Mary Costello - Academy Street

And then he was there, gliding silently under her. Hair flowing back from his temples, his head pushing on. All sound muted by water. She glided, opened her arms and legs, swam parallel above him. They were beyond the reach of others, moving in perfect unison, two sea creatures, cold, radiant, luminous. They swam further, deeper, through sudden patches of cold. She had an urge to wrap her legs around him, ride on his back down into the dark.

And then he banked and they were before each other in the underwater silence. His eyes blinked, searched hers. He brought a hand to her face, stroked it. Air bubbles rose from his mouth. A faint frown, and then a smile. She was elated. And then he was gone, surging upwards, breaking the surface into sunlight. In his after-tow she lost her tread and floundered for a second and lunged back towards the shore, desperate for the touch of the sea floor.

In the evening they gathered up their belongings and piled onto the boardwalk, to the hot dog and drinks stands. Oliver and the others drifted off. They found themselves together again, a sphere of uncalm surrounding them. His silence was overbearing, a force field, sucking everything out of her. He raised his head and looked from him, as if nothing had happened. There was an eerie depth to him, an inwardness that was infinite. She thought he was not in command of it.

That night they all met up again at City Center ballroom on West 55th Street. She was fevered, agitated, consumed by the day’s events. The ballroom was heaving, dancers jiving to the Irish show band. Oliver found a raven-haired girl and never left her side. Anne and Tim danced and then, pitying her, Anne went to the bathroom and Tim took her onto the floor. The crowd swelled and swayed and she searched for the head of David among the throng.

He appeared at her side. She had gone outside for air, sat on a window sill. Under the streetlight he smiled at her. He was very tall. His smile drew her to him and she felt herself in the presence of something good.

‘Hello, stranger,’ she said. She knew she would remember this day for the rest of her life.

‘How’re all the patients? Any more falls?’ She had told him, before, of patients — men mostly — fainting when blood was drawn, at the sight of the syringe even. She suspected him a faller himself.

‘Every day, without fail,’ she said, smiling. She wanted to dance, but not just yet. He sat down beside her, their arms almost touching.

Minutes passed and nothing happened. She felt him retreat into the depths again. He could not help it. She gazed at his hand resting on his thigh and longed to hold it, make something of it. She sensed a longing in him too. She closed her eyes. She remembered something she had read — that the more desperately a man is in love, the greater the violence he must do his feelings to risk offending the woman he loves by taking her hand.

They began to walk. The night was warm, the streets alive. She told him again about the place she came from, the family left behind, the father. She wanted desperately to get him back.

‘I never knew my father,’ he said. ‘My mother reared me and my brother. When I was eight my cousin told me my father was a bus driver. I’d stare at all the buses going by, at the drivers. Wondering…is it you? When I got on a bus, I thought he’d surely know me, he would just know me.’ He threw away his cigarette. ‘One day when I was walking home from school a bus passed and the driver waved at me, and smiled. I thought it was him — I was certain. For a long time I searched. Now, well, I think…he probably wasn’t a bus driver at all.’

She felt him grow remote once more. She searched her mind for things to say. It was all she could do not to touch him.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

She was stricken. She caught something in his eyes — confusion, anger — as if hijacked by feelings he did not understand. She watched him walk away.

‘Will you be here next week?’ she asked his back, almost whispering. It took all the courage she could muster.

He turned and walked back to her. She felt herself in the lap of the gods. He brought his face to hers and kissed her. She could taste the cigarette.

And then he was gone.

MUSIC DRIFTED THROUGH open church doors onto the sunny street where she was walking and stopped her in her tracks. She entered the vestibule and read a notice for a lunchtime recital. She listened. First, she discerned piano, then cello. She stepped into the dim interior and stood by the baptismal font at the back. A small audience sat in the front pews, the musicians to the side. The notes changed, grew loud and discordant, then softened again and ascended in a pure harmony. Alone, the piano played slow and sombre. And then, from the cello, rose the most mournful sound she had ever heard. Beautiful, melancholy, reaching every remote cell. She closed her eyes. With his kiss he had claimed her. He had awoken her soul.

Days passed, each an eternity. She remembered every word, and was by turn exalted, desolate. She had never lived so intensely. At night she sat at her dressing-table mirror. She felt his approach, felt him steal into her, leaving a cold shivery fear at her centre, and afterwards a waning numbness. The only cure would be the sight of him. She crawled into bed. In the dark her mouth shaped itself to kiss, re-kiss, grasping at the air in little fish gulps. She bit back the reflex, the trembling mouth. The things that had seemed indecent to think were no longer so: his limbs, his skin, his hand pressed flat on her belly. Please come back to me.

She looked out of windows. She drifted, distant and composed, through each working day, the routes and rhythms of trains and subways, streets and corridors, already set into her neural grid. Days off she spent in the library, vaguely dreaming, vaguely sick, or in the park, staring at men walking home from work. In the apartment the fan whirred and she looked out and examined the day.

One evening, alone, at twilight she rose from the table and left her hand on the refrigerator door and felt its faint vibrations. She leaned against it and closed her eyes. The radio was on, low. After what seemed a long time she walked to the window and saw a man on the street below, smoking a cigarette. She thought it was him. She had a vision of herself, dressed in his skin, her arms inside his, her head in his. He raised his face but it was not him. She remained calm, felt herself possessed of infinite patience. The man threw his cigarette on the pavement and turned and walked away.

She moved from the window. She stood in the middle of the room. So this is love, she thought.

She went down to the drugstore, desperate to be among people. Returning, she was accosted on the street by a bag lady, a face thrust in hers, crazed eyes, wild hair. A mad mouth screaming obscenities at her, shouting out Tess’s own thoughts. Shameful thoughts. She froze, trapped under the woman’s spell, cursed. Then someone passed and knocked against her and she came to her senses and ran, stumbling, into her building.

The incident shook her to the core. How had that woman known her thoughts — the carnal thoughts that she, Tess, had harboured? This man, this love had become a disturbance, an interruption in her life. She needed to put an end to it. The following Sunday she visited Molly and Fritz. Oliver was there — she had not seen him in a while. He sat red-eyed, hungover, depressed. Alone for a minute after dinner, she asked good-humouredly about the raven-haired girl. He raised his listless eyes and shrugged.

Molly sat down. ‘Have you heard from Claire? I wonder if her arm is any better.’

‘What’s wrong with her arm?’ Tess asked.

‘I don’t think it’s much…She has it ever since Elizabeth was born. It could be arthritis — this family is riddled with arthritis.’