“What’s wrong with kissing somebody?” asks Katherine, trying her best to defend Maureen.
The three girls stop and stare at their mother.
“It’s yuck!” says Elsa. “And the nuns said that if you ever kiss someone, then that means you have to marry them, because nobody else will want you if you’ve already kissed somebody else.”
Maureen and Elizabeth are nodding in agreement.
“Oh really—is that what they told you?” Katherine frowns.
“Yes, Mummy. That’s what the nuns said. Didn’t you know that?” says Elizabeth with a serious expression on her face.
Katherine looks at the three girls. For a moment, she is lost for words. Then she pipes up, “Okay, I think the game is over, girls—time to sleep!”
Still chatting and arguing, the girls, nevertheless, climb obediently into their respective beds. Eventually, their babble calms and a sudden, still atmosphere descends on the room as they fall asleep.
When Katherine now checks on them, she quietly moves to each of their beds in turn. Elsa’s mouth is open slightly, and if Katherine looks closely enough, she can determine Elsa’s lower lip twitching with a tiny pulse. One of Elsa’s arms is stretched out underneath her head, her hand firmly grasping the wooden bars of the bedstead as though she is trying to save herself from falling off the world or floating away from it. Katherine knows only too well Elsa’s anxieties in falling asleep and thinks to herself now what a trusting child she is to ride this fear of nighttime again and again.
Katherine then brushes back a few strands of brown-black hair that have fallen softly over Maureen’s face, unveiling a young woman, not a child. The contours of Maureen’s face have been altering continuously through these summer weeks, so that now it is all future. And on the other side of Elsa lies Elizabeth, hidden under the blankets, so that only tufts of light brown hair stick out.
Katherine leaves the girls’ bedroom like a lioness reluctantly leaving her cubs, and before she goes downstairs, she pushes her own bedroom door back a little so she can get another quick glance of Stephen. He lies sprawled in his cot like a basket of spilled fruit, arms splayed alongside his head and open to the world, legs stretched over the little mountain he has made of his blankets, head settled into the downy hollow of his pillow. Katherine pulls his blankets up over his legs and chest. She can’t resist kissing him.
As Katherine makes her way to the kitchen, she looks out the window. It is as though there are two skies in one. Where the sun has set, on the far side of Cave Hill, the sky is an intense ball of golden light, bleeding beads of orange and fiery pink. The rest of the sky is a cool blue, peppered only here and there with dots of purple cloud.
Looking at the garden under this indecisive sky, she can see how overgrown it has become. Somehow during the resilient ring of daylight, she had not been so aware of this, as though growth checked itself under surveillance and issued forth only when the eye was averted. For now in the pearly streams of evening light, she can see how much the ivy has spread itself over every wall of the garden into the uneven flower beds, seething, it seems, right in front of her as it grows, and stretching its viny fingers down and under the honest chins of the nearby shrubs. What started as a tender touch has tightened and overtaken like an eager, parasitic love. A porraceous palette she sees through her kitchen window. There, the faint silvery white of the dead nettle. And there, the flat, delicate umbels of the ground elder. And there, in the midst of the falling dark, the ghostly outline of Madam Maureen’s fortune-telling tent, its sides now drooping with the settling weight of the moist evening air. How on earth did she not notice, when she was playing with the girls earlier, that their beds were still missing some sheets and blankets?
Out of the silence, the telephone rings. Katherine moves quickly from the kitchen out into the hallway to answer it. It is George, calling from the station.
“Katherine, I’m sorry, I was called into the station straight from work and I’m going to be home much later than I thought. Okay, love?” His voice sounds agitated.
“I was wondering, George. Everything all right?”
“Ach, reports of petrol-bomb attacks are coming in thick and fast and there’ve been arson attacks across the city, so it could be all hours before I’m back. Don’t wait up.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize things were that bad. Are the police out, too?”
“Yes—yes—listen, Katherine, I have to go.”
“George?”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t get a chance this morning to say sorry about yesterday, about shouting . . . when you were leaving . . . and the statuette . . . I didn’t mean . . .” Katherine’s voice is shaking.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Katherine.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“I have to go.”
“I’m tired. That’s all it is, I’m sure.”
“Katherine.”
“All right, George, all right. Be careful, won’t you.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, George, you missed a great day. We had a fair in the back garden and—”
But George has already hung up.
On her way back to the kitchen, Katherine finds the remnants of Madam Maureen’s costume—the green paisley scarf, the mushroom-colored skirt, the soft leather belt—stuffed into a corner under the stairs. She picks them up and throws them over the end of the banister to be put away properly in the morning. She is too tired to do it now. She turns off the lights downstairs, leaving on only the outside light by the front door for George’s return home. She turns off the lights upstairs, in the girl’s bedroom and on the landing, and welcomes night into the house. She climbs into bed, but she does not sleep.
Floating and burning at the same time—Isn’t that how she had explained what love felt like to her daughter?
Floating and burning.
Back with her again. To hold him. To smell his skin. To kiss him . . .
4
September 1949
A ROUTINE HAD DEVELOPED. Against her better judgment, she knew, for routines served only to consolidate things and then make them feel normal. Yes, she knew that. But she could not help herself. Tom had a hold on her that she could not deny. And there was—if she was to be totally honest with herself—the thrill of this secret world.
The excuse she gave to her mother, to her colleagues at work if they, perhaps, asked her to join them on an evening out, and to George was always the same: She was rehearsing Carmen. And although no one ever questioned her, the lie had its way of niggling at her nonetheless. She’d sense the crimson streaks of guilt along her neck and then the buds of tightness underneath her skin as she tidied up her work and made her way from the Ulster Bank offices onto High Street. But by the time she reached Boyne & Son, Men’s Tailors and Outfitters, all thoughts of her deceitfulness would have evaporated into thin air and she would feel as though she had just burst from a cocoon.
As Katherine would arrive at the tailors’ rooms, the last of the junior tailors would be leaving, having cleared their tables, stacked their rolls of cloth against the back wall, and set their sewing tools in orderly fashion ready for the following day’s work. Only Ivy would remain. That’s what Katherine liked to call her—the girl with the ivy-patterned blouse. Her real name, she had learned from Tom, was Miss Beacham, Miss Celia Beacham, but “Ivy” had become a private joke between herself and Tom and so the nickname had stuck. As Katherine walked toward the anteroom, where Tom was waiting for her, Ivy would be sitting on her roost of ledger books, her back to the room. No hellos were exchanged, so busy was Ivy at her desk, but Katherine was convinced as she walked past her that Ivy’s eyes and ears were taking everything in.
Katherine was content to sit and watch Tom work, there in the coppery light of the room, curled up on a wooden chair, her heels drawn in underneath her, her arms gently wrapped around her knees. And he appeared content just to have her near him. They would chat, as
he worked, about music or the weather or about what new film was showing at the Imperial Picture House or at the Classic. She would lift his cigarette from the ashtray on his worktable and take a drag from it, leaving traces of her orange-red lipstick along its length. Or sometimes she would sing snippets from Carmen, but so quietly, it was as though her voice were coming into him from a different room. Tom sat at his worktable, his shoulders hunched forward, sometimes overcasting the braided edges of a blazer or adjusting the buttonholes in a waistcoat. Or sometimes pressing a recently finished evening tailcoat under a hot iron; then the room would fill with the intoxicating smell of new cloth. Like the splintery smell of powdered stone, she thought. Sometimes she would wander around the room as he worked, picking out buttons from their boxes, inspecting paper patterns, half dreamily playing with the spools of dark thread. Some would have found the quietness austere, unsettling even, but Katherine felt protected by it, as though nothing else in the world existed. It was only when she heard the click of the glass panelled door from the main room as Ivy left to go home did she feel the small bite of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach.
The waiting over.
Her hair falling from its soft coil. His hands loosening it. The movement filling the pores of her scalp. She cannot take enough of him in. A brushstroke of cloud in the evening sky. The ticking of the clock. A bruise now on her left hip.
One evening when Katherine arrived at the tailors’ rooms, Tom was not there. Ivy, as usual, was sitting at her desk. Her blouse this time had tight red roses on it. Her slender white fingers moved like bleached bones across the yellowing pages of her ledger book. Her mouse brown hair was so neatly pinned back on either side of her head, it seemed as though her lily-pale ears had just bloomed out of it. She smelled of tea and lavender. Katherine stood by the open doorway of the anteroom. Ivy lifted her head from her work. When she spoke, she revealed a row of tiny teeth.
“If you’re looking for him, he’s gone!” Her tone was almost triumphant.
“Mr. McKinley, he’s gone?” I have never seen a mouth so small as hers, thought Katherine.
“Yes, gone. But he’ll be back. Said he’d be half an hour.”
“Oh, right, thank you.”
“Though I reckon he’ll be ages if Mr. Boyne has his way.”
“Mr. Boyne?”
“Mr. McKinley has important business with him, if you know what I mean.” Ivy’s mouth was a tiny, bitter slit.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Money issues.” Ivy raised her eyebrows and then gave a slow and precise nod to Katherine as though to denote that she would be saying no more on the matter. But barely a moment passed before she continued. “Thought you’d heard. Nothing that a few whiskies between them in the Orpheus won’t solve, I suppose.” Ivy looked gratified. “But we all know that Mr. Boyne is not a patient man.”
“Sorry—Miss Beacham, isn’t it?” Ivy narrowed her eyes in confirmation. “Miss Beacham, I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You see, I was just as surprised as everyone else—I never thought Mr. McKinley would be the gambling type.” Ivy shook her head slowly from side to side.
“Gambling type?”
“They say it was only a mere flutter here and there—the dogs on a Saturday, the occasional horse race—but last month Mr. McKinley lost a whole week’s wages following a tip-off from a man he hardly knew who works in the pub just across the road there—apparently!” Ivy swiveled on her ledger books, pointing out the window located on her right to indicate the pub in question. “And then, in a panic, he borrowed money from Mr. Boyne’s business in order to get himself back on track—unbeknownst to Mr. Boyne, of course—but Mr. McKinley lost that, as well. Terrible, isn’t it? They say all he needed was one win, just one to sort it all out, and now it’s all one big mess. Mr. Boyne—apparently—wants to proceed with—”
Katherine cut across Ivy. “They say? Who say?”
“Oh, people—you know.” Ivy toyed with the tiny pearl buttons on her rose-covered blouse.
“No, I don’t know, and I really don’t think it’s anybody’s business what Mr. McKinley—”
“Doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve done my job. I’ve passed on the message about his being half an hour late for your fitting.” Ivy’s mouth snapped closed like a trap, but her eyes held on Katherine. It was as though Ivy was waiting to see what Katherine would do now that she had received this information about Mr. McKinley.
Katherine stared back at Ivy with a cheeky defiance.What a nasty piece of work, she thought, walking slowly into the anteroom and closing the door behind her.
Despite this little display of arrogance, Katherine felt uneasy. What could Ivy have meant? Was Tom in some kind of trouble? Was he hiding something from her? Her conscience prodded her, urging her to find the one fault that would bring her back to her senses; willing her to find the solid reason that would prove that her relationship with Tom was all wrong. See? her conscience was trying to say. It wasn’t meant to be. You know nothing about him. You don’t know what he could be hiding. You should be with George. What has possessed you?
Katherine paced the room, unable to sit easy in the wooden chair, frequently glancing out of the window to see if she could catch a glimpse of Tom making his way back along High Street, pulling absentmindedly at this piece of material and that.
Above her on top of the work cabinet, the porcelain statuette of the tailor, which Katherine had given to Tom as a present, still stood; she had placed it there the first night they had stayed together in the tailors’ rooms; a sentry to their lovemaking. As she flicked through scraps of paper on Tom’s desk, Katherine felt as though its eyes were watching her, two tiny infinities, sequinned black, following her every move. Judging her perhaps. Katherine reached up and turned the statuette around so that it faced the wall.
Twenty minutes later, Katherine heard the familiar ring of Tom’s voice from the main room, then the high-pitched trill of Ivy’s voice in reply, but plaintive not chirpy. Katherine opened the door of the anteroom. Tom was leaning over Ivy as she sat at her desk. There was a serious look on his face. Ivy had her back to Katherine and her head bowed, as though she was working fastidiously at the figures in her ledger book, but the tip of each lily pale ear was now ridged with pink. Tom lifted his head and quickly turned to Katherine. “Just checking that Miss Beacham had passed on my message, Miss Fallon,” he said with a smile. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“No, it’s fine . . . really.” Katherine was immediately warmed by his polite pretense. “Yes, Miss Beacham informed me you’d be late.” She played along with him, holding her position at the doorway.
“This shouldn’t take long, Miss Fallon. I’ve only some adjustments to make on the bolero, that’s all.” Tom straightened himself and walked toward Katherine.
Ivy sniffled loudly as he left her side.
Once inside the anteroom, Katherine’s words rushed at Tom, “Where were you?”
“Sorry, Katherine, I had a few things to sort out.” He seemed calm, good-humored. Then, taking her hand, he said casually, “Would you like to walk the embankment tonight?”
“Is everything all right?” Katherine kept her voice quiet.
“Yes, everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”
The outer door clicked shut. Ivy was gone. Katherine’s mind was racing now.
“What were the things you had to sort out, Tom?” Katherine could see plainly that Tom was a little taken aback by the seriousness of her tone.
“I had a meeting with Mr. Boyne,” he said slowly, “I’m trying to reclaim some of the assets that had originally belonged to my father. The legalities are complicated, but I think I can find a way of getting around that. I have to play my cards right with Mr. Boyne, though; he’s no dozer, so it might take a bit of time.”
As Katherine stood before Tom, there was nothing in his manner to suggest to her that he was hiding anything from her. Maybe best just to forget what Ivy s
aid, Katherine thought. What a story for her to spin. All that stuff about gambling. What was she thinking? Tom wouldn’t lie. Best put no stock in it. She looked into Tom’s eyes; they were soft and clear and direct. She felt her breath catch a little. “That’s fine . . .” she replied gently. “I was just wondering where you were . . . that’s all.”
“Let me take you for a walk,” he said.
Only a crease of light reached them from the other side of the river, so that she could hardly see her feet in front of her. Her walk with him across the uneven ground sent a shudder through her bones with each misjudged step. Lifting her foot higher than necessary or not high enough. Scuffing her shoes against embedded stones. Catching the pocket of her coat on the hollow tubes of broken reeds. Hidden brambles plucking at her sleeve and calling her back. Knowing that the water was only feet away from her, only inches away at times. She could feel the coldness of it waiting.
He moved with ease. For him, just another walk home by the river.
They had set off from the corner of High Street, across the Albert Bridge, passing by the McConnell’s Weir, where a steel girder had broken away from one of the abutments and had lodged itself in the water. In the dark, she could hear the girder confusing the current. They continued along the Ormeau Embankment, where suddenly the light just seemed to fall away from them in pieces. Eventually, they found a sitting stone just a little downstream of the Ormeau Bridge, a flat hunk of rock where the narrow path broadened a little on the embankment. The river below them was the color of metal.
She felt as though the sharp night air was skinning and deseeding her senses. Why? She could not explain it to herself. Something to do with the murky blackness, perhaps. Something to do with Tom’s playful disregard for her: Taking her for a walk along the embankment with no moon to guide them. Something to do with what Ivy had said about him. It was all playing on her mind. She felt a shiver through her spine.
Then out of the dark he took a box of matches and his tailor’s notebook from his pocket. He opened the book and tore a page from its center. He twisted the paper and set it alight with a match. Their faces were illuminated for a few seconds in its glow. Then he gently threw the twist of paper into the river. He tore another page and set it alight and then another, and another. Tiny bombs of light fell into the black. Blossomed on the water like fire lilies. They held their light in the wet dark for a few moments and floated in a cluster with the current, then went out. She breathed the night air in. She watched the display. She listened to the sound of the water against the stones. She sighed. She began to feel warmer as they sat together. Her eyes adjusted to the dark. She looked out over the river. The reeds were brushed flat like long, wet hair against the bank from the last fall of heavy rain. She lifted her head. The night was beautiful. The sky so full of night clouds, it was as though it wasn’t there at all. Seen through his eyes, her city was transforming itself in front of her, and she realized that it wasn’t what surrounded her that was affecting her as much as his interpretation of it. Her city was rounding itself out of darkness and into light. Like a new world being bidden. She looked at him as he put a match to another twist of paper and a tiny arc of light streaked his face. He brings wonder out of the ordinary, she thought. That is his talent. His gift to me. There is no need for me to be unsure. He held the twist of paper up to her face. Show me, he said. She smiled at him. She knew what he wanted. She opened her handbag and took out her mirror and her lipstick and, as the paper burned close to her face, she eased orange-red across her lips. Then she took out her music sheet and, folding it in half, she pushed it against her mouth to take the excess. He watched her. I do this every time before I sing, she said to him. Every time it’s a signal that I will nurture my dreams until they come true. What dreams, Katherine? he asked. To sing, she said. To sing all over the world, to travel and see what the world has to offer. To go to America. She laughed. You don’t think it’s stupid or mad to think like that, to want to do that? No, he said, far from it. I’ll follow you, he said, and I’ll dress you in silks. I’ll make all your costumes big enough so that I can hide under your skirts. She laughed again. He took her music sheet in his hand. You know what the words mean? He asked her. No, she said, she didn’t, well not exactly. Not all of them. You should be ashamed of yourself, Carmen. Here, take this. He handed her another twist of paper. He ignited it. It burned in her hand. Then, he read aloud, “Si tu ne m’aimes pas, Si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime; Mais si je t’aime, si je t’aime prends garde a toi!” So, this is what you are saying to José, he said. And then, he wrote out his translation for her at the bottom of her music sheet: “Love you not me, love you not me, then I love you; But if I love you, if I love you, beware of me!” How do you know these things? she asked him.
Ghost Moth Page 10