Chapter 22
22
‘But it’s not Christmas yet,’ I tried, as Connor pressed a package into my hands. ‘Shouldn’t we at least wait until tomorrow?’
He’d propped a branch in the old log bucket and hung it with duck feathers. We were sitting underneath it, illuminated by the flick and twist of candlelight and the steady roar of the log burner, heating soup in a saucepan on its hot metal top.
‘New memories,’ he said cheerily. ‘Remember?’
I stretched my feet, now in dry socks, towards the blaze. ‘Well, all right. But next year we get a proper tree.’
He didn’t look up, he carried on prodding the wrapped package along the floor in my direction. ‘New memories,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll bet you’ve got all your old decorations tucked away in the loft, now, haven’t you?’
I had another of those jolts of memory. The last Christmas Elliot and I had had, and packing away the carefully chosen ornaments and baubles, tissue-wrapped, into their box in the corner of the attic. I hadn’t even looked at them since. ‘Yes.’
‘But it would be a touch of bad taste for me to get them out and hang them, wouldn’t it?’ he went on. ‘They were yours and his. It would be like me editing myself into your wedding pictures.’
I laughed. ‘It wouldn’t be that bad. But I see your point.’
‘New memories, Rowan.’ He picked up the parcel. ‘Sometimes it means other things need to be new. Ah, well, next year, as you say.’
Neither of us mentioned Dublin, his job or the distance.
‘I didn’t get you a present, but there’s this.’ I handed over the badly bundled heap, which was more tape than paper. ‘You might like it.’
Solemnly we opened our presents. Despite the amount of tape, Connor got into his first and laughed. ‘Ah, now! He’s got the expression that I always assume when I’m faced with a big pile of research to read through!’
I’d dug the disillusioned Roman soldier out from his position guarding the crease in the back seat of my car and given him to Connor. He did, indeed, look like someone being faced with a distasteful task – his painted plastic face was realistically pissed off.
‘He’s very accurate too.’ Connor turned the figure over. ‘Yep, they’ve got the clothes right, maybe not quite enough hobnails in the boots, but, otherwise, pretty good effort there.’ Unexpectedly he leaned over and kissed my cheek. ‘Thank you.’
My face had gone hotter than the fire could account for. ‘Sorry I didn’t think to?—’
‘Hush. It’s fine. Now open yours.’
It was a beautifully printed book of illustrated folk tales. Nothing new, no stories I hadn’t already heard, but the pictures were gorgeous, deep and dark and layered. ‘It’s fabulous.’ I ran my finger over the embossing on the cover. ‘Really beautiful. Thank you.’
He did one of those shrugs that mean the shrugger is quietly pleased with the result but wants to look as though it was nothing, whilst wanting the shruggee to know that it took them weeks to find that exact thing. ‘You’re welcome. Now, for the love of God, can we have something to eat that isn’t toast?’
We drank our soup and we played cards until the darkness got too much for us and the fire started to burn down low into a bed of ash. The shadows of the hanging branches made us look as though we were lost in a forest.
There was a silence. I became very aware of the feel of Connor’s arm alongside mine, the flex of his fingers on the deck of cards and the way his skin looked pale and unearthly in the firelight against the darkness of his hair when he pushed it back.
‘Rowan.’ His hand left the cards and found my forearm, tracing a complicated pattern on my skin as though he were putting an invisible tattoo on my wrist.
I blinked at him. My breath had gone thick in my throat, as though I were breathing water, and my heart had risen to somewhere just under my collarbone, from where it was trying to tunnel out.
‘Rowan…’
‘Yes.’
He leaned across, bracing his weight on his arms, and his mouth found mine. My hands were in his hair, and then we were stumbling our way upstairs together, limbs wound around one another, kissing and tugging at clothes until we reached my bed. When we fell together under the duvet, we laughed as if a little shocked at what we were doing. The darkness helped – I didn’t have to think that nobody had seen me naked since Elliot, because we couldn’t see anything anyway. Even the moon had got the evening off, replaced by a sheet of cloud that kept even starlight from reaching us, and the dark was so thick that we occasionally elbowed one another in the eye or put a knee into an unfortunate place.
But then…
‘Are you all right?’ Connor had stopped. We were pressed together. Everything had been fine, everything was fine. There’d been kissing and hands everywhere and we were naked, and I was…
I was crying.
Just tears leaking out of my eyes, no drama. No huge, body-heaving sobs, but definitely crying, almost without being aware of it.
‘I… yes. Yes, I’m fine.’ I wiped the back of my hand over my eyes, surprised at the volume of tears.
Connor sat back, scrunching the duvet around himself. ‘No, you’re not fine, are you? It’s all right.’
In silhouette his hair was on end, his face a pale smudge in the darkness.
‘I don’t know why I’m crying.’ I pulled myself away so I could sit with my back against the pillows, gathering spare bits of cover to my chest. ‘I don’t know!’ Tears overspilled and fell onto my neck and I mopped at my face with a corner of the duvet. ‘This is ridiculous!’
‘No, it’s not.’ Connor bent forward and groped around on the floor, then got out of the bed. He was, the writhing shadows told me, pulling his underpants back on. ‘Really, it’s not.’
‘But I want to… I mean, I’m here, I’m naked, it’s all going well, and I have absolutely no idea what’s wrong with me!’
Connor clambered back up the bed, sat beside me and put a comforting arm around my shoulders. ‘That’s better. I was not going to talk any sense with my willy flapping about, now, was I?’
I snorted a laugh that was half muffled by duvet. ‘Now that’s an image designed to put anyone off sex.’
‘Well, good. Because sex is – well. It’s only a part of things, isn’t it? A good relationship doesn’t depend on how hot the sex is, or how often you have it or in what positions. A proper relationship can break down in tears and say, “I haven’t done this since my husband died and everything feels different. And I actually feel a wee bit guilty even though I know I’m a widow and therefore technically not cheating even a little bit,” can’t it?’
‘Is that me?’
‘It is, now.’ The arm tightened. ‘It’s too fast for you. You don’t think it is, but your body has got other ideas.’
He smelled nice. Clean and with a little hint of woodsmoke; a friendly, domestic sort of smell. I snuggled against his shoulder. ‘I don’t want my body to have other ideas. I’m going to sleep with men that aren’t Elliot, I know that. I’m not hastening to a nunnery at thirty-five.’
‘Ah, but knowing and knowing are two different things. Tell me that there’s not this little corner of your brain telling you that you’re being unfaithful.’
I slumped and his arm caught me, holding me in against his bare chest. ‘Why is it all so weird and complicated, Connor? Why can’t we just have a lovely time? And how do you know so much about all this?’
He laughed, but it was almost ironic in tone. ‘Catholic guilt. It does a number on you, Rowan.’ He sighed. ‘So I know all about deep, ingrained shame, even when there’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘Does that mean you’re ashamed about Saoirse and what happened?’ I asked, trying furtively to wipe my face so that I didn’t have trails of snotty tears all over it.
Another sigh. ‘Shame is probably the wrong word. I couldn’t know, how could I? But, like you said before, I took her word for everything without asking the questions – I was so bowled over that this attractive, successful woman wanted to be with me that I was very uncritical. I should have been at least a wee bit sceptical; I’m not that great.’
I turned to look at him. He was a big blob beside me, one smooth shoulder under my cheek and hair everywhere. ‘You are pretty great,’ I said quietly. ‘You might want to hoick up my Fairy Stane, but apart from that you’re pretty damn great, Connor O’Keefe.’
‘ Professor O’Keefe, if you please,’ he said but his voice was laughing. ‘Maybe there’s a way around this whole “lifting the stone” thing. Like I said, I need to do a bit more research and have a chat to Eamonn, but I think, maybe, there might be a way.’ He gave me a quick, one-armed hug. ‘We need to find out what’s going on, but without letting your fairies out into the world, now. The last thing we want is those flying bastards all around the place.’ The arm dropped away from my shoulders and Connor clambered out of the bed.
‘Are you going?’ I noticed how my voice trembled slightly. Urgh. I cleared my throat. ‘Where are you off to?’
Connor straightened from where he’d been raking the floor, with half his clothes over his arm. ‘I think that we’ll put tonight down to a trial run,’ he said carefully. ‘I’m going back next door so that we can both get a proper night’s sleep. Next time I’ll stay over. Er…’ He stopped talking and seemed to go back mentally over what he’d said. ‘If you want there to be a next time, of course. And if you can bear to have me around overnight.’
I thought about the way his hands had felt on my body, and the firmness of his lips on mine. ‘I think so,’ I said.
‘Right, then. I’ll bid you a somewhat Shakespearian goodnight.’
Not at all like a man who’d been sexually disappointed and who was wearing only his underpants, Connor strode from the room, carefully closing the door behind him, which caused a pair of trousers to flop to the floor, and I could hear him swearing quietly on the landing.
‘Goodnight,’ I called softly.
‘Sleep well, Rowan,’ came the reply from beyond the door, and I heard him head into his own room and close that door carefully. Then I punched the pillow very, very hard a few times and finished the cry that I’d started earlier, only this time with a good deal of annoyance mixed in.