‘I’ll tell you now what they do to the calves. They cut them up with cheese wire. The vet puts cheese wire inside the cow and cuts them up before they’re born. Then they get born in bits.’

  Marcella rested her weight on her arms at the sink and spoke into the basin.

  ‘You’re trying to distress me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Cal ‘but I thought you should know.’

  ‘No you didn’t. You’re being childish and trying to hurt me.’ She turned to him, her face creased. ‘Please, Cal, don’t be like that.’ He fiddled with the drying-up cloth and said genuinely he was sorry.

  When he was going she took his face between her hands and kissed him affectionately on the mouth.

  ‘Cal, you’re my friend. Don’t be so miserable. It is the sensible thing.’

  Although he knew that she was going to have a bath he did not climb on to the roof but instead walked to the Stray Inn, demanded tick from the barman and quietly got drunk in the drinking time that was left.

  That week Cal was working repairing fences at the far side of the farm. It was cold and wet but he didn’t care. He thought of Shamie and wondered how he was. He would have to try and get into town and see him. Were misery and depression the same thing? Inside himself Cal knew that Shamie was sick, while he had something which would eventually go away if he ignored it long enough. Cal was just sick of himself. Rain dripped from his nose and his chin as his hands worked in front of him, red and glistening, driving in staples. He smiled when he realized that he was outside the boundary of the farm, fencing himself out.

  At night he sat in the cottage trying to read the books she had lent him. He thought of hundreds of excuses to go up to the house and see her – but could not bring himself to do it. He spent hours lying on the bed staring at nothing, listening to the hiss of the Tilley lamp. Anything he did do to occupy himself he stretched out for as long as he could. He cemented two loose tiles back into the fireplace, keeping them the right distance apart with matchsticks, and it took him all evening. The next night he spent grouting between them.

  On Wednesday the weather changed. In the morning there was a hard ringing frost as he walked across the yard. The fields were whitened and he saw his trailing track behind him as he walked to where he had left off fencing. About midday it began to snow, finely at first, like smoke blowing, then heavy flakes falling from a sky as grey as slate. Cal worked on with his back to the angle of the fall but the snow swirled around him, ascending and descending in front of him. He looked up and saw that everything except the nearest hedge had become invisible. The snow was beginning to lie thickly on the grass and whitely shadow one side of the fence posts. Eventually he gave up and trudged back, the snow over his bootlaces at certain points where it had drifted, and told Dunlop that he thought he was going to die with the cold.

  He lit a fire and changed his clothes and hung them steaming from the mantelpiece and the backs of chairs. There was a roll of carpet underfelt in the room with the stored furniture and he spent the rest of the afternoon cutting it into strips and tacking it round the windows and doors to keep the draught out. And still it snowed an endless stream of flakes whirling to the ground. He saw the Anglia come home early. Everybody must be being sent home for fear of being snowed in. Dunlop left early too.

  Cal heated a tin of beans and toasted himself slice after slice of bread at the fire. He fell asleep and when he awoke it was dark. He rubbed the window and looked out. Between the cottage and the lights of the farmhouse he could see the blizzard. It was after eight o’clock and the fire had died down. Shivering, he raked the embers to redness and put on some kindling wood, then blocks on top of that. He pulled his chair nearer to the fire and put his feet up against the tiles of the mantelpiece. After such a long sleep he knew he would spend the night tortured with guilt and insomnia. There was a knock at the door and he leapt to answer it, knowing who it was.

  ‘Is Cal coming out to play?’ Marcella stood there wrapped up in a scarf, mittens, hat and sheepskin coat. Her jeans were tucked into long leather boots. There was a snowflake clinging to her eyebrow and melting.

  ‘No he is not,’ he said. ‘But you come in.’

  ‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ Cal nodded, humouring her. ‘Do you think we’ll be snowed in?’

  ‘If it goes on much longer, it’s very possible.’

  ‘Better still, do you think they’ll be snowed out?’

  ‘When do they come back?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Gran phoned to say everything is fine and they’re letting him out tomorrow.’

  She tugged off her woollen knitted cap and shook out her hair, placing her mittens on the hearth to dry. Cal bundled up his damp clothes and threw them in the corner.

  ‘Where’s Lucy?’

  ‘She’s asleep – dead to the world. We played snowballs and made a snowman earlier. She was absolutely exhausted.’

  Marcella sat down on his chair and rubbed her hands quickly together while Cal looked out at the snow, which was now rounding off the corners of the window-sill. The wood hissed and spat and flashed a flame.

  ‘Cal, I’m sorry about the other night.’ She spoke quietly after the exuberance of her entrance.

  ‘It’s O.K. It was my fault.’

  ‘No, I hadn’t thought enough about it. It should have been obvious. Do you forgive me?’

  Cal nodded. ‘So what can I do for you?’

  ‘I just wanted to apologize, that’s all. Before they came back.’ She took up her excited tone again and she talked and talked about how cold it was, about her parents-in-law, about the library. She apologized for the melting snow from her boots ruining his hearth and then, realizing that Cal had said nothing, apologized for talking too much.

  ‘Look what I’ve brought to warm us up,’ she said and produced the unopened half bottle of whiskey. ‘But the only way I can drink it is in punch. So I brought these as well.’ She took a small twist of paper from her pocket and showed him some cloves.

  ‘They always make me think of the spiky bits in a king’s crown,’ said Cal.

  ‘So they do. Please let me make it.’ She put on the kettle and put spoons in two mugs. When the water boiled she poured it into the mugs, added sugar and whiskey and floated the cloves in the spinning liquid. She opened the buttons of her coat and sat on the floor, nursing her mug. Cal sat on the bed.

  ‘I’m glad you put me out the other night,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we have this to drink now.’

  She put her nose down to inhale the drink but the fumes of the hot spirit caught her breath and she coughed even before she drank. The noise she made was mixed with laughter.

  ‘Oooh, I’ve made it too strong.’ There were tears in her eyes. She sipped with her spoon, tightening her lips. ‘This is one of the few good things that Ireland can offer the world.’ There was silence between them as they tasted and savoured. Outside the snow seemed to have quilted every sound.

  ‘I’ve been miserable this last few days,’ Marcella said. ‘I want you to know that I am very fond of you and that I felt awful about hurting you.’ She was choosing her words. She turned her face up to him and patted the rug beside her. Cal sat down on the floor with his back against the bed, balancing his mug of whiskey.

  ‘You have not been married,’ she said. ‘You get used to things and when they’re taken away you miss them.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Touching, the comfort of being held. Not necessarily sexual – but there’s that too.’

  ‘Anybody?’

  ‘Good God no. You’re the only person who’s crossed my mind in that respect.’

  She laid her head against him and it was awkward so he put his arm round her shoulders. He set his drink down on the hearth and stroked her face lightly, pushing back the hanging strands of her hair.

  ‘Like this.’ His hands had become coarse with the job and he was embarrassed about the toughness she might feel. But she smiled and closed her eyes as Cal continued to touch her jaw line, her forehead, her cheekbones.

  ‘Is this why you were so nervous when you came in?’ His voice had that awful shake in it again. She nodded, smiling but still not opening her eyes. His hand moved to her neck and he kissed her mouth, sure this time he would not be rejected. She said his name when he took his mouth away from hers. He put his hand inside the warmth of her sheepskin and, through several sweaters, cupped her breast in his hand. Again she made the same noise in her throat.

  ‘I think I love you,’ said Cal.

  ‘Would you die for me?’ She opened her eyes and smiled.

  ‘Only if it was really necessary,’ said Cal and they hugged each other close and laughed. Cal had never felt this way before. Previous sexual encounters in the backs of cars or dark doorways had been sullen with lust.

  ‘I’ve never kissed a man with a beard. It’s nice,’ she said. ‘Let’s get into your bed.’ Marcella stood up to take off her coat and Cal put his arms about her thighs and buried his face in her. She began to take off her clothes layer by layer, at speed because of the cold. He knelt, watching her, not believing. Two jumpers, bra, boots, woolly socks, her Jeans, tights and pants in one, all landed beside him on the floor. Her breasts shook as she struggled with her sock and her arrowhead of black hair was small. Suddenly she was in bed beneath the blanket with a flash of back and buttocks which showed a white triangle of bikini shadow. She faced him.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. He thought of the danger he had put himself in to glimpse the flesh of her neck and shoulder and one breast – on the roof with his knees trembling – and now here it was all displayed for him in an instant. Her body should have been like a secret which was revealed pore by tiny pore – gradually, like opening the cards of a full house with his thumb. He stripped to his gooseflesh and climbed in beside her, terrified that he should make a fool of himself losing his virginity.

  He kissed her and she opened her mouth to him and his tongue probed. He felt with its tip, or imagined he felt, the ridges on the roof of her mouth. He saw himself again touching the back of the steering wheel lightly with his fingers, heard again the incessant barking of the dogs and Crilly trying to get sound out of the bell. Marcella touched his back with her fingernails descending his spine, all the time staring unblinkingly at him. Unable to meet her eyes, he closed his own and smothered his face in the curve of her neck. In his darkness he saw her husband genuflect and the sudden soiling of the wallpaper behind him. The unreal sound of the cap gun. Marcella touched between his thighs and he felt shame.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We have all the time in the world.’

  Cal tried to clear his head, shaking it as if he had a tic. He made a terrible effort to concentrate himself into the tips of his fingers as he traced her body.

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘You’re not on trial.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  If he could forget his impotence it might go away. He feared that, as far as Marcella was concerned, he had gelded himself that dark winter’s night. Still she kept moving her head back to focus on him with her brown eyes. Her touches evoked no response in him.

  ‘Turn over,’ he said.

  She obediently lay on her stomach and he sat astride her back and began to knead her shoulders. He watched her brown skin crease and move under the pressure of his hands. He smoothed the pale horizon of her strap mark outwards with his thumbs. With her face turned away from him at last he became excited and rolled down beside her. But he was on a hair trigger and shot wetly on to her stomach almost immediately she touched him.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said, holding his ashamed head to her breasts.

  The shame of his weakness blotted out the sickening visions of her genuflecting husband. Gradually he began to take an interest in her again and explored her with boyish amazement and touches. Her erect nipples – ‘It’s the cold,’ she said – the fragrance of her juices on his hands, above all the awareness that he was giving her pleasure, were almost too much for him. She made her noises and he rose again and entered her, saying her name over and over again as with light fingers she taught him to time his thrusts.

  Afterwards he smiled and, leaning on one elbow, hawed on his fingers and rubbed them on the imaginary lapel of his lean chest.

  ‘Eventually,’ she said, smiling.

  They lay in each other’s arms, eased and snug beneath the blankets. Marcella said that she had to go back – just in case Gran should phone or Lucy wake. They dressed and she said that they should both go to the house. Cal kept kissing her and touching her even as she dressed.

  Outside the snow had stopped falling and they walked, printing it with double tracks, she holding on to his elbow in case she should fall. Everything was still and crisp and bright as daylight. The snow squeaked dully as they pressed it with each step. Marcella looked back and said they were leaving clues. If there wasn’t more snow they would be caught.

  Cal said, ‘What happens if you get pregnant?’

  She smiled at him. ‘I dusted off my diaphragm,’ she said. He made a sound of amazement.

  ‘Cal, I came to you hoping.’

  In the house they drank more hot whiskeys and made love again on the rug in front of the fire, with the door held shut by an armchair against the possibility of Lucy coming down. When it was over they lay on their stomachs, their faces turned to each other. Cal’s hand rested on her buttocks and she pushed his long hair behind his ear.

  ‘You’re such an attentive lover,’ she said. ‘You can see it in your eyes.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ His eyes flickered away from hers.

  ‘Your attention to detail. You make me believe it’s me.’

  ‘I don’t understand. It is you.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  ‘Isn’t that how it always is?’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘You’re not making yourself very clear.’

  She sat up and put her sheepskin coat round her shoulders and held her knees between her arms. Cal reached out beneath her ankles and delicately touched her. He lay with his head resting on his folded elbow, looking.

  She ignored what he was doing to her and went on.

  ‘I can’t explain without talking about Robert – and that’s not a very nice thing to do in the circumstances.’

  Cal shrugged. ‘I wish I’d met you before he did.’

  She laughed. ‘You’d probably have been in short trousers.’ He looked hurt and she ruffled his hair. ‘We had stopped making love for a long time before he was killed. We had occasional sex but he didn’t make me realize I was me. He was having it off with some creature of his imagination. God forgive me, I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’

  ‘Were you in love with him?’ Cal’s voice still had echoes of a shake in it.

  ‘Love is a very strange idea. I never know what it is. When you were young it seemed to be all intensity and no opportunity. Later when you did get the opportunity the fire had gone out of it.’

  ‘I still have it,’ said Cal.

  ‘You’re still young. Anyway that’s too simple. It must be a mixture of friendship and desire. The friendship had gone out of our marriage long ago and Robert’s lust was for someone inside his head – not me.’

  ‘And you went on living together?’

  She laughed. ‘For God’s sake, Cal, it’s still going on. I’m living with his family.’

  ‘Did you even like him?’ Cal’s voice was high with incredulity.

  ‘Recently – not much.’

  Cal laughed, a loud harsh guffaw with no amusement in it. It went on too long.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’

  He was unable to stop immediately he heard her tone. ‘Nothing. It’s a kind of joke. You really mean that? About not liking him?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked perplexed, her face like a child’s not understanding but continuing to smile. ‘Don’t laugh like that again. It’s not you.’ She held out her arm and took him under her coat.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. The fleece was warm against his back.

  ‘He was so plausible – one of those people that everybody likes in company. He could charm the birds off the trees – everybody, men and women. He was witty and intelligent but you couldn’t believe a single word he said. He told lies, Cal. All the time. About his affairs – I know he had two or three at least – about his drinking, about the money he spent. After a while I stopped asking and even then he offered me lies. It got so bad I think he actually believed them himself. And the worst of it was that his mother backed him up on everything. She took his word as gospel.’

  Cal nodded, watching her staring into the fire. His hand moved on the bones of her back.

  ‘He was one of those people whose company you love for an hour or so but you’re glad you’re not married to them. But I was.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘You’re not listening, Cal. I need more time – to heal maybe.’ She rested her chin on her knees and he thought she was on the verge of tears. He caressed the side of her face with the back of his hand and kissed her on the cheek. She acknowledged the gesture with a resigned tightening movement of her lips.

  ‘I love you,’ he said. As he said it he felt a new danger. The more he loved her, the more friendly he became with her, the more afraid he was that he would tell her what he had done. It was the one thing he wanted to talk to her about, to have her console him. He wanted to share his guilt with the person he had wronged. To commune with her and be forgiven. He opened his mouth to speak and she waited, listening with raised eyebrows. Cal paused.

  ‘I would like – another drink,’ he said.

  She got up, leaving him in the cold, and went to the sideboard. She bent over, looking into one of the cupboards. With the inflexible nature of sheepskin the tail of her coat rose and Cal saw the sweet lines of her bare undercarriage.

  ‘You’re like a hot cross bum from here.’

  ‘I’m a genius,’ she said and flourished the substantial remains of a bottle of brandy. ‘Gran always keeps it in case of illness.’

  ‘A woman of foresight.’

 

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