Anna
JUST AS I DRIFT OFF to sleep, I swear I register the sound of a scream.
Far-off, like it’s wiping past the house, but I swear I hear it.
It follows me into a white-blonde dream, this dulled, drawn-out noise.
And as I am waking, it almost wakes with me.
Becoming more real, a sound so true I could hold it in my hands.
But when I look around, I see Peggy and Jack have slept through it.
Perhaps there was no scream at all. Perhaps you just want some attention. Are you jealous of my new life?
Then comes silence, and a bright morning.
The brightest I have seen this year. The sun has burst across a pale sky.
Slowly, wildflowers bud, and the tight beginnings of berries build up the hedges.
A chorus of birds sing. And Betty pushes her bicycle up my path.
Her blue coat and hat soaking up the light.
These days, these moments and seconds, coming from nowhere without warning and filling me with an infinity of reasons to keep going.
How violently quick my spirit has been uplifted.
It begins with her fingers tapping on the window, on my heart, and her voice calling in the door.
A bag of stale bread in the basket of her bicycle.
Cooing at Peggy as though she is younger than nine.
‘Peggy! Come on and we’ll feed the ducks.’
There at the window, she reminds me of myself.
Always looking in. I don’t even get angry at Peggy for the look she throws me when I follow them.
She takes Betty’s hand, and I wonder if she’s showing off.
What I wouldn’t give to take Betty’s hand.
To tell her how she uplifts me. To tell her that she has made my future soft and inviting, where once it was just a far-off and impalpable threat.
But I say nothing, and follow them closely.
Betty starts telling us about a man who called to them a few nights ago, with a big horoscope chart. He could read her past or future using the stars.
‘It’s all to do with your time of birth, I think. It’s a science, so he said.’
He was telling Betty and Bill about their own tendencies and proclivities, as though they didn’t know themselves.
He told them parts of their future that they couldn’t guess at.
Parts of their past that he shouldn’t have been able to guess at.
Isn’t that interesting? Just another memory that I am not a part of; I hate missing out on these things, even when I fear all of my stars would have been void.
At the lake, Betty gets down to Peggy’s height, pointing out a patch of reeds, lifting her dress and letting the bare skin of her knees become dirty with the earth.
Isn’t she wonderfully uncouth? See her fingers working, ripping the heel of the bread into pieces for Peggy, who drops them into the water.
What a gift, to have such a surplus you can allow the bread to go bad.
I never felt so grand. Here are the ducks.
Amn’t I a lucky girl, in a lucky position?
To have Betty Nevan elevating me above my own class.
Right now, I am so much more than Anna O’Leary.
These big, almost oppressive happinesses come on so fast and so strong.
I wonder is it Betty bringing them on? When I am with her, I feel I am floating and firmly on the ground at the one time.
A big feeling. An almighty feeling. You cannot imagine what this is like.
I feel like I came out of the sun to be here.
For the first time in so long, I feel the winter is behind me.
‘You’re going down to the hall next Friday, I assume?’
Oh, every word she utters is an injection of energy into my blood. Do you know what I like so much about Betty? She isn’t just humouring me. I can tell that she really likes me.
‘I can’t go. I’ve no one to look after herself.’
I say, nodding at Peggy, who seems frightfully close to falling into the lake. Betty draws her back with a hand. How gentle she is.
‘Sure drop her down to Minnie Keane. She’ll have a few in with her that night, she won’t mind at all.’
Solving problems as though they aren’t problems at all. Everything is easy for Betty. How lucky I am that she wants to solve my problems. How lucky I am to spend my afternoons with her, breathing in her Imperial Leather.
Would it be bizarre to go down to the dance on my own, without the boys? To enjoy a night by myself, as myself? Imagine, doing something on my own.
Imagine, standing among the hot, damp bodies in the hall, making her laugh. Light trapped in the sweat on her forehead, her waist hot beneath my hand. I have to be there. Of course, I will be there.
‘We might get a nice fella for you.’
She teases, and I know she’s only trying to have a laugh, but it feels like a slap in the face. I laugh along like it’s all fine, but I’m mortified.
‘Ah, come on, Anna, you must be ready for a bit of romance now. You’re always saying that you’re sick of spending all your time up in the cottage.’
She’s right, I am always saying that. But I don’t remember telling her that I want a man. I shrug.
‘I’ve no luck with lads.’
‘I used to think the same thing, until I met Bill. I never burned like that over a man before.’
She speaks so softly that I could be mishearing, but so confidently that she is unmistakable.
I’ve never heard a woman use language like that before.
To admit so openly to burning; to express her most private, stirring feelings to me.
Why would she bring me in this close and then try to offload me onto some man?
‘I wish I could admit to all the ways I’ve burned.’
I tell her, and I see her pausing at this. It comes naturally, I can catch her off guard.
‘Are you nervous of men, Anna?’
She asks me, and I feel ten years younger than I really am.
I shake my head. It isn’t that I’m nervous of men, not at all.
I’m just glad to let them move through the world entirely separate from me.
Any man could take a notion to knock me to the ground, to draw blood from me or make a mother of me.
Why would I invite one of them around me?
‘I was never so nervous of a man as I was of Bill, you know, when we first met. I was afraid of what he might do to me. What he might not do.’
How eloquent. Not like a giddy schoolgirl but like a mature, assured woman, unafraid of her own desire. I have always been building towards a woman like Betty.
‘Leave it with me, Anna. I won’t match you up with any old dope.’
She makes her way to Peggy and bends down to speak to her. She starts to tell her that she once wanted to be a detective.
‘I often think of it. That I’d like to work with the guards, solving things like.’
She says it with such confidence. I don’t think she’d make much of a detective, when she seems to think I want a boyfriend and not all of her attention.
‘And you’re going to be a vet, Peggy, isn’t that right?’
I see the flash of every syllable that leaves her mouth and floats into the air.
‘That’s right.’
I never knew that Peggy wanted to be a vet. I didn’t realise that Peggy had ambitions.
The afternoon rolls around us. What a sight she is as I leave her.
Rain begins to fall into the lake, but she doesn’t hurry away.
Instead, she goes back down to Peggy’s level and hugs her.
And then, getting wetter, she turns to me, laughs at herself, and hugs me, too.
The damp of her hat on my cheek. Let the dye run off and colour me blue, please.
The world slows to half its speed, and I hold on to her for my life.
My god, what it is to have her right here, in my arms. Holding on and keeping her dry.
When she turns to go, the rain gets heavier. As though the whole sky has turned to liquid. She is wet, then she is the water. She is glittering blue, and then there is nothing left to see. Only Betty, blue and soaked in the sky. Turning and leaving. Gone.
I wonder if she thinks of me when we are apart. I wonder if she knows she is so deep in my thoughts that she could taste them.
It isn’t often I find somebody who likes me this much, who lets me like them this much. Each friend that I’ve lost was a stepping stone to her. You will remember all the trouble I had keeping friends.
Catherine Jennings. A tall, quiet girl, who I became so close to that I began to voice her thoughts for her. I thought I’d never get over it the day that she left with her family for England. It could have happened yesterday, that’s how well I remember it. I was lost without her.
But then, there was Milly Hayes, indulging my daydreams about going to America.
I felt like I was one of her senses, that’s how well she knew me.
It was like she was explaining me to myself.
There were countless reasons we didn’t remain friends, all of which could be boiled down to the milkman’s mere existence.
These days, I can’t recall it as much more than a story told to me by somebody else.
Then came Aoife Murray, who came into my life around the same time that you met Jack. I thought that we were going to be a little four. But then you and Jack started courting, and Aoife got engaged. Suddenly I didn’t fit anywhere. I was so embarrassed over it.
I remember so well the day that she got married.
Outside the church, when I couldn’t face watching the ceremony, you put your arms around me.
Whatever you said to console me, I don’t remember now.
But I remember the feeling of being in your arms, and of being important to you.
It was peace. Broad and complete peace, the likes of which I hadn’t known until then, and which I haven’t known since.
And when the bell of the church rang for Aoife and her husband, I felt happy.
Something new had come. Something more than what I had before.
All night through the party, you stayed with me.
Even when Jack asked you to dance and told you that I was only looking for attention.
Nothing that he tried could charm you away from me that night.
The corners of your mouth stained purple by the port wine, widening your already wide smile.
And all night I had you laughing. I loved feeling that important, that close to you.
I know I was never your favourite, but I think, that night, I got close.
For a long time after, I tried to recreate that closeness. I’m not sure why it never came back. As good as I was to you, it was never the same as that night. Now I wish I could have just enjoyed the memory of us, rather than always trying to reanimate it. Overdoing it, you know.
I’m trying not to do that with Betty.
Betty, Betty, Betty.
A thousand times, Betty.
Everything, Betty.