by Chris Binchy
“Bollocks,” he said. “You tried to fuck this up because of Camille. Out of jealousy and meanness. Because I had something that you wanted but couldn’t have. If you think that’s what you saw the other night and you think that’s why you did what you did, then you’re deluding yourself. I told you that Camille and I were having a bad time and that it was a struggle. But I didn’t say I was giving up. I didn’t tell you that I wanted to end it. I fucking told you that we would sort it out, and still on the basis of nothing you went to her, planting doubts in her head.”
“She came to me.”
“It makes no difference. I would have thought that you’d tell her the truth. That’s all. Nothing more. But then if you don’t trust me, why would you bother?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. It just came out.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Around us the Friday-night crowd was drinking and laughing, oblivious to our conversation.
“But can I trust you?” he said. “Do you want to talk about that?” I looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t know? That she wouldn’t tell me? What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You must know. Of course you fucking know. All the shit you gave me. Were you trying to pay me back?”
“No. Not at all. Not for a second.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. It just happened.”
“What happened?”
I couldn’t speak. There was nothing I could think of to say.
“What happened, David? Go on. I’ve heard it already from her, but why don’t you tell me. Being so honest and all.”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing? That’s not what she said at all.”
“Just fucking leave it, Alex, will you? I’m sorry. I thought it was over between you.”
He laughed, a cold little bark.
“Now who’s lying? I have to go, but I’ll tell you two things first. Even if it was over, even if she had a sworn declaration saying it was true, I would have expected you to stay the fuck away for a year or two out of respect. For me or for us or for our friendship. I wouldn’t ever have questioned that.
“And secondly, we are going to try and sort this out, Camille and I, despite you and your fucking around, but while we do that, maybe you could leave us alone. Is that okay?”
I said nothing. I could feel a buzzing in my head, gray dots that cleared as soon as they came.
“Right,” I said. I looked at him and saw his face and recognized something about it, but the person I knew was gone. He stared back at me, then stood up.
“Hang on. Alex—”
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s all.”
He left, knocking off the table as he went. A pint glass wobbled, then spilled and rolled onto the floor as he left. The bar went quiet with the crash, and the crowd turned and looked at me sitting alone. A few of them cheered, all ironic and drunk, and then in a moment the noise was back to what it had been before.
It wasn’t guilt at first. It wasn’t regret or loss or anger. It was embarrassment. The sheer humiliation of it. Of knowing that she had been with him and with me, and in the end, she still went for him. The realization now that I had been a mistake, a moment of stupidity and regret. That maybe she had seen me as a route back to him. The idea was there formed and ready to be thought. That it was a cry to him for attention. Look what I will do without you, she was saying. See what I can do. She would say that she had been confused and I had been there and I had made the first move on her. Because that was true. Wasn’t it? It couldn’t have been her idea. I tried to remember the moment and felt already how the memory had turned, corrupted now by doubt. I could identify the point at which everything began to collapse. I did it myself. It was my fault.
To know the things that he could tell her now. The whole story from the beginning—the life I’d imagined with her and how I’d frozen him out when the two of them got together. The jealousy and bitterness. The forgiveness. The way I’d hung around on the edges of their relationship, waiting for something to happen. Watching in case he slipped up, judging him when he did, and moving in on her. Presenting myself as the loyal friend who could see it all from her point of view, telling her that the problem wasn’t with her, it was him. It was him and his philandering, his bad temper, his indecision, his reluctance to commit to her. The implications of everything I’d ever said to her. Alex is a nice fellow. He’s a good guy, he’s fun, you know? But you should realize that he will not do the things you expect. He has his demons. His inconsistencies. His failings that we will not talk about but which we know are there. In the space between the bad and the good news, with the moment of hesitation when asked to vouch for his intentions, I had given her some bland blasé platitude. I planted doubt. I’m sure he’d tell you if there was something wrong. Of course he wants you to go to New York with him. Of course. He won’t go if you don’t. Probably.
Was that what I’d said? Was that the impression I had left with her, undermining him all the time, qualifying my comments about him in a way that left enough space for uncertainty to get in and spread like rot? Had I done all this? I told myself at the time that I was being balanced, that I couldn’t say what I didn’t know. But of course I could. That’s what I should have been doing. It was what he would presume. Yes. Absolutely. Great guy. He’ll be good to you. He loves you. He cares. No doubt. I could have said it all and made it real for her. It was what he would have done for me.
When he came to me to talk about his problems and doubts and worries, did I do anything more than wag my finger at him, tell him what he was doing wrong, tell him to try harder, be better, do the right thing? This easygoing front, the confidence and swagger and charm, the ease that he had with people. I knew more than anyone that it cost him. There was a role for me in his life, and I knew what it was. It was to cluck and scold and pretend to know exactly what he should be doing, but also to support him and tell him that he was all right. A moral sounding board. Somebody who knew everything about him and was still here. Because he was a good guy.
Oh, I could look at it all and take the other view. That he stole Camille from me. That he was never seriously interested in her, and that the pretense that he was ran out of steam in a couple of months. That he actively tried to drive her away by saying that he was leaving, asking her and then sulking and withdrawing when she hesitated. That mentally he was long gone by the time he met Rebecca. That when Camille was left behind, wondering what had happened, I was entitled to support her, and if something happened between us, then it was a good thing. Good for her and for me. A happy ending.
But the weakness of this version was that it didn’t happen like that. She went back to him, and I was left with that knowledge in the weeks that followed. It darkened everything. I wonder what they’re doing now. I wonder what he’s saying to her at this moment, if by just thinking of him I’ve triggered an impulse in his brain.
“Here’s another thing,” I imagined him saying to her, “another thing about that fucker that you just won’t believe. And you thought he was such a nice boy.”
He could say what he wanted, and given the situation in which he found himself, he probably would.
After two weeks, when I felt I could do it, I rang him. The phone buzzed and then cut to message. I thought about sending a text, that it might be easier to express myself in words, but it felt wrong. So I said nothing and let the fact that I had called speak for itself.
He rang me back a week later.
“All right,” he said. A statement. Sounding normal.
“Yeah. And you?”
“Yeah.”
“Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry. Really.”
“It’s done now. There’s no poi
nt worrying about it.”
“But I have to tell you. It was wrong of me.”
“I don’t care,” he said, too quick and too loud. I waited. “I rang you because I’m going off tomorrow, and I thought I should talk to you before I went.”
“Going where?”
“Paris.”
“Really. What, for a while like?”
“Don’t know. The year, I suppose. I’m not going back to college. Maybe next year.”
“What happened to New York?”
“Oh, money. Visas. All that. Too much hassle, so we’re doing this instead.”
“Okay.”
“So anyway, I thought I’d let you know.”
“Do you want to meet up for a drink or something? It would be good to see you before you go.” There was a pause, the noise of a bus passing on the street wherever he was.
“Not really,” he said. “I’ve just got a lot of stuff to get organized.”
“Okay. Well, again, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. It didn’t matter anyway. I’ll give you a ring maybe at Christmas.”
I didn’t know half of what he meant. I had to say it. It was stupid to pretend to myself that I wouldn’t.
“Is Camille going with you?”
He laughed. It was a laugh I knew so well that I remembered for a second how close he should be. His voice was wrong when he spoke.
“No. That didn’t work out. There was nothing there really. Just delaying the inevitable.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Don’t be,” he said. He waited. “It’s a fucking mess, isn’t it? After all this time.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I’ll see you when you come back. I’ll talk to you then, and we’ll sort it out maybe.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway. Good luck or whatever.”
“And you.” I waited for a second and then realized that he was already gone.
She had used me to make him jealous. She went back to him, and she told him everything. She wrecked the friendship that he and I had to force him into doing something. She had come between us. The night that I saw her first, I could have turned away. Normally I would have, but I did what I did, and this was where it brought us. Having rejected me, she had ended up being rejected herself. This inclination, the urge to see everything balance out, the sense that there is order in the universe—what comfort could it give me? As soon as I thought it, it faded into nothing. It wasn’t real. It didn’t bring me any closer to what I wanted.
There were other things in my life. A job I could commit to. A bigger world and a life beyond what I had experienced. It could be the start of something for me. At Christmas I would see him, and we would sort it all out when the blood had cooled. In the moments after I spoke to him, I began to realize what it would be like without him. There was nobody I could call to talk about it all, just to tell them what had happened. I thought of my parents. Of Frank. Of Camille. I got up off the couch at home and left, thinking it would be easier to get out of the flat. Out on the street with people around me doing things like normal people did. Not moping around a flat on their own thinking about loneliness and isolation. I walked into town, not really knowing where I was going. It was eight o’clock. Dark on a cold October evening, the sky purple and clean and still. It was an evening for doing nothing. For waiting. The people walking toward me seemed to pick up on it, going home with shopping bags and bottles. Clinking. Talking on the phone to people they wouldn’t see that night. Conversations with their mothers. People at home in the country. Friends who they’d see the next day because the next day was a Friday and that’s what they were for. But not tonight. How many people in my area pulled back into their own space in the evenings? Closed the curtains. Made a meal. Ate it on their own and then later went to bed. Over and over until there was somebody else.
There were others. Tennis club types. People who did things. Not me ever. I knew who I was, and I could do it. Retreat. Lock the door. Go to work tomorrow, and afterward I would go to the pub with whomever was there and I would be glad of them. I would talk and get to know them and we would build it into something more than it was now. Work colleagues. These were people I could do things with. Look up some of the old college crowd. Reunion. See what they were at, tell them about me. Fuck it. No to it all. I wanted none of it.
Chapter Nineteen
I rang her to find out. To tell her what I thought. To try and find a way of asking why she didn’t see things the same way as me. I rang her because I had to. I waited as long as I could, but in the end it was only a couple of days. She was still there, and it wasn’t finished.
“Hi,” she said when she heard me. No surprise.
“Hello. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay. How are you?”
“Not bad.”
“I’ve been meaning to ring you. I just haven’t with everything going on. Did you talk to Alex?”
“Yeah.”
“So you know the story.”
“More or less. He’s going.”
“Yeah. Well. He’s gone.”
“I was sorry to hear it didn’t work out,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“And you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. Or I will be. How’s work?”
“It’s grand.”
We were stuck. I was about to ask her how everything was again when she asked if I wanted to meet her.
I went to a pub near her flat full of rich young fellows thinking they were slumming it among the unhappy gravelly mumblers at the bar. I sat at a table away from them all and ordered from the Chinese girl who came around. When Camille arrived, I heard the noise drop and watched her walk through the bar, saw the men turning after her.
“So,” she said. “Here you are.” She was trying to be normal.
“You look well,” I said. I stood and kissed the side of her face.
She laughed.
“Me? Thanks.”
“What?”
“I’ve not been having the best week of my life.”
“Right,” I said two seconds too late. Punishing her for something.
She sat beside me, and neither of us said anything for a moment. The silence threatened to grow. We sat looking across the room through the open door onto the street outside. Everything was out there. There was nothing here between us, sitting beside each other but not able to look, not able to say anything. The bridge between us was gone now. It was Alex that had linked us together, and to have even thought anything else seemed stupid. I was ready to stand up and leave when she spoke.
“I’m sorry for not ringing you before now,” she said. “I wanted to explain to you what had happened.”
“I know what happened. Alex told me.”
“I should have rung you. I said I would.”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about it. It’s not as if I was waiting.” I tried to smile to make it seem like a joke, but got it wrong. She looked away.
“What did he say to you?” she asked when she turned back.
I shook my head.
“There’s not much point in that. Is there?”
“What?”
“Going down that road. Because I don’t remember exactly what he said. He told me that you had gone back to him, and the second time I spoke to him, he said it didn’t work out and that he was going to France.” She waited.
“That was it?” she asked then.
“Pretty much. Yeah.”
“That’s all he said to you before he went?”
“Just about. Well, no, there was the whole conversation about you as well. But I’m sure you know how that went.”
“I don’t.”
“You can guess.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t.”
> “He thought I’d turned against him, betrayed him, let him down. That it was unforgivable for me to get involved with you, and that I’d deliberately tried to break the two of you up out of bitterness and jealousy. He told me that he would never have done the same thing if the situation was reversed. That sort of thing.” She was staring at me now. “He didn’t tell you this?”
“He said nothing to me about you. Nothing at all.”
“That’s fair enough, I suppose.”
“And was he right, do you think?”
“About that? I don’t know. I denied it all, but I can’t remember what I was thinking or why I did what I did. It doesn’t matter now. That’s all over.” I remembered how it had been only a few weeks before, how it would have been, the three of us out together, and how different I would have felt then. I could say what I wanted to her now, but what good was it to me? “Why did you go back to him?” I said then. “I couldn’t understand it when he told me. And why did you tell him about us? What possible purpose did that serve? He’s gone, and it’s you and me looking at each other in a pub, and none of us is happy now. We all have to move on.” She didn’t answer, just stared ahead. “I’m not blaming you for anything,” I said. “But I just don’t understand it.”
“I love him,” she said, as if that made everything fit.
“I know. But so what? Really, what difference does that make?”
“I thought we could get back to where we started from. I’m not sure it was ever possible, but I tried, and he did too. Or to prove to me that he was serious.”
“But why did you tell him?”
“What?”
“About us. If you were going to go back to him and try and work it out, why did you come to my flat that night?”
