time I read up, walking down the road on the border wasn’t a capital crime, either.”
“The soldier says himself, the gun went off by accident.”
“Angus, catch yourself on! I suppose Cromwell’s invasion was an accident, too.”
“Cromwell’s invasion was three hundred years ago, Christ! This Brigadoon drives me to distraction, always blattering on about Oliver and James and Billy, as if they were all on their way here to tea. MacAnespie will be investigated—”
“That’s rich. Just like the Birmingham Six?”
“The point is, you attend, at the end of the day it’s one more Nationalist demonstration.”
“And Seawright’s was a Loyalist one.”
“That funeral was part of my job. Your job is to stay home and find it all too painful to bear.”
“Even a poet needs to make political statements.”
“Bollocks, haven’t you had it up to your bake with political statements?”
“It’s more you have, and only with mine.”
“I’ll not get into the whole kit, since I said I’d an afternoon free and not the rest of my life. But I do wish you’d think things through a bit more, lass. You call yourself a Republican, but you’ve not a single decent word for the South. It’s the DUP fellows steam off to Donegal on holiday and say it’s brilliant. You, Rosebud, come back from Sligo raving. ‘Their veins run with Fairy Liquid!’ you says.”
Roisin laughed. “I said that?”
He snaked a finger down her arm, and Roisin shivered. “Aye, you’ve a right decent sense of humor, when you let it out. Loose a few more crackers instead of all this howl about creepy trees and menstruation, maybe I’d show at one of those do’s of yours.”
“Angus, you wouldn’t go to my readings if I tap-danced with Dame Edna.” Roisin struggled halfhearted toward the clock. “I’ll need to leave in twenty minutes.”
“I vote we have our own wee service.” He slipped his hand up under her blouse. “Why, this afternoon I personally volunteer to cross the sectarian divide.”
Angus MacBride was a vigorous, aggressive lover who didn’t fancy diddling about for hours trying to satisfy his woman but pleased himself. Roisin preferred this. She enjoyed being taken, even forced a little. Besides, a too solicitous lover made Roisin feel watched, and his attentions often backfired. She had difficulty coming anyway, and under pressure to perform, her excitement withered. She wondered how men, their pleasures so apparent, ever achieved an erection with a woman in the room. Chichi clitoral diligence had, like every fashion, hit Ireland ten years late, and arrived in Roisin’s life with her last boyfriend, Garrett. Roisin would find herself boated on a horizonless sexual sea, what had begun as a careless afternoon excursion darkening gradually to nightmare as the light began to fade and the bed rocked on. Frankly, the two- or three-hour fuck is highly overrated. Garrett had dutifully rubbed away until her vagina was raw, her labia numb. Once they’d endured a few of these sessions, she hadn’t the heart to admit to him that short of success after ten minutes the project was hopeless, so the marathons went on until Roisin began to dread going to bed. She tried cutting his efforts short by faking, but this only seemed to inspire Garrett to more, like a pinball player determined to rack a higher score. Further, he wouldn’t allow himself to enter her until she was “done,” by which time Garrett himself had wilted. So then Roisin would take the helm and dither, though she absolutely refused to put the thing in her mouth. Ironically, he seemed to have the same reaction she did to being conscientiously serviced, and if he did come, it was a nervous, exhausted spasm after more toil, and this from a man who had apologized at the beginning of their relationship that he had trouble with premature ejaculation.
When Garrett announced that he’d started seeing another woman, Roisin was sure he’d found a buxom, thick-armed Andytown wench who boiled potatoes whom he could throw down on the lino when he pleased, to blast away and zip up after five minutes, better than this overwrought, internationally famous poetess for whom he had far too much respect. Angus didn’t have enough, but then she’d do without if respect took the form of obsequious deference in bed.
So Angus plundered on, joyful and oblivious, with the rhythmic grunting Roisin trusted. It would never occur to Angus to fake excitement in a hundred million years. If he didn’t relish making love to her, he’d get up and do something else; for there is nothing so comforting as the obviously selfish person: he will take care of himself. Left to her own devices, then, Roisin relaxed and enjoyed some moderate success. This particular afternoon she preferred to lie back and watch, for finally, at the age of thirty-seven, Roisin had discerned that you didn’t come as a responsibility, a victory, or even as a compliment, but because you felt like it.
The timing of the ring was so perfect, and so close to perfectly bad, that they both had to laugh. Still panting, sweat streaming, Angus reached for the receiver with “’Loo?” in a could-be-anyone voice. While he didn’t want to be recognized, he liked the territorial implications of answering her phone.
Angus looked at the receiver like something with a bad smell and discarded it. “Fancy. Rung off. New boyfriend?”
Long after Angus had gone, Roisin lay on her back with her eyes open, the duvet up to her chin. Only the ebb of light and the beat of her body marked the passing of time. Roisin rarely listened to music. She found quiet a marvel. And she found doing nothing a marvel. How spectacular that you could simply lie here and the day would sift by. Roisin considered this her secret. On either side of the house, women rustled up tea—boiling, toasting, dragging children to the table. Tellies blared, papers flapped, electronic games wheedled away, but here Roisin folded her hands over her chest and could detect only the faint on-and-off hum of the refrigerator, her legs laid out like the dead’s. But she wasn’t dead! That was the secret. Under the slanted ceiling of the top floor, cozied by the faded blue wallpaper flowers and the shadows easing over them, Roisin could roam the moors of her head, heather purpling, grass bent, as a young girl with a long dress in a breeze. She wondered at the bustle of women in this town who always had to be a-doing, boys who tore off in stolen cars through checkpoints, even romantics who yearned for the days a lad could light off to sea. She didn’t see the scrabbling for adventure, when all you need do is pull a comforter to your breast. For there was always a ship waiting in Roisin’s port, with sails like skirts; her own breath blew the wind.
Only when satisfied she could remain this way forever would Roisin get up. She dressed slowly and considered the match of colors as if someone would call, though she’d probably spend the evening padding the house, reading snatches of poetry, and washing the dishes just to feel the water on her hands. Roisin always dressed well, especially for herself. She chose purple and green, like the hillsides in her mind tonight, a soft sweater, low shoes. She tiptoed downstairs as if not wanting to wake herself up.
She’d not combed her hair or made up her face—which she would also do, meticulously, whether or not she stepped out—so when the mirror in the dining room ambushed her she jumped. Especially the last five years, Roisin was mindful of mirrors and did not let them sneak up on her. And after each passing birthday it took a fraction of a second longer to prepare for them. What was required was nothing less than a mirror of her own to fight back, a careful preconception of a face to fend off heresy. As the two versions grew increasingly disparate, it took more energy to generate the gentler portrait, and Roisin marked the positions of store windows and bar glass like the mapmaking of the blind: she needed to anticipate them without seeing them, for a careless glance could ache up the back of her head for hours, like a baton clubbing from the
