Shrugging, I made for the door, Jeanette following. I realized that I was mildly tipsy and that Patricia knew it. But what the hell. We had worked hard.
We walked along slowly, beside the kitchen garden, where Patricia grew herbs and strawberries and raspberries.
“I don’t wanna walk,” Jeanette said. “I’m tired.”
“Me too. Hopefully she’ll be gone when we get back in.”
“Yeah. You don’t seem to like her as much as you used to.”
“Well ...” I paused. Maybe I didn’t. “It’s not that. But one afternoon, I didn’t tell you this, she was asking whether we had boyfriends. Implying we ought to have.”
Jeanette said nothing. We were out in an open field now. She quite suddenly lay down.
“Ah, you’re not going to sleep, are you?” I knew what trouble it was to wake her up once she’d gone asleep. “Look, come back inside and we can go upstairs.”
“No,” she murmured. “Just a snooze, OK? Wake me in five minutes.”
“Right,” I said in a long-suffering voice.
* * *
Five minutes had passed. I glanced at my watch to make sure. OK. I put my hand on her shoulder.
In the dim light she looked so peaceful. Beautiful, too. Suddenly I realized what I wanted to do. Bending down, I kissed her on the lips.
No response. Nothing. Again, I kissed her. Her lips were warm. I breathed for a few minutes and then began to shake her shoulder.
“Jeanette. Wake up. Come on, Jeanette. Wake up.”
She stirred. There was a faint smile on her face, which intrigued me. She opened her eyes.
“You said five minutes.” My voice was soft. It was so quiet around us, and dark.
“Oh, thanks, Cathy.”
As we walked towards the house I felt a curious thing happening. My body felt like it wanted to blend into hers. We walked side by side, our bodies touching. I wished we could stop, put our arms around each other and kiss.
In the house the kitchen light was on, but there was no sign of Patricia. The first thing I did was head for the sofa. I felt around for the bottle.
“Oh, Cathy, no!” Jeanette said, giggling. Her tone said yes.
“What the fuck,” I said cheerfully. We weren’t even bothering to lower our voices. Of course, the old walls were thick, and we were not in much danger.
I poured a good inch into the two glasses that were drying on the rack. We sat down side by side. Again I could feel the flow of desire between us. Or was it only one way?
“Do you miss Jasper?” I asked.
Jeanette looked down. “Not much,” she said quietly.
“Good.” I laughed. “’Cos I’d feel guilty if you did.”
“That’d be stupid.”
I could feel myself getting drunker. In a minute it wouldn’t matter what I said.
“So ... I’ve often wondered ... do you like Jasper more than me?”
“No.” She looked shocked. “Of course not. You’re my friend.” She said this word with difficulty.
I nodded, smiling, my skin glowing.
She looked at me. “God, your eyes are shining.”
I jumped up and looked in the mirror on the wall beside the sink. Yes, they were. And green. I smiled at myself.
I rejoined Jeanette. It was as if something was shimmering in the air between us. I felt so close to her tonight. I wished I could be her ... merge. So that there would no longer be any space between us.
We’d finished our poteen.
“That’s it!” I said, laughing. “Unless you want to pass out. They’d find us here in the morning ... dead.”
She giggled. “No thanks.”
I looked at my watch. “Are we working tomorrow?”
“Hope not,” she said, yawning.
“I hope not too.”
“Let’s not. We can say the drink John gave us wiped us out.”
We chuckled about that. I tossed the bottle back under the sofa.
“It’s way past our bedtime,” I said. “All of ten o’ clock. No, 10:30.”
Jeanette sighed.
I sat down.
We listened to the clock ticking for a few minutes.
There was utter silence from upstairs.
“Let’s go up,” I said. Jeanette, whose face had become sad and weary, nodded. I pulled her up. Then I made her drink a glass of water. I drank one myself.
The evening was over.
* * *
I slipped into bed naked. I never usually did this, but tonight I wanted to feel the sheets against my body. It was hot, too, in the room.
Jeanette was in bed, but not, to my surprise, asleep. She was tossing and turning restlessly. Then I heard her sob.
I gulped. It made me uneasy when people cried. And I never knew what to do. But there only seemed one thing.
I crossed the room swiftly. We were both drunk, I remember thinking, though perhaps it was more accurate to say that our inhibitions had dissolved.
“What’s wrong, Jeanette? What’s wrong?”
I had waited for this, for the moment when she would make herself vulnerable to me. When she would reveal her the things that troubled her.
She began talking incoherently, about the hard times she’d had at home, how she hadn’t been able to study for the Inter because she’d been forced to do so much work at home, how her mother was often ill, and took out on her the resentment that she felt at her husband for leaving her saddled with four kids.
She said she’d never had a friend like me. She thanked me for all I’d done. She kissed my hand. I was sitting quietly by her side, just listening, slightly overwhelmed. It was like everything was being handed to me on a plate at once. Then she reached up, put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me down to her. She kissed my breast.
“Come into bed with me,” she said.
I got in. I had taken my initiative out in the field. Now I did not really want to do anything. I wanted her to do whatever she needed to do.
The next minute she was lying on top of me, crushing my mouth with kisses. God, I thought, this is it! Sex. I felt proud that I had got this far, and that this was finally happening between us. Despite Jasper. Then I wondered, characteristically, whether she knew what she was doing. In her head, was it me she was making love to?
“Jeanette ... slow down,” I whispered.
I could sense that she was trying desperately not to think. It worried me. What about tomorrow? Would she be able to acknowledge what had happened? I wished I could relax, be spontaneous. But it was hard. The flow of energy between us had been cut, somehow, and what was happening wasn’t mutual.
I wanted her to take her time, be tender, kiss me slowly. I sensed what it could be like. Our bodies would melt into each other, we’d be hot, sweating, breathing heavily.
I was afraid to surrender too much. Because I felt instinctively that tomorrow we would have to thrash this through. I couldn’t relax.
Suddenly Jeanette jerked away from me. She buried her face in the pillow. I watched her anxiously. After a moment I reached over and touched her shoulder. She didn’t react, but turned onto her side, her back facing me.
I lay listening to her breathing become deep and rhythmic. She must be asleep, I thought. With a new kind of daring I moved closer to her, put my arm around her. She muttered something I couldn’t hear, but rolled against me; we lay there together that way for a long time. I felt dazed, peaceful too. It’s OK, I remember thinking; this is just the start. It was enough to lie there with her weight against me, to feel that she was, in a way, mine.
* * *
My eyes opened. I glanced at the clock beside my bedside table. Nine o’ clock. No work this morning. I sighed, reveling in the lie-in. I stretched. My body felt good; lazy.
What had happened was coming back to me. It was fine with me. I felt good about it. I glanced over at Jeanette. Still sleeping. Well, let her sleep. At some point in the night I must have gone back to my own bed.
I felt
happy.
There was a knock on the door. Patricia popped her head in.
“Good, you’re awake. You’ll be needed in about an hour, so I suggest you come down and have breakfast.” She took in the fact that my shoulders were bare and frowned slightly.
“It was so hot last night!” My voice sounded unnaturally exuberant. “Could you hand me my nightgown? It’s on the chair.”
She crossed the room and handed it to me.
“Thanks, Patricia,” I murmured.
Jeanette’s eyes had opened. She watched as I slipped the nightie over my head. She looked faintly bewildered.
Patricia left the room without another word.
I jumped out of bed.
“Morning!” I said, cheerily.
Jeanette yawned. She didn’t say anything.
“We have to work soon,” I said. “Patricia was in to tell me that.”
Without looking at me, Jeanette said, “Did something happen last night?”
I paused. There was a brief struggle in my mind. No, Jeanette. Nothing happened. You imagined everything. Yes. Something did. And you bloody well know it.
I was too curious to know how she’d react.
“It was a wild night, wasn’t it?” My smile seemed to offend Jeanette. She gave me a hard look. Then it softened into an appeal.
“Please, tell me what happened. I need to know.”
You weren’t that drunk, I thought. But to humor her, I told her everything, without self-consciousness and without shame. Perhaps I sounded smug. I didn’t mean to.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I thought it was all a dream.”
I looked at her. It was a delicate moment. Nothing had been said yet that was irrevocable.
“Are you sorry?” I asked. “I’m not. I mean...”
But she was off in her own mind, reliving it.
“You should have pushed me away.” That was an accusation.
“Oh, right, I’ll remember that. For future reference.” I almost laughed.
“No!” she said furiously. Her face flushed and her eyes were angry. “There won’t be another time. I promise you that.”
“I see,” I said calmly.
“I’m sorry it happened. I mean, it’s pretty embarrassing.”
I shrugged. “Look, it doesn’t have to be— ”
“I want to forget about it. Totally. That it ever took place. OK? I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t want you to write about it in your diary.”
I stared at her. “That’s not fair. You can’t just pretend it didn’t occur. It was building up for a long time— ”
“It was a ... an ...” She sought for the word.
“Aberration?” I suggested, bitterly.
She nodded. “You’d better not write about it, Cathy. I can’t stay friends with you if you do. It’s not fair to me. I know it was my fault.”
I got up and began throwing my clothes on.
* * *
I needed air. I ran out the front door. It was hot already. I made my way to a field, recently cleared, and lay down on a patch of stubble, my heart beating and my head throbbing. I pressed my face to the ground.
This couldn’t be happening to me. I knew I would never forget those words she’d thrown so recklessly into the air. And I thought she’d cared about me. All she cared about was saving her own skin. Her own reputation.
It was between us. But she couldn’t see that. She felt that what she’d done was awful, that she wouldn’t get away with it unless she rejected it ... me. I felt differently. I could own it as a good experience. I was glad it had happened. But it hadn’t been worth it if it had driven a huge wedge between us.
So that’s it, I thought, my face against the scratchy ground. It’s the end.
* * *
I must have lain there for a long time. I know that I cried, or that tears seeped out of my eyes. I needed Jeanette, though. I knew that I would take whatever she could offer me.
I had no choice.
I glanced at my watch. Time to go in.
When I entered the kitchen I saw my face in the mirror by the sink. Red, streaked with tears and dirt. I began to wipe my face hurriedly on my sleeve. I felt like a nine year old kid. Patricia turned and gave me a long stare. I started backing towards the door, unable to face her gaze.
“What happened, Cathy?” Her voice was very calm, her eyes huge and serious.
“I fell. Just now,” I babbled. “Yesterday I got very sunburned. It came up in the night. I’d better go put some cream on it.”
“Sure, I have some here.”
I sat down. She came over to me. Instead of giving me the tube she squirted some into her hand and began to gently put it on my face. I closed my eyes.
Somehow I knew Jeanette was in the room. Patricia stepped back. Jeanette stood by the door. She had made her face up for the first time in weeks. She looked impassive; a stranger. I looked like a wreck, but at least I was showing what I was feeling on some level. She wasn’t.
She sidled over to me, or so it felt like. To Patricia, or the room at large, she declared:
“Sunburn? Oh, yeah. My mother gets that quite a lot. That’s why she never stirs out of the house in the summer.”
I bit my lip. “What about your mother’s charwoman? Is she prone to it?”
She stared at me, her eyes round, disbelieving.
At the sink, Patricia said in a soothing voice:
“You’ve both been working very hard. Aren’t you glad it’s all over now? I’m going to take you on trips during the days you have left here. We’ll go to Newgrange, if you like. Slane Castle. Monasterboice. I’m an excellent guide.”
I hardly heard her, and Jeanette said nothing.
Chapter 12
No one answered the door, so I felt around under the dusty brown mat on the front step. This was where my mother left the key when she went out and knew that one of us would have to let ourselves in.
Dublin seemed gloomy and dank compared to the country. The sky was overcast, the air oppressive. I was glad that I had a little time to myself before having to face the family, but at the same time it hurt me to come home to an empty house. Probably nobody had missed me, I thought, as I shut the door behind me.
As I climbed the stairs to my room a heaviness weighed down on me. All I wanted to do was throw myself down on the bed and cry. This had to be done furtively. I felt ashamed of my need for tears, of my unhappiness. I should be able to cope with this, I told myself, and I can ... I had already half blocked out the cause of my grief. As Jeanette had wished, I had buried it deep in myself and I seldom thought about it. What tormented me now was Jeanette’s coldness to me. During our last few days in Meath she had been curt, inaccessible. And I, unable to think about it rationally, had filled in the hours by minding Patricia’s children, or sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea while Patricia cooked or cleaned.
Patricia. At the station as the train rolled in she had smiled a goodbye to Jeanette, who’d mumbled some words of thanks for her hospitality. I was watching the train. Then I turned to find Patricia beside me. The next moment she had enfolded me in a hug. My head was pressed against her shoulder, against one of the flowered dresses she wore for special occasions. I could smell a faint perfume.
Then we stepped back. “You’ll come again soon, won’t you, Cathy?” she said. “I want to see more of you.”
I nodded. Her words and her kind look moved me, but they took several seconds to sink in. I felt like a zombie. Nothing was real. This goodbye didn’t seem real. The train, the journey back to Dublin with Jeanette, the thought of going “home”—these had no meaning, no significance for me.
I could not imagine ever coming back to Patricia and John’s house. I would never feel comfortable there, sleeping in the guest bedroom, knowing what had happened in it. The house and the fields were dense with memory and I was determined to leave behind the burden of what had occurred here. With it, I left a lot of myself.
As we boarde
d the train, and it started to move off, Patricia waved, the wind blowing through her hair. I was glad she had left the children behind with John, for there on the platform she looked like a young woman from the 1940s, waving her soldier lover off on the train, her show of bravery and steadfastness masking concern and anxiety. Off to the wars we go. Even Patricia had become an image now. I could not imagine writing to her from Dublin, or ringing her up for a chat. It was her presence that had counted, what went beyond words. And that would be taken away from me now, like everything else.
‘‘Are you coming?” Jeanette said impatiently, her hand on the door of the train compartment.
I nodded, moving away from the window.
The train was crowded, dirty, slow. Jeanette had bought a packet of cigarettes from the snack bar and smoked, grimly, her face in shadow. There was a Mills and Boon on her lap but I didn’t think she was really reading it. I tried to read too, but could not concentrate on the words. I felt as if I were disintegrating. While my body sat numbly on the seat my mind was flying about elsewhere, desperately trying to escape. But it was trapped, because wherever it sought to go it would bump against barriers, obstacles, locked gates. My fate lay ahead of me and I knew what it was: another year in school. The last year. It felt like a sentence. Had I really committed a crime? Did I deserve this? These were the thoughts that I inevitably returned to. They would not go away.
Had Jeanette ever cared? Had it all been an illusion? Was there nothing more to hope for from her? It devastated me to think that all we had built up was gone—in an instant. One miscalculation, and the great shining bubble of our friendship had burst.
I didn’t really want to talk to her. I was glad she was silent. The things we should have said we were both too frightened to say. But by now, anyway, we had forgotten most of what we needed to communicate to each other. It was easier that way for both of us. If we didn’t talk, Jeanette had intimated subtly, a debased and unreal version of our friendship would continue. But it would be something. If I forced her to really look at this, I would receive only hostility and denial in return. And because the implications of what had happened obviously scared her so much, I too felt discomfort and embarrassment.
The Leaving Page 16