Tender (10 page)

“I’m scared shitless about it, to tell you the truth,” he said, shaking his head.

“It’ll be all right,” she said, and she closed her fingers around his shoulder as she had seen his father do, and she thought he might come to her for a hug then, but he stayed where he was.

“It’ll be all right,” she said again, and with that, he seemed to decide something, and he nodded, once, briskly, and he took a step ahead.

“So now for you,” he said.

“Well,” she said, working to keep her voice steady; to keep it cheerful, even. “I’m glad you—I’m glad.”

He nodded. “Me too. I felt it was important. I felt it was time.”

“It
is
time,” she nodded eagerly. “It
is
important.” If she just repeated the words he used himself, she thought, if she just bounced them back to him, then surely she could not go far wrong.
First, do no harm.
Because what she had to concentrate on, she felt now, so strongly, was her face; what she had to put all her work into was the expression in her eyes, was the business of what she was doing with her mouth. Smile. Smile. Breathe through her nose—not too deeply, not like she was fighting for it. Widen her eyes; force them full of brightness. Show none of the riot going on inside; the bafflement, the confusion with all its stupid roars and plummetings, the astonishment, this weird temptation to stare. Show none of the fact that
This! This! This!
had now become
Gay! Gay! Gay!—
because that was wrong of her, utterly wrong. Nothing was more urgent now than to keep all of this out, to keep her face soft with calm and with intelligence and with openness, the face of someone wiser, someone better, the face of someone that she wanted, so badly, to be. He was reading her; he was watching her face for the story of how he would be received—for the story, almost, of what he was. And she would not give him a face by which he could justify a tone any darker than the one in which he was speaking to her now. She was Amy, she decided in that moment. She was Lorraine. She was able. She was knowing. She was for telling; she was for trusting; she was for shelter and for comfort and for relief. Still it banged in her brain, and silently she roared it away, because she should not even be thinking it, should not even be seeing it; she should just be seeing James, her friend, her best, best friend, and now he was walking, and Catherine was following, and the stone of the canal bank was so weathered and bird-stained and gray, and it led on to a path trodden down through this grass by who knew how many feet over who knew how many years.

Still, she was excited. There was this feeling—and she was far from proud of it—of having been given something. Or rather, of discovering that she’d had something all along, without realizing it; like those priests in Dublin who’d had no idea that the painting in their dining room was a Caravaggio. She had never before known anyone who was gay. Nobody real. Nobody Irish, really, other than David Norris, the senator who had fought for the law to be changed, and it was not as if Catherine actually
knew
him. It had almost been a fantasy—a fantasy upon a fantasy—men who were not just loving, but so loving that they were able to love other men. Ridiculous, of course, but that was how she had thought of it; that was how she could not help thinking of it now. Feeling so warm towards James as he walked beside her; feeling such tenderness for him, such—it felt almost like gratitude. Because now—now what? Now she had one of her own? There it was, her own shallowness, and it was so depressing, and it was something that James could not know. That she was not good. Not—what was it? Not neutral. Not this solid ground for him, not for him this safe, trustworthy shore.

But this was something he would not know.

And anyway, maybe she could snap out of it. Maybe, when the novelty faded, maybe then she would become a better friend. Not this silly tourist, trotting beside him up the lane, trying not to stare.

He was talking about David Norris now, she realized; or rather, about that summer, four years previously, when the decriminalization had gone through. He had been fifteen then, and going into his Junior Cert year, and it had been hell, he told her; it had been horrible. Everyone around him talking about it, jeering about it, in school, on the school bus, in the shops in town, at the church gates, and on the radio programs, especially on the radio programs—listening to everyone else talking on the subject, it seemed endlessly, it seemed everywhere you turned, and being petrified that they would work out, somehow, that they were talking about you. That you were one of them.

“Exhibit A,” he said, as they reached the gates, and for a moment she thought he was talking about the house, or about his father’s freshly painted garage door, the vivid greenness of it, which was the thing which had caught her eye, making her think back to the babbling innocence of the night before; but he was talking about himself, she realized.

“But nobody found out,” she said, to try to comfort him, seeing immediately then what a stupid thing this had been to say. “I mean, then,” she said hurriedly. “I mean, nobody found out before you wanted them to.”

“No, they did not, Catherine,” he said, crossing to where they had left the blanket on the lawn; he gathered it up and tucked it under his arm, handing her a glass to carry into the house. “No, they did not. I made damn well sure of that.”

“Well, then,” she said, uncertainly, as they passed under his mother’s painted arch.

Then they had a night that Catherine would remember, she thought, until the day she died. Nothing much happened, except that everything was perfect. The night was perfect: it was warm enough to sit outside, and the sky was on fire as the sun went down, and then it was the coming of a delicate blanket of stars. James’s mother had left stuff for dinner in the fridge for them, and they made it together; Catherine fried steaks on the pan and James went out to the vegetable garden for salad things and came in with lettuce and scallions and radishes, caked with dry muck, and, from his mother’s greenhouse, tiny tomatoes which were a deep, shining red, and sweeter than any tomatoes Catherine had tasted before. In the dining-room cabinet, James found a bottle of wine.

They ate outside. As he filled their glasses, a tractor passed on the main road below. It was traveling fast; someone in a hurry to get home. Out of habit, Catherine craned her neck to see.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” James said, following her line of vision.

“Tractor!” Catherine said, in the tone she and her sister had always used at moments like this: it was the tone in which other people might shout “Fire!” It was an old joke between them. Now James stared at her.

“OK, darling,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Now we’re going to have to give the doctor a call, and have a little chat with him about your tablets.”

She laughed. “It’s a thing Ellen and I used to do. When we were younger, and at home during the summer; we had a thing for men in tractors. Young guys, obviously. Boys. Not old fellas. We weren’t that desperate.”

“Ah,” James said, nodding. “I see.”

“When one of us would hear a tractor coming up the lane, we’d roar out to the other, and the two of us would race to our viewing spot.”

“Your
viewing
spot?”

“Yeah. This bit of high ground behind the hedges at the front of our house. In the rhubarb patch. The two of us would crouch down there and look out through the hedge. It was the perfect height for spotting someone in a tractor cab.”

“My
God
. The planning that went into that.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I mean, meticulous. I mean, military precision, Catherine.”

“A fine art.”

“I love it,” James said, biting into one of the tiny tomatoes. “Of course it’s true, too. You can’t beat a young fella in a tractor cab.”

“You cannot,” Catherine said, and she felt again the thrill of this new state of being between them. She marveled at it; how much they had now—and how much more, stretching out ahead.

“Oh God, there are
so
many fellas I want to show you,” she said, sitting up in her chair with the force of the excitement. “Honestly, James. I can’t
wait
. All the spotting we’ll do.”

“Yes, indeed,” James said, reaching for his glass. “Rhubarb patch, here we come.”

“But in Dublin, I mean, in college, and…” Catherine shook her head. “It’s just so brilliant, James. It’s just…”

The wine was at her already, she knew; it was the reason she was gushing at him like this. But she was glad of it. It was allowing her to move. It was giving her the words—or at least, some of them—which had refused to come to her before. “And there must be guys you want to show me,” she said, reaching across for him; she squeezed his hand—which was not, either, something she would have felt able to do before. “I can’t wait to see them. I mean, who are you into? At the moment?”

“Oh,
into,
Catherine,” he said drily, and it felt almost like he was mocking her; she blinked at him for a moment, uncertain. “Who am I
into?
” he said again, staring at the salt cellar.

“Yes,” she said, trying to sound encouraging. “There must be someone.”

James’s mouth twitched, but he did not speak. After a moment during which Catherine began to panic that he was angry with her, he put his cutlery down and slid a hand into the pocket of his jeans. He pulled out his wallet, a worn brown leather billfold, and opened it.

She laughed nervously. “Are you going to pay me to shut the fuck up?”

“I fucking might,” he said, but he was looking for something; he flicked through the sections where his cards were held. He stopped, and pulled out what looked to Catherine like a small white square. He frowned at it for a moment, then handed it to her. “Here,” he said, shrugging as though it was nothing much.

It was a photograph, or part of a photograph—it had been cut out of a photograph. It had been taken at a black-tie event; the boy was wearing a tuxedo, though with the jacket off and the bow tie hanging open around the shirt collar. He was dark-haired, and he was smiling, and he was probably a bit drunk—that wobbliness to his features—and his arm was thrown loosely around someone, but the someone was gone.

“His name is Keith,” James said quietly.

“I don’t think Armani does a navy-blue tuxedo,” Catherine said, one of the lines from one of the films they had laughed over, those first nights in Dublin; one of their lines, now, and James laughed to hear her use it, but only a little.

“Indeed,” was what he said.

Keith was not beautiful; that was what struck Catherine about him. He was not ugly; he was just not anything much, really. He was slight, and ordinary-looking, and his smile was not a smile at all but a laugh; someone had said something to him to make him laugh just as the shutter had been pressed.

“Nice,” Catherine said, and she hoped it sounded convincing.

“It was taken at our grad dance last year.”

She tapped the right side of the photograph. “Is this his girlfriend you cut out here?”

“Oh, no,” he blurted. “No, no. Though I suppose it does look like that. No, just some of the other lads from our year.”

“You didn’t like them in the same way.”

“No, I did not,” he said pointedly.

“And did you take this photo?”

“
Please.
Are you trying to insult me? It’s barely even in focus.”

“Plus he’s looking at the camera.”

“Smart-arse.”

“But do you not have any proper photos of him?”

He shook his head briskly. “No. No. That wasn’t an option.”

“Oh, well,” Catherine said, as she passed it back to him. “He looks nice.”

James took it from her, and he touched the edge of the photo, and she thought he might run his finger across the surface of it, but he did not. “He has this…” he said, and then he shook his head.

“No, go on,” she said, and her heart was beating faster, and she ordered it to cop itself on. She was not going to do this; she was not going to sit here and perv on the sight of James talking about a boy. She was not going to entertain this in herself; she was not going to feel this on her skin, in her mouth, on the tips of her fingers, the way she did. She cleared her throat. “Go on,” she said again, leaning across the table for his hand. “Tell me.”

Delicacy.
That was how James described it; that was how he described the boy’s face, and what he had loved about it. He was gazing at the photograph as though he had entered once again into its world: a hotel ballroom on a summer night last year, balloons sagging and streamers fallen and cider slick on the floor; “Live Forever” blaring over the speakers. Girls in long dresses and boys in rented tuxes; everyone getting messy and plastered and, eventually, upset. Catherine had photographs just like this one from her own grad dance; for Catherine, too, there had been a boy in a disheveled tux. That boy was long forgotten now; that boy had, anyway, been completely oblivious of her stares.

“Did he know?” she asked James now.

He looked at her. “Are you mad?”

“Where is he now?”

James slid the photograph back into his wallet. “England,” he said. “He did Pharmacy. Easier to get onto the courses over there.”

“Oh, a pharmacist,” Catherine said, and she could have been her mother, approving of someone’s choice of a husband. She laughed at herself, and she thought that James might join in, but he did not seem to be listening.

“I should really get rid of that photo. If I was hit by a bus, and they found a photo of Keith Murray in my pocket. Jesus Christ.”

“I’d get there first and make sure nobody saw it,” Catherine said, and then, because she worried that this had not sounded like enough of a joke, she added, “and I’d take all your money as well.”

“You’d be made up,” James said, refilling their glasses.

She hesitated, and he noticed, eyeing her sharply.

“Go on,” he said, imitating her tone from a moment earlier.

She laughed. “I was just wondering if there was anyone in Berlin.”

“No,” he said immediately, shaking his head. “No, no.”