empty dining hall, and we’d walk about under the trees and lie on our backs spotting stars through the darker darkness of leaves. We told each other stories, sometimes from books, sometimes incidents that had happened in the past. It was lovely, so it was. Words spoken into the night. Small, soft words, far off and glimmery like the summer stars. Sometimes we climbed into the trees and sat in the forks of their branches, swinging our heels. I was better at climbing than he was, more agile, more sure-footed; I’d join my hands into a stirrup to give him a start then I’d scramble up behind him.
After the first week I asked Michael if he fancied having sex with me, but he turned me down.
“Sorry,” he said. “Nothing doing.”
“Why not? Are you gay?”
He gave me his sniffy look. “I don’t fancy you,” he said. “Besides, I’m married.”
“What’s that got to do with it? Anyway, I don’t believe you.”
“That I’m married? Or that I don’t fancy you?”
“Both,” I said. “I don’t think you’re married. I think you fancy me but you can’t get it up.” (It was wonderful, that hospital. All your inhibitions went sailing off down the river.)
“Correct,” he said. “On both counts. It’s the drugs. Why don’t you try Catriona?”
“Do I look like a dyke?”
“Silly girl—ugly word. Catriona’s so beautiful. Those red lipstick circles she draws on her cheeks. I’d try for her myself if I was able.”
“Is she a dyke?”
“Who knows? She might feel like giving it a go if you asked her nicely. Lots of people have a bit of both.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I certainly don’t.” I was shocked. Besides, I was afraid of Catriona, though I didn’t say that to Michael. She saw blood coming out of the taps, which was worse than seeing people being blown to bits.
Michael stared at me, a long, slow, speculative look from those hooded eyes. “You’re very narrow-minded for a redhead,” he said.
I wanted to ask him what he meant, but I didn’t. I was afraid of my hair, even then.
Michael never touched me, never as much as took my hand walking back through the dark. And I was glad enough, for it kept things light and simple. My forwardness was really only bravado.
Robbie came and when he did Michael vanished from sight.
“Hubby alright?” he’d ask me afterwards. “Not pining?”
“Robbie,” I’d say. “His name’s Robbie.”
But he went on stubbornly calling him Hubby. I wouldn’t answer him when he did. I sulked, but he wouldn’t shift; it was Hubby this and Hubby that till I lost my temper.
“Lay off, would you? You’ve never even set eyes on him.”
But he had. He’d seen Robbie from a window.
“I wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night down a back entry,” he said. “He’s the sort kicks the shite out of people like me—”
He had a point, though I didn’t say so.
Robbie hated coming to the hospital. Shame made him narrow his shoulders and kick out sparks with his steel-shod boots. His wife in that place, labelled forever, was more than he could handle. And no Barbara Allen. He’d wanted Barbara Allen as I never had, and now she was flushed down some hospital sluice, gone when she’d hardly started.
My mother came on the bus from Derry. I told her the doctor had said I could ask for a transfer to the hospital there. That way she could visit more often.
She gave me a long, straight look and told me I had a husband. Then she said Londonderry was just a wee village for talk, and folk said these things ran in families, and what about my two wee nieces? Had I no thought for Brian and Anne at all?
“Oh, folk know alright,” she added. “I don’t try to hide what can’t be hid, that’s not my way. But some things are best not advertised.”
Hard words, but there was a tenderness in that hospital, a looking-out-for-one-another that nearly made me not mind them. We were all raw with our own failure, and as well as that our minds were turned down low with drugs so we weren’t so keen on judging. That was a kind of liberation, for what could you do at the bottom but laugh—the laughter of gentleness, not of derision? Derision was for out there. Derision and fear-of-derision had landed us in here. We had broken ourselves on our own wheels, trying to be what we thought was required of us, trying to be “normal.” Failing. In here we moved slowly, taking care, as wounded things take care. Oh, there were dislikes and resentments alright, but only because we were human. Mostly we were as careful of each other’s sore places as of our own, or nearly so. And in a funny way there was no one out there as real for us as the ones inside that we lived with every day. Perhaps what bound us together was pity more than love. I don’t know, I don’t know where the one stops and the other starts.
I was discharged before Michael was. I wrote out my address and I said good-bye, and it never once crossed my mind that I might not see him again. I’d accepted the gifts he’d given me—gifts that were given freely, as you give when you are young. I took them without thought or gratitude; took them in the fullness of youth, when life is opening and everything seems natural and yours by right.
I sent him a postcard. Later on I scribbled half a letter, but I lost it on a bus. I never rewrote it. I was living my life, I forgot about Michael. When at last I remembered, my letter came back with “unknown at this address” scrawled over the envelope. Perhaps he’s alright, perhaps he’s alive, but I get no sense that he’s out there still. The depression was very bad with him; it never let him alone.
I am thirty-six and already so much left undone and regretted. What will I do when I’m old?
Where was I? The day after the night I first met Liam. Saturday. I met him again in the street late that morning. He was walking towards me, his head down, his eyes on the pavement, no sign of Noreen. I was dying with the hangover and the lack of sleep, but I wanted to be out of the flat and away from Robbie, away from Robbie’s foul words, away from the misery in his eyes when he came out with them.
I’d told him I’d messages to do. I was out the door almost before he knew I was going.
When I saw Liam my first thought was to turn on my heel and run, but I didn’t. I’d be past him in a flash, I told myself, there was no call to be drawing attention to myself, running off like an eejit. So I went on ahead, my eyes on the ground, the same as his were. Then the next thing I felt a hand gripping my arm and a voice saying my name out as if it was news to me.
“You can leave go of my arm,” I said. “I’m not about to run off with your wallet.”
He let go. He said he hadn’t seen me till I was nearly past, he hadn’t meant to hurt me.
“How about a cup of coffee?” he added. “Wouldn’t you let me buy you a coffee or a drink or something? Would you fancy a bite of lunch?”
No, I said, I didn’t want a drink, or not yet, and where was Noreen, wouldn’t she be wanting her lunch any minute now?
“That should keep you busy and out of trouble,” I added nastily.
“Noreen got the early train to Dublin. Said she couldn’t be doing with Northerners. Always arguing and complaining and telling the rest of us what to do. Said she knows when she isn’t welcome, even if I don’t.”
“And don’t you?”
“Oh, I do. It’s coming through