The first time Ruairí MacNamara sees Niamh Kelly up close is in the Arts corridor, in final year, and she's wearing a grey jumper with a hole in the cuff that she stretches with her thumb while she waits. He's coming from training, smells of grass and cold showers, and he stops because he doesn't know where he's going. She looks up from her book. It's Anne Carson, a second-hand edition, two fifty at the caretaker's used book fair, and the corner is folded over.
—You've dropped the world —she says.
—I've dropped my timetable.
—What a shame.
She goes back to the book. He stays. It's what he does: stay where he isn't called, with the feeling that if he leaves he'll lose something he won't later be able to describe on a page. At the end of the corridor there's a window and the September light comes in diagonally and hits the back of her neck, and she doesn't move.
—Are you going to say anything else? —Niamh asks, without looking at him.
—Do you like it?
—Like what?
—The book.
—A lot. —She turns a page—. Do you read?
—I study Arts.
—Not the same thing.
Ruairí laughs and it escapes through his nose, and she finally looks at him. She has a broad face, unplucked eyebrows, a freckle split on her lip. He thinks, with a clarity that shames him, that he wants to put his mouth there.
—Niamh —she says—. Kelly.
—Ruairí.
—I know who you are.
She says it without any edge. It's a fact. Her mother has cleaned the house on Fitzwilliam Square on Thursdays for twenty years, and Niamh has been in the back garden twice, once to wait and once to bring a cake that wasn't for her. He doesn't know whether to say it out loud. He doesn't.
Through October they meet in the library, in the coffee queue, on the bus home. She doesn't drink coffee, she drinks tea, and she argues with him about whether Carson translates or rewrites, and she tells him his Dublin 2 accent comes out when he gets nervous. He doesn't know what to do with that. He stares at her mouth when she talks and sometimes she notices and doesn't stop.
One Friday in November, after a match, Ruairí parks his father's Golf on a street in Ranelagh and she's waiting on the corner with her hood up. They haven't arranged it. He texted her: «I'm around here». She replied «ok» two hours later.
She sits in the passenger seat and closes the door and the car fills with her smell of rain and cheap detergent.
—And now what? —says Niamh.
—I don't know.
—Good thing you've got it clear.
They look at each other. Ruairí turns on the heating and the fan roars and she laughs through her nose.
—It's a Golf —she says—. Not a plane.
—It's cold.
—It's cold, yes.
He leans in first. It isn't a decision, it's a collapse. Niamh's mouth is smaller than it looked and tastes of cold tea and two-euro lipstick, and at first their teeth clash and she says «ow» and pulls back and laughs with her forehead against his.
—Slow —she says—. It's not a race.
—Okay.
—Okay.
They go again. She puts her hand on the back of his neck and teaches him the rhythm, and when he puts his tongue in she makes a small noise in her throat that runs down Ruairí's back. His hands are in the air, not knowing where to put them, until she takes one and brings it to her jumper, underneath, to her side, to skin.
—There —she says—. Like that.
The skin is warm and he runs his thumb over it. He goes up to the rib, to the edge of the bra, and stops.
—Can I?
—You can.
He pulls down the cup and takes her breast over the bra and then under it, and the nipple goes hard against his palm and Niamh breathes hard through her nose. He pulls away from her mouth and goes down her neck and she tips her head back and gives him her whole neck.
—The engine —she says suddenly.
—What?
—Leave it on. Everything fogs up if you don't.
He laughs against her neck. The windscreen already has a mist at the edges. The street is empty, there's an orange streetlight two cars away and a bin knocked over on the pavement.
—How far? —asks Ruairí.
—As far as we get before I get hypothermia.
They both laugh. He pulls up her jumper and she takes it off over her head and is left in her bra, and the cold raises the hair on her arms and hardens her nipples before he touches her. Ruairí stares.
—Don't stare —she says—. Touch.
He touches. He sucks one nipple and she grabs his hair and says «like that» and then «a bit less» and he obeys and learns more in ten seconds than he has in a year of reading. He brings his hand down her belly and reaches the button of her jeans and stops.
—Yes —says Niamh before he asks—. But with your hand inside.
He unbuttons them and puts his hand inside her knickers and she's wet, wetter than he expected, and it slips at the first finger. She opens her legs as much as the seat allows and he finds her and she says «there, fuck» and digs her nails into his forearm.
He's clumsy. The angle is bad, his wrist goes numb, the handbrake digs into his hip. She twists and then takes his wrist and corrects the pressure with two fingers over his.
—Circles —she says—. And not so hard.
—Like this?
—Like that. Yes. Like that.
Ruairí watches her face as he does it. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is open and a strand of hair is stuck to her forehead and she doesn't look like anyone. When she starts to tremble she tells him not to stop and he doesn't stop even though his arm is burning. She comes with a short sound, almost angry, and her hand closes over his and then opens.
She goes still. Breathes. He takes his hand out and doesn't know what to do with it, wet, and in the end he wipes it on his jeans.
—Good —says Niamh, her voice broken—. That was good.
—Yeah?
—Yeah. —She sits up and looks at him—. Now you.
She pulls down his zip before he can answer. When she takes his cock out of his boxers Ruairí has to clench his teeth. She looks at it and then at him.
—Condom?
—In the glovebox.
—Of course.
She takes it out, opens it with her teeth, puts it on with an efficiency that makes him laugh and makes him a little nervous. Then she climbs on top, badly, the steering wheel digging into her back, and laughs.
—This is a disaster.
—A disaster —he says.
She guides him in with her hand and sinks down slowly and they both make a noise. She's tight and hot and he has to think about the dashboard not to finish. Niamh starts moving in short circles because there's no room for more, her hands on the roof of the car, and the Golf rocks and creaks.
—The car's going to move —says Ruairí.
—Let it move.
He puts his hands on her waist and pushes up and she says «that» and «again». The glass is completely opaque. A man walks past with a dog and doesn't see them. Niamh bites her lip to keep quiet and then forgets to bite it.
—I'm going to come —he says.
—Okay. —She brings her hand down and touches her clit with two fingers—. Okay, okay.
He comes before she does, his face buried in her shoulder and a groan he doesn't recognise, and she keeps moving until it gets sensitive and then stops with a grimace.
—Sorry.
—It's fine. —She climbs off him, awkward, and drops into the seat—. Almost.
They dress in silence. The cold comes back all at once. Ruairí turns off the engine and the quiet of the neighbourhood comes into the car. She looks at herself in the vanity mirror and gathers her hair with her hands.
—There's class tomorrow —says Niamh, and opens the door.
—I'll drive you.
—I live in Crumlin. It's far.
—That's why.
She thinks about it for a second and closes the door. He starts the car. They go the whole way with the radio on and neither of them changes it.
In December, a Tuesday, Ruairí is with the lads from the team in the usual pub and Niamh comes in to find a friend. She comes over to say hello because he raises his hand and there's no way not to. She stands by the table with her hood up.
—Who's that? —asks Cillian when she goes to the back.
—Niamh.
—Niamh what?
—From the village.
—Ah, the one on the till at SuperValu —says Cillian—. I know her. She served me on Sunday.
—She works Sundays —says Ruairí.
—Right. —Cillian drinks—. So what, you talk to her?
—Sometimes.
—Sometimes?
Ruairí shrugs. Niamh is at the back, her back against the machine, and he knows she isn't looking at him and that she's listening. He doesn't say «she's my girlfriend». He doesn't say «I'm with her». He says:
—She's sound.
And he turns to the bar and orders another round. When he looks again, she's gone.
The first time at his house is a Thursday in January, at half eleven, with Bridie downstairs. Niamh comes up the service stairs with her school bag and he waits on the landing with his bedroom door ajar and a finger to his lips. The kitchen radio is audible and the lino floor and the mop water.
She comes in and puts the bag on the floor and closes the door without a sound, and they both stand in the middle of the room with their hands hanging.
—Hi —says Ruairí, in a whisper.
—Hi.
—Did you get up okay?
—Your mother saw me.
—And what did she say?
—«Ah, Niamh». And she carried on.
They laugh quietly. Ruairí's room is big and messy and there's a shelf of Arts books he hasn't opened and a poster for a film that embarrasses him a bit. She looks around.
—It's very big.
—Yeah.
—For one person.
She comes closer and puts her hands on his face and kisses him and the conversation ends. They undress standing up and in a hurry and there's clothes everywhere, and Ruairí has his shirt half off when she's already sitting on the edge of the bed with her knickers in her hand.
—Towel? —she says.
—What?
—For after. A towel.
He takes one from the wardrobe and gives it to her and she leaves it folded beside the pillow, carefully, and that small, foresighted gesture hits Ruairí with something he can't name.
They lie down. He licks her with the pillow folded under her hips and she covers her mouth with the back of her hand. She guides him with her hand on his nape: up, flatter, tongue still and firm. When he puts two fingers in she lifts her hips and he has to hold her down with his forearm. She comes with her hand on her mouth and a moan that escapes between her fingers and then she's left gasping and says «come here» and pulls him up by the arm.
—Slow —she says—. And the condom.
—Right.
He puts it on this time, badly, with air caught in the tip, and she readjusts it with two fingers and a raised eyebrow. He goes in slowly and they both stay still, fitted together, and then he starts to move with his forehead against hers.
The mattress is soft and makes noise. After a quarter of an hour the bed frame creaks and Niamh digs her nails into his back.
—The bed —she says.
—It doesn't matter.
—Your mother.
—She's downstairs. With the radio.
There are footsteps in the corridor. They both stop dead, still inside, and Ruairí has his mouth open and his heart in his throat. The footsteps pass on towards the bathroom. The bathroom door closes. The tap runs.
—Keep going —whispers Niamh—. But slower.
He keeps going, slow, with long deep hips, and she digs her heels into the back of his thighs and bites his shoulder to keep from crying out. She comes like that, her mouth against his ear and a single loose word, and Ruairí finishes three thrusts later and lets himself fall onto his side.
They clean up. She passes the towel between her legs and he doesn't know what to do with his and puts it on his belly. They lie face up, shoulder to shoulder, looking at the ceiling, hearing the radio downstairs.
—Thursdays —says Niamh.
—Thursdays.
—I have class at two.
—You can stay.
—I can stay until one.
They stay. He reads a paragraph from a book out loud and she corrects his intonation, and then she takes the book from him and reads, and Ruairí likes hearing her so much that his throat closes.
The following Thursdays become routine. Bridie cleans downstairs and Niamh comes up at a quarter past one and Ruairí has the door open and a clean towel on the bed. It's quick and it's quiet and they learn each other the way you learn a road at night. He already knows she likes her nape bitten and doesn't like being talked to while she comes. She already knows he lasts longer if you stop halfway and that he laughs if you tickle his side and that you have to tickle him on purpose.
One Thursday in February, mid-scene, the vacuum cleaner switches off.
They go still. Ruairí is inside, his hands on her hips, and Niamh has her cheek against the quilt. The plug is heard coming out of the wall. Footsteps are heard in the corridor below, then on the stairs.
One step. Another.
Niamh turns her face and finds his eyes and bites her lip. They say nothing. The footsteps reach the landing and stop. Ruairí feels his pulse in his neck. If Bridie opens the door she'll catch them like this, with Niamh's arse in the air and her knickers on the floor.
The door doesn't open. A hand is heard resting on the frame, a moment, and then the footsteps turn and go back down. The kitchen radio goes up in volume.
—Almost —whispers Niamh.
—Almost.
He starts moving again and she laughs against the quilt, weak, and tells him not to stop and he doesn't stop. She comes first this time and he follows with a whimper and then they both start laughing, muffled, their faces buried in the same pillow.
Downstairs, the vacuum cleaner doesn't come back on for a good while.
In March it's his father's birthday. Sixty. There are people in the sitting room and in the garden and caterers and Ruairí in an ironed shirt with his hair combed back. Niamh is invited because Bridie said in the kitchen that her daughter can give a hand with the trays, and she's come in a black Zara dress and her mother's shoes.
Ruairí sees her cross the hall with a tray of glasses and the air goes out of him. She doesn't look for him. She moves among the people as if she were part of the service, because she is, and she smiles and says «prosecco?» and people take one without looking at her.
He's with the team in the garden and Cillian nudges him.
—And her?
—Which one?
—The one from the village. The one with the trays.
—Niamh —says Ruairí—. A friend from the village.
He says it without looking at her, glass in hand, and in the moment it seems fine. Then, over the course of the afternoon, every time he sees her pass in front of him he thinks about correcting it and doesn't correct it. She doesn't come over. She serves. Collects glasses. At one point she's two metres away and he's telling a story and he doesn't put her in the story.
At half nine, when almost everyone has gone, Niamh appears in the garden with her coat on.
—I'm off —she says.
—Already?
—Your mother leaves at ten. I'm going with her.
—Wait, I'll drive you.
—No need. —She zips up her coat—. See you Thursday.
And she goes. Ruairí stays in the garden with his glass and watches her cross the gate and go down Fitzwilliam Square with her shoes in her hand. It starts to rain. She doesn't open an umbrella because she doesn't have one.
The next day he texts her: «It was raining». She replies three hours later: «A bit».
In October, at Trinity, the ground shifts.
Niamh is in the first term of a master's and has a full scholarship and a twenty-hour job in bibliographic services and a folder with coloured dividers. She's cut her hair. She's wearing a tweed jacket Bridie gave her that on her looks like a decision. In seminars she speaks and they listen. In the corridor people stop her to ask her things.
Ruairí is on the same master's and goes to class half the time. He writes three quarters of a story and deletes it. He's got the face of someone who doesn't sleep and a borrowed smile. He's quit the team. In the café he sits at the edge and looks at his phone.
They see less of each other. Thursdays no longer work because Bridie switched to afternoons and the house is full at that hour. They see each other on Saturdays, sometimes, and then less too. Niamh says nothing. He doesn't either. It's as if they were both waiting for the other to ask a question neither knows how to put.
In November there's a postgraduate party in a house in Rathgar. Ruairí arrives late and there are already too many people and too much noise and he plants himself in the kitchen with a can. Niamh is in the sitting room, sitting on the arm of a sofa, arguing with two lads about whether Carson betrays Sappho. He hears her laugh and it hurts somewhere.
Caoimhe arrives. Caoimhe is on Ruairí's course, has a flat on Leeson Street paid for by her father and a way of being in rooms that makes the rooms hers. She puts her hand on Ruairí's arm and says she hasn't seen him in ages. He lets her.
An hour later, Caoimhe is sitting beside him in the sitting room and has left her raincoat on the back of Niamh's chair. Niamh sees it. Ruairí sees that she sees it.
—Do you two know each other? —asks Caoimhe, kindly.
Ruairí opens his mouth.
—Someone from the village —he says.
Niamh lifts her can and drinks. Caoimhe turns to her with all the attention in the world.
—From where?
—Kilbride.
—How lovely. My grandmother was from near there. —And she asks her about school, and about the master's, and about the scholarship, and she's genuinely interested, and she does it all so well that Niamh is left small without anyone having said anything bad—. You have to come over one day —says Caoimhe—. Ruairí, give her my number.
Niamh smiles. It's a correct smile. Then she says she's going to the bathroom and goes.
Ruairí waits five minutes and goes too. The bathroom is at the end of a short corridor and the door has an old bolt. He knocks twice.
—Occupied.
—It's me.
It opens. Niamh is leaning against the sink with her arms crossed. He comes in and closes it.
—Someone —she says.
—Yeah.
—Fine.
—Niamh.
—Fine.
They look at each other. Her eyes are bright in a way that isn't quite crying. Ruairí takes a step and she doesn't move away and he puts his hand on her waist and kisses her and she takes two seconds to respond, and when she responds it's with anger.
She climbs onto him on the sink. Her hip bangs against the tap and the towel falls off the rail and nobody picks it up. He pulls up her dress and pulls down her tights and knickers and takes them off one foot, and she takes his cock out with her cold hand and works it fast, without ceremony, looking him in the eye.
—Condom —she says.
—I don't have one.
—Shit.
—In my wallet, downstairs.
—Doesn't matter. —She brings him closer—. Pull out.
She puts him in without a condom and he gasps and she grips the edge of the sink and says «like that, still» and he obeys. She's wet and hot and tight and Ruairí has to look at the ceiling.
Someone turns the handle.
—Occupied —says Niamh, in a perfect office voice.
—Niamh? —It's a girl from the party.
—Yes. A minute.
Voices are heard on the other side. «It's occupied». «Okay, I'll wait». The footsteps don't go away. Niamh looks at Ruairí and bites back a smile and starts moving herself, slowly, with her hips, without noise, and he puts his hand over her mouth just in case and she licks it.
She comes with her face in his neck and a long tremor in her thighs, and he holds on until she goes limp and then pulls out and finishes with his hand against her thigh and comes on the fabric of her dress. They clean up with toilet paper, badly, laughing. She gets down and readjusts her tights.
—Three years —says Ruairí—. And now I find out you're from Kilbride.
—Your mother has been cleaning your house for twenty years.
—Yeah.
They look at each other in the mirror. Caoimhe's raincoat is still on the back of the chair in the sitting room.
—Caoimhe? —asks Niamh, and doesn't quite ask it.
—Caoimhe —he says, and doesn't quite answer it either.
The door opens and the girl outside comes in and they go out and there are three more people waiting in the corridor. Niamh goes ahead. In the sitting room she picks her coat up off the back of the chair, and Caoimhe's raincoat falls to the floor when she lifts it, and she picks it up and leaves it on top, carefully.
In the bathroom upstairs, later, Ruairí sees two toothbrushes in Caoimhe's open wash bag, one green and one blue, and he doesn't know why he keeps looking at them.
In January, Ruairí stops going to class altogether. He sleeps until one. He answers messages with two words. His mother leaves plates at the door and he returns them half eaten. The doctor says the usual, that it's an episode, that you have to wait, that the medication takes time.
In February he goes back to Kilbride. It's a two-storey house with peeling paint on the door and a front garden of concrete. Bridie puts the kettle on and doesn't ask him anything and after three days tells him to eat. Niamh is in Dublin Monday to Friday and comes back on Friday nights on the last bus.
The second Friday she arrives at half eleven and finds him on the sofa, the telly off and a blanket, and she stands in the doorway looking at him.
—Hi.
—Hi.
—Have you eaten?
—Yes.
—Liar.
She heats soup and puts it in front of him and sits opposite and doesn't talk. He eats it so she'll leave him alone. Then she starts washing the bowl and he looks at her back and says, without meaning to:
—I don't know if I'm any use.
—For what.
—For anything.
She turns off the tap.
—Okay —she says—. We know that. What else?
And something in Ruairí's chest moves, very little, like a piece of furniture being shifted.
At the end of March there's a night when Bridie goes to a sister's house and leaves them alone. Niamh has come back with a shopping bag and an electricity bill in her coat pocket. She leaves it on the table without thinking and he picks it up and looks at it.
—How much is it?
—Seventy-eight.
—And can you?
—No. —She shrugs—. We'll see. —And then—: Do you want me to tell you what my mother earns cleaning your house?
—I know what she earns.
—You don't.
She tells him. He does the maths in his head and it seems little and he says so and she laughs without much heart and says yeah, her too.
After dinner they sit on the sofa. The telly is on and neither of them watches it. Ruairí puts his hand on her thigh over her jeans and she lets him and then turns and kisses him slowly, unhurried, with a soft mouth.
—Yes? —she says.
—Yes.
They go up to her room, which is small and tidy and has a shelf of second-hand books and a clip lamp on the headboard. They undress without hurry and in the cold and get under the duvet and stay pressed together, skin to skin, and he puts his face on her chest and she strokes his hair.
It's different. She moves him with her hands, her hips, her voice. She puts him on his back and makes love to him with her mouth slowly, unhurried, until he pulls at her arm because he's going to come. She climbs on top and puts him in herself and moves with her palms on his chest, looking him in the eye.
—Like this —she says—. No rush.
—No rush.
She comes first, her forehead against his and a long moan she doesn't cover, and he follows with his hands on her arse and his mouth open. They stay like that, fitted together, breathing.
—Don't pull out —says Niamh.
—Okay.
They fall asleep like that and at four he wakes and she's awake too and she does it to him again, slow, barely moving her hips, her face hidden in his neck, and when it's over Niamh wipes him with the sheet and says in his ear:
—I love you.
Ruairí goes very still. She waits. The seconds pass.
—Yeah —she says, and it isn't a question.
—Yeah.
They fall asleep again and at seven there's grey light at the window and Niamh gets up to pee and comes back and sits on the edge of the bed, her back to him, her T-shirt on.
—I have to tell you something —she says.
—Okay.
—Caoimhe.
—What about Caoimhe?
—That you two are together.
—I don't know.
—Ruairí.
—I don't know. —He sits up—. We haven't talked about it.
—Okay. —She turns—. And us?
—Us what?
—What it is.
Ruairí runs a hand over his face. His mouth is dry. He thinks about saying it properly and something else comes out.
—Thursdays have been good —he says—. Haven't they? Thursdays have always been good.
Niamh looks at him. And then he sees it clearly, and it falls on him.
—Thursdays —she says—. Thursdays, when my mother cleans your house.
—Well. Not only.
—No. Only. —She stands up—. Thursdays are when you don't have to explain me to anyone.
She stands in the middle of the room, her T-shirt down to her thighs, and he can't find the argument. She nods, as if he'd said something.
—Fine —she says—. Nothing then.
She dresses. He sits up and puts on his boxers and doesn't stop her. Downstairs, the front door opens and closes. When he goes down, there's a plate covered in cling film on the table and a note from Bridie in school handwriting: «There's stew. Heat it on the hob, not in the microwave. Back at six».
Niamh has left the electricity bill folded beside the plate.
Three years later, in June, Ruairí is on a terrace on Camden Street with a half pint and his phone face down. He's published a story collection that has sold so-so and he teaches in a school in Dún Laoghaire and lives in a shared flat with two people he doesn't know well.
Niamh walks past the terrace with two shopping bags and stops.
—MacNamara.
—Niamh.
She's thinner and still has short hair and a gig T-shirt. She stands there with the bags and he pushes out a chair with his foot.
—Sit down.
—I have to get this home.
—Ten minutes.
She puts the bags on the ground and sits and orders a tea and he laughs.
—What?
—Nothing. That you still order tea in pubs.
—And you still drink pints at five in the afternoon.
They talk. She's at a small publisher, in the rights department, and she tells him about a mess with an Italian author and he laughs. He tells her about the school and she says she could picture him teaching and he asks what she meant by that and she says nothing and laughs.
—Are you still with Caoimhe? —asks Niamh, and she really asks it.
—No. We ended two years ago.
—Okay.
—You?
—A lad from here. It ended in January.
—Okay.
They look at each other. There's a pause neither fills. At the next table someone is arguing over a bill and Niamh looks over there and then back at him.
—Do you remember the Golf? —says Ruairí.
—There's a question.
—My father sold it.
—Thank God. —She drinks tea—. It was a horrible car.
—It was a Golf.
—Horrible.
They laugh. He looks at the bags on the floor, a carton of milk sticking out of one of them.
—Shall I help you carry them?
—I live nearby. I can manage.
—I know you can.
She thinks about it. She picks up one bag and leaves him the other. They walk to her door without saying much, and at the door she stops and looks for her keys and doesn't open it.
—Do you want to come up? —she says—. I have to have dinner.
—Okay.
—It's not a promise —says Niamh.
—I know.
—It's just that there's pasta.
—Okay.
She goes up ahead and he follows with the bag, and on the second flight of stairs she turns and says:
—Thursdays.
—What about Thursdays?
—That I don't work Thursdays anymore.
Ruairí stays on the step below with the bag in his hand.
—We'll see —he says.
And she opens the door.