When I hear the news it's as if someone has punched me. No, worse than that, because I seem to be able to take a fair amount of punching without noticing, but this takes my breath away. I sit down and Molly walks off. After a while she brings some ale and I drink it without thinking.
Conflicting sentiments. This can't be happening. How could she? It's my fault, I should have... Where do I go now? The last is the question that lingers. The others are readily answered: it's happened, she's gone; she had every reason to doubt me; as usual, I did too little and acted too late.
As is my habit, I imagine what would have happened if life had gone my way. I conjure a small room in a boarding house, in a city somewhere. Maybe Dublin, or even London. She rises from our bed in the morning to make tea, and I pull her back under the covers, make her attend to me first, because she's mine and we're free to do as we please; there's no-one to mind us; the encumbrances and divisions of our present situation are gone. Or maybe she does make the tea and brings it back to bed, and we talk while drinking it, and gradually the gap between us lessens and disappears; we kiss each other over the teacups and toast and remains of eggs; we stay in bed half the day because it's Sunday and we can. We never go to church in the morning, my collars are never starched, she loves me and I have some easy, menial employment that pays our bills and lets us have as many children as we want, and...
I'm frozen by a vision of Anna, with child, swollen, sensual, virtually incapacitated and depending on me, when another tankard arrives under my nose and I have to smile at myself. For all of my skills at idealising happiness, the real thing always eludes me. I can fancy how sweet it must be to know a woman like that, and yet, all my experience is of a different kind of love. Harsher, more desperate, and ultimately, unsatisfying.
I'm in no mood for company. So, of course, company arrives. I tell him I'm leaving town tonight. We drink, as we have for many nights past, until the room spins. My friend, who can usually take his ale pretty well, seems to let his guard down, and ends up drunker than me for once. I idly notice that the elegant lady in cream brocade is back, and it adds an aptly surreal quality to the evening. God only knows what she's doing in a place like this.
The room spins, and I drink a little more, thinking, if I can make it spin enough I'll forget why I'm here and not somewhere else, with Anna. We should be sheltering in some barn by now, already reconciled and making love against the chill of the night.
Eventually we're thrown out, not for being drunk but because we're both broke. We walk into the night, me and my friend who is looking groggy and shuffling his feet. I make a crack about the family silver, but even though it's the best joke I can muster and a decent effort for someone who's just had his insides ripped out, it's wasted on him. I look around and he's lying face down in the straw, as if drugged. I callously leave him to his fate. Well, I'm sure he'd do the same for me.
The cool air of the night revives me slightly, and as I look around, I catch a glimpse of alabaster in an alleyway to my left. The lady from the tavern. With a look, she invites me to follow her.
If I can't have Anna...
Suddenly the question I've been pondering on and off all evening comes back to mock me. Where do I go now? The answer comes back in bold colours. I've lost my family, my home, my fortune, my hope of happiness. The only way to go from here is some place better. Bitterness rises in my throat like bile, and I turn into the alleyway, determined that if I can't have what I want, to get what I can.
To take what comes.
THE END