Jesus, I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to know. I had a right to know hadn’t I? No. You can only know what he wants to tell. Maybe he would have told—said, ‘Oh I went out for a drink last night with the boss’s wife while he was finishing the programme.’
Why? Am I not enough for him? Maybe I was not clever enough; I was always talking about clothes and things. Should I have been reading more? I thought, I should learn about television—talk to him about it.
I wished I’d never gone out with Valerie to that damn film. If I hadn’t gone out I wouldn’t have seen Colin with that girl. I wouldn’t have known. It would have been better not to have known, not to know, wouldn’t it? Or would it? Now, every time he went out I’d think he’s with her. Every time he was out of the house I’d be squirming.
He’d probably been doing it for weeks. I was so blind with my idea of him I just wouldn’t see. He’s been sleeping with her probably as well. Rushing from home—a quick jab on the way to work. God, I could just see it.
Last night with Valerie I pretended it didn’t matter. We’d gone on a schoolgirls’ giggly outing for a change, without men; buses and peanuts, eyeing fellas in the interval. We were coming home, sitting on the upstairs section of the bus. We saw him walking arm in arm into the pub by the television station with this girl. Valerie said, ‘Oh look, there’s Colin,’ and then looked at me, horrified. I’d looked out and laughed. I just saw their backs going in the door and I said, ‘Oh he’s a free man you know’ and I hoped she’d think I was very sophisticated and blasé. Ah yes, Colin, my love. Colin with another … free … free to hate as much as he wanted and hurt as much as we were capable; that’s what I was thinking by the following evening.
Damn him for doing it, oh God damn him. Why? We’d been so happy together. We were. We went everywhere together. Everyone said what a couple we were. All those nights I waited up for him in the gallery, watching him finish a show, thinking, That’s Colin, he’s mine, I love him.
I gave up the job in the library at College so I could be with Colin the mornings he was off work. We made breakfast and then made love afterwards and went into town. I hadn’t even done modelling for weeks now. He never said anything much but I could see he didn’t like me spending all that time with photographers, and pictures in magazines and stuff; he said it was like having a share in a bit of public property.
I didn’t mind not working, not modelling. I wanted to live for Colin. I used to say to him, ‘I’ll die for you Colin.’ He’d laugh and say, ‘Much better to live for me Liz—what would I do with a beautiful corpse?’
What would I do? I had no money now. No flat. Nothing. I couldn’t go home—they’d never really wanted me there. I couldn’t just run in and say Look after me. They’d laugh, or be puzzled.
Please Colin come back, please. I’ll do anything you want, anything. You can go out every night with anyone you like. I’ll swear I’ll never ask questions again. I’ll just be here, waiting. Please, please.
The doorbell rang. Valerie. ‘My God—what’s the matter? You look in a right bloody mess.’ I clutched at her. ‘Oh Val, Colin’s gone.’ Saying it, shouting it, convincing myself, an echo: gone, gone, gone.
Valerie poured drinks and lit cigarettes. ‘Ballast for disaster,’ she said. She said, ‘You’re a right bloody fool. It’s he who should be crying, not you. Get a grip on yourself. Damn men, they’re all the same, want their cake and eat it, and want to be approved of for doing it as well. Give him a good kick if I were you. You can’t let people use you like that.’
I kept saying, ‘Oh but I want him back.’ I was defending Colin. Valerie was saying, ‘Ye gods and little fishes, he’ll come back won’t he? This is his flat isn’t it? He’s not going to abandon all his stuff for a start now is he?’ Valerie talked on. She talked with the conviction someone has when analyzing somebody else’s problem.
She said, ‘The thing with men is never to show that you care. Oh you can be nice to them, and have a good time with them, but go mooney-eyed at them and you’ve had it. Kaput.’
Valerie said she had three fellas on the hook, different nights, different moods, different men. She said, ‘It’s time women started getting their own back a bit.’ I said, ‘I bit him on the hand.’ We both laughed a bit crazily.
At midnight Valerie had to go to meet one of the three fellas. She said, ‘For pity’s sake Liz, don’t let him get you down.’ She made a face and squeezed my arm. ‘Don’t let him rule your bloody life.’
After she’d gone I walked round the living room for a bit. I opened the windows that looked out over the sea. I turned off the lights. The tide was coming in. Thousands of silvered ghosts chatting towards the shore, shifting and circling and hesitating but always moving forward. The air was thick with the smell of seaweed, a brown-yellow smell that slipped past your head and into the room, pushing into every corner. I thought, I’ll just be sitting here calmly when Colin comes back. I’ll say, ‘Oh hello there,’ as if nothing had happened. Bleakly I decided: Valerie’s right, I mustn’t let him rule my life.
I waited an hour. Another hour. The whiskey didn’t seem to be having any effect—on me who got drunk on two glasses of wine! I thought, I can move around, I could hold a perfectly lucid conversation. I’ve got this slice round the top of my head which is crystal clear.
Where is Colin?
The hours gathered up like humps once they were over. Like black rocks. The minutes that made them up were mocking dancers, stretching and twanging sharp shut like elastic bands.
If I went out for a walk down to the sea then he may have come back and wondered where I’d gone. He may have gone off again. He may have thought I’d left. I must stay. The furniture was mocking me. The house was. Everything was. The moon was white with the joke of the whole thing. Why me? Why?
I felt my jeans being dragged off. It was Colin. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa. He was pulling at my clothes. His breath was thick with smells. He was saying, ‘Fucking clothes’ and trying to pull them off. I half sat up and pulled the rest of them off and I got down on the floor and wrapped the rug round the two of us and we made love like animals, sucking at each other as if we’d die of thirst.
—11—
‘All I said was, “I think I’d like to go to College,“ or do something, anyway.’
‘You’re crazy Liz, what the hell do you want to go to College for?’
We were sitting up in bed; at least I was sitting up. Colin was lying down. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. I’d been thinking about the College business for days. College, somewhere to go every day. The books I’d read, the people I’d meet, the thoughts I’d have. Something.
‘Isn’t my baby happy here?’ Colin put his head on my stomach. ‘Isn’t my Lizzie happy with her man?’ He started stroking my legs and rubbing his head up and down on my belly.
I put my hand on his head. I said, ‘Of course I’m happy. I just thought, well, I’m not sure, but I thought … Colin wait a minute... I thought …’
—12—
‘We’ll go to Paris for a holiday. How would you like that Liz?’ We were sitting up again. ‘You’re just bored with Dublin I think. I’ve got to go to a film festival in France in four weeks’ time. We’ll meet up in Paris on the way back and have a holiday—d’ya like that Liz?’
I said, ‘Yes. I’d like that.’ I meant it too. But I also felt something had gone wrong. I’d given in too easily. It was always like that.
Maybe when we came back from Paris we would be able to talk about the College thing again. Colin was probably right anyway: I just needed a break. I’d never have the discipline to go to College, I supposed. I was too stupid as well. I mean, half the books that Colin had here were double Dutch to me: Iron in the Soul by Jean Paul Sartre—I tried reading it once but it was just words which seemed as though they’d been thrown at the page.
I couldn’t make them stri
ng together.
That thing with the girl had been a shock too. For a week we’d been strangers to each other. Locked in the flat, viciousness of suspicion, watching each other.
Then we began to talk again. Snows freeze over green fields and black streams gush below. Everything looks like a blanket of white but underneath it’s growing, and seething, and hot.
Colin said that he loved me, but that he must always feel free to have affairs with other women besides me. Not, he said, that he was having, or planning, an affair with that girl. No, that was just a friendly drink. He was calm. He made crying and hysteria and shouting seem ludicrous.
He said, ‘I’m not blackmailing you, or bargaining with you, but if you want to stay then you’ll have to give me freedom to move as I want to, that is all.’ Perhaps I said yes too readily. He said I should go out more.
The day after we’d talked about me going to College I dropped Colin at the television studios and took the car on into town. He’d given me a cheque for fifty pounds. He said, ‘Get a facial or whatever you call it, and something new to wear.’
I went along to Suzanna’s. She said, ‘Long time no see,’ and, ‘When are you going to do some more work?’ and ‘You’re not married or anything are you?’ She kept up questions like that all the time she was cleaning and patting and toning. And although she only half expected an answer she was listening all the time too.
I rang David from Suzanna’s office. Colin was going to be working all day. I thought, David will cheer me up. Anyway, David’s an old friend. Colin knows him. It’s all quite straightforward.
‘You’re looking beautiful,’ David said, ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘Oh come on now,’ I laughed, ‘Don’t look sad, you’re supposed to be cheering me up, remember?’
David was pleased too. The other men in the bar were looking at us. At me. Sideways looks over their glasses, through their conversations, pretending not to really look at all, but wondering what it would take to lay you, peeling you off layer by layer, and barking at their wives when they got home.
We had drinks first. Campari cocktails. David hailed a couple of friends. He talked about his work. He kept saying, ‘How are you?’ but he really meant, ‘How am I? Ask me, how am I?’
We went to this fish restaurant for lunch. It was a beautiful restaurant. There were white linen tablecloths that came down to the ground and then shorter, smaller, yellow linen squares that just covered the tabletops. There were heavy silver fish knives which slipped into the golden soft fish like a thieves. The waiters were dignified guardians of heaven. Slowly, slowly, they introduced you to all the delights that they were in charge of. ‘A little more wine Madam? Perhaps a lightly tossed salad? Some cheese maybe? And a cigar for the gentleman … yes.’
They were mostly men who ate in this restaurant. In suits. Expensive suits. They were all very quiet. Nobody got rowdy or drunk or clicked their fingers at the waiters. Even David’s lot were quiet if they come here. They came humbly, to worship.
‘What would you do if I jumped on the bar and stripped?’ I looked at David, laughing, the wine like white glass in my head. ‘Oh Elizabeth,’ David said.
I thought, I’ll do it. I’ll give them all a good fright. I’ll strip and then walk out into the street, starkers—that will give them something to think about. I thought, Something, anything ... I was in that sort of mood. The world smothering me.
‘What are you thinking about?’ David gave my hand a squeeze. His was moist.
‘I’m thinking how horrible I was to you. I used you,’ I said. I thought: Did I though? Didn’t he use me too? Taking me round because I looked like the right shape, and the right size, and didn’t do anything too out of the ordinary?
‘You could pay me back a little,’ David said, squeezing my hand again. ‘You could stay with me for the afternoon. We’ll go and take a room in the Shelbourne.’ He rushed the words. You could see it was the first time he’d dared proposition a woman like that.
We didn’t say anything for a bit. His hand was sitting over mine on the table. The waiter smiled—thought we were lovers. I thought, Okay, I’ll go with him to the Shelbourne. I’ll go like a proper tart.
A hotel room in the middle of the afternoon—Jesus!
The man at the reception desk had a face like a wasp, bunched-forward eyes and eyebrows and nose all in one. He said, ‘Mr and Mrs …?’ and paused. I wished I hadn’t come. ‘Luggage, sir?’, and he paused. This man dropped in a pause each time he asked a question—Fill that if you can, you clowns.
The room was right at the end of this carpeted passage. The carpet was so thick; you felt as though you had cotton wool in your ears. Sounds were different. Muffled.
David picked up the phone and rang for two double whiskies. ‘No, better make it a bottle of whiskey, Jameson, and some water.’ I looked out the window onto the street below. There were all these people in their coats and trousers and dresses shopping and going home, eating the food and wearing out the clothes and then coming back and shopping again. The closed circles of our lives. I thought, I’ll open the window and scream, I’ll say, ‘Drop your shopping, lift up your skirts and live.’ I imagined their little saucer faces turning up. Shock. Surprise. I thought, I’ll have to do something. This is awful.
David came over. He put his arms round me, crossed across my front, a hand round each breast. He put his nose in my hair, snuffling. ‘Oh baby, my baby.’
There was a knock at the door. The waiter: ‘Excuse me sir, your whiskey.’ Your room, your whiskey, your tart, your money … Sir.
The waiter left. I said, looking in my bag for a cigarette, ‘Look David, I’m sorry, but I can’t really go to bed with you. I mean it wouldn’t be fair on Colin. Or you.’ David winced at that last bit. He handed me a whiskey. ‘Have a little drink anyway.’ His face was crumpled-looking. A foetus face. We had two large whiskies. I turned on the radio above the bed. It was Johnny Cash. ‘I find it very, very easy to be true; I find myself alone when each day’s through; Yes I’ll admit that I’m a fool for you; Because you’re mine I’ll toe the line …’ Something like that. I began humming to it. We used to sing it at school and long for someone to be a fool for, somebody to toe the line for.
The whiskey was changing the room, making it warmer. The corners were softening. The bed stopped looking like a coffin. David was sitting in the chair with a smile on his face, his hand circling my ankle; I was rocking in time to the music, sitting on the bed … la la da dee da.
‘I’ll give you three hundred pounds it you will sleep with me.’ David’s voice was absurd. His eyes were small. His face pinched. He pulled out his cheque book and made out the cheque. I thought, This isn’t happening. It’s a joke. David is joking. We’re just having a little drink and talking about some things.
‘Will you?’ His face was red, pleading. I thought, David you mustn’t plead like that. I wanted to tell him. It made me feel awful. I thought, Okay, I’ll do it. If he wants it so badly then I’ll do it. It was almost as if my body didn’t belong to me. I sometimes felt that.
We got out of our clothes, hurriedly, David trembling. I started shivering all over. The sheets were so cold. So clean. We covered our bodies with the sheets. David was saying, ‘Oh Liz’—and I felt so cold. I thought: I’m the moon. I’m one eye, one silver eye, that’s as cold as metal. I concentrated on keeping my head up, straight. I thought, If I don’t move, if my head doesn’t look at what’s going on down there it will be as if it hasn’t happened.
David rolled off. Dry. Exhausted. I felt a surge of pity for him. Sorry. I felt disgust. I thought I want to get out of there, quick. I wanted the flat, the sea, Colin. I was putting on my clothes, rubbing between my legs with this scratchy white towel with ‘Hotel Shelbourne’ printed on it in flowery writing. I turned round to him before I left. I put my hand on his head. I said, ‘I’m sorry David, so sorry’ and then ran out,
down the corridor, down the stairs, across the hallway—the man at the desk said in his wasp’s voice, ‘Anything wrong Madam?’ ‘Piss off,’ I shouted, running out. I thought, For Christ’s sake, what’s the matter with me?
—13—
I drove from the hotel out to home. Family home, not our flat (Colin’s flat really).
I was thinking of something I’d read in a magazine about murderers always returning to the scene of their crime and I was wondering whether that was why I wanted to go back and abase myself in front of David, and whether that was why I wanted to go home. I was thinking, Does everyone feel this sense of having committed a crime? Not all the time, but having sometimes a very strong sense of guilt, an awareness of at some stage being, perhaps billions of years ago, party to something horrible. It remains as a little deformity inside you.
I was thinking about Father and about Mary. I thought, ‘They never touched me very much as a child.’ I was surprised at that. I’d never thought of it before. Suddenly I could feel the lack of their hands around me.
There was another article I read in the same magazine that talked about murderers. This one talked about people’s spines shrivelling if they are not touched enough. They used the word touch to mean both physical and spiritual touching. They said that every human being needs a certain amount of touching to remain healthy; it is as vital as food, they said. You could touch somebody emotionally, according to this article, by just saying ‘Good morning’ to them in a friendly sort of way, or you could make their spine shrivel by ignoring their smile at a bus stop. An amazing article.
Father opened the door. He said, ‘My Lizzie! You’re a woman already.’ He stood still with his hand on the door, looking at me. I said, ‘A surprise visit—and a flying one—from your prodigal daughter.’ I kissed him on the cheek.
Mary heard the voices from the kitchen. She came out, her hands covered in flour. She must have been baking bread. She walked up and we stood in the hall.
She lifted her hands to show me the flour and that she couldn’t hug me and she smiled; there was a tiny silence, like a gasp; then we all said something together.
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