“We are just driving,” he replied.

He was kind and intelligent and he listened. Jack was ashamed of saying hurtful things about Catherine. “I don’t want to blame anyone,” said Jack. Then he’d over-compensate and praise her, then criticize her again. Or worse, criticize her to himself for being a hypocrite. “I distrusted her,” said Jack, “since I first trusted her. I disbelieved her. She considered me her ballast. I loved her humour.” The man drove on. They stopped a second for a view of Lough Conn from Pontoon Bridge. Then on again. Some time later, Jack was back sitting by Bohola in the waiting room of the hospital. Bohola broke wind violently, then suddenly jumped up, ran outside and started walking round and round the hospital while the others sat inside eating.

Love was when she let him take care of her. When she ran to him for comfort. When she fell asleep first. When she fell on the path and ran past her mother and sister into his arms. But most of all when they stepped through the countryside together, two human beings, glad to be together.

The day she did not come began the other life, the life without her. If he had stayed sober then they would be drunk together now. The argument emanates from his mind. She is not present. He cannot ask her to remain with him since she is not here. That is good. You are not present, whispered Jack.

Now she can never return because they have misrepresented each other. He can never again exist as a possibility in her mind. That is good. He is not present where she is.

The second love is different, but bearable, and sad, but bearable. The first love was stormy, astonishing and unfulfilled. It’s as if life selects two people to go through all the experiences of love so that they will know it is denied them. But they had to live through all this sordidness. He tries to imagine a world where his self-respect would be restored. But his psyche is not capable of such a journey alone.

There are a few private moments of truth that can’t be said. That stay outside the reach of language. Yet the words persist somewhere at the back of his mind, and a hope of reconciliation with her, more distant each time, returns – but returns somehow heightened, because it will pass out of his consciousness once again.

He once was merry and now cannot sleep. How many brain cells has he destroyed? He despises himself. The night nurse comes and goes. The light burns above the dreaming men.

5. The Nomads

5

The Nomads

“Every time I look at you I see my son.”

“What are you in for?” asked Jack.

“Delusions,” Bohola answers. A long time passes. “And anxieties,” he adds.

They sit on a while longer, troubled and untroubled by these intimacies, each trying wildly to keep his mind in the one direction.