“It’s great to see you better,” I couldn’t bear to stay.
“You’ll be in? I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“I’ll be in the day after tomorrow,” and I saw her relax and then ease to let me go as soon as she had the promise. And now that she was willing to let me go I was ashamed of my haste to be away, and wanted to stay.
The next day I put aside for what I liked doing best. I did nothing, the nothing of walking crowded streets in the heart of the city, looking at faces, going into chance bars to rest, eating lunch and dinner alone in cheap, crowded restaurants.
And without any desire for meaning, in the same way as I had been surprised at her bedside, I sometimes felt meaning in this crowded solitude. That all had a purpose, that it had to have, the people coming and going, the ships tied up along the North Wall, the changing delicate lights and ripples of the river, the cranes and building, lights of shops, and the sky through a blue haze of smoke and frost. And then it slipped away, and I found myself walking with a light and eager step to nowhere among others, in a meaningless haze of goodwill and general benediction and shuffle, everything fragmented again.
And then came the quiet or the tiredness that said that if that was the way it was it too had to be accepted, and when night fell it was possible to go home with the easy conscience of a sport’s reporter writing, “No play was possible today at Lords because of rain.”
I tried to write a new story. I thought if I got another story done before Maloney started to ask for it I would give myself several free days, but I wasn’t able to write. It must have been that I had got used to deadlines. I went early to Kavanagh’s to meet her and had drunk two pints by the time she came.
“It’s good to see you,” she bent to kiss me as she started to unbutton her jacket.
“What’ll you have?”
“I’ll have a gin and tonic — to celebrate,” she said mysteriously.
“To celebrate what?” I asked when I brought the drinks back from the bar.
“You see, silly, there was no reason to be worried. I told you I was regular as could be. It must have been all that exercise.”
“I’m glad. I’ll drink to that.”
I must have been worried for I felt a weight lift, as money suddenly come upon that had been feared lost. The evening brightened. Having realized the fear in being set free, I resolved never to put it at risk again. And I thought of how many times this celebration must have taken place, people made light-hearted as we by the same tidings. For this time we had no bills of pleasure to pay. We were not caged in any nightmare of the future.
“We’ve never met any place except in these old pubs,” she said suddenly. “Why don’t we start going to different places?”
“What sort of different places?”
“There’s the cinema,” and she named a picture that was playing on the quays that had received much praise. “Or we could go to the Park next Saturday, to the races.”
At the mention of the Park, I remembered the days at the races I’d often gone to with her I had loved, and I drew back as if I knew instinctively what she was seeking: if we could meet people that either she or I knew it would give our relationship some social significance, drag it out of these dark pubs for christening.
“No. I don’t feel like going to any of those places. But why don’t you go?” and I saw it fall like a blow. She made no attempt to conceal it.
“O boy! That sure puts me in my place,” and there were tears in her eyes.
“I don’t want to put you in your place.”
“But you did. Don’t you understand that those places don’t have an interest for me in themselves but are places that I want to go to with you?”
“There’s no future for you in that — for either of us. You’ll only get hurt. That’s the way you fall in love.”
“That’s all the music I need to hear. Maybe I’m hurt all I can be hurt already. I don’t know why you have to be so twisted and awkward. Especially with the news I had I thought we’d just have a nice pleasant evening.”
“There’s plenty of places we can go together.”
“Where?” she put her hand on my knee, smiling through her tears.
“We could go down the country,” I said awkwardly. “And stay in some nice hotel for a weekend.”
“I have a far better idea,” she was laughing now. “And it won’t cost a thing. I was going to mention it when all the silly fighting started. We can take a boat, one of the new cruisers, out on the Shannon for a weekend. They’ve been pushing us for weeks to do an article. In fact, Walter was saying that someone will have to do the article in the next few weeks. Why don’t we do it the weekend after next? That’ll give time to fix everything. Those cruisers are as comfortable as a hotel and far more fun. Why don’t we?”
“All right. That’s agreed, then.”
“It’ll be great fun. And I can do the article. Poor Walter will even be happy for a day or two,” and in a glow of enthusiasm she started to describe the part of the river that we’d take.
“I suppose we won’t bother going back to my place,” I said when the pub closed.
“Why?” she said in alarm, having obviously taken it for granted that we would.
“I thought you mightn’t want to because of the time of the month.”
“No. That doesn’t matter. We can talk there. And I can hold you, can’t I?”
We went by a side lane which cut the distance back by half, along a row that was once fishermen’s cottages, and then in the sparse lights by ragged elder bushes and rows of dumped cars. I took her jacket when we got to the flat, stirred up the almost dead fire, and put some wood on, and asked if she wanted anything to drink. I was waiting to see what she wanted to do. She said she’d prefer not to drink, just to take a glass of water, but for me to go ahead; and then suddenly, lifting the page in the typewriter, asked if she could read what I’d written.
“Sure. I have to warn you that it’s anything but edifying, but it pays. It’s pornography. No. What’s in the typewriter is only doodling. You can read this story. It’s set in Majorca. It’s finished but I haven’t given it in yet,” and I handed her the story and a large glass of water. I poured myself a whiskey and sat in front on the fire. She sat on the bed, under the arc of the lamp, her glass on the marble.
“This isn’t half hot,” she said after half a page, in the same tone as she’d said “Boy, you don’t move half fast” when I first tried to touch her in the room.
“You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.”
“That stuff might be hot for Dublin but it’s old hat in pornography by now. The new pornography has polar bears, bum frigging, pythons, decapitators, sword swallowers.”
“It sure seems hot enough to me.”
“Do you really want to finish it?” She nodded. “I’ll shut up, so, until you finish.”
Warmed by the whiskey, watching the fire catch, I felt time suspended as she read. If God there was, he must enjoy himself hugely, feeling all his creatures absorbed in his creation; but this was even better. It was as if another god had visited your creation and had got totally involved in it, had fallen for it. Some gods somewhere must be shaking huge sides with laughter.
“That’s something,” she said when she finished.
“What did you think of old Grimshaw and Mavis?”
“O I don’t know. I’m shocked. I suppose what shocked me most of all was to think you wrote it.”
“But you know the stuff is around. That it’s sold in shops. That people buy it.”
“Yes, but somehow one doesn’t think it has anything to do with oneself. It’s for others. So it’s quite shocking to come as close to it as this,” she tapped the pages.
“Would you like a drink?”