In unguarded moments while he is at work, Moira flicks into the corner of his eye. There is no pattern to it. She has taken to reading children’s books. She has eaten her way through Dr Doolittle and enthuses about Dab Dab the duck.
‘What is the difference,’ she asks him, ‘between doing something and not doing something? When I was a kid, hell would open up if you stepped on the crack in the path and the devil would kiss you — but he never did.’
‘You sound disappointed.’
She rubs the corner of her mouth hard with the tip of a finger, as though her lipstick was beginning to smear.
‘I want to go somewhere.’
‘Anywhere you like.’
‘Bolivia?’
‘Sure.’
For some reason everyone is using Spanish music in their programmes that week. It makes the cutting very fast and the colours as sharp as an ad for washing powder. He passes a small girl in her communion dress in the street and there are flamenco flounces down the back of her white skin.
‘How about Barcelona? We can afford that.’ But she just laughs.
It came together in all the things she threw away. As he sat working at his console, the pictures knitted one into the other. Moira glancing at the phone. Moira rubbing at her thigh, as though there was a burr caught between her leg and her jeans. She comes in through the hall door, with the keys between her teeth and they drop to the floor. She wakes in the morning surprised and her mouth seems caught on the pillow.
It is all in the fraction of the second before he cuts away.
They are sitting in the dining room, in an endless two-shot.
‘I love you,’ Moira says; she leans over to put her hand on his arm but stops. ‘I love you more than anything. Anything. It happened by accident. I don’t understand the why. I stepped on the crack in the path by accident and nothing happened. It didn’t open up. I didn’t fall into hell.’
Reaction shot Frank. The film goes on fire.
‘Frank, I can’t tell the difference between things. I can’t tell the difference between what I want to do, what I mean to do, and something that just happens.’
‘What was his name?’
She opens her mouth to speak. He cuts away to the hand that holds the cigarette and before he can stitch it up, falls headlong into the thin, deep hole that he has made.
SEASCAPE
He stood like a young seminarian at the water’s edge, refusing to see the bodies that were strewn all around him. His eyes rested on the cool line of the horizon, and sweat gathered in the white creases of his face. His only concessions to the sun were the jumper he had removed, which never left his hand, and the thick boots that stood waiting in the sand behind him. He seemed to be standing quite still, but in fact was edging his feet forward, inch by inch. After a while, a thin film of water pulled at his bare toes, and he leapt back. The jump was awkward, and when he turned to walk back up the beach, he had the loping, twisted stride of an old tramp. He belonged to the street, and not to the sea, because his eyes had that puzzled, childish look, and his mouth was hard.
A woman rose from the sea behind him, the water running from her shoulders and hair.
‘Daniel!’ He stooped to pick up his boots, without turning around, so she ran up the slope after him, her body scattering a wet trail on the sand. The swimsuit she wore was azure blue, with a triangle of viridian at the neck, and her wet blonde hair had a greenish sheen in the strong light.
‘Daniel,’ she said again, catching up with him, ‘are you coming in?’
‘Nope.’ He still didn’t turn around.
‘You grunter! You pig!’ She shook herself at him like a wet dog and he pulled away from the drops. When she was done, he caught her by the arms and pushed her into the sand, then laughed and walked on. There was a moment’s shock before she screamed and scrabbled up again, then charged after him up the beach. The old boots banged together in his hand as he evaded her, but when he reached the towels he turned around and let himself be caught. She pushed him down and sat on his chest.
‘You need the wash, you old pig. I should throw you in like a drowned cat.’
‘I can’t swim.’
‘You can’t swim? Sure everyone can swim. I’ll teach you.’
‘Of course I can swim.’
‘Liar.’ She swung off him.
‘You are a liar,’ she said, picking up the towel, which was yellow like her hair. ‘You’re always lying to me.’
He lay on his back, his eyes slits in the glare of the sun. He seemed to be watching the sky. She flicked her body with the towel to get rid of the grit that had lodged in the creases, but he still didn’t turn around. The laces of the boots were tangled in his hand and there were sweat marks and the marks of her wet body on his thick, old shirt.
‘You like it,’ he said and rolled on his belly to watch her. She covered herself with the towel to block his gaze.
‘And anyway … I don’t,’ and he rolled back again with a small grunt.
He pursed his mouth. ‘Pour us a cup of tea, will you?’ It was an old joke.
‘Pour it yourself, you bad bastard. You’re not in your mother’s house now.’
She sat there, for what seemed like a long time, and watched him sprawled damply on the sand. She did not stretch out, ignoring the freak weather with the confidence of one who already had the perfect tan. The colours of her swimsuit brightened in the sun.
After a while, she became aware of someone staring. It was a small child, naked as a cherub. He turned away from her when she looked up, and put his hands up to his face, but continued to watch her through his fingers.
‘Hello.’ She smiled at him and he ducked away at the sound of her voice.
‘Look,’ he said, suddenly bold, and with one hand still to his face, he pissed delicately on to the sand.
‘Lovely,’ she said, at a loss — trying not to give the child a complex.
‘No, it’s not,’ he said, ‘it’s very bold,’ and he ran off as his mother lumbered up after him; ‘Come back here and I’ll give you a belt!’
‘That’s the woman for you,’ she told Daniel, as she caught the struggling child and trapped his legs in a pair of pants.
‘A good, pink-skinned Irish ma with strap marks.’
Daniel lay still.
‘Strap marks and stretch marks and Dunne’s nighties. A fine hoult for you in the bed at night.’ Daniel grunted assent.
‘Well, take the old shirt off at least. You look like a maggot under a rock.’
‘I look,’ he said carefully, ‘like something the tide washed up.’
Affairs, she thought, should stay in the place where they were conceived, they do not transplant well. He lay on the sand as though it were the gutter, while she turned her patch of towel into a little piece of the Riviera. Her face was drawn with effort.
‘All I want’, she finally said, with deliberation and a fake smoothness, ‘is an intelligent life. You know what I mean.’ He turned to face her and his eyes were both puzzled and wary.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, and then as a small concession, ‘it was far from intelligence that I was reared.’
‘Well, start now,’ she said, ‘do my back.’ He lifted his head and looked along the beach.
‘I will not.’
‘Pig.’
She flicked out the towel then lay down on it, with her back to him. After a moment’s pause he made his way across to her on his belly.
‘Here,’ he said, taking the plastic bottle of sun oil from its dugout in the sand. ‘What do I do with this?’ He spilt some on his fingertips and slapped it on her back, then moved over the skin like a farmer with a new lamb.
‘You’re done,’ and quietly he lifted the hair from the nape of her neck. He stroked the side of her face, until her breathing eased, his eyes still out to sea.