Authenticity

by Deirdre Madden

  ‘Open the wine, will you, Maeve?’ Frank said. She removed the foil from the neck of the bottle, then handed it silently with the corkscrew to Roderic, who without comment opened it. Frank was busy carving.

  Sinéad, setting a dish of carrots on the table, chided her younger son gently for his scuffed shoes and the paint on his leather jacket. ‘You should wear nice clothes. Don’t you have any nice clothes?’

  ‘I didn’t have time to change, I was working.’

  ‘But you don’t teach on a Saturday.’

  ‘I mean, I was in the studio.’

  ‘Oh. Well, you could at least take your jacket off while you’re at table.’

  As he did so and went to hang it over the back of his chair, a book fell out of the pocket. Cliona bent down and picked it up, remarking as she handed it to him, ‘Art as Art. What a silly title. What does it mean?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve read it,’ he said, taking it from her and replacing it in his jacket pocket ‘I wanted to ask you Mum, would you mind if I only came to lunch every other Saturday?’ He could see by her face that she would: that she’d mind very much. ‘It’s just that I have so little time for my own work, and it breaks up one of only two free days … Oh well, it was just a thought’

  ‘This looks delicious, Mum,’ Cliona said.

  ‘Thank you, dear. I hope you all enjoy it.’

  ‘You look done in, Roderic,’ Frank said, sending plates of beef up the table. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘I’m just very busy these days, what with the job and then my own work, that’s all.’

  ‘What time did you get to bed last night?’ his mother asked.

  ‘I really don’t remember,’ he replied looking rather irritated, as well he might, Dennis thought, being asked such questions at the age of twenty-two.

  ‘What was her name?’ Maeve said slyly.

  Roderic thought about this for a moment and decided to stir the pot. ‘To tell you the truth, I can’t quite remember. I think she said it was Beth, but I couldn’t swear to it.’

  ‘Roderic!’ Sinéad exclaimed, genuinely shocked. ‘Frank, don’t laugh. What sort of talk is this at all?’

  ‘Well, seeing as how you’re all so fascinated with my life,’ he said, uncharacteristically ratty, ‘let me fill you in. I don’t remember what time I got to bed last night, but do know I was in the studio and painting by half eight this morning. I’m here now. This afternoon I’m going to help Tony and Jim to clean the flat. I’m going to go to the launderette and then I’m going to buy in a load of groceries for the week. After that, I’m going to correct twenty-seven essays by twenty-seven teenagers on the difference between Impressionism and post-Impressionism, in not one of which, I can tell you now, will there be a single original thought. After all that, if he will be so good as to join me, I’m going to drag myself down to the pub and have a few pints with Dennis. Tomorrow I’ll spend in the studio, and Monday I’ll be back in the classroom. Have you all got that? Any questions? May I now get on with eating my lunch?’

  Dennis had seen his brother by chance in town one day during the week. He was stopped at the traffic lights in Merrion Square when he noticed Roderic ahead of him, at the gates of the National Gallery ushering a class of uniformed schoolgirls back on to a coach. Dennis had tooted the car horn in recognition before he thought better of it; thought Roderic might be embarrassed by this show of sibling affection when he was in the presence of his pupils. Not a bit of it. Clearly delighted, he lifted his hand to Dennis, then got on to the coach and evidently said to the girls, ‘That’s my brother in the blue car, give him a wave,’ for as the traffic lights changed, and Dennis drove past the coach, every window was a forest of frantic, waving hands. Some of the girls blew him teasing kisses. The effect was hilarious and made Dennis, shy, staid Dennis, feel famous and loved, and he laughed out loud alone in the car for sheer pleasure.

  He told Roderic in the pub on Saturday night how much this little encounter had entertained him. ‘I love the kids,’ he said in reply, ‘I absolutely love them. Until you’ve sat in a darkened room with a class of fourteen-year-old girls, showing them slides of the Sistine Chapel, you haven’t lived.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear things are going well,’ Dennis said. ‘I sort of got a different impression over lunch.’

  ‘Yes and no. It’s hard to say.’

  After he graduated from art college, Roderic took a teaching qualification and then applied for a job in the school in south Dublin where both Cliona and Maeve had been pupils. He had secured a year’s contract and this was how he planned to earn his living, devoting his free time to his painting. In theory it had sounded fine. In practice he was frustrated by having much less space and energy for his painting than he had expected would be the case. On top of that, he now told Dennis, he was beginning to realise that he had made a serious mistake at the start of the academic year by letting it be known – or rather, by not actively concealing the fact – that there was other work, that he was privately dedicated to painting. It surprised then unnerved and irritated him as the months passed, to notice the subtle and insidious way this was held against him. He was well organised, he knew, hardworking and punctual, but on the rare occasions when he did overlook or forget something, little jokes would be made about ‘our dreamy artist, with his head in the clouds’ that had amused him until he came to realise the criticism implicit in them. The headmistress would go out of her way to suggest that exceptions were being made for him, while Roderic thought the exact opposite was true: that it was incumbent upon him to reach higher standards than were expected of the other teachers, simply to counter the unspoken implication that he didn’t pull his weight and wasn’t fully committed to the job. He felt, too, that his considerable popularity with the pupils was also resented and silently held against him. All of this was wearing him down, he said to Dennis.

  ‘It’s the whole ethos,’ he added. ‘It’s lots of little things. And it’s the staffroom, not the classroom. Let me give you an example: Rory Wilson, one of the maths teachers. Nice man, not the worst in there, not by a long way. I was busy at break time the other day so I took a mug of tea back up the art department, as I didn’t have time to drink it in the staffroom. Two days later Rory comes to me and says, “Roderic, I think you have my mug. It’s got a rabbit on it. Do you think you could bring it back down here some time?”’ Roderic put his head in his hands. This is a grown man, Dennis, a man of thirty-five. He has an honours degree from Trinity in maths, and he’s fretting about his rabbit mug. I mean, can you believe it? I lay awake that night thinking, if I stay in this job, will that be me when I’m his age?’

  ‘So are you thinking then that you might not apply for the permanent post when it comes up, as you’d been planning to do?’

  ‘God, yes, I’ll be putting in for that all right, Dennis. I mean, this is my job now. It’s only the first year, after all. Things will settle down, it’s bound to get better.’

  Dennis nodded his head, but looked doubtful. They each took a sip of their pints and fell silent.

  Just at that moment Roderic happened to glance up as a young woman turned away from the bar counter with two glasses in her hand.

  ‘Why hello, Aideen.’

  ‘Mr Kennedy! Oh shit!’

  He ignored this odd, rude greeting and smiled at her. She was wearing a short pale blue woollen dress, trimmed with marabou at the neck. Her eyes were sooty with mascara, her lips painted a dramatic film-star red. All of this made her look absurdly young, although clearly she had intended it to have exactly the opposite effect. ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ Roderic said. ‘You’re not on your own?’ And he indicated the two glasses.

  ‘I’m with Colette. She’s sitting over there,’ she said, pointing across the bar.

  ‘Why don’t you join us? Go over and fetch her; I’ll mind your drink. Two of my pupils,’ he explained to Dennis after she had gone. ‘I think they’re a bit embarrassed at bumping into one of their teachers i
n the pub.’

  ‘How old are they?’ Dennis asked as he watched them cross the room towards where the brothers were sitting.

  ‘Fourteen, fifteen, at the most. Hello, Colette. What a surprise. This is my brother, Dennis, sit in there beside him, have you room?’ They settled in at the table together.

  Colette, like Aideen, was conspicuously dressed up and made up; she looked even younger than her friend. They fluttered and giggled. Together they looked like small coloured birds from a tropical rainforest, and Roderic admired their finery. ‘I like your dress; the feathers are great. Don’t they tickle, though?’ he asked. ‘Are you going dancing afterwards? Where?’ They chatted to him and gradually relaxed, but were shy of Dennis, who was shy of them. He tried to imagine standing before twenty-five such girls, teaching them art – teaching them anything – and felt weak even at the thought of such an ordeal. He could see how attractive and engaging they found Roderic, as they stared at him with a somewhat hypnotised fascination.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Mr Kennedy? Somebody told me that you were a real painter, not just a teacher, that you have a studio and everything. Is that true?’

  ‘It is, but I don’t get to do as much of my own work as I’d like to. I’m too busy teaching you lot.’

  ‘I’d love to see that, I mean a real artist’s studio,’ said Colette, who was slightly more forward than Aideen. ‘Do you think you might take us and show us some day?’

  ‘Probably not,’ he said frankly, ‘but you’ve just given me a good idea. I have some friends who are part of an artists’ co-operative in town. About six of them have studios in the one building, and they’re having an open day in about a month’s time. Maybe I could arrange to take your class along; you’d get to see all sorts of different work, get to talk to the painters. Would you like that?’ They nodded their consent. He asked them if they had enjoyed the gallery the other day, and which of the paintings they had particularly liked.

  ‘This is very pleasant,’ he said eventually. ‘Wasn’t it lucky that it was me you met, rather than one of the other teachers?’

  ‘God, yes,’ Aideen said. ‘Mr O’Hara,’ and they both giggled.

  ‘Or Miss Davis,’ Colette suggested and they exploded into laughter.

  Roderic bit his lip and frowned. ‘I can’t imagine Miss Davis is a great woman for the pub,’ he said, ‘although then again, you never know. After all,’ he added reasonably, ‘I certainly never expected to see you here.’

  They chatted for a short while more, then he looked at his watch and said, ‘I think you should maybe be on your way. It’s your round next and Dennis usually moves on to shorts at this stage in the evening, so it could cost you dear.’ They parted in good spirits, and Dennis was surprised when Roderic almost immediately fell into a gloom, a brown study.

  ‘You handled that very well.’

  ‘No I didn’t. I should have taken their beer off them and set them on the street as soon as I saw them.’

  ‘They’d only have said, “Sod you,” and gone straight off to the pub up the road.’

  ‘That argument would never stand up in a disciplinary hearing,’ Roderic said, ‘which doesn’t mean to say that you’re not absolutely right. And what if some other member of staff had walked in and seen me, apparently sitting drinking with a couple of fourteen-year-old pupils? That would have looked nice.’

  ‘I never thought of that,’ Dennis confessed.

  ‘Well, I did. I was thinking of nothing else the whole time that I was talking to them. And yet you can see, they’re not a bit streetwise, that pair. I made a snap decision that the best, the safest place for them was to sit here with us. I’m a hopeless disciplinarian. Absolutely hopeless.’ They sat in silence for a few more minutes. ‘They’re sweet kids, though, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘You couldn’t not like them.’ He covered his face with his hands and started to laugh. ‘God, I almost let the side down when they mentioned Miss Davis. I was in kinks, Dennis, absolute kinks, I didn’t think I was going to be able to hold it in. You’d have to know the woman. I’d say the last time Vivian Davis was in a pub the Book of Kells had just come out in hardback.

  ‘By the way,’ he went on, ‘there’s a call I must make. Do you know where the phone is in this pub?’ Dennis said that it was in the lobby between the door of the lounge and the front door of the building. ‘Won’t be a minute.’ As Roderic went out he collided with one of two women who were coming into the pub together. Both Roderic and the woman were moving at speed, and they made full impact, head on, from shoulder to knee. ‘Oh, excuse me!’ Roderic said as they extricated themselves from each other. ‘I do beg your pardon.’ But he had clearly enjoyed the accident and gave the woman a look and a lingering smile that told her so before continuing on out to the phone.

  The two women stood there for a moment, then collapsed into giggles. They were standing right beside Dennis, who had observed all of this. ‘Oh, I liked that,’ said the woman with whom Roderic had collided. ‘I’ve had sex that wasn’t anywhere near as good as that. I wonder who he is?’ and she peered at the frosted glass of the door behind which he had disappeared. Still laughing, the two women proceeded through the lounge and into the public bar.

  He felt that Roderic would be flattered and amused to hear what had happened, but when he came back Dennis was too shy and embarrassed to tell him. Roderic himself made no reference to the women, although Dennis noticed how his eyes scanned the room looking for them.

  ‘To get back to what we were talking about earlier: I have to actually do an interview for this job, and I wondered if you could lend me a tie?’

  ‘You mean to say you don’t have one?’

  ‘I do. I have at least two, but I can’t find one of them, and the other one isn’t up to much.’ Dennis could imagine the sorry shred of fabric behind this euphemism.

  ‘Absolutely no problem,’ he said. ‘I can certainly lend you a tie.’

  *

  He could have gone to a shop, Roderic thought, and not had as good a choice. There were ties of every imaginable colour and texture. Watched by Dennis, who was sitting on the end of his own bed, he selected one in plain dark green silk and moved to the mirror to experiment in tying it.

  ‘Is anyone else in line for this job?’

  ‘I think three others have been called for interview. They couldn’t just give it to me, the permanent contract, they have to advertise it, go through the formalities, you know.’

  Dennis paused before risking the next question. ‘And what if you don’t get it?’ He was dismayed to see that this possibility hadn’t even crossed Roderic’s mind.

  ‘What are you on about? It’s my job.’

  ‘Yes, but they don’t have to give it to you, do they?’

  ‘They have no reason not to.’ He was clearly baffled by Dennis’s line of questioning. ‘I’ve put in a good year, worked like a horse. Everyone says how much the girls’ work has picked up, that I’ve transformed the department. Even the other art teachers would credit me with that.’

  ‘But in principle, they would be within their rights to give the contract to someone else.’

  ‘In principle, yes,’ he conceded, with great reluctance, ‘but I mean, God, do you really think … ?’

  *

  When he arrived at his parents’ house the following Saturday, Roderic was already there, sitting alone in the drawing-room. From his inside jacket pocket he took a letter, and handed it to Dennis.

  Dear Mr Kennedy,

  I regret to inform you that it has been decided not to offer you a permanent contract. May I take this opportunity to thank you for your efforts in the course of the past year, and to wish you every success in your future career.

  Yours truly,

  B. Nolan

  ‘Efforts,’ Roderic said, as Dennis handed the letter back to him. ‘Efforts!’

  At that, Cliona glanced into the room. ‘Oh hello Dennis, I don’t think Mum knows you’re here. I’ll tell her she can serve up.’r />
  ‘This,’ Roderic said when they were alone again, and he held up the letter, ‘was in my pigeon-hole in the staffroom. The headmistress didn’t even have the courage to tell me to my face. So I went straight to her office and asked why it had “been decided” not to offer me the post. She said they felt that for various reasons – I liked that, various reasons – it was felt that I wasn’t fully committed to my teaching work. I told her she knew that wasn’t true. So then she said, “You’re pushing me to this: you have a bad attitude to the pupils. You over-identify with them, you’re too keen to be liked.” I said, “You know that isn’t true either. I don’t see the need to be disliked by them to bring out the best of which they’re capable; and that’s another thing entirely from wanting to be liked.” She told me to stop contradicting her. I asked her what I was going to live on. She said she had no idea, and that it wasn’t her concern. Then she had the nerve to say that she thought I would be glad, because it would give me time for other things in which I was interested. And then she said she was busy and would I go, and so I did.’

  ‘And what has the reaction been generally in the school?’

  ‘The girls are up in arms. My two drinking companions came to me in floods of tears, they thought it might have something to do with them. Quite a few of the other teachers have come to me privately to say they think that it’s outrageous, and I’ve been treated disgracefully and the head and the governors should be ashamed, and so on and so forth. For of course none of it will make a blind bit of difference. No one will speak up for me in public or do anything to have me reinstated, because they’re afraid for their own skins. Fear and power, that’s what so much of what goes on in the workplace comes down to, Dennis. I’ve learned that in the past year, if nothing else. And here comes the cherry on the cake: Tony announced yesterday that he’s going to buy a house. Jim is moving in with Moira, so that’s that happy home blown to the four winds. I don’t even know where I’m going to live come the autumn.’ Down the hall, they could hear the voices of their sisters and mother. ‘Jesus, Dennis, I’ve lost my job!’ and he spoke as if he was only now realising the enormity of what had happened. ‘I’ve lost my job; what am I going to do?’