Dublin city is alive with new sounds for Laura. From the hundreds of people who swarmed out of the theatre down the block, dispersing as they found their cars or hailed taxis to different parts of the city and back to their lives. The taxi drivers gather under the balcony as a sudden rain shower takes over. Even the sound of the rain is different. It falls on concrete and the canal across the road. No leaves to delay its eventual fall to the ground, no soil to soak it up. A police siren in the distance, somebody shouting, a group laughing … each sound sends her rushing to the bedroom window.
She is grateful the room is so small. She doesn’t think she could deal with a large strange space. There is too much of it, she needs her own cocoon. It contains a single bed that’s pushed up against the wall; on the other side of the wall is Solomon and Bo’s bedroom. There’s a rail full of his shirts and so the room smells of him. Bo has the wardrobe in their bedroom, he’d told her. He is good that way, continuing to talk when he knows she’s unsettled. It’s calming for her. His voice is soothing, soft. Especially his singing voice. She closes her eyes to hear him again at the party, to relive the moment, and she’s barely placed herself back in the room when a sound from outside causes her to jump. It’s a girl laughing with a friend. Her heart pounds.
In Toolin cottage there were always sounds. It was never silent, despite what the crew say about its peace. Laura was used to those sounds though. She remembers the first night staying there alone. She was sixteen years old, she had been so afraid. No mother, she had lost her some months before, and she and Gaga had said their tearful goodbyes. She was no longer asleep in the next room but knowing that she was not far away eased her pain and fear. When she had learned of Gaga’s death six months later, she’d plummeted to an all-time low. She felt utterly alone, but her grandmother’s death had strengthened the friendship between her and Tom. Tom had shared the news with her in his usual way, with little sensitivity. He seemed to learn this over time. Knowing that she was alone, he stayed a while longer on visits, offered to help out more, fixed things she didn’t ask him to fix, took more care. Having Tom nearby to help her if she needed him in an emergency was vital too. Sometimes Tom fixed her toilet, provided paint, or nailed something together in the cottage, provided medicine, but she was mostly self-sufficient. She liked that feeling, thrived on it, but she felt safe knowing that the twins were nearby, even if Joe didn’t know about her.
There was never a hug, never a kiss, never even a touch between her and Tom but most important of all he tethered her to a world she sometimes felt locked outside of.
‘He’s not to know,’ was all Tom had ever said about the issue when she’d asked, and that’s how it was.
It had been a long time since she’d remembered her first night alone in the cottage so vividly. She’d lain in bed, looking out the curtainless window at the black sky, feeling like she was being watched even though the only people around for miles were Joe and Tom. Despite the work Tom had done to improve the old cottage before her arrival, it was cold. She had wrapped herself in sheepskin, huddled down and listened to the sounds that were alien to her, trying to place each noise and understand her new world. Ten years later, twenty-six years old, and she is back to feeling how she’d felt the first night in the Toolin cottage.
‘I feel like I’m in Cork, in the Toolin cottage,’ Bo whispers, then giggles.
‘Stop,’ Solomon says gently, not wanting Laura to hear her laughing. ‘An owl,’ he whispers, trying to identify the sounds coming from Laura’s room. He recalls being back in her cottage, standing at the window and flinching at each sound. She had identified each sound for him, to help calm him. Perhaps he should be in her room doing the same thing for her. He starts to listen out, not just to Laura, but to the sounds inside and outside his apartment. He hears things he never even noticed before.
They’re both silent as they listen. Flat on their backs on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
‘Bat?’ Bo says, recognising a sound.
‘Some kind of bird.’ He shrugs. ‘That’s a frog croaking,’ he whispers, identifying the next one.
‘Wow, rain on a roof,’ she whispers, snuggling down. ‘The wind?’
‘Who knows,’ he says, enjoying being here with Bo, their closeness. They’re naked, the covers are around their waists on a clammy night that the rain has tried to clear, listening to the night sounds of a remote mountain. He feels magically transported to another place, just by closing his eyes. It’s an intimate insight into what it would be like to lie with Laura in her cottage at night.
‘This is so romantic, I feel like we’re camping out,’ Bo says, snuggling into him, her head under his armpit, her body fitting next to his. She lifts her thigh across his body, nestles close to him. ‘Ever had sex under the stars?’ She starts kissing his chest, and works her way down his torso, his pelvis.
But it dawns on him that this is not romantic. It’s Laura, alone in a strange place, remembering the things about home that she misses, conjuring familiar sounds to chase away her loneliness. He tries to shake away the thoughts of her, he tries to stop hearing her and get lost in Bo. But he can’t, because even when she’s silent she’s still in his head.
18