Mary Costello - Academy Street

She was ashamed. Wrapped in her own selfish fantasies.

That night she called Claire. She could hardly speak.

‘How are you, Tess? When are you coming to visit us?’ The voice was far away and lonely.

‘I’ll come soon, I will. In October. I promise. How’s your arm?’

‘It’s much better. It’s nothing — just numb from carrying Elizabeth around. But now she’s walking.’

‘And Peter?’

‘He’s good. He’s busy, always busy — the company’s expanding. It’s all…great. They have these family days — I meet the other wives. They’re all so pally with each other. We go to parties. Oh, Tess…you wouldn’t believe what some people get up to.’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Is everything okay, Claire?’

A hesitation. ‘Yes, of course. Everything’s good, Tess…Do come out. You promised! I think of you every day.’

Anne Beckett’s wedding drew near. They had grown close, and Tess longed to pour out her feelings for Anne’s cousin, but the dread, and the prospect of shame, if she had misread the signs and imagined it all, prevented her. She contrived to steer conversation towards topics in which his name might arise, but was struck dumb when it did. One night in August, Anne was writing her wedding invitations at the kitchen table, stacking them into a neat pile for posting. Checking names off her list.

‘Donal Brennan, my cousin, can’t come, but David is definitely coming — he was afraid he mightn’t make it. He thinks he’ll be shipping out in October.’

Her heart took fright. ‘Has he been drafted?’ She had thought the draft applied only to American citizens.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think he just signed up for the Air Force. He’s being sent to a base in New Jersey in the next few weeks…’ She thought for a second. ‘I doubt he’ll be flying planes. Maybe paperwork or something.’

A while later, after Anne had gone to bed, she found his invitation in the pile and memorised the address.

He was not in the church for the ceremony, or outside on the sunny street where the guests overflowed afterwards. The reception was held in a hotel forty minutes out of the city. When she saw him at the table, seated three places from her in a suit and shirt and tie, and when he looked up and their eyes met, she knew that, for all the times she had remembered him, he had remembered her too. She watched his hands bringing the fork, the glass, to his lips. She saw his wrists and the fine hairs under the cuff of his sleeve and thought of his skin, warm and smooth under the shirt, and she had to look away. She ate little and genteelly, a new refinement arriving of its own accord, as if every limb and organ and nerve was in obeisance, moved to honour the beloved.

‘I thought you were a lawyer. Why are you joining the Air Force?’ They were on the terrace. She was flushed from the wine. The light was fading and night-lights were coming up on the lawn. She took the cigarette he offered and bent to his lighter’s flame.

‘I am a lawyer. Anyone can enlist if they’re under twenty-five — which I am, just about — so long as they pass the medical.’ She frowned. ‘So you’re not being drafted. It’s your own choice to go.’

He did not answer immediately. She thought of the TV images, helicopters, a burning monk, the words Saigon, Viet Cong.

‘Yes, it’s my own choice.’

He looked out across the lawn, into the twilight. In the silence that ensued she arrived at a complete understanding of him. Recalling this moment later she could not say how she had come to this understanding, only that she had, she had fathomed something deep in him. It was more than fellow feeling. It was as if she had perceived all the joy and fear and pain that had ever entered his heart, and he had let her. For an instant he had let her love him. Her eyes began to fill with tears. It was not with sorrow for his going that she wept, but with a new and gentle longing, a wish that he would get all he had ever wanted. She had an urge to take his tender feeble hand and cover it with her own. She saw him, a small boy again, at the burning tree, standing on a street gazing after buses.

All evening they moved in and out of each other’s orbit. She was a little drunk. When the tables were cleared and the band started up, he did not seek her out but waited an hour, until she had grown almost distraught. Finally, she was in his arms, being wafted across the floor. She looked up at his face, inhaled the sweetness of whiskey on his breath. A line from a poem dangled just beyond her consciousness, but she could not pluck down the first word.

‘I dreamt about you,’ he said.

At the bar they could not peel their eyes from each other. Around them, the beat of the music, people dancing. Ice cubes tinkled and sparkled in their glasses. She sipped the amber liquid, felt its heat spread through her. She put a hand on his arm to steady herself and his eyes smiled. They moved to a dim corner, sat on plush red velvet, touching shoulders, arms, thighs. This certain love is melting me, she thought, and leaned into him.

He was carrying her shoes. Her hand was inside his as they climbed stairs. A corridor of crimson carpet, deep, under bare feet, and then the sinking softness of his bed and his face swimming into view. His chest, the glow of uncovered skin. She left a hand on his sternum, his collar bone. She thought of the word clavicle , how beautiful it was. Her eyes opened and closed and opened again and she was gone, drifting, lightheaded.

And then, woozy, half dreaming, she gasped at the first hot stab and cried out in pain. She pushed at his chest, tried to pull herself from under him. Frightened, he looked into her eyes, and rolled off. He stroked her cheek tenderly. Shh, I’m sorry. A look of sorrow came upon him. She began to crumble. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye. He kissed her eyelids, whispered something she did not hear.

They lay in each other’s arms. She did not want to lose him. She pressed herself to him, felt herself yield again. He searched her face, kissed her. He began to move, slowly, gently, his hands caressing her until she felt the swell and ache of her body, the longing to fuse, to be subsumed. She turned her head to the side, repositioned herself under his weight. He seemed to forget himself then, and her. She did not care. She closed her eyes against the pain, both shocking and stirring. She was offering herself to him, and to something larger. She felt herself topple and a point of light, of bright sensation, opened and spread, spacious within her, and pushed her perilously close to a precipice. She had the feeling that he might after all save her, save them both, but then he gasped and shuddered and collapsed on top of her.

She lay there like a stone. She heard footsteps, voices on the corridor. From somewhere far off came the sound of music, as if reaching her through water. She hauled herself from the undertow and staggered to the bathroom and knelt at the toilet bowl. Strands of her hair fell into the vomit. She sat on the floor, trembling, the walls spinning. She ran hot water and sat into the bath, scalding herself.

When she went back to bed he was deeply asleep. She began to shiver. After a time she drifted off. When she woke he was gone, and everything was silent.

SHE TRIED TO make good what was terrible. She tried in her mind to tenderise it, beautify it. More than anything she wanted to cast off shame. She sat in the dark of her apartment and covered her head with her hands. She did not know how to reassemble herself.

She took refuge in the routine of work, in the care of patients and the ordinary talk of her colleagues. For brief interludes she forgot. She arrived on the ward early and left late, speaking and moving with a slowness, a soft remote kindness in every action. An acquiescence, an atonement too, as if relinquishing all claims to the earth. Everywhere, she watched her step, fearful of walking into doors, trees, people. She lowered her head and walked hard and fast on the pavement to beat down words. Sin. Shame. In the hall each evening she opened her mailbox with trembling hands, and each evening there came nothing, no word from him. She had thought she had known him. She had known only a small corner of him. Is it possible to know anyone, ever? Taking the stairs in one deliberate step after another, she felt her resistance fade. Hours later, with the TV turned down, fear turned to anger. Suffer , her heart cried. Suffer a little of what I suffer.