Normal People(61)

Connell drove her back to Carricklea in the car that evening, though she said she would get the train. They were both very tired on the way home. While they were driving through Longford they had the radio on, it was playing a White Lies song that had been popular when they were in school, and without touching the dial or raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the radio Connell said: You know I love you. He didn’t say anything else. She said she loved him too and he nodded and continued driving as if nothing at all had happened, which in a way it hadn’t.

Marianne’s brother works for the county council now. He comes home in the evening and prowls around the house looking for her. From her room she can tell it’s him because he always wears his shoes inside. He knocks on her door if he can’t find her in the living room or the kitchen. I just want to talk to you, he says. Why are you acting like you’re scared of me? Can we talk for a second? She has to come to the door then, and he wants to go over some argument they had the night before, and she says she’s tired and wants to get some sleep, but he won’t leave until she says she’s sorry for the previous argument, so she says she’s sorry, and he says: You think I’m such a horrible person. She wonders if that’s true. I try to be nice to you, he says, but you always throw it back at me. She doesn’t think that’s true, but she knows he probably thinks it is. It’s nothing worse than this mostly, it’s just this all the time, nothing but this, and long empty weekdays wiping down surfaces and wringing damp sponges into the sink.

*



Connell comes back upstairs now and tosses her an ice lolly wrapped in shiny plastic. She catches it in her hands and lifts it straight to her cheek, where the cold radiates outwards sweetly. He sits back against the headboard, starts unwrapping his own.

Do you ever see Peggy in Dublin? she says. Or any of those people.

He pauses, his fingers crackle on the plastic wrap. No, he says. I thought you had a falling-out with them, didn’t you?

But I’m just asking if you ever hear from them.

No. I wouldn’t have much to say to them if I did.

She pulls open the plastic packaging and removes the lolly from inside, orange with vanilla cream. On her tongue, tiny flakes of clear unflavoured ice.

I did hear Jamie wasn’t happy, Connell adds.

I believe he was saying some pretty unpleasant things about me.

Yeah. Well, I wasn’t talking to him myself, obviously. But I got the impression he was saying some stuff, yeah.

Marianne lifts her eyebrows, as if amused. When she’d first heard the rumours that were circulating about her, she hadn’t found it funny at all. She used to ask Joanna about it again and again: who was talking about it, what had they said. Joanna wouldn’t tell her. She said that within a few weeks everyone would have moved on to something else anyway. People are juvenile in their attitudes to sexuality, Joanna said. Their fixation on your sex life is probably more fetishistic than anything you’ve done. Marianne even went back to Lukas and made him delete all his photographs of her, none of which he had ever put online anyway. Shame surrounded her like a shroud. She could hardly see through it. The cloth caught up her breath, prickled on her skin. It was as if her life was over. How long had that feeling lasted? Two weeks, or more? Then it went away, and a certain short chapter of her youth had concluded, and she had survived it, it was done.

You never said anything to me about it, she says to Connell.

Well, I heard Jamie was pissed off you broke up with him and he went around talking shit about you. But like, that’s not even gossip, that’s just how lads behave. I didn’t know anyone really cared.

I think it’s more a case of reputational damage.

And how come Jamie’s reputation isn’t damaged, then? says Connell. He was the one doing all that stuff to you.

She looks up and Connell has finished his ice lolly already. He’s playing with the dry wooden stick in his fingers. She has only a little left, licked down to a slick bulb of vanilla ice cream, gleaming in the light of the bedside lamp.

It’s different for men, she says.

Yeah, I’m starting to get that.

Marianne licks the ice cream stick clean and examines it briefly. Connell says nothing for a few seconds, and then ventures: It’s nice Eric apologised to you.

I know, she says. People from school have actually been very nice since I got back. Even though I never make any effort to see them.

Maybe you should.

Why, you think I’m being ungrateful?

No, I just mean you must be kind of lonely, he says.

She pauses, the stick between her index and middle fingers.

I’m used to it, she says. I’ve been lonely my whole life, really.

Connell nods, frowning. Yeah, he says. I know what you mean.

You weren’t lonely with Helen, were you?

I don’t know. Sometimes. I didn’t feel totally myself with her all the time.

Marianne lies down flat on her back now, head on the pillow, bare legs stretched on the duvet. She stares up at the light fixture, the same lampshade from years ago, dusty green.

Connell, she says. You know when we were dancing last night?

Yeah.

For a moment she just wants to lie here prolonging the intense silence and staring at the lampshade, enjoying the sensory quality of being here in this room again with him and making him talk to her, but time moves on.