The Wake - Table of contents

The Wake - afters (3)

To hell with them anyway. I can just hear them now, all those religious for want of a better word, smug as hell in their holy houses, lapping up their good fortune. But they can’t take it with them can they? To hell with them, I’ve other things to think about. Would you believe I went to the Armagh march just to see her, not talk to her if she didn’t want to talk, just see her, that would have been enough.

It’s weird when you think about it, she lives a hundred yards away and I travel eighty or ninety miles just to try and get a look at her. And there she was, there she was. In the middle of thousands of civil rights marchers there she was, so close I could nearly have touched her. Ten thousand there must have been, singing We Shall Overcome, blocked by a Protestant counter-demonstration. 

I saw her and she saw me. I had hardly time to take her in when she looked away to speak to a girl she was holding hands with. Audrey, it had to be Audrey, turned to look at me and it was then I got the shock. There was hardly anything of her but what there was was beautiful. The way I’d pictured her she was dowdy and plain and definitely butch. This girl was thin as a reed with nutbrown hair cropped short like a boy’s but the furthest thing from a boy you could get.

The short hair showed off her full face and what a face it was, pale, near enough perfect as far as I could see, something classical about it, like a painting. My mind tried to remember as she fixed me with bright bold eyes. Virgin of the Rocks maybe. Only this was no virgin. The idea of these two beautiful girls doing whatever it was they did together in bed was outlandish but there they were, lovers to each other. And they looked comfortable, defiant, as they stood there hand in hand. Imagine if they could marry, imagine if that could happen, would Aisling be the man? Who would wear the wedding dress?

In my confusion I averted my gaze from Audrey to somewhere unfocused and when I looked back after I’m not sure how long she was still staring at me. What was that look? Curiosity, I’m sure of that, for she was seeing the man she had shared Aisling with, but there was something else. Looking at it now I think maybe it was guilt. Still holding hands they moved away and out of sight. Aisling. I’d hardly looked at her yet this was the girl that had transformed my life for a while, forever, and given me things no amount of sleep could dream.

Maybe she’s not there. I haven’t called. Why? Why haven’t I called? I don’t even know. Maybe I’m afraid of what she might say. Of what I might say. I haven’t seen her once here in Derry since the wake, not once, not in the street, not in her playschool, not in the City Hotel. Maybe she’s moved, maybe she’s gone up to Belfast to live with Audrey for good. That would nearly be a relief. Because then I’d know she was a lost cause and I could get on with things. Couldn’t I?