Her eyes narrow until the television screen is just a green oblong, yawning light at the edges. Are you falling asleep? he says. After a pause she replies: No. He nods, not taking his eyes off the match. He takes a sip of Coke and the remaining ice clinks softly in his glass. Her limbs feel heavy on the mattress. She’s lying in Connell’s room in Foxfield watching the Netherlands play Costa Rica for a place in the World Cup semi-finals. His room looks the same as it did in school, although one corner of his Steven Gerrard poster has come unfixed from the wall and curled inwards on itself in the meantime. But everything else is the same: the lampshade, the green curtains, even the pillowcases with the striped trim.
I can run you home at half-time, he says.
For a second she says nothing. Her eyes flutter closed and then open up again, wider, so she can see the players moving around the pitch.
Am I in your way? she says.
No, not at all. You just seem sleepy. Can I have some of your Coke?
He hands her the glass and she sits up to drink it, feeling like a baby. Her mouth is dry and the drink is cold and flavourless on her tongue. She takes two huge mouthfuls and then hands it back to him, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. He accepts the glass without looking away from the TV.
You’re thirsty, he says. There’s more downstairs in the fridge if you want some.
She shakes her head, lies back down with her hands clasped behind her neck.
Where did you disappear to last night? she says.
Oh. I don’t know, I was in the smoking area for a bit. Did you end up kissing that girl?
No, he says.
Marianne closes her eyes, fans her face with her hand. I’m really warm, she says. Do you find it hot in here?
You can open the window if you want.
She tries wriggling down the bed towards the window and reaching for the handle without actually having to sit up the whole way. She pauses, waiting to see if Connell will intervene on her behalf. He’s working in the college library this summer, but he’s visited Carricklea every weekend since she got home. They drive around in his car together, out to Strandhill, or up to Glencar waterfall. Connell bites his nails a lot and doesn’t talk much. Last month she told him he shouldn’t feel obliged to visit her if he doesn’t feel like it, and he replied tonelessly: Well, it’s really the only thing I have to look forward to. She sits up now and opens the window herself. The daylight is fading but the air outside feels balmy and still.
What was her name again? she says. The girl at the bar. Niamh Keenan.
She likes you.
I don’t think we really share interests, he says. Eric was looking for you last night actually, did you see him?
Marianne sits cross-legged on the bed, facing Connell. He’s propped up against the headboard, holding the glass of Coke on his chest.
Yes, I saw him, she says. It was weird. Why, what happened?
He was really drunk. I don’t know. For some reason he decided he wanted to apologise to me for the way he acted in school.
Really? says Connell. That is weird.
He looks back at the screen then, so she feels at liberty to study his face in detail. He probably notices she’s doing this, but politely says nothing about it. The bedside lamp diffuses light softly over his features, the fine cheekbone, the brow in its frown of mild concentration, the faint sheen of perspiration on his upper lip. Dwelling on the sight of Connell’s face always gives Marianne a certain pleasure, which can be inflected with any number of other feelings depending on the minute interplay of conversation and mood. His appearance is like a favourite piece of music to her, sounding a little different each time she hears it.
He was talking about Rob a bit, she says. He was saying Rob would have wanted to apologise. I mean, it wasn’t clear if this was something
Rob had actually said to him or if Eric was just doing some psychological projection.
I’m sure Rob would have wanted to apologise, to be honest.
Oh, I hate to think that. I hate to think he had that on his conscience in some way. I never held it against him, really. You know, it was nothing, we were kids.
It wasn’t nothing, says Connell. He bullied you.
Marianne says nothing. It’s true they did bully her. Eric called her ‘flat-chested’ once, in front of everyone, and Rob, laughing, scrambled to whisper something in Eric’s ear, some affirmation, or some further insult too vulgar to speak out loud. At the funeral back in January everyone talked about what a great person Rob had been, full of life, a devoted son, and so on. But he was also a very insecure person, obsessed with popularity, and his desperation had made him cruel. Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.
After the funeral she spent evenings scrolling through Rob’s Facebook page. Lots of people from school had left comments on his wall, saying they missed him. What were these people doing, Marianne thought, writing on the Facebook wall of a dead person? What did these messages, these advertisements of loss, actually mean to anyone? What was the appropriate etiquette when they appeared on the timeline: to ‘like’ them supportively? To scroll past in search of something better? But everything made Marianne angry then. Thinking about it now, she can’t understand why it bothered her. None of those people had done anything wrong. They were just grieving. Of course it didn’t make sense to write on his Facebook wall, but nothing else made sense either. If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed. She wishes that she could have forgiven Rob, even if it meant nothing to him. When she thinks of him now it’s always with his face hidden, turning away, behind his locker door, behind the rolled-up window of his car. Who were you? she thinks, now that there’s no one left to answer the question.
Did you accept the apology? says Connell.
She nods, looking down at her nails. Of course I did, she says. I don’t go in for grudges.
Luckily for me, he replies.
The half-time whistle blows and the players turn, heads lowered, and start their slow walk across the pitch. It’s still nil-all. She wipes her nose with her fingers. Connell sits up straight and puts his glass on the bedside table. She thinks he’s going to offer her a lift home again, but instead he says: Do you feel like an ice cream? She says yes. Back in a second, he says. He leaves the bedroom door open on his way out. Marianne is living at home now for the first time since she left school. Her mother and brother are at work all day and
*
Marianne has nothing to do but sit in the garden watching insects wriggle through soil. Inside she makes coffee, sweeps floors, wipes down surfaces. The house is never really clean anymore because Lorraine has a full-time job in the hotel now and they’ve never replaced her. Without Lorraine the house is not a nice place to live. Sometimes Marianne goes on day trips to Dublin, and she and Joanna wander around the Hugh Lane together with bare arms, drinking from bottles of water. Joanna’s girlfriend Evelyn comes along when she’s not studying or working, and she’s always painstakingly kind to Marianne and interested to hear about her life. Marianne is so happy for Joanna and Evelyn that she feels lucky even to see them together, even to hear Joanna on the phone to Evelyn saying cheerfully: Okay, love you, see you later. It gives Marianne a window onto real happiness, though a window she cannot open herself or ever climb through.
They went to a protest against the war in Gaza the other week with Connell and Niall. There were thousands of people there, carrying signs and megaphones and banners. Marianne wanted her life to mean something then, she wanted to stop all violence committed by the strong against the weak, and she remembered a time several years ago when she had felt so intelligent and young and powerful that she almost could have achieved such a thing, and now she knew she wasn’t at all powerful, and she would live and die in a world of extreme violence against the innocent, and at most she could help only a few people. It was so much
harder to reconcile herself to the idea of helping a few, like she would rather help no one than do something so small and feeble, but that wasn’t it either. The protest was very loud and slow, lots of people were banging drums and chanting things out of unison, sound systems crackling on and off. They marched across O’Connell Bridge with the Liffey trickling under them. The weather was hot, Marianne’s shoulders got sunburned.
Connell drove her back to Carricklea in the car that evening, though she said she would get the train. They were both very tired on the way home. While they were driving through Longford they had the radio on, it was playing a White Lies song that had been popular when they were in school, and without touching the dial or raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the radio Connell said: You know I love you. He didn’t say anything else. She said she loved him too and he nodded and continued driving as if nothing at all had happened, which in a way it hadn’t.
Marianne’s brother works for the county council now. He comes home in the evening and prowls around the house looking for her. From her room she can tell it’s him because he always wears his shoes inside. He knocks on her door if he can’t find her in the living room or the kitchen. I just want to talk to you, he says. Why are you acting like you’re scared of me? Can we talk for a second? She has to come to the door then, and he wants to go over some argument they had the night before, and she says she’s tired and wants to get some sleep, but he won’t leave until she says she’s sorry for the previous argument, so she says she’s sorry, and he says: You think I’m such a horrible person. She wonders if that’s true. I try to be nice to you, he says, but you always throw it back at me. She doesn’t think that’s true, but she knows he probably thinks it is. It’s nothing worse than this mostly, it’s just this all the time, nothing but this, and long empty weekdays wiping down surfaces and wringing damp sponges into the sink.
*
Connell comes back upstairs now and tosses her an ice lolly wrapped in shiny plastic. She catches it in her hands and lifts it straight to her cheek, where the cold radiates outwards sweetly. He sits back against the headboard, starts unwrapping his own.
Do you ever see Peggy in Dublin? she says. Or any of those people.
He pauses, his fingers crackle on the plastic wrap. No, he says. I thought you had a falling-out with them, didn’t you?
But I’m just asking if you ever hear from them. No. I wouldn’t have much to say to them if I did.
She pulls open the plastic packaging and removes the lolly from inside, orange with vanilla cream. On her tongue, tiny flakes of clear unflavoured ice.
I did hear Jamie wasn’t happy, Connell adds.
I believe he was saying some pretty unpleasant things about me.
Yeah. Well, I wasn’t talking to him myself, obviously. But I got the impression he was saying some stuff, yeah.
Marianne lifts her eyebrows, as if amused. When she’d first heard the rumours that were circulating about her, she hadn’t found it funny at all. She used to ask Joanna about it again and again: who was talking about it, what had they said. Joanna wouldn’t tell her. She said that within a few weeks everyone would have moved on to something else anyway. People are juvenile in their attitudes to sexuality, Joanna said. Their fixation on your sex life is probably more fetishistic than anything you’ve done. Marianne even went back to Lukas and made him delete all his photographs of her, none of which he had ever put online anyway. Shame surrounded her like a shroud. She could hardly see through it. The cloth caught up her breath, prickled on her skin. It was as if her life was over. How long had that feeling lasted? Two weeks, or more? Then it went away, and a certain short chapter of her youth had concluded, and she had survived it, it was done.
You never said anything to me about it, she says to Connell.
Well, I heard Jamie was pissed off you broke up with him and he went around talking shit about you. But like, that’s not even gossip, that’s just how lads behave. I didn’t know anyone really cared.
I think it’s more a case of reputational damage.
And how come Jamie’s reputation isn’t damaged, then? says Connell.
He was the one doing all that stuff to you.
She looks up and Connell has finished his ice lolly already. He’s playing with the dry wooden stick in his fingers. She has only a little left, licked down to a slick bulb of vanilla ice cream, gleaming in the light of the bedside lamp.
It’s different for men, she says. Yeah, I’m starting to get that.
Marianne licks the ice cream stick clean and examines it briefly. Connell says nothing for a few seconds, and then ventures: It’s nice Eric apologised to you.
I know, she says. People from school have actually been very nice since I got back. Even though I never make any effort to see them.
Maybe you should.
Why, you think I’m being ungrateful?
No, I just mean you must be kind of lonely, he says.
She pauses, the stick between her index and middle fingers. I’m used to it, she says. I’ve been lonely my whole life, really. Connell nods, frowning. Yeah, he says. I know what you mean. You weren’t lonely with Helen, were you?
I don’t know. Sometimes. I didn’t feel totally myself with her all the time.
Marianne lies down flat on her back now, head on the pillow, bare legs stretched on the duvet. She stares up at the light fixture, the same lampshade from years ago, dusty green.
Connell, she says. You know when we were dancing last night? Yeah.
For a moment she just wants to lie here prolonging the intense silence and staring at the lampshade, enjoying the sensory quality of being here in this room again with him and making him talk to her, but time moves on.
What about it? he says.
Did I do something to annoy you? No. What do you mean by that?
When you walked off and just left me there, she says. I felt kind of awkward. I thought maybe you were gone after that girl Niamh or something, that’s why I asked about her. I don’t know.
I didn’t walk off. I asked you if you wanted to go out to the smoking area and you said no.
She sits up on her elbows and looks at him. He’s flushed now, his ears are red.
You didn’t ask, she says. You said, I’m going out to the smoking area, and then you walked away.
No, I said do you want to come out to the smoking area, and you shook your head.
Maybe I didn’t hear you right.
You must not have, he says. I definitely remember saying it to you.
But the music was very loud, to be fair.
They lapse into another silence. Marianne lies back down, looks up at the light again, feels her own face glowing.
I thought you were annoyed with me, she says. Well, sorry. I wasn’t.
After a pause he adds: I think our friendship would be a lot easier in some ways if, like … certain things were different.
She lifts her hand to her forehead. He doesn’t continue speaking. If what was different? she says.
I don’t know.
She can hear him breathing. She feels she has cornered him into the conversation, and she’s reluctant now to push any harder than she has already.
You know, I’m not going to lie, he says, I obviously do feel a certain attraction towards you. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself. I just feel like things would be less confusing if there wasn’t this other element to the relationship.
She moves her hand to her ribs, feels the slow inflation of her diaphragm.
Do you think it would be better if we had never been together? she says.
I don’t know. For me it’s hard to imagine my life that way. Like, I don’t know where I would have gone to college then or where I would be now.
She pauses, lets this thought roll around for a moment, keeps her hand flat on her abdomen.
It’s funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we’re at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions. But you’ve been a very good influence on me overall, like I definitely am a better person now, I think. Thanks to you.
She lies there breathing. Her eyes are burning but she doesn’t make any move to touch them.
When we were together in first year of college, she says, were you lonely then?
No. Were you?
No. I was frustrated sometimes but not lonely. I never feel lonely when I’m with you.
Yeah, he says. That was kind of a perfect time in my life, to be honest.
I don’t think I was ever really happy before then.
She holds her hand down hard on her abdomen, pressing the breath out of her body, and then inhales.
I really wanted you to kiss me last night, she says. Oh.
Her chest inflates again and deflates slowly.
I wanted to as well, he says. I guess we misunderstood each other. Well, that’s okay.
He clears his throat.
I don’t know what’s the best thing for us, he says. Obviously it’s nice for me hearing you say this stuff. But at the same time things have never ended well with us in the past. You know, you’re my best friend, I wouldn’t want to lose that for any reason.
Sure, I know what you mean.
Her eyes are wet now and she has to rub them to stop tears running. Can I think about it? he says.
Of course.
I don’t want you to think I’m not appreciative.
She nods, wiping her nose with her fingers. She wonders if she could turn over onto her side and face the window now so he couldn’t look at her.
You really have been so supportive of me, he says. What with the depression and everything, not to linger on that too much, but you really helped me a lot.
You don’t owe me anything. No, I know. I didn’t mean that.
She sits up, swings her feet off the bed, puts her face down in her hands.
I’m getting anxious now, he says. I hope you don’t feel like I’m rejecting you.
Don’t be anxious. Everything’s fine. I might head home now, if that’s okay.
I can drop you.
You don’t want to miss the second half, she says. I’ll walk, it’s alright. She starts putting her shoes on.
I forgot there was even a match on, to be honest, he says.
But he doesn’t get up or look for his keys. She stands up and smooths her skirt down. He’s sitting on the bed watching her, an attentive, almost nervous expression on his face.
Okay, she says. Bye.
He reaches for her hand and she gives it to him without thinking. For a second he holds it, his thumb moving over her knuckles. Then he lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it. She feels pleasurably crushed under the weight of his power over her, the vast ecstatic depth of her will to please him. That’s nice, she says. He nods. She feels a low gratifying ache inside her body, in her pelvic bone, in her back.
I’m just nervous, he says. I feel like it’s pretty obvious I don’t want you to leave.
In a tiny voice she says: I don’t find it obvious what you want.
He gets up and stands in front of her. Like a trained animal she stays stock-still, every nerve bristling. She wants to whimper out loud. He puts his hands on her hips and she lets him kiss her open mouth. The sensation is so extreme she feels faint.
I want this so much, she says.
It’s really nice to hear you say that. I’m going to switch the TV off, if that’s okay.
She gets onto the bed while he switches off the television. He sits beside her and they kiss again. His touch has a narcotic effect. A pleasurable stupidity comes over her, she wants very badly to remove her clothes. She lies back against the quilt and he leans over her. It has been years now. She feels his cock pressed hard against her hip and she shudders with the punishing force of her desire.
Hm, he says. I missed you.
It’s not like this with other people.
Well, I like you a lot more than other people.
He kisses her again and she feels his hands on her body. She is an abyss that he can reach into, an empty space for him to fill. Blindly,
mechanically, she starts removing her clothes, and she can hear him unbuckle his belt. Time seems so elastic, stretched out by sound and motion. She lies on her front and presses her face into the mattress, and he touches the back of her thigh with his hand. Her body is just an item of property, and though it has been handed around and misused in various ways, it has somehow always belonged to him, and she feels like returning it to him now.
I actually don’t have condoms, he says. It’s okay, I’m on the pill.
He touches her hair. She feels his fingertips brush the back of her neck.
Do you want it like this? he says. However you want.
He gets on top of her, one hand planted on the mattress beside her face, the other in her hair.
I haven’t done this in a while, he says. That’s okay.
When he’s inside her she hears her own voice crying out again and again, strange raw cries. She wants to hold onto him but she can’t, and she feels her right hand clawing uselessly at the quilt. He bends down so his face is a little closer to her ear.
Marianne? he says. Can we do this again like, next weekend and so on?
Whenever you want to.
He takes hold of her hair, not pulling it, just holding it in his hand.
Whenever I want, really? he says.
You can do anything you want with me.
He makes a noise in his throat, leans into her a little harder. That’s nice, he says.
Her voice sounds hoarse now. Do you like me saying that? she says. Yeah, a lot.
Will you tell me I belong to you? What do you mean? he says.
She says nothing, just breathes hard into the quilt and feels her own breath on her face. Connell pauses now, waiting for her to say something.
Will you hit me? she says.
For a few seconds she hears nothing, not even his breath.
No, he says. I don’t think I want that. Sorry. She says nothing.
Is that okay? he asks. She still says nothing.
Do you want to stop? he says.
She nods her head. She feels his weight lift off her. She feels empty again and suddenly chill. He sits on the bed and pulls the quilt over himself. She lies there face down, not moving, unable to think of any acceptable movement.
Are you okay? he says. I’m sorry I didn’t want to do that, I just think it would be weird. I mean, not weird, but … I don’t know. I don’t think it would be a good idea.
Her breasts ache from lying flat like this and her face prickles. You think I’m weird? she says.
I didn’t say that. I just meant, you know, I don’t want things to be weird between us.
She feels terribly hot now, sour heat, all over her skin and in her eyes.
She sits up, faces the window, pushes her hair out of her face. I think I’m going to go home now, if that’s okay, she says. Yeah. If that’s what you want.
She finds her clothes and puts them on. He starts getting dressed, he says he’ll drive her home at least, and she says she wants to walk. It becomes a farcical competition between them, who can dress faster, and having a head start she finishes first and runs down the stairs. He’s on the landing by the time she closes the front door behind her. Out on the street she feels like a petulant child, slamming the door on him like that while he raced out to the landing. Something has come over her, she doesn’t know what it is. It reminds her of how she used to feel in Sweden, a kind of nothingness, like there’s no life inside her. She hates the person she has become, without feeling any power to change anything about herself. She is someone even Connell finds disgusting, she has gone past what he can tolerate. In school they were both in the same place, both confused and somehow suffering, and ever since then she has believed that if they could return to that place together it would be the same. Now she knows that in the intervening years Connell has been growing slowly more adjusted to the world, a process of adjustment that has been steady if sometimes painful, while she herself has been degenerating, moving
further and further from wholesomeness, becoming something unrecognisably debased, and they have nothing left in common at all.
By the time she lets herself into her own house it’s after ten. Her mother’s car isn’t in the driveway and inside the hall is cool and sounds empty. She takes her sandals off and puts them on the rack, hangs her handbag on a coat hook, combs her fingers through her hair.
At the end of the hall, Alan comes up from the kitchen with a bottle of beer in his hand.
Where the fuck were you? he says. Connell’s house.
He moves in front of the staircase, swinging the bottle at his side. You shouldn’t be going over there, he says.
She shrugs. She knows a confrontation is coming now, and she can do nothing to stop it. It’s moving towards her already from every direction, and there’s no special move she can make, no evasive gesture, that can help her escape it.
I thought you liked him, says Marianne. You did when we were in school.
Yeah, how was I supposed to know he was fucked in the head? He’s on medication and everything, did you know that?
He’s doing pretty well at the moment, I think. What is he hanging around you for, so? says Alan. I suppose you’d have to ask him.
She tries to move towards the stairs but Alan puts his free hand down on the banister.
I don’t want people going around town saying that knacker is riding my sister, says Alan.
Can I go upstairs now, please?
Alan is gripping his beer bottle very tightly. I don’t want you to go near him again, he says. I’m warning you now. People in town are talking about you.
I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I cared what people thought of me.
Before she’s really aware of what’s happening, Alan lifts his arm and throws the bottle at her. It smashes behind her on the tiles. On some level she knows that he can’t have intended to hit her; they’re only standing a few feet apart and it missed her completely. Still she runs past him, up
the stairs. She feels her body racing through the cool interior air. He turns and follows her but she manages to make it into her room, pushing herself hard against the door, before he catches up. He tries the handle and she has to strain to keep it from turning. Then he kicks the outside of the door. Her body is vibrating with adrenaline.
You absolute freak! Alan says. Open the fucking door, I didn’t do anything!
Forehead against the smooth grain of the wood, she calls out: Please just leave me alone. Go to bed, okay? I’ll clean up downstairs, I won’t tell Denise.
Open the door, he says.
Marianne leans the whole weight of her body against the door, her hands firmly grasping the handle, eyes screwed shut. From a young age her life has been abnormal, she knows that. But so much is covered over in time now, the way leaves fall and cover a piece of earth, and eventually mingle with the soil. Things that happened to her then are buried in the earth of her body. She tries to be a good person. But deep down she knows she is a bad person, corrupted, wrong, and all her efforts to be right, to have the right opinions, to say the right things, these efforts only disguise what is buried inside her, the evil part of herself.
Abruptly she feels the handle slip from underneath her hand and before she can step away from the door, it bangs open. She hears a cracking noise when it connects with her face, then a strange feeling inside her head. She steps backwards while Alan enters the room. There’s a ringing, but it’s not so much a sound as a physical sensation, like the friction of two imagined metal plates somewhere in her skull. Her nose is running. She’s aware that Alan is inside the room. Her hand goes to her face. Her nose is running really quite badly. Lifting the hand away now, she sees that her fingers are covered in blood, warm blood, wet. Alan is saying something. The blood must be coming out of her face. Her vision swims diagonally and the sense of ringing increases.
Are you going to blame me for that now? says Alan.
She puts her hand back to her nose. Blood is streaming out of her face so fast that she can’t stem it with her fingers. It runs over her mouth and down her chin, she can feel it. She sees it land in heavy drops on the blue carpet fibres below.
