The Wake - Table of contents

The Wake - afters (18)

She produced a tissue out of somewhere. The bedroom door clicked closed .

“Audrey showed me things.” Shoes clattered dropped deliberately. “I tried to tell you. She brought me out of myself ways I never thought could happen.” She wrestled at her nose with the tissue, then folded it carefully in four and slipped it up her sleeve. “But I would nearly have left her that time for you even though it would have broken my heart.”

“What time?” Now can I hold her? We’re alone now.

“The last night I saw you. Not counting Armagh. The night of the wake. Maybe if I’d met you before I met her I’d never have taken up with her. But then ...”

“Then?”

“Then I couldn’t have loved you the way I did. It would just have been like it was with the others before you, the same old thing over again. I never loved in my life before I met her, do you know that, Jeremiah? I’m talking about everything, everything, I’m talking about trying to accept people being different, Protestants, blacks, Indians, Muslims, Jews, anybody coming to live here.”

“Was that it? Tolerance? Was that what she taught you?”

“And that God’s in everything. Also that God’s in everything.”

“But I thought you didn’t believe. You said it yourself. That thing you just said there was one of the first things we learned in the catechism.”

“You’re not listening, you’re not letting me finish. It’s churches I don’t believe in. She was twenty-two and it was as if she was here before, honest to God. Did you ever hear of Spinoza? Or Karl Krause?”

“I don’t think so.” This was doing my head in. Why couldn’t we just get down to it? And talk later.

“It’s so simple when somebody explains it to you. God’s in everything, He’s in nature, He’s got nothing to do with priests and churches, right? Who wrote the bible? Men, the whole sixty-six books of it. You wanted to hear her, Jeremiah. Eve was made up and the apple was made up and the whole world swallowed it. For thousands of years women have been living inside the boundaries made for them by men. Like, who says women can’t love each other? Men. And men say it’s a heresy to think God could be in nature. You know why they say that? Because it would only lose them their power. If God’s in nature then they’ve no control over Him because nature’s a law unto itself so that means men can’t be go-betweens anymore, they can’t interpret and twist. Where would they be then, the ones in Rome and Canterbury and Jerusalem and all? If people can find God outside in the fields or with their lovers even then where does that leave these people in their marble halls?”

“They lose their dominion I suppose.”

Her eyes filled with brightness. “That’s exactly the word Audrey used. Dominion. The second time I was ever speaking to her she said to me, I won’t allow any church or state to have dominion over my body. How dare they! That’s what she said. How dare they!”

“Could we turn off the superser?”

“What?”

“The superser. Could we turn it off? My head’s spinning with it.”

She got up quickly from her chair and switched it off. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” She was closer to me now, standing not four feet away. She blinked. Can I hold her now I wonder, I thought. “I’ll have to get an electric heater,” she said absently. “I’m always intending.”

“It’s just the fumes,” I told her. “Probably I’m spoiled. We’ve got a coal fire you see.”

She nodded. “You know why it struck a chord for me? What Audrey said? My father. My father did what he wanted with me for two years nearly and then with my little sister and these people think ... these people are just as repulsive as he was. Who do they think they are anyway?”

“God’s gift?”

She gave a little yelp of approval and quickly crossed the space between us. Then standing very close to me she put her arms around my neck. I could only think of one thing. I gripped her and held her hard against me, so hard she gasped. When I found I was hurting her I loosened my grip a little and our mouths kissed. I’m not sure how long we stood that way, bodies together, lips soft and warm. Near the end of it I slid my hands from her waist and fingered the leather skirt. She didn’t resist at first but soon drew back from me.

“Take it easy, that’s sore,” she said but her eyes were smiling. “Why don’t you come in with us?”

“What?”

“Come in with us. Frances will be fine with it.”

“You don’t mean ...”

Aggressively she tongued my mouth, then slid her hand behind the buckle of my belt and turning away pulled me after her like a trolley. “Come on. Honestly, it’ll be all right.”