Foreigners

by Stephen Finucan

  The Marsdens had come to an understanding about children early on, in the year before they were married. It wasn’t that they had an aversion, rather it was a question of priorities. David was set on graduate school: a master’s degree in literature, with a doctorate to follow. From there a professorship, hopefully on the West Coast, so they wouldn’t have to suffer through any more Ontario winters. Rebecca wanted to work, a career, and if she still felt like it, graduate school for herself somewhere down the line. There was travel, too. Europe, South America, maybe even Asia: India and the Far East. None of which could be done with children in tow.

  For a while, they had a dog. A mutt named Buster. He filled the hole, as David put it. Many a Saturday in the summer, they would spend the day with him in High Park. He was a big friendly hound. Children would come up to him and scratch behind his ears while he licked the ice-cream cones and ate the hot dogs they held in their hands; and if their hands were empty, he would make do with their faces, passing his big lazy tongue over their noses and mouths. When they travelled, Buster was boarded at a veterinary clinic on Bloor Street, and was as happy to go as he was to return. They’d had him just over two years on the cold November night that he ran out the front door and was killed by the neighbour’s car. Although he never said as much to Rebecca, David greeted the dog’s death with a measure of release.

  David Marsden slept on the narrow rattan sofa the first night. The second he spent in the front bedroom, in the single bed that he’d yet to move, waking late on their third morning in Ireland to the smell of burnt toast. He found Rebecca sitting in one of the matching rattan armchairs with the floral-patterned cushions. Her knees were pulled up to her chest. She was crying.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, it’s that goddamn toaster,” she said, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. “That’s the third time it’s burned.”

  “Maybe you should watch it, then,” David said. He walked across to the kitchenette and removed the two blackened pieces of bread from the toaster and dropped them into the bin with the other four. Then he looked at his wife through the bamboo lattice and smiled: “At least we don’t have to pay by the slice.”

  Rebecca did not return his smile. She stared straight ahead and began to rock back and forth. David came out from the kitchenette and knelt in front of the chair. He gently took hold of her ankles.

  “Listen, honey,” he said, trying to soften his hoarse morning voice. “It’s only toast. There’s no need to get upset. We’ll just go out for breakfast.”

  “It’s not the bloody toast, David.”

  “Well, then what is it?” he said, letting go of her ankles.

  Rebecca looked him in the face and David had to fight the urge to wipe away the thin trickle of snot that leaked from her nose.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked, her voice as timid as a child’s. “That’s what it is: I want to know what we are doing here.”

  David stood up and started toward the door. Halfway there he stopped and turned back round.

  “We’re on holiday,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing here.”

  Getting his master’s degree had proved more difficult than David Marsden had expected. His Ph.D. proved too much. Unable to complete his dissertation, he withdrew from the program and began to look for work, a search that finally ended at Thornecliffe College, an exclusive school west of the city. And while it wasn’t true academia, it at least had the patina of academia: old, red-brick buildings with ivy-covered walls and a wide, green, well-manicured quadrangle where the students lounged about or played pickup games of soccer and rugby. If he glanced up quickly while he was crossing from the administration building to the upper-school block, he could imagine he was strolling the Hart House Green toward Philosopher’s Walk. But the facade was soon broken when he entered his classroom and looked into the blank faces of the fifteen-and sixteen-year-old boys in his charge. Not even their expensive navy blazers could hide the fact that they were no more than bored teenagers.

  The money wasn’t much either, so Rebecca had to put thoughts of her own education on hold and stay on at the bank. She did well, being promoted regularly. She rose from teller to assistant loan officer and finally to mortgage manager. Before she left, there was talk of her getting her own branch.

  Although their plans had gone somewhat astray, they found themselves comfortable. And for a time, even content.

  The previous day they’d taken the train into Dublin and sought out the places they might like to explore more fully in the coming weeks. They walked through St Stephen’s Green and across the great cobbled quadrangle of Trinity College. They noted the visiting hours at the university library when the public was admitted to see the Book of Kells. They stood on the O’Connell Street Bridge and gazed into the Liffey, David hoping to catch a glimpse of a pamphlet floating on the murky waters. For dinner they went to Davy Byrne’s and were disappointed to find the pub crowded with American tourists. But on the whole, it had been a very good day. Rebecca laughed a great deal, and it pleased David to see her happy.

  Her mood didn’t last. It darkened with the evening and carried through into the next day, so that as they set about to investigate Bray itself, the outing felt more like an obligation than an adventure.

  They reached the seafront by taking a side street down from the Royal Hotel and found a breakwall esplanade that stretched the length of a vast beach. The tide was out so far that the distant water looked more like a mirage than the Irish Sea. The noonday sun was strong, and David regretted not having worn his shorts; his jeans felt heavy in the heat. Rebecca wore a pale yellow cotton sundress, sleeveless and loose fitting. The soft wind off the water rippled its hem, gently lifting it above her knees. David watched her as she walked on ahead of him. Her hair, dark with a hint of auburn, had started to come loose from the ponytail she’d tied it in, and strands of it were being picked up by the breeze and fluttered about in the air above her head. The sun had begun to bring the freckles on her shoulders to the surface. As she moved she swung her arms lazily at her side, more like a young girl than a grown woman. From her wrist her instant camera dangled on its tether, bumping clumsily against her thigh with each step. She stopped walking when she noticed he was no longer at her side, and turned to look at him.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she said, a hand held over her eyes to shield them from the sun.

  “It’s you,” David said.

  “What about me?”

  “You look so beautiful.” He stepped forward and reached out his hand. “Give me the camera. I want to take your picture.”

  But her face hardened and she held the camera tightly against her stomach.

  “No,” she said coldly. “I don’t want my picture taken.”

  David led them down the wrong path. They had decided that before visiting the arcades along the esplanade, they would climb to the cross at the top of Bray Head. The guidebook David carried with him said that the panoramic view offered by the promontory was surpassed only by that of Glendalough farther inland in the Wicklow Mountains. He’d been eager to make the ascent, and in his eagerness had followed the trail that ran along the coast, rather than the one that curled around back of the bluff.

  After half an hour of walking, with the cross far behind them and the trail ahead winding away into the distance, Rebecca refused to go on. She stood in the middle of the gravel track, her arms slack at her side.

  “This isn’t the way, David.”

  He glanced back at her, then turned and looked at where the trail, like a grey snake slithering along the cliffside, passed over a railway tunnel and disappeared behind the next hill.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it doubles back on itself around that bend.”

  Rebecca laughed sourly. “I don’t care if it does,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not walking any farther.”

  “Look, I’m sure it won’t take much longer. Why don’t we just follow it around the bend
and see? If it doesn’t go anywhere, then we’ll head back.”

  Rebecca folded her arms across her chest, then turned toward the slope.

  “If you really want to get to the top of the hill so bad,” she said, “then why don’t we just climb the bloody thing?”

  David followed her gaze.

  “Looks pretty steep.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, David. I’ll climb it by myself, then.”

  He watched her as she lifted the hem of her sundress and stepped over the low stone wall that separated the trail from the slope. She took great, long strides as she climbed, bringing her knees up close to her chest, then slamming her feet down forcefully. He was reminded again of a small girl, this time one that, having been scolded and sent to her room, shows her displeasure by thumping up the stairs. There was also a picturesque beauty in her ascent: her yellow dress fluttering among the shifting green grasses of the hill gave the impression of a lone bloom in a flowerless meadow. David again regretted not having the camera. But then Rebecca lost her footing; she wobbled to one side and held her arms out for balance. For the briefest moment it appeared that she’d regained her poise. Then she fell. David remained standing on the trail until he heard her sobs.

  He hadn’t climbed ten feet before he realized that the hill was far steeper than even he had thought, and when he grabbed at the ground to try and pull himself up, it felt as if he’d thrust his hands into a fire. The entire hillside, he now saw, as he blew on his palms, was blanketed in nettles. When he finally reached Rebecca she was on her feet again, holding her arms straight out in front of her. Already, angry red welts had begun to blossom on the soft white flesh of her forearms. Another stretched down her neck, from just below her ear to her collarbone.

  “Goddamn you, David,” she said, tears dripping from her chin. “Sweetheart,” David said, reaching out to wipe them away. “I’m so sorry. Really, I am.” “No, David. Goddamn you.”

  The call from the hospital came while he was going over preps for the final examination with his twelfth-grade literature class. It was early June and outside the warm rays bathing the quadrangle seemed at odds with the tempestuousness of Lear’s heath. They were reluctant to offer information, just said that Rebecca had been admitted to St Joseph’s Medical Centre and that she was asking for him. The bank was in his mind the whole time as he raced back to the city: a robbery, violence.

  When Rebecca told him, David had not known what to say. He’d held her hand tightly in his own, had kissed it, had kissed her forehead, had brushed away the strands of her hair that stuck to her damp brow. He’d stroked her arm, softly touching the inside of her elbow around the surgical tape that held the intravenous needle in place. He’d cried when she cried and cradled her head against his chest. The whole time wondering if his words of comfort sounded as hollow to Rebecca as they did to himself, if she could hear in them the sense of relief that he tried so to disguise.

  Rebecca left David sitting on the terrace of one of the many restaurants that crowded the esplanade and went back to the cottage alone.

  When they’d arrived, the waitress had brought Rebecca a glass of ice and advised her to rub the cubes over her welts.

  “It’ll take the sting out, that will,” she said. “But the red won’t go till morning, so long as you don’t scratch at ‘em.”

  She’d done as instructed and the pain began to subside, only to be replaced by a terrible itch. David didn’t bother with the ice. While they waited for their drinks, he studied the welts that had come up on his own skin, on the heels of his palms and across his wrists. Looking more closely, he could see tiny white thorns embedded in his flesh. When he held his hands up for Rebecca to see, she turned away from him.

  The terrace was crowded with umbrellaed tables, most of them occupied by people having an early dinner after a long day spent on the beach or walking the trails around Bray Head. The din of the surrounding conversations seemed all the more conspicuous by the absence of any at the Marsdens’ table. Rebecca ignored her plate of scampi and chips in favour of the dwindling glass of ice cubes, while David worked away unenthusiastically at his shepherd’s pie. As soon as he could catch the waitress’s eye, he ordered another pint of Guinness.

  The day had begun to cool with the approach of evening and David could feel the familiar prickle of sunburn on his forehead. The thought of getting burnt had never even occurred to him, but looking around at those that had come from the beach, their skin bronzed or painfully pink, it seemed obvious.

  As the waitress returned to take their plates away, a young German family sat down at the table to their left: a husband and wife, near to Rebecca and David’s age, and two small children, a boy and a girl. The mother made a point of separating her children, seating them on opposite sides of the table. Then she spoke directly to each, issuing instructions so softly that even the hard edge of her accent was smoothed. The children nodded in turn and sat completely still while their mother filled two bottles from a Thermos of fruit juice she’d withdrawn from her knapsack. Her children content, the woman turned to her husband and, with her head held close to his, began to study the menu.

  As David looked on, the little girl, whose chair faced away from him, leaned to the side, so that her head and shoulders were in view. She had fine blond curly hair and chubby arms. Her lashes were almost as pale as her eyes, and her cheeks ruddy from the sun. It took David a moment to realize that she was staring at him, and when he did, he became nervous, uncertain how to respond. Then the little girl slowly lifted her hand and, scrunching up her fat little fingers, offered him a wave. David, doing his best to smile, waved back.

  When he turned away he saw that Rebecca had been watching him, the emptiness in her expression so complete it was as if she were no longer there.

  Then she slowly stood up from the table.

  “I’m going back,” she said quietly, picking up the glass of ice. “You do what you want.”

  David remained on the terrace as dusk gave way to evening, and with the coming darkness, the restaurant began to transform itself into a nightclub. The families and afternoon couples were replaced by groups of young men in jeans and khakis with loose polo shirts and short, shiny hair who huddled together with pint glasses in hand, staring after clutches of young women in tight slacks, short skirts and blouses unbuttoned at the neck. From inside the restaurant came the thump of dance music, its thick bass resonating in David’s chest. He had looked out across the boulevard and the esplanade and watched the tide creep in with the waning of the sun. Since the harbour lay to the east, there was no splendid setting, just the impression of a blind being drawn.

  As more young people arrived, David gave up his table and moved to a place near the entrance of the restaurant, a small corner between a wall and a planter where he could watch the goings-on. He looked on with feelings of both nostalgia and envy as those around him, loosened with drink, began to mingle more freely. Then, thinking of Rebecca back at the cottage alone, he decided to have one more pint before heading out.

  Inside the restaurant, the bar was crowded and he had to force his way to the rail. With his drink finally in hand, he went outside again. There were fewer people on the terrace when he returned, the bulk having already made their way indoors to the dance floor that had been set up at the back of the restaurant.

  Still holding his drink, David wandered down to the bottom of the terrace, to where two large bouncers guarded the narrow gateway that opened on to the sidewalk. As he approached, one politely held up his hand.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said, motioning to the beer in David’s hand. “Can’t take that with you.”

  David looked at his full glass. He took a drink and then set it on a table.

  “Just having a last sip,” he said. “I’m finished with it.”

  “That’s good, then,” the man said and crossed his heavy arms.

  “I wonder if you can tell me something?” David said, feeling a little unsteady now.

  The sec
ond bouncer narrowed his eyes at David.

  “What would that be, then?” the first said, his attention divided.

  “There’s a building,” David began. “On the other side of town. In the middle of a river. It’s fallen down. Abandoned. Do you know the one?”

  “Afraid not, sir.”

  “Oh,” David said, nodding. “Just thought I’d ask.”

  The second bouncer looked at him again and stuck out his chin.

  “What you want to know for?” he said.

  “Just curious, really. I was wondering what it used to be?”

  “That’s the old paint factory,” the man said, his tone harsh. “Goddamn awful place it was. When they was making red, the whole goddamn river went red. Like blood, it was.”

  “So it wasn’t a workhouse, then?”

  “A what?”

  “Nothing,” David said. “Never mind. Have a good night.”

  David could see the lights from the bottom of the drive. The cottage was lit up like a beacon on a hilltop. He made his way slowly, dragging his feet in the gravel so they made rasping sounds in the quiet night. The front door was unlocked and he shielded his eyes against the glare in the entranceway. With his free hand he felt for the wall switch and turned out the light, then he went to the back bedroom. It was empty. He found Rebecca curled up on the rattan sofa in the lounge. Her back was to him.

  “Why have you got all the lights on?” he asked.

  When she spoke her voice was thick and nasal, as if she had a cold.

  “I wanted to make sure you could find your way home.”

  David could tell she had been crying. And when she rolled over he saw her nose was raw from blowing and her eyes puffy and red. He remained standing in the doorway for a moment longer, then went over and sat on the edge of the sofa. He ran his hand over her hair.