The children were very cold but quite safe.
None of this was any of Catherine’s business.
* * *
Hughes, in “Epiphany,” his own poem about that same newborn, written that same London spring, described how he had almost bought a baby fox. A man on a bridge had the animal stuffed down his coat front, the tiny face staring out between the lapels.
Bereft
Of the blue milk, the toys of feather and fur,
The den life’s happy dark. And the huge whisper
Of the constellations
Out of which Mother had always returned.
Cheap enough at a pound, the man with the fox said.
But no.
* * *
New slate — clean slate — but already the pressure of precedents. Her cry takes its place “among the elements”—and shadows and blankness and “own slow / Effacement” = dissatisfaction, anxiety. Mirror image is not actually mirror image, because the child has been born. The reflection untrue.
What is the “far sea” that moves in her ear?
* * *
Inevitable.
What happened between herself and James was inevitable.
Was that true? Was that a reality?
Was a reality something you arrived at, or something you made?
Or something you just forced onto things?
2
Lovers.
As though—what was it Julia Doonan had said?
As though the rest of us are only going to Mass together.
And now, it seemed, they were lovers. At least in private.
At least, that was, where other people could not see them.
And, well, at the end of all, all love was private, wasn’t it?
* * *
(This was what Catherine told herself.)
* * *
Catherine wanted him every minute. Catherine wanted him to fuck her and fuck her until she dissolved.
James—
* * *
James was another story.
3
Once, as a small girl, she had gone with the wrong mother from the shop. She had not realized it was the wrong mother. The woman was tall, and moved with purpose, and wore boots and carried a handbag and had a winter coat. Her mother, on that day, had also had all of these things.
Catherine walked along, chatting and chatting.
The woman did not even notice the child at her knee.
How could you not even notice?
Her mother, calling and calling from the door.
* * *
James laughed at her when she told him that story. James was right to laugh.
“You knew damn well what you were up to, Reilly,” he said, stretched out on her bed, smoking. “You liked the cut of that other woman’s jib.”
His hand resting on his naked stomach. His nipples pink and pricked and hard. His dick, ten minutes earlier, had kept making her gag, but the throat was where you were meant to take it, wasn’t it? The throat was how you had the best chance of getting it again.
And anyway, why on earth was she telling him that story now?
* * *
James had made it happen, the second time. Catherine not quite able to believe it. His hands, the way they changed from stroking fondly to stroking slow—
His tongue, full and supple against hers. The hardness of him, already waiting, already there—
And surely that meant something? Surely that said—?
But no.
Because the way they got through this — got away with this — was by laughing about it.
Their great joke.
Their great mischief.
Their great addition to the long, long list of things that, together, they could do.
* * *
And afterwards: the slagging. The innuendo. Like they were meeting for breakfast after their separate, hilarious one-night stands.
“You’re terrible, Muriel.”
“You’re terrible.”
* * *
And where does the blood go when it is making you weak, when it is making you want to fall? Does it go to the brain first, and from there to the cunt, or is it the other way around? Is it the brain or the cunt that says it to you, over and over, no matter how you try to reason with it, no matter how you try to roar at it; is it the brain or the cunt that hisses those words?
Hissing, Get him. Bring him here.
* * *
His hands. His tongue. The fullness of him, tensed and pleading in her hand.
His eyes, closed. The lids the color of sand.
Packed sand, trodden over.
(Why did such things come to her mind?)
* * *
And for Catherine, just the touch of him was always enough. Just the fact of him. That this was James.
He was a long, low shudder that started deep in her spine.
And yes, probably, when he put his hand to her there, it should feel different. Yes. Probably, it should not feel like it felt: like he had lost something down there, like he was searching down there, impatiently casting about. And yes, probably, when he put his mouth there, probably he found it—
All of that — how would he think of it?
Architecture?
* * *
And was it her fault, if he looked to her more beautiful every day?
Was it her business?
Because it was only a lark.
Only a plunge.
Catherine and James. Catherine and James.
And the things they could do.
4
What are you up to these days, Citóg? I never see you anymore.”
“Busy.”
* * *
Nothing that was not him was anything that she could see.
* * *
And James’s gaze in the street now: not something of which Catherine could afford to allow herself to be aware.
Still walking the streets as they were, the taunting bastards; still everywhere, with their untouchable, insolently beautiful stares—
(This was how she thought of them now: as stares, not as the stared-at. Dublin, for her now: the house of the stare.)
And so if, beside her, he saw someone — if, beside her, he sighed or muttered in that way — well, Catherine simply had not heard. Catherine simply had not noticed it, that pulse of pain and longing, that shrapnel through skin of what could not be had—
* * *
From “Tulips”: I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
* * *
Amy, wanting to know if she should add Catherine’s name to the pot one night for dinner.
“No. I’ll be at James’s. I’ll probably crash on his couch.”
And Amy nodding, saying nothing. Amy, who had heard Catherine and James, the noise of them, through her own bedroom wall.
You know, I was always close to Amy, he had said to her, that day by the canal. You know that.
* * *
(That day now so long, long ago.)
* * *
Because nobody knew.
Amy, and that dividing wall just chipboard, really — and nobody knew.
Lorraine walking in on the two of them in the sitting room, one night — and nobody knew.
Zoe, and whatever it was that Zoe saw, or Zoe intuited — and nobody knew.
Because silence. Because pretending.
Because these were the things they all knew, so well, how to do.
* * *
Zoe:
Dear Citstytis,