Normal People(68)

Marianne presses the coffee and fills two cups. In one cup: a quarter-spoon of sugar, a splash of milk. The other cup just black, no sugar. She puts them on the tray as usual, pads up the hallway and knocks the corner of the tray on the door. No response. She hefts the tray against her hip with her left hand and opens the door with her right. The room smells dense, like sweat and stale alcohol, and the yellow curtains over the sash window are still shut. She clears a space on the desk to put the tray down, and then sits on the wheelie chair to drink her coffee. It tastes slightly sour, not unlike the air around her. This is a pleasant time of day for Marianne, before work begins. When her cup is empty she reaches a hand out and lifts a corner of the curtain with her fingers. White light floods the desk.

Presently, from the bed, Connell says: I am awake actually.

How are you feeling?

Alright, yeah.

She brings him the cup of black unsweetened coffee. He rolls over in bed and addresses her with small squinting eyes. She sits down on the mattress.

Sorry about last night, he says.

Sadie has a thing for you, you know.

Do you think?

He pulls his pillow up against the headboard and takes the cup from her hands. After one large mouthful he swallows and looks at Marianne again, still squinting so that his left eye is screwed shut.

Wouldn’t be remotely my type, he adds.

I never know with you.

He shakes his head, drinks another mouthful of coffee, swallows.

Yes you do, he says. You like to think of people as mysterious, but I’m really not a mysterious person.

She considers this while he finishes his cup of coffee.

I guess everyone is a mystery in a way, she says. I mean, you can never really know another person, and so on.

Yeah. Do you actually think that, though?

It’s what people say.

What do I not know about you? he says.

Marianne smiles, yawns, lifts her hands in a shrug.

People are a lot more knowable than they think they are, he adds.

Can I get in the shower first or do you want to?

No, you go. Can I use your laptop to check some emails and stuff?

Yeah, go ahead, she says.

In the bathroom the light is blue and clinical. She opens the shower door and turns the handle, waits for the water to get warm. In the meantime she brushes her teeth quickly, spits white lather neatly down the drain, and takes her hair down from the knot at the back of her neck. Then she strips off her dressing gown and hangs it on the back of the bathroom door.

*



Back in November, when the new editor of the college literary magazine resigned, Connell offered to step in until they could find someone else. Months later no one else has come forward and Connell is still editing the magazine himself. Last night was the launch party for the new issue, and Sadie Darcy-O’Shea brought a bowl of bright-pink vodka punch with little pieces of fruit floating in it. Sadie likes to show up at these events to squeeze Connell’s arm and have private discussions with him about his ‘career’. Last night he drank so much punch that he fell over when attempting to stand up. Marianne felt this was in some sense Sadie’s fault, although, on the other hand, it was undeniably Connell’s. Later, when Marianne got him back home and into bed, he asked her for a glass of water, which he spilled all over himself and on the duvet before passing out.

Last summer she read one of Connell’s stories for the first time. It gave her such a peculiar sense of him as a person to sit there with the printed pages, folded over in the top-left corner because he had no staples. In a way she felt very close to him while reading, as if she was witnessing his most private thoughts, but she also felt him turned away from her, focused on some complex task of his own, one she could never be part of. Of course, Sadie can never be part of that task either, not really, but at least she’s a writer, with a hidden imaginary life of her own. Marianne’s life happens strictly in the real world, populated by real individuals. She thinks of Connell saying: People are a lot more knowable than they think they are. But still he has something she lacks, an inner life that does not include the other person.

She used to wonder if he really loved her. In bed he would say lovingly: You’re going to do exactly what I say now, aren’t you? He knew how to give her what she wanted, to leave her open, weak, powerless, sometimes crying. He understood that it wasn’t necessary to hurt her: he could let her submit willingly, without violence. This all seemed to happen on the deepest possible level of her personality. But on what level did it happen to him? Was it just a game, or a favour he was doing her? Did he feel it, the way she did? Every day, in the ordinary activity of their lives, he showed patience and consideration for her feelings. He took care of her when she was sick, he read drafts of her college essays, he sat and listened while she talked about her ideas, disagreeing with herself out loud and changing her mind. But did he love her? Sometimes she felt like saying: Would you miss me, if you didn’t have me anymore? She had asked him that once on the ghost estate, when they were just kids. He had said yes then, but she’d been the only thing in his life at that time, the only thing he had to himself, and it would never be that way again.

By the start of December their friends were asking about Christmas plans. Marianne still hadn’t seen her family since the summer. Her mother had never tried to contact her at all. Alan had sent some text messages saying things like: Mum is not speaking to you, she says you are a disgrace. Marianne hadn’t replied. She’d rehearsed in her head what kind of conversation it would be when her mother did finally get in touch, what accusations would be made, which truths she would insist on. But it never happened. Her birthday came and went without a word from home. Then it was December and she was planning to stay in college alone for Christmas and get some work done on the dissertation she was writing on Irish carceral institutions after independence. Connell wanted her to come back to Carricklea with him. Lorraine would love to have you, he said. I’ll call her, you should talk to her about it. In the end Lorraine called Marianne herself and personally invited her to stay for Christmas. Marianne, trusting that Lorraine knew what was right, accepted.