Flora and Phenomena is an hour long. I suppose you’d class it an art-house documentary. It’s a meditation on old Ireland left to rot and the stories being lost as a consequence. Small places like Glenbruff are vulnerable to having the life drawn out of them; the farming is dying out, the young people are leaving, the graveyards are full and no one’s building houses.
There’s a time-lapse in the old cottage. The five armchairs standing empty. Birds flying in and out of it, snow drifting down through the gaping hole and a grey figure on the stairs. Great sheets of paisley wallpaper rolling off the walls. A scalloped orange fungus attached to a stack of books, a gigantic tree root shifting the floor tiles in the kitchen. Windows laden with silt. The cutlery on the countertop crusted arsenic green. The clock in the hallway stopped at half past three and the glass dome holding droplets within it. Paper-like curtains with jagged holes. Footage from the Vaudeville nightclub. The old casing of the neon sign. The fragile swaying poppies. The sunken floor like a green lagoon. The sole of a shoe set in lino. The shell of the famine workhouse and swirling vapours atop the bog. A Morris Minor absorbed into a tree. The Neolithic tomb. The hawthorn. The torched manor. Ghost children playing in the handball alley.
I always felt that the pictures and images in Glenbruff belonged to no one but myself, and I’m supposed to be the one capturing them, not anyone else. But who’s going to give a damn about my photos of junk and broken windows now that Evelyn’s gone and made a whole film. Since when did Evelyn want to be making films!
When the lights come up, people look to be spellbound by what they’ve seen and heard. There’s a big clatter as people push back their seats and stand and give a solid, resounding applause that lasts for almost a full minute. I stand too and clap hard. I clap until my hands are burning. I’ve done all the right things, the things you’re supposed to do, and told to do, but it’s Evelyn who made the beautiful film. She went and did it without me.
Maeve leans in to my ear. ‘Isn’t it great for them?’ she whispers.
‘Mm. It’s great for them.’ It’s a traitorous trick. It’s sickening beyond belief.
‘They’re waiting to hear back from another competition. They’re on a shortlist.’
‘Are they now.’
Along comes Aidan, grasping Peadar in a headlock. ‘Don’t forget where you’ve come from,’ he says, scrubbing Peadar’s scalp with his knuckles. ‘Don’t be getting all high and mighty on us.’
Evelyn flits towards us in the red dress, her face flushed with exhilaration. ‘I always knew something big would happen me. Didn’t I always say it. I’d a feeling about it for years. Every decision I’ve ever made in my whole life has led to this.’
Peadar’s looking dazed. ‘We never thought anything would come of it. We never imagined it’d all work out as it did. Lo and behold, here we are now about to hit off for New Mexico.’
‘I imagined it,’ says Evelyn. ‘I knew we had it in us. All we had to do was put our minds to it.’ It’s happened for Evelyn and it hasn’t happened for me. Evelyn’s someone and I’m no one. She’s left me behind, as I always knew she would. ‘You know, there’s two kinds of people in this world. People who make things happen and people who don’t.’
‘Ye should have told me ye were making a film. I would have dropped everything,’ I say, trying hard to sound casual about it, but there’s the wobble of hysteria in my voice. ‘Ye kept it very quiet.’
‘Sure, you were off doing your own thing,’ she says breezily. ‘Come on out for a cigarette. I need some air. Everyone wants a piece of me.’ I follow her out to the front of the community centre. We walk down to the far end of the boundary wall and she takes her cigarettes out of her bag.
The mature person gives credit where it’s due. ‘The film is incredible,’ I say, knowing for certain that if I’d have kept in with Evelyn, I’d be going to New Mexico too. I don’t know a thing about New Mexico, only that it’s in America, where everything and anything is possible for the likes of Evelyn Cassidy.
‘I’m fed up talking about it already and I haven’t even gone to New Mexico yet,’ she says, but it’s only to avoid coming across as being too proud. She’ll need to try harder than that.
‘You’ll have to get used to it. You’re going to be asked loads of the same questions. You’ll be asked the same questions over and over again. You’ll have to write yourself a script. Will they give you the time off work?’
‘Oh, I’m not going back to Amperloc now. Not a hope in hell. Myself and Peadar are going to hit off for London after the festival, see what the reception’s like to the film and set ourselves up. We’re going to start our own production company.’ London. A production company. God, I’d love that. ‘I won’t be half glad to leave Glenbruff. There’s so much I want to do in life. I see myself as a sort of human projector.’
‘London. That’s an exciting move.’ I want to blurt out that I’ll go to London with her, but I swallow the words. It’s too soon to be saying things like that. It’s best if Evelyn invites me to London herself. It’s best to be wanted.
‘Myself and Peadar have to get out of here or we’ll never have our chance. We’ll be making documentaries, probably. And one-of-a-kind feature films.’
‘That’s amazing. A production company. Amazing.’ I know now that it’s London I want, and Evelyn, and the production company. Any minute now she’ll be asking me along too. Didn’t we always say we’d go off and do great things.
‘We’re going to call ourselves “Au Contraire Films”.’
‘That’s a good name. It’s memorable. Congratulations anyway. When are ye off?’
‘We’re going to New Mexico in two weeks. We’ll go on to London then after the wedding in September. Peadar is Terry’s best man.’ Terry’s getting married again to a yoga instructor from Wales.
‘Congratulations.’
‘I heard you the first time.’ A smirk crosses her face for a millisecond, and I know I’ve diminished myself. I’m only a spoofer, and Evelyn’s the shining light. I’m not in the same league as her at all. There’s more of Maeve in me than there is Evelyn. I can feel my personality draining away from me, seeping out through my shoes and into the ground.
I stay at home brooding for several days, reading the opening chapters of books and casting them aside, and smoking out the bedroom window. Evelyn has me confused, causing me to wonder if it was ever my dream at all. I had thought it was my dream, but she has possessed it, taken it over, occupied the dream and acquired it, as though it was never mine to begin with. The anguish is compounded with the guilt of fine summer days spent indoors.
Robert clatters on the door. ‘Have you died on us?’
I stub out the cigarette and call out, ‘No.’
‘Mam’s asking if she should phone Doctor Fitz.’
Mammy comes inside into the room and sits on the end of the bed. She has a good, long serious look at me. I feel uneasy and throw my eyes over at the wall. ‘I don’t like you being down here,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what happened in Dublin but you can’t be hanging around in Glenbruff. A ship wasn’t built to stay in a harbour.’
‘Mm.’
‘What’ll you do with yourself, Katie? Have you a plan?’
‘I don’t know what to do, Mammy. Things haven’t been working out for me. I’m awful confused.’ How is it Evelyn hasn’t asked me to go to London with her?
‘You’re feeling sorry for yourself. The only cure is to go out and have fun, and make a new plan.’
‘Mm.’
‘Most people’s problems come about through a lack of imagination. Haven’t you plenty of imagination of all people. Wouldn’t you be wise to start using it.’
The sun is glaring and white, and the clouds break and reform. The cool wind creates a pattern of shimmering knives on the lake’s surface. White light permeates us, and bleaches the colour out of the place. ‘Funny old weather,’ I say, pushing my sunglasses up my nose. I’ve been waiting for the old romantic feeling
s to rise up in me, but there’s nothing doing. It’s like ordering something from a catalogue and forgetting all about it. Making do with something else. And by the time the order arrives, you’ve lost the desire for it.
‘Funny old weather,’ Aidan repeats, crushing a petrified dog turd under his loafer shoe. ‘Unusual for the time of year.’
‘What do you make of Peadar and Evelyn’s film? They’ll be over in New Mexico soon.’
‘Arrah.’ He throws his blond head. ‘I wouldn’t be into any of that pretentious shit.’
‘Didn’t they do well? Getting into a film festival. You must be proud of Peadar.’
‘I’d love nothing more than for Peadar to see the light and be shot of Evelyn.’
‘It’s looking like the pair of them are on the up,’ I say, and Aidan tsks with disdain.
‘I don’t know how he sticks her. I’ve never met anyone who believes their own hype as much as Evelyn Cassidy.’ My heart is racing to be having the illicit conversation about Evelyn. There’s something delectable about it. ‘Sure, it’s her that’s more interested in a relationship than him.’ Hold on now.
‘Why’s he with her, so? He wrote her a song and everything.’
‘Peadar’d get nothing done if it wasn’t for Evelyn. She has him out playing music and singing and getting involved in film-making. She gives him confidence. She’s convinced him to get out of the trucking too, and now he doesn’t know whether to go full time with the singing or the films. Daft.’
‘How did they manage it? The film. They must have been flat out working on it.’
‘I’d say Dan bankrolled the whole thing. Sure, anyone can make a film if they’ve the money. You can do whatever you want if you’ve the money.’ He’s right. It’s a painful truth, but people can do whatever they want if they’ve the money.
‘You don’t like her.’
‘No,’ he says bitterly. ‘She has everything handed to her. A person like that doesn’t develop any character.’
We meander about the lake and watch the ducks skittering across the water and into the rushes and reeds. Aidan squats down and takes a few photographs with his expensive camera and supersized lens, looking like a sort of wildlife paparazzo. I’m sore about my own camera having been stolen, and I feel that we’re filling the time with banality until Aidan says what he’s been building up to saying. He rises to his feet and scratches the back of his head. ‘It’s good to hang out. The two of us. Do you think you’ll be going back to Dublin or staying closer to home?’
‘I don’t know, Aidan. I burned a few bridges up there. The job ended badly.’ It’s the first I’ve admitted it to anyone.
‘Tough times are the making of a person,’ he says, and then, ‘If you’re going to be around for a while, I’d like to see you again. We may as well.’
I take off the sunglasses. ‘Of course you’ll be seeing me. I’m around for the whole summer, amn’t I.’
‘I’ve always had a soft spot for you, Katie. I’d like us to have a relationship.’ The old Katie would have been high off a kiss from Aidan Morley, but this kiss feels sorrowful and inevitable. Aidan’s lips are cold, and mine are reluctant. The kiss is nothing like how I imagined it’d be. It’s nothing like Luc’s kiss. I lower my head and break off the kiss prematurely.
‘How come nothing happened between us when we were young?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I hadn’t the wherewithal to know what I wanted from you. And then I met Pamela and everything changed.’
‘She was good fun. Wasn’t she?’
‘She was a cracker,’ he says, sighing heavily. It’s time he got over Pamela Cooney, I’m thinking. It’s time he moved on, and told a new story. It’s an awful waste of his looks and vitality. What’s going to happen him if he doesn’t have a new story for himself? For fear he’d take on the mantle of Johnny Grealish with the sad stories on repeat.
We head away from the lake then, and Aidan drives us back towards Glenbruff way below the speed limit. I wonder is he trying to extend the car journey by driving at a slow pace. The journey is verging on the unbearable. On the approach to Glenbruff, he pulls up close to a ditch overlooking a plot of land. ‘What do you think of the view?’ he says. ‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s grand.’ The view is only alright. It’s nothing special. It looks like any sort of countryside place. ‘What about it?’
‘It’s mine. I’m after buying it.’
‘What did you buy it for?’
‘For building on. I’m building a house. The year after next.’
‘A house. What are you building a house for?’
‘To live in,’ he says, looking at me like I’ve two heads. ‘What else would I be building it for.’
‘Won’t you be lonely in it?’
‘Not at all. Sure, I’ll get married at some stage and have a family and all that.’
‘God. I never think that far ahead. I’m nowhere near building a house, or getting married. There’s a lot I want to do first.’
‘Maybe if you’re not married by the age of thirty and I’m not married either we could have a pact.’ There’s simply nothing more detrimental to romance than neediness. It’s like the turning off of a mains supply. It shuts the whole thing down. He follows up with elbowing me in the ribs. ‘I’m only rising you,’ he says, smiling weakly, but I don’t think he’s rising me at all. ‘Will we meet up again tomorrow?’
Sure, what else am I doing, only biding my time. ‘Alright.’
We drive past Amanda and John out jogging with their elbows jabbing the air. Amanda has a sweatband on her highlighted hair and a shiny Lycra tracksuit clings to her well-maintained body. It’s hard to believe she was ever a heroin addict. John is a tanned, lean man with shaved legs and expensive-looking trainers, and the two of them look like the people on late-night shopping channels selling exercise equipment and power juicers.
I go out to Daddy in the yard and putter about beside him. ‘Daddy. Is Amperloc built on top of a sacred monastery?’
‘Hah.’ Daddy’s crouched down and filling the lawnmower with fuel.
‘Was it built on sacred ground? Is there a ghost of a monk in Glenbruff?’
‘Where did you come up with that?’ he says, scrabbling around for the fuel cap on the ground. ‘Amperloc was built on an old pig farm belonging to the Gormleys.’
‘Oh. It was Evelyn said it.’
‘That lady’s full of rubbish.’ Daddy doesn’t like Evelyn’s film made about Glenbruff. He says it’s a foolish enterprise. He says the romanticisation of broken-down Ireland is only a distraction from the jobs that need doing. Modernisation. Infrastructure. He says he can’t see how a film like that is any good to a place like Glenbruff or the people living in it. ‘You’re doing a line with Aidan Morley.’
‘It’s nothing serious,’ I say, feeling defensive of Aidan in spite of the desperate overtures.
‘Myself and your mother think you should go back up to Dublin for yourself and not be getting caught up in another’s tragedy. If you carry on with him you’ll have a hard life.’ He’s pulling on the cord of the lawnmower, huffing and puffing and having no luck in getting the motor going. He’s never had much luck with motors.
‘I’m not marrying him or anything.’
‘Life has ways of catching you out. There’s nothing for you down here. Nothing and no one,’ he says, and he pushes the roaring lawnmower out to the garden, lavender smoke billowing out of it.
Inside in Nancy’s Café, myself and Aidan are looking out at the street and watching the people we’ve always known going about their business. I’ve ordered myself a hot chocolate. I’ve been craving hot chocolate for days. A teenage girl brings it to me in a tall, thick glass. I draw out the long-handled spoon from the glass and lick the back of it.
‘Dad’s planning his wedding.’ He rolls up the sleeves of his checked shirt. His forearms are bulky and strong-looking. ‘He wants to know who’s bringing partners. Would you say you’ll be around in Sep
tember?’
I smile sweetly. ‘I’d say so.’ I hope to be moving to London in September. I hope to be flat-hunting in Clapham Junction, and soaking up the sights and sounds of the King’s Road and Piccadilly Circus.
‘You know, I haven’t told Dad or Peadar about the two of us. I’d say they’ll get a great kick out of it when I tell them I’ve ended up with Katie Devane from over the road.’
My laughter is hollow. ‘I suppose they wouldn’t expect it.’
‘It’s gas how things turn out in the end,’ he says contentedly. The end. I hope to God this isn’t the end, but it feels like it is.
We hear the sound of a motorbike ripping up the street and look out to see Peadar tearing along with no helmet on him. Aidan cranes his neck looking at him. ‘He’ll kill himself on that yoke before the summer’s out.’
‘What’s the story with the new bike?’
‘Dad got it for him. It’s a present for being best man. I’m a bit pissed off about it but what can I do. I always got on better with Mam and he got on better with Dad.’
‘What’ll he do with it when he goes to London? Will he bring it with him?’
‘He’ll hardly bring it to London. I’ll be surprised if he ends up in London at all. Only last week he was talking about the great money to be made in Australia, working down the mines.’
‘You’re joking. The mines. Would he change his mind that easy?’
‘A person like Peadar likes to keep his options open. He’s always been changeable that way. It’s like he hasn’t yet decided who he is.’ It seems that Peadar is unknowable, even to himself, and in my eyes that makes a person dangerous. Aidan’s voice drops down. ‘I’ll let you in on something if you’ll keep it to yourself.’
‘What is it?’
‘Peadar’s had Stacey Nugent on the side for years.’
‘I thought Stacey Nugent was going with Dan Cassidy.’
‘Peadar’s playing with fire, but I suppose he likes it that way.’ This is something Evelyn needs to know. There’s a high chance it’d put a spanner in the works for herself and Peadar going to London. There’s a high chance it’d take Peadar out of the picture altogether, and put me back in it. ‘You know, he wasn’t home at all the night Pamela went missing. He was down in the clubhouse fooling with Stacey. We’d to think fast when the guards called around looking for an alibi. Peadar spoke for me and I spoke for Peadar.’ Aidan takes up his cup, glugs back his coffee and sets the cup back on the table. He takes my free hand in his. His grip is too hot and too firm, and he’s rubbing my palm like he’s trying to wear a hole in it.
You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here Page 18