Free The Catastrophist: A Novel by Ronan Bennett Page A

she failed to persuade the paper to send her to Algiers. Someone had mentioned my name and she asked to be introduced. One of my books had recently come out in Italy. She had not read it, but had seen some notices. Alan, my publisher, brought her over. I took her small hand in mine and was struck immediately. Not by her looks so much as by her vitality, her openness, and also—I have to be honest—by her evident interest in me. Maybe it amounted to no more than a man being flattered by the attentions of a pretty young woman. I could give it this defensive construction—mock myself from my own mouth to forestall the ridicule—but I know in my heart it was more than this.
    The following day we met for lunch in Soho and spent the afternoon and evening together. I did not press her, and I think this disconcerted her a little. Next morning she rang. She was leaving for Dublin at midday. We talked and talked—this is not usual with me. I felt I had known her a long time and wanted to know her more. After perhaps an hour we were both aware that our tone had altered, that we had arrived at a sort of threshold. Her voice became softer. Little silences crept between us. She gathered her nerve and asked if I would join her in Ireland.
    In many ways, I suppose, the week turned out as I’d expected. I went for an adventure and I got one. But that was not all.
    I used the opportunity to visit my mother in Belfast, whom I had not seen for two years. Her life is filled with pain and patience; I do not know that my presence provides her with much comfort, but I had to see her of course.
    I met Inès off the train at the GNR—she was coming up from Dublin. I was, as usual, too reserved, too cautious (what if she had changed her mind?) to greet her the way I would have liked. I took her bag and we got her booked into Robinson’s in Donegall Street.
    We took the Greencastle trolley-bus as far as the terminus, then walked to Whitehouse and along the shore of the lough where my sister and I used to bring our dog when we were children. She talked and talked—she laughed and said talking was a fault of hers. But she could not be quiet; nor did I want her to be.
    She told me how much she loved Ireland. She told me about a holiday she had taken here as a child with her father. She told me excitedly about the interviews she had had with the IRA in Dublin. She had been to Carrickmore, where the people were brilliant, and to Edentubber, where the terrible bomb had gone off the month before. I held my tongue. The peculiar enthusiasms of the political believer have always left me unmoved; and political anger—of all things—provokes in me, depending on the circumstances, mirth or contempt. There would be time enough for correctives, time enough to set her right on Ireland, and in the meantime her idealistic pronouncements gave me the opportunity to be older, wry and amused.
    I caught her looking at me once or twice as we walked—it was a look I recognized from other lovers: she did not know if she was going to be petted or pushed away. It had nothing to do with desire or lack of it, but with my internal argument. What was I getting into? And at the same time wanting, wanting . . . desperately wanting . . . I was not feeling all that strong.
    The sky was cloudy and sad. It began to rain and we took shelter under the railway bridge at Whitehouse Park. There we kissed for the first time. She kissed me with her mouth wide, with licks and flicks of her tongue. It is not my style of kissing but I was terribly aroused. The rain eased to a drizzle and we moved on in search of a more private place. We went behind a wall under some trees where we kissed again and I pulled up her sweater and kissed her breasts and stomach. She said we could make love. She undid my trousers and her little fingers gripped me. But I stopped it there, confusing her more I think. I held her and she said, “What if I fall in love?” I said, “You won’t.” She pinched my