THIS IS ONE OF THOSEperfect, blissful evenings. Half the parish here in my cottage. Isn’t that lovely? Everybody is in good form, we all have enough and nothing is wrong. An evening that I’m already seeing as a soft memory, tinted gold. An exhalation I didn’t know I needed. Relief and sanctuary, right here in my own home, imagine. We’ve fruit cake. We’ve bottled beer and music. Peggy runs around with other children. Jack has let his shoulders drop. At eleven o’clock, I will turn thirty years of age. Without my mother and father. Without you. But somehow, with so much more than I had before. For a long time, I didn’t expect to see this day. But here I am. Doesn’t everything always come around in the end?
Looking around the room, I see nothing but all of the ways that tonight is different from our first night in Ballycrea. Then, when we had hardly a lump of turf for the fire, and we would spend our evenings listening to static on the radio because we couldn’t tune it up right, embracing any fuzzy voices that we could catch as friends. Look now: a cottage bursting with real companions who have come to celebrate my birthday. The Nevans, the Moores, all of the Doyles. Con and Mic Harney, endless others. Even Dr Desmond. All wanted and welcome. It all worked out. Imagine that. Looking back, I feel a sweetsort of pity for that early version of myself, who was so lonely, and who was trying so hard.
Finally, I feel like I can stop trying so hard. We are settled now, we are a part of Ballycrea, just like everybody else. Not novel blow-ins from a place nobody has heard of. We make up the community. They have warmed to us.
It happened slowly. It happened all at once. Suddenly we became a part of everything. How strange. How special. Do you know what it is to suddenly feel at home in a place you thought you would always be a foreigner? To feel you could throw your arms around people who once intimidated you, and tell them you love them, and that you’re glad ye met? And to be sure that they would tell you the same thing.
How warm the room. How alive I feel. Like something has fallen into place; like something else has fallen away. You know, I never thought I’d say it, but it feels so good to forget about Kilmarra. To move on. Do you know what? I don’t think you’d mind me saying this, it feels so good to move on from you. Bill calls me over; he wants a word with me outside. Why does he look so solemn?
Jack
AS THOUGH THEY AREN’T INthe middle of a party at all, Betty sits Peggy down on her lap and takes her hairbrush from her handbag. Ignoring everyone around them, she brushes Peggy’s hair like she is taming the waves of the sea. This small gesture, filled with so much love. Gutting. Unbearable. Expensive brush from an expensive bag, in her expensive hands; so much grander than my thin little comb, my calloused fingers. All of Betty’s care and attention on my Peggy.
It makes me sick. Just her being here exposes everything that I lack. There is something innately peaceful about Betty. Something that Peggy needs, and that I cannot give her. Although I’ve tried to stabilise things, Peggy has never stood on firm ground in our house. Betty can give her that peace. But could she ever love Peggy like I do?
Normally, brushing Peggy’s hair is a fight. Normally, an adult would ignore her. And normally, Betty would race around the room, engaging with all of the people that want so terribly to engage with her. But they only seem to be interested in each other. They are both happy. Relaxed. As much as I want to call her over, sit her on my lap and assert myself as her parent, I realise that it would be a lot kinder to Peggy to leave her with this woman.
‘Ah, you’re only gorgeous.’
Betty says softly, and although I wince, it’s good to know that she means every ounce of what she is saying.
Era you know, there’s an awful lot to be said for those Nevans. Even if I’ve never really warmed up to them, I can see why the others think that they are what we need. If somebody can breathe a bit of life back into Tom, and anchor Anna down to the ground, and be soft with my Peigín, then of course they must be good. Why, to make sense of the messes that we are, they must be angels on earth.
It appears all Tom’s arse-kissing has paid off. Look around the room. He has throngs of friends here. The people really seem to like him; and by extension, they like all of us. I’m happy for him. He got what he wanted. It’s about time that something worked out for one of us. I suppose there’s a lot here that could work out for me, if I got out of my own way. Did you ever notice that Tom never stands in his own way? There is something in this room that could work out for me, if I let it.
Teresa. The last thing I expected from Ballycrea was Teresa. It’s complicated to be this fond of anybody, when I am still so fond of you.
A part of me knows that it would be kindest to let her be, so that she can find somebody who is ready for her. With a fresh head and without a big, dirty past. I wonder would I get away with keeping all her love for myself, at arm’s length? Could I let her heal the parts of me that I’m willing to share, while holding back all the parts that I want to keep for you? And how do I find out without hurting her, whether she would be satisfied with only glimmers of me?
She comes towards me. Since kissing her, I have felt adrift. Unable to steady or situate myself without her shore. The way that she walks towards me now – new dress, glass in her hand – glaring eyes, it all evokes something carnal in me. Whenever you moved towards me, I wanted to be a gentleman. Now, I just want to be a man.
‘Nice crowd.’
She says to me, and I realise that neither of us will get what we want if a part of me still wants you.
She puts her glass into my hand, and I let her. Her fingers overlapping mine, the condensation slipping against my palm and her pulse beating against my nails. I think what I need is her compassion, but she presents me with the beat of her pulse instead. What am I to do?
A single man, with a beautiful woman handing him a drink. Smiling. The most beautiful woman in the room. Her hand on mine, in front of everybody. What’s the problem? Why can’t I settle?
‘Yeah, really nice.’
Freckled face. Fox-tone hair. Terracotta. Kerr’s Pink. Rusted gate. I could love her. With enough patience, I really could.
Teresa is like a Sunday afternoon, you know? I look forward to her all the time, and then when she comes I don’t know what to do with her. If anything, the freedom and the loveliness of her are a burden. I suppose it’s the effort making, the getting to know someone. Starting again.
Oh, but Sunday afternoons with you. Listening as you hummed along with the radio. Leaning up against the fence with you, as you reached over to stroke the sleeping pigs. I can hear you sucking on a piece of clove rock. I can hear the pig grunting, and you jumping back, laughing. Settling into me. I feel the pulse of your throat under my thumb, still. How do I tell these pulses apart?
The last time Teresa was this close to me, I kissed her. I could take her waist in my hands now and do it again, I don’t know if the locals would care much. What would Peggy think if she saw us? I could take Teresa somewhere quiet, away from everybody else. Where I could touch her in the way that I have often wanted to touch her. Somehow,even with you on my mind, I still want to touch her.
Brimming, glistening eyes, looking right into mine. Just close enough to see into the pool of my thoughts, and what lurks within them. Something in her gaze changes. It falters. And I feel sure that when looking in my eyes, she saw you. I take the drink off her.
‘You’re very good. Did Mary manage to come?’
I say, pulling my hand away from hers, putting her glass to my mouth and swallowing her drink. The cold hardness of it fills me up with regret. I should have taken the chance and kissed her. A glass filling the space where her lips should be.
‘No, she’s wrecked now with the baby due. I’ll be lost without her when it’s born. We used be joined at the hip before she got married. Now she’s always with himself.’
By her face I know that I have hurt her, but she keeps chatting. As though she isn’t allowed to be hurt by me. I’m sure that if I smile in just the right way, she will let me away with it. She lets me away with everything, this girl in love. I think that she sees the sadness in me and likes it. She is one of those women who wants a complicated, dark-souled man, I think. If I could only have an honest conversation with her.
