The Living (11 page)

The pavement was like a tightrope. I looked down at my feet in their runners, left, right, left, right, watched as drops of rain fell on the fabric and were absorbed. The car was motionless, dazzling. I'd need to go awfully close to it to get to my front door. Point-blank range.

I couldn't think of any reason why they'd want to shoot me, but once I'd had the idea, it was hard to shake. My jaw clenched, and tears began to come. I looked down at my feet again: they were still moving.

No friendly light in any of the windows of my house. Aidan and Sheila were on their way to China. As I got nearer I readied my key. I was picturing the car door opening, a big man surging out, grappling me as I tried to reach home. I'd scream, I thought.
I'd scream loud enough to bring the neighbours out into the street. I'd break his silver-rimmed glasses.

I was there. My key slid into the lock, and I looked round, hardly believing that nobody had tried to stop me. The car had slid back a length and was indicating to move off. I couldn't see who was inside. As I watched, the headlights flashed one painful throb into my eyes, and the car rolled smoothly away.

I let myself into the house, closed the door and sank to the floor of the hall.

I
SAID NOTHING TO
anyone about the car outside my house. I woke up on Sunday, indeed, feeling certain that I'd blown the whole thing out of proportion – it was all in my head, my cruelly thudding head.

Rehearsal the following Thursday was frustrating. Having dispatched our better-known pieces, we honked and squeaked our way through
A Song of Ireland
, completely failing to get a sense of the overall shape of it. The basses dragged; the sopranos struggled with tuning. We slogged through the pompous finale, then Diane, who had kept her cool with evident difficulty for much of the evening, said, ‘All right, I don't think we'll get anything more useful done tonight. Let's go to the pub.'

I'd barely spoken to Matthew since our parting after the film on Friday. No chatty little text messages, no bridge of understanding. Lying in bed alone one night I'd cooked up a joyless little drama, wherein he, tiring of my company, was looking for excuses
to back out. We had nothing in common; he was cleverer than me, more attractive. I wasn't what he wanted. Maybe he even had a girlfriend back in England. Such things were not unheard of.

When he fell into step beside me as we walked out into the street, I was surprised. He left some space between us, and I felt the distance like a canyon with a wintry wind sweeping down it. I turned to look at him, saying nothing. The others all seemed to have gone ahead.

As we neared the corner, Matthew caught at my sleeve and pulled me towards the railings. We stopped and kissed fiercely, at first touching only with our lips, but then relenting, holding, hugging, warming each other.

Matthew said into my ear, ‘I'm sorry I haven't been … I've been stupidly busy.'

‘It's OK.'

He stroked my hair, and I drew back to look at him. ‘We're like a pair of illicit lovers,' I said.

He shrugged. ‘Well …'

‘Do you mind the others knowing?'

‘I thought you might,' he said, the dimple on his right cheek deep with a half-smile. I didn't believe him.

I said, ‘I think it's sort of inevitable, unless we're a lot more …'

‘Careful—' said Matthew.

‘Secretive,' I said.

We did some more kissing.

‘I don't have a problem with them knowing,' I said, savouring
the bright new knowledge that there really was something for them to know about.

‘Fair enough,' said Matthew. ‘But I don't want to make a thing of it, if you know what I mean.'

‘What about …' I paused, ‘public displays …?'

‘Hmmm,' said Matthew, kissing my forehead in a thoughtful way. ‘I don't really want to be too blatant about it. Not yet.' He drew back and looked at me, eyes serious. ‘Is that all right?'

‘That's fine,' I said. ‘Sort of an open secret, then?'

‘Exactly.'

‘Right you are.'

‘Story of my life,' he murmured as we turned to walk on towards the pub.

Inside, the others were settling themselves round a cluster of tables, piling coats in a corner, declaring their orders to the ones who were going up to the bar. I made for a table where Joan and Tom were just sitting down. Matthew tapped me on the shoulder and asked what I wanted.

‘Pint of Guinness, thanks.' I sat down to face the other two, who eyed me with mischievous interrogation.

‘Well, look who has a new friend,' said Joan.

‘What?' I said, trying desperately not to blush.

‘That was a tap on the shoulder, if I'm not much mistaken,' said Tom.

‘Indeed it was,' said Joan.

‘Proprietorial, one might almost say,' said Tom.

‘Rubbish,' I said, unable to keep my wide grin in check. I busied myself with taking off my coat and stashing my bag under the table.

‘Have it your way,' said Joan, disdainful.

Matthew returned with pints for the two of us, just as Val and Anja the Austrian soprano joined our table. They were deep in a debate of some kind.

I couldn't put my finger on exactly what annoyed me about Anja. She was the picture of perky zeal. You could imagine her practising her English syntax, memorizing lists of idioms. ‘But that is exactly what I say,' she insisted as she and Val sat down. She appealed to the table at large. ‘If you are going into public life or you are becoming a celebrity, you must give up your right to privacy. People are going to look up to you for your leadership, and they have the right to know what sort of person you are.'

‘But no, that's nonsense,' said Val. ‘You can't just make a blanket rule like that.'

‘They have a right to know about anything that might affect your ability to do your job,' Tom said. ‘Apart from that, it doesn't matter what you're like in private.'

‘But what if you are a criminal?' Anja seemed really incensed.

‘Well, that's what Tom is saying,' said Joan. ‘If you're a criminal, that would affect your job. And if the public had any sense, they wouldn't vote the crooks back into office.'

Val said, ‘And celebrities don't have any power anyway, so who cares what they do?'

‘They have no political power, maybe,' said Anja. ‘But they certainly can have influence on people's behaviour.'

‘I don't think they can, really,' Matthew said mildly. ‘I think they sometimes give people an excuse—'

‘Oh, we're talking round in circles here,' said Val, setting her glass on the table with a slight thump. ‘The bottom line is, you can't enjoy a life lived under scrutiny the whole time. Nobody has a right to follow you around and spy on you. As long as you're doing no harm, you have a right to your secrets.'

I looked over at Matthew and saw his mouth twitch minutely.

‘But how can anybody tell if you are doing harm or not until they found out more about you?' Anja persisted. ‘I think people really want to know who they are dealing with. It matters to them.'

‘Doesn't matter to me,' Val said, causing Anja to let out an exasperated sigh. I recalled Val's outrage at her contact details being sent to Belfast. She was playing devil's advocate.

Matthew took out his phone and frowned at the screen, then began to text.

Anja said, ‘No, but obviously it matters to lots of people, or the media that report it wouldn't survive.' She took another drink. ‘Anyway, it's entertainment. What is wrong with that?'

Tom said, ‘Most of it is engineered by the PR people, anyway.'

‘Yes, exactly – they like it,' said Anja happily, and downed the rest of her drink.

I turned to see Matthew bending to pick up his coat – cursed my weakness when the sight sent a bolt of adrenalin through me.
Fear is not the appropriate response here, I told myself. Matthew stood up, unfolding himself smoothly from the low bar stool. I wanted to lay hold of him and drag him home to bed.

‘You off, Matthew?' Joan said.

‘Yeah, sorry,' said Matthew. ‘I've got to go and meet somebody.'

‘See you soon, then,' I managed to say. He waved to the crowd of them, and was gone.

I looked back down, hoping nobody would speak to me for a minute or two. Matthew had left without finishing his pint.

Two hours later I was well on my way. I was in a fine mood – thoughts of Matthew's departure had receded to a manageable distance, and I was successfully ignoring the fact that I'd have to get up for work in the morning.

I was having a heart-to-heart with Val. I barely knew Val: quiet and difficult-looking, with her dark spiky hair, her nose-ring and her blood-red fingernails. She finished rolling a cigarette, took another sip of her pint.

‘I take it you don't smoke?' She turned the bag of tobacco towards me.

‘No thanks.'

‘I knew you wouldn't. I was only testing you. I'd be a soprano only for these, I swear.'

‘Jaysus, keep smoking,' I said, and we roared laughing.

‘I give up every New Year. Lasted nearly eight months this time round.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘keep at it.'

‘We all have our vices,' said Val. She leaned in closer. ‘Isn't that right, Cate?'

I wondered what she was getting at.

‘What's yours? Go on, mine are obvious.'

I took a drink and looked into my glass, swirling the dark stout around, dissolving the foam patterns that clung to the sides. I thought about my inability to draw boundaries, the way my defences seemed so very breachable, my foundations so unsure. ‘Impossible men, I suppose,' I said, and hoped Val wouldn't ask me to say any more.

‘Is that all?' Val said. ‘Well, that's easily cured.' She stood up and patted my arm as she edged past en route to her nicotine hit outside.

M
ATTHEW AND
I were in Bewley's, drinking tea and being awkward with each other. He seemed preoccupied, and I wasn't up to pressing him. I looked out the window at the rainy Saturday afternoon that was already beginning to darken. We'd been to the cinema, to see an all-too-forgettable romantic comedy, and we'd sat too close to the front. My neck was still stiff; the film had not been worth it.

I was trapped in the cycle of unanswerable questions – about him, about how much he liked me, about who he was, really, underneath it all. I so badly wanted to find out.

‘Penny for them,' he said suddenly.

I looked down at the table and came to a little decision I'd been
mulling over. ‘I found something you might be interested in,' I said.

‘Oh, yes?'

‘It's in the MacDevitt book.'

Matthew picked up his teaspoon and slowly stirred his half-empty mug. ‘Go on.'

With some effort, I set aside my qualms about George and his obsession with confidentiality. I wanted to help Matthew. ‘You know the way you're researching that train ticket that went to Blackpool instead of Preston?' I looked up to see him staring at me. ‘Well, there's a description in Eddie's book of a meeting with a British official, in Blackpool.'

‘Really?' His eyes were wide, his expression open and soft.

‘Yeah. He doesn't actually name the guy, but it could be … maybe?'

Matthew reached over and gripped my hand. ‘Cate, I'm not joking, you have to get me a copy of that manuscript. Can you e-mail it to me?'

‘Ooh, look at you and your academic fervour.'

‘Tip of the iceberg, my dear. But seriously, can you e-mail me the file?'

I shook my head. ‘George would kill me if he found out.'

‘How would he find out?'

I wished I'd said nothing. ‘Listen, it'll be published in a few months. You can see it then.'

‘Oh come on, Cate, now that you've told me, I have to know what's there. I've been hunting for almost a year, and I haven't
found a thing. This could be completely central to my thesis. Look, I'm not going to talk to any journalists, for goodness' sake.'

‘I know you're not.'

‘Just a little e-mail? For me?' He was hamming it up, batting his eyelashes, inclining his head like a supplicant puppy.

‘Listen, George is so careful about this book that he gets me to use
his
computer to work on it. He'd never let me e-mail it. I'll ask him if I can print out that section and show it to you before the book comes out.'

‘No, no, no, it's so simple, you just copy and paste the description of the meeting into an e-mail to me, and click Send. Thirty seconds. Job done.'

‘Matthew, I've told you, I can't. You'll just have to wait.'

‘Oh, have it your own way,' he said. He still looked happy.

We finished our tea and made our way out on to Westmoreland Street. Matthew put his arm across my shoulders – I felt the heat of his palm through the fabric of my red coat. Outside in the yellow-grey dusk, a fine freezing drizzle fell; it clearly had no intention of letting up.

‘I'm sick of this,' Matthew said, peering dolefully up at the sky. ‘I want to move to Florida.'

‘With the hurricanes and the crocodiles?'

‘Alligators, I think you'll find.'

‘Actually, you big pedant, I think
you'll
find there are both crocodiles and alligators in Florida.' I poked him in the chest. ‘So, what next? Are you going home?'

‘Yes, home,' Matthew said, with a note of regret. ‘I've got loads of reading to do.'

‘I'll drive you,' I said suddenly, and stood by to study his reaction.

His eyebrows rose; his fingers came up to pinch the tip of his nose.

‘Come on, it's raining,' I pressed. ‘You don't want to catch your death. Honestly. It's no bother.'

He glanced up at the sky again. ‘That would be really great,' he said. ‘Thanks.'