I wanted to ask him what he meant, but I didn’t. I was afraid of my hair, even then.
Michael never touched me, never as much as took my hand walking back through the dark. And I was glad enough, for it kept things light and simple. My forwardness was really only bravado.
Robbie came and when he did Michael vanished from sight.
“Hubby alright?” he’d ask me afterwards. “Not pining?”
“Robbie,” I’d say. “His name’s Robbie.”
But he went on stubbornly calling him Hubby. I wouldn’t answer him when he did. I sulked, but he wouldn’t shift; it was Hubby this and Hubby that till I lost my temper.
“Lay off, would you? You’ve never even set eyes on him.”
But he had. He’d seen Robbie from a window.
“I wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night down a back entry,” he said. “He’s the sort kicks the shite out of people like me—”
He had a point, though I didn’t say so.
Robbie hated coming to the hospital. Shame made him narrow his shoulders and kick out sparks with his steel-shod boots. His wife in that place, labelled forever, was more than he could handle. And no Barbara Allen. He’d wanted Barbara Allen as I never had, and now she was flushed down some hospital sluice, gone when she’d hardly started.
My mother came on the bus from Derry. I told her the doctor had said I could ask for a transfer to the hospital there. That way she could visit more often.
She gave me a long, straight look and told me I had a husband. Then she said Londonderry was just a wee village for talk, and folk said these things ran in families, and what about my two wee nieces? Had I no thought for Brian and Anne at all?
“Oh, folk know alright,” she added. “I don’t try to hide what can’t be hid, that’s not my way. But some things are best not advertised.”
Hard words, but there was a tenderness in that hospital, a looking-out-for-one-another that nearly made me not mind them. We were all raw with our own failure, and as well as that our minds were turned down low with drugs so we weren’t so keen on judging. That was a kind of liberation, for what could you do at the bottom but laugh—the laughter of gentleness, not of derision? Derision was for out there. Derision and fear-of-derision had landed us in here. We had broken ourselves on our own wheels, trying to be what we thought was required of us, trying to be “normal.” Failing. In here we moved slowly, taking care, as wounded things take care. Oh, there were dislikes and resentments alright, but only because we were human. Mostly we were as careful of each other’s sore places as of our own, or nearly so. And in a funny way there was no one out there as real for us as the ones inside that we lived with every day. Perhaps what bound us together was pity more than love. I don’t know, I don’t know where the one stops and the other starts.
I was discharged before Michael was. I wrote out my address and I said good-bye, and it never once crossed my mind that I might not see him again. I’d accepted the gifts he’d given me—gifts that were given freely, as you give when you are young. I took them without thought or gratitude; took them in the fullness of youth, when life is opening and everything seems natural and yours by right.
I sent him a postcard. Later on I scribbled half a letter, but I lost it on a bus. I never rewrote it. I was living my life, I forgot about Michael. When at last I remembered, my letter came back with “unknown at this address” scrawled over the envelope. Perhaps he’s alright, perhaps he’s alive, but I get no sense that he’s out there still. The depression was very bad with him; it never let him alone.
I am thirty-six and already so much left undone and regretted. What will I do when I’m old?
Where was I? The day after the night I first met Liam. Saturday. I met him again in the street late that morning. He was walking towards me, his head down, his eyes on the pavement, no sign of Noreen. I was dying with the hangover and the lack of sleep, but I wanted to be out of the flat and away from Robbie, away from Robbie’s foul words, away from the misery in his eyes when he came out with them.
I’d told him I’d messages to do. I was out the door almost before he knew I was going.
When I saw Liam my first thought was to turn on my heel and run, but I didn’t. I’d be past him in a flash, I told myself, there was no call to be drawing attention to myself, running off like an eejit. So I went on ahead, my eyes on the ground, the same as his were. Then the next thing I felt a hand gripping my arm and a voice saying my name out as if it was news to me.
“You can leave go of my arm,” I said. “I’m not about to run off with your wallet.”
He let go. He said he hadn’t seen me till I was nearly past, he hadn’t meant to hurt me.
“How about a cup of coffee?” he added. “Wouldn’t you let me buy you a coffee or a drink or something? Would you fancy a bite of lunch?”
No, I said, I didn’t want a drink, or not yet, and where was Noreen, wouldn’t she be wanting her lunch any minute now?
“That should keep you busy and out of trouble,” I added nastily.
“Noreen got the early train to Dublin. Said she couldn’t be doing with Northerners. Always arguing and complaining and telling the rest of us what to do. Said she knows when she isn’t welcome, even if I don’t.”
“And don’t you?”
“Oh, I do. It’s coming through loud and clear, I just don’t want to admit it’s what I’m hearing—”
My head hurt, and I wanted to get away from him. By now I was well on my way to forgetting all about the business with him the night before. It seemed like a dream, a stupid dream, and I was sick of myself and the way I let my imagination lead me up garden paths. Then he put out his hand and took mine. Straightaway I was back there, ready to drop with the knowing of what I had known last night. And with the fear of it.
He didn’t let go of my hand. Instead he put his other one under my elbow and drew me round to face him. I kept my head down, my eyes well away from his. But I let him move his hands to my upper arms and hold them there to steady me. After a while his hands dropped.
“Right,” he said. “Lunch,” he said, and steered me into the Sceptre and sat me down in a snug. Then off he went to the bar and came back with sandwiches and pints of Guinness.
“I don’t like Guinness,” I said.
“You could do with building up.”
I don’t remember any more than that, I don’t remember what I said next or what he said next or whether I drank the Guinness or left it sitting or poured it over his head. But I remember how I pressed back into the chair, how I tried to get small and still inside my clothes to get away from him. He never touched me, and I never touched him, but when I got back to the flat two hours later, I had a story ready for Robbie and I wasn’t slow running it past him. I told him I’d rung my mother from a pay phone while I was out.
