Beautiful World, Where Are You(63)

In time it passed, Lola was born, healthy thank God, and he told himself they’d never do it again. Too much strangeness for one life. As usual, as usual, he had been wrong.

Outside, the air stirred the trees, sifted its cool breath over their faces. They climbed into the car together. Lola pressed her nose to the window and left a tiny circle of powder on the glass. The church was squat and grey with long thin stained-glass windows, rose-coloured and blue and amber. As they entered, the electric organ played, the scent of incense touched them, damp and fragrant, and the rustle of cloth, the creaking of pews, as everyone stood and watched them processing together up the polished floor of the aisle, Lola stately and magnificent in white, radiant with the realisation of cherished plans, accepting with composure the gazes offered to her, not bowed but upright, Pat in his suit, dignified, tender in his awkwardness, Mary smiling nervously, clutching Eileen’s hand with a damp grip, and Eileen herself slim and pale in green, dark hair pinned loosely behind her, arms bare, head held aloft on her long neck

like a flower, and turning her eyes quietly she looked for him but did not see him.

Matthew was waiting at the altar, frightened, joyful, and the priest spoke, the vows were exchanged. O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely. Afterwards on the gravel outside the church, the white daylight, the chill of wind, spindly fingers of foliage, everyone laughing, shaking hands, embracing. The bridal party stood together under a tree to have their photograph taken, inching closer and further apart, murmuring to one another with fixed smiles. Only then Eileen saw him, Simon, standing at the church door watching her. They looked at one another for a long moment without moving, without speaking, and in the soil of that look many years were buried. He remembered when she was born, the Lydons’ new baby, and the first time he was allowed to see her, the red wrinkled face more like an old creature than something new, baby Eileen, and his parents said he was always asking for a sister after that, not just any sibling, a sister, like what Lola had. She remembered him too, the older boy who went to a different school, lively, intelligent, with those strange seizures he suffered from, an object of sympathy among the adults, which made him, though he was a beautiful child, somehow freakish. Her mother always saying how lovely his manners were, a little gentleman. And she was the adolescent girl he remembered, thin and freckled, standing at the kitchen counter with her legs twisted one around the other, fifteen, always frowning. Speaking not at all or suddenly and too much, her bad tempers, her friendlessness. And those frank looks she turned on him, pink in the face and almost cross. He was that too, for her, the boy, the young man of twenty, who helped out on the farm for the summer, she had seen him, with incomparable tenderness, bottle-feeding a baby lamb, she would spend a week in agony over a glance

from him, the breath knocked out of her when she entered a room to find him there. The day all three of them cycled to the woods and left their bikes in a clearing together.

Dark clouds surreal-looking behind bright sunlit treetops. Lola telling a long, embellished story about someone who had been murdered in the forest, Simon murmuring things like, Hm, I’m not sure about that, and, Oh dear, that’s a bit grisly, isn’t it? Eileen absorbed in kicking a pebble along the path before her, occasionally glancing up at Simon to observe his face. Stabbed so many times she was almost decapitated, Lola was saying. Gosh, said Simon, I’d rather not think about it. Lola laughed and told him he was a mouse. Well, if it comes to that, I am a bit, he said. It was starting to rain then and Lola untied her jacket from around her waist. You’re like Eileen, she said. He looked over at Eileen and said: I’d like to be more like her. Lola said that Eileen was only a baby. In a quick, heated, strangely loud voice, Eileen said: Imagine someone saying that to you when you were my age. Lola looked around at her sympathetically. But to be fair, she answered, when I was your age I was a lot more mature. Simon said he thought Eileen was very mature. Lola frowned and said: Don’t be creepy. Simon’s ears were red then and his voice came out sounding different. I meant intellectually, he said. He didn’t say anything else and neither did Lola, but neither of them were happy. Lola put her hood up against the rain and walked ahead.

With fast long strides she marched on around a bend in the path, out of sight. Eileen looked down at the path, which had been dry dirt and was now turning to mud, little streams running between the stones. The rain was growing harder, making a pattern of dark dots on the front of her jeans, wetting her hair. When they came around the next bend, Lola still wasn’t visible. She might have been further ahead, or she might have gone down some other path. Do you know where we are? Eileen asked. Simon smiled

and said he thought so. We won’t get lost, he said, don’t worry. We might get drowned, though. Eileen wiped her forehead with her sleeve. Hopefully no one will come along and stab us thirty-eight times, she remarked. Simon laughed. The victims always seem to be on their own in those stories, he said. So I think we’ll be fine. Eileen said that was all very well unless he was the murderer. He laughed again. No, no, he said. You’re safe with me. She glanced up at him again, shyly. I feel that way, she said. He looked around at her and said: Hm? She shook her head, wiped her face with her sleeve again, swallowed. I feel that I’m safe, she said, when I’m with you. For a few seconds Simon was silent. Presently he said: That’s nice. I’m glad to hear it. She watched him. Then with no warning she stopped walking and stood under a tree. Her face and hair were very wet. When Simon noticed she was no longer beside him, he turned around. Hello, he said. What are you doing? She gazed at him with intense concentration in her eyes.