After several weeks at Bell Books, I’d grown adept at navigating the office landscape – the network drive, stationery, e-mail templates and phone enquiries – and I enjoyed George’s confidence in me with regard to the new website. George was irascible, but warm and articulate, and he clearly cared a lot about his work. He had a trick of looking at you sideways through those narrowed eyes, sizing you up, making mental notes – then opening out into a disarming smile.
‘How are you getting on, there, you OK?’ Paula rose from her desk.
‘Grand, yeah.’
‘I’ve to go down to the post office now, before George gets back and changes his mind. If Martin Bright’s office phones from London about the MacDevitt project, tell them the manuscript is on its way.’ She disappeared into George’s office, to emerge a few minutes later carrying a large envelope and wearing a sour expression. ‘I think Eddie’s the only author we’ve had this century who won’t use e-mail. I ask you. In this day and age.’
‘Is he a bit eccentric?’
‘Fuckin’ throwback, excuse my French.’ And with that, she left.
JULY ROLLED INTO August, the limpid evenings just beginning to deepen at the edges, with perhaps a faint impatience to get on to autumn. The weather continued fine, and I continued to like my job. My parents and Mícheál went on their annual holiday in Kerry; I consolidated my recent tradition of declining to join them there.
On a Thursday evening at the end of the month, I headed into town for the first choir rehearsal of the season. I arrived a few minutes early and went to join some of the others by the piano. Tom Silke, impeccable as always in a waistcoat and tie, turned to greet me. ‘Well, a Chaitlín, and how are we this clement evening?’ Tom was one of very few people from whom I’d tolerate my given name. He leaned in close. ‘Come here to me, did you see our new tenor?’
I looked around but noticed nobody unfamiliar.
‘Oh, is he not here? He must be in the jacks. He’s an absolute dish, if you like them a bit grainy.’
‘Fresh blood, is it?’ It was rare enough in Dublin choral circles, particularly on the tenor line.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Tom. ‘Mizz Duffy has come up trumps. Our lightning conductor. Connections in all directions. Don’t ask me how she got hold of him.’
The choir began to cohere; I took my usual seat among the altos. The door to the corridor squealed, and a stranger edged into the room. He was quite tall, slim but not skinny, and he had curly dark hair and large, deep-set eyes. I put him in his late twenties, maybe even thirty. He carried himself well – straight-necked, square-shouldered, graceful as he walked towards the empty chair beside Tom. He hadn’t shaved. I could hear Tom’s voice in my head: if you like them a bit grainy.
Diane Duffy, our faultlessly coiffed conductor, raised her hands for quiet. ‘Welcome everybody, welcome back! OK, I’d like to start …’ She waited for the simmer of talk to subside. ‘I’d like to start with a very warm welcome to Matthew Taylor. Wave to the nice people, Matthew.’
Heads swivelled to acknowledge the newcomer, who said, ‘Hello.’
‘Matthew’s here to help with that little tenor famine we were having,’ Diane went on. ‘He’ll be joining us for our Belfast gig in November, anyway, and I hope for the Christmas concert as well. Matthew, thanks for coming on board – I hope you enjoy yourself.’
‘I’m sure I will, thanks,’ Matthew said. He sounded English. I decided I wouldn’t hold it against him.
‘Speaking of Belfast,’ Diane went on, ‘I hope everyone got the e-mail about that. Here’s the sign-up sheet. Pass it round, and cross out your name if you definitely can’t be there.’ She handed the list to one of the sopranos. ‘Now, they want a twenty-minute set from us, the usual old favourites, plus we’ll be joining with two other choirs to perform a newly commissioned work – of which more later. This is a big opportunity for Carmina Urbana, and we’d obviously all like to do a superb job, yes? OK, good.’
The sign-up sheet reached me with no names crossed out; I passed it on.
Diane was still speaking. ‘And I’m also putting the finishing touches to our Christmas concert programme. It will feature, by popular request, Chichester Psalms, which if you don’t know it is by Leonard Bernstein and is absolutely delicious.’
An appreciative murmur ran round the room.
Diane turned away to the piano and thumped out a major chord, then faced the room again, hands poised, commanding. ‘Now, on a very gentle ooo.’ She pointed at each section and gave the notes. ‘Listening for tuning and blend, then altos drop a semitone on my cue – three, four …’
We settled into our warm-up exercises, then worked through a Mendelssohn Benedictus. I noticed Matthew Taylor’s voice behind me on the tenor line – full and strong, but light. It sounded like a trained voice. He was better than Tom, I realized, and much better than any of the other tenors.
During the break I drifted over to where the two of them were talking.
‘Allow me to present Cate Houlihan, the sine qua non of the alto line,’ intoned Tom. ‘Matthew went to Cambridge, it turns out. He seems to have picked up one or two singing tips there.’
A shy dimple appeared on Matthew’s cheek. ‘I was just asking Tom about these concerts that are coming up.’
Tom took the cue. ‘Yes, well, we’ve got this gig up North in November – vee prestigious although musically bankrupt, one suspects – and then I think our proper concert is in the second week of December.’
‘Our proper concert,’ Matthew repeated. ‘I see how it is. I take it Belfast will be improper?’
‘That’s entirely up to you, dear boy – I’m not responsible for your conduct.’ Tom was caricaturing himself.
‘What brings you to Dublin?’ I asked Matthew.
He was a PhD student, he explained, come to do some research in the UCD history department. He’d been in Dublin for just a few weeks. He’d visited on a family holiday several years ago, but he couldn’t remember much. He liked it, so far.
‘UCD,’ sniffed Tom. ‘Well, you weren’t to know.’
Matthew looked a little alarmed.
‘Tom lectures in Trinity,’ I told him.
‘And my father before me!’ said Tom.
Matthew gave a slight bow. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
Diane called the choir to order. ‘Little treat for you now.’ She had a stack of music, which she distributed in bundles to be passed along. ‘It’s our peace anthem for Belfast!’
I looked at my copy: A Song of Ireland was printed across the top. Over to the right, the composer’s name.
‘Trevor Daintree?’ Tom rumbled behind me. ‘Never heard of him.’
We started with a relatively easy passage from around the middle of the piece, in which the men held long, mild discords on open vowels while the women ambled above them in thirds and fourths. After that, though, the harmonies became less obvious, the Latin text twisted itself around our tongues, and we became mired in the complex rhythms.
‘Is there a particular reason,’ Tom mused, ‘why this Trevor Daintree person was not drowned at birth?’
Diane laughed with the rest of us. ‘We’re not really feeling the love, are we? Maybe it’ll grow on us. OK, once more from bar one-eighty-three, and then we’ll do some nice Bernstein.’
THE LITTLE PUB round the corner, where we always went after rehearsal, was hot and full of breath. The television was on, tuned to some match. Ollie, the barman, knew us well. He raised his hand in greeting as we trooped in, and spotted Matthew. ‘What’s this, a new victim?’
We ordered drinks. Matthew had a Guinness, earning much macho backslapping from the others. ‘I drink it in England too,’ he said, ‘but it’s really not the same.’
In the jostle for seats, I ended up beside him. Or was it that he ended up beside me? That was an appealing thought. He smiled as we sat down, as though to acknowledge our prior acquaintance. His mouth was finely contoured, with a perfectly crisp boundary where the dus
ky pink of his lips ended and the white skin began.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what do you do when you’re not singing?’
‘In those rare moments, you mean? I work for a publisher.’
‘Oh?’ His elegant eyebrows registered interest. ‘I was a publisher’s reader for a few years, before I bit the bullet and re-entered academia. What house do you work for?’
House seemed an impossibly elevated term for George’s outfit. ‘You won’t have heard of it. It’s tiny. It’s called Bell Books.’
He flexed the corners of his eyes. ‘Hmmm. I think I might have, actually. Do you publish mainly Irish interest?’
I couldn’t help smiling. ‘All Irish publishers publish mainly Irish interest,’ I told him gently.
He looked slightly embarrassed. I watched the tiny ridges on his lower lip, how they caught the light. His ear, too, was particularly lovely – a dainty pink swirl that hugged the side of his head, framed bewitchingly by dark curls. He said, ‘But no, I’m sure I have come across you before. Bell Books. You don’t do fiction, do you?’
‘No, it’s all government reports, touristy books, history, that sort of thing.’
‘Ah, that’s it. I think my supervisor is writing a preface for one of your books.’
‘Is your supervisor John Lawless?’
‘Yes, that’s right, he was telling me about it last week.’ Matthew seemed unconcerned by the coincidence, which was a good one, I felt, even by Irish standards. He went on, ‘What’s the author’s name again?’
‘Eddie MacDevitt,’ I said, and immediately got the feeling that perhaps I shouldn’t have. ‘But I’m not – I don’t – I’m not working on that project. I don’t really work on the books themselves.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I just do the website, and correspondence and stuff.’ It was my turn to be embarrassed. Suddenly, my job seemed meaningless and dull.
‘That could be fun,’ said Matthew. ‘What’s Eddie MacDevitt like as a correspondent?’
He was so keen, I wished I had something exciting to tell him. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘My boss is handling the whole thing himself.’
‘I see,’ he said. I tried to fight the conviction that I’d somehow blown my chance at a first impression.
We turned our attention to the general conversation. Val Dunne, a fellow alto, was unhappy. ‘Wait – what? They want our actual names?’ She was addressing Joan Richardson, the hearty English-woman who acted as benign dictator of the choir committee and stiffened the musical sinews of the soprano line.
Joan said, ‘Yes, that’s right, we have to send a complete list to Belfast next week. Names, contact details, dates of birth, the lot.’
‘Dates of birth? You’re joking!’
‘No, it’s all seriously official.’
Val wasn’t giving up. ‘So you’re saying, some random fuckers up in Belfast are going to have my name and address and phone number and e-mail and fucking shoe size?’
‘But, Val, they’re not random fuckers.’ The obscenity sounded peculiar in Joan’s mouth. ‘It’s the Civil Service. They’re responsible people. This is a high-profile event. They need to know who’s going to be there, that’s all.’ Her tone was cajoling now. ‘Yes, all right, they’re going a bit overboard with the red tape, but you know how bureaucrats are.’
Val sat back and scowled at her shiny red fingernails. ‘Well, I don’t see how having my mobile number is going to help them, is all.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Joan. ‘It’s a condition of our doing the gig.’ She looked deflated. She and Val were housemates – perhaps she was worrying about stony silence in their shared spaces.
I left soon after that and went for my bus. Waiting at the stop, I sang the registration numbers of a few passing vehicles. Just as I spotted my bus turning the corner, a large dark saloon car manoeuvred out of a nearby parking spot and rolled slowly away from me. I read its number: 52845. Tricky. Was there something there? 52845: I whistled it under my breath …
Aha! It was the opening of Chichester Psalms, which we’d been rehearsing earlier. How gratifying that I was now in a position to make this catch. I wouldn’t have known it two hours ago. A complete phrase too – very rare. It boded well for the coming season, I decided. I bounced up and down as I hailed the slowing bus, and grinned. I felt oddly as though I’d accomplished something.
BACK IN MY flat I made a cup of tea and sat at the table in the living room looking out at the soft darkness. Through the window I could see the top branches of the young ash tree that grew on the pavement opposite. They hadn’t been visible earlier in the year. They waved at me, and I waved gently back.
On reflection, I wasn’t too worried about having made a bad first impression with Matthew. It had been OK. Anyway, he was the one who’d gone all nerdy about my job. I wondered fleetingly if he was thinking about me too – a squishy thought, and one that required prompt management. I’d better find something to bring me back down to earth.
I switched on the radio as I tidied up. There was an interview with some dried-up academic about recent outbreaks of trouble in the North. Dissident Republicans rearing their scaly heads again. A couple of weapon stashes, a punishment beating, a bomb plot mercifully foiled. Dr Expert described in careful, polysyllabic detail how these ongoing paramilitary activities could ultimately, if unchecked, precipitate an unthinkable return to historical instabilities. Both interviewer and interviewee spoke with assured middle-class Dublin accents, the rounded intonation of entitlement and benign dispassion. The sound evoked the flavour of home. Schooldays, back a decade or more. Homework in front of me on the dining table. Radio voices floating in from the kitchen. Head down as Mum and Dad argued about the same old, same old news: Republican ceasefire – would it hold?
‘Nora, they got what they came for, and they need to do the decent thing now – lay down their arms and not be acting the maggot.’
‘They’re not acting the maggot, Paddy. This wasn’t what they came for. This was never about bureaucracy. You know that as well as I do. This is about beliefs. This is about history. This is about blood.’
NOTHING COULD POSSIBLY have appealed to me less that Sunday than a trip to Ardee. There were so many arguments against it, starting with enforced interaction with my family and going right through to the fact that my car (which wasn’t really mine) was having one of its periodic crises. I wished I’d stood up to Mum when she’d rung. But Sunday lunch with Uncle Fintan and Auntie Rosemary was nearly as immutable as Mass itself. From time to time, it simply had to be endured.
It might not be so terrible – I hadn’t seen Uncle F in ages. Then again, Mum had been hassling me to talk to him about my rent, which he’d set at a nominal rate when I’d moved in here. I sat in my living room, gulping down coffee and thinking of my uncle, his bemusement at the prosperity that his little investment in the eighties had brought. Even now, no negative equity for him.
Out in the street, I encountered my downstairs neighbours, Sheila and Aidan. Their smart black hatchback stood agape. Sheila turned from the car as I emerged, and walked back towards the house, carrying a small potted bush in one hand and some garden tools in the other: a matching spade and fork, a trowel hanging from her finger by a leather loop. More plants stood on the footpath where they’d been unloaded from the car.
‘Hiya, Cate,’ said Sheila. The tools were gleaming new, unsullied by soil or stone.
Aidan was wrestling a plastic-wrapped futon mattress out of the car. He lifted his chin in greeting. ‘How’s it going?’ He looked groomed, as always, in pristine jeans and a pale green shirt.
‘Here, let me give you a hand,’ I heard myself say. I took hold of the slippery package at its nearest corner and tugged at it.
Aidan murmured and shook his head, but I stuck to my guns. I could feel the strain in my shoulder muscles. Why was I persisting? We heaved the thing on to the footpath as Sheila came back.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘My folks are coming for
a visit next week, so we’re trying to make the place look a bit respectable.’
‘Ah, hence the plants and everything.’ I nodded.
‘I know! We actually asked Mr Sullivan ages ago and he said we could plant whatever we liked out the back, but then do you think we did anything about it? So now we’ve just got a few bits and pieces and we’re going to stick them in and see what happens.’ She spoke rapidly, in an unceasing stream. ‘Is he well, anyway?’
‘Uncle Fintan? Yeah, I think he’s in good form.’
‘Oh, that’s good. He was off to Spain on his holidays when we saw him last. He was due a holiday, I’d say.’ Sheila shook her head sadly. ‘I thought he was looking awful tired.’
‘Ah, yeah,’ I agreed. I was beginning to edge away.
‘And how’s the new job? Going well?’
The last time we’d spoken had been the morning of my first day at Bell Books. ‘It’s going great,’ I said.
‘Well, that’s good,’ said Sheila.
‘Listen, I’d better …’ I raised a valedictory hand and began to move towards my car, which was parked across the narrow street.
As I walked, the engine of a car parked a little way down the road hummed to life. I looked at it, and felt a tiny thrill of recognition as I realized that it had the same registration number as the one I’d seen a few days ago: 52845, the opening phrase of Chichester Psalms. Funny how Dublin seemed so big, yet you ended up crossing the same people’s paths all the time. Was this the same car? I couldn’t remember the make or year of the one I’d seen before, so I couldn’t tell for sure.
‘Spooky,’ I said to the ash tree as I fished for my keys.
It was shortly after I took the Ardee exit off the M1 that my car decided to stage its big huff. Suddenly and inexorably, it slowed, ignoring my frantic pumping of the accelerator. I was lucky to be able to indicate, brake and pull over before the momentum dissipated altogether. I switched off the engine and sat in silence, gathering my resources.
When I felt ready, I phoned the house. Dad answered – just home from Mass, grudgingly willing to head back out and help me.
The Living Page 2