Anna
THE EVENING FINDS ME. AT home, I am sewing curtains and waiting for a call to be brought back down to Betty’s house. She didn’t kiss me, I know, but she didn’t turn me away. She might need time. I won’t entertain the idea that it was all in my head. It wasn’t. Not this time.
Jack is out at Doyle’s. I’m not sure where Peggy is; I never really am. It was such a shame to have had to leave in a hurry this morning. Tom bursts in the door. He slams it shut, the cross falling off the wall. The windows shaking in their frames. Clearly ready to strangle me. Let him try.
‘Were you down in the Nevans’ this morning, girl?’
He asks me, trying to be gentle. But I hear the heat in his voice. I know better than to answer him. Tom is in his saviour mindset now, where he knows exactly what is best for all of us, and any deviance from that is criminal.
‘I’m fit to kill you, Anna.’
A cold streak runs through me, but the anger thins out of his voice before he finishes his sentence. He half chokes, as though he is going to cry. He doesn’t want me to answer, I know. And yet I cannot fight the compulsion to further upset him.
‘I don’t know why you’re always putting Bill Nevan before me. It’s like he’s your god, or your daddy. Tommy, you’re nothing but his employee.’
Disappointed, and angry, and then, as if so bewildered by me that he has been left without any other option, he wipes his hand down his face; in defeat, he blesses himself and drops down to his knees and begins blubbering out a prayer. All pointed at me.
‘When are you going to buy us beds?’
I hope that hurts him.
I get on with my sewing. When it seems he has prayed himself to the point of exhaustion, he takes Daddy’s pipe and lies down to sleep.
That’s it then, he isn’t going back to work.
He isn’t having the rest of the evening; he is skipping straight to tonight.
It seems that he hasn’t much regard for what upset him so much before.
It’s all too much for him. I suppose I should be deep in thought, too.
Creating a counter to all of the moves he is planning.
He mumbles a little plan to himself, but I know that I have time.
Tom’s problem is that he needs to have his plan thought out before he can execute it.
He never just acts. So I have time to do something myself, before he goes out to get Jack.
Before he finds Peggy. And before he secures the details of a plan that the three of them will enact against me.
‘Sorry, Tom. Sorry, Jacky.’
I whisper, as I slip out of the house, undetected. Into the depth of the night.
I have to get back to Betty, to keep talking. To find how my love has settled in her, and whether it has sparked a mutual feeling. She might let me sleep at her house; I could tell her that Tom is fit to kill me.
It isn’t the nicest walk down to her tonight. The weather has turned. It seems we cannot catch up to the spring.
When I arrive, I don’t want to go inside. The idea of mentioning you again makes me sick. I don’t want to disturb you anymore. I just want to watch her awhile and gather my thoughts.
And so I take myself as far as the window, where her perfect sleeping form faces me, warped by the thin glass.
Breathtaking. I want her always sleeping as softly as this.
Unharmed, unharming. If I cannot have her alive, I will wait for the day when I can be her grave.
When she will sleep this gently forever, and I will wrap myself around her.
Imagine, Tom wants me to let her go. As though I could ever let her go.
And then, as if by some horrifying miracle, her eyes open.
And she looks out at me. A moment of just her and me, suspended in time.
Just eyes meeting eyes through the glass, through the night and all that has passed.
And I know that all of the things that I feel for her are real.
I know that. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of it, or if I feel differently one day. I love her. I know it. I love her.
She whispers something, and then she says it aloud, and I can only just make it out. It sounds like crying.
‘She’s outside, Bill.’
She kicks back like a mare, waking her husband, who darts up to catch me, too late.
I am gone, part of the night again. Part of the hedges.
Part, perhaps, of her dream. Only a flicker of the light, something that briefly fascinated and terrified her.
Existing only as a moment. Let her catch me on the horizon, running out of her husband’s reach.
I wonder for a moment about leaving my scalp here for her to find. Doesn’t she always say she loves my hair? Well, then she can always have my hair, and know I came for her tonight. Oh god, suddenly the sky is so low. I fear I might have to crouch to walk under it. The dawn is coming on so quick.
And then, a smear becomes a clear shape, and I see Tom coming towards me.
Racing, like a bull. Shouting my name. Once more, I am reminded of the night you died.
Oh god. For a moment, I remember it all so clearly.
How deeply I loved you. The veins at Tom’s temples, bulging.
Like Mammy all over again. That’s what he said.
Unmarried and pregnant and his problem. I should never have told him you were having a baby.
I should never have trusted him with my feelings.
He knew that if he pushed Jack, then Jack would push back.
But if he pushed you, you would just fall.
How easily he knocked you back down the stairs.
Maybe he wanted to get rid of the baby. Maybe he wanted to get rid of the pair of you.
My hand, reaching for you, a moment too late. I remember it all now.
Tom catches my arms. Once more, in complete control of me.
Don’t forget me, darling.