A huge wave caught him and he went down. She thought the stones in his pocket would prevent him from rising, but somehow his head re–emerged. Yet this time he didn’t flounder back towards the shore. He walked out, calmly and slowly like he’d finally conquered his nerve. The waves were half way up his shoulders and then his neck. She found herself calling but the wind meant he would never hear. Then she was running, cursing the bolt on the gate, careering down the steps three at a time. The sand slowed her feet like running in a nightmare. She had three children asleep and a husband who loved her. It was crazy to take this risk but she couldn’t turn back.
There was no sign of him in the water, only footsteps as a clue to where he had entered. She screamed his name, sobbing for him or for herself. She could have stopped him, she could have done something. After two decades of mocking his cowardice, she was no better. If she had really wanted Chris that day in Loughshinny she could have simply guided his hand to her breast, but she had been as much a coward as him. That was what had both attracted and repelled her, they were too much of a kind whereas she had needed somebody different to change her. Opposites attract. Whoever Jane had been, she would have resembled Peadar, practical and driven. Suddenly it felt that she wasn’t just searching for Chris in those waves, she was looking for herself.
The waves were up to her ankles now when she glanced back at the hotel lights beyond the cliff. Nobody to see or know what might happen to both of them. She stumbled into the water calling Chris’s name.
The water was bitterly cold, almost paralysing her. The force of the waves took away her breath. She stumbled and felt a shoe float loose. She was going to die if she did not turn back. This was sheer madness. A wave lifted her up and Alison found she was swimming, gasping at the cold, struggling for breath. All she had on was slacks and a sweatshirt. The sea water was sickening, stinging her eyes, pounding in her ears. She went down and thought she would never come back up. This became no longer about Chris, it was about saving herself.
She surfaced again, salt water filling her mouth as she tried to scream. The waves had turned her around so she was facing the beach. Her sweatshirt hampered her arms as she attempted to strike for shore. Then she saw him in the moonlight, gasping for air twenty feet away. His limbs were twitching, as if in a seizure. Perhaps a heart attack had already claimed him before the waves got their chance?
They pounded over his head again and she lost sight of him. She swam in his direction, buffeted about, then caught a glimpse of a raised hand. She had no idea how often he’d gone under. He seemed oblivious to everything, his body going through the automatic motions of struggling for life. When she reached him he didn’t seem to know who she was or whether she was real. He kept trying to say a name that wasn’t hers.
How she found the strength she didn’t know, but Alison managed to swim behind him, pulling his head back, screaming for him to relax and just let his body float.
He thrashed about, with renewed life, fists flailing in the water as if trying to punch her. He twisted from her grasp and went under. She lost sight of him, then felt his torso crash into her legs, automatically grasping hold and pulling her down. She kicked out in terror until he let go. His body surfaced for a second and she saw that his jacket was gone, his shirt buttons burst open. She grabbed hold of his hair which felt like seaweed. It came loose and she grabbed a second handful, pulling him around until they were face to face. He seemed to know who she was now.
‘Let me die, blast you, let me die!’ She couldn’t hear the words, just watched his mouth open and close. But she understood them and the fury in his eyes.
‘I can’t, fuck you, I can’t.’ She doubted if he could hear her over the waves. She’d never been this cold before, colder than death. Her teeth rattled, she felt about to be sick. Another wave came and they both went under, limbs frantically locked together, scrambling for something to hold. She came up and knew she couldn’t carry on. Her rush of strength was gone. She almost blacked out, then, from her dream, that image of a submerged woman flashed before her. It frightened her into flailing out her arms, yet she didn’t know if she could even reach the shore alone. Chris could sense the ebb within her too. She saw him try to swim for her sake, arms stupidly floundering around.
‘Turn around,’ she tried screaming, ‘turn, you bastard.’ No words came out, just more water rushing down her throat. But he seemed to understand and let himself go. At her mercy, at her trust. She tried to take deep breaths and not black out. She kicked out weakly, one arm around his neck, until eventually she knew she could kick no more. Her legs sank, touched sand and collapsed. A wave covered them, then rushed out, showering them in sand and pebbles. Chris staggered to his knees, then fell again. They were under water suddenly, another wave rolling them backwards.
Then Alison saw Sheila’s face in her mind and she crawled to her knees. Hallucinatory images swamped her as she tried to stay conscious. She felt herself crawling past shards of floating glass, through a rusting porthole window, brushing against flitting shoals of rainbow fish. She fought against this pull towards unconsciousness, gripping Chris’s hair, tearing at it, using the pain to lever him to his knees. Another wave washed over them but they had almost reached the shore. She panted like an animal, crawling on her hands and her knees, pulling him alone and scratching with her nails if he didn’t crawl fast enough. Alison was crying. Sand clung to her face and hair as she sank down. Her body twitched and shivered and she was almost sick.
Chris lay beside her, face up, making a noise she couldn’t fathom. They lay for an eternity, their bodies almost touching, and then his hand found hers and grasped it, his body rolling over so that he lay astride her. Her mouth was already open, yearning for the long–awaited taste of his tongue, before he kissed her. Yet it didn’t feel sexual, it felt primeval, like the struggle to emerge from the water. The warmth of his tongue against hers, its urgent probing, its quest for something tangible, something made whole again.
Everything else tasted of sand and salt. The hotel seemed another world away. She had saved a life. Every muscle ached and yet amphetamines kept exploding throughout her body. She felt herself twelve, eighteen, she was every age and any age. Her sweatshirt was half torn, his shirt long gone. He raised his lips a second.
‘Jesus,’ he whispered, ‘I wanted you so badly.’
She kissed him again, feeling renewed life in his limbs. His hands were in her hair, brushing her neck, touching her shoulders, sloping slowly down across her neck until suddenly they stopped. Chris lowered his head, then slowly rolled onto his side.
‘In the waves I thought you were someone else,’ he whispered, ‘Jane come to meet me.’
Sand was everywhere, in her eyes, her bellybutton, her fanny. It seemed to course through her, mingled in her blood. All the water in the world would never shift it or rid her nostrils of this tang. The amphetamines were fading, leaving her body drained and wrecked, skin wrinkled by salt water, hair a tangled mess.
‘I wanted to let you do it,’ she said. ‘I’d do the same myself.’
‘Then why stop me?’
His tone was bitter now. She sensed his body shiver with shock and cold. Her neck was sore as if he had bruised it in withdrawing his hand.
‘Would you have stopped me?’
‘No.’ he replied. ‘Not if I knew what grief you were going through. What am I to do with the rest of my life?’
‘I don’t know. Start again. You said yourself you’re free. A terrible freedom but free all the same.’
‘How can I? I know who I was once, before Jane and the girls. But I can’t bring him back and the person I became should have died in that car as well.’
‘He didn’t,’ Alison insisted. ‘You’re still here.’
‘Whose fault is that?’ Anger had left his tone, there was just exhausted bewilderment. ‘I would either be with them now or in oblivion where I wouldn’t care.’
‘You’re lying if you say you wouldn’t have stopped me
too,’ Alison said. ‘Not if you’d one ounce of love left.’
Alison loved Peadar, she loved her children, but there was more to her than just them. Chris’s naked chest was rising and falling, still fighting for breath.
‘I’ve cursed you these last days,’ he said, ‘almost as much as I’ve longed for you. Just when I’d emptied my heart of everything you come back in. You knew me as a coward, but just this once I found the courage. Now I’m scared shitless. Not of death but of life. I’m scared of tomorrow and every day after.’
‘You’ll find someone else.’
‘I wouldn’t know how to start. I’m too old.’
‘You’re not.’
‘Inside I am,’ Chris said. ‘All routes cut off. Two neat stitches in each testicle and that was the end of that.’
‘They can reverse those operations,’ she told him. ‘It’s not easy, but …’
‘I don’t want it reversed. I knew it was final. No matter if the sky fell on my head. Now the world tastes of cardboard, you understand? Nothing feels like it once did because part of me is dead. My taste buds. The nerve ends on my fingers.’
Chris turned towards her, his hand inches away.
‘I can’t leave my children any longer,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘How do I know you won’t …’ she hesitated.
‘Not tonight at least. I just want sleep. I’ve not slept properly for weeks. Taking comfort from planning this night. I wanted to die somewhere where I might feel close to them. I never expected to see you here.’
‘Coincidences occur.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
Alison backed away slightly from his gaze. ‘I’m not the person you knew,’ she said. ‘Every year I come here I’m older, more battered inside. I didn’t think I’d make it this year. I almost lost a breast.’
She was telling him details she had withheld from Peadar. She should feel guilty lying here, but she did not.
‘You’re the same woman you ever were,’ Chris replied. He was close to her again but she didn’t back away. Her eyes closed as she felt his hand touch her stomach, drawing the torn sweatshirt slowly up until, after what seemed an eternity, he touched her nipple. Chris’s hand felt like she had always known it would. Unhurried, gentle, the first man to touch her breast in fifteen years, apart from Peadar and Dr O’Gorman. The only man ever, apart from Peadar really. The others didn’t count, their hands had left no trace, and even now, under Chris’s touch, the spell of Dr O’Gorman’s cold fingers, which had made her fear her own breasts, seemed banished.
How long was it since she had felt this young, her nipple erect, straining against the ghost of intricate red stitching? Chris’s fingers circled, savouring its fullness, the ripeness of a young orange plucked. The tang of sea air. Alison kept her eyes shut, knowing his were closed as well. He brushed tenderly against the stitch, then his hand went still, cradling her nipple between thumb and finger. Five seconds, fifteen, twenty. How long did two decades take? She opened her eyes.
‘Thank you,’ he said, slowly withdrawing his hand. Both knew that anything more between them would be mundane and superfluous.
Neither spoke as they picked themselves up and climbed the steps. A few late drinkers remained in the Slaney Room, where light spilled out onto the patio. Chris took her hand and she followed along the dark boardwalk, through bushes and shadows, the hidden ripple of water, lamps casting shadows. They reached the tennis courts and she almost broke loose, desperate to check her children.
She opened the French doors and pushed the curtain aside. All three slept on, though Danny had turned over, with his giraffe fallen onto the floor. She wanted to run in and hug them, but every inch of her skin was plastered in sand. Her body shivered with a foretaste of pneumonia. Gravel stung her bare feet. Life felt different, every sensation magnified. Only now was shock properly taking hold. Chris let go her hand gently and stepped back, away from her.
‘I’d forgotten what life tasted like.’
‘So had I.’
‘I’ll make no promises,’ he said. ‘Still, I’m starting to miss that blasted dog.’
They didn’t kiss or touch again. She watched him slowly walk to his own room, looking back just once to raise a hand in thanks or farewell.
When she closed the French doors, her legs almost gave way. She made the shower so hot it scorched her skin. But she didn’t care. Alison leaned forward beneath it, holding onto the tiled wall with both hands. The water coursed through her hair and down her back, splashing over her belly and breasts, yet still could not remove the feel of his hand. She turned the shower off and dried herself.
The children were sleeping. She let her robe fall, placed Danny’s giraffe back beside him and walked naked towards the bed. When had she last felt this special? It was a secret she would never speak of, to Ruth or to the man she loved. Except maybe to Sheila in many years’ time.
She could see so clearly now. Sleep was needed because her lover would be here in the morning for her. The car to be loaded and farewells said, though Chris would long be gone. Enniscorthy, then Gorey and Ferns, the motorway beyond Arklow, the mountains rising, then falling as they plummeted towards Rathnew and Ashford. Every mile bringing them closer, causing the chorus of voices from the back seat to call, ‘Are we there yet, Mammy, are we home?’
About the Author
Dermot Bolger was born in Dublin in 1959. One of Ireland’s best known authors, his seven novels include Father’s Music, A Second Life and The Journey Home – one of the most controversial Irish novels of the 1990s. His eight plays, including The Lament for Arthur Cleary, The Passion of Jerome and April Bright, have received several awards including the Samuel Beckett Prize and have been staged in many countries. Plays: 1, the first volume of his Selected Plays, was recently published by Methuen.
A former factory hand and library assistant, he founded the Raven Arts Press while still in his teens. In addition to being a poet and editor, he was the instigator of the collaborative novels, Finbar’s Hotel and Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel (which have appeared in twelve countries) and editor of The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction. He lives and works in Dublin.
From the reviews for Temptation:
‘A finely observed account of a woman weighing up whether she has paid too dearly by underpinning family stability at the cost of personal fulfilment. Bolger shows a rare ability to enter into the mind of a woman, especially one so tumultuous as Alison’s as she reflects on her past, and is drawn towards reshaping it with this chance encounter with a ghost from her pre–marriage days. This compulsive story is set over five days but covers a lifetime.’
Irish Independent
‘Bolger writes with fierce intensity and with genuine insight into the mind of a woman … painting a portrait of family life with extraordinary wit and skill.’
Dublin Evening Herald
‘From the first page of Dermot Bolger’s Temptation, I felt that Brian Moore had been reborn … Alison is a superb creation, reminding me of Moore’s Mary Dunne. But Bolger surpasses even Moore in his descriptions of the pains and pleasures of motherhood. Never has everyday life with children been so interestingly told … it’s the most perfect profile of a wife and mother I have ever read.’
Books Ireland
‘Bolger is a master storyteller … Temptation surely establishes him as one of the major Irish novelists of the past quarter century.’
Irish Post
‘Bolger’s simple realism and non–judgemental approach lead the reader into regions of despair … [Temptation has] a thrilling, even redemptive ending.’
Time Out
‘Dermot Bolger provides an insight into how the most ordinary lives are dotted with moments of singular significance. Temptation is one of those books which creeps up and absorbs you. Once engrossed its hidden depths become more apparent with each page.’
Tuam Herald
‘Magnificently realised and true … Bolger has
sculpted a drama of modern Dublin family life. There are few enough renaissance men these days, but Dublin can rejoice in possessing Dermot Bolger.’
Sunday Independent
‘A sensitive, insightful read’
Sainsbury’s Magazine
‘On the surface a simple story that spans just five days, it has depth, and the conflicting emotions that can come with family life are skilfully explored. Bolger gets inside a woman’s head as few male writers can.’
Choice
‘Temptation is immensely understanding and perceptive, all the characters richly and quirkily realised. Bolger’s pièce de resistance, though, is his heroine. Alison is that rarity in modern fiction: a woman about whom the reader is allowed to frequently change their opinion. We are alternately moved or irritated by her, but always we are firmly locked in her consciousness. This is the kind of powerfully involving novel that comes along only rarely.’
Amazon.com
‘In fine, strong–willed prose, Dermot Bolger confronts us with thoughts of mortality, the illusion of redemption of the past and the wisdom of keeping the past exactly where it is. Temptation is a fine examination of that particular emotional state.’
Scotsman
‘A stunning portrait of a woman torn apart by a chance encounter with an old flame.’
Liverpool Echo
‘Read Temptation if only to understand what good writing really is.’
Bassline & Blank
By the same author
Novels
Temptation Page 18
