OTHER TIMES WHEN I’d brought a man home to bed for the first time, I’d spent a sleepless night, dozing but always conscious of his presence, always slightly wary – of what I might do in my sleep, of what he might do if my vigilance slipped. This first night with Matthew, though, I slept soundly until ten o’clock in the morning. I woke to hear him moving around in the bathroom, and levered myself up on one elbow, blinking in the flood of sunlight that washed through the thin curtains. Matthew came back in, running his fingers through wild hair.
‘Ah, there you are,’ he said, mimicking an absent-minded aristocrat.
‘Good morning, Mr Taylor.’
‘You must be Ms Houlihan,’ he said, with a little too much ee in the middle syllable. He climbed back into bed behind me and began to stroke my back, gently, slowly.
‘Oh well, if you say so, I suppose I must …’ I turned to him, and we kissed – carefully at first, both conscious of the sharp taste of sleep in our mouths.
It was a long time before we got up. Finally, I couldn’t ignore the twinges of hunger any more. I heaved myself ungracefully out of bed and shambled into the kitchen to put on the kettle and find some bread to toast. The floor was chilly under my feet. I leaned against the sink surround, letting the hard countertop press into my flesh.
‘Wow,’ said Matthew from the door. ‘A naked breakfast service.’ He was dressed in his jeans and shirt, his eyes sleepy. He put his arms round me and kissed my neck. I started buttering the toast, enjoying the feel of his clothes against my body, his lips on my skin.
There was a moment of giddiness – vertigo, almost – when I thought, how can this possibly be happening? How did we get here? Is Matthew Taylor really standing in my kitchen kissing me? Then I put the knife down and turned to kiss him back.
Breakfast shaded into brunch, after which we ambled into town through a sunny, breezy afternoon and ended up going to a film in the Savoy. It was a lavish Hollywood feel-good movie, much better than I expected. We bought popcorn and fizzy drinks, and Matthew sat with his arm round me for most of the film. When we emerged afterwards into the yellowing dusk I felt as if I’d been given a transfusion of energy.
It was windier than it had been, a damp, whipping wind that threatened to develop into rain. Matthew turned up the collar of his jacket and pinched the end of his nose. We walked down to the river hand in hand.
We stopped at the bridge. ‘Madam,’ said Matthew, ‘you’ve been charming company.’ He kissed me gently. ‘I believe my bus stop is this way,’ he said.
‘Mine’s just across here.’
‘Right.’ He fished in an inner pocket and produced his phone. ‘I suppose we’d better do this bit, then. What’s your number? I’ll text you.’
I told him my number, and a few seconds later I read on my phone: ‘This is me. 990’
‘What’s the nine hundred and ninety for?’
‘Think about it,’ he said.
‘It’s ten less than a thousand … which is … I don’t know.’
‘Go on, you’re on the right track. Think Latin.’
I laughed aloud. ‘Oh, my god, it’s XM, right? Like a Roman numeral?’
‘The woman is sharp!’
‘The man is a big nerd!’
We kissed goodbye, and Matthew loped off towards the river, turning to wave at me before he’d gone thirty feet. I floated across to the bus stop and replied to his text as I waited: ‘Look, I can be a nerd too! 90’ I could still feel the ghost of his touch, taste his sweat, his kisses. I felt shiny and precious, like silver.
SUMMER WAS LONG gone: the urban greenery on my wonted routes grew russet-flushed, the light turned to liquid gold and the promise of chill brushed my face. As always, I loved it when branches whispered to me as I went by, and one or two leaves dried out and fell, a prelude to the devastation ahead. I hunted out last winter’s hat and scarf, although it was not yet cold enough to wear them.
Matthew came round every few days. We went on proper dates: saw plays and films, visited galleries, ate in restaurants, spent slow, delicious nights in my wide bed. He was funny, considerate – and had an antiquated streak that meant he ended up paying for both of us more often than not. He had a poise to him, a polished presentation that I found irresistible. He made a commendable carbonara – ‘my party piece,’ he said. His hands were always warm.
By mutual agreement we were discreet at choir, confining ourselves to friendly greetings and participation in the same conversations at the pub. It seemed important to establish the dynamic between us properly before exposing it to scrutiny.
I’d never felt so grown-up. Mostly, I’d gone out with men who didn’t do dates – who preferred to wander into my world and stay there for a while, oscillating between bed and the sofa. Late-night DVDs over ice-cream or pizza from a box. Relationships saturated in the flickering light of the television screen. Matthew was different. He seemed whole, somehow – self-contained – drawn to me not out of some unarticulated need but by conscious choice. It was exhilarating, like nothing I’d experienced before. The straightforwardness of our interaction astonished me. I did not talk about my past, and nor did he. With him, there was no need to go digging in the murk. I was used to twisty dramas, coded messages, labyrinthine desires – anything but the plain English we seemed to be able to use with one another.
Now and then I wondered what my younger self would have said about all this if she’d known. Teenaged Cate had held some rather intemperate opinions – she would have looked askance, to say the least, at a British boyfriend.
I went shopping with Matthew one Saturday afternoon and bought a beautiful vintage coat – red corduroy, with a big furry collar. Feeling bold, I wore it out of the shop, and we proceeded down Grafton Street, arm in arm.
A voice behind me shouted, ‘Hey! Cattle!’
Instinctively, I jerked away from Matthew and spun round. Only one person called me that.
Mícheál was standing in the queue for the cash machine, laughing at me. ‘Made you jump!’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Me and PJ got tickets to the match.’
What match, I neither knew nor cared. I wanted to punch him in his ruddy-cheeked face. ‘This ignorant little gobshite,’ I explained to Matthew, ‘is my idiot baby brother. And Mícheál, not that you deserve to be introduced to actual people as if you were a normal human being, this is my friend Matthew.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Matthew.
‘Hi, Matthew,’ said Mícheál, making it sound like a challenge.
‘Behave yourself,’ I told him. ‘And never call me that again, OK?’
‘Ah, fuck off, I’m only messing. Is that a new coat, is it?’
‘None of your business, gobshite.’
‘It’s nice.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Well, thank you. Enjoy the rest of your day.’ I could do heavy sarcasm too, it turned out. Gathering the shreds of my dignity about me, I ushered Matthew away.
We were barely out of Mícheál’s line of sight when Matthew threw his arms round me and collapsed on my shoulder in a fit of giggles. ‘Cate, that was priceless! You changed into a completely different person! Your accent, your tone – everything – it was amazing!’
I sniffed, trying to weather the embarrassment. Despite myself, I began to giggle, and soon the two of us were guffawing together. It was too absurd.
Later, at dinner, I said, ‘We all change into different people when we’re with family, though. It’s like going back in time.’
‘Maybe,’ said Matthew.
CARMINA URBANA CONTINUED to practise for the Christmas concert and the Belfast gig. Diane finished introducing us to the new music, and we settled into the familiar pattern of note-learning and polishing. The easier pieces fell into place quickly, so that they could be left for light relief at the end of a rehearsal. Our antipathy towards Trevor Daintree and A Song of Ireland did not abate.
Tom was absent one week, and at break time Joan stood up
to tell us all that his father had died. A choir would be much appreciated for the funeral.
I got George’s permission to take Monday morning off and offered Joan and Val a lift. I collected them in Rathgar, and as we neared Rathmines, Val spotted Mircea the Romanian bass, standing disconsolate at a bus stop in the drizzle. He climbed into the back seat beside Val.
‘This will be my first time to a Catholic funeral,’ Mircea said when we were moving again.
Joan explained to Mircea that it would be a Protestant funeral.
‘Ah,’ Mircea said, ‘but I thought it was said Church of Ireland – is this not the same as the Catholic Church?’
The discussion that followed revealed Joan as quite an expert on the details of Catholic and Anglican worship. She also turned out to know where the Romanian Orthodox Church in Dublin hung out.
‘I am atheist,’ Mircea said, with a long ah sound. ‘But don’t tell my mother.’
The route into town was clogged, and it was already ten o’clock by the time I found a parking spot on South Frederick Street. We hurried through the Nassau Street entrance of Trinity, down the ramp and on past the old library towards the college chapel in Front Square. The drizzle had stopped now, and muted sunlight made the place look downright idyllic – gracious old stone, city traffic receding, browning leaves on elephantine trees shimmying in the wind.
It felt strange to be back here. I’d hardly stepped on to the campus since I’d left. I would’ve been picking up my Master’s degree around now, if I’d taken my place. If my parents’ verdict had gone the other way. ‘It’d be different if it was a qualification of some kind,’ had been Dad’s last word. Mum had said, ‘You have to start thinking about the future.’ I’d gathered that it was bad enough to have chosen Trinity in the first place, without getting notions about more study.
As I followed Joan and Val through the massive doors and up the stairs to the organ loft, I felt at home – at home with the dark wood and the dust, with the bright curving vaults above us, with the lovely bulbous acoustic that caught and magnified our voices.
I waved a greeting to Matthew, but we didn’t get a chance to speak. Rehearsal was just beginning. We sang first through a selection of solid hymns, accompanied by a worried organist with thinning blond hair, whom Diane introduced to us as Stephen Bailey. I loved singing the traditional Church of Ireland hymns, with their squarish melodies and straightforward harmonies. They were so much more comforting than the weedy folk-group efforts of my youth. I’d sung in Trinity Chapel Choir for just two terms in my final year, but it had been the highlight of my week. The sparse dignity of the Anglican service, the measured tranquillity, the sense of intellectual engagement, were so different from the droning, smug Catholicism I’d grown up with.
Tom’s father had apparently been a big fan of English Baroque, and we were to sing two anthems by Henry Purcell. We started with Hear My Prayer, which I hadn’t sung before but others had. The music was in eight parts, twining and curling around each other to weave a delicate, shimmering fabric of sound. ‘Lovely,’ Diane said, after our first run-through. She tapped her tuning fork and listened. ‘Tuning’s good. We need to work on the diction. Hear my prayer O Lord – give me a clear d there, right on the downbeat – and then and let my crying come unto thee – we want a very exaggerated and-a-let there. And-a-let. And roll your r s if you can – crrrying. It’s a bit … English, I know …’ she faltered, and I heard Val beside me give a very tiny snort. ‘But that’s all right,’ Diane went on, recovering. ‘We have English people in the choir. Listen to how they do it.’
‘You know,’ Val muttered, ‘it might actually be … kind of OK to sing Purcell in an English style.’
Diane said, ‘All right, once more from the top.’
The service was efficient and dignified, the readers calm, the priest consoling. As the offertory gifts were brought up, we rose for the first Purcell piece. ‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts,’ we sang. Tom gave a moving eulogy, which was among other things a meditation on changing times, a changing Ireland. His father had been born in 1923, just after the Civil War.
Afterwards, everybody went across Front Square to the Exam Hall, where tea and sandwiches were served. I went to find Tom, who received my condolences with a quiet solemnity that conjured a lump in my throat. Having shaken my hand, he excused himself and went to greet a tall, black-haired woman and two teenage boys whose abundant curls marked them out as his sons. I could see Matthew across the room talking to Donal and Linda. I exchanged brief and stilted words with Stephen, the organist, about the music we’d just performed. Joan and Val joined us just as Stephen was drawn aside by the vicar.
Val spoke quietly. ‘So Stephen got a mention in the death notice, at least.’
‘Oh?’ Joan was pleased. ‘As Tom’s partner?’
‘Yeah – well, not explicitly, I don’t think. Survived by children Joyce and Thomas, grandchildren whatever their names are, and by Elizabeth Silke and Stephen Bailey, sort of thing.’
‘I hope Elizabeth’s being decent to Tom,’ Joan said.
I felt like an eavesdropper.
I looked for Matthew again, but he was nowhere to be seen. As I scanned the room my pocket buzzed. He’d sent me a text: ‘Sorry to disappear – I have to rush back to UCD. 990’ I texted back: ‘No probs. See you soon. 90’
I went back to my car alone and drove out towards Rathmines. It took a couple of miles to admit it, but I was upset by Matthew’s leaving like that. We hadn’t exchanged a single word all morning. Would he not at least have crossed the room to say goodbye to me in person? Without meaning to, I began to slip into a little whirlpool of worry. He wasn’t being honest with me, I angsted. He was so reserved, always, and I had no real feel for how much of that was cultural and how much of it was just him.
I stopped to pick up a sandwich for lunch before going back to work. I was in front of the deli counter, waiting my turn, when I recognized someone walking past the window: it was that man with the big-lensed glasses, like Dad’s. I’d seen him that night in the Stag’s Head, and later near my house, when he’d driven off in the car with the Chichester Psalms registration plate.
‘Yes, please?’ said the server at the deli counter.
‘Hang on.’ I ran out into the street.
What was I doing? How was it done? I looked wildly around, up and down the street, but saw neither the man nor the car. I felt like an idiot – I hadn’t a clue where to start. I went along the row of shops a little way. The man was not in the launderette or the Chinese takeaway. He could have been in the hardware shop, but I had no intention of burrowing in there to look for him.
It might not even have been the same man. I’d barely glimpsed him. I might have accosted a perfectly innocent stranger and accused him of stalking me. That’s if I’d even have the guts to accost him in the first place. Did he know I’d seen him? Would they – whoever they were – change their strategy now?
Lacking other options, and feeling very small, I went back to buy my sandwich.
I ARRIVED AT WORK to find the place in crisis: Paula and George were arguing loudly in the inner office. Paula accused George of having no head for business, being wilfully ignorant about the amount of work he was heaping on her desk, living in cloud-cuckoo land. George defended himself but was clearly on the back foot. I didn’t dare disturb them.
Eventually, Paula declared that she had had enough and issued a thunderous resignation. George did his best to talk her out of it. She had four weeks of holidays due to her; he said he’d give her six if she’d take two now and come back to work. Two weeks, she said, was an insult. She’d take four now and three more at Christmas, thank you very much, and George could like it or lump it. And she’d be keeping an eye out for other openings. She stalked back out to her desk, greeted me curtly, collected her things and left.
George and I had a planning meeting after he’d calmed down a bit. There were three books at proof stage, locked in to the printe
rs’ schedules, as well as the fisheries conference proceedings, which was already slipping behind, and another big illustrated job due in. We said nothing about Eddie MacDevitt, although I could feel him lurking in the silences.
It was my idea to take the company laptop home with me and work some overtime – I could at least do the routine copyediting and proofreading for him to check afterwards. George huffed and puffed a bit but agreed in the end that it was the best solution.
‘Keep a note of the hours you do,’ he said. ‘I’m trusting you on this one.’ His eyes were sharp as needles.
I did a couple of hours that evening, and George was pleased with the results. ‘You might have the makings of an editor, all right,’ he told me.
I mustered my courage. ‘What about the MacDevitt book? Will we be starting work on that soon?’
George shook his head. ‘I’ll be taking care of the MacDevitt book myself, Cate. It needs a bit more work than your average manuscript. Poor oul’ Eddie is the salt of the earth, but words … not his strong suit, you could say.’
By midweek, it was clear that the stress was getting to George. He banged about in his office, growled down the phone, lurched out to meetings with his collar askew. He was fighting with his computer one afternoon when he lost it completely. I heard a yell of frustration, a thump, and then something that sounded like his chair falling over.
Into the silence, he said, ‘Cate, could you come in here for a minute?’
I came in as he was righting the chair, and he gave me a distinctly sheepish look. He picked up from his desk a device about the size of a grill handle, black, with a few buttons and a cord connecting it to the back of the computer. ‘I got a loan of this yoke from John Lawless, and I can’t get it to work at all.’ Now he looked helpless.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a scanner, would you believe. You’re supposed to be able to scan in text. I keep getting what looks like the text, but I can’t select it. It’s as though it’s a picture of the text, not the text itself. Does that make any sense to you?’
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