Authenticity

by Deirdre Madden

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m here to see Roderic Kennedy’

  She looked at his face more keenly now, and then she said, ‘Of course you are. You’re Dennis, aren’t you?’ He nodded and she knocked sharply on the door beside her own. ‘Roderic! It’s your brother. I’d go on in if I were you,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll be in myself in a minute.’

  Dennis rarely called to Roderic’s studio and never without being asked. Roderic, dressed in a check shirt and a pair of jeans heavily encrusted with paint, was slumped on an old sofa, smoking a cigarette. He looked exhausted. The startling energy of the paintings that surrounded him, strong, rigorous works executed in pale colours, contrasted uneasily with the silent lassitude of the man who had made them. The smell of paint was overpowering.

  ‘Dennis.’

  ‘Roderic.’

  He moved to make room on the sofa but Dennis was already reaching for a hard kitchen chair from beside a table covered with art materials.

  ‘Mind you don’t spoil your jacket: check there’s no paint on that chair before you sit down.’ He offered Dennis a cigarette which was politely refused.

  ‘So, how’s it going?’

  In response Roderic waved his hand to indicate the paintings. Dennis nodded, not knowing what to say.

  ‘Good of you to come over at such short notice,’ Roderic said, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘That’s all right. I have a long lunch break today.’

  ‘I do appreciate it, though,’ and he looked at Dennis directly now, then looked away. They could still hear the Mozart from the next room.

  ‘Does that bother you when you’re working?’

  ‘Not in the least. I like it. If I could get my act together I’d have music of my own.’

  Had he been drinking? He seemed fairly lucid if somewhat depressed, but it was difficult to know. There was no evidence of bottles or glasses around, but that meant nothing.

  ‘In fact, I’m particularly fond of music when it’s on the other side of a wall. It reminds me of my childhood, when you or Dad used to play records down in the drawing room, late at night. I’d lie in bed listening until I fell asleep. Did you know that? It’s one of the few things I actively like to remember from those years.’

  Before Dennis could answer the door of the studio opened again, pushed by the weight of the small woman’s body, for her hands were not free. She was carrying a tray with two mugs and a plate of sandwiches. Roderic looked faintly annoyed.

  ‘Really, Maria, there’s no need for this …’

  She ignored him and set the tray on the only remaining space on the table. ‘It’s chicken and vegetable,’ she said handing a mug to Dennis. ‘You’re not a vegetarian?’

  He shook his head, but still demurred: he didn’t really want the soup or any of the shapeless sandwiches on the plate. Maria wasn’t having any of this: she stood before him holding out the mug, and gave him a look of unexpected ferocity. Suddenly Dennis made the connection. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t get any lunch otherwise. Roderic, come on, won’t you join me?’

  With a slightly grudging air Roderic helped himself to a sandwich.

  ‘There’s bloody gratitude for you,’ Maria said. ‘Don’t forget, it’s your turn tomorrow. Bring the tray back when you’ve finished.’ She refused to bring her own food in to eat with them and returned to her studio.

  ‘Do you have lunch together every day?’

  ‘Two, maybe three times a week, no more than that,’ Roderic said. ‘She’s a decent skin, Maria.’

  It was a couple of weeks since they had seen each other and they now fell into conversation, cautious at first but gradually more relaxed as they continued with their meal. Roderic ate hungrily, as if he needed the food. ‘These sandwiches are better than they look.’

  The moment came when Dennis felt he could ask, ‘Have you heard from Italy recently?’

  Roderic shook his head. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Mmn.’

  ‘You have? What news is there? Are they well? Nothing’s wrong, is it?’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Dennis said. ‘The girls sent me a card for my birthday, that’s all. Serena’s got the brace off her teeth, that’s the only news.’

  ‘And she’s all right? I mean, it worked? It did straighten her teeth?’

  ‘The card didn’t say, but I expect so. Braces always work, I think.’ Roderic’s anxiety about this would have been funny had it not been so desperately sad. Dennis suddenly remembered his own experience on the night of Roderic’s wedding and realised with a pang that this desolation had been his brother’s whole life now, for years and years.

  ‘Anyhow, to business. The painting: which one is it?’

  Roderic stood up and crossed the room. He lifted a canvas that was leaning against the wall and without speaking, propped it against the table directly in front of his brother, then stood back and lit a cigarette. Dennis stared at the picture and frowned. It was all a charade, but he had to go through with it.

  It had been after eleven the previous evening when Roderic rang. He engaged his brother in drunken, rambling small talk that didn’t fool Dennis for an instant. Weary from a hard day at work – he had actually been half-way up the stairs on his way to bed when the phone rang – Dennis gave him short answers and did not follow up any of his conversational leads, hoping to force him to the point, until eventually Roderic blurted out: ‘Would you like to buy a painting?’

  Dennis closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the jamb of the door, fighting the temptation to say, ‘Look, I’m too busy to bother with this now, just tell me how much you need and I’ll write you a cheque, we can sort out the details later, all right?’

  ‘Dennis? Dennis? You’re still there? Hello?’

  ‘Yes, still here,’ he said, opening his eyes, staring at his own reflection in the hall mirror. ‘Certainly I’d be interested in having a look at a picture.’

  ‘Tomorrow be all right?’ Roderic said quickly. ‘Could you come over to the studio around lunch time?’

  Dennis closed his eyes again and kept them shut as he replied, ‘I could indeed.’

  ‘Thanks, Dennis, you’re a star.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ Dennis said aloud in the empty house to his own reflection after he had hung up. ‘You’re a complete mug.’

  The painting wasn’t as big as he had feared, and he hoped now that he was giving a convincing impression of assessing its artistic merits as he stared at it. In reality he was trying to guess how much he might be asked to pay. From having bought pictures from Roderic in the past, he had a very rough idea of prices, and from the size of this one he thought it unlikely that it would be more than he could afford. Out of the corner of his eye he sneaked a glance at Roderic, who was staring intently at the picture. He must be desperate for the money, or he wouldn’t ask. He had only done this to Dennis a few times before.

  ‘What have you on it?’ Dennis said eventually.

  Roderic named his price. It was a figure far lower than his brother had expected and Dennis was unable to conceal his surprise. Misreading his reaction, Roderic immediately protested, ‘It’s a reasonable price for a picture of that quality and those dimensions, believe me. You’d be getting a bargain.’

  ‘Oh, I can believe it,’ Dennis said. They fell to looking at the picture again. ‘Is it a recent work?’

  ‘I finished it about six months ago.’

  ‘I don’t know where I’ll put it in the house. I’ll try it out in a couple of different places, see where it fits best.’ In this subtle way he gave his consent and even though he wasn’t looking at Roderic as he spoke, he could actually feel his brother’s relief permeate the studio.

  ‘I’ll get it over to you this weekend,’ Roderic said, and waved aside Dennis’s suggestion that he might collect it himself.

  Now that the deal was done, Dennis could actually see the picture in itself. It was a square canvas on which bars of cream, gre
y and pale blue paint radiated calm. Perhaps he would hang it at the head of the stairs; there was a suitable space there. He was getting a bargain. Whether he wanted it or not was another question altogether. He wondered how many other paintings Roderic had sold for a song to raise some quick money.

  ‘Are you still with the same gallery?’

  Roderic’s face darkened. ‘We had a falling out,’ he said.

  ‘The man was a spiv. Anyway, I like to see to my own affairs.’

  While they were eating lunch Dennis had covertly looked around the studio trying to guess which of the many canvases would be offered to him for purchase. He had noted a particularly small one, and he nodded towards it now as he pulled his chequebook out of his jacket pocket. ‘And how much are you asking for that?’ he said.

  Roderic looked surprised. ‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought to sell it.’ Dennis started to fill in the cheque, giving Roderic time to consider his suggestion. He could see how torn his brother was between the desire to have more money and the need to hold on to the picture.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dennis,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m not ready to let that one go yet.’

  ‘Well, keep me in mind when the time comes,’ Dennis replied, completing the cheque and handing it over to him. ‘I’d best be off. I’ll talk to you towards the end of the week.’

  When he went into the hall he noticed that the door of Maria’s studio was still ajar. She was listening to Beethoven now, the late quartets. For a moment he stood there in the dim hall, that stank of paint and packet soup, listening to the sublime music. An immense grief about Roderic’s life welled up in him. Cautiously he tapped on the open door.

  ‘I wanted to thank you for lunch.’

  ‘Pan bread and plastic ham: big deal,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’re used to better. Do you want to come in for a minute?’

  He was struck at the difference between Roderic’s studio and Maria’s. Here the predominating colours were darker – bottle green, purple, claret, black. Maria was sitting at the table cutting five-pointed stars out of an Ordnance Survey map. Within ten minutes he would be back in his office at the bank, with its magnolia paint and its grey filing cabinets, its water cooler and glowing computer screen. He was still at a loss to understand how he and Roderic starting out from the same point in the same family had ended up with such different lives.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ he said. ‘How is Roderic these days?’ She raised her right index finger to her pursed lips, with her other hand she pointed towards the door. They sat without speaking and listened to the sound of the door of Roderic’s studio being slammed, the rattle of keys as he locked it, and then his footsteps as he walked down the hall and left the building. Maria did not speak for some moments after this, clearly trying to gauge how much Dennis already knew, and how much she ought to say. ‘Had the bottle and glass been cleared away in my honour before I arrived?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said. They probably hadn’t come out yet for the day. He usually doesn’t start drinking until late in the afternoon. That’s why I try to encourage him to have something to eat with me now and then. Get a bit of ballast before he starts hitting the bottle, you know. He’ll buy us both chips tomorrow, or pizza, and I won’t have to remind him. He’s very proud and you have to respect that. He gets the work done too, Roderic. It annoys me sometimes when people talk as if he’s completely undisciplined, for he’s producing more than a lot of people who are stone cold sober every day of their lives. And that’s not considering the quality of the work. He’s a superb painter, your brother.’

  Everything she said comforted him. ‘Things obviously look worse from where I’m standing.’

  Maria struggled in her mind as to how to let him down gently and decided it couldn’t be done. ‘Oh they’re bad all right, Dennis,’ she said, ‘as bad as can be.’

  He saw Roderic more often than she imagined, and there was little in the litany of misery she now described that was new to him. It was only the detail: he hadn’t known whether Roderic drank in pubs with others or alone in the studio, and Maria told him it was almost exclusively the latter. Even though her descriptions were understated, he saw vividly the picture she described of Roderic settling down to drink at the end of the day until he was too far gone to leave the studio. He would sometimes stay the night there. ‘He sleeps on the sofa. I occasionally throw a rug on him before I go home. I’ll tell you this though for nothing,’ she added. ‘If he got that Jeannie woman out of his life he’d be doing himself a favour, for they’re only dragging each other down. She’s a bloody nuisance. Every time she comes round here they quarrel; I can hear them sometimes even over the music. But generally he’s not at all aggressive. He’s a really nice man, Roderic, when he’s not on the tear.’

  ‘Does he ever talk about his family?’

  ‘He often talks about you,’ she said. ‘He sings your praises: he thinks you’re the bee’s knees.’

  ‘And the others?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Almost never. A few weeks back I was talking to him about families in general – well, about my family in particular, to tell you the truth – and he said he knew his parents and sisters thought that he was a complete failure.’

  Only last week, Dennis had had a row with Maeve over her casual remark, ‘The only consolation is that poor Mum and Dad didn’t live to see Roderic’s life go down the drain in this way.’ Dennis had responded with more truth than charity, saying that her own life was not exactly a shining success.

  ‘Does he ever speak of any other family members?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘I know he has kids off in Italy, if that’s what you’re getting at, but no, he hardly ever talks of them. I think it’s more than he can bear.’

  From his briefcase Dennis took out a small leather folder. ‘You have all my numbers here,’ he said as he handed her his business card, ‘home, office and mobile. Never hesitate to call me if the need arises, at any time of the day or night.’

  She took the card, then said, ‘Wait a moment.’ She crossed to the table, wrote something on a square of yellow paper and passed it to him. ‘If it’s all getting you down too much and you need to talk to someone about it, call me. And again, don’t hesitate: day or night. There are some things you shouldn’t have to go through on your own.’ Touched by her kindness, Dennis was for a moment at a loss to know what to say

  ‘I don’t know where it’ll end. Sometimes I think he’s killing himself.’ He was amazed to hear himself blurt out something that he had hesitated until now to admit even in his own mind.

  Maria did not respond directly to this remark. Instead she said, ‘Let me tell you, Dennis, someone very close to me, his father was a hell of a drinker and so I’ve seen at first hand the toll it takes on family members. There’s only so much you can do and most times it makes no difference anyway. So you look out for yourself, d’you hear me? You look out for yourself. You’d best be off to your office, or you’ll be late. And I meant what I said: call me if you need me.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Just outside the pub, someone offered Roderic a flier for a mobile phone company which he unthinkingly took and stuffed into his pocket, wondering if the poor sap knew how ridiculous he looked. The man was actually dressed as a mobile phone, encased from ankle to head in an absurd rectangle of foam rubber from which his face stared forlornly above a console of numbers. The costume restricted his movements so that he was like a spancelled goat and could barely hobble towards the passers-by to offer them his leaflets, which in general were spurned.

  He went into the pub and sat down. It was a place Julia liked, which was why he had suggested it for today. It was also a place of which Dennis was fond and it was there that the coincidental meeting of all three of them had taken place earlier in the year. Ever since then he had been more careful to arrange appointments so that there was no danger of an overlap. Holding a beermat between finger and thumb, he turned it over an
d over again on its edge and thought meditatively about his brother. He’d made real progress in his struggle to become less dependent on Dennis – not asking him to do little favours, to mediate between him and other family members and so forth. It had been a hard habit to break, but sometimes he thought it had been harder still for Dennis, who hadn’t quite yet come to terms with no longer being needed as he once had been. Just at that Julia came into the pub in the company of a middle-aged man, rather stocky, who was carrying a plastic bag from a bookshop. Roderic couldn’t imagine who he might be, foolishly so, he realised almost immediately: he should have recognised him from the photograph on her mantelpiece of the kite-flier. For when Julia said, ‘Roderic, I want you to meet my father,’ he saw at once that it could be no one else.

  ‘I didn’t want to muscle in,’ Dan said by way of introduction. ‘Julia told me she had this arranged with you so I said I’d see her later in the day, but she wouldn’t hear tell of it.’

  ‘She did well’

  ‘Did you see your man outside?’ he went on as they settled themselves. ‘The poor fella with the leaflets? Did you ever see worse? It’s not enough for him to have a rotten job, they have to dress him up like a fool to do it, make a laughing stock of him in front of the entire city. They’d have us believe that we’re all on the pig’s back now. And then they’re always going on about choice,’ he said. ‘About freedom. Here’s the choice your man had: sit on the dole, or take a job that makes him look like a total arse. Where’s the choice in that, you tell me? Where’s the freedom?’

  Just at that moment a waitress came to their table. They ordered salmon salads and Dan asked for a pint of Guinness. The young woman, who was clearly not Irish, had some difficulty in understanding what was being said and hesitantly asked Julia again what she wanted to drink. She scribbled it all down, forced a smile for them, then stripped a carbon copy of their order from the notepad and wedged it between the salt and pepper. ‘I wonder what part of the world she’s from?’ Dan said after she had gone. The country’s full of foreigners these days, and I’d say plenty of them are having a hard time of it.’