Belinda McKeon - Tender

“Brilliant shot,” Lisa was saying, nodding approvingly at James.

“Smokin’,” Zoe was saying, poking Aidan in the ribs.

“Oh, now, he was a right handful in front of the camera, I can tell you,” James was saying, which of course just made Cillian whoop and cheer all over again, and it occurred to Catherine that for her own sake, for her own sanity, she should really call it a night and go home to Baggot Street, to bed, and that maybe everything would be clearer in the morning, that maybe in the morning, everything would be OK; but no, the last thing she could do, the last thing she was able to do, was to go out of here and leave everyone else with James. What she wanted, rather, was for all of them to go, and for the two of them to be left alone together, and then maybe she could stay over, snuggled up warm and cozy beside him. Guilt and dismay accosted her again at the thought of this, or rather at the realization that she had, once again, allowed herself to be so sucked in, rendered so wistful and so hopeful and pathetic, by that thought; but it was there. It was in her. What was she supposed to do with it? she thought, watching as the door to the hall opened and Liam walked in, guitar case on his shoulder, six-pack of beer in his hand. What was she supposed to do with it, when it was not even something she could understand? From the middle of the room, James was coming, smiling, to greet Liam, hand out for a shake, then arms around him for a hug, and the horrible bird of jealousy thrashed against the walls of Catherine’s chest again, and she poured herself another mug of awful, bitter wine.

And it was later that Catherine understood.

It was after several other conversations that had made her feel rattled, and baffled, and dreadful; a dreadful, horrible friend. Lisa, for example, telling James that there was a new exhibition by Ed Dunne coming up at the Gallery of Photography, and that she could get him an invitation to the opening, and James saying that they could go together, and happening, at that moment, to catch what must have been an injured look in Catherine’s eye, and saying, abruptly, We’ll all go! And everyone had agreed, and Zoe had said that they’d make a night of it, but that had not made Catherine feel any better — that had only made Catherine feel worse, because she wanted it to be only her and James who were going, her and James, glossy and sophisticated at an art opening — she would wear her black wool Oasis dress, the one she had worn to the English Ball — and she did not want any of the others there to get in the way of that, to diffuse that glow. And then Liam, talking for a long while about Dunne’s photography and what he thought of it, because of course Liam, being from the North, had an opinion, because Dunne was from Belfast originally and his work was always in some way about the Troubles; Liam had plenty of opinions, and they were smart and they were reasonable and they were, at moments, quite angry — he did not think that Dunne, who had lived in America for years, had a right to pontificate, as he put it, about things he did not have to live with, or to worry about personally, or to experience. Liam’s uncle, it turned out, had been killed early in the Troubles, shot at a checkpoint close to his home in Tyrone — and surely there was no worse feeling than the feeling Catherine had at that moment, of hating Liam for having a story which made him so interesting, so much the object of James’s fascinated, sympathetic attention. What was wrong with her?

“Do you think the talks up there at the moment will come to anything?” Zoe asked him, and Catherine hated her, too, for being so earnest and worried about things that affected other people, not them, and for the way that James, in response to this, frowned, and looked, also, worried, and launched into a long exchange with Liam about whether the deadline just imposed on the peace talks at Stormont could really bring anything about. Catherine watched him as he spoke, and she thought about how, when she had watched him working earlier that week, taking photographs of Zoe on the lawn outside the Pav, she had felt jealous not just of Zoe but — this was insane, this was intolerable — almost of his camera; of the deep care it was getting from him, of the locked, intense focus. She could not understand herself. She could not believe —

And when the conversation had finished, Cillian and Liam took their guitars out, and the singing started, and it was after perhaps twenty minutes of their singing that Catherine understood. Cillian was singing, for the most part, though Liam joined in for a few songs, and everybody else did as well, and they were making their way through all the usual things—“Blackbird” and “Hallelujah” and “Suzanne”—and then Cillian had started into a U2 bender—“Pride” and “Bloody Sunday” and “When Love Comes to Town.”

“Oh, enough bloody U2,” Catherine said to James, who was on the floor across from her, smoking some of Cillian’s hash and sitting back against the wall; he had one arm resting on the top of his head, bent at the elbow, and she thought of Florian in the photograph, and she chased the thought of him away. And James laughed, and said something that Catherine could not make out about Bono, and he passed her the joint, and their eyes met, and they were both smiling, and it was just lovely, Catherine thought — it was just the way it should be, with all of the earlier nonsense melted away. And by now, Cillian and Liam had started another song, a song it took her a moment to place, as Liam strummed it into the room, but it was more of the same: the same corny, heartfelt appealing. And she was actually laughing about it, thinking of how she and James would mock its lyrics, its diamonds and its cradles and its graves, when it hit her.

It was a song she had never really listened to before, though she had heard it so many times, heard its hoarse, desperate chorus. It was a song that had always just been there; always just part of the world’s background noise. And now — now, it seemed, it was hers. Because now she was singing it, in her fucked-up mind. James was sitting across from her, whispering to Zoe, and she was here, with its words coursing through her, with its words in the place where her breath was meant to be. Where her sense was meant to be. Her reason.

You . And you. And the guitar chords slamming down like blows; Liam really going at the guitar chords, and Cillian, really pulling the arse out of the lyrics, roaring one word over and over, giving it two syllables, making it roll on, roll over; making of it a haunting.

And fuck, Catherine thought, as she watched James, as she watched the smile of him, and the lean of him, and the way his skin looked in this half-light, and the way his eyes looked when they fastened on Cillian and on Liam.

Fuck, she thought, you cannot feel this. You cannot feel this for him. You cannot.

But she did.

On Monday, she stayed in the library and she worked on her Plath essay. She steered clear of James, telling him that she had to work. She had decided that enough was enough; that if she had to, she would stay away from him for a month, to shake herself out of this madness. Because this could not continue. She could not continue to be this weak. To lose his friendship because of this — unthinkable. And on top of that there was the shame of it, because this was, was it not, the precise thing about which her parents had warned her? And she had sneered at them; she had thought them ignorant and old-fashioned and appalling. So she would talk herself out of it. She would wean herself back to what was normal. And if she could not — but there was, she decided, no could not . There was only should . The kind of friend she should be. The kind of Catherine; the best, or at least better, version of herself. And yes, it would take work. But she was going to get there, she decided. She was going to get there, and James was going to be waiting for her, her old James, when the business was done.