Jack
EVEN THOUGH WE WALK ON without speaking, they feel too close to me. So close that they might as well be on my back. I try to walk ahead, but they catch up. Such a thick silence. Tom must feel the weight of it, too, because he is the one to break it.
‘We’ll have some craic tonight.’
When we arrive, the parish hall is lit up, almost moving with people. We get in and pay Father O’Brien, and I’m hit with the warm wave of all of Ballycrea crammed into one room. Perfume and sweat. Not far from the carry-on we would have had in Kilmarra.
The single lads lined up against one side of the room, and the single girls lined up against the other.
Catching up with each other, pretending they aren’t afraid of the other side of the room.
Like children. Normally, myself and yourself would have been one of the first couples to break the ice and start dancing.
As this thought warms me, I realise I have to send myself to the line of single lads and immerse myself in their nerves.
Naggins are pulled from breast pockets and sucked on, even with the disapproval of the women.
There was a time I would have joined them for a sly sup.
Thanks be to god you grew me up out of that carry-on.
I know some of these lads from Doyle’s: Jim Ryan and his crew.
If I’m lucky, they won’t know me. If I’m lucky, I’ll get through the night without hearing a cover of ‘I Feel Fine’.
There’s Bill and Betty, talking to everybody that passes them.
As though he is the Lord Mayor and they are welcoming people into their grand home.
The band introduces themselves. Some jazz trio I have never heard of but who have stirred up some excitement with the locals.
Who will no doubt turn to playing polkas on the saxophone.
It’s all very familiar, really, and it settles me.
No matter how far I go from home, most things seem to stay the same.
Nights like these put me in mind of you.
Of course they do. Coming to your door and collecting you.
In your nicest dress, in your sister’s satin shoes.
A vision. Glowing. Goddess of Kilmarra. What I wouldn’t give for one more night like that.
To feel your dress creasing under my hand.
To wear the lipstick off you. It’s so sweet to miss you.
Thoughts like this will come to me all night, I suppose.
Countless fragments of you, yet never enough to amount to the whole of you.
And I’m hit with the fear that I’m only a short sideways step away from becoming like Jim Ryan and his crowd of sad old bachelors, hanging around the hall, looking to snare any young one who is too polite to tell me to piss off.
I take a drink, and then I take another.
One of us has to be the first to chance it, so I approach the women against the wall and ask one of them if she will go for a dance with me.
It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just what a man is supposed to do at a dance.
I dance with one, and then another. What harm is it to lean into them when they talk?
To be closer than is proper, to know the taste of their breath and the heat of their words as they speak.
What harm could it really do to let somebody touch me?
It’s only a feeling. Just to remind me that I am alive.
Yes. How easily I forget that I am alive.
Teresa approaches me, but I cannot handle the lovely panic her attention would bring me right now.
As one song ends, I find Anna against the wall.
‘Come on, girl.’
I take her arm as the ‘Siege of Carrick’ begins.
It all sounds good by the jazz band. Better than I thought.
It’s all going better than I thought. The sweat of Anna’s palms warms my hands.
We begin, and the blur of the locals wipes past me.
Ah yes, I am alive. And how good it is. Anna laughs.
The music picks up. I haven’t heard this song since I was a boy.
Suddenly I remember the feeling of freedom.
Suddenly it is summer. You are back for a minute, and I feel fine.