Ghost Moth

by Michele Forbes

  “Just put it there.” Tom pointed to the table by the window, “away from the rolls of fabric.” The young woman put the tea down and then left the room.

  Katherine cast her eyes over to Tom, who was now writing something in his black notebook. She felt excited by everything about him. The strong angle of his jaw. The broadness of his back and shoulders. The fairness of his skin, his hair, the soft expression in his eyes when he smiled. The large expanse of his palms when he touched her. The coarse strands of chest hair, which were now sticking out over the top of his shirt where he had pulled his tie loose a little and which she probably should not be seeing. Everything about him.

  Tom indicated to Mr. Agnew to come over to the worktable and continued to issue instructions to him.

  “The coat needs to fall lower than the dress, of course—”

  “I’m busy, Mr. McKinley. I’ll see what I can manage,” Mr. Agnew replied sharply, interrupting him.

  However, Tom kept talking, as though Mr. Agnew had said nothing. “—have a mock-up of the coat for the next fitting and follow the designs exactly as I have laid out here. Understand?”

  With that, Tom left Mr. Agnew reluctantly studying the designs at the table and walked toward Katherine. As she looked up at him, he kissed her full on the mouth and then, pulling away from her, he whispered to her quickly, “Meet me at Corn Market on the corner of Arthur Street at seven.”

  Then he turned back to Mr. Agnew and said, “And help Miss Fallon out of the mock-up. We don’t want her to stab herself on the pins—we’ll leave that to Don José in the last act!”

  Tom emerged from the crowd on Arthur Street precisely at seven, and Katherine felt herself shrink at the sight of him, as though she was pure heart and nothing else, her body a pulse.

  “Am I late? I walked the town for a while and I lost track of time,” he said.

  “No you’re not late at all. You walked the town?” Her voice was light, surprised. “How lovely.”

  He smiled.

  It tilted her world.

  “And what would you say to a cup of tea?” he said.

  The noise of the tearooms at the Café Royal appeared to exist independently of its makers. It hung like a weighty halo of sound. Like a clamorous, constant din no matter how the arrangement of people changed beneath it. Even had the tearooms emptied in a single rush, it felt as though the gabble would continue unabated—a vaporous, omnipresent tearoom music.

  It was not just the excited voices of the customers that accumulated as a ringing canopy under the decorative ceiling; it was every sound that was made in that room. It was the screeching of chairs on the wooden floor as people marked their arrivals and departures, and the jittery creaking of adjustment as they positioned themselves comfortably in their chairs at the small tables covered in white tablecloths. It was the clanging of the cutlery on silver trays by the exasperated waitressess, who smelled of sweat and soap. Their clumsy, deliberate, unrepenting handling syncopated with what seemed like their thoughts of private vengeance. It was the clatter of Delft by waiters too unimpressed by their own busyness to care. And it was the singular holler of orders being flung across the room like lone birds swept up in a wind-filled sky.

  Wasn’t it as though the light had created them? He and she and all life in the Café Royal? she thought. They glistened. Everything glistened. The Art Deco lamps suspended from the high ceiling were like large, glowing soup bowls dropping into the cloud of sound. Light ricocheted off the gilt-edged mirrors on the four walls, off the glass display cabinets, off the silvered glinting slices of knives, forks, and spoons, off the swinging glass doors that led into the kitchens, off the pearls and paste that hung around the porcelain necks of the fine ladies. Not even the plumes of smoke rising from the cigarettes of the customers diminished its radiance.

  It was its own world.

  The large doors leading into the tearooms from the foyer swung backward and forward as people bustled in and out. Nearby, a high-spirited couple chatted about a film they had just seen. Other people were looking out for the arrival of friends. Four young women sitting together chimed together like a carillon, their words ringing around them. One woman sat on her own just to the left of the doorway, every so often lifting her head to view those coming and going. She twisted her teacup on its saucer, occasionally tipping it to peruse its contents. As she lifted the cup to her mouth, small drops of tea fell onto the saucer like brown baby lemmings falling into a shiny white sea.

  Never before had she seemed so aware of the detail of her surroundings. Never before so keenly as this.

  Tom managed to order a pot of tea from a waitress who, as she arrived to take their order, was already leaving them. There was no point of stillness where the relationship between customer and waitress was acknowledged. The waitress’s front teeth stuck out and her pen did not stop moving on her order pad. She was a dreary creature in this circus of glass and light. She kept writing and walking, creating for herself a novel of calories and libations. She wove her way through the tiny alleyways between tables without needing to look where she was going, her front teeth leading the way.

  A huge pot of tea arrived almost immediately, deposited at their table en route as it were. The waitress was gone. Tom opened the lid of the teapot, his fingers protected by a paper napkin. Tea leaves floated in hot water; it had not yet become tea.

  “How many have you pocketed?” Katherine said wryly. Tom looked puzzled and slightly taken aback. A moment passed. “The sugar lumps. They’ve been disappearing into your pocket.” Her voice was colored with mock accusation.

  “Not exactly the worst habit in the world,” he replied defensively. Then his face relaxed. “I’ll eat them later, on the walk home. You don’t miss a trick. Or here”—he changed tack—“you have them, then!”

  With this, he plunged his hand into his pocket and dumped the small handful of off-white lumps across the table and into her lap. She yelped with delight at having caught him out, throwing her head back with laughter, her skirt now cradling his saccharine contraband. Quick as a flash, he lifted the teapot and made as if he was going to pour the hot, steamy contents over her sugared lap.

  “Do you like tea with your sugar?”

  He looked at her, his eyes smiling right at her. She grabbed at the teapot to stop him and felt the hot steel of the teapot burning her hand.

  They sat in the café as the evening unfolded and Tom told her a little about his work, pulling occasionally on his cigarette, about what shows he had designed costumes for, about his night-walks along the riverside. As he spoke, his eyes seemed never to tire of her and his smile remained gentle and confident. It seemed the easiest thing in the world for her to listen to his voice, which reached her through the noise of the café like sweet perfume.

  Not every night, but most evenings, he said, he followed the narrow dirt path along the Lagan’s embankment until it brought him home. He remembered his father used to take him along the same path when he was a child, but only recently had he begun to walk it again. Occasionally, he would check the Albert Clock at the end of High Street as he left the tailors’ rooms, to time his journey. Sometimes, particularly on moonless nights, he said, the shadows on the embankment merged so densely with one another that he could not tell where the path ended and where the water began—both a weave of ink black. On those nights, he had to test the ground as he moved to see whether hardened earth or yielding wet lay beneath his feet. He had to sniff the air to sense whether what lay before him was the thickness of clotted vegetation or the thin, cool envelope of the river’s breeze. Not even the orange light that eased across the river from the heart of the city could guide his way.

  “We’ll walk the embankment together,” he said “some night when the moon is full. I’ll show you.”

  Yes, yes, she would like that. She would like them to walk the embankment together, she said. She was enthralled by the way in which he seemed to draw joy from everything around him. Her world seemed wider.
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  When Tom walked her home through the city, people moved around them like eddies and currents before a squall. He sang to her along the upward slope of the Mountpottinger Road, past Cluan Place, across the junction at Beersbridge Road, past the Unitarian Church with its sign saying THE LORD GIVETH AND THE LORD TAKETH AWAY. His voice was so smooth, it had made her want to weep. He sang the “Indian Love Call” and “We’ll Gather Lilacs in the Spring” as they walked past The Mount, past Paxton Street. He bought her an ice cream at Fus-cos, near John Long’s Corner, and then sang her a vanilla and raspberry serenade as they crossed Isoline Street. A dome of soft memory in the making, creamy white, trickled with sugar sweetness, berry-berry red. Their tongues tasted childhood and their lips chilled and they walked together, creating a song line through east Belfast.

  They walked on down the final slope of the road until they reached the flat where Katherine lived. Popping the last of his ice cream into his mouth as though it were a tiny dunce’s hat, he kissed her cheek, his lips cold white. As he walked away, she could hear him sing quietly to himself, his voice moving on a curl of night air.

  She opened the street door with her key and made her way up the stairs to the flat where she lived above a chip shop. There was no effort to the climb; it was as though she were floating up the stairs. Never before had she felt this much alive.

  Entering the flat, she was greeted by her mother in the hallway. Her mother held a side plate with the remains of a sandwich on it and was on her way out to the kitchen.

  “Ah, Katherine”—her mother was unable to hide her disappointment—“George has been waiting all evening for you.” Katherine quickly looked at the clock in the hallway—it was now eleven o’clock—then back at her mother.

  “What?” she replied with an immediate sense of alarm, and walked quickly into the parlor, where George was waiting. The “good” cups and saucers were sitting on the table next to him, gold-rimmed and lady-thin. But George obviously had had more than enough tea, and the cups sat idle, like a rejected lot at an auction. They sat like George sat.

  He has every right to be even a little frosty with me, Katherine was thinking, as she had obviously forgotten that they had made arrangements to meet up, but George rose immediately with a smile and offered her a chair.

  “Sorry.” Her voice sounded strangely timorous now, after the laughing, after the singing, after the cold ice cream. She looked slightly confused. “I forgot about tonight. I had a costume fitting.... It took longer than I thought.... I . . .”

  “No, no.” George’s voice soothed the rising ripples of apology. “No, we didn’t make any plans for tonight, Katherine. I just called by because I wanted to see you.”

  She was stopped in her tracks.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “So,” George continued tenderly, “you’ve just come from the costume fitting? That was a late one.”

  Katherine looked at George, at his kind face and his gentle eyes, and heard herself say, “Yes.”

  She walked slowly over to the chair by the parlor table that George had offered her and sat down, absentmindedly brushing a thin sprinkle of sugar dust from the folds of her skirt onto the parquet floor of the parlor. The soles of her shoes slid across the tiny, glistening grains, as though the floor were slipping from under her.

  Her mother, having returned from the kitchen, was wearing a slightly embarrassed smile and was twisting the beads of her necklace in polite agitation.

  “What a long time you had to wait for this young lady, George!” Mrs. Fallon said, shaking her head. With a sudden impatience, she turned to Katherine. “Katherine, do you want some tea?”

  “No thanks, Mummy.”

  “And you’ll hardly want a sandwich this late.” Her mother was giving her the answer with the question.

  “No, I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Well, I’m hitting the hay now. Frank will be home in a minute. Vera has already gone to bed. George, give my regards to your mother and father.”

  “I certainly will, Mrs. Fallon. Good night.” George remained standing.

  “Good night, George.” Then quietly to Katherine: “You shouldn’t have kept that poor man waiting so long.”

  Katherine lifted her head to her mother, hoping her face would not betray the confusion she was feeling inside.

  “Good night, Mummy.”

  “And say a decade of the Rosary as usual before you go to bed,” Mrs. Fallon offered quietly.

  “Don’t worry, Mummy, I will,” said Katherine.

  Mrs. Fallon gave a series of small head nods, then closed the parlor door behind her with a gentle click.

  George immediately moved over to Katherine and swept his hand against her hair, then kissed her on the forehead, taking in the smell of her skin and the unfamiliar odors that now perfumed her. He pulled his chair closer to her and sat down. He took her hand, beginning, absentmindedly, to stroke his fingers along the elongated soft hollows between her knuckles.

  “You must be tired.”

  “No,” she replied simply. She looked at George. His black hair was brushed back from his forehead in a smooth, soft wave, his deep brown eyes each ringed with a tired gray smudge. She removed her hand from George’s gentle hold.

  The silence between them hung heavily. She could not help feeling that she should not have told George a lie about why she had been late in getting home. The lie now sat like another presence in the room, expecting to be fed.

  Then George smiled.

  “Talk to me,” he said. She was being uncharacteristically quiet. She wanted to say so much to George, but her mind was strangely still. And something within her began to feel a little desperate. Familiarity defined her relationship with George. They had been together for two years and at this stage could almost predict each other’s behavior. George was a good man, considerate and thoughtful and a little afraid of passion. But when she had been with Tom that night, everything had felt buoyant and possible and vital.

  She breathed deeply to blot out these thoughts of Tom and then opened her eyes wider to George; she did not want to exclude him. He reached and squeezed her hand, which was now resting on her lap. His touch warmed her; his tender confidence reassured her. If she ignored the lie, she told herself, if she chose not to feed it, it would go away.

  “How did your fitting go?” George was rubbing the tips of his fingers across her nails.

  “The fitting?” she said almost sharply. She could sense her heart beating faster. She had spoken too quickly, she realized. Her voice sounded too abrupt, her tone too shrill, too defensive.

  “Yes. Your fitting.” George said slowly and emphatically. “You said you were late because of a costume fitting.”

  “The fitting went fine.” She was shaking her head as she spoke, as if to denote that there was nothing, no, nothing different or unusual to report. “It’s all just a mock-up at the moment. There’s no real costume yet, but some adjustments to the sleeves need to be made, and to the length and to the waistband, and the neckline needed reshaping, and something at the back needs realigning; that was all.” She was shaking her head again.

  “Not a lot needs changing, then?” George retorted wryly.

  She looked at George, unable to respond to his irony. Her forehead creased a little. She could feel her mouth filling with saliva. She wanted to swallow.

  “Seems like a lot of carry-on just for a show,” he continued.

  “George . . . I’ve something to tell you,” she mumbled, unsure of how much she wanted to tell.

  George swept his hand across her hair again.

  “You look a little tired, Katherine.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What is it?” George, although cautious, could not, however, hide the impatience in his voice. “Is everything all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You seem a little—”

  “A little what?” She looked at George as she
cut him short. Her tone was defiant now.

  “You just seem a little annoyed at something, at me perhaps.”

  “Why should I be annoyed at you?” She looked at George with such coldness that it took him aback. He felt himself automatically pulling away from her.

  And everything seemed to be falling around her. The nicer George was being to her, the more difficult she was finding it to tell him what she wanted to tell him and the more hardened she grew. Something has altered. Let me tell you. We are altered. . . .

  From below them, they could hear the last customers leaving the fish and chip shop, muffled voices traveling down the street and then vanishing into the evening. The fug that had risen from the constant frying of fish and chips throughout the day and had hung between her and George as they sat in the parlor now settled heavily on the furniture, on the tablecloth, and on their clothes, with a spreading, greasy odor. George stood up from his chair and reached forward to lift the teacups from the table. He was suddenly feeling dispirited now and thought it best that he should go.

  “I’ll clear those away. Just leave them.” Katherine’s voice was sharp.

  “It’s no trouble, Katherine.”

  “No, please, leave them.” She was biting the air.

  “Just what is it that has you so angry?”

  Katherine fell silent for a few moments as she tried to gather her thoughts.

  “I’m not angry—you’re right, I’m tired, that’s all.” She lifted her head to look at George.

  “What do you want me to say, Katherine?” George could not disguise the chagrin in his voice.

  “I don’t know. Nothing. There’s nothing to say.” For the first time that evening, her tone was imploratory.

  George looked down at her hands, which were clenched into fists on her lap. He lifted each hand in turn and pulled the fingers gently open.

  She looked at George, the dark brown hues of his eyes deepening moment by moment.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—” she said, feeling the sting of tears well up in her eyes.