by Jon McGregor
Is that so, Mary murmured, looking closely. Mary Friel, she said softly, as if trying to remember writing those words, as if she wasn't sure that it had ever been her name at all. He didn't say anything. Sarah moved closer to them, looking over her mother's shoulder.
She told me they panicked when you didn't come back, he said, and maybe Julia took this in case there was some trouble about it. She told me they tried to find you but there wasn't enough information here. She looked, and nodded.
Well now, she said, taking the card from David's hands and laying it down on the table without quite letting go. I suppose it's my turn now. Would you get me those albums from the bureau in my room? she said, over her shoulder, and Sarah turned towards the door, gesturing with her head for Eleanor to go with her. They listened to the two of them walking down the hall and away into another room.
Mary turned to him, and put her hand on his, and he realised immediately that he knew what she was going to tell him, and that there was nothing he could do to stop her saying it aloud.
What you should understand, she said very quietly, letting go of the card and stepping back slightly, is that most girls would have given false names to the nurses, you know? For fear of someone being told.
She didn't look at him as she spoke, and at first he wasn't quite sure what she'd said.
Absolutely, she said, they'd have given false names. That's what I did, she said.
I can't find them here, Sarah called through from her mother's bedroom, and Mary left the room to go and help her.
So when they sat down on the long plump sofa opposite the gas fire, Mary adjusting the cushions behind her and opening the first of the albums out across their laps, they knew, they both knew what was happening. But neither of them said anything about it. Sarah, standing back again, watching from the kitchen doorway, didn't know, and so perhaps it was for her that they kept quiet. Eleanor, sitting at the table in the window again, didn't know, although she immediately saw some small change in David's manner, and in his voice, and so perhaps it was also for her that they kept quiet. Or perhaps it was because they weren't quite sure and they both preferred, for the moment, not to know.
Well then, Mary began. I suppose my story's longer than yours, on account of my being around a lot longer, so it's a good job we're sitting down. He smiled, and leant a little closer towards her, a little closer to the pictures in the album.
So, she said. This is the first photo of us. This is us at my sister Cathy's wedding, all of us except Jack, who was away. I'm fifteen, that's me there, see? This would have been just before I went over to England for the first time, she said. Just before we went to the hiring fair in Deny.
He listened to the words, to the soft drifting sound of her voice, and he looked at the pictures. He found his hand moving towards each photograph the way Mary's had done at the table, as though his fingers might feel something more than he could find with his eyes, some extra detail, some texture or colour or life. But there was only the glossy press of the cellophane laid over each page, the slight ridge of each photograph's edge.
She talked on, explaining each picture, talking around it, telling the story of growing up in such a large family, of having to follow her brothers in travelling for work, of what had happened in London, of coming home to raise a family of her own. She sent Sarah back to her room to look out the biscuit tin from under her bed, with her rainy-day money in; will you look now, she said, that's the same tin I had back then. The words came easily, the story tumbling out with the pictures the way that she'd always imagined it would, sitting in a room with the fixed and silent attention of a man like this, her long-rehearsed words filling the room. She talked on, and he listened, and he asked questions, and she answered, and she was still talking by the time Sarah had turned on the side lights, and cleared the table, and twice offered them another pot of tea.
And when she had finished they both sat together for a time, not speaking, their hands touching lightly against each other, both knowing what needed to be said now but neither of them wanting to be the one to begin.
62 Bill for room and board, Conway's of Letterkenny, June 2000
As they were leaving, Mary produced a package of photographs, reprints of the ones she'd shown him in the album. It was neatly tied with string, and wrapped in a plastic bag to keep it out of the rain. I'd still like you to have these though, she said, all the same. If you'd like them. David took the package, and nodded, and tried to say yes, thank you, I would. Eleanor moved away to the car, and Sarah backed away into the house, as if they thought they should make way for one last private moment; but as the two of them stood there they could do little more than smile.
I'm sorry, said David.
Oh, not a bit, said Mary. It's you that's come all this way now. He shrugged. I should be apologising to you. I think Sarah got a bit carried away with herself there, I think maybe she found what she wanted to find, you know? I think she didn't stop to be sure. She only said you were coming a few days ago, I haven't had a chance to . . . she said, her voice fading, her hands reaching for what she was trying to say. It would have been nice though, wouldn't it? she said. Before it was too late. She stopped, and closed her eyes, and he thought about calling Sarah back outside. But it's okay, she said, finally. I don't mind. And I don't think you'll mind, will you?
No, he said. No, I won't.
It's better than nothing though, isn't it? she said, almost smiling, and he could only nod in reply.
They didn't drive straight to the hotel. It was earlier than they'd expected, and Eleanor said they should have a look at the scenery while there was still some light. They drove north out of Letterkenny, following a road he half remembered from his previous visit, heading up towards the Fanad peninsula. They didn't speak much. Neither of them seemed certain what to say.
Are you glad you came, at least? Eleanor asked eventually, and he took so long to answer that she thought he hadn't heard her. They drove into a small market town, coming to a river at the bottom of a steep hill, and as they crossed an old stone bridge he glanced at her and said yes, yes I am.
Well, she said. That's the main thing. They followed the road out of the town, through another small village, and out to the shore of a long narrow bay, pulling off the road on to a gravelled car park by a slipway. He turned the engine off, and they watched a pair of men working on a fish farm in the middle of the bay.
I was expecting more people though, he said. Not that it matters now. She shifted in her seat, turning her body towards him, waiting for him to say more. He opened the car door. I thought there'd be a whole crowd of them there, he said, waiting to meet me. I didn't think it would just be the two of them like that. I think I thought it would be more of a get-together, he said, swinging his legs out and resting his feet on the gravel.
Maybe that would have come later, she said softly. He looked at her, and she saw for the first time the disappointment he was feeling, etched across his face, darkening in his eyes.
Maybe, he said.
He got out of the car and wandered over to the water. She reached for the door handle on her side, but stopped, letting her hand fall as she watched him kicking small stones from the concrete slipway into the sea. She thought he might pick one up and skim it across the water, remembering when she'd first taught him how, a young woman showing her landlocked boyfriend the way to search out a flat stone and curl his finger around its corner, to bend his knees as he flicked it across the waves. She remembered his boyish delight when he'd finally made one bounce, and she wondered whether she'd ever really imagined, then, still being with him now, still being able to see that fizzing, sparking, skinny young man in the ageing figure he'd become, with his greying hair, his loosening skin, his tired and heavy heart. She couldn't remember being able to think that far ahead.
He didn't skim any stones. He kept his hands in his pockets, and his eyes down, and the waterproofed men on the fish-farm rafts finished up their work, and a pair of diggers on the other
side of the bay fell quiet and after a few minutes he got back into the car.
It's getting dark, he said. Shall we go back to the hotel?
She waited until he'd run a bath and settled into it before asking him anything else. She put the lid down on the toilet and sat there, watching him smooth soap lather up each of his arms and across his chest, watching him slide down into the water to rinse it off.
She said, David, were you surprised though? The way it turned out? He looked at her, sitting up a little straighter. He splashed water over his face, and wiped it away with his hands. She said, tentatively, I mean, could you not have asked a few more questions before we came over? Didn't the dates seem wrong from the start?
I don't know, he said. It seemed to just about fit. I think it was Sarah who got the dates muddled. You know she was doing all this without telling her mother? he said, turning to Eleanor. Eleanor's eyes widened and she shook her head.
No, she said. Oh no, really? David nodded, and shrugged, and sat forward to wash his feet.
Maybe I knew all along, he said. Maybe Mary did too. Maybe we were both just kidding ourselves, really. She leant towards him, her face in her hands and her elbows on her knees, waiting for him to go on. He looked at her, almost apologetically. I wanted it to be her, he said. I so much wanted it to be her. And I assumed Sarah was talking to her mother about it, checking things. I just didn't know. I thought it was worth taking the chance. He sat up straighter, sluicing handfuls of water across his body. I had all this stuff, he said, waving his hands as if to conjure the photos and scrapbooks out of thin air. I just wanted to hear what she would say, he said. He slipped back down into the water, closing his eyes and laying his hands across his face, and she stood up to leave.
But there was so much more I would have told her Eleanor, he said, his voice muffled by his hands. There was so much I wanted to be able to say. She looked at him.
I know, she said. He lowered his hands, and looked at her.
I know, she said again.
She closed the bathroom door and left him to it, turning on the television news, looking at the supper menu and the tourist leaflets in the folder by the bed, wondering what he thought he was going to do now. Later, she heard the water draining from the bath, and the rattle of it being refilled, and she looked up to see him coming out, avoiding her eyes, sitting on the edge of the bed with water trickling down his hunched back. She said nothing, but undressed quickly and quietly, slipping into the bathroom and closing the door behind her. She expected to find him asleep when she came back out, or watching television, or sitting blankly by the window, or even to have gone out walking and left her a note. So she was surprised, when she opened the bathroom door, to find him waiting for her, with his towel wrapped around his waist and a look in his eyes that she recognised at once.
Really? she said, arching an eyebrow and taking a towel to dry her hair, nodding over at the supper menu: aren't you hungry?
Really, he said, moving towards her, placing his shaking hands against her warm damp skin.
It was always almost the same. The unbuttoning of the back of the skirt. Half a smile at the corner of the mouth. Her hand, sooner or later, on the back of his head. Sometimes the smile would come first, sometimes the unbuttoning, and sometimes, catching him by surprise, the hand pressing lightly on the back of his head, making him kneel.
They would almost always be in the bedroom, and almost always on the bed, the curtains closed or half open, the window hauled up or bolted down, the lights on or off or lowered. Sometimes the rain would hurtle across the roof and against the window while he pulled her shirt or her sweater up over her head, pressing his mouth against her neck and her shoulder and her collarbone, kissing her throat until her familiar faint sighs brushed against the top of his head. Sometimes the evening's light seemed to last for hours, the warmth throbbing up from the hot dry streets and in through the open window while they lay naked together on the bed. Sometimes the sky would be flat and still and grey.
There would be the feel of her thighs beneath the stretched fingers of his hands, hot and red from the bath, still smelling of soap and towel, or cold from a long day outside. The skin gradually less smooth than it had once been, less soft, her waist a little fuller, her legs a little heavier, and what Kate had once called her creases becoming ever more pronounced beneath the touch of his own ageing hands.
Sometimes it would be snowing, and the room would be filled with a wavering white light, shadows and refractions falling across the walls.
She would step backwards, and sink on to the bed, and lie back with her legs trailing to the floor, both of her hands pushing against the back of his head, and he would follow her with his mouth.
Sometimes, when they were older, his knees would make a cracking sound as he lowered himself to the floor. I think I'm getting too old for this, he would say, and she would shush him as she worked her fingers into his hair. Sometimes his jaw would click, loudly, and they would both have to stop and laugh for a moment.
It would be in the morning, when neither of them were in a hurry to go out, or it would be in the afternoon when they both got home, or it would be last thing at night. It would almost always be the last thing at night.
She would shift on the edge of the bed, and make the sounds he liked to hear, and almost always reach that moment, the jerking forward of her head, the sudden lift of her legs around his ears, the look of someone bolting awake from a dream before settling gently down with a long slow sigh.
He would trail his fingers across her waist, her belly, her breasts. He would pinch her skin. He would stand up - and sometimes it would take him longer to stand than it might once have done, pushing himself up from the floor with a hand on the edge of the mattress, rubbing his knees - and he would look down at her, stretched out, lying across their bed in the bedroom they had shared for so long.
There were times when they went without these things for weeks at a time, months, a year. There were times when they undressed in the evenings with their backs to each other, or in another room, climbing into two halves of a silent bed and staring at opposite walls of the room in the near-darkness. There were times when they slept in different rooms, and woke a little colder than usual, blinking, trying to remember what was wrong.
Sometimes he would bring her a cup of tea in the morning and put it by the side of the bed and open the curtains a little. He would watch her, as fragile-looking in sleep still as she had always been, her eyelashes flickering, her clenched hands drawn comfortingly up against her face, and want nothing more than to climb into bed beside her, to curl up into her warmth. He would wake her, a hand resting on her shoulder and his voice low and steady, and tell her that he wanted her to take the pills before he went to work.
Sometimes she would bring him a cup of tea in the morning, and he would already be awake. Sitting up against the wall in the corner of Kate's old bed, reading, or watching the grey light brighten through the open curtains. Unable to sleep because he'd already slept through most of the previous day. Without his work, he told her once, the work he'd spent his whole life either doing or preparing for, he'd been lost for what to do with his time. I feel so tired all the time now, he would tell her, his voice flat and low. I feel uncomfortable, like I need a bath or like I need clean clothes. I feel like I'm letting you down and I can't do anything about it, he would say, his head lowered, his voice drained. I know, she would tell him, touching his hand. Really. I know.
The doctor told me I should find a new hobby, he said to her once, coming back from an appointment. They caught each other's eye in sudden recognition, and laughed for the first time in weeks.
She would almost always open her eyes after a few moments, propping herself up on her elbows and looking at him expectantly, or sitting forward and drawing him towards her, kissing and stroking and taking him into her mouth until he was ready to join with her on the bed. Sometimes it took him longer to be ready than it once had. It seemed to be one of the things t
hat happened, with the cracking knees, the thinning hair, the fatter waist; a slower response of the body to the prompting of the excited mind, or the mind simply slipping for a moment to something else altogether; to whose car alarm that was going off outside, to how Kate was getting on at school, to whether tomorrow was the day for putting out the bins.
Sometimes the phone would ring, and they would ignore it, letting its shrill little grab for attention go unanswered while they moved closer together in the familiar way. Sometimes the phone would ring and one or other of them would say sorry, hold on, but it might be, I was expecting, and leave the other one waiting, impatiently or patiently or finding their place in the book they were halfway through.
They tried to use the lounge again after Kate left home, when they had the house to themselves once more. They tried - after a slow stunned month of feeling lost in their own home, of not knowing quite what shape their days should take now that they didn't have a daughter to feed or provide for or watch growing up - to undress each other on the rug in front of the new sofa, and to kiss, and to relearn what it meant to be just the two of them in their world. But they would hear voices somewhere, footsteps, and turn to the door suddenly, or check for the third time that the curtains really were closed, or be distracted by the draught coming under the kitchen door, and they would almost always move back up the stairs to their bed.
Sometimes he would shape a hand around her breast, and hold it there, still, feeling its weight as they moved.
Sometimes he would reach behind her and trace his fingers up and down her spine until she shivered.