The Truth About Love

by Josephine Hart

  “It is not madness. It is what protects the mind from madness.”

  “You know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll talk about it someday?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I thought I’d brick it all up for a while. So I’d never put a foot in it again. Then I thought, no, just put up a wooden gate … then get someone to go in sometimes. Then I thought, who could I ask to do that place, that garden, for me? I mean, what lad could I pay a few shillings a week to and say, go in and weed it? They wouldn’t want to. Then I set to wondering about Sissy’s dream of a rose garden. All those years she’d been at me to do something about it. Make it into a proper garden. She was particularly keen on a rose garden. Wanted me to try to level it, you know. A garden? What do I know about gardens? But her aunt grew roses. Won prizes. Anyway, that’s how my mind worked that day. That and other things, visions of the boy. I still don’t know what to do with that back garden. I’ve put a kind of milky glass in the pantry window so that Sissy can’t see the back garden even if she accidentally pulls the curtain. She didn’t even comment. Not a word from her. She never goes into the back at all any more. Won’t let anyone else go out either. Except me. The boys used to take it in turns to go out to the shed for the turf and coal—she was determined to burn no matter what the temperature. But she can’t bear to see just Daragh going out. Alone. But if I board the garden up, let it go to rack and ruin as they say, well, it’ll become a wilderness. Rats will come.”

  “Do not think like that Mr. O’Hara.”

  “Someone told me once flowers bloomed on graves. On even bits of… if you understand me.”

  “I understand you.”

  “And tell me, the shock of how shocking it is, does it wear off? Yes?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Hasn’t for you yet?”

  “No. Did you know that we had a number of conversations? That your son would sometimes sit and talk to me as he awaited the island swimmers?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. He was proud to be asked to row the boat. It’s been a club rule since the O’Driscoll child drowned. Oh, four years ago must be now. Her uncle, a Tralee man, up for the weekend was rowing the boat. Couldn’t swim. Poor little Alice O’Driscoll fell off the boat—got into difficulties and went down. Some on the island and on the shore could hear the man, distraught, crying out his prayers, ‘Mary, Mary, Mother of God, save her. Save her.’ Shocking story. If the uncle could swim Alice would have lived. It wasn’t the Mother of God who was needed that day. It was a swimmer! So that’s what we decided to do with the lesson of Alice O’Driscoll and that’s how Malachy Martin, the best swimmer in half the County of Kerry, got his promotion. Strings were pulled and we got a Sergeant who in his spare time, and indeed in more than that, goes out to the lake to teach the town’s children how to swim. Poor Malachy, he misses County Kerry. Told me it took him ages to get used to living in a place ‘without even a hint of the sea.’ Does something to the soul, he thinks. Have you ever heard him sing ‘Thank God We’re Surrounded by Water’? He’s got a great voice. Loves the sea and sent to a Midlands town. Isn’t that the way? Ambition comes at a price. He divides swimmers into body types. Told Olivia she was for the breaststroke. Her shoulders, evidently. The lad’s body was long, you know. His long arms made him a crawler. ‘Crawler’s body, Tom. Long, narrow. The breaststroke boys are built differently, stockier, heavier, in my opinion, Tom.’ Who’d challenge him anyway? We learn from tragedy. Slowly. Anyway, I didn’t know you’d chatted with the lad. He was shy in the beginning. Not like Olivia and as for Daragh, he’s neither one nor the other. Hidden. But the lad—he was shy all right but good with …”

  “Strangers?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought he was a very kind boy.”

  “He was. About the gate again: I want to mark the place with something important. Something he loved. And part of him is still there. Though they found nothing.”

  “It’s hard to know what to say to you Mr. O’Hara.”

  “I suppose it must be. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know what to say myself. That’s why poor Father Dwyer now says nothing. Perhaps it’s best in these circumstances to say nothing. Or maybe there’s a language we don’t know yet. You speak two languages and yet you’re stumped.”

  “I speak four languages. This not to boast but to agree with you. ‘I’m stumped,’ as you put it, in all of them. And Mr. O’Hara, I need to think about your request. If I decide to part with the gate I won’t sell it. I will give it to you.”

  “I did not come here for charity!”

  “Forgive me. I did not mean …”

  “I want to buy it. I want to buy it for him. A present for him. You wouldn’t understand but I didn’t buy a new bike for him. Bought him a second-hand bike. Last birthday. What meanness made me do that? He was grand about it but I knew he’d set his heart on the new one. Madness, the way my mind’s working now. But I need to do this. I know it’s an important thing, the gate. It’s nearly eight feet high. The helmet is bronze. I’m not a fool. Though you may be surprised to hear it, my mother sculpted in bronze—exhibited in London, at the Royal Academy summer show, often. I know the gate’s approximate value. And now I have the money.”

  “I did not mean to suggest you did not.”

  “Yes, you did. And normally you’d be right. I have little money. I am the worst kind of poor man, a man who came from a family that was not rich—you know, we’re not a rich country—but well off. Very well off indeed. Land. Which they sold. My mother’s family, three sisters, two brothers all living and living well on the income from their capital. Freemen of the city of Dublin in recognition of their charitable work. My two uncles travelled the world. And I’m a world away from that now. And I’ll never get back. A family can spin itself out, you know. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. Once upon a time and a twelve year time it was, as they say, there was me and my younger brother and my father and my mother—a small universe created in a mismatch. It split off and my mother went back to her grand house trailing two sons and we were trailed off, I suppose you could say, to boarding school and after a few years I ran away—to sea, as it happens—and when I got back she was dead. And there was no way back from that. I was lost in every way. They for gave, they said, but I made a few more mistakes. I seemed incapable of making the world bend to even my smallest wish. I shrugged my shoulders at the world, I suppose. I was a failure, Mr. Middlehoff, at everything. At business, and they were generous to me helping me set up things—but nothing worked or maybe I just didn’t care enough. Maybe one triumph is enough in life. And Sissy was mine. Anyway, back to money—the great subject for some people. Money has been made over to me as a balm I suppose. Not a lot. I’m still not reliable, you see. But I am not here as a pauper.”

  “This isn’t harsh patronage Mr. O’Hara. If I part with the gate, and forgive me I need some time to think about it, it will be a gift to you. I liked the boy.”

  “Who didn’t?”

  “You said at the inquest you knew he was playing with these things … these chemicals …”

  “I did. It’s no use now to talk of what I should have done.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “There was nothing in his head but crackpot ideas. Tell me a boy in the world who is without crackpot ideas? Olivia explained better than I did at the inquest. He was building a rocket. Bravado! It was a terrible accident. He was in heaven—strange phrase, I suppose, now—playing around with beakers and powders from school—and then Mr. Kelly, the chemist, took a shine to him. Oh the lad was full of mad thoughts, childish thoughts of being a rocket scientist. For God’s sake, when did an Irish Midlands town last produce a rocket scientist? Sure, have we ever produced any kind of scientist? Poets yes—and the lad loved poetry. They don’t normally go together, they say, cleverness with words and at science, but they did with him. Anyway, the truth is, I didn’t pay attention. Our little daughter was sick for
a long time then we lost her less than a year ago. So. We weren’t vigilant, Sissy and me. We missed the danger in what he was doing and we were punished for that. ‘His death is not a punishment, Tom,’ Bishop Fullerton told me. He didn’t react well when I told him we were serving the toughest penance any priest could hand out and that it will never end. It’s not his fault but somehow I felt Bishop Fullerton had let me down. Talked about the Risen Christ; strange choice of image for a father mourning his son. Anyway, the Risen Christ would heal the wound. Time, of course. He threw that old lie about time into the equation. To tell you the truth we were both a bit embarrassed at the end. But I know time will make no difference to us. He was ripped from us, you see—not like the long slow defeat with our little girl. It’s like the difference between a deep sigh and a scream, I suppose. Not that I’ve screamed. Men don’t much though I suppose you’ve heard them scream. In war. Wounds, I suppose.”

  “Yes.”

  He looks away.

  “Wounds! I dream myself, and I’m not a woman, of remaking his body. I dream of putting it together again. And I only imagine how he was after it happened. In the morgue—well, they dressed him up. What’s there to say? I feel as if we’ve sent him back to God, unmade, as if we were careless and sent him back to Him broken; as if someone had given us a precious vase to look after, rare, like one of those vases my uncles would bring back from the East, irreplaceable, and one day you just move its position, carelessly, casually, not paying due attention to what it is you have in your hand, and it falls and smashes! That’s how I feel. Careless. We were careless. We didn’t look after it, I mean him, properly. We weren’t vigilant. Sorry. I’m struggling …”

  “It’s understandable, Mr. O’Hara.”

  “Do you … do you just struggle along yourself with life Mr. Middlehoff?”

  “We all do.”

  “The bishop would tell you of the Risen Christ. The Great Survivor. No good to you, I suppose?”

  “I’m not familiar with that particular … incarnation.”

  “Well, ask Bishop Fullerton. He’ll give you a lecture on it. You play chess with him every month they say. We don’t have much call for chess here. Bishop Fullerton went to Trinity, you know—Protestant university—unusual for a Catholic boy—had to get special permission—but not unheard of. And his was a late, well late-ish, vocation. He moved around with the English. His sister married an English peer though he rarely refers to it. Naturally. Anyway, I must go now. Thank you for talking to me. It’s the act of a gentleman. Will you think about the gate?”

  “I will.”

  “And will you think about a price?”

  “No. As I said, it can only be a gift Mr. O’Hara. Otherwise I will not part with it. But if I decide to give it to you then you must organise the removal.”

  “Saving my pride are you?”

  “I admire you Mr. O’Hara, and though I am very sad at what has happened I am not acting out of pity.”

  “Pity? What’s wrong with pity? ‘A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.’ Do you know that line?”

  “No.”

  “Yeats. And he’s right: at the heart of deep love you’ll find a kind of pity. I can see you don’t agree.”

  “No. But I will consider the idea.”

  “There’s a lot to consider in that little idea. And thank you about the gate. Considering it, at least. Like I said, you’ve been a gentleman to me. I won’t forget.”

  “You’re Irish, Mr. O’Hara. Forgetfulness is not possible.”

  “And you’re German, Mr. Middlehoff. No doubt memory is a burden.”

  A sudden word-wound? No. A simple statement of fact. We say goodbye. I wait in the courtyard as he walks to his car and watch as with some difficulty he manoeuvres himself back into the driver’s seat as though he were again assuming a crouched position in a cage. His hands grip the wheel with an intensity that suggests he is more likely to pull it free from the dashboard than guide it through the various movements necessary to its journey through the main gates which, with a kind of perverse confidence, I keep open during the day. And once through those gates he must turn left towards the home where his past is waiting for him.

  THREE

  She is here. Harriet Calder is here. Mostly she is not. It is thus that I define my life, in major and in minor matters. I am. She is not. I drive carefully, for example. She does not. She drives, as she does most things, recklessly. She trusts her luck perhaps. In this we are very different. When she is not with me she is yet with me. She is my shadow-self, which I can neither catch nor detach myself from. She is the darker side of me.

  Harriet Calder is here! I breathe the same air as she. She is not my type. She is thin and what in youth seemed a pleasing coltishness now, in early middle age, seems like a disconcerting lack of femininity. Her height does not help. I am a tall man and though she is not as tall as I her habit of wearing her hair loosely pulled and piled and pinned on top of her head makes her appear closer to my height than is the fact.

  She is wearing a red jacket. It is, as I know, an old hunting jacket. Her legs are encased in narrow black slacks and, swinging from her shoulders, a rain cape, which resembles one of Bridget’s rain capes. What on Bridget looks merely useful, on Harriet looks daring. Harriet is a challenge and despite her slightly androgynous appearance many men wish to respond. My sexual jealousy is deep and permanent. It is an emotion to which Harriet has never given any consideration. Her terms prevail. I am, and have always acknowledged myself to be, helpless. That is the difference between my brother and I. Heinrich, in thrall to his wife Carlotta, rebels against his sentence. I do not. I know that Harriet’s need of me is less than my need of her. The degree is irrelevant. I was not always so wise. Few are. They believe the terms can be renegotiated. They are wrong.

  She’s pounded, cape flying, down the wood-panelled hallway like an army of one. I follow slowly. She is here. That is all. That is everything. She throws the cape, though it is wet, over the high back of a dark green library armchair. She sees the book of poetry lying on the side table. Gottfried Benn. Morgue. She puts it carefully back on the small Biedermeier table and the lamplight shines on it. I keep this room lighted, though dimly, day and night, summer and winter.

  “What was it your father said about your obsessive poetry reading, Thomas?”

  “Hardly excessive, Harriet. Besides, he encouraged me in this.”

  “As in many things.”

  “Yes. Drink, Harriet?”

  “At eleven-thirty in the morning? Certainly, Thomas.”

  “Whiskey?”

  “Perfect.”

  She smiles at me. When Harriet smiles she inclines her head, her lips twist slightly at the corners and then her rather crooked front teeth are exposed in the smile. Her smile. What can I say? Harriet’s smile. Even in this attempt to describe the smile of Harriet Calder I am aware that I am a man obsessed. Now the red jacket is thrown over the arm of another chair. The grey jersey she is wearing reveals nothing of the figure beneath. She is a hidden woman. In this she has ruined other women for me. Gender ostentation is, as I have found, often the result of gender uncertainty. Nothing can be secret when all is on display, and it is within secrecy that obsession lies. Harriet’s body. The disproportion of legs to torso: I know it well. I pour the whiskey and turn towards this woman for whom my sexual desire has never ceased. Since the first time I made love to Harriet Calder, which was the first time I made love. She wore white. We were shocked. She was in mourning for her parents who’d been killed in a car crash. My family—her distant relatives—had expected black. I turn away from the memory. She is speaking. I love her. I hate her. I listen to her.

  “Now remind me, indulge me, Thomas. What was your father’s line?”

  “He said I suck poets dry.”

  “Very clever man, your father.”

  “Yes.”

  “He must miss Ursula. He won’t remarry?”

  “Harriet, he’s an old man. H
e has lost two wives. My mother and Ursula. Besides, he honours their memory.”

  “So much easier isn’t it, honouring the memory than honouring your wife when she’s alive?”

  “Or husband!”

  “Ah! Yes. I do my best, Thomas. There are lives between us. And I come to you often.”

  “Not often enough, and you refuse to live with me.”

  “Yet I’m here. From time to time I too must be with you. I’d like another whiskey.”

  Then she settles herself on a low sofa.

  “You know I despise this place, Thomas. This house. I hate its deliberate isolation. Its grey stone. Its windows looking out onto that grey lake. I hate everything that’s false about it. The obviousness of your choice. It’s lost, that time, Thomas. Proust is a bore and a thief, like you. With your pathetic scraps of memory—semblance of things past. The squirrel is of the rat family, Thomas. I hate it and its habits. I hate this place.”

  I remain calm. I know this game. It’s solo. She is here. That is my triumph. It is enough. It is not enough. It is, however, all I will have. I can suffer her rage. It rarely lasts for long; it will abate and return. Suddenly she sighs.

  “I’m sorry about the boy. You sounded upset.”

  “I was. I am.”

  “Was there an inquest?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing really. A shocking accident.”

  “What age was he?”

  “Sixteen, almost seventeen.”

  “Christ!”

  She downs her whiskey. I never try to stop her. She knows her limits. I have never seen her drunk.

  “Good God, I recognise that portrait! That’s from the hunting lodge. You didn’t have that the last time I was here.”

  “Which is too long ago.”

  “For God’s sake, Thomas! I owe you nothing. Nothing! And yet still I come to you. I travel by boat, which I hate just slightly less than I hate flying. Always a foul crossing, a brutal sea. I drive through these ugly towns and villages. It’s bungalow hell. What terror do these people have of being too far from the ground? Some peasant lust for the earth? Bungalows everywhere. And grey after grey: it makes the place seem like a mirage. This rubbish about green! For heaven’s sake, how could you spot green through the driving grey rain?”