Authenticity

by Deirdre Madden

  I get on well with everyone here except Mauro. As Elsa remarked the other day in her grammatically perfect but heavily accented English, ‘I think we are all developing a Mauro complex.’ Late that night she had a tremendous row with him. I’m not sure what it was about, but I can make an educated guess. She wouldn’t tell me but I notice that she hasn’t had a good word to say about him since then. He’s well off: his father, she says, is a wealthy industrialist who has funded Mauro on this particular little flight of fancy for the past couple of years. When the novelty wears off, she says, his father will set him up in something else, and he’ll hold artists in contempt for the rest of his life. I think the end can’t be too long in coming: terminal boredom has already set in. I told Elsa I don’t think he’ll last the whole of his six-month stay. He isn’t doing a stroke and there really is nothing else to do here all day except work, as we’re out in the middle of the fields. He makes no secret of the fact that he thinks us all dull dogs because we spend our days closed away in our studios.

  Anyway, enough about him. Elsa is a tremendously fine artist. I’ve learned ever such a lot from talking to her. She works on lithographs, something I never enjoyed when I did it at college, but she has let me spend some time at the stone with her and has taught me a lot about the technique. There’s a great generosity of spirit in the people here. We’ve all been into each other’s studios at this stage, and have all (again, with the exception of Mauro) done enough work to give each other a sense of what it is we’re about.

  Gina is the exact opposite of Mauro, if anything a bit fanatical. She has the studio beside mine, and when I wake in the mornings (and I wake early, because of the light) more likely than not I hear the sound of her chisel on stone. I often fall asleep at night to the same sound, because she frequently goes back to her studio after dinner and works again. The rest of us, I must confess, either walk down to the little bar in the village for a beer, or else we sit around on the terrace or in the common room drinking red wine and talking until all hours. I can’t really communicate with her because of the language barrier, but she doesn’t talk much to anyone really, she’s just not a verbal person. The only thing she can say in English is ‘I love stone’, and she knows the words granite, marble and so on. She showed me a portfolio of photographs of sculptures, and they were remarkable. She can make stone liquid, can make it flow down the side of a table, she can make it appear soft as a fleece. As Ray said with some humility after he’d seen her work, ‘If I could do what Gina can do, I think I’d spend all my time closed away too, I wouldn’t ever want to do anything except work.’

  Because the sad fact is that Ray isn’t a very good artist. He’s a great guy, and we get on like a house on fire, but I can’t let my feelings sway my judgement as far as work goes. I’m even cold enough to say it interests me to see how bad an artist he is. I was so disappointed the first time I went to his studio. He works in collage, but it really has nothing going for it: no energy, no ideas, even his sense of design is weak. When you look at it you’re aware that it’s just bits of paper stuck together. That is of course technically what collage is, I know, but the end result should be so much more than that, just as painting is something more than paint and canvas. What he does is all too tightly controlled and too small He’s trying to work on a bigger scale but doesn’t feel comfortable with it. He knows the work isn’t good enough, he keeps saying that he needs to relax more into it, and he’s exactly right, but he doesn’t seem to be able to do it. Every artist wants to do better work: you’re always pushing against your own limits, and I know myself from bad times what it’s like when you know it’s not good enough – not good at all – and there seems to be no way through. Yet you do also know when you’re on the right track. He has, he says, good ideas, but he can never seem to push them through to any satisfactory degree. And yet the odd thing is, he’s a tremendously dedicated artist. I mean, he’s a real artist, even if he is a bad one. I think if someone forced Ray to stop working he wouldn’t be able to go on living, he needs to be doing it.

  I’ve been thinking about this whole question a lot since I met him. One always tends to assume that someone who is an artist, a real, driven, anointed artist, is also a good artist, but that may not always be the case. There are people of great technical ability but no vision: they’re not really artists, but they pass as such. Poor Ray. I have a horrible feeling that no matter how hard he tries he’s never going to get any better. Perhaps I’m wrong. I hope I am, and maybe after years of effort he’ll break through and do something utterly original and beautiful.

  Why am I telling you all this? I know it can’t interest you. I’m just thinking out loud. I don’t want to talk to anyone here about it in case it seems underhand or uncharitable to Ray, but it has been on my mind a lot lately.

  Enclosed are a couple of photographs – you might think to show them to the family, although whether or not they’ll be interested is anyone’s guess. Karl took them yesterday and got them developed when he was in town today. The first one was taken in my studio. Left to right, Gina, Elsa, the dreaded Mauro, yours truly, Enzo and Ray. Looking at this picture, you will not be surprised to learn that my nickname here is Gulliver (as he was perceived on his Lilliputian travels rather than in his Brobdingnagian phase). The second photo was taken on the terrace where we have dinner. You’ll recognise who’s who from the first picture, apart from the two people sitting under the tree who were just there for the evening. The man is an old friend of Elsa’s from Turin, whose name I must say I’ve forgotten already. He’s an expert in fresco restoration and is overseeing a project in a church near here. The woman beside him is Marta, a colleague of his. She speaks good English and I enjoyed her company. It was nice to have some new faces around the table. We arranged that Elsa and I would go out to the church tomorrow to see them, and I’m pleased and excited about that. I’ve never seen a fresco being restored before. They both made a good contribution to the evening, which went on until all hours.

  I feel tremendously at home here, and so contented; I think I could stay for ever. You wouldn’t ever think of coming over to live here? I really believe at the moment that the only thing I would miss if I never went back to Ireland would be the odd pint and your good self.

  Best love,

  Your brother,

  Roderic.

  Dear Dennis,

  A quick postcard, to congratulate you. I know how much this promotion means for you and I am DELIGHTED it came through. Ray was in the common room reading his post when I received your letter. I said to him, ‘I think I’m going to cry. I’ve got everything I want and I don’t think I’ll ever be so happy again in my whole life.’ (To which Ray replied, ‘That’s what Scott Fitzgerald said, and look what happened to him.’) Anyway, I am thrilled for you. Congratulations again, and I’ll write a real letter soon.

  Best love,

  R.

  Dear Dennis,

  I’m afraid this isn’t going to be particularly cheerful, so please bear with me. I’ve been a bit pulled down during this past week and I had a letter from Cliona this morning that didn’t help. I strongly suspect that it was written under slight duress; that is, that you had told her to drop me a line, for shame’s sake, so that she would have written to me here at least once before my time is up. For all it amounted to, she needn’t have bothered. It was full of grudging jokes along the lines of, ‘Isn’t it well for some, off gadding about leading the life of Riley in Italy while the rest of us have to work for a living.’ It’s no more than I would expect from her, indeed from any of the family, except you, and it would probably just have irritated me slightly at any other time. But it caught me at a bad moment and tipped me into a deep gloom that I haven’t been able to shake off since then. The first point is that I have been working here harder than I’ve ever perhaps worked in my life. I’ve been amazed at the quantity of work I’ve managed to do in just over five months, and the quality is good too: I’ve made a quantum leap. It has been a perio
d of extraordinary intensity and development for me. But what Cliona can’t see is that it has been just that: an exceptional period in my life, not the norm.

  We each make our own choices in life and then try to be true to them. I know the family (and I of course exclude you from this) have always thought of me as a dreamer, a drifter, a loser, when they have thought of me at all, for their abiding attitude with regard to me is one of absolute indifference. Well, let me tell you this, I would far rather die by fire than by ice. They see the best side of my life at the moment. What they fail to recognise or acknowledge is that this exceptionally good part of it is about to end. Take my life and Cliona’s all in all and ask Cliona to choose. Yes, you can have six months in Italy, your time your own to do as you wish, and a small bursary to help you do it, but the condition is that you have to take the whole life. That means Italy, yes, but also the bits and scraps of teaching, the not having a regular salary, the knowing you won’t be able to have a house or a car or anything much in material terms for a long time, if ever, the comments of people who regard you as simultaneously having beaten the system and living a life of idleness and luxury, while also being a failure. And then there are your own feelings of failure, the days, maybe weeks when you’re not happy with anything you do, when you have no luck, when you think it is all self-delusion, that you have no gift, no ability, that it’s all vanity, a joke. But you’ve burnt your boats too, because there’s no going back now. When you jump ship from the expected thing you cease to be Our Kind Of Person, so you might never get a conventional job again. Imagine if you offered all of that, the whole package, to Cliona: what would she say? No thank you, that’s what. She’d run shrieking back to the life she has chosen, the life that’s mapped out for her. She’d stay with the job she has and that nice man Arthur who’s probably going to marry her in a year or so.

  I realise that years from now I may bitterly regret how I have chosen to live my life, but it’s a risk I’m prepared to take. The thing is, Dennis, if I don’t keep faith with the life I’m leading now I can definitely see myself at fifty or so, probably even sooner, feeling angry and bitter, feeling that I haven’t had a life at all and being too deeply entrenched in some other reality – having damaged my consciousness to such an extent that it would be too late. And that’s what it comes down to, Dennis, consciousness. I just couldn’t live that other life. You know that. It doesn’t of course mean that it’s a bad life, or wrong in itself, just not right for me. And to try to deny that would be to do great harm. I would be doing no favours to anyone.

  As you know, my time here is almost up, and I’ve been thinking about what happens next. My heart sinks, frankly, at the thought of going home. I’ve already been in touch with the college: I can probably get a few classes in the autumn again, but nothing definite has been arranged yet. My studio will be available; I’ll write soon to the person subletting it to confirm when I’ll be back. But that’s about all there is for me to return to, I feel Not a lot, is it? Above all, I’ll have to find a place to live. I know you have always said that the room is there for me, and I’ll always be grateful to you for that, but I don’t want to go back to being dependent on you. You have helped me so much already, and I feel that any more would be an abuse of your kindness. So I’ve written to a few friends to ask them to keep an ear to the ground and let me know if they hear of a suitable (dead cheap) flat. Failing that, I will probably rent a room in a house to start me off, until such time as I get something sorted out.

  But the biggest problem of all is that I don’t want to go back. I don’t yet feel that I’ve exhausted the experience of being here. I’ve sold some work and a gallery has offered me an exhibition for later in the year. I’m just at the point where my contacts are developing – I can even speak reasonably good Italian at this stage – and it seems such a waste to simply walk away from everything. Ray is staying on: he’s found a job down in Florence, teaching painting and art history to students over on study trips from the States. I’ve hoked for something similar, but although there are a few openings, the colleges only want to employ Americans. I’ll keep looking, but I think my chances of finding something like that are pretty slim.

  The final and most important element in all of this is, of course, Marta. I’m sure you realise how close we are now, and the idea of saying thank you and goodbye, of just walking away, seems like unbelievable rudeness, as well as folly of the first order. I suppose we could try to keep things going at a distance – were she in England or even France we’d try that – but Italy is so far. And I just couldn’t ask her to come to Ireland. God knows, there’s little enough there for me, so what would there be for her? There would be absolutely no work for a specialist in her field of art restoration. She has a good job, her own car and apartment. She’s close to her family – she’s an only child – and she loves her life here. It breaks my heart to say it, but I feel that I have absolutely nothing to offer her. If we went to Ireland, the circumstances would undermine the relationship in no time at all. So I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what will happen. I lie awake at night trying to think of a way to square the circle. This is the idyll Cliona envies me. If you have any ideas on how I might crack this particular problem do let me know. I’ll write to you again soon, and I promise it won’t be such a dismal letter. Sorry to moan, and thank you for listening to me,

  Best love,

  Roderic.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Pronto?’

  Silence at the other end of the line, and then a female voice, but not Allegra’s as he had expected. Roderic always spoke to his daughters at this time on a Wednesday evening ever since renewing contact with them.

  ‘Um, Mr Kennedy? Have I got a wrong number?’ His response had clearly thrown the caller and he apologised, explaining that he was due to receive a call from abroad at any moment.

  ‘I’ll try to be brief then,’ she said. ‘My name’s Julia Fitzpatrick. I think Maria mentioned me to you, Maria Hill.’

  Maria had had a studio in the same building as Roderic, just after the latter’s return to Ireland, and they had remained good friends after she moved to a new space. Earlier that week, he had met her by chance in a bookshop. ‘Speak of the devil,’ Maria said. ‘I was talking about you only the other day to a former student of mine. She might be going to Italy on a fellowship next year, and I thought it would be interesting for her to talk to you about it’

  ‘By all means,’ Roderic said. ‘Tell her to give me a ring,’

  And yet, after he had chatted to Maria for some time and then said goodbye to her, he wondered what he could sensibly say to her protégée. In the ensuing days when he had thought of this woman at all it was to hope that she wouldn’t get in touch, but now that she had he felt it would be rude to refuse to see her. It was Maria to whom he had said yes, and after all she had done for him, he could never let her down.

  They arranged to meet the following Friday afternoon in a city-centre café.

  ‘You’ll know me,’ she said, ‘because I have strange hair.’ No sooner had he put the receiver down than the phone rang again.

  ‘Ciao Babbo.’

  ‘Carissima ciao …’ And for the next half-hour he forgot all about Julia Fitzpatrick.

  *

  She had very strange hair indeed. He had thought her description of herself on the phone was self-deprecating; as soon as he saw her he realised that it was merely accurate. She walked into the café and he raised his arm, waved her over to the table where he sat. She approached him smiling, introduced herself and shook hands. Months later, at Christmas, they would discuss that moment. He would tell her how struck he had been by the easy way she dumped her bag on the floor and offered to buy him a coffee, how he watched her as she went to the counter and took a tray, narrowing her eyes to look at the choice of cakes scrawled faintly on a small slate. He would be able to describe to her the long green skirt and white blouse she had been wearing on that hot July afternoon long after she hers
elf had forgotten. She would ask him frankly if he had found her attractive right from the start, and he would answer with equal candour no, not particularly; that in the first instance he hadn’t been looking at her in that light at all. Nor, unusually, had he thought of his daughters, as he habitually now did when in the company of young women. It had been himself he thought of when she finally sat down opposite him and said, ‘I’ve brought you here on a fool’s errand, I’m afraid. I’m not going to Italy after all.’

  She had received the letter that morning saying that her application for the residency had been unsuccessful. ‘I feel embarrassed now, I shouldn’t have contacted you at all until I was sure.’ She had phoned him at once to cancel the appointment but he wasn’t there, had already left the house for his studio.

  ‘You must be bitterly disappointed.’

  ‘Gutted.’

  He thought of himself, of how delighted he had been when he opened the envelope and received the news all those years ago. ‘Where in Italy is the place you hoped to go?’

  ‘In Tuscany,’ she said. ‘A foundation called the Villa Rosalba. It’s a long-established place, I believe. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘I have indeed.’

  ‘Gutted,’ she said again. ‘I’m trying to be philosophic.

  When one door closes, another one shuts, or whatever the saying is. I’ve got that wrong, haven’t I? Well, that’s what it feels like.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Italy before?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the problem. I went there briefly when I was a student and I’ve always wanted to go back for a longer spell. Were you there for a long time? Maria didn’t say’