all up on the balcony now. In I too and up the stairs. Just beginning, as I get there. Wedge myself in amid the costume rails. Poor fuckers, she whispers friendly-like and budging up. Hey Alison, yeah, I don’t envy them this. Everything resting on it. Get a job. Get an agent. What’s Danny doing? Miss Julie, I say. She rolls her eyes Of course he is, he doesn’t half fancy himself!

Straight after the run-through First Years disperse for the readying. My job’s a spot of foyer sweeping. Making sure the Spotlight pictures are neat. Telling Danny, as he wanders past Break a leg! and Me and Stephen are back together again! Good work, he says Any chance of asking his agent to keep an eye out for me?

Soon enough the afternoon showing begins. First and Second Years – banned from sound – cram ourselves into the canteen. Hear casting directors and agents come in. Glasses clink and Hello darling! Third Years cracking the side door open, waiting for their cues. Then disappearing off into the Church. Afterwards whispering That went well, or I fucked up, or I really can’t tell, suppose I’ll have to wait and see. But time goes round and soon he’ll come which makes me somewhat insensible to their suffering.

Tap polite claps through the door, then a hum up of standing. I go out into the loiter of Third Years waiting, making
interesting, looking thin. Teachers sympathising or saying Well done. Hey Danny, happy? Reasonably, he says Just got to hope now I get a bite, but there’s someone waiting for you outside. So I follow on out to the brim of day. And leant against the pillar, there he is. Talking to some small man – or who by comparison, seems. The lightness still all about him, right through his long frame. Fag in his mouth. Loot under his arm. Saying No he is, I saw him last term and I’m actually thinking of getting him to read. Then he sees me Hey Eil! – taps the little man’s arm – Hang on a sec, this is her. And reaches through the mayhem for me. Been waiting long? Few minutes, he says So let me introduce you. This is my girlfriend Eily, this is my agent. Hello. Shake and Is that short for Eileen? Éilís, Stephen says Hey Danny, over here, there’s someone I want you to meet.

Fancy a walk Eil, before we head home? So we See you later, the others and off we go. He unfolds the Loot as we cross to Crogsland Road. I’m thinking it’s time to move. I’ll soon need the extra space, what with an office and a room for Grace and fancy moving in properly? My mother will probably kill me, I say But I don’t care so yes! Then stop to kiss on the kerb between the Enterprise and, now closed down, Fortune Village Chinese. Whereabouts do you fancy? Camden forever, I say. I thought you might say that, so how about this one then? Three bedrooms up off Delancey Street? Yeah that looks great. Okay, then I’ll give them a call, as we cross over the Chalk Farm Road. Up onto Regent’s Park Road. Across the bridge. Taking the heat of the afternoon on our heads. Arms around each other, we go past shops and the Russian tearoom on the right. All the way up to the phone boxes by the park gates. I’ll just nip in and make that call then, he says. I rock back on my heels as he does. Watch a plane passing over. The white it brings.
A perfect sky cut but of this world, like me and him. In it. Ready now.

What are you smiling about? he asks. Just am. Well we can see it at six and, if we like, we could move in next week. Then quick catch hold of each other, wide-eyed. Ready for the plunge? Long past Eil, you? I am. Good, come on.

So through the shade of sycamores we climb Primrose Hill. Grass crisped by July. Dogs barking below. Some lads from my year making the most of a football. To me! No, to me! I said You dick!

At the top we stretch out on the scrub and kiss a little and admire the smog. Easy together so fall to some catching up. We got the final green light for the film. Congratulations! I say Does that mean you’ve solved the end? God I hope so, he says I just realised after all these months of thinking about him again, even with all his fuck-ups and the state he was in, I was actually kind of fond of him. I wanted to give him something better than what happened to me. Besides which, it’s not autobiography. I can finish it any way I want. So how did you? Well, he says Now he’s up there on the roof, end of the night. Losing it. Waiting for God to come back. Slowly the sun starts to rise so he watches as the sky turns white. Quiet everywhere. Then he sees a girl making her way down the street. Maybe still a little drunk from the night but beautiful, with her hair catching all the light. Almost mesmerised, he keeps watching her, his ungodly sign, until the sun is up and she has gone from sight. Then the camera pulls back gradually from the roof, the street and away across all he can see until he’s no more than a fragment of the city, until even he can’t be seen any more. It’s beautiful, I say. I hope so Eil, there should be some, even in that life. And he kisses me then, so we kiss. Then for a while
we’re the kissing idiots on top of Primrose Hill teaching all of London what happiness is, for lying there together, we already know.

Standing up later we pick grass and daisies from our hair. Linger for a moment over the city arrayed. Come on, he says, arm around my waist It’s time to go. One minute more, Stephen? So he stays to look with me through its towers and bridges. Across its shops and along its streets. At Londoners getting ready for their Friday nights. Somewhere below trains go in underground while above buses find to all the different towns that have become London now. But even its tumult is peace for me. He walks down the hill a little before turning to call Eily, Eily, stretching out his hand. Come on my love, he says We haven’t got much time. I take one last look at him there against the evening sky then go naked to him, open to him, full of life.

Firstly, I would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of the Arts Council of England and the cool heads of Tracy Bohan, Hannah Griffiths, Rachel Alexander and Mitzi Angel.

Then, many thanks for so many things to my mother Gerardine, my brother Fergal, Marietta Smith, the great Henry Layte, Phoebe Harkins, Ross MacFarlane and Damian Nicolaou.

For all the reading and forbearance – as well as everything else – I thank my husband and daughter, William and Éadaoin Galinsky.

And finally, and fondly, thanks to all of Group 33.

Eimear McBride grew up in the west of Ireland and studied acting at Drama Centre London. Her debut novel
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing
took nine years to publish and subsequently received the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the Desmond Elliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in
Dubliners 100, The Long Gaze Back
and on BBC Radio 4. She occasionally reviews for the
Guardian, TLS, New Statesman
and
New York Times
Book Review.

A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing