‘She’s OK.’ Mrs Ryan takes another gasp. ‘I asked her again about putting in for a transfer to Dublin, but she wouldn’t. Says she’s used to it down there.’ Another puff, followed by a single rich cough. ‘She says there’s talk of some kind of negotiations going on. Maybe some’ll get released.’
‘That’d be good,’ says Maire. It’s a discussion she doesn’t want to get drawn into. ‘Better go up and catch up with my work.’
‘Aye, you do that.’ Mrs Ryan looks up at her. ‘Thanks, Maire.’
She goes upstairs, sits at her desk, opens a notebook and the marked page of a book, Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials. It’s by Telford Taylor, an American lawyer who was one of the Nazis’ prosecutors, and was published a year ago. Despite the good reviews, the library hasn’t got a copy, so she’s splashed out and ordered one for herself. She’s been devouring it hungrily but, at this moment, her appetite has gone missing.
She peers around her box of a room: narrow single bed, bedside table with just enough room for lamp and alarm clock, school desk and chair, scratched brown chest of drawers, hangers on a rail, a wash basin in the corner. Two photographs sit on the chest, her ma and da getting married, and the McCartneys and Kennedys together by the sea in Portrush. She wonders who could have taken it, as they’re all in the picture. On the back row, Joseph stares at her with an idiot grin on his face. She wonders how he’s faring. At least there’s been nothing of him or his friends in the newspapers.
Looking at him only brings that image of the boy’s receding behind. She stands to inspect herself in a small square mirror nailed onto the wall. She peers closely to examine the two spots, one lodged just above her upper right lip, the other low on her chin. She touches them – not ready to pop and nothing she can do before the morning. Her hands move down her body to the growing tyre of flesh around her belly. She knows she’s let herself run to seed. Bad eating, mainly – it’s chips every night at the Ryans’. What’s there been to look good for since she came here? Now she thinks of taking better care of herself. Just in case . . .
In case of what? She tells herself to wise up. David Vallely is a nice-looking English boy from another world she’s met and talked to once and knows nothing about. He’s probably a flirt who sees nothing more in her than a coffee mate with a mutual academic interest. She needs to see him that way too and remind herself that she’s here to get a top degree and keep herself to herself. She probably won’t even see him again anyway. Be better not.
On the Monday morning, he’s there in the library. Same table, same chair.
He walks towards her, flicks a smile and leaves the library. A few minutes later, he’s back and drops a note in front of her as he passes.
‘Fancy pizza this evening?’ it reads.
She looks up at him with apparent disapproval, turns over the note and writes on the back. She holds it up so he can see the reply from the far end of the table.
‘OK.’
Her end of weekend resolution has lasted the split second of hesitation it takes to scribble two letters. She can’t believe what she’s done. He sticks up a thumb, reads for a few more minutes and leaves again, this time not to return.
Her heart seems to thump all day. She’s racked by a jumble of feelings. Guilt, anticipation, dread, excitement – reverting always to guilt. She knows full well Martin would say she’s breaking their deal if she goes out with him. She tries to think back to that conversation two years ago. Martin gave the orders – she stayed silent. Why should her silence mean acquiescence? She’s too smart not to know that’s sophistry. But she’s maintained the isolation for more than two years – there has to come a time when she can relax. What could be more harmless than a posh English boy with whom she’s nothing in common and who knows nothing of her island or where she’s come from? Anyway, she’s already said yes.
When they meet up at the pizza place and exchange opening pecks on cheeks, she calms. He’s easygoing, soothing, even nicer to look at close up across the table. She’s struck again by his teeth and feels self-conscious. The gap between her two upper front ones has never much bothered her – doesn’t Madonna have one? – but now she wonders if he minds. And there are the ‘incisors’ the dentist once remarked on – not to mention the uneven bottom row. They were never bad enough to get done on the National Health, and who’d want to waste their own money on teeth? Not that it was ever an option. He truly doesn’t seem to care. Lightly creased in smiles, he contentedly gazes at her eating her pizza slice by slice in her hands, her tongue licking stray strands of melting cheese from her fingers. They share a bottle of Soave – she finds herself drinking faster than he is.
‘How was your weekend?’ she asks.
‘I packed the rucksack and got a bus to Wicklow.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Walked up Lugnaquilla. It was great. Fantastic views.’
‘I love mountains!’ she exclaims.
‘Maybe sometime we should climb one,’ he suggests shyly.
‘Yeah, be great,’ she replies almost under her breath, then buries her eyes in her plate.
‘And you,’ he says after a second or two. ‘How was Battle of Algiers?’
‘Brilliant.’ He expects her to go on but her eyes stay silently down.
‘Yes, it is,’ he agrees.
‘It sorta manipulates you,’ she says, looking back up with a smile. ‘You know what they’re doing is wrong, but you kinda feel it’s right.’ She feels a tiny thrill at coming up with the judgement out of the blue.
‘Like here?’ he asks. She doesn’t answer and itches to change the subject.
‘So tell me ’bout youse,’ she finally says.
‘Not as much to tell as there should be,’ he replies. ‘Irish father, as it happens—’
‘Would be with a name like yours,’ she whips in.
‘Though they left a long time ago. The family did OK.’
‘I can see that.’
He blushes modestly, then casts his most beguiling grin, his eyes twinkling. ‘My mother was English, though. Bit of French blood. She was a good-looking woman.’
She notices the tension. His smile disappears. ‘Yeah, both gone.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘There we are, nothing to be done.’
She thinks of asking how and why, but decides from the sadness in his expression that he doesn’t really want to discuss it.
‘So it’s me alone against the world,’ he continues, proclaiming it like a manifesto.
‘No brothers or sisters?’ she asks.
‘Just me. A lonely orphan in Dublin.’ He reverts to his default mode of self-mocking. She sees him as the standard male who deals with past regrets by avoiding them. Silence follows for a second or two of memory and consolation.
He’s chatty enough and reticent only about himself – she understands that’s in a boy’s nature. Above all, he’s a good listener and she finds herself chattering away in all sorts of unintended directions.
‘So what about you?’ he pipes up.
‘Not much to tell either. Not yet rags to riches. My da’s a mechanic, never had a proper academic education.’ He watches her break into a smile of fondness. ‘Mind you,