A Nail, A Rose Walking through the streets, Irene could see no light. She passed other people on the pavements and in the streets, but couldn’t see them either. All she could see was the image of Danny, picking up his glass in both hands and twisting it so that the beer swirled around in the bottom. He wasn’t saying anything. Irene was talking and going slowly mad. ‘There is something,’ she had said, ‘there is something you’re not telling me… it might be something that you think is true but isn’t at all… Tell me,’ she said. ‘Explain to me, speak, just speak to me…’ He hadn’t answered; but then they weren’t in the habit of explaining things to each other. That was how it was between them, they had no need of words. Then she’d said to herself that all she had to do was to walk out, all she had to do was to leave behind her, just as it was, this thing that she would never understand. She could no longer remember whether she had said goodbye. She thought she hadn’t; she thought she had just got up, walked across the room and opened the door. He didn’t move or follow her. They were in the café where they often used to meet – the sign outside had the name of a flower on it, something like lily of the valley, or wallflower. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten, but she always tried not to think of it. She walked into the street, but he didn’t come after her, he didn’t shout: ‘Irene!’ She was walking in the dark roads. It hadn’t happened that day, nor even the day before: it was a long time ago now. But ever since, whenever she walked through the streets, she always saw the same image, of Danny picking up his glass in both hands, swirling the beer at the bottom of it and saying nothing, whilst she talked and went slowly mad. She was tired and the road was steep, so she waited at a tram stop. Sitting in the carriage, she closed her eyes, but images continued to assault her: his face, his hair, the hands she loved so much. Tears began to rise up through her body. She didn’t like crying in the tram; it was much better to talk to yourself instead. Whatever it was, she would never understand it now… Danny and Irene: that she did understand, she understood it perfectly, and she thought it meant she could understand the rest of the world as well: Danny and Irene, and the whole world. But she would never now understand the line that ran between them, like an arrow with a sharp point at either end. And the whole world was now this line. Whenever they had met again after a parting, they had come together like two hands joining. They were like two hands of one being, finger against finger of the same length, palm against palm. And two hands of the same being are clasped together because of the same joy or the same agony. He didn’t say, ‘I love you,’ and nor did she. Plenty of people say ‘I love you,’ but what existed between them wasn’t the same as what exists between those people. Instead of saying ‘I love you,’ he said: ‘Irene’. And she said ‘Danny’. Sometimes they were at the heart of love, like a bee in a closed flower. But only sometimes, because that wasn’t the sole aim of their encounters. Two hands can join together in joy, in torment, in emotion, in prayer, or in revolt; but their love-making was a whole in which they touched on hope and despair. Because their love-making was savage and it was pure. They made love in heather, in orchards, in fields of cut corn; in bedrooms, too, and in other people’s beds: that was their right. When they made love the only words they spoke were ‘Danny’ and ‘Irene’. Danny never gave her lilies of the valley, nor perfume, scarves or rings; his presents would be an ear of corn, a nail or a leaf. He sometimes gave her fruit; but not the sort of fruit that changes and turns putrid – the fruit that he gave her had hard, dry outlines and a fixed shape, like kernels. She had got off the tram and was walking again, towards her house, in the slippery, deserted streets of the outskirts. A recent fall of snow, now half-melted, had been hardened by frost, and there were sheets of ice all over the place: she had to walk slowly. She could hear footsteps behind her, but they were some way away, and she paid no attention to them. A leaf, a nail, a kernel. How she had loved his hands, and his fair hair… in heather, in orchards, in fields of cut corn… By now night had fallen, and the verges and the waste ground seemed to be etched in black and white: the only branches she could see were those on which snow was still lying. She was living through a present without a future, she was carrying inside her a love with no tomorrow. The world was empty, and she was walking along a road of hardened mud and snow. It was a black night. In this year 1944 the darkness was total, the few houses that she passed black and dead. The road was deserted apart from those footsteps behind her; they were getting closer but still she paid them no attention. In heather, in orchards, in fields of cut corn… Now the man’s footsteps were right behind her, he was close up to her, almost at her back, and he was hitting her on the head. Irene felt the blow while still lost in the memory of love. She turned round and saw a man wearing a cap, with a hammer in his raised hand. ‘Take everything I have,’ she said, ‘just don’t hit me any more.’