Normal People(67)

He rings the doorbell, and almost straight away the door opens. Marianne is standing there, her right hand on the door, her left hand covering her face, holding a crumpled tissue. Her eyes are puffy like she’s been crying. Connell notices that her T-shirt, her skirt and part of her left wrist are stained with blood. The proportions of the visual environment around him shudder in and out of focus, like someone has picked up the world and shaken it, hard.

What happened? he says.

Footsteps come thumping down the stairs behind her. Connell, as if viewing the scene through some kind of cosmic telescope, sees her brother reach the bottom of the staircase.

Why have you got blood on you? says Connell.

I think my nose is broken, she says.

Who’s that? says Alan behind her. Who’s at the door?

Do you need to go to hospital? says Connell.

She shakes her head, she says it doesn’t need emergency attention, she looked it up online. She can go to the doctor tomorrow if it still hurts. Connell nods.

Was it him? says Connell.

She nods. Her eyes have a frightened look.

Get in the car, Connell says.

She looks at him, not moving her hands. Her face is still covered with the tissue. He shakes the keys.

Go, he says.

She takes her hand from the door and opens her palm. He puts the keys into it and, still looking at him, she walks outside.

Where are you going? says Alan.

Connell stands just inside the front door now. A coloured haze sweeps over the driveway as he watches Marianne get into the car.

What’s going on here? says Alan.

Once she’s safely inside the car, Connell closes over the front door, so that he and Alan are alone together.

What are you doing? says Alan.

Connell, his sight even blurrier now, can’t tell whether Alan is angry or frightened.

I need to talk to you, Connell says.

His vision is swimming so severely that he notices he has to keep a hand on the door to stay upright.

I didn’t do anything, says Alan.

Connell walks towards Alan until Alan is standing with his back against the banister. He seems smaller now, and scared. He calls for his mother, turning his head until his neck strains, but no one appears from up the stairs. Connell’s face is wet with perspiration. Alan’s face is visible only as a pattern of coloured dots.

If you ever touch Marianne again, I’ll kill you, he says. Okay? That’s all. Say one bad thing to her ever again and I’ll come back here myself and kill you, that’s it.

It seems to Connell, though he can’t see or hear very well, that Alan is now crying.

Do you understand me? Connell says. Say yes or no.

Alan says: Yes.

Connell turns around, walks out the front door and closes it behind him.

In the car Marianne is waiting silently, one hand clutched to her face, the other lying limp in her lap. Connell sits in the driver’s seat and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. They are sealed into the car’s compact silence together. He looks at her. She’s bent over her lap a little, as if in pain.

I’m sorry to bother you, she says. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do.

Don’t say sorry. It’s good you called me. Okay? Look at me for a second. No one is going to hurt you like that again.

She looks at him above the veil of white tissue, and in a rush he feels his power over her again, the openness in her eyes.

Everything’s going to be alright, he says. Trust me. I love you, I’m not going to let anything like that happen to you again.

For a second or two she holds his gaze and then finally she closes her eyes. She sits back in the passenger seat, head against the headrest, hand still clutching the tissue at her face. It seems to him an attitude of extreme weariness, or relief.

Thank you, she says.

He starts the car and pulls out of the driveway. His vision has settled, objects have solidified before his eyes again, and he can breathe. Overhead trees wave silvery individual leaves in silence.





Seven Months Later


(FEBRUARY 2015)



In the kitchen Marianne pours hot water on the coffee. The sky is low and woollen out the window, and while the coffee brews she goes and places her forehead on the glass. Gradually the mist of her breath hides the college from view: the trees turn soft, the Old Library a heavy cloud. Students crossing Front Square in winter coats, arms folded, disappear into smudges and then disappear entirely. Marianne is neither admired nor reviled anymore. People have forgotten about her. She’s a normal person now. She walks by and no one looks up. She swims in the college pool, eats in the Dining Hall with damp hair, walks around the cricket pitch in the evening. Dublin is extraordinarily beautiful to her in wet weather, the way grey stone darkens to black, and rain moves over the grass and whispers on slick roof tiles. Raincoats glistening in the undersea colour of street lamps. Rain silver as loose change in the glare of traffic.

She wipes the window with her sleeve and goes to get cups from the press. She has work from ten until two today and then a seminar on modern France. At work she answers emails telling people that her boss is unavailable for meetings. It’s unclear to her what he really does. He’s never available to meet any of the people who want to meet him, so she concludes that he’s either very busy or just permanently idle. When he appears in the office he often provocatively lights a cigarette, as if to test Marianne. But what is the nature of the test? She sits there at her desk breathing in her usual way. He likes to talk about how intelligent he is. It’s boring to listen to him but not strenuous. At the end of the week he hands her an envelope full of cash. Joanna was shocked when she heard about that. What is he doing paying you in cash? she said. Is he like a drug dealer or something? Marianne said she thought he was some kind of property developer. Oh, said Joanna. Wow, that’s much worse.