The night was so still that the shadows of the beeches did not waver on the moonlit grass, seemed fixed like a leaf in rock. On the white marble the gold watch must now be lying face upwards in this same light, silent or running. The ticking of the watch down in the barrel was so completely muffled by the spray that only by imagination could it be heard. A bird moved in some high branch, but afterwards the silence was so deep it began to hurt, and the longing grew for the bird or anything to stir again.
I stood in that moonlit silence as if waiting for some word or truth, but none came, none ever came; and I grew amused at that part of myself that still expected something, standing like a fool out there in all the moonlit silence, when only what was increased or diminished as it changed, became only what is, becoming again what was even faster than the small second hand endlessly circling in the poison.
Suddenly, the lights in the house went out. Rose had gone to join my father in bed. Before going into the house this last night to my room, I drew the watch up again out of the barrel by the line and listened to it tick, now purely amused by the expectation it renewed — that if I continued to listen to the ticking some word or truth might come. And when I finally lowered the watch back down into the poison, I did it so carefully that no ripple or splash disturbed the quiet, and time, hardly surprisingly, was still running; time that did not have to run to any conclusion.
Parachutes
‘I want to ask you one very small last favour.’
‘What is it?’
‘Will you stay behind for just five minutes after I leave?’
It was the offer of the blindfold, to accept the darkness for a few moments before it finally fell.
‘If we leave together we’ll just start to argue again and it’s no use. You know it’s over. It’s been over for a long time now. Will you please stay five minutes?’ She put her gloved hand on my arm as she rose. ‘Just this last time.’
She turned and walked away. I was powerless to follow. She did not once look back. The door swung in the emptiness after she had gone. I saw the barman looking at me strangely but I did not care. The long hand of the clock stood at two minutes to eight. It did not seem to move at all. She was gone, slipping further out of reach with every leaden second, and I was powerless to follow.
‘A small Jameson. With water,’ I said to the barman. As I sipped the whiskey, the whole absurdity of my situation came with a rush of anger. It was over. She was gone. Nothing said or done would matter any more, and yet I was sitting like a fool because she’d simply asked me to. Without glancing at the clock, I rose and headed towards the door. Outside she was nowhere in sight.
I could see down on the city, its maze of roads already lighted in the still, white evening, each single road leading in hundreds of directions. I started to run, but then had to stop, realizing I didn’t know where to run. If there were an instrument like radar … but that might show her half-stripped in some car … her pale shoulders gleaming as she slipped out of her clothes in a room in Rathmines …
I stared at the street. Cars ran. Buses stopped. Lights changed. Shop windows stayed where they were. People answered to their names. All the days from now on would have to begin without her. The one thing I couldn’t bear was to face back to the room, the room that had seen such a tenuous happiness.
I went into the Stag’s Head and then O’Neills. Both bars were crowded. There was no one there that I knew. I passed slowly through without trying to order anything. The barmen were too busy to call out. I moved to the bars off Grafton Street, and at the third bar I saw the Mulveys before I heard my name called. It was Claire Mulvey who had called my name. Paddy Mulvey was reading a book, his eyes constantly flickering from the page to the door, but as soon as he heard my name called his eyes returned fixedly to the page. They were sitting between the pillars at the back. Eamonn Kelly appeared to be sitting with them.
‘We thought you were avoiding us,’ Claire Mulvey said as we shook hands. Her strained, nervous features still showed frayed remnants of beauty. ‘We haven’t seen you for months.’
‘For God’s sake, isn’t it a free country?’ Paddy Mulvey said brightly. ‘Hasn’t the man a right to do his own things in his own way?’
‘Blackguard,’ Eamonn Kelly said gravely, his beautiful, pale face relaxing in a wintry smile.
‘Why are you not drinking?’ Empty half-glasses stood in front of them on the table.
‘I’m afraid we’re suffering from that old perplexity,’ Mulvey said. ‘And we’ve been waiting for Halloran. He was supposed to be here more than an hour ago. He owes us a cheque. He even left us a hostage for reassurance.’ He pointed to a brown leather suitcase upright against the pillar.
‘I’ll get the drinks,’ I offered.
‘Halloran went off with a boy. I’ve been telling them he’ll not be back,’ Eamonn Kelly volunteered.
I got four pints and four whiskeys from the bar.
‘I should thank you for this,’ Eamonn Kelly said as he lifted his whiskey. ‘But after careful consideration have come down against it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve decided you’re a blackguard.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because one must have some fixed principles. I’ve decided you are a blackguard. That’s an end of it. There is no appeal.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Mulvey said. ‘You’re not drunk enough for that yet. Here’s health.’
‘Good luck,’ Claire Mulvey said.
‘What are you reading?’
‘Another slim volume. I’m writing it up for Halloran,’ and he started to speak of the book in a tone of spirited mockery.
I tried to listen but found the arid, mocking words unbearable. Nothing lived. Then I found myself turning towards a worse torture, to all I wanted not to think about.
She had asked me to a dinner in her sister’s house a few days before Christmas. We’d met inside a crowded GPO. She was wearing a pale raincoat with the detachable fur collar she wore with so many coats. Outside in O’Connell Street the wind was cold, spitting rain, and we’d stood in a doorway as we waited for a bus to take us to the house in the suburbs.
The house her sister lived in was a small semi-detached in a new estate: a double gate, a garage, a piece of lawn hemmed in with concrete, a light above the door. The rooms were small, carpeted. A coal fire burned in the tiled fireplace of the front room.
Her sister was as tall as she, black-haired, and beautiful, pregnant with her first child. Her husband was small, energetic, and taught maths in a nearby school.
The bottles of wine we’d brought were handed over. Glasses of whiskey were poured. We touched the glasses in front of the coal fire. They’d gone to a great deal of trouble with the meal. There were small roast potatoes, peas, breadcrumb stuffing with the roast turkey. Brandy was poured over the plum pudding and lit. Some vague unease curdled the food and cheer in that small front room, was sharpened by the determined gaiety. It was as if we were looking down a long institutional corridor; the child in the feeding chair could be seen already, the next child, and the next, the postman, the milkman, the van with fresh eggs and vegetables from the country, the tired clasp over the back of the hand to show tenderness as real as the lump in the throat, the lawnmowers in summer, the thickening waists. It hardly seemed necessary to live it.
‘What did you think of them?’ she’d asked as she took my arm in the road outside.
‘I thought they were very nice. They went to a great deal of trouble.’
‘What did you think of the house?’
‘It’s not my kind of house. It’s the sort of house that would drive me crackers.’