Gone by Martin Roper Read Free Book Online Page B

roll hits the space between my toe and the wall, feel the precision of my father working in me. I measure the first length, lay it on the table and run the other lengths of paper off it. I am happy in my anger. Success lies in letting her go one better in insults and leaving silence the job of cutting her down. I paste the paper and let it soak in, then paste it again. She is still standing there, waiting for a reply. I start to whistle, the happy whistle of my father when he had to deal with customers looking over his shoulder. In his heyday he would have a room this size done in three hours. The door slams, and the house, empty of furniture, echoes with her hostility. I am halfway around the room when I notice I’m going the wrong way—the joins in the paper will show. No matter, they won’t rise for months. We are decorating the house for someone else now. We are fighting more and more, the arguments only a break from the bitter silence. Despite her independence and staunch feminism she feels let down by the man in her life. I am a coward. I am running away. These are the things we don’t talk about, the unsaid words that widen the gap in the bed.
    She wants to ensure all the floorboards are secure before we put the last of the skirting boards down. I keep going with the lining paper, running it down to the floor. We work in inverse proportion to each other, the more corners I cut, the more care she takes in the details. I watch her comb her hair at night, as I have done every night for years. The slow rhythmical brushing, the decisive centre parting that I loved to watch irritates me. We would come to blows if it wasn’t for exhaustion. She is still fighting the children in her head. The house is papered now, dressed from head to toe. One evening I come in and she has written poems on the walls in pencil. Sexton, Plath, Ozick, Rich, Bishop, Glück, Levertov. Poems pencilled neatly all over the house. The pencil will burn through the paint and I sit down under the weight of resentment. But she hasn’t done it on purpose I suppose. Three coats will cover them, and then slowly, over the winter months, when the new occupants turn on the heating the poems will bleed through and reveal their past. I want to write poems too but can think of none. I caught this morning’s morning minion. Dappled dawn. I go up to bed. She is already asleep.
    I wake to the smell of paint. She is rolling the walls in the room that was to be her study. Bright yellow. Rolling wet sunshine. She should have done the ceiling first but I say nothing. All advice is accusation now. I go down and start the kitchen ceiling. Contentment settles in our working. I shout up if she wants tea and her yes sounds like the first casual word she has spoken in months. I go out and get fish and chips and we sit on the stairs eating them out of their bags. We talk about how much longer it will take. The papered walls insulate our voices; speech heavier now. I think about telling her how ashamed I am of my fear but don’t. Work is the only refuge left in our marriage.
    We go to Brefini’s and Medbh’s house on a Sunday afternoon to talk about books, a dull Dublin version of the Bloomsbury set. About a half dozen of her friends (only later would time teach me the sundering of friends) talk and talk, and the only aspect that appeals to me is the decadence of drinking wine in the middle of the afternoon. I hate the way they tear books apart for the sake of it. Everything for effect. They are like young barristers cutting their teeth. Today they are discussing Cormac McCarthy’s latest book. Ursula and I had read it in bed together the night before. Rather, she read it and I occasionally read over her shoulder. We both hated it. Man’s struggle with the Universe against an imponderable sunset. She finished the book late into the night. I remember listening to some of the locals coming home drunk. The next day battle ensues over