The dining room was empty apart from a handful of people seated at tables beside the windows. Jean recognised some of the faces from the airport—two single ladies traveling together, a pair of middle-aged couples from the Midlands, a sizable party of athletic-looking Germans who had arrived on a separate flight but had taken the same coach to the hotel.
“Looks like we’re late,” Martin said as a waitress passed with several small plates of salad and a few egg mayonnaise. He glanced around the room, assessing their options. “How about that table by the back wall?”
Behind them the glass doors to the lobby opened inwards, and Jean stepped aside to let the new arrival pass. “We can’t,” she said, smiling politely as the man edged past her, “it’s all prearranged. We’re supposed to look for our room number.”
The man ahead of them hesitated.
“Ah,” he said, turning to Martin, “I think you’re with us. You’re Room 27, aren’t you? There’s been two places set at our table since the first meal. I’ll lead the way; we’re just over there.”
It took a moment to sink in. The prospect of having company did not appeal to Jean; she’d been looking forward to enjoying the evening on their own. She looked at Martin helplessly, but he only shrugged and grinned. Very little bothers him, she noted as he took her hand, and wondered why the realisation left her less comforted than annoyed.
They followed the man past the Germans to a table towards the far end of the room where a woman sat alone facing the window, her hands folded across the handbag in her lap. She smiled at the man but looked startled when they, too, sat down.
“My wife,” the man explained. He and Martin shook hands across the table, and Jean nodded politely to the other woman as they were introduced. She didn’t catch their names.
“We were beginning to think we’d have the table to ourselves for the week,” the man said, looking at his wife. Jean glanced up, surprised. His tone, she was certain, had been faintly hostile, and she felt a vague antipathy surface in response.
“Yes, sorry about that,” Martin said pleasantly. “We didn’t have much appetite after the flight, and we couldn’t seem to get out of bed in time this morning.” Jean looked at him crossly. Why apologise? she asked him silently. We’re the ones with our backs to the window. They could have left at least one seat with a view.
“You’re newlyweds, aren’t you?” Martin asked, reaching for the wine. “Somebody told me you’re on honeymoon.”
“Yes, that’s right. We were married last Saturday.”
“How lovely for you,” Jean said, but no one seemed to notice. She watched the comings and goings of the kitchen staff while the other three chatted about the size of the wedding, the great expense involved, the trials of farmers in Britain today, and the implications of the new Europe, but the exchange was awkward and soon lost momentum. A pair of entrées went past en route to the Germans, whose appetite was apparently insatiable and who greeted their arrival with an appreciative cheer.
“Have you been married long?” the woman asked. Again Jean felt her irritation surface. The query was, of course, entirely innocent; anyone recently married was bound to assume that all other young couples were just like themselves. Nevertheless she found the question intrusive; if the woman had wanted to avoid confrontation she needn’t have phrased it quite that way. She met the other’s gaze head on.
“We’re not. Married, that is.”
“We’re engaged,” Martin added quickly.
“Really?” The woman’s expression was so genuinely delighted that involuntarily Jean slipped her hands between her knees. “When’s the wedding?”
“We haven’t set a date yet,” Martin said easily. Jean’s corroborative smile was tight. “Sometime soon, we hope.” He pulled a portion from the warm loaf at his elbow, offering it to her with his eyes. She shook her head, suddenly conscious of the intimacy which could make speech between them unnecessary. And we’re not engaged, she told him irritably, so don’t tell them we are.
“How is the food, anyway?” Martin asked.
The woman grimaced. “A bit rich, actually. We made the mistake of eating Italian the first night—couldn’t sleep for hours afterwards.”
“We’ve been ordering the European option ever since, though, and that’s been alright,” her husband said. “Just be sure to ask for it well-done.”
Behind them the conversation was animated, the couples delighting in the discovery of mutual friends and acquaintances and the recollection of experience shared. At the table in front the two women had pushed aside their plates and napkins to make room for the brochures they’d collected during the day, pointing out to each other the places they’d just visited and sorting through postcards to decide which to send. Jean found herself thinking of breakfast that morning—the cheese, the fresh fruit, a few rolls from the flight, what was left of the spumante from the previous evening, the kick of her heart as they’d let the cork fly. . . . She sighed. Still, it wasn’t fair to leave Martin to cope on his own. He was being so patient, too, so charming and polite, while she kept fighting irritation and the urge to be unkind. With an effort she returned her attention to her own table.
“That’s right, the Franciscan mission,” the man was saying. “There’s a museum of local history in it now. Under it, actually. In the catacombs. I can’t imagine how you missed it; it was pretty well marked.”
“I’m surprised, too,” Martin answered. “We walked around the gardens, of course, and the chapel, but we never saw a sign for a museum.”
“I have the brochure here,” the woman said, pulling a folded leaflet from her bag. Jean leaned towards him as Martin examined it, resting her palms on his forearm for balance, using the moment as an excuse to make contact. Dark, aboriginal faces stared out from the pages, their portraits appearing between shards of pottery, bone and feather jewelry, the chipped and peeling implements of tribal war—all souvenirs from the heyday of the mission. The accompanying text described in detail the primitive peoples to whom the articles had once belonged: their passion for music, their addiction to drink, their idolatrous religions, and violent, unpredictable ways.
“Thank you,” Martin said, refolding the leaflet, “I’m sorry we missed it. I still don’t know how we could have; we were right there the whole day.”
But we spent it in the gardens above the catacombs, Jean thought wistfully. At the end of a trellis they’d discovered the chapel, a small room with stone walls and a low, wooden ceiling, lit only by candles and furnished with four wooden pews. A simple crucifix hung above the altar, its Jesus roughly hewn, the two arms of the cross bound together with twine. It looks like you’re praying, Martin had said, showing her the photo, a product of the Polaroid Instamatic his family had given them as a bon voyage gift. He’d captured her with hands folded, her head at an incline, gazing thoughtfully up at the cross. As he emptied the camera and inserted new film, she’d noted with amusement how he placed the discarded cartridge and scraps of silver paper on the floor at his feet rather than hazard contact with the seat of a pew. He’d been curiously self-conscious, she realised suddenly, from the moment they’d come in. First time in a chapel, was it, Martin? The possibility hadn’t even occurred to her until them.
Behind them, the foursome were choosing pastry, deciding which of the cakes to split between whom. What’s your favourite, they asked the waitress who stood beside the sweet trolley with a silver cake knife in her hand. She shrugged, her expression amiable and relaxed. Every one, delicioso. But there’s a whole glass of rum in that one there.
The woman cleared her throat.
“So, what about you?” she said. “Where are you from?”
Her husband’s smile was strained. “They’re from Ireland, dear, obviously.”
“Northern Ireland, yes,” Jean said.
“Yes, of course.” The man lifted a sprig of parsley from the chop on his plate, examining it from a distance with the prongs of his fork. The woman coughed.
�
�Do you live in the country?” she asked brightly. “I hear the country’s very nice.”
“Yes, it’s beautiful,” Martin agreed. “We don’t get out to see it much, though. No car, I’m afraid. We’re from Belfast.” West Belfast, Jean added silently; she could practically see their faces blanch. For some reason she found the reaction gratifying.
“Ah yes,” the man said, swallowing deliberately. “Right in the thick of it, then.”
“Well, it does seem that way sometimes, I suppose,” Martin laughed, “but it’s not as bad as all that, really.”
“Are there really armed policemen and tanks on the streets?” The woman’s expression was avid, and uneasy blend of fascination and distaste. And what about the bombs, and all those shootings, the woman continued; do you think it would stop if they brought back hanging? Jean leaned aside as the waiter moved in to serve their first course, keeping her eyes on the man’s white sleeve and deft fingers, trying to listen only to the light tap of silver against glass as the warm strands of pasta were scooped from one dish to the next. Such discussions always brought out the worst in her. Inevitably she made some radical and accusatory comment with whose sentiments she did not really agree. But what’re they fighting about? she heard the man say then, and Martin spoke calmly of politics and history, of cultural differences and conflicting aspirations, of each side demanding protection without understanding that the other was equally afraid.
“And what side are you on?”
Jean looked up. She’d been waiting for that question; in fact, she was surprised that they’d waited this long to ask. Martin struggled to find words for a diplomatic answer; she knew she was being childish but she would not return his glance.
“We can’t help being curious, I suppose,” the man said. “We don’t meet too many of you, really, not in Dorset. Aren’t you on our side, then?”
Jean set down her fork. “And what side is that, exactly?”
“We like to think we’re not on any side,” Martin said quickly. Jean felt him grip her knee under the table, and she crossed her legs tightly to push his hand off. The other two nodded but said nothing, apparently waiting for him to go on. Martin shrugged and smiled. “We try not to be, anyway.”
The man looked puzzled. “But surely you’re from one side or the other.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Martin said, “I guess we’re from both sides. We’re a mixed couple—Jean’s a Catholic, I’m Protestant.”
Oh, for chrissake, Jean thought bitterly, must we tell these people everything? She felt an irrational urge to say something inflammatory, to embellish the reality of her own experience and imply activities in which she had not been involved. But then Martin would stop in the middle of his answer—how they were pacifists who had met through the peace movement, how nobody they knew had ever been injured, how nobody close to them ever had died.
Shamed by self-recognition, she hesitated. The other two were nodding their heads while Martin described how careful they’d been in the early days of their courtship, the precautions they’d taken and yet still been on edge—preoccupations which after two years no longer mattered, replaced by others far less exotic, which even Martin, with his broad-minded notions of privacy, had the sensitivity not to bring up. For a moment Jean saw herself as she imagined they saw her: pale-faced and silent, clutching her napkin, overcome by a topic too painful to discuss.
She avoided their gaze as the plates were cleared, as they finished their coffee and brushed crumbs from their laps, as they gathered their room key and other belongings and finally rose to leave. When they had gone Martin covered her hand with his and sighed.
“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” he said. His voice sounded weary but she did not respond. “D’you fancy dessert?” he asked, changing the subject. “Ice cream or something?”
“We’re going to get one anyway; it comes with the meal.”
He eyed her warily.
“What is it, Jean? What’s wrong?”
Though she’d given him all the usual signals—the cheerless expression, the imputative silence, the refusal to meet his eye—the speed with which he’d responded to them took her by surprise. For a moment she wavered, considered aborting the mood, but she still felt the tug of unrealised conflict and a gradual tightening between her brows.
“I just wish you hadn’t said that,” Jean said, despite herself. The tone of her own voice only irritated her further. Martin’s expression was grim.
“Said what, Jean?”
She gestured impatiently. “All that stuff.”
He shrugged dismissively, withdrawing his hand. “We’ve been through this before, Jean. What difference does it make what we say to them? Come Saturday morning we’ll never see them again.”
But that was in Belfast, she countered silently, too unclear in her own mind to argue out loud. You expect to field questions from strangers at home.
“I think,” she said stiffly, “you had an obligation to be truthful.”
“And how wasn’t I, eh? What did I say that wasn’t true?”
She shook her head, suddenly inarticulate. “And why did you have to tell them so much about us? I don’t know them; I don’t want them knowing my business.”
He nodded. “So now I was too truthful, is that it? Tell me something, what would you have said? Eh?” She didn’t answer. “No? Well, I can guess. My way, they go home thinking at least some of us aren’t terrorists. Your way . . . ? I don’t understand your way at all.”
Most of the other guests had already departed; only one elderly gentleman was still sipping coffee at a table by the door. A girl from reception was moving among the tables on the far side of the room, clearing cups and emptying ashtrays, her white blouse sheer and loose and unbuttoned above the bosom, bright orange beads around her neck swinging out from inside it as she cleaned. Jean watched Martin signal for coffee, admiring the clench of his thighs as he turned—his sartorius, she told herself tenderly, his rectus femoris. He was right, of course; she was overreacting. She should learn to take these encounters less seriously, to be like the ones who gave tours of the building sites, pointed to the corrugated iron erected to keep the kids out of the unfinished bungalows with which the Executive was rebuilding Ardoyne and said, See how the Brits make us live? Bloody tin shacks with no running water. It’s worse then South Africa here, so it is.
Jean smiled, remembering how she’d first heard that story, how she’d told it to Martin and how he’d laughed, too. Bright and unburdened, she turned to him then, but he was examining the sugar packets in the bowl on the table and would not look up, and just as swiftly as they had come to her, her good spirits drained away. Outside the evening pressed like paint against the window, and all she could see as she looked into the glass was her own reflection, the image clear and remarkably well-defined.
Hydrophobic
Eddie Cranston asked my sister to marry him three times before she stopped saying no. The first time he’d come with flowers and gone down in front of her on one knee, even though he was a big man and the position was difficult for him. The second time he asked her he put it in writing and then stood on the corner across from our house, so she’d know where to find him when she wanted to look. A postal strike delayed the letter but still he kept standing there three days in the rain—which impressed her enough that she went out to him, told him directly that he was a heathen and there must be no mingling of the heathen and the saved. So he said that he’d do whatever she wanted, anything at all if it made her change her mind. That’s when she told him about the Holy Spirit, the need for forgiveness and a cleansing of sin. That should do it, my father had said, turning away from the window and shaking his head. If he’s got any sense now he’ll give up and go home. But instead Eddie told her he’d think about it, and in the end said Okay, if that’s what it takes.
We were eleven days now from the end of February, and I was thinking that the water would be cold. The grass beneath us was brittle with frost, and
the ice spread like filigree from the banks around the water, reaching out like fairy fingers towards the belly of the Lough.
How you doin? Eddie asked me. You okay?
I nodded. How you doin? I said.
I’m okay, he said. I’m alright.
I didn’t believe him. For a man who couldn’t swim he was taking it very well, but I had felt the cool damp of his skin when he took my hand on the way into the church. I knew he was afraid.
It was too early, really, for an outdoor baptism. The only one I’d ever seen had been in the summer, two dozen people in white robes with Bibles standing face front to the Irish Sea, lapped by the water and equidistant like the driftwood pillars of an obsolete pier. We’d spent that day in the Sperrin Mountains, were on our way back along the Antrim coast, headed for Whiteabbey where the hospital was when my sister saw them and made us pull over for a better look. There was a family of swans in the reeds by the water, an elegant female and three grey cygnets; my father and I stood watching them till my sister called us over, crouched down beside me and made me look along her arm. Reminds me of Emily, my father said—my Aunt Emily who had been to Israel, who had gone with her church to the Dead Sea. When the bus had stopped to change a flat tyre practically everyone had stripped to their swimsuits and offered their wounds to the heavy brine before reboarding the bus and going on to En Gedi. Only my aunt had remained on the shore, where she stood with their cameras and other possessions and watched as the rest of the congregation descended until they were nothing but knobs of saffron, ash-grey, and auburn against the even, eggshell green of the Sea. She’d gone in later when they got to the Spa. You can’t drown in it, she told me, the water won’t let you. One minute you’re standing, just touching bottom, and the next something starts to upend you, lifts you up by the balls of your feet and tips you over; you keep coming up whatever you do. And you can only stay in for a little while, or the pull of the minerals saps all your strength. Once you come out you go straight to the showers, and then you can sleep, or buy ice cream, or a lovely tall glass of something cold to drink. There had been some, she said, who’d refused to shower, who, having bathed in the salt tears of Jesus, would not give them back to the Sea. Fools, my aunt had called them, fools to let their faith eat away at their skin.
Departures Page 2