—It’s funny how you don’t see things coming, he said.
—Storms? I said. Being too literal is still my way of dealing with his oversupply of enthusiasm.
Above us there was nothing to see except unmoving purple and brown clouds. The waves were rasping at our cold feet as Daniel headed into the dunes with a whoop—another off-kilter gesture. We followed a path up through the dunes to a rough clearing. His expression softened to show that we should stop to admire something—it was quite an ordinary view, a tatty picnic area was about it. There were the blackened remnants of several bonfires and some teenagers were playing guitars further into the dunes. I couldn’t see but could feel the sweet smoke from our barbecue at home.
Then, in what was a frantic moment for him, Daniel said he wanted to talk about something—it was nothing to worry about, he said. He didn’t think so, he was sure of it.
He told me that my mother and father were indifferent to my stories. And, because life in Paris had become a story—not an E.T. story but a real story—they didn’t believe my memory loss was genuine. Just too much, they told him. Daniel was short of breath and mumbling so I had to ask him to repeat it—whether he would go their way or mine should it ever come to that.
I held my breath and my temper then out it came—one for every miraculous, pathetic punch.
—No, no, no.
Daniel’s cheeks are soft but his skull isn’t and my hand really hurt. Also, he barely put up a fight. His beautiful face full of sadness and worry as he thudded into an accommodating dune. The commotion brought about the attention of a passing collie, which sniffed us up and down, perhaps wondering, as I was, when Daniel was going to get up. The dog took his time walking away, implying disapproval.
In an hour I will meet my parents at Quai 53 and a car will drive us all the way to Charles de Gaulle. For now, I am in an antiques shop on the harbour in Saint Martin—it’s nearly empty in a very expensive way—and Ségo is waiting while the antiques man checks on the availability of some bistro chairs she wants to buy for Gravy.
It is thirty-five degrees outside but Antiques is wearing a black polo neck under a burgundy V-neck under a grey cardigan under a blue woollen jacket. He smells discreetly of furniture polish and I am scratching my collar just looking at him. While Antiques makes his call, he offers us a seat on the display versions of the chairs.
The metal is cool against my thighs. —Nice, I say.
Ségo looks rested after her week in the sun but far from relaxed. I’ve become fascinated by her skin, expensive and childlike. It is, as I have come to expect, as smooth and tight as a porpoise’s. Whenever she hugs me—good night and good morning and times in-between—I can smell it, I can take her all the way into my nostrils.
My voice rises sharply when I say, —I’m excited about Dublin.
—You sound it.
—You don’t have to be so mean about it.
I stand up quickly but the chair has stuck to my leg and skin departs metal with a fart noise that we ignore.
—They’re my parents, I say.
—That doesn’t mean that they value your happiness. It just means they’re good at appearances.
Antiques finishes his call and addresses Ségo in an amorous tone. He tells her that some chairs have mysteriously appeared and they can be delivered to Paris whenever she wants. Assuming he has secured the sale, he lays it on thick.
Ségo turns to me and says, —What’s wrong with the chairs I have?
We make our escape from the shop and outside I wonder if convention dictates that I should storm off. Start crying while I’m at it. Jump off the pier.
It’s Ségo so I don’t want to do any of that—but I feel there are some things she needs to know.
—Ask a question, I say. Can I say something about me and Jerome?
—You just gonna say mean things to get back at me?
—There is some simple information I feel I should share with you and you are free disregard it if you wish.
—Touché, she says.
—Touché.
—Touché.
—Touché.
—Touché.
—Touché.
—Touché.
—Touché.
—Eva, what is it you want to say to me?
I approach the stone steps leading down to the jetties and all the boats. There is a walkway that takes you over to the Quai 53 side of the harbour without having to walk on the street. The steps are in the shade and the stone is wet and cool, if a little narrow to accommodate two people sitting side by side.
—Are you alright? she says.
But it seems to me that Ségo wants me to keep quiet, and take whatever it is I have to say about Jerome to the airport and back to Ireland.
—Am I in trouble if you don’t like what I say?
—Where do you get these things from? In trouble? No.
Ségo makes her way after me, coming to rest a couple of steps above where I’m sitting. Her knees are resting against my shoulders and she begins to give me a massage. I flinch at her touch at first but she settles into a rhythm where she is moving slowly along my spine as if pulling the meat away from the bone. She seems to want to push me as far as she can, waiting for a response—my sigh—before pausing and asking for my hands.
At one point she is waggling my wrists and pulling my fingers so that the sound of my popping joints resembles radio static.
Then she says, —Is this what I think it is?
I know I can nod my head and that this time Ségo will see me. Otherwise, with both of us on the steps and facing the same way, it’s a phone call where nobody can hang up.
Ségo sounds embarrassed.
—He hit you, didn’t he?
She is rubbing my shoulders and she adjusts the strap of my swimsuit. It is just as well that I can’t see her face when I say, —Of course, this was after I had been pregnant with his baby.
—I knew, she says.
—Because he hit you too?
—Because he told me.
—Has he hit you?
—No.
—Not yet, I say.
Ségo is right to play it down. Although sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d had a baby. What if I had tried to test Jerome’s love for me? As if there wasn’t a finite amount of it. Now I will never know. And what my child has never known—how could it?—is that it would have affected every part of my life, those other areas—my feeling of aimlessness in particular—that did not turn out so well when it was left to me. As decisions go, losing a child may not have been the worst one I have made. But I did not make this decision.
—Are you going to see him again? I say.
—I doubt it.
I’m past worrying about Jerome now, I am—but I can remember Arles—and what went wrong in my body. Before that there was a beautiful hotel room with tiles and a terrace. We brought our own music and our own gin and made ourselves right at home. When we finished the bottle we called down and asked for more, but they said they couldn’t give us gin—they could give us wine. The man who delivered it to the room took to us and said the wine was lovers’ wine. And then, of course, something in me burst and there was all that fuss.
Ségo has her ears pricked but I don’t share any of this.
Across the harbour, through the masts and sails, I can see my parents leaving Quai 53. Ségo’s phone rings—it’s my father calling, he’s waving to us from outside the restaurant. I could be about to walk out of her life forever and it is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Losing her is as feasible as persuading a drip back up a tap. Besides. Can I even begin to say what she has done for me? I won’t even try.
يا روحي
I would rather be looking at the planes but Charl
es de Gaulle is full of shops which demand our attention.
—Let me see you properly, Mum says.
This is how she speaks to me now. The judge in a pet show.
I pull faces in the shop’s mirror. A feather could be tickling my nose. Oh my heart, the scarf is the kind of thing worn by the Queen. Mum chatters to keep me interested in buying it—in her buying it—but the scarf does nothing a scarf is supposed to do and it costs all that money. Next door, in an undertaking as impressive and solemn as the signing of an international treaty, she buys me pearls. But I’m having a lovely time and when I’m having a lovely time I tend to imagine it can only get lovelier. And if it’s what Mum wants, I am content to wear the tasteless scarves and pointless but correct pearls.
It is probably too much and certainly too soon but, before we have even left Paris, she says she wants to return to France. There’s a place she wants to visit in Avignon—it’s expensive, she says, but you get what you pay for these days. We’ll go next spring, once I’m more settled. We’ll drink the appropriate aperitifs under the perfect blossoms. Meanwhile, they are about to spend six thousand euros on a weekend touching their toes and cleansing themselves with raw fennel—although it occurs to me that vulnerable people, the category to which I’ve decided my father belongs, have come to expect too much from fruit and veg.
I feel embarrassed that my parents spend most of their time on holiday—but you would need to be a skilful orator to convince anyone that theirs is a life that needs adjustment. They are just rich and the vast world is very available to them.
And to me, Mum says.
We drive from the airport in Dad’s enormous custard-coloured car. We reach Dun Laoghaire, passing by a beautiful pier that for the life of me I can’t remember—I feel stupid for not recognising it. There is nonetheless a pleasant, savoury smell to the sea.
Mum shares her thoughts so far—that this will be the perfect place in which to resume my old life.
—I’m picturing walks along the pier, she says.
—Watercolour-worthy sunsets, Dad says.
They point out the landmarks—as though they have taken in an exchange student for the summer—but they only begin to understand my confusion, made worse by carsickness, when I fail to recognise the Martello Tower across the bay. They mean well and I know that—but my parents have to be told in a number of ways that I don’t remember.
—There’s our house! Mum says.
The bay before it is attempting to sparkle into life. The tired sea is one thing but there, Mum says, is the bandstand blown up by the Provos and new library that cost all that money. Teddy’s—that’s where we’ll go for ice cream. A quick spin through Glasthule and St Joseph’s Church is pointed out, briefly, as if I am expected to sculpt a baptism, first communion, and confirmation—an entire childhood—from some passing remarks.
We pass the beach in Sandycove where a pair of old men are returning from an evening swim in matching dressing gowns—an act, to my mind, of good old quiet defiance.
I ask Dad if he swims.
—I bet you look funny in your togs.
—He looks like a big fat candle, Mum says.
Dad slows at the gate to afford me a widescreen view of the house. Compared to what I know—Paris, dishes, dirty mattresses—it’s the home of a lottery winner. Viewed from the garden, the large windows that brood upon the bay speak of a discreetly satisfying life within.
Dad has some work calls to make and Mum stage manages my entrance to the house, so I am left alone to explore. I spot interesting nooks everywhere—and there is so much hallway, far too much of it. The manicured parquet floorboards are different from the thick carpets I have envisaged, but so are the great piles of neatly stacked birch in the porch and by the fireplace in the first living room I come to.
The living room has the look of a sacristy—lace curtains the colour of a roast potato, from Dad’s cigars—but the rowdy gathering of plants and vines in the conservatory is overwhelming. It may be the end of summer but the light is wintry. I let the vine tickle my forehead. I dig my face deep into the canopy of leaves and to my surprise discover that it is real—a harsh, stalky smell and a fist of grapes falling gently against my nose. They are dusty but underneath the dust the grapes are a livid purple. There is so much to see—plants, their names beyond me. I guess at orchids and I am sure I see geraniums. I congratulate myself for knowing the name by popping a grape into my mouth.
I am spitting the grape into my hand and wiping my hand under my armpit when Mum appears with tea—fetching hot drinks seems to be what she does. But she doesn’t have the hang of my memory at all. I have to ask her explain things. Dad’s routine—that, when he isn’t in here, he is in his study drinking coffee, drinking wine, smoking, writing letters to papers, reading books on treason, betrayal and arson. Sometimes he just sits in the dark with his music but she says I am not to worry and his moods pass eventually.
—Why moods?
—It’s your father.
—Is the cancer back?
—Is it back? It’s been gone for, I don’t know, almost as long as you.
—He looks like he has something.
—That’s your father.
—Should he be smoking?
—He can smoke all he wants.
—But it’ll come back.
The silence that follows is much gloomier than I expect. Mum pirouettes away, which says that I am to follow her.
—Leave the cup, she says.
I stand at the sea wall. I look up and see the mirroring effect the dusk has on the upstairs windows. What any of this signifies I can’t be certain—but I understand something is afoot when Mum blunders towards the garage waving her arms as if shooing pigeons.
—When was the last time you played the cello?
Music seems to be an acceptable topic but I am learning to tune Mum out when she speaks. Or I am still listening but in a distracted way, the way you do when you’re washing dishes—because by now I have adjusted to the fact that they have a surprise for me. It was only a matter of time before someone mentioned that word.
In the drab light my father does not look well—he is already sitting on an upturned wine crate, looking as disillusioned as a fisherman expecting bad weather before an important day at sea. He has rolled up his trousers and is putting on a pair of old combat boots which have been rotting by the garage door.
—There are jobs to do, he says. If you want to occupy yourself in the next few days, I’ll be needing a right-hand man. Unless you have music to play.
It seems that once upon a time I wanted to be a professional musician.
—Missed the conservatoire by a whisker, says Dad.
I say, —What’s the conservatoire?
—You auditioned, Mum says. Twice.
—I don’t remember.
—You do remember, Dad says. You said music was your life.
Let’s not pretend that I can remember—but I’m queasy and this comes on suddenly. My queasiness is seasoned with panic because I don’t know why they look so worried.
Mum takes a while to unlock the garage door. She steps back so I am more or less standing there alone.
—Have a look around, she says. See if there’s anything you can find.
The interior of the garage resembles the scene of an interrupted burglary. There is a box containing some tulip bulbs and when I lift it as instructed Mum asks if I see what is underneath—the leather handle of an instrument case. I remove the cello from the case, holding the instrument as though it has never been out of my hands. The point of this, apparently, is that it should seem like a happy memory. Dad is now standing at the door of the garage. Mum joins him, miming fascination at the scene. God knows how I try to return their anxious smiles.
On the stairs there is a framed photograph
a child being rolled through snow. I turn the picture to the wall—just in case she is who I think she is.
My bedroom is vast and clean and half-painted. The floorboards go on forever and I decide I will wear them out with focused pacing. Mum has explained that they wanted to get the room ready for me but they couldn’t decide on a colour for the walls—I suppose I could make too much of that, if I chose to. She also said we could pick out some furniture but the room is so big that it would worry me to fill it and I think I like it as it is—although I can’t make out much of anything belonging to me.
I get into bed and out of bed. Maybe I won’t spend any time in here. Maybe I will spend all my time in here. The sheets and pillowcases are new and very nice—the brand name would probably be big news for anyone into sheets and pillowcases but I don’t want to know. I am not going in the direction of branded sheets. The wardrobes—for perhaps an hour I stand in front of them, attempting to answer the question of to whom those old jeans now belong and what purpose they serve.
It was a Saturday morning in Paris. Apocryphal. Much like the first day I saw Eagleback. I had wanted to travel alone to Paris but Mum and Dad wouldn’t hear of it. Paris was to be shared, they said. The city photographs well but in three dimensions you have to contend with homeless people like I would become; scaffolding over the cathedral; forgetting your favourite route to that café and getting there to find it shuttered. Many such things about the meeting with the music teacher occur to me—she was going to help us with the pre-screening for the conservatoire and I was expected to walk into her home and confidently play Dvorak’s Concerto from start to finish. Her living room floor was bare and scuffed and I was alone on it with absolutely no idea of what to do with this cello I had brought with me on the plane.
The bow was too light in my hand. The cello strings were made of toxic material and I was scared to touch them. A heavy sigh came from the teacher—a skinny woman in an oversized man’s shirt. It was not what I would have worn to welcome strangers to my home.
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