I speak without looking at him. This carry-on is driving me mad. I want to give him a puck, to tell him he doesn’t know a thing about women, and that everyone can see it. Tom loves to say that I’m mad for the women. That I’m a flirt and a playboy and whatever else. The truth of it is, I’m just not afraid of women the same way that he is. And he uses that against me. That’s all. Sure you were the only woman I ever had any real time for. He knows that, and so he must know how this hurts me.
‘Teresa might have given you a kiss goodnight by the sounds of it.’
He says, under his breath. Maybe to him, this is just fun. Maybe he thinks it’s just harmless jeering, and that I am playing along. But I think I’m about to cry. It’s as if he has opened me up and looked inside me, chosen to ignore all the space you take up and to illuminate the small space that Teresa has occupied. He is forcing me to confront the piece of me that would have loved a goodnight kiss off Teresa. The part of me that no longer yearns for kisses off you. It’s inappropriate. It’s tasteless. And just as I pull my arm back to puck the back of his head, Anna interrupts.
‘She did not. That girl has more sense than to be kissing an eejit like you.’
Her tone is vacant. As though she doesn’t even realise she is speaking. Like snapping at us is just muscle memory. She goes back to not hearing us, ignoring us, whichever it is. Thanks be to god for Anna. We walk on in silence, and I become horribly lost in the complications of kissing a person. Of touching and knowing a person.
‘I let a few people know that we’ll be having a party for my thirtieth. Just so ye know.’
Tom is almost sheepish when he says this. Not like him.
Minnie Keane is just about awake when we call in for Peggy, who is wide awake.
‘Where’s my girl?’
I call, maybe a bit louder, a bit more inebriated than I would like to sound. She rushes out to us, hugging my waist. Although she has the energy for walking, I need something besides my thoughts to focus on, and so I carry her home on my back and ask her about her evening. She wants to know about the dance. It’s nice to be the older one, so I can dismiss the questions I can’t handle. She tells me about the other children that were there, which ones she plays with in school and which ones she didn’t know. Her little voice growing tired. As we approach the cottage, she pretends to fall asleep so that I won’t make her walk.
‘Will you carry me up the hill, Peg?’
I ask her, and fear she can smell the drink off me. She laughs, forgetting that she was pretending to be asleep.
When we get home, we lie down and I pretend to go to sleep. As though the dance never happened. As though we weren’t out at all and Tom didn’t ask me those questions. Every now and again, he kicks a leg or taps his fingers against his chest. Just moving, I know, but I can’t help receiving it as plotting. As menacing. As an attempt to annoy me. Would he not just go to sleep? It’s a shame when you get to know somebody so well that you look past the best in them.
Predictably, these sweet and unwelcome thoughts of Teresa come to me. Just about the way that she looked this evening. Curls hardened with hairspray, and the way her cheeks met her eyes when she smiled, creating creases in her powder. Charming, in its own way. I wonder if I will always be confused by feelings like this, or whether they will one day be welcome. I wonder when I will catch up to the life that startedthe moment I lost you. God, it feels like only a minute ago that you were here with me.
Tell me, where does lust fit into grieving? Things might be easier if I had never met Teresa. Then I might not have been forced into the possibility of moving on.
Perhaps it would be easier if we had been married. Or if I was a woman. Then I could just put on a black shawl and be the Widow Jack forever. I suppose that comes with its own set of problems. I wish I had realised how easy I had it when you were still with me. I close my eyes, and there you are. A strange, liquid light, moving before me. Trapped under my eyelids. Always changing. Always here.
Tom coughs. Do you know what – this is terrible, but – often, when we settle down to sleep, I am overwhelmed by the thought that I will wake up to find the three of them dead.
Betty
‘I WAS AWAKE ALL NIGHTthinking about it.’
I tell Ciara, surrounded by the iron smell of stout, with a draft from a small window missing its glass. Jack O’Leary drops a pot of coffee down to us with a wink.
‘There ye are, girls.’
I didn’t realise he’d started working in Doyle’s. Those O’Learys are everywhere. Ciara smiles, somehow drawn in by his little charm. How I’d love to burst his bubble, tell him that Ciara is drawn in by any man with half an ounce of charisma. Sure with her John, how could she not be? We’ve to wait until he’s back up at the bar to keep talking. When I told Ciara what happened with Anna last night, she was so intrigued that she made me tell her a second time.
Part of me feels guilty for suggesting to Bill that the O’Learys are too much. And even worse for saying it to Ciara this afternoon. I don’t want to seem like a gossip, but I have to talk about this, because it doesn’t feel right.
Ciara is eyeing Jack, waiting until it’s safe to talk.
‘What did Bill make of it?’
‘Sure he didn’t take any notice. He probably has it forgotten now.’
I didn’t bother mentioning it to him again this morning. What would be the point, when I know he’d only dismiss it? The way Billsees it, he finally has a big, capable man to help him on the farm, who is too grateful to look for more money and too obedient to do anything but what he’s told. Besides, amn’t I the one who told him to keep an eye on Tom and Jack in the first place?
‘So what are you going to do?’
That’s the question. What am I going to do? I keep telling myself that it takes all sorts to make a world. That everybody is different. That I don’t have to be friends with everyone. All the things I’ve been telling myself to justify the odd feeling I get from them. From her.
‘I’d cut them out, if I could. But Tom is working with Bill, and suddenly Jack is working in here, and Anna calls up to the house every evening. What can I do?’
