by Dermot Healy
“You think so?”
“I could get a job there with some theatre.”
“And what about your work here?”
“What would you know about that? I never see you. You turn up drunk on my opening nights. You’re doing things of which I don’t approve. I thought you would take care of me. Do you hear me? I thought you would take care of me.”
“I hear you.”
“There’s only so much of this I can take.”
“I realize that.”
“We could live together somewhere and have children.”
“Do you want children?”
She stiffened. “Why,” she cried angrily, “what’s wrong with that! Do you not want children?”
She let go of him. He lay looking at the ceiling.
“This is a terrible life we are leading, you know that,” said Jack.
“Do you think other people go on like we do?”
“If they do,” said Jack, “I’m sorry for them.”
She did not argue on, for she remembered that it was not so long ago since he could have been indescribably cruel to her if he had wanted to. She lay beside him, deep in a womanly despair that seemed to embrace everything.
“Hugh!” he shouted, “there’s water in the engine room.”
“Jack,” she whispered. “Jack.”
He struggled fiercely.
“We have to get out of here.” He climbed out and began to drag the bed across the floor. “Jack!” she called. She turned on the light. He stopped immediately.
“Jack,” she said, “it’s me. Catherine.” She approached him fearfully.
“I heard you shouting,” he explained. He lay down and went back to sleep.
IV
THE MUSICAL BRIDGE
26
Flying in Belfast
He was sitting by his empty typewriter with a raging toothache when the telephone rang.
“Ha-ho.”
“Eddie.”
“I hear you’re doing a bit of theatre in West Belfast.”
“That has fallen through.”
“Oh. Have you got that new play you promised me?”
“Not yet.”
“Could I look at what you’ve done so far?”
“Why?”
“I’ve been offered to direct a play of my choice, sometime late next year.”
“I’ve done nothing.”
“Right. So how do you spend your time up there?”
“In the mornings I’m not well. In the afternoons, while Catherine is off round the province in a minibus doing political plays, I sit in an old record shop listening to music from the sixties. Played,” added Jack, “by an ex-British soldier. Then at night I give Irish classes.”
“Excellent. OK. Look as soon as you’ve finished something will you send it on?”
“Sure. I will.”
“Ha-ho.”
Jack put a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter and watched the Union Jacks blowing.
He disappeared into his study for three days. She came home each evening to the tap of the typewriter.
The demons that jealousy and drink would unleash were quietened. The few hours of sobriety made them wise, forgiving and nostalgic. A new beginning seemed possible. They allowed themselves two drinks between eleven and midnight and saluted each other. A mood of religious hilarity would take them.
“Are your characters happy, are they content?”
“They’re peaceful.”
“I worry about their wellbeing.”
“So you ought.”
He’d place the pages he had finished before her and watch her face anxiously for her reaction. She’d attempt a few lines, and look at him.
“What do you think?”
“It makes me wonder where you spend your days while I’m away. There’s a lot of erotic text here that as woman I have not experienced with you, and that makes me wonder.”
Jack laughed. “It’s called invention.”
“Is it? I find it sexually unnerving.”
And it was on one of those nights that Jack partly emptied, for a few seconds, his body of the sex that controlled it.
How he arrived at that state was through a hazardous frisson of the mind. Something had jerked him into a new uncertain state of desire. He had been stretched out beside Catherine. He felt her presence there, long and tall and blond in the bed, a womanly shape sleeping beside him. His full length in every respect. Willing to be abused by him insofar as her turn would come to humiliate him. Then he thought for a second that she was a man in the bed beside him. She, of course, when he told her these things, laughed and was delighted by the thought, because she was glad he was capable of such longings.
For she believed secretly that men only desire men.
For Jack it was a tender moment to be stretched alongside someone laughing.
“Catherine,” he said.
It was how he left his body. It was for a minute only. But he felt for a moment that he had become the woman beside him. As she moved around the room in her nightdress, he could feel that he himself was scuttling about in his womanness. He even felt the sensation of breasts. And the soft texture of the things she wore against his skin. What he felt in the night beside him. Was half touched by. For a second he wore round him something shapeless. Still it pleased.
And as he told her of this sensation and saw her pleasure, he knew he had passed some test his mind and body had set him.
The following day he was walking down the road on his own to the newsagent’s and again he felt the sensation of his bosom fall. Then came the faint feeling of being possessed. For a second, phantom skirts blew out a little behind him. He stopped briefly and shook his head. It was Catherine who had taken him over. He was grateful when his own identity was restored, for he had not the courage to sustain that rootless feeling a moment longer. He knew what had happened, he had become Catherine, not really Catherine but some other woman possessed him, some ideal shape had taken him along the road for a few steps. It was generous and terrifying when he stepped into that phantom dress on the street, then no more. Yet he proceeded not impoverished by what he had felt and seen, not caring that this was only a fraction of the great void to be crossed.
“How’s about ya, Jack?” asked the old lady in the newsagent’s as she pressed a tissue to her lips.
“I’m flying,” said Jack.
Slowly, his transformation into Catherine took place. Since he could not win her as himself, he would become everything that she loved in herself. Not that he knew that this transformation was taking place. But often he would catch himself rise off a chair as she did, lift a cigarette in the same manner. He felt his back suddenly straighten like hers. It was just these incidental intimations told him that something was happening over which he had no control.
Whenever he wrote formerly, he had always gone sober to keep his concentration for all the insane imaginings that took place. Now, when he sat by the fire with the day’s work over, a glass of wine at his feet, a glass of wine at hers, he was amazed at the contentment he felt. It all seemed possible. The play took shape according to her themes, her obsessions, and with all her nuances intact. He wrote about her stubbornness in owning and holding on to what was rightly hers.
“Remember,” she said, “that you are not me.”
He let a certain amount of time pass. Then he said: “I have just realized that you don’t believe in fiction.”
“You’re wrong,” she answered with conviction. “My trouble is I believe it totally, or not at all.” She looked at him with mock scorn. “In that, I’m like my father.”
They went to a party thrown by Helen, a friend of Catherine’s. He stood by Helen’s side with a tall cold glass of white wine.
“Are you a feminist, too?” asked Jack.
“I like men too much,” she said, “to be a feminist. I need nice male chauvinists to carry my shopping home.”
“You’re disgraceful!” Catherine laughed.
Helen’s room was full of charts of the human body and the human brain.
“Are you by any chance an astrologer?” he asked.
“Not quite,” she replied, “I’m a psychiatric nurse, you might say.”
“Don’t start her,” said Catherine. “Talk of the brain only brings bright spots in front of my eyes. At school certain puzzles used to make me feel faint.”
“Now it’s sex,” said Jack.
“Stop,” said Catherine, poking him.
Then she turned serious.
“All my life I’ve feared madness,” she said.
“And I wanted to commit suicide,” said Helen.
“This is a lovely conversation,” said Jack.
“And then,” said Catherine, “there’s jealousy.”
“Oh,” agreed Helen.
“For a whole year before I met him I was negligent of sex because all of my affairs provoked in me such wanton acts of jealousy that I was afraid someone might get killed.”
“Watch yourself, Jack,” said Helen.
“In fact,” said Catherine, “once I was alone I thought I could please myself physically more than other people could. When I was lonely I used stroke my own breasts.”
Helen nodded: “You can run out of possibilities there in time.”
“Yes,” said Catherine, and she took Jack’s arm.
“I would give anything to be as happy as ye are,” said Helen.
“We have our own troubles,” said Jack.
Then Helen leaned up and put her arms around him and kissed him. It was a bright sisterly kiss. Then she kissed Catherine. “Ye are lucky to have each other,” she said, “and remember, I love you both.” Catherine never left Jack’s side. Helen sang. Catherine sang. Jack danced. Then, towards dawn, they took a taxi home with a driver that knew them both. When Jack went forward to open the door of the house, the taxi-driver whispered to Catherine as she counted out the fare in the half-light of the car interior: “He is in danger here, ye know.”
“What?” she asked, terrified.
“I don’t wanna scar ye,” he said, “but I’ve heard stories about him swinging in and out of pubs with the wrong people. Like it’s none of my business, but you should tell him to be more careful. The whole sectarian thing could start again in the morning.”
Catherine sat rooted to the seat of the car.
“This city is evil,” she said. “It’s evil.”
“He’s been foolish. He doesn’t understand.”
She thanked him. She snapped the bolts home on the front door. She pushed the kitchen table against the back door. He was stretched out with an open bottle of wine on the settee listening to an unaccompanied version of “The Lament for James Connolly” sung in a broad Dublin accent. She lifted the needle off the record.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because it’s dangerous,” she said.
He looked at her. “But it’s your record.”
“I know that.”
When they lay down together she listened to every sound in the street. She lay awake listening for the sound of breaking glass like Jonathan Adams had long before her. She woke out of a nightmare and leaned over his body and looked at his face. For a long time she stared at him and listened to his breathing. She watched dreams flick across his closed eyes. She fell asleep holding his hand. When she left for work the next morning she asked him not to go out. To stay by the phone.
Later, Catherine rang him. There was no answer. She continued ringing throughout that day, getting more and more frantic. She imagined everything terrible that might befall Jack. She thought of walking into the flat to find a gush of blood still running down the door that led into the living room. She imagined leaning over to look into his face and finding the eyes peacefully closed. Each violent detail was replayed in terror in her imagination. Then in the late afternoon the phone rang. He was in Lavery’s pub.
“Oh, Jack, I can’t tell you the things that have been going through my head,” she said. “Stay there – I’ll be right over.”
“Look I’ve met some people I know, we’re heading off for a spin to the Glens.”
“But I need to see you badly.”
“We’ll only be away a while.”
“Who are these friends?”
“They’re from Dublin. Eddie my director is with them. I wanted to show him a version of the play.”
“Promise me you’ll be back tonight.”
“I will.”
She smelt him when he came in. Then she perched at the corner of the bed and looked at him as he sat with his back to the wall. He realized she was very drunk. Then she got up and stood by the window.
She came back and sat as before. She lit a cigarette. Her hands were shaking.
“You’ve been with someone.”
“I was with no one.”
“Don’t you look at me all high and mighty.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“I can see it in you. You think you can do what you like with me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Did you bring some drink back?”
“No. I’ll go out and get some.”
“Forget it.” She tapped the cigarette nervously. “Will we go to Mayo for Christmas?”
“I have to go to Leitrim to see the family.”
“To see all the Bleeding Hearts.”
“Stop, Catherine.”
“‘Stop Catherine,’” she continued, imitating him, “You fucker you.”
He looked at her.
“Ah well, don’t come back then. Go there and stay there. Don’t set a foot inside the door of this house again. Do you hear me!”
“You fascist!” he spat. Suddenly he jumped up.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and pinned her back to him. They fell to the floor and lay there breathing heavily.
“Let me up,” she said.
He eased his grip on her neck. She buttoned her coat. She put her feet back into her shoes. “You slept with her, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Did she kiss your arse like I do, you bastard?” she screamed and flailed out with her fists. He caught her again. “Let me go,” she screamed. She left. He waited for hours to see would she return. At three in the morning the bell rang. She was at the door, very drunk, moist-eyed and shaking.
He led her in. He climbed back into bed. She climbed in beside him.
Early next morning he found her arm come round and circle him. She turned him over.
“Did I do that?” she said, touching a bruise on his cheek.
He opened his eyes.
“Forgive me, Jack,” she said. “I think I am going demented.”
“I think I am as well.”
“Oh God, I feel terrible.” She stood up and tottered. He looked at her long white arms and white shoulders. The fairy hair on her stomach. She looked vulnerable and sorry. She sat where she had sat the night before, at the edge of the bed. Flayed by guilt, he waited for her anger to erupt.
Instead she said softly: “I am sorry for hitting you.”
“And I’m sorry for hitting you,” he replied.
“I suppose you think you have me now. That you think you can do with me what you like.”
“No I don’t.”
“Now you’ve had your revenge, will you do something for me?”
“Yes.”
“Will you swear to be true to me?”
He swore he would be true. She swore she would be true. They swore together. “Now,” she said, “you are mine. Remember that.” They walked down the early morning streets. Seagulls were chatting in the middle of a roundabout. “Meet me round one,” she said and kissed his cheek. He bought a noggin of gin at an early morning pub. Then he sat in a park among the Protestant unemployed drinking it. At eleven he walked back to the house. He halted inside the door. A rolled-up Irish Press had arrived from Eddie. A photo of Jack was on an inside page.
“Don’t go in there,”
she said, “we’ll have a drink at home.”
“Just one,” he said, entering a bar.
“I’m going home,” she threatened.
“I’ll follow you,” he said, and left her.
“Please, Jack,” she called, “these are bad times.”
“Just one,” he said.
“We should be together.”
“Well then, come with me.”
“No.”
Alone and disorientated, Catherine headed off into the night.
Immediately Jack broke into a conversation between two men on his right.
“Did you ever do something stupid?” he asked.
“Whadya mean?”
“That’s my photo there in the paper,” said Jack and he shoved across the Irish Press for them to see.
“I don’t read that paper,” the second man said and he pushed the paper back.
“I wouldn’t either,” replied Jack, “except you see my photo is in it.”
Again he showed the photograph. But without looking at the newspaper the man nearest him said: “What for?”
“I was stupid enough to say I was writing a new play about Belfast, but the truth is I haven’t a word written,” said Jack. He looked behind him at the people seated round the small tables, their shopping bags at their feet. It was dole day. He wondered what to say. “I know nothing about Belfast” he said.
“Aye,” said the first man.
“But we’re at home here,” said the second.
“Where do you live?” asked the other.
“Up on My Lady’s Road,” lied Jack.
“Good on ya,” the nearest man said, softening. “I’m Bertie.”
Both men included Jack in their rounds. They talked of the sports centres in Belfast, of the wave machine in the Shankhill Baths. How Jack loved Belfast a sight better than Dublin. “How long have you been in My Lady’s?” they asked him. “A few years,” he lied. “Well, you know your way around.” They toasted each other. “Do you take any interest in religion?” the nearest man asked.
“No,” said Jack.
“Well, you’re better off maybe,” replied Bertie.
They drank. They would not let him buy. He told them he was from Leitrim.
