I DON’T KNOW how the rest of the night went, or who sat up with Liam’s body after I left; I suspect Bea and Ernest did the bulk of it, though at one stage, Kitty tells me, they all moved in there and played cards. Apparently, I made a bit of a fuss in the front room. Mossie pushed a sour little pill in my mouth, and Ernest tried to pray with me, but I refused point blank to rest in my old, childhood bed, so they put me in a cab and sent me home.
The empty house, when I got there, was such a blessed relief-I think that is one of the reasons I walk around at night now, to get that feeling again; of sanity and emptiness, of one room giving way so easily to the next. So I stayed up for a while, and then I went upstairs and had sex with my husband for the last time.
That was not my intention, of course. After the night I’d just had it wasn’t my intention to have sex of any sort, never mind terminal sex. But I slipped into bed and Tom was awake. And he was in love with me. There is really no point in going over his reasons: he loved me; he wanted to drag me back to the land of the living. And maybe, now that my soul was so soft, he wanted to leave his mark there too. My body was not soft, however. I wondered why he did not notice this. But I did all the moves, and I made way for him, and I did not tell him to stop. So I must have wanted it too, or something like it.
He was not to know what had happened in Griffith Way after he left. Or that I had taken a pill (maybe it was the pill?) or that I felt like meat that had been recently butchered, even as he felt terribly moved. If that is what he felt. He was very gasping and juddery, at any rate, like his nerves were all alight.
Afterwards, we lay face to face, buried up to the neck in the duvet. We have said too much to each other, over the years. We are judiciously silent.
But he needs to say one more thing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
I think for a moment that he is apologising for the horrible sex, then I think he is sorry about the death of my brother, but in fact he is sorry for some infidelity he has committed in the past-he will tell me in a moment how little she meant-and this will be so silly and unbearable under the circumstances (I have just, I realise, slept with my husband for the last time), that I forestall him by saying, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’
He takes this as a sign. Everything is going to get better. He says I should do something. Work part-time, or take a daily walk at least-what about a house, what about getting a house and doing it up, now that the market’s on the move? Money. I could earn money. He says he has been too busy, he’s had a bit of a dip, but that we are out of the woods, he is over it now. And I say, ‘A dip?’
He says, ‘Please, not that again.’
I say, ‘Your daughters will sleep with men like you. Men who will hate them, just because they want them.’
And he says, ‘What?’ He says, ‘Jesus, you know. It’s just…’
‘Just what?’
I think he means that there is a limit to these things, to the way men think. That it isn’t real. That no one gets killed, for example. I think he means that this side-by-side business is all we’ve got.
He is probably right. So I lie there, side by side with him, and I contemplate the spreading bruise of my private parts.
‘Funny thing about men’s bodies,’ I say. ‘They never lie. That must be handy. I mean you’re built to tell the truth. On / off. Like / don’t like. Want / don’t want.’
And Tom says, ‘Not really.’ There is no reliable connection, he says, between what you want and what your mickey wants; sometimes it’s hard to tell.
‘Oh,’ I say, and roll over, and go to sleep.