Tender (28 page)

And then she was at the front door, with James and with Julia, and Julia, her new friend, was so nice to her, and seemed to really like and respect her, and told her that she had a beautiful singing voice, and that it mattered nothing at all about the words.

“James,” Nate said, from behind them; from the middle of the big, now empty, central room. They glanced around at him, all three of them, and he beckoned to James, who muttered, to Julia presumably, his apology, and stepped towards Nate with, Catherine thought, something almost businesslike in his eyes. And left alone together now, Catherine and Julia could chat a bit more, and so they did, and Julia was so friendly, so easy to talk to, and when she smiled at Catherine, Catherine felt so much approved of, and when, in the next instant, her gaze traveled over Catherine’s shoulder, and caught on something there, and decided on something—made a very obvious and conscious decision—to come back to Catherine, but looked different as soon as it did so, looked full of something else, some wariness or wryness; when her gaze did this, Catherine knew that it was telling her not to look around, not to look to the middle of the room. Julia’s eyes were fast on hers; they were full, Catherine thought, of the sentence
Stay here,
and Catherine was so very proud of herself then, because she was quick enough, in that next moment, as she turned towards James and towards Nate, to turn her inward gasp into a noise of amusement, of enjoyment—the noise of someone who took everything in her stride.

“The art of goodbye,” Julia said, from behind her, and Catherine dug up a laugh, and laughed it low in her throat where it sounded so much in control, and she took the movement her shoulders wanted to make, which was to slump, and she made them shrug.

James’s mouth on Nate’s mouth. James’s hands on Nate’s arse. Nate’s hands in James’s hair. Tongues; even in that brief glimpse she could see that there were tongues.

“Well,” Catherine said to Julia, shrugging again, and again Julia smiled. It was probably best now, Catherine thought—how utterly sober she felt, now, how capable, if she had had to, even of driving home—to talk about the weekend, and about what she was doing for the weekend, and that in a few hours, she would take the train home, and yes, she was so much looking forward to seeing her family, and yes, and yes, and yes, and then, once again, Julia’s gaze shifted, and something in it told Catherine she could turn around, now, and there was James, coming towards her, looking past her, and there was the space where Nate had been.

I
n 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.”

His lips twitched towards a laugh, but did not go there. “What, should I bring someone with me?”

“I mean, come back with me to Baggot Street. It’s only ten minutes away. Thomas Street is miles.”

“It’s not miles.”

“It’s far,” she said, which she knew was stupid—it was only up Grafton Street, around Dame Street; he would be home—she glanced at her watch—by seven. Then she saw her opening. “Your landlady will be up,” she said, shaking her head. “Are you seriously going to walk through the door like this while your landlady’s eating her breakfast?”

He said nothing; he looked to the ground as though it might have a solution for him, as though it might offer a way out.

“James,” she said, and she grabbed his wrist. “Just come on. You can go home later. When she’s at work.” She walked ahead of him, her heart racing, and she turned right onto Harcourt Street, and after she had done so, she glanced behind, and she saw him, coming after her, his head down, and he had not turned left, in the direction of Grafton Street. He was coming home.

“Come on, slowcoach,” she said now, and she beckoned to him. “I’m freezing. I want to get home to bed.”

And when he caught up with her, she took his hand, and he let her; he did not shake her away. And on Baggot Street, the newsstand was open for business already, and the headlines were trying to be hopeful. And when they got home to the flat, it was empty, and there were plenty of empty beds, but these beds were not even mentioned. They went into Catherine’s bedroom, and they got into Catherine’s bed—James still in his jeans and his T-shirt, just as he had been when they had shared a bed before, only his feet bare; Catherine in her thin woolen dress, reaching quickly through the armholes, while James’s back was turned, to unfasten her strapless bra and pull it free—and James faced the wall, and Catherine put her arms around him, and in the half-light, as they went to sleep, she tried to tell him, with her arms so tight around him, and with her lips pressed to the nape of his neck, that there was no need to worry.

Her lips to his neck: a kiss, and another, the language that was theirs by now, the language of affection and closeness and reassurance.

“It’s getting bright,” she said, though she knew she should not be speaking; knew she should be letting him drift off, and should be drifting off herself. But she spoke, and she let her lips touch him in that spot again, where his hair trailed off, where the soft skin of his neck began.

“I know,” he said, and probably she was imagining it, the tremor in his voice, but in case she had not, she held him tighter; she gripped him to her, one hand on his ribcage, the other on the sharp jut of his hip.

“It makes me think of being little in the summertime,” she said, and this time when her lips met his skin, she left them there a moment, as he had done to her so often, and then she moved them, so lightly, just a whisper, just the lightest circle on the downy skin.

“Having to go to bed before it was dark,” she said, and she thought of it: long evenings leaking in through the curtains, the window and sill behind them seeming such a high, glorious box of light. Ellen asleep in her cot, and the sound, from outside, of tractors, or a lawn mower, or a visiting neighbor, allowed to stay up as long as they pleased.

“Yeah,” James said, with a breath of a laugh, and it almost startled her, to be brought back to him again, back to here. She had been drifting. But her hands were on him, her lips were on him, and when she moved her left hand, she felt his ribcage under her fingers, and more than that, she felt him go entirely still.

“I can count your ribs,” she said, and she counted them: two, four, eight of them. He laughed again, the same hesitant wheeze, and this time, when she put her lips to his neck, she let her tongue touch on his skin as well, and he gasped. He said her name. It was a question, she knew; maybe, she knew in some part of herself, it was a warning.

“Catherine,” he said, and she let her hand go lower.

“Catherine,” James said again, but now his hands were moving too, and he was not asking her anything anymore.

And just the touch of him made her come.

And she knew why it was working for him. She knew why it was that he was able to do this. He did not stay hard the whole time, and she knew why this was, but it did not take him long to recover, and she did not mind—it did not occur to her to mind—that he did so looking not at her, but elsewhere: at the ceiling, at the wall, it did not matter. Nothing mattered. She knew what this was. It was touch; he was desperate for it. With Nate—she pushed him instantly back out of her mind—it had been more than he could deal with, more than he could bear, but with Catherine, it was different. With Catherine, it was a deal.

And everything was such a relief; that was what struck her. Everything, as they kissed, as they touched, as they fucked. Everything was a relief, and everything was like the end of something, the end of a problem or a misunderstanding that had gone on, now, for far too long. And she did not think, lying there afterwards, that she would long for this with James again. She did not think it would be necessary. She thought, the fever had been broken now; the madness had been purged. And she thought that later that morning, or early in the afternoon, she would wake and she would be able to get on with her life now, now that this business was out of the way. She would catch her train home, and tomorrow night she would go to her grandfather’s party, and she would come back to Dublin on Monday, or on Tuesday, and everything would be fresh, and everything would be clear. She lay there—laughing about it, really, the way that James, in the moments after they had finished, had been laughing about it too. Because what fun. What a lark. What devilment they had proven themselves capable of; what new knowledge they had of one another now.

And then Catherine woke up early in the afternoon, and nothing had gone away after all.