Antonia looked unwell by the time the bleak dawn light came seeping through her bedroom curtains. It was obvious from the way she kept fiddling with her hair, pulling it forward over her face, that she was embarrassed to be seen in that state. I couldn’t blame her. Her hands, when she sat on the edge of the bed to light a cigarette, were shaking. The sight reminded me of the prelude to one of my mother’s rages. Wells of unhappiness so deep, so terminal, that they could never be appeased. The massive, obstructive fact of my mother’s disappointment in life was distressing to the point that I had started to hate being near her. Which was little better in practice than hating the woman herself, after all that she had done for me.
I stopped responding to Antonia’s words. I stopped nodding. Women want to talk when you least feel able. At first she kept offering sentences that trailed off, leaving gaps for me to jump in and assert the opposite. ‘This has been a huge mistake, Declan …’ she murmured, watching my face closely, inviting me to disagree, to extend some reassurance. I didn’t open my mouth. ‘No, really, it was all my fault …’, ‘I’m far too old for you …’, ‘I should have known better …’ I didn’t beg to differ.
Next thing she was telling me that her unhappiness was my fault, that I was inconsiderate, heartless, cruel — that I had used her. All she wanted was not to feel rejected for once in her shitty life. Was that so much to ask? That’s when I got up and left. I stood up and dressed quickly and walked out of her bedroom, feeling as guilty as a four-year-old boy, but there you have it. Knowing with every step that I was fucking up again, but without exactly understanding why, and without exactly caring.
‘That’s right!’ she was shouting after me, standing at the top of the stairs in her nightdress, clinging to the banisters like a madwoman. How much smaller she was without her heels. Almost ordinary. Almost plain. ‘Run away!’ she screamed. ‘You just run away!’ My mother’s words to the letter. Uncanny. Antonia had probably learned them from her mother, who had in turn learned them from her mother before her. Women were never happy. They didn’t want to be happy. They deliberately pushed all your buttons, manipulated you into acting the bollocks, then derived a perverse satisfaction out of watching you crack and seeing their blackest suspicions confirmed. Fuckhead, she had called me.
Antonia’s face up there on the landing was monstrous with disgust and triumph, as if she had finally tricked me into revealing my true colours, and those colours were even uglier than she could have hoped for. You stupid bitch. Are you happy now? I pulled on my shoes and grabbed my jacket from the floor. I could hardly bear to look at her.
She hurled a book down the stairs as I undid the latch. How symbolic. ‘Tinker,’ she hissed. ‘Dirty little tinker.’ I slammed her lacquered door behind me. Beware of the Dog. Was it then that my hatred for Antonia peaked? No, I was only getting started.
26 Good girl Sharon, that was A1
The street lights were still glowing orange. It was about half six in the morning, judging by the grubby light. I’d left my watch behind on Antonia’s bedside table. No turning back. I crunched across the gravel driveway delineating the point at which the mark had been irrevocably overstepped and shut the wrought iron gate behind me. We had left it askew the night before in our haste.
I did not glance up at her bedroom window. It’s the one thing a man’s supposed to do — look over his shoulder to steal a last lingering glimpse of his beloved, displaying how he cannot get his fill of her. Antonia would be watching for the glance, or watching for its omission, rather, to add to her slate. She’d be standing by that window in her white nightdress like a ghost, her ashen face more ashen behind the pane of glass, eyes boring into the back of my skull until I disappeared from view. It was a long, straight street.
I pulled up my collar and tucked in my chin. A few flakes of snow drifted down, grey as the cloud that had issued them. My empty stomach sucked and squelched with every step, a drain being unblocked with a plunger. The last of the street lights petered out as it grew bright, if you could call it bright. I wouldn’t. I reached for a stick of gum but the packet was empty. I crumpled it in my fist and jammed it into a hedge.
Antonia’s road intersected with a thoroughfare. A general feeling of flintiness loured about the place, a prevailing lack of comfort. The pavement was as perishing as compacted ice. It was hard on the bones. The buses weren’t up and running yet. I did not know that part of the city. I was as lost as I had ever been.
The second I rounded the corner out of Antonia’s sight, I had the most unbelievable headache. I crouched over by a pebbledash wall and cradled the crown of my head in my hands, pleading for it to pass, practically praying, thinking at one point that something had burst, or was about to. There is always a price. Eventually, the headache lifted, and I floundered on as best I was able. The odd car was out on the road by then, windscreen frosted and exhaust pipe pluming. How people found the will to leave their beds at that godforsaken hour to climb into frozen metal machines, I did not know. It was beyond me.
Any self-respecting man would have retreated to an early house, but it was pity I was after, not oblivion. My thoughts alighted on Guinevere. She was their natural destination. I had loved her before I met her. She was in every book, every song, every poem. It was not too late for us, I felt certain in my desperation, and was buoyed up by the conviction. I would place my aching head on her lap and beg forgiveness. The prospect made me walk faster. A car screeched past with a broken fan belt. I would present myself at her door and make a full confession, then beseech her to absolve me. It was too much responsibility to place on a young girl’s shoulders, but I didn’t let that stop me.
The threat of snow had passed by the time I made it to her door. I had been walking for maybe two hours, half-starved and smelling of another woman. What a relief it was to turn the corner onto her familiar cul-de-sac, those sleepy redbrick cottages with their net curtains and pink geraniums. No crunch of irrevocable gravel, no twin block-capital trespassing signs. ‘I love you,’ I was chanting as I stumbled along the cracked uneven paving leading to her door. ‘I love you, I love you, oh I love you, my love.’ Guinevere’s curtains were drawn.
The black cat from the house next door displayed itself archly behind the glass, as if it were the finest merchandise in the city’s finest shop window. I rapped on Guinevere’s door with the brass knocker. I gave it a good clatter. It took a few goes to rouse her. Her bedroom was at the back. I was finding it difficult to contain my excitement. When she finally answered the door, she looked dismayed to find me standing on her doorstep. It was not the reaction I’d been hoping for.
‘Declan,’ she said. Why was she whispering?
I rushed forward, but the door was not opened to me. Guinevere held it fast. ‘What are you doing here?’ she wanted to know, ‘at this hour? God almighty, go home.’ She was wearing her powder-blue dressing gown, and not much else besides.
I tried to get a hold of her waist to pull her to me but she back-stepped out of my grasp. ‘Go home, Declan,’ she warned me again, and tried to close the door. I jammed in the foot before she got it shut. ‘Jesus,’ she whispered in exasperation. Her eyes had a raw look. She had been crying. For a sickening moment I wondered whether Antonia had phoned her. You stupid bitch. There is always a price. But Guinevere didn’t have a phone. I reached for her hand, but she wouldn’t let go of the door.
‘Oh my beautiful girl, I’m so sorry,’ I blurted. ‘I’m so sorry for everything. I’ve been a selfish bastard, and a stupid one, but I love you so much. I’ll never hurt you again. Let’s give it another go. Please don’t shake your head at me like that.’