‘Yeah,’ said Hugh. ‘Maybe.’
‘I left myself, really slowly. It happens, sometimes. I do that. But this time it was really slow. It was so slow, it was like I caught myself leaving. I mean that was the first time.’
‘Right,’ he said.
‘And I loved that. I just loved it. Going down to my mother’s with the baby in the back. And all the rain.’
Shannon Airport
IN THE ARRIVALS Hall at Shannon the glass doors pulled open and the glass door slipped shut.
Constance watched as one after another passenger was ambushed and claimed. People were crying and laughing and Constance couldn’t remember what she was looking out for, exactly. There would be some unchangeable thing about her brother to say he was her brother. Some glow. That is how she remembered Dan as a child and also, more surprisingly, from the last time they met — it must have been 2000 — a year when Constance no longer recognised her own reflection coming at her from a shop window and Dan was looking better than ever. She did not know how he managed it. Constance actually thought there might be make-up involved; or Botox, perhaps. It was as though the light had a choice, and it still chose him.
Maybe he was just fit. Though Dan never showed the effort of being fit, or unfit, she could not imagine him breaking a sweat. Handsome people did not move their faces much, that was part of the trick; her mother had it, and Dan had it too. It was the attitude, more than the fact of good looks. A sense of expectation.
Hanna was actually the prettiest of the Madigans but Hanna was all expression, all personality, and she did not photograph well — this, in an actress, was not a good thing. Constance gripped the steel rail in the Arrivals area and held her own face up like a plate for her brother to recognise, but it was, she knew, just a sad reflection of what she used to be. Her face was a shadow passing over the front of her head — like the play of light on the side of a mountain, maybe. For two seconds at a time, the old Constance was there. She inhabited the picture of herself. Everything fit.
And there was Dan — she knew him immediately — slight and alert behind his massive trolley: older than Dan should be, but looking absurdly young for his age. A gay man, as anyone might be able to discern. He checked the faces in the welcoming crowd with a nervous impeccability.
‘Hell-oooo!’ Dan threw out his hands, towards her, and stepped out from behind his luggage. More camp than she remembered. Every time a little more. It came up through him with age.
‘Look at you!’ He touched her lightly on the side of her face and then her shoulder, then leaned in, as though impulsively, for a hug. He greeted her like a friend and not a brother. He greeted her like no friend she ever had.
And he had too many bags with him. Far too many. Much of the luggage was matching. Dan noticed her noticing all this, as they walked across the concourse. They were fighting, before Constance had opened her mouth. They were doing it all over again. And Constance was utterly fed up with herself, suddenly.
I don’t care!!! she wanted to say. I don’t care who you sleep with or what you do!
Even though she did care. She checked the eyes of everyone who looked at him from the oncoming crowd.
‘How are you?’ she said to Dan.
‘Good.’
‘That overnight thing is a killer.’
Dan went to say something, but decided against it.
‘I slept,’ he said.
They were out through the main doors and in the fresh air; the beginnings of dawn to the east of them, and the lights of the airport trembling orange against the freshly blank sky.
‘Hello Ireland,’ said Dan.
He smiled, and she looked over to him. And there he was.
Dan was a year younger than Constance, fifteen months. His growing up struck her as daft, in a way. So she was not bothered by her brother’s gayness — except, perhaps, in a social sense — because she had not believed in his straightness, either. In the place where Constance loved Dan, he was eight years old.
He stood beside her as she sorted out the ticket, then they walked across the car park together, almost amused.
This was the boy who ran alongside her in her dreams. Constance, asleep, never saw his face exactly, but it was Dan, of course it was, and they were on the beach in Lahinch coming round a headland to find something unexpected. And the thing they found was the river Inagh as it ran across the sands into the sea. Sweet water into salt. Constance had been there many times as an adult, and the mystery of it remained for her. Rainwater into seawater, you could taste where they met and mingled, and no way to tell if all this was good or bad, this turbulence, if it was corruption or return.
‘You know what I want?’ said Dan. ‘I saw it on my way through and I can’t believe it — because what I want, more than anything, is some Waterford crystal. Don’t you think it’s time? Some champagne saucers. I should have got some for Lady Madigan, she’d love them.’
‘You think?’
‘Or for me. I knew there was something missing in my life. I just didn’t know what it was.’
‘Champagne saucers?’
‘Champagne saucers?’ They were both, and immediately, imitating their mother.
‘Oh go ’way now,’ said Dan. ‘I’m tired of you.’
‘Actually,’ said Constance, ‘she’s in good form.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s in good form. I mean, apart from all this stuff about the house. She’s.’ Constance could not find the word.
‘Mellowed?’ said Dan. They were at the car which, Constance remembered, was a Lexus. She did not know if she was ashamed of this fact or proud of it, but Dan did not seem to notice, as she popped the boot with the logo on it, and he lifted it high.
‘More like mood swings, I’d call it.’
Dan said nothing to this, just worked the luggage into the boot, placing her shopping carefully to one side.
‘I know,’ he said, shutting the lid.
Though he had no way of knowing. How could he know? He had not been there.
Dan was ducking towards the driver’s door, when he realised what country he was in.
‘Wrong side!’ he said, and they bumbled around each other. Constance touched his waist as they swapped over and he seemed smaller than he used to be. This was not possible, of course. It was just that everyone was fatter, these days, your eyes adjusted to it. Everyone was fatter except Dan.
He noticed the car, all right, when Constance put it into reverse and a video of the rear view came up on the dash.
‘Con-stance,’ he said. ‘What is this thing you’re driving? You’re like the doctor’s wife these days.’
‘Ha,’ said Constance.
‘Mood swings,’ he said. ‘Is she serious about the house?’
‘Yeah well,’ said Constance. ‘I think she’s just getting old.’
‘And. Not in a good way?’ he said. Constance was searching through the gears for first and then reverse, and she could not laugh until she was straightened up. Then she laughed so hard she could not find the ticket for the barrier.
‘Shut up,’ said Constance. ‘I am trying to get us out of here.’