In White Ink
Page 21
She pulled away and looked at him.
‘So that’s that,’ she said. ‘A married woman now.’
Eoin nodded. He held the gift in two hands and gazed at the paper.
‘It’s broken,’ he said again. ‘So I’ll fix it and give it to you next time you visit...’
‘Can I see?’ she said. ‘Is it a picture?’
He pried open the corner of the paper, and let it fall to the floor. He couldn’t see much beyond the blur of the bubble wrap. The frame looked different – newer than he remembered, and shinier. The glass had smashed completely – he could hear it scrape against itself. He knew it would be unwise to unleash all those shards on the fresh carpet, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to see Sharon’s painting again – the bowl that disappeared off the side of the page, the blurred tulip that she had placed beside it, its petals streaked watery pink and yellow. What he liked about this painting was the way one petal had come away from the flower and found its way inside the bowl where it lay like a small disc of blood. There was something very interesting about that, which the art college had failed to consider. He could remember Sharon crying about it – her teacher chastised her for not ‘plotting’ her composition. Eoin needed the reassurance of Sharon’s painting – the marks she had made, the proof of her. Perhaps Sharon had touched the canvas to pad down a peak or make a dot in the distance; perhaps there was a strand of her hair preserved in an oily slice of tablecloth. He had read once that the Mona Lisa’s pearls were made with pinkie fingerprints.
He opened only the top of the bubble wrap, hoping that the glass would be caught in the pocket beneath, and tried to slide the frame upwards, but it wouldn’t budge. He tugged at the mouth of the bubble wrap and wiggled the picture up out of it, spilling little cubes of glass over the new carpet.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry, someone put something heavy on top of it—’
It was a photograph. Three girls in their school uniforms. Eoin recognized them all. The tall blonde one was Sharon. Sharon with her tongue sticking out to be cool, wearing her school tie as a headband. Clara was in the middle, her cheeks fuller than they were now, thick, low eyebrows, nut-brown hair. The girls had their arms slung over one another. They each made a peace sign with two fingers, but the way they did it looked more like they were saying ‘fuck you’ to the camera. The other girl was Maud. The stout girl who used to traipse around after Sharon. He had a soft spot for her because she was always so stuttering and polite. The other girls used to fix her make-up for her in the back of the car and tell her she looked fab and he remembered she used to wear black tights with the tiny dresses, instead of going bare-legged like the others. She had died too. My God, could he really have forgotten? A few weeks before Sharon. My God. Yes. She had leukaemia, but it was the hospital bug that killed her.
‘Oh,’ said Eoin, looking around for his own gift. ‘It’s the wrong one.’
The tree-planting ceremony. That was where he had seen that big man before – the tree-planting ceremony at the school. One tree for Sharon, and one for the other girl. They stood there – he and Pam, beside the fat man and his short wife, and the headmistress clutching her hands before her like a bouncer. The students were assembled on the lawn. The girls from Sharon’s class held each other and wept, crumbling tissues into their faces.
‘It’s from someone else. It’s a photo; from someone else.’
He placed the smashed picture in Clara’s hand, and stooped to pick up his own gift. There it was – under the table with the gift tag and the golden ribbon still on.
‘I’ll give this to you another time, Clara,’ he said. ‘Congratulations. A married woman now.’
He gave her a dry kiss and moved past her towards the door.
*
The dining room was darker when he came in, and colder, because the big doors had been thrown open onto the patio. There was a string quartet playing a fast waltz, but their sound was feeble, leaching into the dark space outside.
At the far end of the room, some couples shuffled palm to palm to the beat of the waltz, the men in crumpling linen the colour of aged paper, the women in all their murky frills like spring flowers open to the moon.
Pam was still at their table – Table 4, The Kiss – sitting amongst empty chairs, the red-cheeked child asleep on her lap. Her eyes were closed and she swayed to and fro like a lapping shore, jaw pressed to the child’s clammy hair. Her oval face was tilted like a Madonna’s, Victorian pale in the dim light. Eoin stood before her, holding the picture in his hand. They were glittery hearts on the giftwrap – not rings – and doves.
‘Pam,’ he said, but she didn’t open her eyes.
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Acknowledgements
Some of these stories have taken many years to write. I have been baffled by the generosity and astuteness of their first readers and critics, as well as the patience and trust of their various publishers. The Arts Council of Ireland played an important practical role in facilitating my work on this collection.
My partner, Seán, dedicated thankless hours to reading and rereading these pieces in their rawest states. His insight often helped me to grasp the slippery heart of the stories they were to become. Without his contribution, certain paths may never have been taken, and without his care and more-than-co-parenting of our three children over the last months, this collection would have been even longer coming.
Thank you, Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff of Tramp Press, for friendship, time and invaluable feedback over the last years; Daniel Caffrey for championing the work, and providing both the pastoral and editorial care to see it through; John Hobbs for the constant encouragement and sound advice; Joseph Roche for giving me a first-hand account of his Mars One experience; Tom Morris for his quiet support, Colm Farren for his careful readings, Michela Esposito for her discerning and creative eye; Laura-Blaise McDowell for providing a refreshing dose of flippancy, Mary O’Donoghue for her persistent backing, and Eleanor Rees for her sensitive, diligent edits and much needed reassurance.
I am grateful to Marianne Gunn O’Connor for placing this collection, and to my agent, Lucy Luck for her unfailing enthusiasm and support.
Thank you, Antony Farrell of Lilliput Press, for publishing me in the first place, for true collaboration and open mindedness through this process, and for the dishwasher – a gift that has bought me hours of writing time.
Thank you, Neil Belton, for encouragement at a critical moment many years ago, and for your unwavering confidence in my writing. I feel honoured to have you as an editor and truly satisfied that this collection has found a home with Head of Zeus.
About Elske Rahill
ELSKE RAHILL grew up in Dublin and lives in Burgundy, France, with her partner and three children. Her first novel, Between Dog and Wolf, was published by The Lilliput Press in 2013.
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The Apollo list reflects in various ways the extremity of our time, and the ways in which novelists responded to the vertiginous changes that the world went through as the great empires declined, relations between men and women were transformed and formerly subject peoples found their voice.
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First published in the UK in 2017 by Apollo, an imprint of Head of Zeus, Ltd.
Copyright © Elske Rahill, 2017
‘Toby’ was first published in AGNI, Fall 2016.
‘A Wife’ was
first published in Dubliners 100, Tramp Press, 2014, as ‘A Mother’, to mark the centenary of James Joyce’s Dubliners.
‘Bride’ was first published in The Dublin Review, 2012.
‘Terraforming’ was first published in A Kind of Compass, Tramp Press, 2015.
‘Manners’ was first published in The Dublin Review, 2011.
‘Cords’ was first published in Home (part of the pan-European project ‘Scritture Giovanni’), 2015.
‘Tasteless’ was first published in The Tangerine, Winter 2016.
The moral right of Elske Rahill to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
These stories are works of fiction. Like all fiction, they are built out of lived experience. While some of the scenarios may be speculated from contemporary political, legal and material circumstances, their details are imaginary; the events they present are fictitious. Character names or traits resembling those of actual persons are coincidental and should not be inferred as references to living individuals. If there are similarities between the organisations portrayed in these stories, and existing businesses, charities or institutions, they are unintentional and should not be considered accurate reports.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781786691040
ISBN (XTPB): 9781786691057
ISBN (E): 9781786691033
Design: Hannah Ellis
Author photo: Hartwig Klappert
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