Time Present and Time Past

by Deirdre Madden

  He has more tea and a cake, but when he moves to take his second cake, his prize, Joan challenges him on both his diet and his health, charges with which Fintan is familiar, and which he wearily refutes.

  ‘I’m quite well, really Mummy, there’s no need to be concerned.’

  But his mother insists, and they argue about it until he ends up vaguely promising to go for a full medical check, something which he has no intention whatsoever of doing. To distract her, he changes the subject to the economy, and the ploy works. Somewhat to his surprise, he begins to find himself genuinely engaged in the conversation, for her ideas on the subject are original and well informed; her gloomy predictions worryingly convincing.

  At the end of the afternoon, when he stands up to leave, Joan suddenly says, ‘I know it was very hard for Beth, losing Christy when she did, but it was hard for me, too, and no-one ever seems to think of that. I was left with two teenagers when your father died, and Martina was a complete handful. It wasn’t easy for me either.’ There is petulance in the words, but none, surprisingly, in the tone of voice, which is perhaps why Fintan feels that what she is saying is only the truth and that she is right: she was never given the sympathy she deserved. She looks vulnerable, standing there in her living room; her age and weakness strike him as never before.

  ‘It must have been very hard, Mummy,’ he says. ‘I didn’t appreciate it at the time; I was so young myself.’

  Afterwards, when he leaves the house and is back out on the path, he has to fight the urge to lie down for a while, before going down to the station and getting the DART back to where he lives. In the train, the people around him look strange; he feels edgy and enervated.

  When he arrives in Howth, instead of going straight home he walks down to the pier to clear his head. The water between the boats is oily and dark green, with the texture of glass in a bathroom window, rippled to make it opaque. Below the surface a dark shape is thickening, looming, and the head of a seal breaks the surface, whiskered and oddly humorous. Written in bold red letters on a white sign nearby are the words: ‘A person shall not feed a seal from the quayside or from any other place in this port’, with further details in small print of the bylaw to which this pertains. Fintan wishes he had a pocket full of herring. The seal looks up at him, as if this might well be the case. For a few moments they stare at each other, the seal in all its heavy innocence, until it finally slips below the surface of the dark water again, and disappears.

  FOURTEEN

  Martina can’t sleep, and so she rises, puts on her dressing-gown and comes downstairs. She considers herbal tea, but only for a moment, and then pours herself a good inch of single malt, a thing she rarely does. Maybe it’ll help me sleep, she thinks. Maybe it’ll just make me drunk. No matter.

  Her gaze wanders around the room as she sips the whiskey. She has lit only a small lamp, and all the strange objects there look stranger than ever: the vase with the suspended glass lustres; the old gramophone with its golden horn; the embroidered fire-screen. She imagines Christy’s mother sitting decades ago in that same room, with a piece of buff linen stretched taut on a wooden hoop and small hanks of coloured silk beside her, each one bound with two black-and-gold paper bands. Christy’s father is sitting behind a big newspaper. Christy is upstairs asleep: he is still a baby. All of this is a fantasy and yet it is also the truth: all of this really happened. It is odd to think of this space holding the lives of these three other people, only one of whom she ever met. Martina sometimes comes home from work, enters the hallway and is astonished to think that she is living in this peculiar little house.

  There are framed photographs here and there: Fintan with his entire family; Martina and Beth; a picture of Christy on his own that Beth particularly liked, and that Martina had had enlarged and framed as a Christmas gift.

  Martina remembers that when she lived in London she had gone through a phase of visiting flea markets and junk-shops, where once she had seen for sale a photograph of a woman in late middle age. It was a studio portrait, black and white, and probably from the early nineteen-fifties, Martina guessed, from the clothes the woman was wearing. She couldn’t imagine that anyone would ever wish to buy it. The image was in no way striking or special but it was moreover enormous, quite out of proportion for a family photograph. And Martina had found it an easy image to interpret: this was a matriarch, and this photo was a devotional object, at which the family was to worship. It worked for a while, didn’t it, Ma? She thought. But you ended up in the junk-shop, all the same.

  Martina sips her whiskey and wonders idly about the woman in the photo. Is she remembered with dislike by her family? Or is she remembered at all? That will be me someday, she thinks, completely forgotten, like my sultry ancestor, about whom nobody remembers anything, not even her name. Martina thinks about her own life: all the things she has done, all the things that have happened to her. Things that had been so important at the time: possessions she had wanted, the attention of certain men; why, she can almost laugh at it now, so trivial and foolish do her past desires seem to her. Everything will be forgotten, everything.

  She is sitting at a kitchen table with a box of thick wax crayons and a cheap jotter. She is drawing pictures. Granny Buckley is baking scones. She has the wing of a white bird to clean the griddle and she is singing. Martina draws flowers, a rabbit, a clumsy house. The rain is battering down outside. There is no sign of Fintan or Edward.

  She can feel the effect of the whiskey now, not just the slight burning sensation that she had registered with the first drink and its following glow, but the way it is working on her mind too, she finds that dangerously attractive. It isn’t just the wish to take the edge off the day, but to wipe out the accumulated pain of life itself. She knows it would solve nothing, but on a night like tonight she can understand the appeal of the mental annihilation strong drink might bring.

  There is a room in her mind. The door is shut, but sometimes it blows open and she is drawn in against her will, on a black wind that leaves her shaken and frightened. Sometimes she can enter the room of her own volition, to try to face down what is there. Might she be able to go there tonight?

  She met him at a party hosted by a friend of a friend. He’d been part of a small group which she’d drifted up to and joined; four or five people there had been, two of whom she knew casually. They’d been talking about gambling. It was something in which she had no interest, but she’d stayed there listening anyway for a few moments, until another person had come over, at which point the group suddenly split, leaving her with him and a woman whom she didn’t know, who said to him, ‘Well, Duncan, how was New York?’

  It turned out that he had lived in Manhattan until recently, which interested Martina as she had been there for a visit some six months earlier. It was only really at that point in the evening that she paid him any attention at all. He was about the same age as herself, a professional type, dark-haired and heavily built, formally dressed unlike most of the other guests. She said that although she had liked being in New York for a week, she had wondered how it must be to live there, and so they had talked about that, and about places in the city they had particularly liked. The other woman took part in the conversation for a while and then moved away.

  At that moment platters of food were brought around, and someone came up to them with two bottles of wine, to top up their glasses. There was a balcony in the apartment where the party was being held and it was a warm night so he suggested that they sit out there to continue the conversation.

  He was in IT, he told her, like pretty well everyone these days, she thought, and afterwards she wondered if what he said was true, was anything true, was his name even Duncan? She wondered if she were to go to the friend of the friend and try to trace him back, would anyone claim him?

  Out there on the balcony, with small candles flickering in lanterns suspended from the railing, Martina realised that the more she talked to him the less she liked him. Nor did he seem particularly ta
ken with her; he struck her as offhand and indifferent. And that had irked her. She was used to men paying her court, but she was also aware that she was getting older. Of late she had become particularly sensitive to any idea that the power of her beauty might be waning. Before long she stood up to leave, and was surprised when he at once asked if they might meet again.

  She said yes, but made it clear that it was to be on her terms. She suggested the following Saturday, and gave him the name of a wine-bar near where she worked, said she would see him there. He was amenable to all of this, but still seemed neutral, as though it would have been a matter of no consequence to him had she refused.

  Why did she agree to see him again? She was, in the future, to ask herself this time without number. Perversely, it was because she had known he didn’t like her. It was a challenge. She would win him over; she would make him attracted to her. But in all of this she was refusing to listen to her instincts which, even then, told her that he wasn’t to be trusted.

  To Martina’s surprise, he seemed delighted to see her the following Saturday, jumping out of his seat to greet her when she arrived. She found him much more engaging than he had been at the party: funny and charming, keen to know all about her. He wanted to know where she worked, and where she lived in London. She enjoyed the evening, and when he suggested dinner the following Saturday night, she readily agreed. He knew of a particularly good restaurant, he said; fish, it served, did she like fish? He would book a table there for eight o’clock. It was a bit tucked away and hard to find, so he would collect her from her apartment and drive her over. She also agreed to this.

  She isn’t sipping the whiskey any longer, she is gulping it down. She rises, goes to the bottle and pours herself some more. As she returns to her seat she notices that the cat has chosen not to sleep on Beth’s bed tonight, but is on a chair, in a dim corner of the room. Martina picks the cat up and it gives a soft, petulant mew; but when she sits down and places it on her lap it flops over and immediately falls asleep again. She strokes its fur as she drinks. This is another thing she has learnt during her time living with Beth: the deep solace an animal can give, its mute comfort. She puts her hand on the cat’s breast and can feel its rapid, racing heart, its life-force giving her strength.

  He arrived early, a good three-quarters of an hour before she was expecting him, so that she was still in her dressing-gown, which annoyed her. He kissed her hard on the mouth as soon as she opened the door, which annoyed her even more, and he pushed quickly past her, was in her living room before she knew what was happening.

  ‘I’m nowhere near ready.’

  ‘I can wait.’

  It was all wrong. She felt vulnerable and wrong-footed, and his personality was different again tonight on this third meeting, there was a swagger, an arrogance that hadn’t been there before. He stood in the middle of the floor looking around freely at everything in her modest home: it seemed to amuse him.

  ‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I think we should call dinner off.’

  ‘You’re very unfriendly all of a sudden.’ He crossed to where she was standing and touched her face, but roughly, and she flicked her head away, showing her anger frankly now.

  ‘Just go.’

  With that, he hit her hard across the face with the flat of his hand, using such force that he knocked her to the ground. Then he was on top of her, pinning her down, pulling her dressing-gown open. She screamed once and he hit her again, put his hands tightly around her throat and told her to stop struggling. What happened was pure violence. She went very silent and still, like an animal, like prey, because she was afraid she was going to die.

  Afterwards as she lay there, crying and in deep shock, he laughed at her and told her she was a stupid bitch, asked her if she’d enjoyed it, said it would do her good. He left the room and she heard the main door of the apartment close behind him.

  Fear. Fear such as she had never known. He might come back. Although she was in great pain she struggled to her feet, went into the hall, double-locked herself in and put on the chain, then went back and dragged the sofa up against the living-room door.

  I got it all wrong, she thinks now. I should have called the police. I should have got them to take swabs, try to trace him back through the people at the party. I should have nailed him and stopped him attacking some other woman. Martina feels guilty about that, and guilty and ashamed too that she hadn’t seen him for what he was. She hadn’t been some ingénue, some little girl just out of school. She’d prided herself on her judgement as far as men were concerned: years of experience had taught her not just how to subtly read all kinds of strategies and behaviour but how to deal with it. Even with this man she had known that there was something wrong; but out of vanity, she told herself, she had ignored the danger signs. In fairness, though, she’d never before come across a dangerous predator. She’d thought that he didn’t much like her; but could never have guessed at the degree to which he hated and despised her, until it was too late.

  And she is angry with herself now, sitting half-drunk in the dim room with the sleeping cat, for feeling any degree of shame or guilt, knows that this poisonous combination of self-blame and recrimination is the natural result of what had been done to her. It wasn’t her fault.

  After locking herself in that night, she took a shower, and put the dressing-gown she had been wearing in a bin bag to be disposed of. She was still terrified that he might come back. He didn’t just know where she lived; he had asked her most specifically where she worked.

  It didn’t take long to dress and to pack a case, even though she was unsure what to put in it because she didn’t know where she was going. She was struggling now against confusion and disorientation, struggling to stay focused. She took the Tube out to the airport even though it was not the quickest means, but the thought of being closed up in a taxi with a man she didn’t know was intolerable to her.

  In Heathrow she looked up at the destination board and thought of how she could go, this very night, to any of the cities listed, the more distant and unfamiliar the better. There was a flight going out near midnight to Tokyo: she could max out her credit card on a one-way ticket and spend the time during the journey trying to work out what she would do when she got there. A flight was also leaving shortly for Oslo. When Martina had first moved to London she had had a Norwegian neighbour, a funny, gentle, friendly woman. Maybe all Norwegians were like that. Maybe she should go there. What should she do?

  Just with that, she flinched away in shock as someone touched her gently on the arm.

  A middle-aged woman was standing beside her in jeans and an anorak, pulling a small suitcase on wheels. She asked Martina in an American accent was she well, did she need any assistance? And Martina discovered that she was too traumatised to speak. The stranger then said, ‘I’m going over there,’ and indicated a nearby cafe. Martina shook her head helplessly. ‘I’ll be there for the next half-hour or so. If you change your mind and need anything, come and find me.’

  A few moments later, Martina looked at her own reflection in a mirror in the ladies and could see why the woman had approached her, offering help. Would she herself have gone up to someone who looked as she did? Someone so tousled and with a look of such terror in their eyes? She splashed water in her face and brushed her hair; told herself to get a grip or she would put herself in danger again. These thoughts of flying to Japan, it was madness, but still she wanted to get away; still the thought of being in the same city, the same country, even, as that man, appalled her.

  She went out onto the concourse and looked at the destination board again. The last flight of the day to Dublin was listed. If she bought a ticket and checked in immediately she would just about make it.

  What she remembers most clearly from the rest of that night was the huge surge of relief as the plane took off, and the sense that this was the right thing to do, even if it was also somehow mad and unreal and nightmarish, like all of the rest of that evening. I was at work
today, she thought. A few hours ago I was selling skirts and dresses and jackets, and now I’m on a plane. She felt a mixture of fear and adrenaline that sat particularly badly with her physical exhaustion and distress, and did not improve as time passed.

  What next? The cool, damp Dublin air when the door of the plane was opened. Wheeling her case to an airport hotel no distance from the terminal and booking in. The anonymous room. Putting out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, and pulling a table across the door, just to be sure. Another shower, with cheap liquid soap from the pump bottle in the bathroom. The sleep that didn’t come until near dawn.

  She puts her face down close now to the cat’s head, breathes in the pleasant, peculiar fragrance of its coat. It’s doing her no good to remember all this. Think about the next day, the Sunday. Ringing Fintan around noon and being secretly relieved when it went straight to voicemail. Not being able to venture out until the afternoon, and then taking a bus into town, with no real idea of where she was headed, any more than when she had gone to the airport in London; but getting out of the bus in Drumcondra and walking towards Christy and Beth’s house, as if under a spell.

  I’m safe now. That had been her first thought when Christy opened the door and she stepped into the hallway. That man would never find her here, no more than if she had somehow slipped through a rent in the fabric of time itself, and disappeared back into the distant past. Christy said almost nothing – maybe he didn’t even speak at all. In the sitting room he gestured towards an armchair before a newly lit fire. For once, there was no music playing in the house. There was a Foxford rug on the back of the sofa in Black Watch tartan, blue, green and black, and he handed it to her. She unfolded it and sat under it, stroked the wool with her hands and felt oddly consoled. She thinks that she then moved to speak but he raised his hand, and they sat in silence for a few moments longer: but such a silence. It deepened and intensified. Any word would have been too abstract to define what had entered the room, but the spirit of it was the absolute antithesis of what had been done to her the night before.