Then sunlight, silence. Each day, the air higher and thinner. Leaves dropping down in the stillness, knocking against the layered branches, a hollow, papery sound. And the cheep of birds, small flurries of song, the chestnuts fiery, the ash going lemon yellow in the soft, clear light. At evening the sky all around the horizon laid out with layered white cloud, like fresh, folded linen. Above this, a pure, thin blue, with combings of fine cirrus, the wisps of an old woman’s hair.
I’d no idea what I was doing there, only kept from panicking by squashing down all thought. Derry, Belfast—they seemed like stories I’d invented, black-and-white photos, a long way away and in another time. I would wake in the early morning and lie in the breathing stillness, so happy I dared not move.
I should do this remembering more; it might bring me contentment. What’s happiness? Nothing at all. Wind in the trees. You only notice when it dies away.
We hid ourselves from Liam’s family, but with his friends it was different.
“This is Ellen,” he’d say. No explanation, no word of where he’d got me from. It must have seemed strange to them—one day I hadn’t existed, the next I was part of his life. A few of them asked about Noreen, but he only shook his head and smiled. Maybe they saw the way we were together and that stilled their tongues.
They seemed an odd lot, scruffy and garrulous, into music but indifferent to fashion. That was strange to me. There was more money in the North in spite of the unemployment, and if you were young you were mad for style. Here it was the opposite. Most of Liam’s friends seemed to live in jeans, and the girls my age hardly bothered with makeup at all. Everything was borrowed, thrown together, improvised. They thumbed lifts or rode around the place on antique bicycles; the few cars they had access to were clapped-out wrecks that no one ever serviced, much less washed.
But it didn’t stop them enjoying themselves. Any excuse was a good excuse and what money they had disappeared right away on a good night out with plenty of drink. Just the same, the talk was all of America and emigration and getting your hands on a green card.
That was then; it’s all completely different now. The banks are lending, the emigrants are coming back home, and everyone’s learned about possessions with the speed of light. But then was when I came, and it was so unlike what I was used to, it fairly made my hair stand up on end.
But Liam looked out for me, he knew I was frightened still, alert for any hint of the things I saw that weren’t there. We’d be in company, and something would shift on the edge of my vision; I’d tense, but before I’d had time to panic, there he’d be, at my side. And it wasn’t like it had been with Robbie, I didn’t feel hunted down by his eyes, just less always the stranger in the crowd. Which was odd, when you think about it, because for the first time in my life I truly was.
I knew I ought to write to Robbie, but I couldn’t put pen to paper and I couldn’t bear to ring him up and hear his voice. You think with a new love you’ll leave off loving the old one, but it doesn’t always work like that, or it didn’t for me. I knew I’d never go back to Robbie no matter what happened with Liam, but I cared for him still and I knew I’d hurt him sore. And I was his lawful wife, and Robbie set store by such things; if I wasn’t going back I should tell him so he could get himself a divorce. Robbie needed a wife—and children, too—that way lay his only chance. But I didn’t write or phone, I sent no word.
I signed on in the nearest town. There were no jobs anyway—half the country was signing on, they asked about qualifications, and when I said a degree in Russian they shoved the forms across at me, the same as in the North.
Liam was standing beside me, one hand on the counter, the other one dropped to my leg, which he planned to squeeze if I needed help.
“Different country, different ways,” he said. “One squeeze for yes, two for no.”
I was nervous as a kitten, for I’d got it into my head that they’d turn me down flat if they found out I was a Prod. But they didn’t. I answered their questions and filled in their forms, and I didn’t need help from Liam. Then they said it all had to be processed and told me when to come back.
The minute we were outside the door, Liam asked me about the Russian.
“Did I not tell you?” I said, all surprise, though I knew very well that I hadn’t. Robbie had used it against me—he’d liked going on about fancy degrees and a fast track to the dole, while he was only City and Guilds but it paid the bills. I’m being hard on Robbie, I know that. Robbie was a grafter, never out of work, and he measured himself by the wage packet he brought home. I took any job that came up—unskilled and low-paid, I wasn’t fussy—but they never lasted that long, and I felt inadequate when I wasn’t working, so Robbie’s sneers got to me.
At that time, with glasnost and the crumbling of the Soviet Union, I felt worse about the Russian than ever. As though I’d just put my shirt on the favourite and watched him come limping in last.
“They told us at school there’d always be a need for Russian translators,” I said lamely.
But Liam liked having a girlfriend with Russian, he didn’t care if it didn’t get me a job. He started asking me words, and then he’d repeat them back and laugh at the way he had to make shapes with his mouth that it definitely didn’t want to make. In no time at all he knew basic words, and it was only a skip and a jump before he could mispronounce whole phrases in pidgin Russian. We’d use it in company to say private things, and when people asked he’d say he had this personal tutor who was teaching him Russian in bed.
The weather changed. Transparent rain fell from a whitish sky that sat low on the hills and wiped out the line of the mountains. A soft trickling sound. Gentle. Our life turned inwards, enclosed by the falling rain. We’d go to bed in the afternoon, and afterwards I would lie with my head on Liam’s belly; the house, our lives, ourselves, cocooned in the quiet rain.
I woke one night and got out of bed and went to kneel at the window. The rain had stopped, and the sky, wiped clean, was black and pierced with stars. In the morning the sunlight was different. Sharper, more defined. And a nip in the thinning air that pinched at your fingers and made you remember gloves. The sky was blue and intense, and the ash held its last yellow leaves to the radiant light. Light caught the filaments woven by spiders; it shone the wet grass and burnished the late gnats afloat in the air like sparks. From the ditches and fields came the dense gleam of light on water.
And there was I, uneasy, out of place, yet hardly caring so long as there was Liam.
Where was I from, what was I doing here, when was I going home?
Alone with Liam, I forgot the questions.
And Liam, never once asking me, letting the reins hang loose, feeding me apples, feeling my breath on his hand.
The sale of the house came through. The papers were signed in March, and the new roof went on in the dry spell before Easter. Everyone helped. Connor brought us the slates from a ruined house on the farm, and one of Liam’s brothers-in-law had sawmill connections and got us a deal on the rafters. The insulation was a cobbling together of leftover stuff from a job on a schoolhouse, while tools and ladders and nails and the like were borrowed or scrounged. It was like that down here—you never just went to a shop and bought something; it all worked on who you knew and what way they’d find to help out.
Liam’s friends were handy enough—artists often are—and they’d have a crack at most jobs provided you weren’t too fussy about the look of the finished item. We weren’t too fussy; we wanted a roof on the house that would stand the wind and the weather and that’s what we got. I enjoyed it—a crowd of us up there, swarming about on the roof in the sunshine, busy as honey-bees. I worked hard alongside the men, and by the end of it I was stronger