I just want her to tell me everything is fine, and to come back inside with me. But she won’t even look at me. I can’t stop myself from talking at her. She is yet to start listening.
‘Betty! Would you look at me.’
I had a sense of what I was feeling when I stepped outside, but it’s gone now. I don’t have any words for this, it’s just a flood of feelings. Her arms cross, and at last she looks at me, from the side of her eye.
‘Have you been drinking, Anna?’
I hear her speak, but it’s like something said on the radio, that I’m not supposed to reply to. The ground under me feels further away by the second. What’s going on? I thought that Betty and I understood each other. That she could see me and hear me. Even when I have felt like a supernova, dying in so deep and silent a space that nobody even knows that I am here, Betty knew. And suddenly, that has all gone. Suddenly, she is deciding not to see or hear me anymore. Not to understand.
If she would just smile at me, get up and come back inside with me.If she would only acknowledge me and let me know that I am still here. Betty, please just give me that smack of attention that I am craving.
‘You’re as weak as water.’
A woman like Betty should stand up to me, but all she does is look up at the stars. As though if she ignores me long enough, I will go away. As though she is afraid of me. Just looking up at the stars, at a reflection of herself. Admiring her shine, no doubt.
If I could just tell her that I love her. I love her as she is, I love the smell of the dead blood between her teeth, I love the phlegm in her throat. I love her as a woman, and I would love her as a man, as both or neither. Regardless of the form she takes, I love her. It makes no odds to me. If she exists, I love her. Would she look at me then, if I told her that?
It isn’t that I need the intensity of my fingers in her mouth again, or my blood on the back of her tongue. I just need a roll of the eyes. My name squeezed into a sigh. To be dismissed would be infinitely better than being ignored.
‘Why are you being so boring?’
Grappling for attention, like a child. So embarrassing. But I can’t stop. Just as I open my mouth to swear at her, the door opens behind us again.
‘All okay, ladies?’
Ciara Moore stands in the glow of the hall. And looking as though she has just seen her saviour, Betty stands up and moves towards me. Close. Closer. Far closer than I would have expected a moment ago. So close now that our cheeks could touch. We share a breath; I have never known something so intimate. From here, I could count the creases that lie against her eyes. I can almost taste the sherry that she drank inside. Almost touching. On the edge of almost everything.
And then she steps back. And the inches between us feel infinite. Iwonder if I will ever feel close to anybody again. Just as I think she isn’t going to give me anything, her eyebrows worry themselves, and with a hand on my arm, she tells me,
‘Cop on, girl.’
Oh, the heat of her words. Isn’t this the right fire to be warmed by? Isn’t it good to bathe in the flames? I might let Betty burn me alive, just for the thrill of her acknowledgement. She walks past me into the hall. I watch once more as the back of her head moves out of reach. And while I still feel I’m falling, this time I feel I am falling into her. As she dwindles into the crowd, I wonder if she is the jesus that I have heard so much about, and what an honour it would be to be a louse on her scalp, living off her body and blood. She goes inside with Ciara, linking her arm. The best friends. Let them be best friends, I don’t want that title. She and I are tethered by the soul. Friendship doesn’t begin to describe it.
How strange, that all somehow felt more real than my bloodied fingertips in her mouth. She could put her hands round my throat now, it wouldn’t feel as close. She could go right to the centre of me, see my blood while it’s still blue, and determine whether or not a soul lingers within me, and still this might feel more intimate.
Just as I think I might fracture into a thousand pieces, Tom puts a hand on my shoulder. I smell him. He is real. He is Tom. Moments later, Betty leaves the hall with Bill. They are going home, I think. It’s fine now. I have Tom.
Tom
I ALMOST FEEL ANNA COMEback into her body as I lay my hand on her shoulder. Frightening stuff. She can be such a frightening girl. Something comes over me as I see Bill and Betty leave the hall. He turns to wave at all of us. Not at me, but at everybody. And I am compelled to call out after him. To halt him, to catch up to him. Cold sweat on my neck. Cold wind on my face. And tell him that I’ve never really been anything, but he has made me feel like a man. That I might never be enough to impress him, but that I will always be here.
That woman’s husband. It’s a funny one. I’ve had flashes of admiration for people before. Of course I have. Dozens of people. But this is something altogether new. I don’t know what to call this feeling, and I don’t know what to do with it. All I really know is that it took Bill to find it in me.
I was always comparing myself to Dad, and then to Jack. To any man with his own land or his own woman. Meeting Bill has made me see how wasteful that was. I don’t want to compare myself to anybody anymore. I want to stand alone as a singular thing, far away from everybody else, so that his light hits the most of me.
It doesn’t matter anymore that I’ve no land and no wife. I have somebody who cares about me, who wants the best for me, and who is deeply interested in me. There’s plenty men with wives who don’thave that. Do I want the feeling named? Do I really need it named? Some combination of gratitude and freedom, of ecstasy and lightness. Whatever it is, it all comes from Bill. And he doesn’t even drip-feed it, he lets it all flow freely.
Something tells me that I should try to create this feeling for myself. Something else tells me that I will never be able to. He’s teaching me how to be a man, how to be smart and happy. Whatever he wants to teach me, whatever he wants me to know, I will take from him.
He walks away with his wife, and I watch him go.
Betty
‘GOODNIGHT BILL, GOODNIGHT BETTY! GOODNIGHT!’
Tom calls after us, so loud and exuberant that I can still hear him even after we have gone. There’s something about Tom that I can’t quite explain. Something pity-inducing, that is endearing and off-putting at once. It’s the way that he shouts goodbyes to us in a manner that even Peggy is too old for. Never mind anyway. He isn’t the O’Leary I’m worried about at the minute.
I cling onto Bill all of the walk home. Frost takes over the ditches, and I feel unsteady in my shoes. How do I begin to tell him about what happened with Anna?
