Snow White and the Seven Bishops had drawn to a triumphant close that night, despite the rumour that the bald guy snoring in the third row was the critic. Everybody who could claim to have been in any way involved had hitched a back-carrier ride to Jennifer’s flat for the party. Maria enjoyed the first few hours of energetic dancing, but by one o’clock some loner had taken over the stereo to play his personal Leonard Cohen/Morrissey/Dylan mix; as the melancholy ballads droned on, a succession of incoherent boys waved their beer cans at Maria. In the corner Galway and Suzette were having what looked like a meaningful conversation. By half two they were holding hands; he caught Maria’s eye and gave a victory sign.
At three she shared a taxi home with the couple who had finally emerged from the toilet; every time the guy touched his girlfriend’s leg, she gave him a playful shove that impaled Maria’s hip on the door handle. She comforted herself: With any luck Jael and Ruth would still be up and she could ask them what they wanted on their Christmas glasses.
But there was a barely legible scrawl on the back of a phone bill; she found it resting on the black velvet cap, which was draped over the teapot. “Gate-crashing slight acquaintance’s party,” it read. “Hope yours was fun. Excuse paper. XOXOX. R. (&J.)”
Maria felt unreasonably depressed. When ten minutes of ice-skating on a satellite channel had failed to snap her out of it, she got out the glass goblets and box of enamels and set to work. Jael and Ruth both being water signs, she contemplated a zodiac theme; since scorpions and crabs were beyond her technical grasp, it would have to be mermaids for them both. Jael’s would be red, with big sensuous swirls of hair and serpentine tails. Maria was usually a perfectionist, but tonight she painted quickly, trying to make the ruby figures come alive. She stopped when the whole glass was swarming with mermaids, three elongated ones forming a spiral chain around the stem. The other glass, for Ruth, was more difficult. It was shiny black enamel, and the effect was sombre. The mermaids got smaller as her hand began to ache, until they looked more like octopi than women. Maria added a few strands of green seaweed around the base, then gave up and left them both on the windowsill to dry. She was damned if she was going to sit up all night slaving over a Christmas present they mightn’t even like anyway.
After half an hour between the sheets Maria was still wide awake. The floor was cold underfoot as she padded into the kitchen. While the kettle boiled, she tried on Ruth’s black cap, pulled smoothly over her tufting hair. Her reflection in the window startled her; the tight velvet halo made her face recede above the round collar of her nightshirt. She looked like a chaste pageboy, trotting through some seventeenth-century painting of a banquet. A wan smile failed to break the illusion, and she turned away.
Waiting for her cocoa to cool, blowing on its steamy surface, Maria paced up and down the corridor. If she looked through the bead curtain, she could see the glasses glinting on the dark sill of the kitchen window. The beads swayed and clicked in the night draught. She had no idea what to do next.
Finding herself at the door of the other bedroom, she took a strengthening sip of cocoa and turned the handle. There was nothing to see, of course—just the usual bare square of carpet around the futon, the same pale walls. The only rich colour in the room was the huge, battered wardrobe, which caught the light from the corridor and turned it mahogany red. Maria stepped delicately between an empty bowl and what seemed to be a fingerless glove. The carpet was restful on her bare soles. She set her cocoa mug on the window ledge and looked out on a clear view of empty offices, a jet descending toward the airport, and a giant crane silhouetted in fairy lights. Below, the street seemed deserted, except for the single red dot of a motorbike disappearing round the corner.
On her way out, the back of Maria’s hand skimmed across the polished wood of the wardrobe, which was interrupted with scratches. She tried the intricate metal handle, half of which came off in her hand; as she was fitting it back into its hole, the door swung open. The first thing that billowed to meet her was a taffeta ball gown; she could not imagine which of them had ever worn it. Left must be Jael’s side. Maria recognized her second-favourite leather jacket, and three pairs of jeans bunched up on a hanger with a cerise silk shirt draped angularly over them. Ruth’s clothes took up roughly a third of the space; an occasional flash of cream or white broke the sweep of black shoulders. Shutting her eyes, Maria let her fingertips follow the clothes, hanger by hanger, trying to identify them by texture and the shape of a collar or elbow. After a run of heavy cottons and denims, her thumb fell on velvet and sank into it.
Crouched on the floor of the sturdy wardrobe, her head wrapped in hanging folds, she breathed in. That must be lavender—a sachet from Ruth’s mother. A tang of stale smoke, definitely, and a whiff of boot polish from the Doc beside her bare knee. Something under her left foot—a strap or lace—was hurting. Maria reached out for the bottom edge of the heavy door and pulled it as far shut as she could without trapping her fingers. Now she was cloaked in darkness on four sides.
Something infinitely soft touched her cheek. She twitched away in fright, then turned back to find it with her lips, but it was gone. Whatever was cutting into her foot mellowed to a gentle ache. Perhaps ten minutes passed in this way, with her breath getting deeper and the slow boom of her heart the only sound. Then Maria reached under her nightshirt and touched herself for the first time since she could remember.
Eventually there was a small, familiar sound, like a bird pecking at a tree. The sound of a key in the front door. Maria lifted her head off her knees so fast that a heavy winter coat was pushed backward, and several hangers jangled in protest. She held her breath. The front door was shut, very gently. Footsteps at the top of the corridor. Remember O Most Gracious Virgin Mary that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession …
Footsteps in the kitchen. The gurgle of the tap, filling the kettle. Maria stopped praying, with a brief “ta” in the direction of the hangers. Bending low, she slid out of the wardrobe without too much disturbance and shut it softly behind her. She crept to the door. A moment later she was opening her own bedroom door loudly behind her and walking into the living room.
Ruth, alone, leaning against the fridge.
“Top o’ the mornin’ to ya,” Maria said, too heartily.
“Want some tea?”
“I just came in for a glass of water.”
They sat in companionable, exhausted silence.
“The cap looks wonderful on you.”
Maria jumped, having forgotten she was wearing it. “Hope you don’t mind, I just thought I’d try you on. I mean, it.”
“Anytime.”
She reached up for it, then, with a jolt, remembered; keeping her fragrant hand by her side, she used the other to pluck off the cap and hand it to Ruth. “Where’s your bit of skirt then?”
Ruth grimaced obediently at the phrase. “Learning to lambada. She was enjoying the party more than I was, so I came on in a taxi.”
“Are you all right, pet?”
“Mostly,” said Ruth. Meeting Maria’s eyes, she reassured her: “I’m waking up, that’s all.”
“Waking up, how?”
“You’re the one who told me that it didn’t matter how you got woken so long as you were awake,” she reminded her slyly.
“Did I?”
“About coming to college.”
“I don’t remember. What a profound young thing I am, ey?”
Ruth threatened her with the dregs of her tea.
“It’s no time to be waking up, woman; even the sea gulls have gone to sleep.” Maria yawned.
“I’ll go in a minute.”
The tired words hung on the air like feathers, then zigzagged down to the ground. Maria emptied her glass of water into the sink and held her fingers under the tap. As she left she rested her cold hand on Ruth’s bent head: “Sweet dreams.”
Only when she was halfway down the corridor did she remember tha
t neither Ruth nor Jael drank cocoa and that her mug was still on their windowsill.
“I asked Santa for a white Christmas, not a frigging freezing one,” grumbled Jael as they bumped the tree up four flights of stairs to the flat. She stopped at the bottom of the last flight to suck her numb fingers, letting the tree sag against Maria, who was doubled over, coughing.
“Well, whose bright idea was it to wait till teatime on the twenty-third?” Ruth called from the door above them. “That’s when we’d pick up the last-minute bargains, you said. You’re not telling me that misshapen monstrosity is all they had left?”
“This elegant nine-foot spruce fir,” Maria panted as they heaved the tree through the doorway, “enhances the grandiose proportions of the Georgian tenement in which it is presently—what’s the word?—erected.”
“Ouah!” added Jael.
They disentangled the tree from the bead curtain and wedged it into a deep casserole dish with dictionaries and Spanish novels. “Its somewhat assymetric stance,” continued Maria, brushing needles off her jumper, “symbolises the, shall we say, unusual bent of its owners.”
By nine o’clock they had spotted the flat with wisps of holly and red crepe-paper bows. Jael had wounded her thumb on a spiky leaf; at intervals during dinner she sucked it and told stories about famous guitarists reputed to have lost digits to gangrene. They had intended to leave the presents lying decoratively under the tree, but when Jael produced a decent bottle of wine, Maria decided to give them their glasses. Ruth couldn’t stop laughing as she compared them: “Jael’s mermaids look like they’re having an aquatic orgy, while mine are lining up for the Dance of Death.”
“Yours are subtle,” Maria protested. “You have to look hard at them.”
“Whereas mine are crudely obvious, I suppose,” added Jael, with a wink. She went to on propose a toast to “Maria Murphy, the only known flatmate who pays her rent in advance and never leaves visible hairs in the bath.”
They had clubbed together to buy her a radio, as a more sociable alternative to her Walkman. She swallowed hard as she unwrapped it; Christmas always made her irritatingly sentimental.
Jael was already wearing her present from Ruth, a pair of vicious-looking earrings in the shape of broomsticks. “I picked them myself,” she confided to Maria. “They bring out the witch in me.” She sent Ruth off to their room for her present; “It’s under the futon in a classy green plastic bag,” she explained, “but don’t worry, it was dead cheap, probably off the back of a lorry.”
Ruth reappeared a few minutes later in a little black wool dress; her smile was dubious.
“Gi’s a twirl, madam!” shrieked Maria.
But Ruth sat straight down to her chocolate mousse. “You’re trying to make either a femme fatale or a total fool of me,” she said to Jael, “and I’m not sure which. But I like it. I think.”
They played poker, badly and enjoyably, most of the night. “Winner gets to take Maria to her grad,” announced Jael, and raised the bidding by twenty pence.
“No, she’d better take us both,” called Ruth, going over to the fridge for more ice. “Two for the price of one, special offer while stocks last.”
“I’m not going,” said Maria, suddenly decisive.
“Yes, you are, and you’re taking me,” murmured Jael in her ear. “I look very nice in a tuxedo.” Her breath smelled of whisky and chocolate. Maria elbowed her away; she looked up to find Ruth watching them.
Ruth sat down; she was moving so strangely tonight, coiled up in that dress. “Won’t your mother be disappointed?”
“When?”
“About your grad.”
“Oh, that.” Maria felt serene. “My mother can stuff herself.”
At half past five she remembered the roof. The landlord had admitted that the skylight had a pull-down ladder, and they had been waiting to try it out. Jael grabbed a handful of holly and a sweeping brush; Maria ran after her. “I’ll be up in a minute,” called Ruth from her room; “Just got to get out of these blasted heels.”
The skylight resisted a few thumps from the brush, then creaked open, sprinkling rust down on them. A wave of cold air hit their flushed faces. Maria gasped as she climbed through the narrow hatch.
“It’s the frost that’s making me slip, not the whisky,” explained Jael as she staggered along the dip between the roofs. She worked her way over the slates to the wall and started waving to the tiny figures getting into cars on the streets below.
Maria stood still. She craned her neck back to see the full bowl of luminous clouds, satellites and stars. Dizzy, she had the impression she might topple right off the building. Gradually she became aware of Jael standing just behind her, holding a strand of holly high in the air. “What’s that for?” she asked.
“No mistletoe,” said Jael briefly, and bent round to kiss her.
Later, trying to remember whether it was a short or a long kiss, an acceptable peck or a dangerous fusion, Maria had no idea. It was somehow balanced on the knife edge between these definitions when Ruth’s head came through the skylight. In the second her eyes took to get used to the dark, they had lurched apart.
“Oh, sorry,” said Ruth. The blank oval of her face disappeared down the hole.
They were mute, staring at the skylight; then Jael made a dash for the ladder. Maria could hear heavy footsteps in the corridor, Jael’s muffled voice protesting, petering out, then silence.
It was getting colder, she thought, as she inched, one foot at a time, along the dip between the roofs and squatted down in a nook beside a chimney. Too cold for snow. She wondered whether there was snow on the mountains. She wondered what the hell had just happened.
Maria tried to fix her attention on the stars, then on the icy slates under her, but her head was whirling. Such a confused dread. Like when she was a child at mass, putting her tongue out for Holy Communion, and heard her own unspoken whisper of resistance: This is too much for me.
By six she was cold to the bone, her knees locked stiff. She would go for the half seven train home; Mam would be glad of the help at lunchtime. She waited for the first lick of dawn on the mountains, taupe and snowless.
Maria climbed down the ladder; her numb fingers lowered the skylight clumsily. The flat was hushed. Once in her room, she fumbled a few jumpers and jeans into her rucksack and tiptoed down the corridor. Better leave a note on the kitchen table so they wouldn’t worry.
But when Maria reached the bead curtain, she realized that they were still there. She stood rigid, convinced that they would see her or hear her breathing, but the couple by the fire were oblivious to everything. All she could make out clearly in the red light was Ruth’s face. Her head sagged back on the top of the sofa, and her face was a blank page. The folds of her new black dress were crumpled over her stomach; her legs were limp as a rag doll’s. Jael was sprawled between them; all that could be seen of her was her long back and some copper waves of hair spilling over the lap of her lover. Maria watched, as if this dance, this coupling, was the key to the whole story. The bodies shifted together like a knot of seaweed.
It was not until Ruth’s eyes opened, glittering straight at her across the room, that Maria backed away and slipped out the front door.
7
STIRRING
The train coughed its way to a halt at every tiny station between Dublin and home, but Maria barely noticed. She sat curled up in the corner of a smoky carriage, thawing out. After half an hour her fingers had uncurled, and she picked up a Farmers Gazette somebody had left behind on the seat. She found it impossible to concentrate on the print; her eyes skewed toward the pale orange fields framed in the rushing window. On page three a headline leapt into focus: “Homosexuality an Affliction Says Archbishop.” She folded the paper in fours and tossed it onto the opposite seat.
At Limerick Junction she thought she spotted Ruth in a crowd on the next platform, but it turned out to be some skinny stranger. Ridiculous, anyway, because what would Ruth be doing in Limeri
ck Junction? By now Jael would be bringing her breakfast in bed, no doubt. How would she explain last night, Maria wondered—a sociable peck on the cheek, perhaps, or a joke, a mock kiss staged between the two of them for a laugh. She would not put it past Jael to claim that Maria had started it. Not that it was long enough to start or finish; it could only have lasted half a second. All this fuss over a momentary contact of dry lips.
She leaned her elbow on the edge of the jolting window. God knew, she had never been more than friendly with that wretched woman. Painstakingly Maria ran the past three months like a film in her head, but it began rolling too fast for her to pick out more than the occasional detail. She had felt so at home in the flat. So absurdly safe. It had not crossed her mind that a woman might want to, well, kiss her. Her mind jerked through the weeks. It was undeniable that Jael’s behaviour had been odd, sometimes intense and flirty, but that was just her way. Similar to the way friends had talked to Maria all her life; just schoolgirl humour.
There was Nuala, now that she came to think of it. On sunny days they used to bunk religion class and slip out the back field to lie in the long grass and eat Kola Kubes. The odd time Nuala’s eyes might catch hers in a lingering stare, and Maria would wait, but then the pale eyes would drop, and the next remark was always banal. That was all—no scandal. Nuala had left in fifth year anyway. It was hardly fair on the girl to start interrogating her in retrospect.
Maria wove her way down five carriages to buy a plastic cup of coffee. As she was carrying it back to her own carriage, the train hiccuped and slammed her hip against the door. She felt nothing. In her mind she was taking off from the roof of the train. Her taloned heels thrust up from flat metal, kicking away rags of cloud, firing up into the icescape.
Her mother noticed her yawning over lunch and gave a disapproving glance. “It’s the heat,” said Maria to forestall any remarks about dissolute student life-styles. “The house is stifling, I don’t know how you can bear it.”
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