The paper light went out and the river lilies faded. He and she disappeared together into the black of the world. But when he kissed her, she was all the color of orange-red.
You don’t think I’m mad to have dreams like that, do you? she asked him.
No, he said, I don’t.
You don’t?
She alighted the number thirty-one trolley bus into town. The conductor pulled on the bell rope. As the trolley bus pulled away from the curb, she reached for the rounded grab handles on the ends of the seats and carefully made her way down to the front of the lower saloon. She tucked her pearl gray woolen coat under her and sat down on the princess blue leather seat. She sat, appalled at herself.
Her menstrual period had been only one week late, but this was so unusual for her, for her cycle had always been regular. So regular, in fact, that, month by month, she could predict when she would start almost to the very hour.
In her pocket she carried a set of her mother’s rosary beads. It wasn’t in her nature to pray, even though her mother had always insisted on the family saying the Rosary every evening for as long as she could remember, even though they never missed Mass on a Sunday, even though the nuns at school had driven Catholicism into her with a devout and steely determination. But she needed to turn to something. She needed providence, intervention; she needed her luck to change. She slipped her hand into her coat pocket to touch the rosary beads and whispered a prayer.
The conductor came to collect her fare, tapping impatiently on his ticket machine. She handed the conductor twopence for the short journey she was taking, only three stops from her flat on the Castlereagh Road to the corner of Templemore Avenue. She would walk the rest of the way from there. The conductor punched a hole in a mustard-colored ticket and handed it to her. She held the ticket in one hand and with the other she wiped the misted window beside her and looked out through the finger-width slices of clear glass as the streetlights moved past her in long, crystal streams.
Only one week late.
And for that week, she had never felt so much confusion. Her emotions had swung, like a pendulum, from one absolute to another. One moment, she would picture that everything was as it once had been. Tom had somehow suddenly melted away in her mind and she and George were a devoted couple again. The next moment, her heart would seize with panic at the very thought that she might never see Tom again. Over and over again she brushed against, then swept past the unthinkable: She was one week late.
She rubbed her finger anxiously where, for a brief time, she had worn her engagement ring. It would be weeks before she would be able to pay the remaining money due on the statuette and retrieve her ring. What had she been thinking? George had believed her when she had told him that she had thought it best to put the ring away safely until after Carmen had finished. She could not wear it as the character Carmen, she explained to him, and she could not possibly run the risk of taking the ring off in the rehearsal room or in the church hall—where they would perform the following week—as so many things went missing. And George had thought it prudent of her. He had not questioned her decision for a moment. She had taken advantage of his kindness, she knew. She had betrayed him. She was appalled at herself.
Over the past few weeks she had seen very little of George. He had been helping to organize a ceremony in honor of the members of the Fire Service who had helped in raising money for the rebuilding of the Ulster Hospital for Women & Children. George himself was to receive a commendation at the ceremony for his contribution as a retained fireman, and, sitting on the number thirty-one trolley bus, she was on her way to join him.
Appalled at herself. Appalled at where her own desires had brought her. Not quite comprehending how she was allowing herself to behave so irresponsibly. Sinfully, perhaps? Appalled at how she was resisting nothing. Most of all, appalled at how she had betrayed George. How could she ever forgive herself?
There was one thing she would have to do to redeem herself. She would have to bring it all out into the open. She would have to be brave enough to face the consequences. She would have to tell George what had happened and that it was over between them.
She touched the rosary beads in her pocket again. She gazed at her reflection in the misted window. She was a phantom silver shape in her pearl gray coat against the princess blue leather of the seat.
The trolley bus reached the corner of Templemore Avenue and, as she stood up from her seat, the conductor pulled once on the bell rope. She disembarked at McMordie’s Hardware shop and, crossing Castlereagh Street, she reached her destination within a matter of minutes.
It was a modest ceremony; a group of perhaps fifty people had gathered in the main holding area of the station. Among them were George’s mother, Anna, his father, William, and his older twin sisters. Four fire engines sat two behind two, each machine primed for maneuver at a moment’s notice. The firemen stood on one side of the vehicles, their families and friends on the other.
George’s mother and father greeted Katherine with wide smiles. She stood beside them and listened as the deputy chief fire officer opened the proceedings, informing guests that a short display would be presented by the firemen after Mr. Balmer, senior consultant of the Ulster Hospital, had said a few words, and that some of the doctors, working in the restored wing of the hospital, would introduce themselves, and that there would be refreshments—tea, coffees, sandwiches—kindly provided by the women parishioners of the local Church of Ireland, at the end of the evening.
Katherine caught the look of pride on Anna Bedford’s face and the seriousness of William Bedford’s expression, which immediately had softened into the round face of a beaming boy when his son had smiled at him. She saw George’s twin sisters, Heather and Susan, giggling and whispering comments about the young firemen who flanked the four glistening fire engines, suddenly respectfully hold their composure as Mr. Balmer stepped forward to make his address. She heard the singular, dry, nervous cough she knew to be George’s as his name was called out in special acknowledgment of his exceptional contribution in raising money for the funds. She watched as George walked past her to shake Mr. Balmer’s hand. How smart in his uniform, how handsome humility made him, how gentle and loving his smile as he turned to her, how proud she felt, how wretched she felt, how she felt her body and mind disintegrating where she stood, feeling she was falling away in pieces, crumbling like old, dried skin. She must tell him. She must tell him about Tom. Words echoing, ringing in this cavern of light and steel in which she now felt captive. The heat of the room in her pearl gray woolen coat. The glare of the lights on the high ceiling. Her stomach hot. The flash of gleaming red from the fire engines. Her head tight. The heat in her woolen coat. Her legs unstable. And her body collapsing like a door blown shut.
In the last moments of consciousness, she could hear George calling to her, and a slack, embarrassed laugh from the crowd who had gathered around her as someone asked, “Is there a doctor in the house?”
George had taken Katherine home after the Fire Service ceremony and had urged her to rest the following day, but she had gone into work regardless, informing her mother over breakfast that she felt better and only a little tired. All day at work, she battled with herself. Blaming herself for not telling George about Tom, hating the fact that she had lost her nerve. Next time I see George, I promise I’ll end it, she said to herself. Next time.
At five o’clock, Morna McFarlane from the Arrears Department at the Ulster Bank offices asked Katherine to join her and a few of the cashiers for a drink at Sherries. But too eager to meet up with Tom again, Katherine declined with her usual excuse.
“You’re terrible, you are. You and your singin’.” If I didn’t know any better, Katherine Fallon, I’d have said you had a wee fancy man hidden away there somewhere!” Morna pushed her round chin into the air and pressed her plump hands against her ample chest. “Wait till I tell George.” She laughed loudly, then pulled on her heavy wool coat.
Katherine smiled
nervously.
“Don’t look so shocked—unless, of course, you do have a wee fancy man!” Morna fastened four big brass buttons. “Well, come here to me—next time you’re going out, you’re going out with me—right!”
Katherine nodded.
“It’s just them two new cashiers—Helen and Sheila—they’re no fun. All they talk about is illnesses and operations and who’s died and who didn’t die but nearly died. Like two old crows.” Morna busily fixed the straps of her leather handbag over her arm as she spoke. “Right,” she said, shaking her head in resignation, “I’m off. I’ll see ye tomorrow, then!” Then just before she disappeared around the corner of the corridor, Morna turned her head and shouted back to Katherine, “And don’t forget to say hello to your wee fancy man for me!”
As Katherine approached the tailors’ rooms that evening, the door swung open as though it was being wrenched off its hinges and Ivy rushed out past her with tears streaming down her face. By the time Katherine turned to her to ask her what was wrong, Ivy had disappeared down the stairs and was gone. Katherine found Tom in the anteroom, sitting quietly at his worktable. He lifted his head and smiled at her as she entered the room.
“What’s wrong with Ivy—with Miss Beacham?” said Katherine, perplexed.
“Oh, nothing . . . nothing.”
Katherine stared hard at Tom. “Nothing? Didn’t you see she was in floods of tears?”
“She’s upset.”
Katherine couldn’t hide her concern. “I can see she’s upset! But why is she upset? What happened?”
“I think it’s unrequited love,” Tom said casually, and went back to his work.
Katherine felt pricked by his nonchalance. “That’s a bit coldhearted. What if she needs someone to talk to?”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“She told me you had ‘money issues’ with Mr. Boyne,” Katherine said abruptly.
“She told you what?” Tom lifted his head.
“She told me you were gambling and that you’d lost a lot of money. What did she mean, Tom? Are you in trouble?”
“Nothing of the sort.”
“Please, Tom, you can tell me anything.”
“There’s nothing to tell. Don’t mind what Miss Beacham says—she’s prone to hysterics at the best of times. Really, Katherine, everything is fine.”
“But why would she say such a thing if it wasn’t true?”
“It isn’t true, Katherine, I promise you. Miss Beacham has a very active imagination—and has all day to sit and feed it! Don’t pay any attention to her. Come here to me.” He held his arms out to her. She embraced him, but as he held her, she felt a chill rinse over her skin.
It was Wednesday night, the opening night of Carmen. From where she stood in her shadowy corner behind the scenery flats of the church hall, Katherine watched Charlie Copeland rocking to and fro on a little wooden stool. The stool sat to the side of an array of street sellers’ baskets and wooden wheelbarrows, which were to be brought on after the overture. It wasn’t the first time she had witnessed this self-imposed incarceration of Charlie’s, from which, this time, it seemed to her, he could not release himself. She watched his strained yet muted expression and knew it to be merely a faint extenuation of the whole fevered scenario going on inside his head. Charlie’s glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose, which was moist with sweat. He nervously pushed them back. Charlie had only ever sung onstage before as part of the chorus and now, as Zuniga, he had lines to say—had lines to “deliver,” as the director had put it. With very little time to go before “curtain up,” he had the demeanor of a man preparing not for his first performance, but for his own execution.
Right beside him, squashed into a tiny section of the backstage area that was free of props and stage furniture, the Cigarette Factory Girls practiced their choreographed routine for the first extract they were to perform, their smooth, white, young faces all wearing the same kind of forced smile. Their conical felt hats, which were perched precariously on the sides of their heads, shook violently as they danced. Katherine could see clearly that they were only adding to Charlie’s agitation. They were jumping and fussing and becoming overly excited, thumping on the floor as they moved, insisting they rehearse the same piece again and again. Whenever they stopped to draw breath, she could hear Charlie muttering loudly enough so that the girls would hear him say, “What in God’s name are they at, these lumps of girls? Why can’t they rehearse somewhere else? Why are they so damn eager?”
Her gaze lifted from Charlie and across to James McCauley, who was standing behind the street sellers’ baskets, wearing too-generous earrings as Escamillo. The earrings looped like two large, glinting dog’s ears to grace his shoulders. He kept making small movements with his head, testing out their weighty sway, a little unsure as to whether or not they made him look foolish, so that his heavily made-up eyebrows seemed to be signaling pathos even before he had begun to perform.
Then beside her, Rosemary Wylie appeared, talking to the air and insisting on leaving her wristwatch on. It had been a present from her fiancé and she was refusing to part with it. No one would notice that it wasn’t in period, she was saying—what was the period anyway, did anybody know? Rosemary Wylie was playing the part of Micaela, but from the very first day of rehearsal, it had been obvious that she would much rather have been playing the part of Carmen—it was the way in which Rosemary Wylie had smiled at everyone when the cast list was announced, as though she were smelling something dreadfully unpleasant. Now, she was not happy with the three enormous gold leaves that had been sewn across the bodice of her costume. They were unflattering, she thought; they interfered with the shape of her bosom. Much better the décolletage that had featured in the original costume designs. Why had it been changed? The stage manager, a plump, short-haired woman named Cissie McGee, whispered loudly from the prompt corner that there would be no time to discuss costumes. Most of the cast had seen their costumes for the first time tonight. Some of the costumes were not even finished—that’s just the way it had turned out—and so everyone just needed to get on with the job at hand, check their props and be ready for the performance. Curtain would be up in ten minutes. Rosemary Wylie’s features sank slowly back into her face, as though they were flotsam on quicksand, as she listened to Cissie McGee, her nostrils flaring in a last but vainglorious attempt to save herself.
Hugh Drummond—Don José—suddenly arrived and rushed into the backstage area, tucking his ruffled shirt into the waistband of his pantaloons and swinging his costume jacket high above his head and around his shoulders. Urgency always made Hugh feel important. He slapped Charlie Copeland on his back as he passed behind him, nearly knocking Charlie off his little wooden stool.
“Charlie, my good man, just made it. And how’s the lumbago this evening!”
Charlie made strenuous efforts to regain his composure before replying sourly, “Never better, Hugh, never better.”
“Oh, hello there, girls!” Hugh watched the Cigarette Factory Girls skip and hop as he tucked in the last ruffle of his shirt.
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