I almost whacked an old woman in the face with my shoulder, my suit tails whipping behind me. We were late by then, Órla said. But the night would be good, I thought. The finality of a phase approaching. Very soon I would be handing the diary over to Mark and telling him what I had found, which was that – what? Ghostly figures. The silhouette of someone against the sun. I knew almost nothing, at that point. I felt buoyed too, seeing Órla energised like this to take me to the house where I could unburden myself of this thing, share, with the one person who might understand, the story of all that I’d found and got carried away into. To make it stop, if it could be. It meant perhaps our cycles – I mean Órla’s and mine – were aligned and would continue longer. I felt like I could do with her, like a stabilising wheel.
‘Where on earth did you disappear off to?’ she said, walking ahead of me, backwards. ‘Are we talking about this?’ Sharp like a bird crying. I would try to listen, I thought, indulgently.
‘I’m sorry about this, Órla,’ I said. ‘I had to go and clear my head. I hadn’t slept well.’
‘I mean, I get that – it’s just, you seem a little – ’
‘Yeah, I’ve not been sleeping – I’ve been having the weirdest dreams. And you went off somewhere and I – I decided not to just sit and feel sorry for myself. I went out with some friends and lost track of time. I slept on a sofa. A leather sofa,’ I smiled, I rubbed my lips, which were dry. ‘I felt rubbish when I came back. I got rained on. Got myself soaked. I didn’t think you’d spend the night at mine, and then when you had I felt guilty – and – ’
‘What else, Tom?’
‘What else what?’
She would either know the truth somehow, or she wouldn’t. That’s what I thought. She would see I was concealing this great story behind the lies. It hadn’t rained for some time. The river. The ghostly people in the fields sending up smoke lines that no one saw. The lies were all there to make a web of constructions indicating what had actually happened. If she could read in between, then I’d know. A tram gave its strange echoing ding; the greyish department store on the corner was leaking people like blood. A lowering grimy light, my beautiful clothing glowed and hers was crisp and black. We had slowed, we briefly held hands. We were young and light, we understood. We sped past a patisserie and a jeweller’s. This part of town was smart and we were heading towards the future. I tapped my jacket again for the book, to feel it comforting and waiting there.
Through
As we walked the crowd thinned, and then we were on a bridge across a gap in the city where the river flowed far below. I stopped part way, unable to go any further, struck with the knowledge of an action repeated before: crossing the river. Though at this time at a great height – the bridge fell away on either side for thirty feet at least. But I was flying over it. I had to look down and see if he was there. If I was there next to him. I had stopped to look. I asked to borrow Órla’s lip balm. My lips were fine but I needed to plant my feet down, there above the great hollow in the air. It struck me I didn’t have a plan for what to say to Mark when I saw him again.
‘What else were you feeling when you saw me?’ Órla said. She must have said other things that I’d missed. ‘Cos I think you were going to say, and forgive me if I’m wrong – jealous.’
‘Jealous?’ I tried to work out what she was referring to. I leaned over the wall, locating some trees, yellow and red as a fire, and used them to ground my vision. I rubbed my face, and the leaves on the trees seemed to crackle and disperse into the air. I gave a hard sniff.
‘Conflicted then,’ She must mean the morning. That morning? A morning? All the mornings stretched back along the riverbank behind us, every morning that had existed since the city was built alongside it and overhead. The setting sun glinted on three hundred years of mornings. And I had a flash of the man, who had Daniel’s face and Daniel’s slight, compact body – working away at the banks of a river – I thought fishing. I almost called down to him. I hoped he was warmer now. Tying some wire around his hands, threading a needle – Órla meant the morning when she and Daniel and I had breakfast together. I must have seemed cold to her.
‘What were you up to with Daniel, if I should have been feeling jealous?’ I said.
I was speaking mechanically. Staring out across time, across the chasm of time. Alongside a field of green corn, James Lennoxlove was rushing on his horse,
