The Abyss

A friend and I are writing a book. Any insomniacal publishers who happen upon the following, feel free to offer us far too much money for us to accept while retaining our integrity. We'll take the risk. Below a vignette, a teaser, an inch of silk off the shoulder, a bite upon the bottom lip - one's own, an appetiser fragrant with future delights, of our own devising. Copyright Stephen McGroggan and Fionnuala Bradley date as of now. Don't touch without asking! Bites always unacceptable. Critical comments: piss off, get a life, what the fcuk, only to be used judiciously. We are sensitive flowers who bloom unseen at night, and are delicate to the touch. etcetera and the like and you know what I mean, sniff. It's like a murder mystery.


Joshua met Anna breathlessly at the front of the Queen’s University Film Theatre foyer, known to its patrons lovingly as the QFT. As apology, Joshua offered in breathless staccatto, 'Sorry, I’m late. Missed the bus. Had to run up.'
Anna managed the feat of raising her eyebrows while narrowing her eyes as she spun neatly on one heel and went in. Joshua followed in her train, catching his breath. The film that had just begun was Woody Allen’s ‘Hannah and her Sisters’, which was beginning a festival of his films. By its end, Joshua and Anna had shared enough smiles to make them on common ground again. Exiting, Joshua suggested a coffee and the two decided on ‘The Other Place’, a pleasant coffee shop just around the corner on Botanic Avenue.
‘What did you think of the film?’ asked Joshua tentatively.
‘Brilliant! Of course, I’ll not say that in my column. Much too unreserved a comment.’
‘And what will you say? An impressive achievement?’
Anna smiled, recognising the sarcasm.
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to take another flick through my thesaurus tonight. Maybe there’s a more modest superlative that I haven’t made use of yet … but it was brilliant!’
They entered the coffee shop and luckily found the last available free table.
‘And what about you?’
‘Oh, you know, … I love all his films. It’s his wit that comes through the dialogue. And how sometimes they speak over each other, just like real life. They can all talk at once while still managing to be responsive to each other. It’s as if there’s not enough time to wait for the other person to finish before they need to hear what you have to say. But then maybe that’s what people are like in New York.’
Anna narrowed her eyes at Joshua for the second time, but this time in curious pleasure.
‘It sounds like you could write a review of it better than I could.’
‘I’m don't think so. I’ve just enjoyed his films so much that it’s easy for me to talk about them. It’s your gift of being able to criticise constructively that which you don’t happen to enjoy that I admire. If I don’t like something I switch off. So I could talk all night about Woody Allen but give me the book of a third-rate crime novelist and I’d be struck dumb. My review would be – oh, I didn’t like it!’
‘So, you think I’ve a gift then’ said Anna playfully.
Nodding, while receiving his cappuccino with a politely grateful smile at the waitress, Joshua thought that it was safe to praise Anna without being accused of flattery. ‘That review you did of ‘Death by Candlelight’ was excellent. I found it much more entertaining than the book itself.’
‘You’ve read it?”
‘Well, I wanted to see if I would agree with your taste.’
‘And?’
‘I think you were dead on, even though I wouldn’t have been so eloquent in my disgust!’
‘Good. I would have left you to drink your coffee alone otherwise,’ smiled Anna.
‘I rather thought you might,’ said Joshua, burying his nose in his coffee.
The couple let silence descend for a second, accepting, rather than speaking over, a moment of friendship. But not to let the moment be mistaken for intimacy, Joshua revisited the theme of the conversation.
‘My favourite bit was that part about the abyss.’
‘What part?’
‘Where Mia Farrow’s character is trying to find out how her writer sister knows all those intimate details about her love life which only her own husband and she could possibly know.’
‘Yes, when Michael Caine was arguing with her in the bathroom about her being too perfect!’
‘And all the time he was having an affair with the other sister ... yes.’
‘Another realistic moral dilemma of the age brought to us by Mr. Allen?’
‘Well, a bit of a stretch of licence I suppose.’
‘But anyway, what about this abyss?’
‘Well, Mia Farrow’s character loses all her self-composure after the argument and there she was lying in bed in the dark feeling that she's losing her husband. Remember?’
‘… sort of, yes.’
‘She comes to the point of recognising that at the thought of losing him she just feels lost herself, lying there vulnerable in the darkness. And that's when Michael Caine turns on the light and reciprocates her love again. In her moment of abyss ... and emptiness, she became ready to need him again, and he found the strength to stop his infidelity.'
Anna went into a deep train of thought instantly, as she sipped from her cup. Joshua began to fear that he had gone on too long; that he’d bored her. With her, he had felt strangely relaxed and he wouldn’t have talked so openly with everyone. But perhaps such musings didn’t appeal to her. He buried his eyes once more in his cup, this time a little nervously. Like little lamps, Anna’s eyes came on.
‘That’s it! That’s it! It’s not something we saw. It’s something we didn’t see. Oh, God. But if it wasn’t there, that means …’
Hastily, she scrambled for her bag beside her.
‘Come on, we’ve got to go.’
‘Where?’
‘The library.’
‘But it’ll be locked up. It’s almost midnight.’
‘That's just perfect.’
Anna grabbed both their coats and exited the café in a flurry, the trains of the coats flapping darkly in the wind behind her as she vanished out of sight stage-left. To a drunk man in the corner of the shop trying to sober up before returning home to his wife, Anna appeared as a rather impressive go-getting, name-taking witch late for some pressing appointment. Joshua drained his cup with a glurp and a sulp and bounced after her with all the ungainliness and comedy of some faithful old bespectacled black cat.