And no, James had not yet taken Catherine’s photograph, but she was determined that this would happen over the coming weekend.
And this was part of what had changed, too: Catherine being determined that James would act, and act towards her, in certain crucial ways. That he would come with her when she wanted him to go for coffee or to the National Gallery, for instance, or to O’Donoghue’s for an early-evening pint, even if he was working in another pub himself later and said he would prefer not to arrive there with booze on his breath; that he would walk with her on St. Stephen’s Green or along the canal; that he would, now, take her photograph.
He was bemused by it, Catherine thought. He did not seem to see it the way she did, as something to worry over, as something about which she should feel ashamed; those ways of seeing it, she suspected, would never even have occurred to him. For his part, the things he had told her that night in the kitchen, the experience of telling them, had seemed, to some extent, to have lightened the load he was carrying, to have freed him up in some way. He was up early in the mornings now, and unless she was quick about getting up herself, and getting ready, he was often out the door before she was, and it could be difficult to track him down during the day. On the evenings he was not working in the pub, he was mostly at home with her and the others in Baggot Street, but one evening he had wanted to go for a drink with Zoe and Aidan and Aidan’s friend Liam, and Catherine, who had only wanted to stay in and watch television in front of the fire with him, had not been able to leave him to it; she had trailed along, and had not been very good company — Zoe, the next day, had made a comment about PMS.
He was going from her; that was how she kept thinking of it. He had made the decision, because of what she had said to him that night, or because of what she had forced him to face up to that day, to pull away from her slightly, to carve out his own space, to start living his own life. And Catherine could not understand where these feelings were coming from; she could not understand why they had such a hold over her, gripping her by the hair it seemed sometimes, clasping her by the throat — but she felt them. She felt alone; or she felt, at least, the threat, the specter, of her own aloneness. She felt the panic of his going, and the emptiness with which it would leave her. He was not going anywhere, and yet she felt it. And there were no letters now; there were no fat white skins bulging with words through which to feel close to him, through which to feel that there was someone, out there, always, listening to her. There was only him, and there was only the distance from him to her. And Catherine was scrabbling across it now. Catherine was thrashing in it as though it was drowning her. And there was, too, the fact of what was happening to her body, now, when James put his arms around her, when James put his lips to her forehead, his lips to her cheek — but Catherine did not want to think about that part of it anymore. Catherine did not want to think about the second night, the previous week, that Cillian had stayed over, so that he and Lorraine had once again sequestered the sitting-room floor; Catherine did not want to think of her own gladness that night, or of what it had felt like to have James once more in the bed beside her, or what it had felt like to drift off and to awaken with him nestled so close.
There were things it was not good to think about. There were questions it was not useful to ask.
James was finished in the darkroom, as it turned out, when Catherine went up to find him; he was in the PhotoSoc office, chatting intently with a girl holding some kind of old-fashioned, box-shaped camera. If he was surprised to see her arrive, he did not show it; he just beckoned her over, and began telling her about the girl’s camera, which had belonged to her grandfather, and which was, he said, a Rolleiflex, the camera that Richard Avedon had used, and Diane Arbus, and Robert Capa. He mentioned some other photographers of whom Catherine had not heard, and the girl beside him nodded enthusiastically and added some more names. Catherine glanced at her. She was plump and short, with blond curls; she held the camera below her large breasts. Her fingernails were painted a glittery purple. James introduced her, but Catherine instantly forgot her name; all she could think about was how keenly she wanted to get James away, and home, and to herself. But he kept talking, as was usual; now he was explaining the workings of the camera, how you had to look down through it from above, as though through a tiny trapdoor, and at this, the blond girl demonstrated and then, smiling, looped the leather strap from around her neck and passed the camera over to Catherine to try for herself.
“Oh, no, I’d be afraid I’d break it,” Catherine said, but the girl insisted, and so did James. She took it; it was lighter than she had expected, but sturdy, its silver dials jutting out against her palms, its pebbled black plastic surface pleasingly rough against her fingertips. She looked down through the neat square chute which topped it, and she staggered in surprise a moment; the picture was sharp and clear and moving, like a tiny television in her hands, and in it was a tiny, frowning James, now a grinning James, now a James who was calling out to her, waving at her, saying her name. She found herself staring at this James; she found herself transfixed by him. He was just the same as the real James, as the James who stood not two feet away from her, but he was different. When she moved, he moved. When she turned one of the dials on the side of the camera, he went out of focus a moment, but when she turned it once more, he was back again, crisp and perfect and real; there was a short, curved handle on the other side, and when she turned that, winding it like a clock handle, the camera gave a lovely, satisfying click, and the blond girl cheered.
“You took him!” she said, clapping her hands. “Well done!”
“Catherine,” James said much less warmly, “you’re wasting Lisa’s film.”
“Oh, no,” the girl said, “sure how would it be a waste? Sure this way I get to have a photo of you!”
“Jaysus,” James said, pulling a face. “You’re made up.”
“I bet it’ll be worth a fortune twenty years from now,” the girl said, laughing. “After my show kick-starts your glittering career.”
“Show?” Catherine said, frowning, looking from one to the other.
“Lisa’s asked me to give her a few photographs for her group show,” James said, taking the Rolleiflex from her.
“You never told me!” Catherine said, hearing the whine in her voice.
“I’ve just found out myself,” he said.
“Myself and a few friends from NCAD are putting together a group show of new artists on an old factory floor in the Liberties at the end of the summer,” Lisa explained.
“The Liberties?” Catherine echoed incredulously. In her mind she heard, as though it was the shutter release of the Rolleiflex, the neat, smooth click of parts coming together and working just the way they should. “I’ve heard of there,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s a great spot,” Lisa said. “So many amazing spaces that are derelict now. I love James’s portraits, and they’ll be perfect for this show, I think—”
“We’ll see,” James said, holding up a hand as though to suggest that this line of talk was dangerous, and needed to be deflected. He turned to Catherine. “Anyway. Now that you’ve taken your masterpiece.”
“Sorry?”
“Will we head?”
It had started to rain, so they took the bus, climbing upstairs to find a seat together, and they had been sitting less than a minute when Catherine, moving to rest on James’s shoulder, noticed that he was asleep, his head hanging, his hands lying slack and open in his lap. She tried to rest on him anyway, but he jerked away, though it might only have been the motion of the bus, going over a pothole or a bump, or swerving, maybe, to avoid someone on a bike. As he slept, she studied his face: the delicacy of his cheekbones, the fullness of his lips, the sheen of his stubble, golden and glinting at moments in the evening light. She felt it again, the sensation she had been having for days: that although he was beside her, even awake he was as far away, really, as he was now when asleep, and that she could not hold him, and that she could not even really know him.