To let her know that I do want her, and that the many reasons I have held myself back are beginning to thin. To let her know that my life has been a deep and endless ache, to see if that would turn her on or off. To ask whether she would hold my hand while I get myself over you, so that we could have a proper start together. Maybe I should say something.
Anna
JUST WHEN I THINK Iwill have to pull him off her, Jack takes his hand away from Teresa’s. Isn’t he a divil? It’s like he has a measure for my temper, so he knows exactly how far he can push before I push back. He knows just what he can get away with without consequences. The cheek of him, to let Teresa wrap herself around him like a vine when only a few short weeks ago, he was below in the chapel, crying over you. It seems he only misses you when it suits him.
In many ways, tonight reminds me of your final night. All we are missing is that fantastic shrieking, which tore through everything. Jesus, the thought of it is enough to make me sick. I miss my mother. I think I will cry.
But look, Jack’s hand is off Teresa. Nothing bad is going to happen. This is nothing like your last night. There are people everywhere, nothing bad could happen with so many people around. Oh god but a tear still runs down my face. Where are you? Is Mammy with you?
I need my darling woman. I need Betty. If I started to cry now, would anybody even turn around to look at me? I have to leave the room. Have a moment alone. I make my way to the bedroom.
Oh, light as rain, her hand falls on my shoulder. Here she is. For a moment, luminous, shrouded in electric light. She looks unlike she has ever looked before. More beautiful. Brighter. Let me soak in all ofthat light. Singe the back of my corneas, let this be the last thing I see.
How marvellous, that an action as simple as her hand on my shoulder could soothe me so quickly, so intensely. Where we touch, we become one thing. Oh my, I hope she is putting aside her feelings just for tonight. Just enough to revive me, to bring me back to the edge of my mind, away from this swirling mass in the middle which I have been sucked into.
It’s a funny thing, normally, she would talk to several people all at once, touching them and looking in their eyes. But now, she is looking only at me. Touching only me. As though none of the rest of the locals even exist. If I only knew what I was doing differently to make me special enough in this moment to receive all of her attention. I never realised something as simple as Betty’s hand on my shoulder would fill me with such calm.
‘Are you alright, pet?’
How attentive she is. This is my Betty. As I know her, just as I met her. Caring and good and mad for me. Isn’t she good to notice me? Her hand stays there a moment. If we were only without reservations, if we were only uncivilised. If we could exist in this moment forever.
‘Would you drink a hot whiskey if I made it?’
Yes, a little moment like this. Her, offering me a hot whiskey. I would happily choose to exist in this moment, always. If we could be nothing but an instant, here and gone. Without the time for consequences to reveal themselves, or for emotions to sink in. If we could break free from our flesh and let our souls shiver through the air, touching. Her hand is lifted from my shoulder. The cold of its absence. The world, rushing back to me. Our moment over, so fondly missed already.
Without waiting for an answer, she goes and begins doing what she offered, without offering me much more than a glance. Here and then gone. I realise she hasn’t said my name all night.
If I only knew what she counted as special, then I could always be that thing. I want to be the instant of a smile breaking over her teeth. Of birdsong in her morning, while she looks out onto the dew, glistening on her grass. If I could be a moment of bliss, happening and then ceasing to exist. If she could always remember me as a moment of bliss. Somebody drops a glass in the corner. A man whistles. Everybody cheers and laughs. If I was that sort of moment. The burn of a hot whiskey. Glass as it shatters on the floor. Blood sucked from a finger. The throat of a fish, cut.
My eyes begin to sting. With a heavy blink, I find myself alone, in the bedroom. My face turned to the wall. All on my own. How did I get in here? Where has she gone?
My god, it’s like waking from a dream. Everything I knew to be reality only a moment ago rushes away from me. There is no hot whiskey coming my way. There was no moment with Betty. Just another something that I imagined. Alright, that’s alright. There’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t mean a thing.
I make my way out of the bedroom and into the party, as the little whiskey dream lets go of me. Betty is here alright, herself and Ciara Moore are chatting with some men that I don’t know.
‘Well, remember now my sister was in Dublin last year doing the Christmas shopping, and she was stopped to be interviewed for the television.’
Ciara tells them all, and I listen, quietly. Thinking clearly again. You can’t imagine the burden of thinking and feeling at this rate, when nothing is as it seems. Thoughts come from nowhere, raging with a sort of passion that drags me around in circles and then drops me.
‘They were asking her does she smoke, and would she be put off by a man who smokes. Mortified so she was! Imagine everybody athome seeing you on the television, talking about yourself, hands full of shopping bags!’
Seeing Betty here in my cottage, I can’t help but wonder if I have finally found the person to keep me still. Even ignoring me, she slows my heart.
‘But sure she was too embarrassed to say she didn’t want to be interviewed. The shame of the whole thing nearly knocked her down dead!’
They all start laughing, and my vision falls to Betty’s heeled shoes, kicked under a chair. Her bare feet on my floor. I can exist peripherally, if that’s what she needs.
Tom
‘LOOK, TOM, THE OFFER ISthere if you want it.’
My ears are ringing. I cannot believe what I have been given. A perfect, unbelievable opportunity. I thought Bill might have been calling me outside for a birthday cigar, or to offer some wisdom for the next decade. A moment just for the pair of us, away from the noise of the party. I didn’t expect this. He goes on.
‘There’s plenty men inside who would jump at the chance. But I thought, no, Tom O’Leary is the man for the job.’
Bill lays an entirely new beginning before me. Even after he gave me a start here in Ballycrea, here he is, giving me another. A job with Betty’s brother’s company out in New York.
‘You could make your fortune over there, more than you’d ever make here in Kerry.’
