Belinda McKeon - Tender

In the street, she turned to him. Smiling; she had decided that she would be smiling about it. That this would be her tactic. Laughing, as though what a jape! What a whirl! Parties, who could be up to them? Parties, what silly things happened at them, what comical things, what things, so much fun at the time, but ultimately meaningless, ultimately—

“Don’t, Catherine,” he said, holding a hand up, and her heart, she thought for a moment, actually stopped.

“Don’t what?” she said, forcing herself into a giggle; out it came, like a brace of bells. “James. You snogged him. You—”

“I can’t, Catherine; don’t,” he said, and his hands were to his temples, his fingers pulling at his brow. “Don’t, please .”

“James,” she said, still laughing, but then he looked at her — he blinked at her — and she stopped. “I don’t understand,” she said, trying to take his hands; he shook her off. “I don’t—”

“That was madness,” he said, leaning, with one hand, against a windowsill; possibly the windowsill of the room in which the Doonans and all their remaining guests were still sitting. With a light touch to James’s shoulder, she steered him away, down past the other little houses, all their curtains closed against the dawn.

“Don’t worry about it so much,” Catherine said. “I mean, I know it was mad — it was mad. I mean, you snogged Ed Dunne’s boyfriend!” She tried again for laughter; tried to get him — jostling him gently — to join in. Her heart was hurtling; she did not want to laugh, she wanted to cry, but she could not cry. She could not show. “James,” she said, and she put her hand on his arm again. “You snogged Nate from Brooklyn!” She gave the words, again, Julia’s enunciation. “In Michael Doonan’s house! This is mad!”

He spun around in her grip, then, it seemed to Catherine; he did something — shook her off, she realized, a moment later — the force of which set his whole body moving, and hers, and they stood there like this, jolted apart, in this narrow lane off Harcourt Street, in the half-light of morning, and James stared at Catherine, and Catherine stared at James.

“It’s not fucking funny, Catherine,” James said, and his breath was coming raggedly, and Jesus Christ, he was crying. Crying. A tear betraying him at the corner of one eye.

“James,” she said, and it was so selfish of her, so self-centered, but what she felt, in that moment, was jealousy; she had wanted to cry, and had fought it back, and now here he was, doing it, and she could hardly join in — could hardly storm in on top of him; and she envied him that, too, she realized. His moment. His crisis. Whatever it was.

“James,” she said again. “I mean, it was just a kiss. It was just a drunken kiss.”

“It should never have happened,” he said, his mouth grim. “It should never have gone that far.”

“You were drunk,” she said, hearing that the pleading was coming through clearly in her voice. “Nate was too. It meant nothing. It meant—”

“Nate,” James said, shaking his head bitterly. “That fucking prick. That arrogant, self-satisfied, fucking prick.”

“Well, you kissed him,” Catherine could not stop herself from saying. “You’re the one who—”

“I do not want to talk about it, Catherine,” he shouted, holding up a hand. “It is so fucking vulgar .”

“James!”

He stared at her. “You don’t understand, Catherine. You don’t understand what it feels like to humiliate yourself in this way, to realize that you have behaved so carelessly, so stupidly, so visibly.” He looked at her, seeming suddenly to have thought of something.

“What?” she said weakly.

“Who else was still there?” he almost spat, as though she worked for him, as though she had not got the figures to him in time, or the documents, or the percentages; she felt, as she tried to summon to mind the faces of those who had said goodbye to them in the Doonans’ sitting room, as though she was circling a desk, trying to get it in order; a phone was ringing, a pile of pages was collapsing.

“Ed, obviously,” she said, the words tumbling. “And the Irish Times woman. And that bald man. And some woman, maybe from the gallery, maybe from some other gallery, I don’t know.”

James’s hands were over his face. “This cannot be happening,” he said, faintly.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why it’s so terrible. It’s not as though—”

It’s not as though they saw the two of you, she was about to say, but in that moment, Catherine realized something, and for a reason that, also in that moment, she forbade herself to think about, she made a decision. James, she realized, was unclear about the order of things; he was unclear on the question of who had been in which room, when, as he and Catherine had said their goodbyes; who had stayed in the sitting room, and who had trailed through to the main room with them, and who had been there, standing around the main room, leaning against doorways, watching them as they went. Watching him as he doubled back. Watching what came afterwards, observing it like the piece of news that it was, acquiring it like the nugget of gossip that it was, perfect for sharing, perfect for laughing over later.

“It’s not as though it matters to these people,” was what she said, and instantly on his face she saw how little this had helped; how, somehow, this only made matters worse. “James,” she said, reaching out to him again, but again, he shook her off. “You barely even…”

“No, Catherine. We were fucking messing, talking, flirting, I don’t know the fuck what, in the corridor, and the next thing we were shifting, and we went into that downstairs bedroom and we—”

“The bedroom?” she said, staring at him. “You didn’t—”

“No, we didn’t, Catherine,” he said acidly. “We just, messed around, I don’t know, and then…” He shook his head. He looked, she thought, utterly furious.

“What?”

“Then someone came in for a coat, that woman who sang that never-ending bloody song earlier, and she saw us. And I got out of there.”

“And Nate fell asleep on the bed.”

“I don’t fucking know what he did. And as far as I was concerned, that was an end to it. To be seen once was, for God’s sake, enough. And he’s such an arrogant prick, and such a cocksure fucker.”

“So how did it happen again?”

He laughed, but it was not the kind of laugh Catherine wanted to hear. It depressed her: it was sunken with irony, collapsed into anger. “How did it happen again is right, Catherine?” he said, and he shook his head. “How did it happen again?”

“How do you mean?” she said, and her voice was like a child’s.

“Nothing,” he said, and he thrust his hands in his pockets and walked on towards Harcourt Street.

“You’re not going home?” Catherine said, rushing after him. “You can’t go home in this state.”

“Where else am I going to go, Catherine? The George?” He laughed, the same empty laugh. “It’s closed. Even its clientele know when to call a night a night.”

“James,” she said, and she grabbed his elbow, and she did not care, this time, if he tried to shake her off; she would hold on to it, and she would take hold of it again and again, if she had to, would take hold of both his elbows, in fact, which, in the next instant, was what she found she had done, so that they were facing each other, his face wrenched in irritation, and hers in Christ knew what. Pleading, probably. Always with him now she felt as though she was pleading.

“Please don’t go home on your own, James.”