Authenticity

by Deirdre Madden

  ‘It’s a brick box. It amounts to nothing. I hate my life and I hate myself.’

  The vehemence with which he said this startled her, and at that there was the sound of a car horn from the street below. ‘That’s your cab.’ He gathered up his affairs – she made sure that he had forgotten absolutely nothing – and she saw him down to the front door. There was a tremendous awkwardness to their parting. They both felt they had said the wrong things and now could not bring themselves to say anything more, not even goodbye. The cab driver gave them a sly smile, as though their tense and clumsy reticence on the doorstep was for his benefit but didn’t fool him for a minute: he knew exactly what had been going on when a buttoned-up middle-aged businessman was leaving a young woman’s house at near midnight.

  ‘Dalkey, is it?’

  ‘Dalkey,’ William said. ‘Drive out along by the edge of the sea.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Roderic said. ‘You’re going to go and see some woman you’ve never met before to tell her that you think her husband, whom you met on a park bench, is having some kind of nervous breakdown?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have put it like that, but in essence I suppose, yes, that is what it amounts to,’ Julia said.

  ‘And you’ll tell her as well that he came to see you at your home late at night?’

  ‘Of course not. That would only worry and upset her.’

  ‘I bet it would. Well, seeing as how you’ve told me all this, I can only presume you’re asking me for advice and here it is: leave well alone. Don’t get involved.’

  They were sitting in the kitchen of Julia’s house, having breakfast, and she had just told him everything about William. Although Roderic didn’t say so, she suspected he wasn’t particularly pleased about her having invited William into her flat late at night. ‘If you tell her the whole story it’ll do more harm than good; if you tell her only part of it – about meeting him on the Green – you’ll get caught in all sorts of half truths and evasions. She’ll only become suspicious and then where will you be?’

  ‘I hoped you wouldn’t take this attitude,’ she said. ‘I only want to help.’

  ‘More trouble starts by people wanting to help than in any other way.’

  In the days since William’s visit to her house, the thought of his unhappiness had troubled her greatly. The resolution to do something about it had crystallised the preceding afternoon, in a supermarket, of all places. Standing in the queue, she watched idly as the woman in front of her set her shopping on the moving belt. Julia was aware how much she could extrapolate about the woman’s life simply by looking at her purchases: gin, dog biscuits, a cake in the shape of a football, a bag of carrots already washed and chopped. The man behind the till rang the items up quickly and the woman hurried to put them in bags. To look at her confirmed what Julia had surmised: mid thirties, sober suit and briefcase, wedding ring and a cluster of diamonds. This will never be me, Julia thought; and at that, she suddenly perceived the other woman’s life in all its strangeness and complexity, as though it were some remarkable, extravagant construct. A dream palace, absurdly ornate, all turrets and domes: that was what she was building. Julia saw her painstakingly painting her nails. She saw her paying a telephone bill; saw her collect her son from a football match. All of these actions, no matter how small or banal, contributed to maintaining the strange, elaborate artifice that would someday vanish, as though it had never been. And although the woman’s life was alien to Julia – in many ways she was out of sympathy with the values that underpinned it – there was no denying its immense pathos.

  The man behind the till rang up the total, and the woman took out a tan leather purse. She flicked it open and revealed a neat row of credit and cheque cards on one side, one of which she pulled out and handed to the man. On the other side of the wallet was the inevitable window, with the inevitable photographs, this time of a man and two children. And in that moment, Julia knew what she had to do.

  ‘So you’re going to ring her up,’ Roderic said. ‘What will you say to her in the first instance?’

  ‘I’ll tell her I want to talk to her about her husband.’

  ‘She’ll love that. Married women love it when a woman they don’t know rings up to say that they want to talk to them about their husbands. I can just imagine how mine would have reacted.’

  ‘I’ll tell her I barely know him, that I’m almost a stranger.’

  ‘And she, not unnaturally, will want to know who you are.’

  ‘Roderic, you’re not making this any easier.’

  ‘I’m trying to make it as difficult as possible so that you’ll drop the notion.’

  ‘Well, my mind is made up. I’m going to do it.

  ‘All right then,’ he said, ‘do it. Do it now. Look her up in the phone book; ring her and arrange to meet.’

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘I’ll do just that.’ She stood up and moved to the door.

  ‘Oh, and Julia?’ he called after her.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Good luck.’

  The cat hopped up into the chair she had vacated and Roderic sat listening. Through the closed doors he could hear her voice in the sitting room, but not her exact words, and his heart went out to her. She was well intentioned; he hoped her kindness wouldn’t backfire. As she came back into the kitchen Roderic and the cat turned to look at her, as though both were anxious to hear how she had got on. The effect was comical, but Julia was in no mood to be amused.

  ‘What on earth,’ she said, ‘am I getting into here?’

  *

  Standing in the hall of her home in Dalkey beside the longcase clock, Liz thought the ground had opened in front of her. Her hand was shaking so that she could barely replace the receiver. You don’t know me, but I need to talk to you. It’s about your husband. She had thought never to hear those words again. She went into the drawing-room and crossed to the window. The garden was in its own way as restrained as the room in which she stood: with its formal lines and cropped grass, it bore William’s stamp. Liz would have preferred it to be wilder, for she liked trailing, straggling plants, sweet pea or honeysuckle. But he would have none of it, had objected even to the laburnum tree, because it grew at an angle. He was more overbearing than he knew, she often thought; in the house too, he subtly insisted on certain things: the sombre clock, the old dark furniture, the modern paintings she disliked. On the lawn a blackbird tugged at a tenacious worm. The idea that it could be the old problem back again was almost more than she could bear. She thought of all that had happened in recent weeks and tried to fit it like a template over her memory of that time.

  When it started, all those years ago, she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it, couldn’t define even to herself what was happening. It wasn’t, at first, anything William was doing but rather something he was. He’d been in a dream: she’d gradually realised that he was living in some kind of haze, as though he were sleepwalking through his days. And then when she realised she’d been wrong – he was doing something, the doing and being were linked – she’d chosen not to waken him, she’d chosen to join him in the haze. She’d been like a small child that thinks it cannot be seen because it has its eyes closed. She knew in time that William wanted to be woken up, but she determined not to do it. He wanted to be challenged and caught: that was part of the cruelty.

  And so William would come back late at night.

  ‘Where have you been until now?’

  ‘Where do you think?’ a question she didn’t deign to answer. In time when he arrived back at midnight she would say nothing.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask where I’ve been?’

  ‘No.’

  She suspected the woman worked with William, a suspicion confirmed on meeting Martin. The concerned way in which he’d taken her hand and held it, the way he said, ‘Ah Liz, how are you at all?’ told her everything she didn’t want to know. (‘Fine,’ she’d replied, ‘never better.’) If he knew then Elaine
knew. She brought up his name deliberately next time they met (‘William’s always so thoughtful’) and the cold hostility of her reply (‘Is he? Is he, indeed?’) was final proof.

  He’d become more audacious, had rung the woman from home. Hannah? Is that you? Are you free to talk? One night amongst the contents of his emptied pockets, left on a flat china dish he kept in the bedroom for that express purpose, she found a receipt from a restaurant, Quo Vadis. The name was a nice touch, she almost wished she could have remarked to him on the elegant irony of it. She scanned the listed dishes, despised herself for being able to know which were William’s choices: melon and ham, cannelloni. It became ridiculous, the nadir possibly being the morning when she got into the car, and there was a golden earring, in the shape of a crescent moon.

  It was left then to the other woman, Hannah, to act, and she must have been pretty desperate by that point. What had gone on between her and William before she had taken the final step of ringing Liz and forcing things into the open? You don’t know me but I need to talk to you. It’s about your husband.

  And given that Liz had known so much at that point, she’d been taken aback by her own surprised rage, for in spite of everything it really was as if, until that moment, she hadn’t known. Her sudden fury had shocked William too, who had at least the grace not to say ‘But I thought you knew.’ He arrived home from work that night to be attacked by Liz as soon as he opened the door. She tore at his hair, scratched his face, ‘You pig, you pig,’ and he’d tried to resist her without harming her, but then she was gone, out into the car, a scorching of tyres and over to Elaine and Martin’s house. More tears there: ‘I knew, I knew, I wanted to tell you but I didn’t want you to be hurt.’ But it was Elaine who in the long run had persuaded her to give her marriage another chance; and she took some persuading, again surprising herself at how reluctant she was to forgive William. She finally agreed to stay solely on condition that they would start a family, something he had long resisted. In time, Liz even felt sorry for the woman involved, who had had the misfortune to get tangled up in William’s mysterious pain. It had been so clear that he was acting out something that troubled him deeply, but that he barely understood, and Liz pitied her for having thought that anything could ever come of it. But was the same thing now happening again? In all honesty, she thought not. His present distress seemed of a different order, although she couldn’t understand what was at the back of it.

  Later that day, as Liz led Julia through the hall, past the longcase clock, the mirror and into the dining room, Julia though momentarily of her own flat, and how extraordinarily tatty it must have looked to someone who was used to all this. But she was too preoccupied with how the meeting was to go to take in more than a general sense of comfort and wealth, a dimness of rugs and silver.

  ‘Do please sit down.’

  On the chair facing her now was a small pale woman, about whom there was something soft and hesitant: not at all what Julia had expected, for Liz had been quite sharp when they’d spoken on the phone.

  ‘You’re quite sure we won’t be disturbed?’

  ‘Certain. William’s out at the moment, he won’t be back until much later.’

  ‘Well, then, the first thing I had better say is that I hardly know your husband. To be honest, he’s all but a stranger to me. But I met him recently and he was in a bad way, so much so that I thought it best that those close to him be told about it. Just, you know, in case anything happened.’

  She paused, not knowing quite what to say next.

  ‘Do please continue.’

  And so, as circumspectly as she could, Julia described meeting William recently on Stephen’s Green. She said he had been upset, and she had kept him company for a little while; they’d smoked a cigarette together and then he’d gone home. She omitted to say that she’d gone with him.

  ‘Did he tell you anything about himself?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Oh we talked a bit about our families, our lives,’ she said vaguely. ‘Nothing of any great consequence.’

  Liz stared hard at her. ‘Was this Friday two weeks ago?’ She nodded, and then Liz asked her exactly the same question Julia had asked William: ‘How did you know where to find me?’

  ‘Your husband told me his name and mentioned where he lived. I looked it up in the phone book. He was very upset; please believe me, that’s why I came here today. Truly, he’s a stranger to me still.’

  In all of this, Liz felt there was something that didn’t quite add up, but she didn’t know what it was. She certainly didn’t know what to make of this odd young woman.

  ‘Friday, two weeks ago?’ she said again.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the following Thursday – late at night – can you shed any light on that? I think it was the last day of February.’ At that, the phone rang in the hall. ‘Excuse me, I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  Julia was immensely relieved by the interruption, saving her as it did from lies and evasion, for Thursday was the night William had visited her. Left alone now, she had her first chance to look around at the room in which she was sitting. Everything in it, burnished and glowing, bespoke money. The walls were painted a dark red that set off the gilt of the picture frames, and there was a vase containing a kind of flower Julia had never seen before, each stem bearing a tiny pointed cone of white blossom. Traditional in its overall style, with many antiques, the few modern pieces in the room were carefully chosen and perfectly integrated. On the table beside Liz’s chair was a lamp made of sea urchins, next to it, a row of antique paperweights. They had the air of limpid, luminous creatures dredged up from the bottom of the ocean as the sea urchins, oddly, did not. There was a heavy scent of tuberose: some kind of room perfume, Julia guessed. Although she liked individual elements – the fine rugs, the delicate tables – the overall effect was stifling and oppressive; and suddenly she felt as though the strange dream palace she had imagined recently as a figure for another woman’s life was a real place, and here she was in it.

  She could still hear Liz talking in the hall. Turning her attention to the bookcase beside where she sat she found to her surprise that it contained a remarkably eclectic and interesting library of art books. There were catalogues, monographs, biographies and collections of criticism, covering all periods of art history but with a marked bias to the twentieth century and to contemporary work. So he hadn’t been simply trying to flatter when he said he was interested in art, she thought, as she lifted down a volume on Joseph Cornell and leafed through it. She was not a covetous person – there was nothing else in the room she wanted – but for a moment she did envy William his fine cache of books. Replacing the volume, she stood up to look now at the pictures, which reflected the interests suggested in the bookcase and complemented the traditional nature of the room more harmoniously than she might have expected. There was a large fine nude in red chalk and a small abstract triptych of considerable power. Over by the window was a landscape painted in an expressionistic style, giving an idea of greenness, of vegetation and the heat of a summer’s day rather than an accurate representation of trees and fields. It was slightly slapdash, but not at all bad. It wasn’t an artist whose work she knew, and the signature was just a squiggle. She turned to walk back to where she had been sitting, and was utterly astounded by what she saw. There was no mistaking it: hanging on the wall behind the chair on which she had been sitting was one of Roderic’s paintings.

  She could tell it was not a recent work, both from the colours – blues and greens, much more intense than the pale tones in which he now worked – and from the style, which was looser, less rigorous than it had become of late. It was a fine painting for all that, full of energy and confidence, and she was still standing there, gazing at the fields of colour, when Liz came back into the room.

  ‘I was just admiring your painting.’

  ‘That thing? Do you like it?’

  ‘I do, actually,’ Jul
ia said, offended on Roderic’s behalf by Liz’s tone.

  ‘It’s William’s pride and joy. He bought it years ago, wouldn’t part with it for anything. It means a lot to him for some odd reason.’

  ‘And the other picture?’ she asked, pointing at the landscape over by the window.

  ‘He did that himself.’

  ‘William? William paints?’

  ‘He used to,’ Liz said. ‘He doesn’t have time now.’ She indicated that Julia might sit down again. ‘I think you’ve been straight with me, so I’m going to be straight with you. William had a kind of … collapse, I suppose you could call it, earlier this week. It has been in the offing for some time now – and yes, I had noticed. He’s taken time off work; he’s been to see doctors. He’s getting good care, and I know he’ll be fine in the long run.’

  ‘Good,’ Julia said, and she meant it. ‘Good.’ She stood up, and suddenly Liz knew exactly what it was that she reminded her of. It was a wild animal: not in the sense of her being dangerous or violent, for she was if anything rather a gentle person. But she had about her that otherness of a small creature that one might see in a forest, going about its life without feeling in any way linked to people. There was about her a kind of completeness that didn’t need to explain itself.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Julia said. ‘I’m glad I came. I’m sure now that your husband won’t come to any harm.’ And this remark, which was meant to comfort, had exactly the opposite effect, finally getting through to Liz the message she had come to bring. Only now did she see the danger that William was in, that had been apparent to this stranger, but not to his own wife.

  Chapter Nine

  Even after they had all grown up, and Dennis and Roderic no longer lived at home, they were still expected to return every Saturday for family lunch. Apart from their now partaking of a bottle of Côtes du Rhône during the meal (it didn’t go far amongst six) and Frank occasionally inviting his sons (but not his daughters) to join him in a glass of whiskey afterwards, the proceedings bore, Dennis thought, an eerie similarity to what they had been when they were all children. It didn’t bring out the best in them.