Then a small voice inside me whispered; you are not and will not be alone, not with me here.
‘Daniel’s getting water I think,’ Órla said, ‘though he seems just as fucked as you. What a party, eh? And you know these people. These fucking folk. I don’t think they’ve noticed anything,’ she was talking on and on in a reasonable voice. I was grateful for it, amazed to be honest that she could be so free of drama. I shifted position; the book was in my hands under me, and I pulled it out and put it against my forehead. Cracked soft cloth. It smelled – faintly – of the stables.
‘Here,’ she said, and took it from me, ‘I’m just putting it down so you can stretch out. Get some sleep.’
I tried not to get worked up. If I said anything more to her I don’t remember. I did something with my eyes closed – something like I slept, but a busy sleep.
Red Room
In the red room there for a bit I must have slept and under that I was remembering the urgency of the diary page hidden – beneath the folds – and the strange eroticism of the man in old fashioned clothing biting the sliver of wood out of my finger. As I came and went from myself I felt a body lying beside me, at first stiff, then soft with sleep. And then there was a second standing over me, watching, breathing. I kept my eyes closed for safety. I felt better, less unhinged. I wondered if the drinks had been spiked – that would account for the disorientation. I did feel faintly sick. I kept my eyes smartly closed and I thought about what I might have missed in the times between going into the wardrobe and waking up standing in this room with Órla there and the look on her face. It felt like being stolen from myself. I thought, ‘Okay, something terrible has happened to you – what now do you need to get over it and feel all right?’
Órla sat up beside me.
‘Just off for some water since Daniel’s not come back with any,’ she said. ‘Dying of thirst. Don’t go anywhere.’ The bed released and she was gone.
Someone was coming up the stairs.
I pretended to be asleep. The worst thing now was if Mark came – I could just about cry at the idea of explaining I needed more time. But no, it was Daniel there in the doorway. He stood – the light fell around him, making him a silhouette. Like here, you standing by the window, a silhouette with the stars at your back, candle flame illuminating your hand. Like that yes, a dream almost. Exactly. Then Daniel was fully there and the door closed behind him with a boardroom click. Light from the low lamp bathed his face, extending shadows on him. Then or now. I felt like this was the first of many future times I was really seeing him clearly, letting myself see him. He was awkward in his formal clothes. His overgrown dark hair on his ears, and his eyes were long and glowed in the light – not amber, I’d want to say, something livelier, like silty water in the sun – and his lashes dark. He was drunk too. He fussed with his jacket, taking it off. He had a soft-looking, stumbling-looking mouth that my fingers somehow remembered being inside.
‘Daniel,’ I said.
‘Here.’
He handed me a glass of water as he sat down on the bed. We were alone, then.
Kiss
A wind blew from a distant inland place and I found myself shaking. Between us, the air crackled like a pelting of ice about to hit us both, already too late and smacking into us. So suddenly this comes on I thought, because I didn’t have the perspective yet. All I felt was: make the storm break, make it stop. I felt a pain in my fingers – a kind of shock – a kind of shock that is the moment before touching. No, it was never like this. Believe me? I reached over for him and pulled him near. His hot breath and my hot breath. I kissed him. Just like that as if our mouths and tongues together had been a form the universe was waiting to shape all this time. If you unsettle yourself anything is possible. That’s what the night had proved. There was no accidental slip of the lips that led us somewhere I didn’t want to go. I wanted – to go – I did.
As I kissed him I saw that other place, only briefly; I smelled bread cooking in an oven and heard a creaking of wood and leather, the sound of a brush on a wet floor – smell of fresh hay falling loosely, horses, sawdust, pipe smoke, mud being washed away. Two selves crashing together overlapping two selves imaginary or from long past histories, I didn’t care, I pushed my tongue in. Daniel filled the world in then with himself and it was cologne and sweet-salty booze and a hit of chocolate. His face gritty – not gritty. Stubbled. I opened my eyes and pulled back a little; it was Daniel, wasn’t it. Yes. I chose this, I thought.
Even as I thought that I felt myself as two people: one making the choice, the other judging it, loathing it. A small part of me was pointing at something moving under – I moved back from that part. It stretched its shadow out along towards me across the floor of my being, touched me with shame – Órla it said. I moved back to Daniel. But perhaps it was not shame but tact. Because Órla was in the room again, watching, silent. There was nothing I could say that would make things any easier, right then – no excuse or comfort – and my lips felt stung and good – that would invalidate what I had just done. So I just looked at her. My mouth tired and red. Daniel’s too. We had chosen to. Our handmarks were all over each other. A redness on his arm from my hand. My God, I thought, is this what it’s like?
Daniel put his hands up and held my face.
‘Tom. You’re fucking gorgeous,’ he whispered. I took his hands and held them against my face.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ apologising for my whole life – and to the shadow, and to Órla, and to my own self for not letting this happen sooner – but this was the only time it could have.
‘Shh,’ Daniel said. ‘God, I have you,’ he said. Or did he say it later? Órla was beside us, and warmed us and we made a figure together of our arms and legs. And we didn’t stop kissing any more after that, exhausted, fired, drunk, fell back down together, holding on dearly tight. I think I spoke, I think I whispered, ‘Don’t leave me yet.’ Daniel’s back against my stomach. Órla’s neck against my mouth.
Waking
It was still dark. Sounds of the party breaking up came from outside: cars leaving the drive, goodbye, drive safe. Little car honks. I fumbled around but couldn’t find my phone to check the time. I wasn’t hungover though my mouth was clothy and I desperately needed a drink. Daniel was lying beside me, a thin slice of his neck lit up red in the white light from the toilet. And arm with no owner poked out from the lower sheets. I swallowed A white cold line moved down me, sank into me. I got up and put on the rest of my clothes. I went to the toilet to fill the glass, but I saw the diary on the floor in the light – falling across it, an arrow – pointing to Daniel, then moving to point to the door.
I wanted to say goodbye to him. I was pulling him up to do it. ‘Get up, Daniel,’ I thought, ‘get up.’ He was awake and a horrible smile came on his face, and I realised he was not dead and I might be. A scream came up the back of me. My hands were hot with blood. There was music playing again, wasn’t there? In a moment I was free.
The hall was dark and full of ways to go. I passed each one on careful steps not wanting to meet Mr MacAshfall and his forced cheeriness that would force me to be cheery right as I had come to a piece of my real self. Not wanting to meet Mark’s mother – had I briefly seen her? Impressions of hair and a pinched neck, some judgements, my sloppiness. Not wanting to encounter anyone at that tilted hour but Mark himself. There was a chance he had gone to bed, but I thought it was a small one. I went downstairs into occasional light and a kind of dry comfortable atmosphere. The MacAshfalls ran the public parts of their home warm. The last of the catering staff were carrying biodegradable sacks out to their van through the open front door; if they noticed me they didn’t want me to know they had. Kind, I thought. I was barefoot, unshowered and almost round to sobriety, a depressing prospect for anyone to see. I dumped myself on the staircase and waited for them to finish. As they were exiting, one of them looked up at me and gave a louche army salute. I raised two casual fingers, immediately thinking it was like s
omething an emotionally hogtied man might do watching his only brother set out to sea on an unworthy vessel. He closed the door behind him and was gone forever.
‘You’re up,’ said Mark. He was coming from the living room area. He had changed into some less smart clothes, but by anyone’s standards his pyjamas might count as formal wear. Navy silk, matching slippers.
‘Mark,’ I said – I strolled down to meet him business mode on, and in the kitchen we sat on high stools at the marble bar with our faces rearranged in those shadows. The red of the counters only made Mark look even more doughy than usual. He took out something white and thickly creamy from the fridge and began eating it slowly with a tiny spoon.
‘Enjoy yourself?’ Mark said. He was still a little drunk.
‘It’s been a strange night.’
‘I’d imagine,’ he said – smirked.
I sat silent.
‘Do you want anything, Thomas?’ he said, gesturing broadly to the kitchen, ‘we have lots of leftovers. Or I can make you a drink?’
I asked for water. He got up and made me a glass with ice and a cucumber slice from a tub in the fridge. When I had drunk it all down in silence, I was ready.
‘Listen, Mark – I have that book you were talking about. The diary.’
‘Oh really! Yes, I thought you might.’
I stared at him.
‘Daniel took it,’ he said. ‘The idiot stuffed it down his trousers and ran off. I knew you’d moved in with him. And that you might remember our conversation. So . . . ?’
I tried to straighten the timeline in my head – hadn’t he told me before I’d decided to move in? I took a brief tilt towards paranoia. This is a set-up, all that. But I gave up and took out the book. I put it on a clean space on the marble bar and opened it to the back, where I had left the folded piece of paper.
‘Mystery deepens,’ I said.
Mark scoffed in amusement.
‘Look at that.’ He leaned forward and unfolded it. And this is what it said.
An account of himself by James O’Riorden,
written 16 May 1820
You will have read this diary now and perhaps there is no one who will ever see this letter as I will conceal it well but still I have to write it. I am compelled by my moral sense and the awareness of the precarity of my soul for what I have done and what I have not done in the matter I related as if I was James Lennoxlove, the master of the house of Bitterhall. I am not that man. That man is a figment, based on a man of a different name in a similar social position. I am James O’Riorden, no one of importance, a servant only in the house of the other ‘James’. I wrote in his words, unable to tell it myself, and to ease only myself. God forgive me!
I was born in Ireland and taken to [illegible] very young by my mother, three or four years old. My father she left behind and all to the good, she said, that he stayed, and kept his surname with him, while we took another. For this reason I am not afraid to mention O’Riorden here, as there are no records by which to find me. I was raised in a part of that city that is considered a very low place indeed. But still I went to school, because as you can see I write not badly. I learned more refinement in my letters while in the service of the ‘Lennoxlove’ family, the father of ‘James’ requiring even his grooms to be able to read well and keep reliable accounts. This was not out of charity or some noble goal but to enable no man to feign ignorance if some goods of the house or money etcetera went missing. When I was first employed I had additional practice as I was required to keep a legible diary of the horses’ eating habits, stool, teeth, and overall look, so that the master could keep track of their flourishing and make adjustments. Very often he would comment on my dismal handwriting and I would attempt to improve it before he next checked it. This first master ‘Lennoxlove’ was always looking to the improvement of the breed.
But it is about his son I write, the man I wrote as in guise. I was in the barn on the last night of the year (I will take care not to write which year, so that neither I nor he am incriminated). It happened differently to how I said, but I think dear reader you will have guessed so, otherwise why should I write this?
I was nine when I came to the house. James was fourteen and had his schooling by a tutor. The master was in his full health then and very strict; I saw him beat James – nearly a grown man – for riding out late on a fine summer evening. He did beat him in full view of anyone passing, hitting him with a strap until James fell on the courtyard stones. The master made him stand and hit at him again and again, until at last he fell and could not get up. It was as if he were beating me, the pain I felt for James, who I carried home. He cried but afterwards was a colder, more defiant sort to me and to all. I had such extreme affection for him, which I kept almost silently and unseen. I took care not to be servile in my manner but always restrained and quickwitted – I knew he would find nothing but disgust for me any other way.
James would ride all the time he was not kept by other tasks. He grew fair haired and tall, strong and well, with a charming smile that I saw him give only while on horses, and later, to women with whom he wanted to get his leg over. Still I do not think he liked horses overly but for the feeling they gave him of freedom on the quiet lanes and the leaping of hedges while chasing down some poor fox or other for the dogs to tear at. When the old master died and James inherited, he put some of his money in to further increasing the stock and to expanding the stables.
I turned the page.
To mark his first year of manhood and the new though ongoing improvements he was making, James held a ball at ‘Bitterhall’ and invited gentry from the nearby estates and from [illegible], where he had lively society friends – poets and advocates and the like. The ball ran late, but James slipped away before midnight. I was minding the guests’ horses and trying to compose some poems. Another man who was to help me was away with his sweetheart, which pleased me so I could work on my compositions in peace. James came in loudly, kicking at the door, and with a very fierce look to him and asked me to prepare his horse, which I did quickly and saying little. He rode out and I closed the doors behind him. Later I heard sounds of the horse cantering near, and went out to receive it, but she dashed past me into the stable. Two riders were now on the horse, beside James, a man in common clothing who looked pale.
‘Sir,’ I said.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he answered, and lifted the man down. ‘Go to the house now please, I’m about my business,’ he said. He had the man by the shoulder. Barely a man, it seemed, by the look of him, with a thin young face, wary and frightened. All I did was nod and stepped outside. But after came a sound of disorder – I rushed in. The man was resisting, feebly I thought, and James stood to him angrily holding a knife at his throat.
‘Sir,’ I said again, cried his name and begged him not to hurt the man. But he, seeing that the man would not stop shouting, killed him there with the knife and after it was done had me bury the dirty straw.
I have no idea to what end James brought the man to the stable. The body we laid in a ditch by the road and I said to the other servants I’d heard it was a vagrant from the city had committed the murder in the early morning, and so this rumour duly spread. After we had returned from the road, the master cut his palm and mine and squeezed a little of our blood together into a brandy cup. We both drank and he declared us blood brothers, loyal unto death. I do not know if he believes it, or believes that I could be so easily taken in by the power of an oath surmounting a horrible act. Just because I am loyal to him – this he clearly knows, how deep my affection has been for him since our childhood.
I have never said anything and never will, not in fact for loyalty but in shame, except that I found I had to say it in some way however cowardly, because my heart couldn’t bear to keep quiet, and so wrote it like a kind of story. And now you have found it – never mind, it is likely that when the backing has come unstuck I will be dead, I am only waiting until the stables are furnished adequately and the horses are not so di
srupted by the works before I force my departure from this world. I expect to go to the devil in due course. But I will see James there in Hell, I think, many more years after my own going. The man he killed, I learned later, was the son of a blacksmith in the nearby village. I want to write his name, but it isn’t possible without drawing the crime too clearly. As it is, it will stand better if there is an element of untruth about the thing, even with this confession.
Invisible
‘Oh my God,’ I said.
‘Very mysterious,’ said Mark in a flat tone.
‘Yes—’ I answered.
‘Oh well,’ he said, slapping the paper down on the counter. ‘I suppose it was too much to hope for neat answers and that.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘It’s right there.’
Mark drew back, and played with the paper – turning it over and around, craning his head. ‘No – am I missing something?’
I sat shaking, looking down at the confession. A cold wind swirled in my head, though I couldn’t think why.
‘It’s right there. James, his life, what he saw.’ Mark touched the paper, and I knew, ‘Mark – you don’t see anything. You don’t see anything.’
Mark eyed me over his mug, then flashed a clever look. ‘Did you know, Arthur Conan Doyle’s father saw fairies dancing over St Gyle’s Church and drew pictures of them ascending into a descending blue night sky. Not unlike,’ he said, gestured vaguely at the sky – a woolly orange – ‘this one. They locked him up because he was a drunk, too, if I’m remembering right. I’d say that reason, rather than the seeing of things. It’s not unforeseeable. An inability to fit into this world, to be stuck between this that and the other. It’s the chemical straitjacket, these days, for that kind of offense.’
Put on prim, businesslike tone. Wry smile. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said – mumbled – got up. ‘I’m messing with you,’ I said. ‘Anyway – I have to be going.’ I was walking away, ‘Thanks for the party—’
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