The China Factory

by Mary Costello

  Beyond the hotel garden the sea turned grey. She heard its murmur as the night began to fall. The nights here made her unspeakably lonely.

  Adam got them drinks. There were lamps lighting in corners.

  ‘I was thinking we might go back tomorrow,’ she said.

  He looked at her. ‘Aren’t you having a nice time? I thought we were having a nice time.’

  ‘We are. It’s lovely. It’s just that, well… there’s rain coming and we’d be going home on Saturday anyway. I just thought…’ She knew the sky would soon turn purple and send down rain while they slept. In the morning she would gaze out of the hotel room onto grey rocks and she could not bear to think of the emptiness that would follow.

  ‘Okay, if that’s what you want.’ He looked at her. ‘Aren’t you happy?’

  He would always say the right words, do the right thing. He would put himself in harm’s way for her. She should be happy. She should be happy. How then could she explain why she didn’t feel enough? Is there a measure for enough? And when the enough plateaus out, as it does in a long marriage, is there a different kind of measure? Is there an index for love? She looked over at him, at his dark eyes and greying temples. And is there, she wondered, any explanation why on this warm night in this beautiful corner of the earth, with the vast ocean beyond the window and the moonlight overhead—is there any explanation why my head is filled with thoughts of another man?

  They drove east to the city in near silence the next day. She had thought that faith, belief, would save her from this desolation, from the death of hope. That faith would protect against temptation, prevent this slide in life, make acceptable those mundane days when no more adventure, no new love, was possible again. Because love had, by now, been decided, accepted, finalised.

  She had never met this other man, or heard his voice, and she had tried not to love him. On a wet evening in February she had attended an author’s reading in the city. Afterwards, she had walked out into the lighted streets with the image of the soft-spoken writer and his novel with its strange aloof character swirling around in her head. Two weeks later she received an e-mail.

  Hi there. Did you, by any chance, attend a reading in a Dublin library one evening last month? Did you leave your copy of Julius Winsome behind? I picked it up, and failing to find its owner among the stragglers, kept it. What a novel! I had not heard of this writer before. His book truly captivated me. I found this e-mail address inside the back cover. If this is your book I want to thank you and return it to you. If not, please accept my apologies for the intrusion. Sincerely,

  E. B., New York.

  P.S. I happened to be in Dublin for work when I strolled into the library that evening.

  The memory of the reading returned—the hushed atmosphere, the author’s stillness, the enclosed world of the novel.

  Dear E, You have indeed correctly identified the owner of Julius. And yes, what a writer! You can hold onto the novel. And I hope you enjoyed your trip to this grimy old city of ours. And, lucky you, living in NYC!

  Kind regards,

  A. D.

  Within five minutes her mailbox pinged.

  Dear A,

  I sent that mail out into the ether never really expecting a reply. Just shows you! And thanks for leaving Julius with me. I will read it again—though I live in the shadow of a tower of unread books. And alas, I do not reside in NYC but way out in the suburbs. Think Revolutionary Road without the revolution, or the front lawn. Or the beige.

  Best regards,

  E

  She sat looking at the words on the screen, and then went downstairs to watch the evening news with Adam.

  E,

  They’re remaindering Julius here. I’ve bought three to give away at Christmas. It will kill me to part with even one, but there you go. And beige is very underrated.

  Dear A,

  A Christmas shopper in March, I’m impressed! And I loved Dublin but I got robbed the night before I left. Think of it… a few Dublin Jackeens getting the better of a tough Bronx boy. I felt so stupid.

  Regards,

  E

  She stared at the words, then shut down her laptop.

  Dear A,

  I wanted to ask if you had read any of Donovan’s other books—I believe there are two? And my wife is a big fan of Irish writing—what other contemporary writers can you recommend?

  And so it started. In his persistence she sensed a need. She slipped in a reference to Adam the second night. It was all about books and films and TV at the start. She had always had a need to talk about books. He quoted Beckett and Sartre from memory. He possessed an odd combination of bookish charm and boyish hyperactivity. His glittering intelligence, in those first weeks, terrified her. One day, she thought, my small seam of knowledge will be exhausted. He peppered his opinions with quotes from Swift and Goethe and she slipped further out of her depth. Sorry, she replied, I have never read Moral Purpose. Sorry, I’m not very well versed in German literature. Sorry, I’m not that up on philosophy. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh, I think you underestimate yourself, he wrote back. He sent her quotations, lines from songs; he sent her poems. Did he not know the effect such words, such lines, such poems might have on a woman?

  Your erudition leaves me tongue-tied. I’ll soon need shades on this side of the astral plane to shield me from the glare of your knowledge.

  His reply was slow in coming.

  The Astral Plane… I like this… Celestial beings, you and I… There is a lonely spot near the South Pole—I read of this today—a US team of astronomers are setting up an observatory there. It’s the perfect site for stargazing… I thought of you when I read this. It’s so calm in this place that there’s almost no wind or weather there at all, and the sky is dark and dry. It is the calmest place on earth. I thought of you.

  I have so little to say, to write. What I write must seem very trite to you.

  Why do you do this, why do you put yourself down like this?

  *

  He wrote copy for an advertising agency. He worked from a home office and made occasional trips to the city or abroad. She imagined a suburban town, like White Plains or Scarsdale and men in suits parking at the train station and boarding silver bullet trains that raced through the countryside, leaving telephone wires zinging in their wake, into the heart of Manhattan. He looked out on treetops from his upstairs office, he told her. He had a view of the sky and another of birds and birdhouses. He went down and counted the trees in his garden one day, for her. Eighteen, he said. Big garden, she said. He did not mention children. He told her there were woodlands at the back and cardinals in the trees. She did not know what cardinals looked like so she lifted down Adam’s bird book from the bookcase. She began to imagine it all. She gave him the sound of running water close by and a lake a mile away and the silver train in the distance, and starlings wheeling in formation above his head, and she gave him a wide open sky as he crossed the fields, and a yellow sun, and a ready open heart.

  There is this girl I meet. She works in my local mini-market. One day she was sitting on the wall in the parking lot, crying. She’s just a kid, eighteen or nineteen. She’s from a farm in Mississippi and her husband’s stationed up here with the army. She calls me ‘Mister’. The others bully her over her accent. She’s poor. I can tell the poor. I grew up poor, I married a poor girl. The poor have a code: they stay together, loyal, faithful too. She’s missing her mother, this girl. The poor always get to you.

  I dreamt of you last night. I woke before dawn and heard your footsteps on the stairs. I felt you drawing near and I was frightened you’d be discovered. The moonlight streamed in through the skylight on the landing. I walked barefoot through the house. I knew you were just ahead of me. I opened the back door and there in the middle of the garden stood a deer. The moon was so bright. He stood and looked into my eyes with his own beautiful wet ones, and then he turned and I saw there was a stream at the end of the garden and, beyond that, a dark forest. He bounded off and disa
ppeared into the forest. I fled upstairs and each step of the stairs fell away behind me.

  One evening Adam came in and placed a kiss on her forehead and rubbed her back and then walked out onto the patio.

  ‘Will we eat out here?’ he called.

  He helped her carry out the plates and glasses. Her hands trembled. Earlier, on the canal bridge, she had driven through a red light.

  ‘I ran into Kevin in town today,’ he said, when they were seated. ‘He looked a wreck.’

  ‘Things aren’t great at home,’ she said. ‘I told you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But it’s just the usual stuff with them, right?’

  She shrugged. ‘Karen doesn’t think so. She wants out.’

  ‘She wants out? Why? What’s he done?’

  ‘Nothing. He hasn’t done anything. It’s—I don’t know… They’re incompatible, she says.’

  ‘Incompatible! Huh! New-fashioned love!’

  She gave him a look.

  ‘What? It’s true, isn’t it? Incompatible. Christ, you’d think people were software programmes—“X is incompatible with your system, sir! You’ll need a whole new system, or, alternatively, you may change X.”’

  ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘I know… Sorry… There’s no third party, is there? Jesus, has he met someone else?’

  ‘No. No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘And he’s not drinking or… violent, is he? Or gambling?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that.’ She put on her sunglasses and looked at the sky. She longed to escape his presence.

  ‘What then? They’ve just grown tired of each other, is that it?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’ Suddenly she hated the sky. She wanted no reminder of blue or beauty or betrayal. She went inside and lifted a jug of water from the fridge and leaned on the door for a few moments.

  ‘That’s what people do now, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘They break up so easily.’ His voice had grown sad.

  ‘People don’t break up easily. They don’t.’ He seemed not to hear her.

  ‘No one is satisfied anymore. Everyone wants more. We all think we’re special, but we’re not.’

  ‘They’ve fallen out of love,’ she said, a little harshly.

  She felt his eyes on her. After a few moments she pushed her chair back and got up.

  ‘You okay?’

  She frowned and shrugged. ‘Of course.’

  That night she lay in the bath and wept. She heard Adam move about downstairs. She had done him harm. As she had done the woman, the astral wife, harm. Each night that she ascended the stairs and sat at her desk she was stealing from his life, from his wife. Is this what she had become—a thief, a plunderer? She heard the signature tune of the ten o’clock news. She went into the bedroom and lay on the bed. This day, and every day, and her whole conscious life now, started and ended with the other man, with the yearning for him. Was she allowed to yearn like this? Was it permitted? She heard Adam’s step on the stairs. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye. He knelt at her side.

  ‘Hey… Shh, what’s wrong?’ He took her hand and kissed it, and at his touch the guilt flared up inside her. ‘Sometimes, I think… something isn’t here anymore,’ he whispered. ‘Something’s been taken. It frightens me.’ Then he kissed her eyelids. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  She shook her head and smiled. ‘Nothing, honest.’ Then he rose and turned to go. He bent down and took her bare feet in his hands and kissed them. ‘See?’ he said brightly. ‘See how much I love you?’

  Things shifted on the plane then. She became hyper alert to every change in tone, every late mail or small absence. She thought he removed himself sometimes. She could not bear to think of him as a husband, as deeply married. She feared running out of things to say and strove to draw out the intimacy. But the effort showed. She became moody, began to pick and prod. She accused him of remoteness.

  Me, remote? he countered in a blaze of anger that shocked her. Her curtness sometimes, he wrote, pierced him to the bone, and she was frosty, like so many European women. Cold Northern Women, he wrote in cruel capitals. You’re ice-bucket cold sometimes. And you have a sharpness that can pierce. Do you know this? Are you even aware of this?

  When was I cold? When did I pierce you? she demanded, in a tumble of rage and hurt and fear. I have never said such cruel things to you, never once… And I am tired of this… this affair of the mind. And don’t think it’s less! That the damage and the betrayal and the guilt is less than the other? Is that what you think? Because it’s not, it’s worse. Do you think we’ll go untouched, unpunished, you and I? Do you think we are immune? Do you? Is that what you think? And where’s your code now?

  A rift opened, and their quarrel turned into a battle which left her profoundly shaken. Back and forth they traded hurts, damage heaped on damage. The astral plane fell silent for days. Each nightfall she became overwrought. His loss impoverished her. In the mornings she looked out at the trees and found a new calm. She got a taste of how it would feel to be clear of him. He had become an interruption in her life, a vexation. She would always be waiting for signs of the end, of him casting about for a new love. She would shed him and it would be an ease. Come the winter he would have faded out, and she would survive, she would endure. People don’t die of love anymore, she thought. She could not die of love for a man she had never met. Could she?

  Please, please come back to me… Are you not glad that I found you?

  She read his plea at dawn. She crept back to bed. Adam lay on his belly and from the borders of sleep he reached out and drew her to him and whispered the familiar words and declarations he’d whispered every morning for years.

  She climbed out of bed again and sat before the screen. She typed a word. Refound. She closed her eyes. She knew there would be nothing worse than losing him.

  And so, somehow, a difficult passage had been managed. She walked around the house and out into the streets again, in glorious bounty, thinking, I am loved, I am the beloved. She felt his approach in unexpected moments: brushing off Adam in the kitchen, driving through the city at night, walking by the seashore. She had a longing to use ampler words, my love, my darling. At the water’s edge she stood and waited, longing to detect something of him, some return, a sign, an echo carried back in the hum of the universe.

  It might have continued like this, this strange courtly kind of love. Or the talk and the dreams might have petered out and given way to a new tranquility. And the desire, too, in time might have burned itself out for want of consummation. But then he hurled a lightning bolt down onto her screen one night.

  I have to come to Dublin again. I didn’t know if I should tell you. Then I thought… We might pass each other in the street; I might walk by a café with you inside the window, oblivious, like in Doctor Zhivago… And I thought what a great tragedy that would be. But I don’t know what to say now… except: Do you want to meet?

  *

  She rode the commuter train into the city on a bright morning in mid-August. Small suburban back gardens shot past. Across from her a youth with a pale feminine face listened to his iPod, his long legs crossed and hidden under him so that she imagined him ending in a mermaid’s tail.

  She saw him first, standing directly under Bewley’s clock. He wore a black jacket and his bag was slung over his shoulder, like he said it would be. She came down the street from Stephen’s Green and he turned and the sun came out and fell on his face and she saw it was the astral man. He put his arms out and embraced her. She felt herself stiffen and shy at his touch. She could not look at him. She glanced around the street, thinking that Adam was watching.

  ‘It’s so good to see you. You look lovely. I’m so happy you came… I was so afraid you’d get cold feet…’ His accent was strange in this place. ‘How are you? Are you okay?… Please, say something…’ He stood back from her.

  She felt his eyes scorch her, from head to toe. ‘How was the flight?’

&
nbsp; ‘Good. Good. I like night flying. I got a couple of hours’ sleep on the plane. But tell me… how are you? This is strange, isn’t it? This is really strange… but nice too. Isn’t this nice? What will we do? Would you like to get coffee or lunch or something? Do you want to sit down? I do! I need to sit down. Are you glad you came? Are you glad we’re here?’

  Stop talking, she longed to say. Why can’t you stop talking?

  They started up the street. She thought walking would quell him. A boy on roller skates came weaving towards them. He swerved close and she moved aside and bumped lightly against the astral man’s shoulder. He placed a hand on her back and muttered ‘Lunatic!’ after the boy. She smiled at the word, and he gasped ‘Aha!’ His delight was contagious and she felt herself blush. ‘I thought I’d lost you there for a while,’ he said. ‘You looked scared, as if I might be about to shoot you or something.’

  All the time she felt his hand on her back.

  He stopped and turned to her and touched the ends of her hair. He brought his forehead close to hers. He was whispering something but the racket inside her head and on the street drowned out his words. She pulled away and walked on.

  ‘Please, aren’t you going to talk to me? I’ve come all this way…’

  ‘I thought you came for work.’

  ‘Work came second. I came for you.’

  They entered the Green and walked under the trees. Men in suits crossed the park on their lunch breaks. Teenagers, joggers, mothers with buggies went hurriedly by. She scanned each passing face. They sat on a bench, side by side, almost touching. A pigeon hopped on the path at their feet, pecking crumbs. The sun dipped behind a cloud. He put a hand on hers. She closed her eyes at the touch.

  ‘I cannot stay long,’ she said impassively.

  He withdrew his hand. His jaw clenched, a muscle rippled. Her heart was pounding. If she touched him, if she as much as put a hand on his, there would be no going back.