CC 113: Terraces and Roads

‘Mind you don’t fall again,’ said Emer as we helped each other over the stile at the side of the gate.

‘Ive got it,’ I said, absolutely confident there would be no more tumbles on my part this morning.  I had some command of my legs again so precautions were taken with every placement of the foot.

Emer lay her purse down on the road and looked at her phone again.  ‘It should just be about five minutes,’ she said.  ‘I’ll wait here with you until it comes.’  She’d called for the taxi as we were walking down from the castle.  It had been a straightforward exchange.  ‘Taxi from Cuchullain’s Castle to Cuchullain Terrace, Castletown Road, please.’  When she said it, I thought about how narrow and unimaginative these place names were in terms of the words they consisted of.  Two Cuchullain’s, two castles, a town, a terrace and a road.  Simple, reserved, not very diverse.  Yet these places encapsulated the life we had together.  I wished a great many more words could be used to label these places.   

I stood next to Emer as she fiddled with her phone, checking messages or something.  We began a soundless but cool slide to the end, and I could have returned to the demise of it all in that moment, and mourned it over, but instead I found the pace of our togetherness strangely fulfilling.  In this pause, there was none of the salt and vinegar of separation – it seemed to evaporate; and estrangement, the cheese and onion – the smell of that was gone too.