This Is How It Ends (4 page)

S
HE SPOTTED HIM AS
soon as she crossed the road, you couldn’t help but notice him. A big man in a big padded jacket and a mad hat, he was sitting there on the last bench, the one right beside the steps.

People don’t really sit on the benches at that hour of the morning. At that hour, they tend to be engaged in some kind of activity. They’re either walking their dogs up and down the promenade, or they’re jogging, or they’re speed walking. Underexposed figures that pass you by in the half-light. They tend to be hooked up to some kind of a personal stereo, or else they’re obscured by a big scarf or something. Nobody pays any attention to anyone else at that hour of the morning, it’s an unspoken agreement.

Maybe that’s why he stood out. There was something strange about somebody who would just sit there on a bench at that hour of the morning. There was something not right about him.

She decided to take a closer look.

She crossed the road at the usual place. She stepped off the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic. She couldn’t be bothered to wait for the lights to go red. When she got to the far side, she picked the dog up and tossed her over the seawall, then she climbed over herself, sitting on the wall sidesaddle first, then swinging one leg over after the other.

To get to the steps she had to walk right past him. She made sure not to even look sideways at him, she just walked by and sat down on the top step just like she usually would. She made a play of unclipping the dog lead, talking to the dog while she was doing it.

Even with her back to him, she could feel his eyes on her.

“There we go now. That’s my girl. Stay still now or I won’t be able to unclip it, you silly thing.
Now
, off you go.”

And the dog was gone. Down the ramp and out onto the beach in a wide arc, her tail spinning with the wild joy of it all.

Addie hovered there for a minute on the step, her knees hugged into her chest, soaking up the sight of the happy little dog and the beach and the beautiful morning. There were patches of white frost here and there on the sand and the dog seemed confused by it. She was dashing back and forth, sniffing at the frost suspiciously. She looked up for guidance, a baffled expression on her face. You couldn’t help but smile, she looked so funny.

From the bench, there was a noise that sounded like a laugh.

Addie turned round. The least little turn she could make, she twisted her body from the waist, peering back over her shoulder. He was watching the dog with this familiar look on his face and he was chuckling away. You’d swear it was his own dog he was watching.

She didn’t give him time to speak. She snapped her head back round to look at the beach. Jumped up and skipped down the ramp and out onto the sand. She raised the ball thrower and gave the tennis ball an almighty whack, right out into the sky. Lola went tearing after it, her tail whirling round and round like a helicopter blade.

“Whoa, that’s quite a throw,” he said cheerfully.

Addie pretended not to have heard him. She took her iPod out of her pocket and stood there at the bottom of the steps while she untangled the wires. Plugged herself in, wrapped her scarf twice around her neck, and tucked the ends into the front of her coat, sealing out all the cold air. She selected a track and scrolled the volume up as high as it would go. Then she turned her face to the sea, closed her eyes, and headed straight for the horizon.

THEY MADE A NICE
sight out there on the beach, the girl and the little dog. He felt happy just watching them.

It was a stunning day. The sky was clear as far as you could see, the water a shimmering blue. The frost on the beach was like shards of mirrored glass. Bruno could feel the heat of the sun on his face. He was almost too hot in his coat but he didn’t want to take it off. It was a treat at this time of year.

The girl was so far out there now that she was just a matchstick person, a black overcoat and two black sticks for her arms and her legs.

Bruno watched her as she raised her arm up in a backwards sweep over her head and whacked that ball-thrower thing she had with her, sending the tennis ball flying in a perfect arc, much farther than you would think it would go. Every time she threw the ball the dog would go crashing through the shallows to fetch it back. She must have thrown that ball a hundred times, but Bruno wasn’t counting.

Behind her, streaks of deep fleshy pink cut swaths through the sky. The girl was just a shadow puppet against that blazing backdrop.

She was standing at the waterline now, still as a statue. She stood there for a long time. Bruno couldn’t help but wonder why she was standing there.

He found himself longing for her to turn round.

IT WAS COLD
down on the beach, a vicious wind sweeping the length of it. Addie’s cheeks were smarting and her nose was numb. Her body was still warm, though, the inside of her scarf a little clammy where she’d been breathing into it.

Tom Waits, she was listening to:

She was ready to go in now but she couldn’t. She was waiting for him to leave. She figured he couldn’t stay there all day.

Every so often she would turn to scan the promenade, expecting to find his bench empty. But he was still there. It was as if he was waiting for her.

Fuck it, she thought, I’ll freeze if I stay out here much longer.

HE SAT AND WATCHED
her as she walked back.

She was hopping from side to side. He guessed, wrongly as it happens, that she was avoiding the puddles.

At first he thought she was talking to herself. She had her head down and she was talking away as she walked. He wondered, was she talking to the dog? But the dog was nowhere near. The dog was racing round her in these huge loops, circling her wide. That’s when it occurred to him. She wasn’t talking, she was singing.

It came to him in little wisps, buffeted by the wind, as if you were turning the dial on a radio, trying to find the station. When he did get a clear signal, he didn’t recognize what it was that she was singing, she was so far out of key.

You had to disconnect yourself from the tune, you had to concentrate on the words instead. When he did figure it out, he couldn’t help but smile. He found himself singing along:

With every step now, he could see her more clearly. She was wearing a heavy black overcoat, a huge brightly colored scarf wrapped several times around her shoulders. She had a hat on now. A dark blue beret, he was sure she hadn’t been wearing it before. There were licks of honey-colored hair sticking out from behind her ears.

She had a cheerful face, a face a small child would draw. A perfect circle, huge round eyes, and bright pink cheeks.

Bruno took an instant liking to her. Afterwards it would seem to him that he loved her from the moment he first saw her face.

SHE WAS AWARE THAT
he was watching her. He wasn’t even trying to hide it.

She was walking with her head down to avoid looking at him. She had her head down and she was looking at her runners as she walked.

She tried to concentrate on the music. She kept having to remind herself not to sing along. Even this far out, it wasn’t safe. Sometimes the wind can carry sounds right into the shore.

She was hopping from spot to spot on the sand, selecting her next move carefully so she would land on a razor-clam shell. She loved the satisfying crunch of them under her feet.

A hundred yards from the promenade, she glanced up quickly to check his position. Then she charted her course. She would walk right down to the far end of the beach. She would take the steps by the Martello tower. She would cross the road at the traffic lights and double back along the footpath. That way she wouldn’t have to walk past him. She could avoid him entirely. She could slip back into the house without him ever having seen her.

It was a bit mean but it had to be done.

She slid the dog lead from where she had it draped around her neck, then she turned to see where Lola had got to. There was no sign of her. Addie whirled round full circle, scanning the beach to see if she was behind her, but she wasn’t. It was only when she turned back in towards the shore that she spotted her.

Wouldn’t you know, she was right at the bottom of the steps. She was standing there with her tail wagging away as she waited for Addie to join her. There was no choice but to follow.

Addie walked with her head right down, her hands deep in her pockets. She was aware of him watching her but she was determined not to look up. She would hook the dog onto the lead and she would walk straight past him. Even at this late stage she was dead set on avoiding him.

Just as she approached the bottom of the steps, Lola began to spin round in a circle. The next thing she was squatting back on her hind legs, squeezing a big turd out onto the sand. Great, thought Addie, that’s just fucking great. For a moment she thought about leaving it there. But she couldn’t do that, not with him sitting there watching her.

She fished around in her pocket for a bag, coming across her keys instead. She pulled them out and transferred them to her left hand. Fished around again until she found the roll of bags. She held the loose end of the roll in her teeth and tore, leaving one bag hanging from her mouth. Out of the corner of her eye she was watching him.

Walking over to the spot where Lola had done her business, she bent down as gracefully as she could. Using the bag as a glove so she didn’t have to make direct contact, she picked up Lola’s mess. She doubled the bag over itself and tied a knot in it. Then she held it away from her delicately with two fingers.

She looked up to see the steps right in front of her. A quick glance at the bench. She could see he was watching her intently.

With her keys still in one hand and the bag dangling from the other, she walked slowly up the steps, mustering as much dignity as she could under the circumstances.

When she got to the top, she straightened up. He was smiling at her with his eyes, as if she’d done something amusing. He raised his hand to greet her in a familiar gesture, as if he knew her.

She smiled a wobbly little smile, inclining her head ever so slightly to acknowledge his greeting. Then she pulled her spine up tall and marched over to the poo bin to dump the bag. She let the lid fall back down with a clang. Without so much as looking at him again, she turned and swung her way along the promenade, calling to the little dog to follow her.

SHE COULDN’T BELIEVE
it when she heard him shouting after her. She could not believe it. She didn’t even have to look behind her. She knew it was him and she felt a sudden anger rising inside her.

“I don’t need this,” she hissed. “I do not need this.” And she started to walk even faster, pounding along towards the gap in the seawall.

“Hey!”

Over the music and the sound of the traffic she could just about hear him.

As she stood at the edge of the footpath she could see him out of the corner of her eye. He was standing there beside the bench, a ridiculous figure in his beard and his daft-looking hat. He was holding one arm up in a kind of salute and he was shouting something at her.

“Wait!”

She pretended not to have seen him. She stood at the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic.

A car stopped. The driver motioned for her to cross, and she ran for it. Lola ran along beside her without questioning why.

She was aware now that he was following her. She heard a car horn beep and then she heard him shouting something at her, but she was so agitated she couldn’t hear what it was. He was just behind her now. There was no getting away from him.

She stopped suddenly and turned round, trying to feign surprise. She removed her earphones one by one, holding them in her open right hand, the way you would hold a pair of dice you were about to roll.

“I’m so sorry,” she said in her frostiest voice. “I didn’t hear you.”

He had come to a stop in front of her. He was bent over double, leaning on the fronts of his thighs and panting, the flaps of his hat hanging down on either side of his face like dog ears. He didn’t speak, he just raised his right hand. He was dangling something between his thumb and his index finger.

A very familiar-looking set of keys.

She stared at them. Her mind was straining to catch up with what she was seeing. She looked down at her own hand where her keys should have been, and there was the poo bag.

Suddenly it dawned on her what had happened. She looked at him in absolute horror.

He looked so very unthreatening all of a sudden. Standing there, doubled up from the effort of chasing her, the brown eyes raised to hers. The keys held aloft, like an offering.

She leaned back against the gatepost, threw her head back, and laughed.

And that was how it started.

AFTERWARDS, OF COURSE,
he would joke about it.

What I had to go through, he would say, to get this woman’s attention. I went through shit to get to her!

And Addie would laugh. She would smile with good grace every time he told that story.

“I kind of had to sleep with him,” she told her sister afterwards. “I behaved very badly. I felt I had to make it up to him.”

I
t
’S NOT LIKE SHE
slept with him right away. They actually spent the whole day together first.

“It’s nice to meet you, Adeline Murphy, at long last!”

He was studying her face with this rapturous expression. He seemed genuinely delighted, his eyes shining.

They were sitting opposite each other at the battered old table in the basement, two mugs of coffee set in front of them. The coffee was still too hot to drink.

Addie was in an agony of embarrassment. Even now she was trying to find the space in her head to go back over the excuses she’d made. She wasn’t convinced she’d carried them off.

“We only just checked the messages last night,” she had said. “We were going to ring you back today.” The dark red flush creeping up over her face gave away the lie. All her life, Addie had been a blusher. It was a constant source of mortification to her.

“I can’t believe you’re the cousin!” she had said in a desperate attempt to redeem herself. “It never even occurred to me. I thought you were some stranger who was following me.”

The whole time she was making her excuses he was nodding politely. He was doing that thing of smiling at her with his eyes. He seemed amused by it all.

He was more handsome than you would have thought at first sight. The beard was a bit misleading. Salt-and-pepper hair, the hair in his beard darker than the hair on his head. Nice eyes, funny how you noticed the eyes more because of the beard. Ten years ago, he must have been really handsome. Now he looked like he was turning into a cartoon version of himself, his face all droopy and jowly.

She kept having to remind herself that he was her cousin. It didn’t feel like they were from the same family. It didn’t feel like they were from the same species.

New Jersey, he was from. He seemed surprised that she didn’t know this about him.

“Spring Lake, New Jersey,” he said proudly. “Most Irish town in America.”

And she winced.

He looked puzzled.

“You don’t believe me!”

But it wasn’t that Addie was finding it hard to believe him. It was something he would never be able to understand. She didn’t want to believe him.

To Addie, Irish America was something you wanted nothing to do with. Irish Americans were fat people in check trousers and baseball hats who descended out of tour buses onto Nassau Street and waddled into Blarney Woollen Mills to buy Aran jumpers. They were red-faced people in sneakers who hung around the National Library trying to trace their family tree. They were people who attended fund-raising dinners in hotel ballrooms in Boston and New York and talked nonsense about the North. They spoke too loud and they pronounced all the place names wrong. The very thought of an Irish American in search of his roots was enough to make you squirm.

Of course Bruno was oblivious to all the negative connotations he was arousing. He had no idea of all the prejudices and petty resentments he was stirring up. He was under the impression that he had nothing to be ashamed of.

“My sisters were all champion Irish dancers,” he said happily. “My sister Megan still teaches at the Lynn Academy of Irish Dance in Audubon, New Jersey.”

And Addie cringed again, thinking, what have I got myself into?

“What are your plans for the day?”

“Do some work, I suppose.” God, she was a terrible liar.

“Seems a shame to be stuck inside while the sun is shining outdoors. Isn’t there any chance you could take the day off?”

Americans and their sense of endless possibility, it caught Addie off guard. She couldn’t think of a way out quickly enough. She didn’t want to think of a way out.

“Listen,” she said, “I’m an architect. I can probably take the whole year off.”

HE THOUGHT SHE
was joking about the swim.

“Yeah, nice day for a swim,” he had said, laughing.

She had left him waiting in the car while she ran up to check on her dad. She had started the engine, so the heat would come on while he was waiting. Thoughtful of her.

He leaned forward to turn the radio on again. They were talking about the election. They had some guy from NPR on the line and they were talking about Wednesday night’s debate. Who won, who lost. CNN polls and CBS polls and they were saying Obama won, no question. McCain lost, he went over to the dark side and he lost. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll lose the election, said the presenter. And the reporter came back in. No, ma’am, all it means is that he lost the debate. The election is still anybody’s guess.

Bruno reached over and turned the radio off. He sat there in the buzzing silence and let the hot air blow over him. He breathed in through his nose, letting the air out again slowly. It was hard not to get upset about it. Even at this distance, it was hard not to get upset.

Why did Bruno care about it so much? Sometimes he hardly understood it himself. It had crept up on him, like everything else in his life. He wasn’t a political animal, never had he thought of himself as politically engaged. He had been brought up Democrat, just like he’d been brought up Catholic. But the idea of getting involved in politics repelled him. Bruno was not a person to wear a badge on his lapel, he was not a bumper-sticker kind of guy. He was an observer, that’s what he had always told himself. He was just an interested observer. But the more you observed, the more you found yourself engaged, that was the problem. Especially these past few years, there seemed to be a lot of stuff to be engaged about.

There was the war in Iraq and there was the war in Afghanistan and there was nothing linking Iraq to Afghanistan or to September 11. There was a failure of logic there that upset Bruno. There had been a deception and it offended his sense of order. Nobody seemed to have noticed it except for him. When he talked about it in the office they all looked uncomfortable, they laughed it off. Well, what would you expect? Republicans to a man, all they talked about was the tax implications. Then there was Sarah Palin, and that was like a bad joke except that Bruno wasn’t laughing. Even the thought of it made him crazy. Obama had to win, he just had to win.

Bruno was distracted by the sound of a door slamming. He turned to see Addie coming back down the steps, a bunch of towels rolled up under her arm.

So she wasn’t joking about the swim.

THE SWIMMING IS
a religion to her. It’s the thing at the very center of her. She’s a swimmer.

That’s why she keeps her hair cut short, that’s why she always smells of chlorine. She has swimsuits and towels perpetually draped over her radiators, multiple pairs of goggles in the glove compartment of her car. A huge framed David Hockney swimming pool on the wall over her bed. For Christmas one year Della gave her an Esther Williams box set. Addie has watched every one of those movies a hundred times.

In the wintertime she swims in the pool. But from June to October she swims in the sea too. She plans her life around the tides. She always knows what time is high water. She never has to check the paper.

She swims at Seapoint or the Forty Foot, she even swims at the Half Moon Swimming Club on the South Wall, and nobody swims there anymore. It’s right next to the sewage plant, just under the power station, maybe that’s what makes people squeamish about it. They prefer to swim on the other side of the bay. But the way Addie looks at it, it’s all the same sea. People swim in the bloody Mediterranean, people swim in the Ganges, for God’s sake.

From June to the end of August, there are lifeguards on duty, on the lookout for trespassing dogs. But they make an exception for Lola. Lola has earned their respect.

It’s the elegant way she swims, with her neck stretched up to keep her head out of the water. It’s the distance she covers, staying with Addie all the way. The only indication she gives that she’s tiring is her heavy breathing. She makes these wide circles in the water, like a paddleboat, just for the pleasure of it.

“What an extraordinary dog!”

That was the nicest compliment Lola ever got. They were coming out of the water together after their swim. There were two old ladies sitting on the stone bench in their swimsuits and one of them said to the other, what an extraordinary dog. And Addie was so proud to be the owner of this extraordinary dog. Lola the swimming dog.

FROM THE ROAD,
the sea had looked bright and blue and beckoning. But now that they were right down beside it, it was a horrible stony gray. Choppy and cold-looking and distinctly uninviting. Bruno was having second thoughts.

Of course Addie went straight in. She drew her clothes off and tossed them on the ground and she walked right down the ramp and into the sea as if there were no difference between the air and the water, as if they were all the same element.

They were out there right now, herself and the dog. Bruno could see the wet little head struggling along beside her. She was talking to the dog but he couldn’t hear what she was saying, words of encouragement no doubt.

He registered a twinge of jealousy. I wish she’d encourage me, he was thinking.

He was finding it hard to believe he was doing this. Even as he was inching his way down the icy ramp, clinging for dear life to the handrail, he couldn’t believe he was going to do this. His underwear was flapping in the wind, his chest hair all rigid and petrified. His balls were clenched. He was worried about his heart.

Maybe this is how it ends, he was thinking. Maybe this is it. Behaving like some damn fool teenager. Plunging my fifty-year-old body into the icy water to impress a girl. Now, that would be a nice ending.

“Come on in,” she was shouting, her voice rippling with laughter. She was floating on her back as if she were in the Caribbean. She was taking pleasure in taunting him.

“Don’t tell me there’s something stopping you?”

“Only the fear of death,” he roared back. He raised his arms over his head, took a big deep breath, and in he went.

THREE DAYS HE’D
been in the country and now here he was, swimming in the freezing-cold sea with his crazy cousin. The Martello tower, there it was, towering above him.

“I feel like I’m doing the
Ulysses
experience,” he shouted, once he’d recovered from the shock.

She was bobbing up and down beside him. Her hair was plastered to her head, her eyelashes long and spiky and her eyes big and bright. She looked like a seal.

“Never got past the first chapter,” she roared back, her voice bouncing off the surface of the water. “Bit of a boys’ book, isn’t it?”

Bruno lay on his back. He kicked his legs furiously to warm himself up. The splash he made was hugely satisfying. He started to feel a warm glow seeping through his body.

The glow didn’t last. Just a few minutes later he began to lose all sensation in his legs. He wanted to pee but he couldn’t, his bladder seemed frozen solid. He plowed a rough front crawl back to the shore. He had to tread water for a minute until he found the base of the ramp by stubbing his toe against it. Hauled himself out by the rusty railing and staggered up the slimy stone in his wet underpants, his skin burning as it came in contact with the air. He dried himself off with the towel she’d given him and then he struggled into his jeans and sweater. The jeans kept snagging on his damp skin as he tried to pull them on.

He sat himself down on the ground and leaned back against the base of the tower. Closing his eyes, he savored the watery sun on his face. Every so often he opened one eye and scanned the sea for Addie.

“I’m not really your cousin, am I?” He could swear there was something flirtatious in the way she’d said it.

“Second cousin once removed.”

“Oh, we don’t really count that stuff here,” she’d said.

And he’d smiled.

He could see her head now, dipping up out of the water and then disappearing down again. Lola’s little head chugging alongside her. Behind them, sea and more gray sea. Above the sea, the thin horizon, and above that again, the sky.

SHE WAS SWIMMING
a short raspy breaststroke parallel to the shore. Every so often she would turn round to encourage the dog. The sight of the loyal little creature swimming along beside her never failed to move her.

When she turned her head the other way she could see Bruno sitting up there in the sun. Without the hunting cap and the big coat he looked almost normal.

This was the start of a romance. That was very clear to her. As soon as she got out of the water she would have to pick it up where they had left off before the swim. She would almost definitely sleep with him, probably later this very day.

Suddenly she was exhausted by the thought of it all.

She didn’t have the energy for someone new. She had no energy for all the questions she would have to ask and all the answers she would have to give. The enthusiasm and the self-belief to present herself one more time, to package herself and her history into something attractive and positive and lovable. She remembered that she hadn’t shaved her bikini line for weeks and suddenly she had no energy for it all.

She rolled over onto her back and spread her arms out wide either side of her. Then she let herself fall down into the sea, her bum and her hips and her tummy first, allowing the weight of her torso to pull her limbs down into the water.

She let herself sink like a rag doll. Bubbling the air out through her nostrils so she didn’t float back up. She opened her eyes and saw her own legs wafting out in front of her. Her skin was white and eerie-​looking, like the skin of a drowned person. She wondered for a moment if she might just let herself sink. Would she have the courage not to save herself? Would she change her mind when it was too late?

Part of her was curious to find out. But without ever making a decision, she found herself rolling over onto her tummy again. She was swimming back up towards the surface now, her face pointed forward like the prow of a ship, her arms pushing the sea down to either side of her.