Anne Enright - Yesterday's Weather

He lay on his back, his eyes slits in the glare of the sun. He seemed to be watching the sky. She flicked her body with the towel to get rid of the grit that had lodged in the creases, but he still didn’t turn around. The laces of the boots were tangled in his hand and there were sweat marks and the marks of her wet body on his thick, old shirt.

‘You like it,’ he said and rolled on his belly to watch her. She covered herself with the towel to block his gaze.

‘And anyway … I don’t,’ and he rolled back again with a small grunt.

He pursed his mouth. ‘Pour us a cup of tea, will you?’ It was an old joke.

‘Pour it yourself, you bad bastard. You’re not in your mother’s house now.’

She sat there, for what seemed like a long time, and watched him sprawled damply on the sand. She did not stretch out, ignoring the freak weather with the confidence of one who already had the perfect tan. The colours of her swimsuit brightened in the sun.

After a while, she became aware of someone staring. It was a small child, naked as a cherub. He turned away from her when she looked up, and put his hands up to his face, but continued to watch her through his fingers.

‘Hello.’ She smiled at him and he ducked away at the sound of her voice.

‘Look,’ he said, suddenly bold, and with one hand still to his face, he pissed delicately on to the sand.

‘Lovely,’ she said, at a loss — trying not to give the child a complex.

‘No, it’s not,’ he said, ‘it’s very bold,’ and he ran off as his mother lumbered up after him; ‘Come back here and I’ll give you a belt!’

‘That’s the woman for you,’ she told Daniel, as she caught the struggling child and trapped his legs in a pair of pants.

‘A good, pink-skinned Irish ma with strap marks.’

Daniel lay still.

‘Strap marks and stretch marks and Dunne’s nighties. A fine hoult for you in the bed at night.’ Daniel grunted assent.

‘Well, take the old shirt off at least. You look like a maggot under a rock.’

‘I look,’ he said carefully, ‘like something the tide washed up.’

Affairs, she thought, should stay in the place where they were conceived, they do not transplant well. He lay on the sand as though it were the gutter, while she turned her patch of towel into a little piece of the Riviera. Her face was drawn with effort.

‘All I want’, she finally said, with deliberation and a fake smoothness, ‘is an intelligent life. You know what I mean.’ He turned to face her and his eyes were both puzzled and wary.

‘No, I don’t,’ he said, and then as a small concession, ‘it was far from intelligence that I was reared.’

‘Well, start now,’ she said, ‘do my back.’ He lifted his head and looked along the beach.

‘I will not.’

‘Pig.’

She flicked out the towel then lay down on it, with her back to him. After a moment’s pause he made his way across to her on his belly.

‘Here,’ he said, taking the plastic bottle of sun oil from its dugout in the sand. ‘What do I do with this?’ He spilt some on his fingertips and slapped it on her back, then moved over the skin like a farmer with a new lamb.

‘You’re done,’ and quietly he lifted the hair from the nape of her neck. He stroked the side of her face, until her breathing eased, his eyes still out to sea.

‘Did you see the body in the water?’

‘Which one?’ Her voice was muffled by her arms.

‘With the clothes on.’

‘No.’

‘Floating on its face.’

‘No.’ Her voice had an edge to it.

‘It was badly swelled. The gas brings them up, you know, after nine days.’

‘No, I did not see it.’

‘Pity.’ His hand left her face, and he lay down the length of her. After a while, he seemed to sleep.

The afternoon wore on, and still neither of them moved. There was something obscene about the two forms lying so close together, one fully dressed and curved around the naked limbs of the other. She looked like a tropical fish in a dirty pond, with a bad old pike to protect her. Everyone around them was busy being amazed by the good weather, playing and shouting and soaking up the sun, but these two were not sunbathing or flirting. They were probably not even asleep.

The heat grew less intense, and as a slight breeze pulled at her hair, she stirred and slipped away from the curve of his body. She sat up and stared around her, as though surprised by what she saw, and then she reached for her bag and started to search around in it. She produced a bundle of postcards and a pen, and shuffled through them to find the right one. It was a picture of a cat in a window, reaching for the blind above her, with the sign ‘Guinness is good for you’ posted on the wall outside.

Dear Fiona, (she wrote) the weather is glorious. The lump is being lumpish, haven’t seduced him into the sea as yet. Will you check the cat for me? Should never have trusted her with that couple downstairs. We miss ickle pussums, we does, and you too.

She tore it up and took out a fresh one; this had a picture of a donkey and a red-headed girl with a turf creel in her arms.

Dear Fiona, is he psychotic or what? The nights are, as always, amazing, but the weather doesn’t seem to suit his sensitive skin. Besides, he keeps on sneaking downstairs to make dubious phone calls. I don’t care about An Other Woman … maybe, but I keep fantasizing that he’s got a kid salted away somewhere. If you see Timmy, say I’m fine, i.e. give him a crack in the gob and tell him I’m sorry. All is …

She had run out of space and was writing where the address should go. The breeze had brought up the hairs on her arms, and she paused for a moment to examine them. Then she started to write on the front of the card, over the donkey’s face:

I have lovely arms. Not that it makes any difference.

And she abandoned everything where it was and ran off down the strand, into the sea.

She could swim for hours. The water was beautiful, despite the cold, and she aimed straight for the horizon. She felt like diving down, wriggling out of the swimsuit and swimming on and on. The foolish picture of its limp blue and green washed up on the beach drifted into her mind. They might even accuse Daniel of the crime.

She took a breath, grabbed her knees to her chest and bobbed face down on the surface of the water. Slowly, as she ran out of breath, her muscles eased. She blew what was left in her lungs out in an explosion of bubbles, then shot up into the air and took breath. No. She would not be angry. Anger did not suit her. She would carry around instead the chic pain of an independent woman — the woman who did not whinge or demand, or get fat on children.

‘I like independent women,’ he had said once.

‘Bloody sure you do,’ she answered. ‘They’re not allowed to complain.’

The shadows had grown harsher and longer by the time she got out of the water, her hands numb and her legs stiff with the cold. She made her way up the slope heavily, shaking her fingers in front of her. Long before she reached their place, she saw that Daniel had gone. The postcard she had written and left was torn up like the first, the pieces scattered and half-buried in the sand. Among them was his discarded shirt, and a pair of trousers lay broken-limbed and empty on her yellow towel. She yanked at the towel to clear it of debris and the bundle of postcards flew up into the air. Moving slowly, and shivering with the cold she went to each one in turn and picked it up. Daniel had written on the face of them all.

The first was a pictue of a Charolais cow on the cliffs of Moher. The sky was a hazy mauve, and the cow, which was right on the edge of the cliff, stared seductively at the viewer. Across the line of the sky he had written, ‘A Rathmines Madonna Dreams of The Intelligent Life.’ The next was a glossy reproduction of the beach in front of her, the colours artificially bright. Along the curve of the strand were the words, ‘Yes, the nights are amazing, but as yet, I have no child.’ She stared at it for a long time, and looked around to see where Daniel could be, before picking up the next one. It had an oul fella sitting in a pub, the light bounding off the polished surface of the bar counter and a fresh, new pint in the shaft of the sun. There was a crudely drawn balloon coming out of the old man’s mouth with the words: ‘What is the difference between a pair of arms?’ Finally, there was the beach again, though this time there were footprints drawn along the strand, enormously out of proportion, and a figure in the sea with HELP! coming from it. The caption read, ‘O Mary mo chree, I am afraid that the water will claim me back again.’