“Well, you kissed him,” Catherine could not stop herself from saying. “You’re the one who—”
“I do not want to talk about it, Catherine,” he shouted, holding up a hand. “It is so fucking vulgar.”
“James!”
He stared at her. “You don’t understand, Catherine. You don’t understand what it feels like to humiliate yourself in this way, to realize that you have behaved so carelessly, so stupidly, so visibly.” He looked at her, seeming suddenly to have thought of something.
“What?” she said weakly.
“Who else was still there?” he almost spat, as though she worked for him, as though she had not got the figures to him in time, or the documents, or the percentages; she felt, as she tried to summon to mind the faces of those who had said goodbye to them in the Doonans’ sitting room, as though she was circling a desk, trying to get it in order; a phone was ringing, a pile of pages was collapsing.
“Ed, obviously,” she said, the words tumbling. “And the Irish Times woman. And that bald man. And some woman, maybe from the gallery, maybe from some other gallery, I don’t know.”
James’s hands were over his face. “This cannot be happening,” he said, faintly.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why it’s so terrible. It’s not as though—”
It’s not as though they saw the two of you, she was about to say, but in that moment, Catherine realized something, and for a reason that, also in that moment, she forbade herself to think about, she made a decision. James, she realized, was unclear about the order of things; he was unclear on the question of who had been in which room, when, as he and Catherine had said their goodbyes; who had stayed in the sitting room, and who had trailed through to the main room with them, and who had been there, standing around the main room, leaning against doorways, watching them as they went. Watching him as he doubled back. Watching what came afterwards, observing it like the piece of news that it was, acquiring it like the nugget of gossip that it was, perfect for sharing, perfect for laughing over later.
“It’s not as though it matters to these people,” was what she said, and instantly on his face she saw how little this had helped; how, somehow, this only made matters worse. “James,” she said, reaching out to him again, but again, he shook her off. “You barely even…”
“No, Catherine. We were fucking messing, talking, flirting, I don’t know the fuck what, in the corridor, and the next thing we were shifting, and we went into that downstairs bedroom and we—”
“The bedroom?” she said, staring at him. “You didn’t—”
“No, we didn’t, Catherine,” he said acidly. “We just, messed around, I don’t know, and then…” He shook his head. He looked, she thought, utterly furious.
“What?”
“Then someone came in for a coat, that woman who sang that never-ending bloody song earlier, and she saw us. And I got out of there.”
“And Nate fell asleep on the bed.”
“I don’t fucking know what he did. And as far as I was concerned, that was an end to it. To be seen once was, for God’s sake, enough. And he’s such an arrogant prick, and such a cocksure fucker.”
“So how did it happen again?”
He laughed, but it was not the kind of laugh Catherine wanted to hear. It depressed her: it was sunken with irony, collapsed into anger. “How did it happen again is right, Catherine?” he said, and he shook his head. “How did it happen again?”
“How do you mean?” she said, and her voice was like a child’s.
“Nothing,” he said, and he thrust his hands in his pockets and walked on towards Harcourt Street.
“You’re not going home?” Catherine said, rushing after him. “You can’t go home in this state.”
“Where else am I going to go, Catherine? The George?” He laughed, the same empty laugh. “It’s closed. Even its clientele know when to call a night a night.”
“James,” she said, and she grabbed his elbow, and she did not care, this time, if he tried to shake her off; she would hold on to it, and she would take hold of it again and again, if she had to, would take hold of both his elbows, in fact, which, in the next instant, was what she found she had done, so that they were facing each other, his face wrenched in irritation, and hers in Christ knew what. Pleading, probably. Always with him now she felt as though she was pleading.
“Please don’t go home on your own, James.”
His lips twitched towards a laugh, but did not go there. “What, should I bring someone with me?”
“I mean, come back with me to Baggot Street. It’s only ten minutes away. Thomas Street is miles.”
“It’s not miles.”
“It’s far,” she said, which she knew was stupid — it was only up Grafton Street, around Dame Street; he would be home — she glanced at her watch — by seven. Then she saw her opening. “Your landlady will be up,” she said, shaking her head. “Are you seriously going to walk through the door like this while your landlady’s eating her breakfast?”
He said nothing; he looked to the ground as though it might have a solution for him, as though it might offer a way out.
“James,” she said, and she grabbed his wrist. “Just come on. You can go home later. When she’s at work.” She walked ahead of him, her heart racing, and she turned right onto Harcourt Street, and after she had done so, she glanced behind, and she saw him, coming after her, his head down, and he had not turned left, in the direction of Grafton Street. He was coming home.
“Come on, slowcoach,” she said now, and she beckoned to him. “I’m freezing. I want to get home to bed.”
And when he caught up with her, she took his hand, and he let her; he did not shake her away. And on Baggot Street, the newsstand was open for business already, and the headlines were trying to be hopeful. And when they got home to the flat, it was empty, and there were plenty of empty beds, but these beds were not even mentioned. They went into Catherine’s bedroom, and they got into Catherine’s bed — James still in his jeans and his T-shirt, just as he had been when they had shared a bed before, only his feet bare; Catherine in her thin woolen dress, reaching quickly through the armholes, while James’s back was turned, to unfasten her strapless bra and pull it free — and James faced the wall, and Catherine put her arms around him, and in the half-light, as they went to sleep, she tried to tell him, with her arms so tight around him, and with her lips pressed to the nape of his neck, that there was no need to worry.
Her lips to his neck: a kiss, and another, the language that was theirs by now, the language of affection and closeness and reassurance.
“It’s getting bright,” she said, though she knew she should not be speaking; knew she should be letting him drift off, and should be drifting off herself. But she spoke, and she let her lips touch him in that spot again, where his hair trailed off, where the soft skin of his neck began.
“I know,” he said, and probably she was imagining it, the tremor in his voice, but in case she had not, she held him tighter; she gripped him to her, one hand on his ribcage, the other on the sharp jut of his hip.
“It makes me think of being little in the summertime,” she said, and this time when her lips met his skin, she left them there a moment, as he had done to her so often, and then she moved them, so lightly, just a whisper, just the lightest circle on the downy skin.
“Having to go to bed before it was dark,” she said, and she thought of it: long evenings leaking in through the curtains, the window and sill behind them seeming such a high, glorious box of light. Ellen asleep in her cot, and the sound, from outside, of tractors, or a lawn mower, or a visiting neighbor, allowed to stay up as long as they pleased.