Anna
A SUDDEN AND DEEP QUIETfalls after Cathal has taken the men away. Not wanting to appear immature, I accept the new drop Betty pours out for me. I accepted the first drop without asking what we were drinking, and I feel it’s too late to ask now.
My coat and handbag on her chair. My hands around her glass. My body in her home. This might be the first time I’ve seen her in the kitchen without her apron on.
‘It’s quiet now.’
How boring, yet I find myself saying it with a little laugh, and wishing that I hadn’t. I don’t want to bother Betty with such pedestrian observations. I don’t want her thinking that the silences need to be filled. I want to be in her silences, as she is in mine. To admire all the ways that we are when we are not speaking, moving or doing. Just existing with each other. How intimate. Betty pretends not to be disappointed that I have commented on the silence; she must like it too. I smile at her and wait for a smile back. I wait for her response. I place each of my delicate feelings between her molars and wait for her to bite down.
‘It’s no harm to have a break from the lads.’
She says, and I nod. And I wish I hadn’t been nodding along so vigorously to everything she was saying about the economy, so shewould know I really meant this one.
‘It’s nice to have a break from everything, isn’t it?’
She says, and I cannot tell if she is relaxed or sad or bored. Suddenly, everything stops. It’s like time has paused; Betty has paused. There is nothing but me and the texture of her breath. I hear it, and I feel it, warm and ruffled around me. And then everything comes back.
‘Yeah.’
I hate that she would ever feel that she needs a break. Her life should be easier. So easy that a break would seem monotonous and unnecessary. What sort of a life would we have if I was to move into her spare room? How long would the bliss last? I wonder could we spend every evening this way. Barefooted, perhaps in nightdresses, drinking with the moths. Without the lads. Close. Yes, barefoot in our nightdresses. Her, in something white, almost sheer on her raindrop body. Something expensive. She makes me feel so expensive. Absentminded, she pulls her hair up and away from her face. Look how the baby hairs lie marbling the side of her neck. Look how her tiny little veins bulge from her temples, ageing her. And then she lets her hair back down. Isn’t it good that we are so familiar to each other, that she can expose these parts of herself to me?
Tom
‘A CALF IS COMING, TOM.’
Bill says to me as we reach the barn. Softly, and to me only. I feel like a little boy being told that Santa Claus is coming. Half intrigued, half afraid. Man up now, Tom, this will really impress him.
The cow is heard before she is seen. It has been years since I dealt with anything like this. After Daddy’s accident, the bull was sold along with all the cows. Now, I’ve to put on a brave face and pretend I know exactly what I’m at. At a time like this, there would be nothing worse than to ask for help.
‘Bill, are ye well? Thanks for coming down.’
Frances McCarthy says, as Cathal leads us into the barn. Bill nods at him.
‘I’ve the apprentice here.’
The men laugh at me, and so, immediately, I laugh with them. Although really, I suppose that I am Bill’s apprentice. Not in any trade in particular, just in how to be a man. How to be Bill. It isn’t a bad thing to learn.
Calving isn’t the gruesome thing I remember it being. For a reason that I cannot name, the mention of calving made me anticipate mass panic, the men racing around the barn as the straw rapidly took the colour of thick, dark blood. This is nowhere near as dramaticas a human birth. The cow is getting on fine without us here. I feel totally unnecessary. What a horrible way to feel. Even Bill might be unnecessary here. But then, the cow cries out. A particular note that I have heard only once before. It is the sound of pure, undiluted pain.
Is it stupid that just the thought of her could bring me to tears?
Anna
MAYBE I’VE HAD ENOUGH TOdrink now. It’s strange, I feel saturated by everything. It’s like I have taken on all the colour in the room, all the humidity and feeling. Something has multiplied my feelings and brought them right up under my skin, so close to the surface that one twitch would have them seeping out of my pores. Everything has been magnified. Somehow better and somehow worse.
And then, I shatter it all by knocking Betty’s glass off the table and onto the floor.
‘Oh god. Sorry, Betty!’
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry.
