Eclipse: A Novel (17 page)

The fact is, Lydia has always been jealous of Cass and me. Oh yes, she has. That was the way it was right from the beginning. It was into my arms that Cass as an infant would come tottering, no matter what blandishments her mother might be offering, what coos of encouragement or flattering cries. Even later, when her world was steadily darkening, it was I that our daughter would seek out first, it was my hand she would clutch to keep from falling past all help into the abyss of herself. Whose eyes did she seek when she came back from that first seizure, gazing up from the floor beside her bed with the bloody froth still on her mouth and that look on her face we thought was an unearthly smile but was only the effect of the contracted muscles relaxing? Who did she run to, laughing in terror, when she knew an attack was coming on? Who did she describe her aural visions to, the shattering glass cliffs and terrible birds made of metal and rags that flew at her eyes? Who did she turn to one day by that bed of lilies in someone’s garden and whisper in the thrilled rush of discovery that that,
that
was the smell, as of some wonderful delicate sweet rotted meat, that filled the air around her in the seconds before a seizure? Who was the one who woke first when that cry rose up through the night, that long high thin ululation, like a nerve being drawn slowly out of its sheath?

I sat beside Lydia on the sofa, easing myself down as if she were asleep and I unwilling to wake her. The sunspot on the lino had shifted a stealthy inch or two. The moon in its course must be swinging ever closer to the sun, homing in on the light, like a moth. A faint whiff of strawy smoke drifted on to the air; a field of stubble somewhere was burning. The silence had a buzz to it, as of harp strings rubbed not plucked. My upper lip was unpleasantly damp. Long ago, when I was a boy, on a summer day like this one, still and hot, I walked across the fields, oh, for miles, it seemed, to a farm, to buy apples. I had brought with me my mother’s oilcloth shopping bag; it had an unpleasant, greasy smell. I wore sandals, and a horsefly stung me on an instep. The farmhouse was all overgrown with ivy and had many small dark gleaming windows. It was the kind of place where in a boy’s adventure book dark deeds would be afoot, and the farmer would wear gaiters and a waistcoat and carry a menacing pitchfork. In the yard a black-and-white dog growled at me and turned in cringing circles, its belly almost scraping the gravel. I stood in the stone-flagged porch while a fat surly woman in a flowered apron took my bag and went off into the shadowed depths of the house. There were gnarled geraniums in clay pots and a grandfather clock that seemed to hesitate before each tick. I paid the woman a shilling and she said nothing, watching me go. The dog in the yard growled again and licked its lips. The bag was heavy now, and kept bumping against my leg. In a lane I paused beside a soupy pond and watched the water-skimmers; their feet made pewtery dents in the surface; they moved as if worked by wires. The sunlight came through the trees like hot gold smoke. Why that day, that farm, the farmer’s wife, the apples, those insects on that pond—why any of it? Nothing happened, no grand vision was granted me, no blinding insight or sudden understanding, yet it is all there, clear as yesterday— clearer!—as if it were something momentous, a key, a map, a code, the answer to a question I do not know how to ask.

“What is it?” Lydia said without looking up, and for a second I thought she had somehow been reading my mind. “What’s wrong with you, what is the matter? What”—wearily—“what has happened to you?”

The apples were a pale whitish green and each bite came away with a satisfying, woody snap. I remember them; to this day I remember them.

“I have the feeling,” I said, “the conviction, I can’t rid myself of it, that something has happened, something dreadful, and I haven’t taken sufficient notice, haven’t paid due regard, because I don’t know what it is.”

She was silent, then gave a sort of laugh, and sat up and rubbed her hands vigorously on her upper arms, as if she had become chilled, keeping her face turned away from me.

“Maybe it’s your life,” she said. “That’s disaster enough, isn’t it?”

Evening, and she is still here. At least, I have not heard her departing. I do not know what she is up to, there has not been a sound from her, from anyone, for hours. It is worrying. Perhaps she has encountered Quirke, and is with him now, pouring out her troubles. Serve him right. Or she might have cornered the girl, might be quizzing her, wanting to know if I have interfered with her. I am skulking in my hideout, hunched over my bamboo table, feeling cross and ill at ease. Why must I always be the guilty one? I did not ask her to come here, I did not invite her. All I wanted was to be left alone. They abhor a vacuum, other people. You find a quiet corner where you can hunker down in peace, and the next minute there they are, crowding around you in their party hats, tooting their paper whistles in your face and insisting you get up and join in the knees-up. I am sick of them all. I shall not come out until she is gone.

IV

It is the following morning, and there is much excitement. The circus, of all things, has come to town. After a night of disturbed sleep I was woken early by a confusion of noises outside my window, and looked through a crack in the curtains to find a dozen or more trailers drawn up at haphazard angles in the square. The horses were being unhitched, and big-muscled bandy men in striped vests were hurrying to and fro, plying ropes, and hefting things, and calling to each other in sharp, brief barks; it was as if the performance had already started and they were the opening act. As I watched, tent-poles were being assembled, and a big tarpaulin was thrown down and rapidly unrolled. All around the square, at other bedroom windows, other curtains were twitching, and even the odd front door was opened cautiously and a lathered face or curlered head appeared, poking out in groggy wonderment.

“What’s going on?” Lydia asked sleepily from the bed behind me, where she had raised herself on an elbow, a hand lifted to shade her eyes.

“It’s the circus,” I said, and had to laugh, though it came out more like a cough.

In fact, as I later found, it is more than a circus, it is a kind of roadshow, with a shooting gallery, and stalls for shying coconuts and throwing rings, and a cage on wheels containing a family of mangy, purple-bottomed monkeys who gibber and hoot and stare at passers-by with comical malignity. There is even a hall of mirrors: Lily and I were present when it was being put up. The big rippled sheets of glass were taken out of their sacking and lowered from the back of the wagon, and for a few giddy moments a troupe of rubbery dwarves and etiolated giants shimmied and shivered in those depthless caskets of light. Lily pretends to be bored by all this, but behind her arch look there is a glitter of childish excitement she cannot suppress. We had come out to do a tour of inspection while Lydia prepared breakfast. I had that sense of false alertness that comes from the lack of both sleep and sustenance, and in the early sunlight everything around me was unreally clear and sharply defined, like the pieces of a shattered kaleidoscope. On the back steps of a trailer painted in scarlet and midnight blue a man sat, watching us. He was a shabby, skinny fellow with red hair and a thin, foxy face. He wore a loose red shirt and shapeless trousers that were much too big for him, a clownish get-up, and he had a gold ring in one ear. He looked familiar, although I was sure I had never seen him before. He reminded me of a person I used to meet about the streets last winter, at the start of my bad time, whom also I seemed vaguely to know, and who certainly knew me, or of me, at least, for every time we encountered each other, which happened with alarming frequency, he would smile to himself, an awful, smug, lip-biting smile, which he would make a show of trying to hide behind a hand, while sidling quickly past me, with eyes resolutely downcast, as if he thought I might tackle him, might plant myself in his path and make him stop, or try to cuff him on the ear as he went by. He too had red hair, and wore spectacles that flashed at me mockingly, and a duffel coat, and down-at-heel shoes and concertina trousers. I thought perhaps he might be a member of the guild, a spear-carrier who thinks himself a Kean and hates me for my reputation and my successes. After an encounter with him I would have a sense of disquiet that lingered for days. I did think of confronting him, and demanding to know what it was about me that amused him, what secret of mine he thought he had uncovered, but before I could decide to act he would be gone, hurrying off into the crowd, head down and shoulders shaking, so it seemed to me, with secret mirth. This circus fellow had the same look of amused knowingness, though he was even more sure of himself, and was evidently not in the least concerned as to what I might say or do. Nevertheless, as we drew near he stood up, showing a hand-rolled cigarette and patting his scrawny thighs as if in search of matches, and went inside the trailer. Lily, I saw, had spotted him too.

We inspected the monkeys, one of whom rolled back his mouth so far it seemed he would turn himself inside-out, a moth-eaten lion reclining motionless as a sphinx and gazing out upon the world with an expression of unfathomable boredom, and a supercilious and very smelly dromedary tethered to a cherry tree, the lower leaves of which it was tearing with rubbery lips and spitting disdainfully on the ground. Lily stopped to watch in awe a dun mare copiously pissing. Despite my hunger I was not eager to return to the house. I am not sure which I find harder to cope with, Lydia’s anger, or that brittle cheerfulness which is its inevitable consequence. After our fight yesterday she sulked throughout the evening, but relented later, as I knew she would. I had made her come with me to the pub, in order, I confess, to allow Quirke and the girl to get themselves settled for the night without her knowing, for I had not yet gathered my courage sufficiently to break to her the news of their permanent residency. We drank too many gins, and fell into amorousness—yes, yes, I have languished off the sexual wagon, I’m afraid, just when I thought I was cured of all that delirium. But we were very tender and forgiving toward each other, and in the glimmering small hours, clasped in her familiar warmth like a marsupial in its mother’s pouch, I seemed more nearly sane than I have felt since I cannot remember when. By morning, however, doubts had set in. There is something not quite right, something even mildly disgraceful, in the way she lets her fury be transformed with such apparent ease into a wholly other sort of passion. Intransigent and cold of heart I may be, but when terrible things are said I take them to be at least an approximately accurate expression of true feelings, firm convictions. For instance, when Lydia hurls at me those accusations—that I am a bad husband and neglectful father, that I am a monster of self-regard, that onstage I cannot act and in life never cease from acting—I am impressed, I am cowed, even, despite the flinty exterior I take care to maintain. Not only that, but I bethink myself, even in the heat of battle, and wonder if perhaps these things are true of me, and if so how I should go about trying at least to ameliorate my faults and failings. My wife, on the other hand, judging by the rapidity and thoroughness with which she switches mood, seems to regard these exchanges of heavy fire, which leave me drilled with holes through which the wind of self-recognition whistles unimpeded, as no more than light badinage, lovers’ raillery, or even, as last night, a form of sexual foreplay. Where is her sense of duty, I mean the duty to mean what one says, and, having said it, to stand by it?

After spying on the circus through the curtains for a moment longer—I was not entirely certain it was not a dream—I got back into bed, and presently woke, a second time, to the sound of her whistling. Yes, whistling. Have I mentioned that she does not suffer from hangovers? Angry, gin-blue seas were crashing inside my head, but she was sitting naked and unconcerned on a chair by the window, making up her face with the aid of a pocket mirror and doing that tuneless whistling she claims to be unconscious of, and that nearly brought our marriage to an end before the honeymoon was over. I lay for a while and pretended to be still asleep, fearful of being required to be bright, and suffering from that peculiar shyness, amounting almost to shame, that I always feel after those extravaganzas of fighting and reconciliation that I hope are not to become again a frequent feature of our life together, if we are to have a life together. It is at moments such as this, fraught and uncertain, that I understand myself least, seem a farrago of delusions, false desires, fantastical misconceptions, all muted and made manageable by some sort of natural anaesthetic, an endorphin that soothes not the nerves but the emotions. Is it possible I have lived all my life in this state? Is it possible to be in pain without suffering? Do people look at me and detect a slight peculiarity in my bearing, as one notices the stiff jaw and faintly drooping eye of a person lately risen from the dentist’s chair? But no, what has been done to me is deeper than dentistry. I am a heart patient. There may even be a name for my complaint. “Mr. Cleave, harrumph harrumph, I’m afraid it’s what we doctors call anaesthesia cordis, and the prognosis is not good.”

Still feigning sleep, I saw through the peacock shimmer of lowered lashes that Lydia, the make-up brush suspended, was regarding my reflection in her mirror with a sardonic eye, knowing full well I was awake. I never was able to fool her; others might be taken in by my subterfuging ways, but never Lydia. I sat up, and she smiled. I did not like that smile, complicit, feline, expressive of that primitive conspiracy of the flesh we had entered upon again in the night. I repeat, how could she so lightly set at naught the appalling things we had shouted at each other—she said I had broken her spirit, as if she were a horse, to which I replied that if she had been a horse I would have had her shot, that kind of thing—before we both fell drunkenly into bed and, later, into each other?

“You look terrible,” she said, husky and indulgent.

I did not answer. It is a curious thing about Lydia, that her body has hardly changed with the years. She has thickened somewhat, of course, and gravity is working its gradual, sad effects, yet in essentials she is still the silver-pale, slightly slouchy, excitingly top-heavy spoilt princess that I used to stalk along the quays by the Hotel Halcyon that summer all those years ago. Her flesh has a flaccid, slightly doughy quality that appeals to the pasha in me, suggestive as it is of the seraglio and the veil. She does not take the sun, after a month in the hottest of southern climes her skin will show no more than a faint, honeyed sheen that will fade within a week of her return to the grey north. On the warmest days there will be parts of her—her flanks, her inner arms, the soft flesh of her throat—that will retain a porcelain chill; I used to love to hold her in the clammy afterglow of passion, feeling her against me, the length of her, from brow to instep, that cool dense surface stippled with gooseflesh. Now I looked at her there in the morning light at the window, big and naked, one leg crossed on the other, the freckled shoulders and blue-veined breasts, those three deep folds of flesh at either side of her waist that I used to pinch until she shivered in languorous pain, and the old dog stirred in me and lifted its twitching snout—yes, yes, I am a fine one to talk of standing on principle. I was not so besotted, though, as to fail to note the small but remarkably well-stocked suitcase she had been foresighted enough to bring with her. I fear she is planning a long stay.

No ghosts today, not a single sighting; has Lydia’s coming put them to flight for good? I feel uneasy without them. Something worse might take their place.

When Lydia and I came down, Lily was already in the kitchen, sitting at the table head on hand, glued to a comic and spooning up cereal with automated precision. Lydia was startled to see her there, but not so much as she was a moment later when Quirke himself appeared, coming in from the hall in braces and shirtsleeves, with a loaf and a bottle of milk in a string bag. Seeing Lydia he paused, and his eyes skittered sideways. For a tense moment all was still, and even Lily looked up from her comic. I had an urge to laugh. “This,” I said, “this is Mr. Quirke, my dear.” Quirke hastily rubbed a hand on his thigh and came forward, offering it, with a queasy grin. A fuzz of reddish hair spilled thickly from the vee of his open shirt collar, which, it struck me, made it seem as if his stuffing were coming out, and I almost did laugh. Lydia allowed her hand to be shaken and immediately withdrew it. “Breakfast?” Quirke said encouragingly, showing the meagre bag of provisions. Lydia shot at me a darkly questioning glance which I pretended not to notice. She is a practical person, however, and saying nothing she took the milk and bread from him and carried them to the sideboard, and filled a kettle at the sink and put it on the range, while behind her back Quirke looked at me with eyebrows lifted and mouth turned down, as if we were a pair of urchins caught out by a grown-up in some prank.

I could not help but be amused by all this—the social predicament was wonderfully laughable. My enjoyment was short-lived, however. Quirke, no doubt seeing his living arrangements in peril, set himself at once, nauseatingly, to the task of charming Lydia. It worked; she always was a pushover for plausible rogues, as I can attest. While she went about preparing our breakfast he followed her around the kitchen, hastening to lend a helping hand when it seemed required, all the while keeping up a stream of fatuous talk. He spoke of the splendid weather she had brought, said he had wondered, coming in, who owned the lovely motor car parked outside—he must have spotted it last night, and prudently stayed away until after lights-out—told her stories from the town, and even launched into a potted history of the house. This was the last straw for me. Feeling an obscure disgust I went to the door, muttering an exit line about taking a stroll, as if I ever strolled anywhere. At once Lily scrambled up, wiping her mouth on her forearm, and said she would come with me. Outside, the early sun had an intense, lemony cast, and the morning was all glitter and glassy splinterings, which did not help my headache, or my mood. Lily stopped and spoke to one of the circus hands, an Italianate type with oiled curls and a gold stud in his nostril, clasping her hands at the small of her back and swaying her meagre hips, the little slut, and came back to me with the eager news that the first performance will be put on this afternoon; I have the grim suspicion that she hopes I will take her to it. Well, why not; we could make a family outing of it, Lydia, and Quirke and the girl, and me, old paterfamilias.

When we returned to the house Lydia had cooked bacon and eggs and fried bread and tomatoes and black pudding; I had not thought there was so much food in the house—perhaps she brought it with her, all parcelled up in that bottomless suitcase of hers—and my stomach heaved at the sight, which was almost as bad as the smells; lately I have pretty well got out of the way of eating. Quirke, with a large and not quite clean handkerchief knotted round his neck for a napkin, was already tucking in, while Lydia, wearing one of my mother’s old aprons, was at the range cheerfully dishing up another round of eggs. I took her by the wrist and drew her into the hallway, and demanded to know, in a furious whisper, through gritted teeth, what she thought she was about, setting up this grotesque parody of domestic life. She only smiled benignly, however—she does not realise how close she comes at times to getting a black eye—and touched a hand to my cheek and said with horrible roguishness that she had thought I would surely be hungry this morning and in need of something hot to restore my strength. I feel I am losing control here; I feel that some large thing I have been holding in my hands for so long that I have ceased to notice it has suddenly shifted and become slippery, and may at any moment go tumbling out of my grasp altogether.