Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

She looked at George, the dark brown hues of his eyes deepening moment by moment.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—” she said, feeling the sting of tears well up in her eyes.

“Not to worry. While I was waiting, your mother and I had a great conversation about the merits and demerits of the Mother’s Union!”

“No, I don’t mean that, I mean. .” But she could not bring herself to say it. She could feel something closing within her. “. . Yes. . I’m sorry. . I’m sorry I was so late.”

Her apology was all that George needed, it seemed, for he smiled widely at her.

“Katherine, I’ve something to show you,” he said eagerly, and then he put his hand in the pocket of his jacket, sat down beside her, and presented her with a small blue velvet box.

“This is why I wanted to see you tonight, Katherine, and I’m sorry, sorry that I couldn’t wait until we had made plans to go out, but it was just that I put the final payment down today after I had finished work”—his nervousness and excitement was making him speak very quickly now—“and I was able to collect it from the jeweler’s, and I know that I should have taken you out somewhere nice to give it to you, but, here we are, and I hope you really like it and that you’ll say—”

He stopped talking suddenly, as though realizing he was in the middle of a speech he had yet to write. Katherine had her head bent so that he could not see the expression of complete bewilderment on her face. Only a short while ago, climbing the steps to her flat and thinking of Tom, she had felt transformed, had felt something new opening up within her. But now, looking at George, she realized how little she knew about Tom. And she knew George; that was the truth of it. She knew his ways, trusted him, relied on him, knew that he loved her and would care for her. Here is a decent man. Here is George. What did she know of Tom? Her thoughts were collapsing now like a stack of cards. Trembling, she held the blue velvet box in her hand.

“I hope you like it, Katherine.”

She opened the box. The box was lined with indigo satin, a tiny piece of night sky. Out of this sky, the neat diamond of a ring shone like a lone star. Around it, the ring’s gold band gleamed like a lick of yellow moon.

“Will you marry me, Katherine?”

Katherine slowly lifted her head and looked at George. In that moment, his sweet humility caught her. She knew, deep in her heart, that if she refused George, he would be devastated.

“Yes,” she said, still trembling, while on the wooden floor of the parlor, under the table, the lie still sat, its tongue coated with sugar, waiting for scraps.

Two days after George had asked her to marry him, Katherine slipped the dustcover over her accounting machine in the offices of the Ulster Bank and closed the block of files that had been resting on the wooden trolley by her table. There was a chorus of good-byes and “Show us again” from her envious colleagues, who rubbed their hands up and down their thighs as they cooed with admiration at the engagement ring on her finger. She quickly left the building and turned right along Waring Street, crossing onto Rosemary Street and then cutting through Berry Street into Smithfield Market.

It was there that she spotted the small figurine sitting in the window of an antiques shop. The porcelain statuette of an old man with weathered skin, sitting cross-legged, a piece of cloth in one hand and a needle and thread in the other. When the proprietor informed her of its price — it was much more expensive than she had anticipated — she did not falter for a moment, but instead emptied her purse of its two shillings onto the counter. She then asked the proprietor if he would take something as security on the rest of the purchase so that she could take it with her, and then she slipped off her engagement ring and placed it on the counter beside her money. The proprietor made it clear to her that though it was not usual for him to agree to such an arrangement, he would agree nonetheless, for the value of the ring she had offered him was more than satisfactory. He wrapped the statuette in a double layer of brown paper, securing its edges with a long piece of string, and handed it to her.

She left the shop with a rising sense of exhilaration. An urgent breeze began to rise up in bursts from around the street corners, flapping the awnings above the shopfronts and rudely lifting the hem of her skirt. She held the brown paper parcel close to her chest, its paper crackling like a catching fire. As she arrived at the tailors’ rooms, Mr. Boyne’s gray-haired secretary was leaving, as was the young woman with the ivy-patterned blouse. The last of the junior tailors had laid out their work carefully in place, to be ready for the following morning, and were taking their jackets and caps hastily from the coat stand by the door before they headed home. Katherine walked past the tailors without glancing at them. She could see that the door to the anteroom was open. As she approached it, she could hear him singing quietly. She could feel his voice pulling her in. She entered the room and could see him standing at his worktable, his head slightly bowed. As he lifted his head, he smiled at her through his song. Then he walked to the door, his eyes never leaving her, and closed it behind them both.

Katherine and Tom lay still and awake on the rucks of cloth that he had spread out on the wooden floor. Crimson and gold. They lay curled into each other and fully dressed, her back against his chest, as though they were both waiting to be discovered in an empty house. Both concealed the true extent of their desire for each other, choosing instead a cautious foreplay of touch and conversation. Their senses were magnified by the uncertainty of decorum — its appropriateness or its waste of time — and so they hovered in a state of sexual suspense. The lamp on the worktable cast a hoopful of honeyed light across their bodies, while the cloth warmed under them and released the odor of its new thread. The statuette now sat on top of the work cabinet beside the boxes of buttons, its brown paper wrapping left like a discarded skin on the floor. Behind them, in the far corner of the room, the clock ticked, but neither of them wanted to shift from their position to look at it. So every so often, Katherine tapped Tom’s pocket watch with her fingernail and he told her the time. If she was late getting home, her mother would worry. They lay quietly, losing the sense of time as time passed, drifting even into moments of drowsiness, their eyes opening to gleams of silk and brocade and then the tap, tap, tap of her fingernail against his pocket watch.

“Quarter past nine.”

Through her spine she could feel Tom’s heartbeat. This distinct life resounding through her. This life she did not know. When she was a child, she would often place her ear against her father’s chest and, as she listened, feel that she was attached to an ancient tree, the steady tempo of his kindness, the layer upon layer of compassion ringing its deep tones, the vibration filling her ears and her head and her body. Solace tapered from an ancient wood. Here, that same resound, that same sense of bliss, but instead she was a new bird in a new forest, in her nest of skin and bone and body heat, the ridge of an unfamiliar pulse threading its way through her. A slender, yielding wood surrounding her, protecting her, exciting her.

“You haven’t told me yet.” Tom’s voice was soft and unhurried.

“What have I not told you?” She turned her head a little toward him.

“What it is you do.”

She sighed and stretched her legs, her upper back pushing into him slightly. She smiled.

“Oh, it’s all so boring, and predictable. I work in the Ulster Bank offices on Waring Street. I add up all the figures on my accounting machine, and when they don’t add up, I find out why, because there’s always a reason, because it’s all mathematics, and then I fix that and I move on. And that’s what I do, all day, that’s it. I account for things.”