Portobello Notebook

by Adrian Kenny

  He rang the bell, her voice answered at once, and the street door was buzzed open. Inside, a woman was cleaning the hall. The lift smelled of lilac air freshener, its bright mirror walls reflected every failing in his face. From the top corridor windows there was a view across rooftops to the sunlit gentle shapes of the Dublin hills.

  In daylight her brushed short hair seemed smooth as lacquer, her make-up was delicate and pale as the silk scarf about her throat. He stepped onto a carpet the colour of magnolia, so clean he felt he should take off his shoes. But he wasn’t sure about his socks, so he sat at once on the couch, a taut white oblong. There were paintings on the walls that seemed good enough to be in public galleries. He admired a cubist nude, saying it had a look of Braque, and she said that an uncle had left it to her in his will. There was an air of money, and inherited good manners. She gave him a coffee-table book while she went to the kitchen – a galley of light wood and steel. The book was on pagan religions; he was admiring a bare-breasted Bacchante when she returned with a tray. He shut the book and helped her to set china on a small glass table. He felt a tension when she sat beside him on the couch.

  She talked, he listened. Her mother had reared her in Paris; her parents had divorced when she was a child. Her mother still had love affairs, dramatic, like opera. Madeleine had worked as a model, then as a dress designer for a fashion house. She had lived with a man for years, then it had ended, everything of her old life had ended in a car crash. She had almost died. After that year in hospital, her life had changed from a physical to a spiritual one. That was why she had come to live in the west of Ireland. She rested her back against the couch.

  Now he had to reply – nothing committal, but not too detached either. Her story wasn’t the sort he was used to. He settled for banality with an intimate smile. ‘How did you like the west?’

  ‘The people seemed friendly at first, when you met them in pubs. But behind that I found them cold. You got so far, then that was the end of it. They never invited you to their homes.’

  He agreed, saying that country people lived with their families. She said that Dublin seemed to be the same. He said the young were different, but at this age in life – he smiled again – most people had settled down in pairs. She talked of other cities she had lived in, where adults didn’t just live between home and pubs. He wondered why she had left those cities, if her life had been any different before the crash. He said Dublin was partly a city and partly a provincial town.

  The phone rang. She went to answer. He understood now the reason for her stiff-backed walk. She spoke in the same distant friendly tone she had used with him. Sitting down again she explained that a priest she knew was coming to visit. She went to Mass in his church. She pointed to a kitsch picture of the Virgin Mary he had given her. The doorbell rang, and she introduced a Father Declan. After ten minutes’ chat with the smiling homely priest, he made some excuse and escaped.

  He thought of her sometimes in the following weeks: her mended body, the loneliness that drove her from that elegant flat to sitting in churches and making friends with priests. He rang again, one wet summer evening, and as they talked she mentioned that she was writing a book. She asked if he would look at it, correct the English? Again he made an appointment to see her, this time in the afternoon.

  She wore sleek black trousers, a silk white blouse with the top button open, without a scarf, and he noticed red marks like eczema on her neck. She sat beside him on the couch, at the glass coffee table, and they looked at her script. It was about mermaids, a hundred pages of handwriting in turquoise ink. There were a few references to learned sources on the last page. It looked like a schoolgirl’s project.

  ‘Have you been working at it long?’

  ‘For years.’ She explained that the mermaid was an image of sea water, of womankind, of life. She mentioned the myth of the lady and unicorn, then talked about mermaids again. They were all images of spiritual life, of nature and rebirth …

  It was a way of spending her lonely time. He pointed out a few small mistakes of idiom. As she smiled and her face grew bright, he sensed an energy in the tense body beside him; but he hesitated to put his hand on hers. He didn’t know where it would lead. She was fragile. He felt that her whole body was raw-sensitive, that even a touch of his finger would leave a mark like the red eczema on her neck. He said goodbye to the quick fling he had been reaching for. He sat back and listened patiently.

  She talked of the big world of fashion and money. She knew how that world worked. If she could get backing, her book about mermaids might make a good film. She had known film-makers in Milan, New York … He knew she wouldn’t get anywhere.

  In the following weeks, when she phoned him or he phoned her, he heard of the latest hurt. She had met some film-makers, they had asked her to give them a storyboard. And she had. But nothing had happened. It was typical of Ireland. In Paris, if someone said he would call you, then he called …

  Wandering around town one day he came across a copy of Andersen’s mermaid tale, and he sent it to her by post. She rang to thank him, then in the same distant friendly tone mentioned that she was leaving Dublin. He felt a small surprise at her independence. She had been to the country, to take photos of some stone carving of a mermaid, and had seen a cottage to let. It was a sign. She began talking of astrology, the stars that linked us to the universe …

  He felt relieved that she was leaving, and he rang more often to ask how things were. It was only right. She was having trouble with the removal firm, she was busy seeing her things packed in crates. He smiled at her carefulness. She answered stiffly, ‘Things ought to be treated with the respect they deserve.’

  When she was safely gone, he wrote to her. She replied soon after, with a photograph of her new home. As he had expected, it was no cottage: he glimpsed a peacock, a lawn running down to a river. She invited him to visit for the weekend.

  She deserved to be treated with respect, he told himself as he drove down one autumn Friday evening. Wind was blowing through old trees along a lane that led to what looked like an eighteenth-century farmhouse. They sat in a big kitchen floored with varnished flagstones, warmed by a range, while outside the wind blew louder, and rain ran down small-paned windows set in thick walls.

  She was happy there. It was the house she had always wanted. There were civilized neighbours who had already invited her to their homes … As she talked, she showed him through big square rooms with low ceilings, and he admired her cubist nude, felt a shock again before the kitsch Virgin Mary. Her study was upstairs, the desk neatly filled by those turquoise handwritten pages, pasted with photos and photocopied pictures of mermaids holding mirrors, combing their hair, reclining on their scaled fish tails. She went on talking as she prepared the dinner. She had been back to Paris. Her mother wasn’t well. Her sister was abroad, married to a diplomat. Their father didn’t keep in touch. She lit a candle on the table, and they sat down.

  She wore a patchwork jacket, beautifully stitched squares of red, yellow, green. There was a buttercup leaf on the butter, a basil leaf in the tomato soup … every detail was just right. He felt her waiting for some remark or sign that would show as precisely what his intentions were with her. He had no intentions. There were only so many times you could fall in love before the heart said Lies and refused to play the game any more. But when she looked at him across the candle flame, he smiled.

  ‘You’re good at living alone.’

  ‘It’s an acquired taste.’ Her smile opened a little, like a door, revealing a little of the loneliness inside.

  Gently leaning forward, he asked if she had met any Irishmen she liked. Yes, she had met someone, but he had been so vague. The last time she had seen him he was still aimless, drifting about. She took a single glass of wine from the bottle he had brought. From that and the candle and the intimacy of their talk, her face took on colour and grew bright. He leaned a little closer, but her voice began to rise. Her book on mermaids could have made a good fil
m for television. And that man she had met, who hesitated about everything – what was wrong with him? What was wrong with Irishmen? Were they afraid of their priests? Of their mothers? Of themselves? Had they any minds of their own? All her French friends here said the same. You got so far, then the Irish withdrew …

  He sat back from the table as her voice rose higher still. It was almost a cry. ‘I haven’t felt like a woman since I came here. In Paris, when a man asked me out, he made me feel … like a woman!’

  She stopped, as if suddenly aware of her outburst. The wind was still blowing; he heard a peacock’s scream. He offered to help with the washing up, and then with the drying. He glanced at an old timber-cased kitchen clock, and said casually, ‘Is it that time?’ She showed him to a guest room, on the ground floor.

  There was delicate scented soap in a china dish, a white fleecy towel, even a bedside book. He turned out the light. All he wanted was the peaceful dark. But as he lay in bed he heard her moving about upstairs. Her room was above his. He heard her bed creak, then heard her get out and walk the floor again. She was upset? Her damaged back was hurting her? Or was she trying to tell him that she was awake, waiting for him? The pacing and creaking went on for almost an hour. At last there was silence. Exhausted, he fell asleep.

  The wind had gone next morning, and the rain. She said she was going into town, shopping, but didn’t invite him to come. She was still embarrassed by the previous night’s outburst, he thought. He said he’d enjoy a stroll about the place. He felt pure relief as her car wheels cut through pools of rainwater down the lane. Walking about the yard, he saw her attempt at gardening: a bed of cream and dark-blue pansies beaten to the clay by the storm. Ripe apples rotted amongst nettles growing tall under a tree. The sun came out, and following the sound of a river he walked along the lane.

  An old woman sitting outside a cottage greeted him Good-morning, and he stood for a moment to chat. He said he was staying with Madeleine, but the old woman didn’t seem to know who he meant. She patted the bench, inviting him to sit. From her voice, she wasn’t local. No, she was from Eastern Europe, she said. She talked about her life’s adventures, the suffering she had seen in the war, how she had met her husband, the paths that had led to their coming together, and to settling in this corner of Ireland at last. In easy silence then they watched a spider appear in a web strung between two Michaelmas daisies growing by the porch. They smiled together as the little white daisy flowers trembled with the spider’s movement. When he looked at his watch, he saw that two hours had passed, but he sat there enjoying the autumn sun and this spirited old woman’s company.

  It was afternoon when Madeleine appeared, walking stiffly down the lane. When she saw him, she stopped. He saw confusion, and anger in her face as she came up the cottage path. Ignoring the old woman, she stood before him and said – almost cried – ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you!’

  The old woman smiled and invited her to join them. Madeleine stood, flustered, her forehead cleft by a frown. Like a spoilt child, he thought. Deliberately polite, he moved to make room on the bench, and she had to sit down. There was shame as well as anger in her eyes. He had gone too far, he knew. But he couldn’t take any more. He left that evening.

  That was the last time he saw her. He wrote of course, and she replied. She wrote to say that her mother was ill, that she was returning to Paris. He wrote to sympathize when her mother died. She wrote to say how much she liked being back in Paris, and described the job she had found in a small museum. She didn’t put an address on her letter, but when he was in Paris the following summer he found himself walking along by the River Seine to where she worked. In the cloistered courtyard, looking at carved pieces of medieval stone made beautiful by time, he imagined that this was the sort of place where at last she would be at home. He asked for her at the desk, the attendant nodded vaguely, said the name was familiar, but thought that she had left.

  He had done his duty, and felt relief as he escaped. But as he went down the sunny boulevard, eyeing the beautiful faces in the flow, he half-expected to see her appear – tense, hurt, waiting for a slight, waiting for love. She was there, somewhere. As he drifted with the crowd he felt he was being carried, farther than ever, out to sea, where there was no love, to her.

  ‘THAT’S VERY SAD,’ Jack said. ‘I could nearly tell that to herself.’

  Eddie said, ‘Don’t.’

  ‘No, that’d be handing in your gun.’

  ‘You can’t hand in your gun.’

  That was how they talked on Sunday evening, feeling better as they parted and went home to their wives.

  In New York

  HE HAD SPENT so much of his life scratching for a living that he found it hard to believe he had some money now. His daughter found it easier, and brought him to a hotel starred with bronze plaques in memory of famous residents. When he heard the price and began to bargain, she withdrew, embarrassed; stepping forward again when a deal was done. A tall, laconic black porter led them upstairs. It was like a return to the Sixties. A woman with long grey hair, a long flowery dress was watering potted plants in the corridor. The sound of old rock music, the scent of herb seeped from closed doors.

  ‘You’re in the tropics, enjoy yourself.’ The porter showed him into a big shabby white high-ceilinged room.

  Two windows looked out on New York. His daughter stood at one, her boyfriend at the other. Over their shoulders he tried to see his life from this new perspective: as a man approaching sixty, who had married and reared a family, had had a little success. Alone abroad he was always nervous, but his daughter’s presence calmed him, as his wife’s would. He needed his family, so he had always rebelled against family. When his daughter and her boyfriend had gone, he felt a flicker of the excitement he had as a boy when his parents went out for the evening – those rare occasions. Rooting about the room, as he used to at home, he found an abandoned painting cut in half in the wardrobe; and written in dreamy pencil above the washbasin mirror: All things are Buddha things. Language is illusory – just what he might have seen here thirty-five years ago. He looked at his old face in the mirror. He hadn’t grown an inch. In his school there had been a tree whose bark had grown about an iron paling post until only the tip showed. If he had grown at all, he had grown like that, embracing his limitations.

  IN THE EVENING they brought him out to an Italian restaurant where they ordered a pizza for three, as big as the small table. Like his wife, his daughter was vegetarian, and when he noticed the slices of salami he said as usual, ‘I’ll eat them.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She lowered her head, embarrassed again, and murmured, ‘I’m eating meat now.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  Her boyfriend smiled. ‘We were wondering how we’d be able to keep up the lies for a week.’

  ‘It’s strange.’ He looked at her. ‘You’re just the age I was when I came here.’

  She listened patiently as he reminisced over the red wine. He had thought then that he could leave his past behind. For a short while he had felt like a snake sloughing its old skin. Then he had realized he had no new skin. He had cracked up and gone home.

  His daughter smiled too. ‘Welcome back.’

  The New York he remembered was remote from the city they walked through. Times Square was smaller, duller, than the neon jungle where he had lingered. Central Park was bigger and brighter, different from the glittering menacing place he had hurried past at night. In time he had learned to face the panics and elations of those days, and they had flown. Now they were like the sparrows, lovely and ridiculous, squabbling in the ivy below his hotel windows.

  He was yanked back from his memories next day. They were in a shop, enjoying the pleasure of dithering between bottles of French wine and half-gallon jars of Californian at wonderful low prices, when his daughter’s phone rang. It was his wife, calling from Ireland to say that their old friend Eileen had died. His daughter crying was suddenly like a child again; and her boyfriend, even
as he comforted her. The evening meal in their Manhattan flat became an Irish wake as they drank and talked of Eileen: the Christmas Day they had brought her to a family party, where she had grown bored and stood outside the front door, ringing the bell until they left … Eileen was the last of the artists’ wives. It was fitting they had heard of her death in a wine shop. Wilful, intelligent, a chain-smoking, drinking Irish Catholic, she had shown him the way into a wider world at home. He decided to cut his holiday short, change his ticket and go back for her funeral.

  IT LEFT HIM one last day in New York. With his daughter and her boyfriend he visited the Met Museum, watched them walk hand in hand slowly, eagerly past two thousand years of masterpieces, as if admiring a wonderful landscape from a train. That was when he thought of Joe, an old friend now living in New York. Back at the hotel he looked him up in the phone book, hesitated, then called, and in a moment heard a voice direct from the past. It hadn’t changed. Joe invited him to lunch, gave directions to his apartment in the aloof, smiling voice he remembered from school. His daughter gave him a map, and the sort of advice he had once given her, and then he set off on his own.

  Eileen had been old, her death was natural. It was so long since he had met Joe that their meeting could mean little now. He strolled peacefully in the sunlight, sitting here and there to pass the time. In Union Square two stoned buskers, one with a drum, the other wearing a brown cloak and a plastic horned Viking helmet, pranced about the grass. A gay type cried, ‘Horny bitch!’ and he smiled. What had frightened him once, at best amused him now. Two sunbathing girls sat up and laughed as the buskers circled them in an obscene dance. He wandered on, down as far as Canal Street, allowing himself to get lost, asking directions and finding his way again. This was the life he had aimed at, fallen short of, and which his daughter was embracing now. He felt no bitterness. His life had grown in another direction, like that tree at school around the iron paling post.