Tender (8 page)

Catherine burst out laughing; it was so clearly a mimicry of something their mother must have said while the phone call was going on. Now her mother said Anna’s name sharply, but she did not glance with a grin at Catherine, her eyebrows raised, the way she did whenever they both heard the child say something funny or precocious or endearing. She kept her back turned, looking out the window at the lawn, or at the meadows, or at the hedgerow or at the sky; at the young calves, bucking and leaping, or at the plastic swing, drifting, or at the white garden chair, upturned by Anna or by a gust of wind. Catherine had left a book out there, she remembered; she went out to bring it in.

In truth, it was not just the question of how to get to Carrigfinn for the weekend which bothered Catherine; it was also the question of what going to Carrigfinn for the weekend meant. Days with him. Nights with him, without the company—the buffer—of the girls. That day in Dublin, the Pat Burke day, they had hugged goodbye at the station, and Catherine had wondered if she was meant to understand it, what was going on between them. Because something was going on. She felt so close to him already by that stage, and the phone calls that followed confirmed it; the way James spoke to her during the phone calls confirmed it. The directness. The openness. That first afternoon in Baggot Street, it had shocked her a little, to hear him talk about how much he was looking forward to seeing Amy and Lorraine again, about how he could hardly wait to see them; outside of television, she had never heard a boy talk so sincerely, so emotionally, before. She had actually squirmed, listening to him. If he had been joking, if he had been being ironic, that would be one thing, but this was not irony; this was a strange, unafraid openness. And now, during their phone calls, it was the same, and again, she felt herself wanting to scuttle away from it somehow; from the way he told her that he missed her, that he wanted to see her, that he wanted to have her company again. Always she listened for the irony, for the trace of mockery, but it was never there; he was serious. He was saying aloud the stuff that, Catherine now realized, she had always thought you were meant to keep silent.

And of course the real irony was in her own reaction. Because she had wanted this, for so long, or had believed she wanted it; she had spent so long trying to get close to various boys in this way. And now she had it, apparently. Now she had someone who talked like this to her. And what was she meant to do with it? Because James was not her type. The way he talked so much. The way he looked. The red hair, clumped, untamed. The freckles like cowshit spatters. The clothes: baggy jumpers, worn-down Docs, navy socks ribbed and faded, jeans bunched in with a canvas belt. He was grand, he was fun to talk to—but beyond that, no. And yet, she was enjoying him so much, so much more than she had enjoyed anyone before. She felt her brain grow, talking to him. She felt herself wanting to live her life so much more fully. There had been nobody like this for her before. So did that not mean something? After all, what did she really know? Of it, of being with someone, of being—was this what it was?—in a relationship with someone, of actually being in love, instead of just thinking you were? Instead of all the things she was, by now, so accustomed to doing: storing up every sighting of them, counting the moments of eye contact as though they were coins, as though they could get you somewhere, buy you passage to somewhere? This was not how it was with James, and so maybe this, after all, was what it was meant to be like. Maybe she had misunderstood this, as she had misunderstood so many things, all these years. That first night he had phoned her, the excitement and gladness she had felt at hearing his voice had unnerved her, and she had heard it in his voice, too—and something more in his voice, as well: a kind of relief. A relief that she was glad to hear from him. And what did that mean?

It was Lorraine’s birthday, she told her mother, and Amy was throwing her a small party; at “small party,” her mother shot Catherine a look which made clear not just that she did not believe her, but that she was disappointed that Catherine, in lying to her about her reasons for going to Dublin for the weekend, would come up with so pathetic an offering. But getting her mother to believe that she would be staying in Baggot Street until Sunday evening was all that mattered. She left the
Leader
office at six, and walked to the station, and she watched as the half six train to Dublin departed, and she sat and waited for the one coming in the other direction. As it pulled in ten minutes later, James was standing with his head out the carriage door, waving; Catherine was immediately mortified. He looked insane. He was doing, she knew, some kind of regal wave; pretending to be royalty arriving into Longford. She saw people on the platform notice him, raise their eyebrows at him warily, or with bafflement, or in outright disgust. A man in the uniform of the train company shook his head slowly as he waited for the carriages to come to a stop. He put a hand to James’s door.

“That’s not safe,” he said.

“He’s—” Catherine started to say, coming up next to him, but she was interrupted by James, leaping out of the carriage to hug her, all arms and tightness and laughter and saying her name, over and over. Her name.

“Hi,” Catherine said, her voice a high-pitched, awkward trail.

“Can you let these people behind you on there, please,” the Iarnród Éireann man said angrily.

“Oh, we’re getting on as well,” James said, still with his arms around Catherine.

“Well, will you make up your mind, please,” said Iarnród Éireann.

“James,” Catherine hissed.

“Oh,” he said, squeezing her again. “It’s so good to see you.”

From beside them, a click of the tongue. “For
fuck’s
sake. Fuckin’…”

Carrigfinn was a farmhouse, whitewashed with black windowsills, a lawn stretching out in front of it. A long tarmacadam drive came down to meet the lane.

“God, I was always so jealous of people who had tarmacadam around their houses when I was a kid,” Catherine said as they walked through the gates. “They could cycle or do roller-skating or whatever they liked.”

“Really?” James said, considering this. “Well, we don’t have any roller skates, but feel free to cycle around the house all weekend if you like.”

“Ha ha.”

“There’s the old fella. Tidy yourself up a bit.”

“What?” Catherine said, alarmed.

“I’m
joking,
Reilly, for crying out loud.” He raised a hand. “Well, Daddy!” he called.

A man turned from the garage door, which he was painting, Catherine now saw, covering its brown planks over with a vivid green.

“Ye got this far,” he said, putting his brush carefully down and coming towards them. He was tall, with a head of white curls; he wore a pair of navy overalls smeared in several places with green, the sleeves rolled up. His arms were tanned. He came a few steps towards them and stopped, one hand on his hip, the other reaching out, she saw with a jolt of shock, to James.

“Well,” he said, as James, repeating the same word, went right up to him and planted a kiss on his cheek. His father’s hand stayed on James’s shoulder a moment, held the bone of it, then fell away.

“We got a lift out with Fidelma McManus and the mother,” James said, stepping back to where Catherine stood.

“Jaysus, I hope you had plenty of news for them,” his father said with the trace of a smirk. He nodded to Catherine. “Hello.”

“Hi, Mr. Flynn,” Catherine said, sounding yappy and absurd. “Nice to meet you,” she added, in a cooler tone.

“Who’s this lassie?” he said to James. “Tell her not to be calling me names like that.”

“This is Catherine, Daddy,” James said. “Catherine, this is my father, Mick.”

“Very nice to meet you, Catherine,” his father said, and they shook hands.

“Catherine lives with the girls above in Dublin.”

His father made a face. “What girls?”

James made a noise of exasperation. “You know what girls, Daddy, for fuck’s sake. The girls I went to school with. Amy and Lorraine.” He rolled his eyes at Catherine, who tried to laugh. “What girls,” he shook his head.

His father shrugged. “Ah, sure,” he said, and he winked at Catherine. “Sure I can’t keep track of you.”

“You can keep track of what you want to keep track of,” James shot at him.

“And where are you from, Catherine?”

“You went far,” he said drily to James, when she told him. He looked back to the garage door. “And what do you think of my labors?”

“You’re turning the place into a post office, is it?”

It was true: it was that kind of green.

“Ah, get in to your mother and don’t be annoying me,” his father said, swatting a hand to send him away.

James’s coloring was from his mother, Catherine saw. Peggy. Her accent was almost Northern; that singing affection in her words. She had a kind face, and when she saw James she put her arms around him, just the way James had done to Catherine at the train station, and when she was introduced to Catherine, she put her arms around Catherine too. They were just in time for dinner, most of which Peggy spent playfully upbraiding James for not having come down from Dublin to see her and his father sooner, and for hardly ever phoning them, and for not having sent her any postcards from Berlin.

“What in the name of Jesus do you want with postcards from Berlin?” James said, his mouth full.

“Well, I’d just
like
them, Jem,” his mother said.

“You’ve enough rubbish coming into the house as it is,” James said. “All your bloody catalogues and everything.”

“Oh, Catherine,” Peggy said, looking to her with a face of mock dejection. “He’s an awful boy.”

“He is,” Catherine laughed.

“An awful, awful child. I don’t know where we got him, I’m telling you. All the rest of them are as pleasant as can be.”

“Ah, poor mother,” James said, getting up from his chair and putting his arms around her shoulders; he buried his face in her neck. “You’re an awful bollox, do you know that?”

“Oh, Catherine,” Peggy said now, laughing, her eyes wet. “Do you see what I have to put up with?”

“Ah, you love it,” James said dismissively, kissing her hard on the temple; he slipped back into his chair.

“Oh, God help me,” Peggy said, still laughing, and she pointed to the plate of vegetables in the middle of the table. “Catherine, pet, help yourself there, won’t you now.”

“Oh, by the way, Mammy,” James said, scraping with a knife at the pat of butter, “I can’t go to Edel’s wedding now. Catherine is here.”

“Ah, Jem!” his mother said, putting her cutlery down. “Sure you can’t do that. Sure you can bring the wee girl. Sure they’d all be delighted to meet her.”

James shook his head, not looking up from his plate. “Catherine hates weddings,” he said. “I can’t do it to her.”

“Ah, Jem,” his mother said with a sigh, and that was it; the matter was closed.

Dreams fled away.
She just could not think of the rest of that line, but anyway, it did not matter; anyway, within an hour or so, with James’s parents gone off to the wedding, Catherine had other things to think about. She and James had lain out on the lawn for another while, and then James had suggested a walk down to the canal, and it was down by the canal that things became clear—finally, as Catherine thought of it afterwards, although at the time, this clarity did not feel like anything which was continuous with the things which had gone before. At the time, it felt like swimming, which was not something Catherine had ever been able to manage—her arms got tired, and her legs moved wrongly, and her breath got trapped inside her body and thumped its frightened wings—which was to say that at the time, it felt like drowning. What did it matter, she snapped at herself afterwards, whether she felt like drowning, or whether, indeed, she drowned, when it was James who was struggling, James who was speaking, James who was pushing the words out with that strained, clipped sound?

A boat was moving into the lock as they reached the canal, a gleaming white cruiser, on its deck a tanned and patient family—mother, father, two young girls—speaking French, and pointing at the rush of water, and wearing orange life jackets high and blocky on their bodies. Catherine and James waved at them, and smiled at them, and then for a while they sat on the stone bank to watch them, legs hanging down over the lock as the boat rose up below. The children were shouting, and the father was nodding, and the mother was busy with something close to the boat’s controls. The released waters plummeted in from the other side, like so many eaveshoots giving up their store of rain.

“Daddy’s giving you the eye,” James said.

Catherine glanced at him. “What?”

“Your man, Catherine,” he said drily. “Not my poor old fella. Jesus Christ.”

“Oh,” she said, laughing. She looked down to the Frenchman; he was occupied with one of the children.

“No, he’s not,” she said, but as often happened whenever she became aware of a man’s attention, or even of the possibility of it, her hands went to her hair; she fixed her ponytail.

“Oh, yeah,” James said with a smirk. “And
Maman
is not too happy about it, I can tell you. Look at her, shooting daggers at those long legs of yours.”

Catherine blew out through her lips. “Don’t be ridiculous. Sure her legs are miles longer than mine anyway.”

“Look, look,” James said out of the side of his mouth, and it was true, the man was gazing up at her now, his hands on his hips. The woman spoke to him, and he busied himself with something on the side of the boat.

“Now, Reilly,” James said, nudging her. “Bloody home wrecker, that’s what you are.”

“Stop,” she said, laughing.

“You know, you don’t keep your eyes open at all, Catherine,” he said, and he sat back from the edge of the bank, pulling up his knees and leaning against them. “So you don’t.”

Catherine shrugged. “It’s not really
worth
noticing that kind of thing.”

“Is it not?”

“To be looked at by some old French guy I’ve never seen before and will never see again? Big deal.”