‘If we leave together we’ll just start to argue again and it’s no use. You know it’s over. It’s been over for a long time now. Will you please stay five minutes?’ She put her gloved hand on my arm as she rose. ‘Just this last time.’
She turned and walked away. I was powerless to follow. She did not once look back. The door swung in the emptiness after she had gone. I saw the barman looking at me strangely but I did not care. The long hand of the clock stood at two minutes to eight. It did not seem to move at all. She was gone, slipping further out of reach with every leaden second, and I was powerless to follow.
‘A small Jameson. With water,’ I said to the barman. As I sipped the whiskey, the whole absurdity of my situation came with a rush of anger. It was over. She was gone. Nothing said or done would matter any more, and yet I was sitting like a fool because she’d simply asked me to. Without glancing at the clock, I rose and headed towards the door. Outside she was nowhere in sight.
I could see down on the city, its maze of roads already lighted in the still, white evening, each single road leading in hundreds of directions. I started to run, but then had to stop, realizing I didn’t know where to run. If there were an instrument like radar … but that might show her half-stripped in some car … her pale shoulders gleaming as she slipped out of her clothes in a room in Rathmines …
I stared at the street. Cars ran. Buses stopped. Lights changed. Shop windows stayed where they were. People answered to their names. All the days from now on would have to begin without her. The one thing I couldn’t bear was to face back to the room, the room that had seen such a tenuous happiness.
I went into the Stag’s Head and then O’Neills. Both bars were crowded. There was no one there that I knew. I passed slowly through without trying to order anything. The barmen were too busy to call out. I moved to the bars off Grafton Street, and at the third bar I saw the Mulveys before I heard my name called. It was Claire Mulvey who had called my name. Paddy Mulvey was reading a book, his eyes constantly flickering from the page to the door, but as soon as he heard my name called his eyes returned fixedly to the page. They were sitting between the pillars at the back. Eamonn Kelly appeared to be sitting with them.
‘We thought you were avoiding us,’ Claire Mulvey said as we shook hands. Her strained, nervous features still showed frayed remnants of beauty. ‘We haven’t seen you for months.’
‘For God’s sake, isn’t it a free country?’ Paddy Mulvey said brightly. ‘Hasn’t the man a right to do his own things in his own way?’
‘Blackguard,’ Eamonn Kelly said gravely, his beautiful, pale face relaxing in a wintry smile.
‘Why are you not drinking?’ Empty half-glasses stood in front of them on the table.
‘I’m afraid we’re suffering from that old perplexity,’ Mulvey said. ‘And we’ve been waiting for Halloran. He was supposed to be here more than an hour ago. He owes us a cheque. He even left us a hostage for reassurance.’ He pointed to a brown leather suitcase upright against the pillar.
‘I’ll get the drinks,’ I offered.
‘Halloran went off with a boy. I’ve been telling them he’ll not be back,’ Eamonn Kelly volunteered.
I got four pints and four whiskeys from the bar.
‘I should thank you for this,’ Eamonn Kelly said as he lifted his whiskey. ‘But after careful consideration have come down against it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve decided you’re a blackguard.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because one must have some fixed principles. I’ve decided you are a blackguard. That’s an end of it. There is no appeal.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Mulvey said. ‘You’re not drunk enough for that yet. Here’s health.’
‘Good luck,’ Claire Mulvey said.
‘What are you reading?’
‘Another slim volume. I’m writing it up for Halloran,’ and he started to speak of the book in a tone of spirited mockery.
I tried to listen but found the arid, mocking words unbearable. Nothing lived. Then I found myself turning towards a worse torture, to all I wanted not to think about.
She had asked me to a dinner in her sister’s house a few days before Christmas. We’d met inside a crowded GPO. She was wearing a pale raincoat with the detachable fur collar she wore with so many coats. Outside in O’Connell Street the wind was cold, spitting rain, and we’d stood in a doorway as we waited for a bus to take us to the house in the suburbs.
The house her sister lived in was a small semi-detached in a new estate: a double gate, a garage, a piece of lawn hemmed in with concrete, a light above the door. The rooms were small, carpeted. A coal fire burned in the tiled fireplace of the front room.
Her sister was as tall as she, black-haired, and beautiful, pregnant with her first child. Her husband was small, energetic, and taught maths in a nearby school.
The bottles of wine we’d brought were handed over. Glasses of whiskey were poured. We touched the glasses in front of the coal fire. They’d gone to a great deal of trouble with the meal. There were small roast potatoes, peas, breadcrumb stuffing with the roast turkey. Brandy was poured over the plum pudding and lit. Some vague unease curdled the food and cheer in that small front room, was sharpened by the determined gaiety. It was as if we were looking down a long institutional corridor; the child in the feeding chair could be seen already, the next child, and the next, the postman, the milkman, the van with fresh eggs and vegetables from the country, the tired clasp over the back of the hand to show tenderness as real as the lump in the throat, the lawnmowers in summer, the thickening waists. It hardly seemed necessary to live it.
‘What did you think of them?’ she’d asked as she took my arm in the road outside.
‘I thought they were very nice. They went to a great deal of trouble.’
‘What did you think of the house?’
‘It’s not my kind of house. It’s the sort of house that would drive me crackers.’
‘What sort of house would you like?’
‘Something bigger than that. Something with a bit more space. An older house. Nearer the city.’
‘Excuse me,’ she said with pointed sarcasm as she withdrew her arm.
I should have said, ‘It’s a lovely house. Any house with you would be a lovely house,’ and caught and kissed her in the wind and rain. And it was true. Any house with her would have been a lovely house. I had been the fool to think that I could stand outside life. I would agree to anything now. I would not even ask for love. If she stayed, love might come in its own time, I reasoned blindly.
‘Do you realize how rich the English language is, that it should have two words, for instance, such as “comprehension” and “apprehension”, so subtly different in shading and yet so subtly alike? Has anything like that ever occurred to you?’ This was Mulvey now.
‘No. I hadn’t realized.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t. And I’d rather comprehend another drink.’
‘Comprehension. Apprehension,’ Eamonn Kelly started to say as I went to get the drinks. ‘I’ll apprehend you for a story. An extraordinarily obscene story.’
‘Jesus,’ Mulvey groaned.
‘I hope it’s not long,’ Claire Mulvey said. ‘Where have you been all this time?’ she asked as he began. ‘We don’t have to listen to that. Those stories are all the same.’
‘I got mixed up with a girl.’
‘Why didn’t you bring her here? You should at least have given us the chance to look her over.’
‘She wouldn’t like it here. Anyhow it’s over now.’
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said.
‘Is he?’ Eamonn Kelly shouted, annoyed that we hadn’t listened to the story he’d been telling.