“Whiskey.”
“It’s just wonderful to have all this time and ease,” she said.
“Your good health,” I drank.
“Do many people live in this house? I didn’t realize it was as big as it is till I came in tonight.”
“There are ten flats. It’s an old house. It was converted about five years ago.”
“What kind of people live here?”
“Much the same as I, mostly single. Once they marry they don’t seem to stay long. Civil servants, school teachers, there’s a girl who works on the radio, a solicitor, an accountant, that kind of person. I’m afraid I don’t know much more about them.”
“Aren’t you ever curious?”
“Of course I am but I make sure to restrain myself. We meet on the stairs. Sometimes they run out of salt or sugar, mostly the girls, or they cut their hands washing up. It’s all very polite.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be long here till I’d know everybody. Do you ever wish you could go into another flat and sit and talk?”
“No. Because I’d be afraid they’d come into mine. And bore hell out of me. There are times when you can’t stand even the best company in the world. Why I avoid getting involved with anybody here is that I know myself too well. This place suits me. If I got involved with someone and they turned out boring or bothersome. I’d not get out in time — because I can’t stand the tension that sets up — and I’d wind up having to do something violent like leaving the house altogether.”
“You sound a very unsocial person,” she laughed, “but I don’t think you’re unsocial at all.”
You’re the sort of person who needs a woman, I thought I saw behind the words; you’re the sort of person who’s ripe for plucking. And I’m the one for the job. “I don’t know what sort of person I am,” I said and took her in my arms.
There was no need of caution any more. If the seed was going to its source it had already gone.
The night was set for drinking. Whether we would drink more or not, the day was already useless and hungover. Pour the bottle out.
And so we took our bodies till the sweet mystery of the wine turned to the glass of vinegar we flinched from lifting in the fuddled light. And we towelled our dank bodies and walked to the taxi rank at the bottom of Malahide Road.
“When will we meet again?” she nuzzled close to me and shivered in the cold light.
“In three days’ time, say.”
“All that length of time?”
“There’s this aunt I have to go in to see. And the next evening I have to bring stuff into the paper. That’s the two evenings in between gone.”
“Come with me in the taxi, then.”
“What’s the use?” I was reluctant.
“I want you to,” she pressed her lips on mine.
The house she lived in was in a tree-lined road, detached and prosperous, surrounded by gardens. She seemed to want me to see it, even in this impoverished light, and I got out of the taxi and walked her to the gate.
“I’ll see you in three days,” I said.
“In three days,” she raised her lips a last time. There were no lights on in the house.
She left off from fumbling in her handbag to wave to the taxi as it came out of a turn on the empty road. I waved back and saw her lift a key cautiously towards the lock. I watched to see if she’d take off her shoes but the taxi had taken me out of sight before the door opened.
“I’ll get out anywhere here,” I said to the driver soon after we had left the road. I needed to walk.
I ended the Majorcan holiday with a simple ringing of the changes Maloney had asked for: the Colonel with Mavis; Mavis and the bullfighter Carlos; the Colonel and Carlos’ sixteen-year-old girl friend Juanita — all four of them in delicious, unending revel — cunt and tongue and tit and rod and sperm. At the end of the story they all take a taxi together to the airport, addresses are exchanged, promises made. I had finished so early in the day that I decided to walk the five miles across the city to the hospital but it was still an hour too early when I got there. I bought an evening paper, read it over a hot whiskey in the pub closest to the hospital and got the bottle of brandy there too. It was night when I came out, starlit, with frost. I paused at how beautiful the chrysanthemums were — rust, yellow, pink — under the naked bulb hanging from the canvas of the flower stall in the cold-steel light. I knew she’d hardly like the flowers but on impulse bought her a bunch because of their amazing beauty in the frost. On many frozen evenings such as this she and I used to go to Lenten Devotions, down the hill and to the left up Church Street, and stand at the back of the cold, near-empty church.
“God bless you,” she said as I put the brandy down. “I wouldn’t take it off you but I know you have plenty of money, but I’ll never forget it,” and I saw her eyes fasten on the chrysanthemums in disapproval. “What did you want to go bringing in those old flowers for?”
“I was just passing them and I thought they looked nice.”
“They’re a waste. And I’m not likely to get married again,” she began to laugh, but painfully, catching at the laughs. “And I’d hardly be here if I wasn’t trying to put off the other thing.”
“Ah, but look, all the people around you have flowers.”
“They’re from the city,” she said. “A good head of lettuce or a string of onions would give me more joy than all the flowers in the world.”
I thought of her own garden beside the little creosoted wooden gate off where the railway siding used to be, blooming with good things for the table. “You look far better, and I don’t think it’s just in my eyes.”
She did look better. Though I knew it was of little use. All sorts of clover and sweet grasses glowed here and there on even the steepest slopes. They were not meant to be clutched at.
“Maybe because they’ve stopped that old deep X-ray. It used to make me feel horrible. I don’t trust any of those drugs and gadgets. But what can you do? When you’re here you have to put up with whatever they want to do to you.”
“Do you ever hear from Cyril or Michael?” I asked.
“No, it’d never occur to them that there was such a thing as a pen or paper. They’d not write,” and she started to chuckle. “But there was someone asking for you. She has me persecuted about you. It’s that blackheaded nurse that jumps around.”
“Well, tell her I was asking for her. She’s a fine looking girl.”
“I will not. There’s nothing more sets your teeth on edge when you’re down as someone going around showing the joys of spring.”
“Would you like a little brandy now?”
“No thanks. I can do without it for a while. The pain’s been not so bad. I’ll keep it till I need it.”
Through the window above the bed I could see the clear sky of frost, pierced with stars, and the reflection of all the lights of the city beyond the bare trees, and beside them this woman’s fierce desire to live, and in the long ward, all the little groups about, the same desire in each bed, small shining jewels in an infinite unfathomable band. Everywhere there was a joy that was part of weeping.
Suddenly I felt my eyes blind. I had been taken completely by surprise. There was the need, too, to give thanks and praise; and no one to turn to. So that she wouldn’t see my disturbance, I pretended to fix the brandy bottle more carefully out of sight in the locker.
“I suppose I might as well be going now. Before they put me out.”
“What hurry’s on you? Ah, but wait, tell me the truth now, do you think will I ever get out of this old place?”
“Of course you’ll get out but you’ll have to have patience.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I never will.”
“There’s the bell for the visitors,” I said.
“You can still stay on a few minutes.”