As I come in the door, Anna comes clambering to me, as though I am vital air. As though I escaped and left her behind. She doesn’t likeme being out in the town for long, meeting new people. It’s hard to say if she has noticed, but Anna has become incredibly dependent on me. In the mornings, she makes me promise that I will be home for dinner. As though I would leave and never come back. Anna is always preparing for the next abandonment; it’s sad, and the reasons are too much to face.
‘If I was going to leave, don’t you think I would have come to Ballycrea alone rather than hauling all of ye along with me?’
She didn’t laugh when I asked this. She never laughs too much. The trouble is, Anna doesn’t realise just how many chances I’ve had to leave. A ticket to London with my name on it. A pub in Wexford that needed looking after. Countless other lives that I have passed up out of loyalty to her and the other pair. I use things like this to remind myself that I am a good man. I could have left when you came into the picture, you were good for keeping them all in line. A part of me wishes I had left then. All the disappointment I might have avoided.
How to convince them to come out to the Moores’ this evening? How easily I could remind Anna what a lack of friends leads to. How deeply the loneliness sinks its teeth; the sickening slow pace with which each minute passes.
Perhaps if I was just honest and told them that I want to build up credit with people. That I want to have somebody to fall back on besides the family, because they are always falling back on me.
I suppose the truth of it is, I know that there won’t be any convincing involved. If I tell them we are going, they will have to follow. The more of an effort we make here, the quicker we’ll get used to it. I’ve found that, generally, people will get used to any situation they are put in, no matter how difficult. And the best way to settle into something new is to be immersed in it.
I have to remind myself that it won’t always be like this. A day willcome soon that we are all so busy with work and friends that nobody will need to be coaxed out of the house. A day will come when Kilmarra will just be a strange dream I once had, and the residual horror of it will drift off. I will stop thinking that the sunrises there are like Holy God putting watercolour across the sky, and that here in Ballycrea, He is just switching on the big light.
A day will come when I think of you less. It will, because it has to; because there was a time when I could think of nothing but Mammy and Daddy, and now there are weeks when I think of Daddy only once or twice. Fleeting thoughts of my mother don’t hurt me much at all once they are gone. We’ll get there. We’ll get popular, and employed, and it will be like you never happened to us at all.
And while I wait for that day, I will distract myself with Ballycrea. They won’t be tepid towards us for long. The brand-new family in Dr Desmond’s cottage will soon be just part of the scenery, as though we have always been here. If I could just leash and muzzle the three of them and get them down to John Moore’s house.
Forgive me, but I must say that there is something freeing about being away from Kilmarra; to be where there isn’t a scrap of you. Nobody knows your name or your face. Nobody knows what happened, or what it did to us all. There’s nothing left now but a hazy, collective memory to remind us you were ever real at all. My God, ’tis a year already. Madness. Just the thought of you makes me think of that sheep, and that maybe I should have had the mercy to at least kick its body into the hedge.
Anna
TOM’S GRIMACING FACE GAME UPthe hill and blossomed into a smile as he came in the door. He thinks he’s cute out, that I don’t see him putting on moods.
Then again, all we have done for the last year is put on moods. I have drifted so far from the person I used to be, and lost total sight of the person I was trying to be. All that’s left of me are the confused, troubled parts. Sewn together and draped over me as I skulk around the new cottage all day. Preparing meals and then cleaning up after them, so that I can prepare for the next. Wasn’t a fresh start supposed to be liberating?
Jack seems to have less interest in leaving the cottage than I do. It could stay this way, myself and himself, never piercing the membrane of the front door. Maybe we could get back to the way we used to be. Always laughing and fooling like children. Or we could carry on as we have been all year, in a stagnant silence together. Trying to figure out whose fault all of this is.
I’m just not ready for the town yet. Picking up Peggy from school, meeting her teacher. Hanging around the square with Tom, being seen by people. I’m not ready to start all that. The best way to look after myself is to cut the stitches between me and the world. Letting myself escape somewhere easier.
Like to one particular Sunday afternoon, two years ago. A place I drift off to all the time.
Sky saturated blue, the air sweet and heavy with pollen. Lukewarm bathwater, steam filling the air. A glossy bar of Pears glistening in your hands. And me, pulsating in a church-cold breeze. I feel it stinging. I still try to dull it.
You, hunched, trying to get what heat you could from the water that your father and sisters had already washed in. You know we would have given you the first bath in our house, if you had just come over. The soft moss of your body hair. The veins on your chest spelling my name. A profane heaven, all obscured by the lace curtains. Why would I choose to put myself on display below in Ballycrea square, when I could send myself off to places like this?
‘The price of pork is gone astronomic, lads.’
Tom announces himself at the door, taking off his cap and wiping his forehead. He lands slices of ham down on the table. So far, I’ve managed to avoid cooking fish, which Tom tells me is half the price of pork. More likely, it’s just what’s popular here, and Tom wants to be seen buying it. Jack looks up from the corner, listening without joining in. Just as I think Tom is going to tell me once more ‘’tis all fish here, girl’, he launches into a new story.
John Moore, whose wife sells him the newspaper every day, is hosting a small gathering at his house this evening. Unfortunately, the invitation has been extended to the lot of us.
‘He asked for me by name, did he?’
I ask, because John Moore doesn’t know for certain that I even exist. What harm would it do him if I didn’t attend? Only for a moment on Thursday, as we rolled into town, was I seen by anyone at all. Those who did see me are probably beginning to think that I was nothingbut a trick of the light. A little flicker, there and gone. My god, to be nothing but a flicker of light.
‘Too much of your time is spent sat on your arse, staring out the window. It’s not healthy for a young person like yourself to sit inside all day.’
He stumbles over his words, not knowing whether to call me a girl or a woman, settling on person. He doesn’t know what to do with me, he doesn’t know what I am.
‘Since when do you have a problem with people staying indoors all day?’
He doesn’t respond to me, but adjusts his shirt and lets my comment hang in the air before dropping, unacknowledged.
‘We’ll go down for an hour. It’s proper to go somewhere when you’ve been invited, and it’s good to be seen out.’
His voice is a clever blend of curt and soft, so that I can’t accuse him of being forceful, but I can’t disagree with him, either. Peggy comes in from the garden and sits with Jack, under his arm. They talk together, quietly. She’s the only one he ever wants to talk to.
‘Ah Tom, can we not wait another few days, until we’re settled?’
