Departures (3 page)

The woman cleared her throat.

“So, what about you?” she said. “Where are you from?”

Her husband's smile was strained. “They're from Ireland, dear, obviously.”

“Northern Ireland, yes,” Jean said.

“Yes, of course.” The man lifted a sprig of parsley from the chop on his plate, examining it from a distance with the prongs of his fork. The woman coughed.

“Do you live in the country?” she asked brightly. “I hear the country's very nice.”

“Yes, it's beautiful,” Martin agreed. “We don't get out to
see it much, though. No car, I'm afraid. We're from Belfast.”
West Belfast,
Jean added silently; she could practically see their faces blanch. For some reason she found the reaction gratifying.

“Ah yes,” the man said, swallowing deliberately. “Right in the thick of it, then.”

“Well, it does seem that way sometimes, I suppose,” Martin laughed, “but it's not as bad as all that, really.”

“Are there really armed policemen and tanks on the streets?” The woman's expression was avid, and uneasy blend of fascination and distaste. And what about the bombs, and all those shootings, the woman continued; do you think it would stop if they brought back hanging? Jean leaned aside as the waiter moved in to serve their first course, keeping her eyes on the man's white sleeve and deft fingers, trying to listen only to the light tap of silver against glass as the warm strands of pasta were scooped from one dish to the next. Such discussions always brought out the worst in her. Inevitably she made some radical and accusatory comment with whose sentiments she did not really agree. But what're they fighting
about?
she heard the man say then, and Martin spoke calmly of politics and history, of cultural differences and conflicting aspirations, of each side demanding protection without understanding that the other was equally afraid.

“And what side are you on?”

Jean looked up. She'd been waiting for that question; in fact, she was surprised that they'd waited this long to ask. Martin struggled to find words for a diplomatic answer; she knew she was being childish but she would not return his glance.

“We can't help being curious, I suppose,” the man said. “We don't meet too many of you, really, not in Dorset. Aren't you on our side, then?”

Jean set down her fork. “And what side is that, exactly?”

“We like to think we're not on any side,” Martin said quickly. Jean felt him grip her knee under the table, and she crossed her legs tightly to push his hand off. The other two nodded but said nothing, apparently waiting for him to go on. Martin shrugged and smiled. “We try not to be, anyway.”

The man looked puzzled. “But surely you're from one side or the other.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Martin said, “I guess we're from both sides. We're a mixed couple—Jean's a Catholic, I'm Protestant.”

Oh, for chrissake,
Jean thought bitterly,
must we tell these people everything?
She felt an irrational urge to say something inflammatory, to embellish the reality of her own experience and imply activities in which she had not been involved. But then Martin would stop in the middle of his answer—how they were pacifists who had met through the peace movement, how nobody they knew had ever been injured, how nobody close to them ever had died.

Shamed by self-recognition, she hesitated. The other two were nodding their heads while Martin described how careful they'd been in the early days of their courtship, the precautions they'd taken and yet still been on edge—preoccupations which after two years no longer mattered, replaced by others far less exotic, which even Martin, with his broad-minded notions of privacy, had the sensitivity not to bring up. For a moment Jean saw herself as she imagined they saw her: pale-faced and silent, clutching her napkin, overcome by a topic too painful to discuss.

She avoided their gaze as the plates were cleared, as they finished their coffee and brushed crumbs from their laps, as they gathered their room key and other belongings and finally rose to leave. When they had gone Martin covered her hand with his and sighed.

“Well, that wasn't too bad,” he said. His voice sounded
weary but she did not respond. “D'you fancy dessert?” he asked, changing the subject. “Ice cream or something?”

“We're going to get one anyway; it comes with the meal.”

He eyed her warily.

“What is it, Jean? What's wrong?”

Though she'd given him all the usual signals—the cheerless expression, the imputative silence, the refusal to meet his eye—the speed with which he'd responded to them took her by surprise. For a moment she wavered, considered aborting the mood, but she still felt the tug of unrealised conflict and a gradual tightening between her brows.

“I just wish you hadn't said that,” Jean said, despite herself. The tone of her own voice only irritated her further. Martin's expression was grim.

“Said what, Jean?”

She gestured impatiently. “All that stuff.”

He shrugged dismissively, withdrawing his hand. “We've been through this before, Jean. What difference does it make what we say to them? Come Saturday morning we'll never see them again.”

But that was in Belfast,
she countered silently, too unclear in her own mind to argue out loud.
You expect to field questions from strangers at home.

“I think,” she said stiffly, “you had an obligation to be truthful.”

“And how wasn't I, eh? What did I say that wasn't true?”

She shook her head, suddenly inarticulate. “And why did you have to tell them so much about us? I don't know them; I don't want them knowing my business.”

He nodded. “So now I was too truthful, is that it? Tell me something, what would you have said? Eh?” She didn't answer. “No? Well, I can guess. My way, they go home
thinking at least some of us aren't terrorists. Your way . . . ? I don't understand your way at all.”

Most of the other guests had already departed; only one elderly gentleman was still sipping coffee at a table by the door. A girl from reception was moving among the tables on the far side of the room, clearing cups and emptying ashtrays, her white blouse sheer and loose and unbuttoned above the bosom, bright orange beads around her neck swinging out from inside it as she cleaned. Jean watched Martin signal for coffee, admiring the clench of his thighs as he turned—his
sartorius,
she told herself tenderly, his
rectus femoris.
He was right, of course; she was overreacting. She should learn to take these encounters less seriously, to be like the ones who gave tours of the building sites, pointed to the corrugated iron erected to keep the kids out of the unfinished bungalows with which the Executive was rebuilding Ardoyne and said, See how the Brits make us live? Bloody tin shacks with no running water. It's worse then South Africa here, so it is.

Jean smiled, remembering how she'd first heard that story, how she'd told it to Martin and how he'd laughed, too. Bright and unburdened, she turned to him then, but he was examining the sugar packets in the bowl on the table and would not look up, and just as swiftly as they had come to her, her good spirits drained away. Outside the evening pressed like paint against the window, and all she could see as she looked into the glass was her own reflection, the image clear and remarkably well-defined.

Hydrophobic

Eddie Cranston asked my sister to marry him three times before she stopped saying no. The first time he'd come with flowers and gone down in front of her on one knee, even though he was a big man and the position was difficult for him. The second time he asked her he put it in writing and then stood on the corner across from our house, so she'd know where to find him when she wanted to look. A postal strike delayed the letter but still he kept standing there three days in the rain—which impressed her enough that she went out to him, told him directly that he was a heathen and there must be no mingling of the heathen and the saved. So he said that he'd do whatever she wanted, anything at all if it made her change her mind. That's when she told him about the Holy Spirit, the need for forgiveness and a cleansing of sin. That should do it, my father had said, turning away from the window and shaking his head. If he's got any sense now he'll give up and go home. But instead Eddie told her he'd think about it, and in the end said Okay, if that's what it takes.

We were eleven days now from the end of February, and I was thinking that the water would be cold. The grass beneath us was brittle with frost, and the ice spread like filigree from the banks around the water, reaching out like fairy fingers towards the belly of the Lough.

How you doin? Eddie asked me. You okay?

I nodded. How you doin? I said.

I'm okay, he said. I'm alright.

I didn't believe him. For a man who couldn't swim he was taking it very well, but I had felt the cool damp of his skin when he took my hand on the way into the church. I knew he was afraid.

It was too early, really, for an outdoor baptism. The only one I'd ever seen had been in the summer, two dozen people in white robes with Bibles standing face front to the Irish Sea, lapped by the water and equidistant like the driftwood pillars of an obsolete pier. We'd spent that day in the Sperrin Mountains, were on our way back along the Antrim coast, headed for Whiteabbey where the hospital was when my sister saw them and made us pull over for a better look. There was a family of swans in the reeds by the water, an elegant female and three grey cygnets; my father and I stood watching them till my sister called us over, crouched down beside me and made me look along her arm. Reminds me of Emily, my father said—my Aunt Emily who had been to Israel, who had gone with her church to the Dead Sea. When the bus had stopped to change a flat tyre practically everyone had stripped to their swimsuits and offered their wounds to the heavy brine before reboarding the bus and going on to En Gedi. Only my aunt had remained on the shore, where she stood with their cameras and other possessions and watched as the rest of the congregation descended until they were nothing but knobs of saffron, ash-grey, and auburn against the even, eggshell green of the Sea. She'd gone in later when they got to the Spa. You can't drown in it, she told me, the water won't let you. One minute you're standing, just touching bottom, and the next something starts to upend you, lifts you up by the balls of your feet and tips you over; you keep coming up whatever you do. And you can only stay in for a little while, or the pull of the minerals saps all your strength. Once you come out you go
straight to the showers, and then you can sleep, or buy ice cream, or a lovely tall glass of something cold to drink. There had been some, she said, who'd refused to shower, who, having bathed in the salt tears of Jesus, would not give them back to the Sea. Fools, my aunt had called them, fools to let their faith eat away at their skin.

Two readings had been chosen for the opening service, Deuteronomy 7, the first five verses, and Luke 12: 49–53. We stood and sat down several times in the course of it, then the service was over and the hymn had begun.

Well, Eddie said, I guess that's my cue.

He rose and leaned forward to edge around past us, obstructed by an uneven battlement of knees. My father turned to look after him as he headed up the aisle, but I closed my eyes and imagined his movements, thinking,
He's in the foyer now with the rest of them; there, they've just handed him a robe.
I imagined him undressing behind a curtain in the vestry, the lift first of one leg and then the other, each sock rolled individually and tucked, one each, into separate shoes. I wondered if he took off his shirts like my father, both hands reaching round to tug at the garment and pull from behind with a crackle of static, or if he crossed his arms in front of him the way I did and took hold of the hem, his face distorted by the snag of the buttons or reddened for a moment by the chafing wool. Then the organ pipes swelled and the full force of them reached me, a thousand throaty voices answering every pressed key, the space in which to hear them filling with sound from one end to the other like water fills an ice cube tray.

When the hymn finished we all moved outside. A wind was gathering on the edge of the water; it moved confidently among the assembled, tousling hair and examining gowns, lifting hems and cuffs for inspection before moving on. My
sister stood to one side and consulted her Bible; even the wind seemed to know better and give her a wide berth. Here, daughter, my father said softly, go see how he's doing. So I went over to Eddie and took hold of his hand.

How do I look? he said.

Cold, I said. Do you know what you're supposed to do, now?

You tell me again, he said.

There is one body and one Spirit, I said, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. That's all you need to know, I told him. Please don't be afraid.

There were three to be baptised, two women and Eddie, and as they were church members he'd agreed to go last. The first woman sank back in the water like a slumberer, surrounded by the cushions of air in her clothes. I remembered how my sister had washed a coat once without having emptied its pockets first. Eighty-five quid and a bill of sale, all that was left of some forgotten transaction my mother had made before she died came out in a lump, and we had to submerge it in a bowl of warm water till the layers separated and the creases relaxed. That's what it looked like, that jellyfish way the cloth sank and lifted just below the surface. Then there was another time when they'd let us out early, told us not to ask questions and to head straight for home. The police had been there, and the army, too, but still Jimmy Macken had torn leaves from his textbook and hurled them in celebration straight back at the school. A gust of wind had lifted the pages, pressed them up into the bare limbs and branches of the trees in the schoolyard. The next morning they hung there dripping with rain, and that's what the woman's arms looked like, buoyed up beside her in the cold clasp of her sleeves.