This Is Now

by Ciara Geraghty

  ‘Is everything OK?’ said Cillian.

  ‘Everything is great. I’m in town, buying you a lovely shirt and tie to wear to Joan’s on Monday night. To go with your new cufflinks, of course. What time is she expecting us?’

  Joan, on hearing that Stella was visiting, had insisted that Cillian take some time off work to bring her over for dinner.

  ‘Ah, you’re very good, Stella, but you don’t have to trouble yourself. I have shirts. And ties.’

  ‘Do you? You never seem to wear them.’

  ‘I do.’ Only when it was absolutely essential. Funerals and weddings, in the main.

  She’d barely been here for twenty-four hours. It felt longer. Cillian felt shabby, thinking that. It was the case. He was flat out. And she was still vague about when she might leave. He thought he could relax a bit more if there was a departure date.

  Up until her arrival at his house, Cillian would have said he’d known Stella for a few months. They were friends. He was pretty sure he had never called her his girlfriend. And he didn’t think Stella would refer to him as her boyfriend. He was too old to be anybody’s boyfriend.

  Except, now, it seemed he was. Had been for a year.

  Somewhere along this train of thought, while Stella was talking ‘ ... and I said to Selene that if Eddie’s mother didn’t want to wear the cerise pink hat to the wedding, then ...’ it came to Cillian. Where he had seen a drawing like the one in Lenny’s kitchen.

  ‘Sorry, Stella, I have to go,’ said Cillian.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ll see you later.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Will you ring me?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ He hung up before she could say anything else. Went into Contacts, found her. Her phone went straight to voicemail.

  Martha Wilder. Leave a message.

  Cillian drove back to the station and was sitting at his desk with a mug of coffee when she arrived. Mick held the office door open and was about to motion her inside when she strode right past him. Immediately, the office seemed smaller. Dingier.

  ‘Nice digs,’ she said, looking around. The room housed a splintering wooden desk, a plastic chair, a rusting ceiling fan, an ailing potted plant and a small square window – open – that looked onto a small square yard filled with wheelie bins, weeds and one menacing-looking crow.

  Cillian smiled. ‘I would have got the Febreze out if I’d known you were coming.’

  Martha opened an enormous handbag, rummaged arm-deep in its depths. ‘I brought the drawing you mentioned in your voicemail. It’s in here somewhere.’

  ‘I only meant you to send me a photograph of it.’

  ‘You piqued my curiosity,’ she said. He nodded. She had always been curious. He supposed that’s what had made her so good at her job.

  ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘I needed a distraction. I’m writing a brochure for a health food company and it’s making me queasy.’ She pulled a frame from her bag, set it on the table between them.

  Cillian studied it. While it was different to the one in Lenny’s kitchen, there were similarities. This one used charcoal too. And the woman. The nurse. He was pretty sure that she was the same woman. In Martha’s one, the artist had drawn only her face, catching her beauty in the delicate slant of her cheekbones, the fine line of her jaw. Cillian moved his face closer to the drawing. In her eyes, he thought he could see a reflection of snow. A field of snow. At the edge, a young man, lying on his back. No more than a boy really. A boy in a soldier’s uniform.

  ‘It’s called I See You,’ said Martha, sitting on the chair on the other side of his desk. ‘It was a gift from Stan,’ she said. ‘I mean Dan.’ She smirked and he nodded, conceding the jibe.

  ‘He gave it to me when he left. I told him it wasn’t traditional for people to give each other their possessions when they split up but he insisted.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cillian, looking up. ‘I didn’t know that you’d split up.’

  ‘Yeah, marriage was another of those considered decisions I made when I was on the sauce.’ Martha grinned a sudden, unexpected grin and Cillian grinned back, as if it was contagious, which, in fairness, it was.

  ‘This one is only a print. Dan says the original is worth a small fortune which, for ordinary people, is probably fairly sizeable.’

  Cillian took out his phone and showed Martha the photograph he had taken earlier in Lenny’s kitchen. ‘What do you think of that?’ he asked. She took the phone from him, brushing her fingers against his in the transaction, and he sat a little straighter, crossed his arms and felt somewhat foolish, although he couldn’t say exactly why. Martha peered at the screen. The bruises on her face were not as vivid as before although the array of their colours was vast, like autumn leaves. Her skin, while pale, held no trace of the grey of the previous day. But her skin had always been pale without make-up.

  He thought about her comment, When I was on the sauce. She had piqued his curiosity with that. Although she had always piqued his curiosity.

  Strands of her hair lifted in a sudden breeze through the window. They blew against his face and he brushed them away.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Martha, setting the phone on the desk between them. ‘It runs amok if I don’t restrain it.’ She gathered her hair in both hands so that, for a moment, her neck was exposed and Cillian was reminded of its slender length.

  She pushed as much of her hair as she could fit down the back of her jacket.

  She handed Cillian his phone. ‘That’s interesting,’ she said.

  ‘It looks like the same woman, doesn’t it?’ said Cillian. ‘In both of the drawings.’

  Martha nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘Do you think they were drawn by the same artist?’

  Martha considered this. ‘If that’s the case, it’s quite a find, Cillian.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nobody knows who the artist is. He – or she, but it’s broadly believed to be a he – drew ten of these, all in charcoal, apart from one which is a charcoal drawing of a house over a shop, but with a vase in the window, full of flowers that are painted this really vivid red. That’s the only one that doesn’t feature the woman, the nurse. Six of the drawings are privately owned and four are in art galleries. I mean international galleries. MoMA, Guggenheim; the big guns. If what you’ve got there is the genuine article,’ she nodded towards his phone, ‘then this is a big story. Where did you get it?’

  Cillian shook his head. ‘I can’t say right now.’

  ‘I have Jelly Babies in my handbag.’

  Cillian laughed. Martha had found it amusing, he remembered. His penchant for the people-shaped jellies. ‘You’re too tall for Jelly Babies,’ she had said.

  ‘Is anything known about the artist?’

  Martha shook her head. ‘Not really. There’s speculation of course. That maybe he’s German. That maybe he fought in the Second World War. And that he lives – or lived, more likely – in Ireland after the war.’

  Cillian thought about Tobias Hartmann. According to the system, he was a German national, although he had lived in Ireland for decades. Not quite old enough to have fought in the Second World War. He would have been only fourteen when the war ended.

  ‘You look like you’re in pain,’ said Martha. ‘Are you thinking thoughts?’

  ‘Trying to.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘How’s Tara doing?’ he asked.

  Martha shook her head. ‘I was in earlier. I brought the FTSE 100 index but even that didn’t rouse her.’

  ‘She just needs some time,’ said Cillian.

  ‘You’re not going to say something like, Time is a great healer, are you?’

  Cillian shook his head, grinning. ‘I know how you feel about the humble cliché.’

  Martha stood up.

  Cillian stood too, looked at her. ‘Listen, Martha, this stuff we were talking about, it’s ...’
/>   Martha nodded. ‘I know. Top secret. I won’t say a word about any of it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Cillian. Even though neither of them owed the other anything anymore, he knew he could trust her on this. There were some things you just knew.

  There was a knock on the office door and the Super barged in. ‘I’m not disturbing yiz, am I?’ he barked.

  Martha picked up the framed drawing from Cillian’s desk, slid it inside her bag. ‘I’d better let you get back to crime-busting,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, Martha Wilder, how are you?’ the Super roared at her then. ‘My ex-wife is a big fan of yours. That piece about the custody battle over the boxsets in particular.’

  ‘I hope it was helpful?’ said Martha.

  ‘Well, now, I didn’t read it, obviously. I’m more a sports pages kind of a bloke. I just happened to glance at the article, in the dentist waiting room the other day. Molars, bane of the existence. Anyway, your woman, the ex, she took the lot. Even Fargo and she feckin’ hates the Coen brothers.’

  Cillian stood up. ‘I’ll see Martha out, boss. Then I’ll be in to you, OK?’

  They walked towards the front door of the station. At the entrance, Cillian stopped. ‘Thanks for your help, Martha.’

  ‘Buy me a family bag of Maltesers and we’ll say no more about it.’

  ‘So Wilder’s back on the scene, wha’?’ said the Super when Cillian returned inside. He was a notorious gossip, as well as a keen, if covert, reader of women’s magazines.

  ‘She’s helping us with our enquiries,’ he said.

  The Super smirked. ‘Is that what we’re calling it these days?’

  Cillian ignored him, told him instead about Lenny and the stolen jeep and his visit to Lenny’s house that morning. He didn’t mention the drawing on the cork board. He wasn’t sure where he was going with that. Probably nowhere. Still, it wouldn’t do any harm to call in to Mr Hartmann’s nursing home. Take a look through his stuff. If he was the artist, there might be something there. Drafts or sketches. And if that was the case, then maybe he kept a drawing in his safety deposit box at the bank. An insurance policy. Or maybe he kept it for plain old sentiment? Jimmy or Lenny could have taken it along with the money and Lenny was just the sort of dope who would keep it.

  It was a long shot.

  ‘So that’s it?’ said the Super. ‘All the tax-payers’ money you earn and that’s all you’ve come up with so far?’

  Cillian nodded. ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘No wonder Wilder dumped you,’ said the Super, turning and heading down the corridor.

  His office still smelled of her. That peculiar mix of tangy lemon and woody tobacco and mint. He left the door open and pushed the window as wide as it would go but her scent lingered and it was difficult to concentrate, the way it moved around him, like pieces of their past, snippets of their nights. Their days. Not all of their days had been bad. Some of them had been pretty good.

  He had liked Martha Wilder pretty much from the start. And then, he had loved her.

  It happened one day. One ordinary day. It wasn’t a big thing in the end. No grand event, like the first time they had sex – after their first date, just inside the front door of her apartment. Or when they went on their first mini-break together – Belfast. Martha wanted to see the port. ‘I love ports. The stink off them. Anything could happen in a port.’ Cillian had convinced her to visit the Giant’s Causeway which she’d declared ‘too fucken beautiful’.

  ‘You’re too fucken beautiful,’ he’d told her that day as the light from the lowering sun glanced through her hair, setting it on fire in a way she would have called odious, had she known. He’d said it in an Ian Paisley voice to take the weight out of it. And he knew it would make her laugh, his Ian Paisley impression. She laughed and even though he loved her laugh – a low rumble, like thunder – it didn’t happen then. Not right then. She walked out to where the causeway met the sea, scooped water into her cupped hands and threw it over him. ‘I think we should get you back to the hotel,’ she said. ‘Get you out of those wet clothes.’

  Oh, the sex. Glorious was not a word that Cillian Larkin often had cause to employ but glorious it was just the same. She tasted of cigarettes and wine and even though he neither smoked nor drank wine, he did not seem able to get enough of her. Of the taste of her, the smell of her skin, the weight of her hair, slipping like rope through his fingers. The sound she made when she came. Like someone trying not to make a sound. There was something contained about her. Potent.

  And yet it was not this part of their relationship that made him fall in love with her in the end.

  It turned out to be the day she bought the sofa. That great, squashy sofa that was too big for her apartment but she bought it anyway.

  ‘I’ll come with you, if you like,’ he’d offered. He was supposed to be going to a conference. Instead, he was asking a woman if he could go sofa shopping with her.

  He hated shopping.

  ‘OK,’ said Martha. ‘But only if you agree not to voice any opinions on my choice of sofa.’

  ‘I don’t generally have opinions on sofas, to be honest,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t even describe mine if you asked.’

  ‘I didn’t ask.’

  ‘I think it’s blue.’

  ‘It’s green.’

  ‘I won’t say a word.’

  ‘And you’ll throw in lunch, like you said?’

  ‘When did I say that?’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Someplace that serves chips and wine?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘OK then. I’ve to file some copy first so don’t distract me for an hour.’

  He made coffee in her kitchen, poured some into the Dalek mug he had bought for her last Christmas. She had bought him the exact same one. It said, Make me tea or I will exterminate you. No sugar, no milk, leave the teabag in. He carried it into her office, set it on her desk beside the mousepad and left, closing the door quietly behind him. He texted his boss.

  Can’t make conference. Something important came up.

  He read the paper at the kitchen table, which was where he always sat when he was in her apartment, on a comfortable chair, with a cushioned seat and armrests. He always sat on this particular chair, although he had not made a conscious decision in this regard. Had not declared it his when he had first sat on it, six months earlier. Martha always sat on the opposite side of the table. Perhaps it was their version of a commitment, in a relationship where work came first for both of them.

  ‘I love my job,’ she’d told him, early on. There was a faint warning in her tone.

  ‘I love mine.’

  ‘Good,’ she’d said.

  A week could go by without them seeing each other because of work commitments. And then they’d see each other and Cillian would come away from her wondering how he could have let a week go by. Gradually, the gaps shortened and the time they spent together lengthened. Neither of them had requested this. It hadn’t been a discussion. But it had happened nonetheless.

  The sound of her fingers tapping against the keys of her laptop was familiar. He realised he liked it. Something quietly insistent about it.

  The sofa had to be squashy. And red. And velvet. ‘I want it to be like the one in the Gryffindor common room,’ she explained to the man in the furniture shop on Capel Street. Her tone was matter-of-fact, like there was nothing odd about a woman – a grown-up – with a serious job, a woman who had interviewed criminals and got them to admit to things they had denied in courtrooms, a woman who sometimes got texts from the leader of the opposition – Is a pint out of the question? – to want the same couch that Harry, Ron and Hermione squabbled on during their formative years at Hogwarts. The man – who had come out of the shop and greeted them when he noticed them peering in the window – nodded and said, ‘I have just the thing,’ as if he were no stranger to the seating preferences of an avid Potter fan.

  ‘Are you Oliver Cassidy?’ Martha
asked, nodding towards the sign above the shop door. She always wanted to know who was who, Cillian noticed.

  ‘He was my father, I’m called after him,’ said the man, smiling as if he’d just remembered something and the memory was a good one. ‘He died five years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Martha and the man shook his head like he disagreed. ‘Ah, he had a good innings, as he’d say himself. And a good life, for the most part.’

  The sofa fulfilled all Martha’s criteria, although no measuring tape was needed to work out that it was too big for her apartment, a bald fact that Cillian made no reference to. Martha appeared diminutive when she sat on it.

  ‘Why don’t you take your shoes off and put your feet up?’ Oliver Cassidy suggested. ‘Take your coat off too. I find it’s best to sit on a couch the same way as you would at home. You’ll get a better feel for it, yes?’

  Martha – who disliked getting her size sevens out in public – surprised Cillian by taking the man up on his suggestion.

  ‘And you, sir?’ He turned to Cillian, gestured towards the other end of the sofa. ‘Would you care to try?’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s not for—’

  ‘It’s really comfortable, Cillian. Have a go,’ said Martha.

  He sat down at the other end.

  ‘Put your feet up, sir, like your wife here.’ Oliver nodded towards Martha with a smile across his broad face as if she were someone he’d known for years and hugely approved of.

  The word wife settled on Cillian in a not unpleasant manner. He was surprised Martha hadn’t picked Oliver up on it. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him. He kicked off his runners and lifted his legs onto the couch. His feet found hers and he trapped one of them between his and massaged her toes. She caught his eye and scowled but did not pull her foot out of his reach. Oliver disappeared into a room at the back of the shop, telling them not to rush into a decision, warning them that a purchase of a sofa was a long-term commitment, they should consider every aspect, put themselves in different positions, wonder if they could see themselves sitting there in ten years’ time, which was the length of the guarantee, even though the sofa would last much longer than that, he assured them.