they did together, because she had nothing evil in her, and he would give his life away to make her happy. His life, whatever that was. And the years afterwards, with Natalie in Paris, his youth, gone now, never to be had back again. Living with you is like living with depression, Natalie told him. He wanted, he tried to make her happy, and he couldn’t. Alone afterwards, washing his dishes after dinner, the single plate and fork on the draining board. And not even young anymore, not really. For Eileen those years had passed also somehow, sitting on floorboards unboxing flat-pack furniture, bickering, drinking warm white wine from plastic cups. Watching all her friends move away, move on, to New York, to Paris, while she stayed behind, working in the same little office, having the same four arguments over and over again with the same man. Unable to remember anymore what she had thought her life would be. Hadn’t there been a time when it had meant something to her, to be alive, to be living? But what? One weekend last year, they were both at home, and Simon borrowed his parents’ car to drive her into Galway. She wore a red tweed jacket with a brooch on the lapel, her hair loose around her shoulders, dark, soft, her hands lying in her lap, white like doves. They talked about their families, about her mother, his mother. She was still living with her boyfriend then. Driving back that night, the crescent moon lopsided and golden like a lifted saucer of champagne, the top buttons of her blouse were undone, she put her hand inside, touching her breastbone, they were talking about children, she had never wanted any before, but lately she wondered, and it was impossible for him not to think about it, he felt a hard low ache inside himself, let me do it to you, he wanted to say, I have money, I’ll take care of everything. Jesus Christ. What about you, she asked, do you want kids?
Very much, he said. Yeah. That dead noise when she closed the car door behind her.
Thinking of it again that night, imagining that she would let him, that she would want
him to, and afterwards feeling empty, and ashamed of himself. He saw her on O’Connell Street a few weeks later, it was August, she was walking with a friend he didn’t know, all the way across the road, heading toward the river, and she was wearing a white dress, it was a hot day. How graceful she looked in the crowd, his eyes followed her, her long beautiful neck, her shoulders gleaming in the sunlight. Like watching his life walk away from him. One evening in Dublin around Christmas, she saw him from the window of a bus, he was crossing the street, on his way home from work probably, wearing his long winter overcoat, tall and golden-headed under the streetlights, God it was an awful time, Alice in hospital, and Aidan saying he needed to think about things, and there, out the window of the bus, there was Simon, crossing the street. It was so peaceful just to watch him, his fine handsome figure, making his way through the deep blue liquid darkness of December, his quiet solitude, his self-containment, and she felt so happy, so grateful that they lived in the same city, where she could see him even without meaning to, where he could appear like this in front of her just when she needed most to see him, someone who had loved her for her entire life. All of that. And their phone calls, the messages they wrote to one another, their jealousies, the years of looks, suppressed smiles, their dictionary of little touches. All the stories they had told about each other, about themselves. This much was in their eyes and passed between them.
Facing this way, please, the photographer said. Simon inclined his head and let her turn away. When the photographs were finished, the party dispersed across the gravel, talking, waving, and she went to him where he was standing on the step. You look very beautiful, he said. Her face was flushed, she was holding a bouquet of flowers in her arms. Already someone else was calling her, wanting something. Simon, she said.
Tenderly, it seemed almost painfully, they smiled at one another, saying nothing, and
their questions were the same, am I the one you think about, when we made love were you happy, have I hurt you, do you love me, will you always. From the church gate now, her mother was calling her name. Reaching to touch Simon’s hand Eileen said: I’ll be back. He nodded, he was smiling at her. Don’t worry, he said. I’ll be here.
24
Dearest Alice – just a quick note to say the wedding was very beautiful, and we’re on the train heading for Ballina as we speak. I always forget Simon is in essence （though he denies this） a politician, and therefore knows literally everyone in the country. He is currently in a long conversation with some random man I have never seen in my life while I sit here typing this message. It’s making me think about what you wrote in your email about beauty, and how difficult it is to believe that beauty could be important or meaningful when it’s just random. But it brings some pleasure into life, doesn’t it? You don’t need to be religious to appreciate that, I believe. It’s funny that I have only two best friends in the world and neither of them remind me of myself at all. In fact the person who reminds me most of myself is my sister – because she is completely insane, which I also am, and because she makes me so angry, which I also do. She looked very beautiful yesterday, by the way, although her dress was strapless, and I know you disapprove of those. The random man who’s talking to Simon is now sitting down at our table and showing him something on his phone. I think it might be a picture of a bird? Maybe the man is some kind of bird enthusiast? I don’t know, I haven’t been listening. Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing you. I think I had an idea in my mind about beauty, or about the wedding, or about you and Simon and how you don’t remind me of myself, but I can’t remember what the idea was. You know the first time I went to bed with Simon was almost ten years ago? I sometimes think it would have been a nice life for me if he had done the Christian thing and asked me to marry him then. We could have had several children by now and they would probably be sitting on the train with us at this very moment, overhearing their father’s conversation with a bird enthusiast. I just have this sense that if Simon had taken me under his wing earlier in