“Number?” he said briskly.
“It’s in my room,” she said, with an air of misery.
“Change?” he said, and he rooted in his jeans pocket. “Here you go,” he said, handing her a fifty-pence piece.
“Oh fuck,” Catherine moaned. “I’m not even dressed.”
“It’s a phone, Catherine. Come on. We’re getting this over with, and then we’re going to drink some stolen wine.”
“Some what?”
“From the back of our Eddie’s lorry,” he said grimly, as he pushed her towards her bedroom door. “I think I earned that much. Anyway, I’m fairly sure he was stealing it in the first place.”
As she was finding the editor’s number in her address book, a new thought occurred to her. “I don’t want you standing beside me while I’m talking to him,” she shouted out to James.
He appeared at the door. “You’re terrible, Muriel,” he said, nodding towards the poster on the wardrobe.
“Seriously,” Catherine said. “You’re not standing beside me.”
“I haven’t the slightest interest in standing beside you,” he sniffed.
“And no listening at the door.”
“No listening at the door? No getting back in the door if you don’t do what you’re meant to do. Now go on.” He pointed. “And don’t come back in here without a job to your name. Do you want our poor children to starve?”
“Oh, God,” Catherine moaned through her laughter as he marched her to the outer hall. “Why did you ever have to come home?”
* * *
That night was for all of them. Amy and Lorraine came home from their exams, and they launched themselves at James, whooped and cheered and even cried because he was home, and there were moments when Catherine felt, again, like an outsider as she watched them, as she saw how easy and how happy they were with each other, but that went away; the way that James behaved towards her sent it away. That night was for all of them, cooking dinner together in the house and heading out into the night afterwards, down to Searson’s and on to O’Donoghue’s and on to dance in Rí-Rá, and stumbling, laughing, home through the streets. And the next day—Catherine postponed her journey back to Longford—was for her and James, wandering around the city, going to IMMA and St. Patrick’s Cathedral and into the gardens behind Dublin Castle, all the places she had not been to yet, all the places it had not occurred to her yet to go, and through campus, where she felt as though she was showing the place off to him, and on towards the National Gallery, except that they did not end up in the National Gallery; they ended up, instead, in a strange little pub called the Lincoln’s Inn. And that night was another night for all of them, and the next day was not a day, either, when Catherine felt like taking the train home, and that day she and James stayed in Baggot Street and talked again for hours and hours, and that night was another night of drinking and dancing, and the next day was Friday, and Catherine finally had to face up to Longford, and to the long, empty months ahead, and, feeling really heartbroken, she packed her rucksack, and she said goodbye to the girls, and James said he would go with her as far as Connolly station, that he would help her with her bags. And at the station, as they waited, Catherine said, I want you to hear something with me; I want you to listen to the lyrics of this song. Listen. Listen.
* * *
“Dreams fled away. What’s the rest of that line?”
“What line?” James said lazily, from the other end of the blanket.
“You know, from the Thomas Kinsella poem, the one about September.”
“I don’t know.”
“It was on the Leaving curriculum. You have to have done it. Everyone had to do it.”
“I don’t know, Reilly. You’re meant to be the poet.” He pulled his legs towards him, let them drop back again. She felt him wriggle in closer to her.
“I don’t know what’s happening to my memory,” she said, trying to ignore her heart, the way it was going faster.
James sighed. “Dreams fled away. And the fire brought a crowd in?”
“Those are two completely different poems! The second one’s Austin Clarke. Did you seriously think that was the line?”
“I don’t know, I told you,” he said impatiently. “I don’t remember my bloody Leaving Cert homework.”
“When night stirred at sea—”
“Lookit, can you stir over a bit on the blanket there, please, while you’re speaking of stirring. I’ve got far too much of the grass.”
“We need two blankets, really,” Catherine said hopefully.
He made a noise of exasperation. “Well, I’m not going into the house again. I just got another earful from my mother about this fucking wedding.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She’s still nagging at me to go. And to bring you with me. Fuck’s sake.”
“Well, I don’t mind.”
“You must be joking.” He sat up; his shadow dropped onto her. “Whose side are you on?”
“OK, OK,” she said, holding up a hand. “I just don’t want to cause trouble.”
“Trouble?” he almost spat. “You’re not causing trouble. You’re helping me out.”
“Well, good, then,” she said uncertainly.
“Good,” he echoed, and seeming satisfied, he sank back down.
* * *
James, when Catherine had phoned him earlier that week, had announced that she was going to join him at his parents’ house in Leitrim on Friday evening and stay for the whole weekend. It was a masterful plan, he declared, because it would mean that he could go down home, which it was about time he did anyway, having been back in Ireland for over a month, and having Catherine with him would mean that he could visit his parents without having to go to the awful neighbor’s wedding to which he had been invited, because Catherine’s presence would get him off the hook. At the same time, it would mean that the two of them could see each other again, because there was only so much you could talk about on the phone. Catherine lived on the same train line that he would be taking to Leitrim, so they could meet halfway and travel down together, and on Sunday they could leave together again, and she would get off the train in Longford, and he would go on to Dublin.
“So it’s the perfect solution,” he said, sounding very pleased with himself. “God, I would have been great to have around during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“I can’t come,” Catherine said, hoping that none of the journalists in the office around her would hear. She covered her mouth with her hand. “There’s no way I could get away.”
“What do you mean?” he said impatiently. “There’s a breaking Longford Missile Crisis, is there? I thought they only let you write the Births and Deaths?”
“It’s not work,” she said, as quietly as she could. “It’s just home.”
James said nothing.
“Hello?” she said, a little desperately. “I mean, I’d love to. I just wouldn’t be able to get away for—”
“Catherine,” James cut across her. “Not this again. Not this complete shite about your parents. I’m tired of listening to you talking this nonsense. You’re not in primary school anymore. You can do what you want.”
“I can’t just up and go to your house for the weekend. What would I tell them?”
“Why do you have to tell them anything?”
“I just have to.”
“So you tell them that you’re going up to Dublin. You live in Dublin, remember? You’re just visiting Longford for the summer.”
“No I’m not.”
“Sorry? What are you telling me? You’ve decided not to go back to college?”
“No. You know what I mean. I mean, yeah of course I live in Dublin, but this is my actual home.”
“Catherine,” James said sharply. “You have a flat in Dublin. As far as your parents are concerned, you have a reason to be in it this weekend. Tell them—I don’t know—tell them it’s Amy’s birthday.”
“I stayed up the weekend for Amy’s birth
day in May.”
“Lorraine’s birthday, then. Lorraine’s engagement party. Lorraine’s funeral. I don’t care. Tell them whatever you have to tell them. Tell them that you’re getting the half six train to Dublin, and get yourself to the train station. Then wait for the train passing through from Dublin and get on it. I will be on it. I will be keeping a seat for you.”
“I don’t know, James. Someone might—”
“Pat Burke? You’re not using the Pat fucking Burkes of the world to get out of this, Reilly. I want to see you on that train. I will see you on the train. In fact, just to make absolutely sure that you get on the train, I will see you on the platform in Longford. Never before in the history of this country has that sentence contained such excitement and anticipation.”
“I don’t know,” Catherine had begun to say. But James had hung up.
When she got off the phone, she went into the kitchen, where Anna was filling in a coloring book at the table while their mother stood at the sink, rinsing lettuce and radishes for a salad.
“You were talking on the phone an awful long time,” Anna said without looking up from her page.
“Was I?” Catherine said, glancing at her mother’s back.
Anna nodded, a twist of distaste suddenly taking over her face; it looked almost grotesquely adult on her little features. “How the hell can you have that much to say to anyone?”
Catherine burst out laughing; it was so clearly a mimicry of something their mother must have said while the phone call was going on. Now her mother said Anna’s name sharply, but she did not glance with a grin at Catherine, her eyebrows raised, the way she did whenever they both heard the child say something funny or precocious or endearing. She kept her back turned, looking out the window at the lawn, or at the meadows, or at the hedgerow or at the sky; at the young calves, bucking and leaping, or at the plastic swing, drifting, or at the white garden chair, upturned by Anna or by a gust of wind. Catherine had left a book out there, she remembered; she went out to bring it in.
In truth, it was not just the question of how to get to Carrigfinn for the weekend which bothered Catherine; it was also the question of what going to Carrigfinn for the weekend meant. Days with him. Nights with him, without the company—the buffer—of the girls. That day in Dublin, the Pat Burke day, they had hugged goodbye at the station, and Catherine had wondered if she was meant to understand it, what was going on between them. Because something was going on. She felt so close to him already by that stage, and the phone calls that followed confirmed it; the way James spoke to her during the phone calls confirmed it. The directness. The openness. That first afternoon in Baggot Street, it had shocked her a little, to hear him talk about how much he was looking forward to seeing Amy and Lorraine again, about how he could hardly wait to see them; outside of television, she had never heard a boy talk so sincerely, so emotionally, before. She had actually squirmed, listening to him. If he had been joking, if he had been being ironic, that would be one thing, but this was not irony; this was a strange, unafraid openness. And now, during their phone calls, it was the same, and again, she felt herself wanting to scuttle away from it somehow; from the way he told her that he missed her, that he wanted to see her, that he wanted to have her company again. Always she listened for the irony, for the trace of mockery, but it was never there; he was serious. He was saying aloud the stuff that, Catherine now realized, she had always thought you were meant to keep silent.
And of course the real irony was in her own reaction. Because she had wanted this, for so long, or had believed she wanted it; she had spent so long trying to get close to various boys in this way. And now she had it, apparently. Now she had someone who talked like this to her. And what was she meant to do with it? Because James was not her type. The way he talked so much. The way he looked. The red hair, clumped, untamed. The freckles like cowshit spatters. The clothes: baggy jumpers, worn-down Docs, navy socks ribbed and faded, jeans bunched in with a canvas belt. He was grand, he was fun to talk to—but beyond that, no. And yet, she was enjoying him so much, so much more than she had enjoyed anyone before. She felt her brain grow, talking to him. She felt herself wanting to live her life so much more fully. There had been nobody like this for her before. So did that not mean something? After all, what did she really know? Of it, of being with someone, of being—was this what it was?—in a relationship with someone, of actually being in love, instead of just thinking you were? Instead of all the things she was, by now, so accustomed to doing: storing up every sighting of them, counting the moments of eye contact as though they were coins, as though they could get you somewhere, buy you passage to somewhere? This was not how it was with James, and so maybe this, after all, was what it was meant to be like. Maybe she had misunderstood this, as she had misunderstood so many things, all these years. That first night he had phoned her, the excitement and gladness she had felt at hearing his voice had unnerved her, and she had heard it in his voice, too—and something more in his voice, as well: a kind of relief. A relief that she was glad to hear from him. And what did that mean?
It was Lorraine’s birthday, she told her mother, and Amy was throwing her a small party; at “small party,” her mother shot Catherine a look which made clear not just that she did not believe her, but that she was disappointed that Catherine, in lying to her about her reasons for going to Dublin for the weekend, would come up with so pathetic an offering. But getting her mother to believe that she would be staying in Baggot Street until Sunday evening was all that mattered. She left the Leader office at six, and walked to the station, and she watched as the half six train to Dublin departed, and she sat and waited for the one coming in the other direction. As it pulled in ten minutes later, James was standing with his head out the carriage door, waving; Catherine was immediately mortified. He looked insane. He was doing, she knew, some kind of regal wave; pretending to be royalty arriving into Longford. She saw people on the platform notice him, raise their eyebrows at him warily, or with bafflement, or in outright disgust. A man in the uniform of the train company shook his head slowly as he waited for the carriages to come to a stop. He put a hand to James’s door.
“That’s not safe,” he said.
“He’s—” Catherine started to say, coming up next to him, but she was interrupted by James, leaping out of the carriage to hug her, all arms and tightness and laughter and saying her name, over and over. Her name.
“Hi,” Catherine said, her voice a high-pitched, awkward trail.
“Can you let these people behind you on there, please,” the Iarnród Éireann man said angrily.
“Oh, we’re getting on as well,” James said, still with his arms around Catherine.
“Well, will you make up your mind, please,” said Iarnród Éireann.
“James,” Catherine hissed.
“Oh,” he said, squeezing her again. “It’s so good to see you.”
From beside them, a click of the tongue. “For fuck’s sake. Fuckin’…”
Carrigfinn was a farmhouse, whitewashed with black windowsills, a lawn stretching out in front of it. A long tarmacadam drive came down to meet the lane.
“God, I was always so jealous of people who had tarmacadam around their houses when I was a kid,” Catherine said as they walked through the gates. “They could cycle or do roller-skating or whatever they liked.”
“Really?” James said, considering this. “Well, we don’t have any roller skates, but feel free to cycle around the house all weekend if you like.”
“Ha ha.”
“There’s the old fella. Tidy yourself up a bit.”
“What?” Catherine said, alarmed.
“I’m joking, Reilly, for crying out loud.” He raised a hand. “Well, Daddy!” he called.
A man turned from the garage door, which he was painting, Catherine now saw, covering its brown planks over with a vivid green.
“Ye got this far,” he said, putting his brush carefully down and coming towards them. He was tall, with a hea
d of white curls; he wore a pair of navy overalls smeared in several places with green, the sleeves rolled up. His arms were tanned. He came a few steps towards them and stopped, one hand on his hip, the other reaching out, she saw with a jolt of shock, to James.
“Well,” he said, as James, repeating the same word, went right up to him and planted a kiss on his cheek. His father’s hand stayed on James’s shoulder a moment, held the bone of it, then fell away.
“We got a lift out with Fidelma McManus and the mother,” James said, stepping back to where Catherine stood.
“Jaysus, I hope you had plenty of news for them,” his father said with the trace of a smirk. He nodded to Catherine. “Hello.”
“Hi, Mr. Flynn,” Catherine said, sounding yappy and absurd. “Nice to meet you,” she added, in a cooler tone.
“Who’s this lassie?” he said to James. “Tell her not to be calling me names like that.”
“This is Catherine, Daddy,” James said. “Catherine, this is my father, Mick.”
“Very nice to meet you, Catherine,” his father said, and they shook hands.
“Catherine lives with the girls above in Dublin.”
His father made a face. “What girls?”
James made a noise of exasperation. “You know what girls, Daddy, for fuck’s sake. The girls I went to school with. Amy and Lorraine.” He rolled his eyes at Catherine, who tried to laugh. “What girls,” he shook his head.
His father shrugged. “Ah, sure,” he said, and he winked at Catherine. “Sure I can’t keep track of you.”
“You can keep track of what you want to keep track of,” James shot at him.
“And where are you from, Catherine?”
“You went far,” he said drily to James, when she told him. He looked back to the garage door. “And what do you think of my labors?”
“You’re turning the place into a post office, is it?”
Tender Page 6