Life Drawing for Beginners

  Michael rubbed a hand across his face. He needed to sit down.

  The door opened and a woman he knew slightly walked in and smiled hello. Michael dropped the letter under the counter and braced trembling hands on the counter, and made a sterling effort to smile back.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, approaching the counter. “You’re looking a bit pale.”

  “I’m fine,” Michael said. “Never better.”

  “Glad to hear it.” She took two tins of cat food from the shelf and brought them to the counter. Barry caught her eye.

  “Oh hello,” she said, smiling. “Who’s this now?”

  “That’s my grandson,” Michael said. “His name is Barry.”

  —————

  “What are you doing?”

  Audrey swung around, almost toppling off her stepladder. Kevin, appearing out of nowhere as usual.

  “I’m taking down my hanging basket for the winter,” she explained. “I’m going to empty it and put it into the shed until next year.”

  “We’re going to the lake tomorrow,” he said, “if it’s hot.”

  Audrey scanned the early-evening sky, which was striped with pink. “I think you might be in luck. See those red bits in the sky? That means it’ll probably be nice tomorrow.”

  “We have pink lemonade and chicken wings and apples, but not the green ones, the red ones.”

  “Mmm, sounds yummy. I love chicken wings.”

  “I’m going swimming,” he said, his eyes on Dolly, who was attempting to scrabble her way through the hedge, “if the water isn’t too cold.”

  “That’s nice, a swim would be lovely. Dolly,” Audrey added sharply, “stop that.”

  “I got new togs,” Kevin said. “They’re blue.”

  Audrey smiled. “They sound very smart. I was saying to your mum I must take Dolly to the lake sometime.”

  He regarded the animal doubtfully. “Can he swim?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she can—I think all dogs love the water. And even if she didn’t want to go in, we could still walk around it, couldn’t we?”

  “You could come with us, but the dog would go in your car. And he couldn’t eat the chicken wings.”

  Audrey smiled. “Thanks, Kevin, but I have to go to work tomorrow. We might take a trip out there over the weekend—and maybe you and your mum would like to come too.”

  “Yeah. I have to go now.”

  He turned abruptly and made for the back door. The curious gait he had, arms held rigidly at his sides as he walked. Audrey wondered, not for the first time, what would become of him if anything happened to Pauline. Who would take him in, who would want the responsibility of a fully grown man who was still a child? It must worry Pauline desperately.

  She unhooked the hanging basket from its bracket and carried it carefully down the steps. She upended it onto the compost heap and broke up the earth with her rake. The weather was really gone crazy if tomorrow was going to be warm enough to go swimming. Nearly the end of October, almost winter really.

  She put the empty basket on a shelf in the newly stained shed, next to half-full paint cans and old flower pots. She replaced the ladder, propping it against a wall in the shed, next to a growing bundle of newspapers she really must recycle soon.

  And afterwards, try as she might, she couldn’t remember the last thing she’d said to Kevin.

  —————

  Michael waited until they’d finished the fish pie, until she’d begun to stack the empty plates.

  “Will you stop that for a minute?” he asked. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  She looked at him, the plates still in her arms. “What is it?”

  “Just sit down for a minute.”

  She perched on the edge of her chair. “Are you cross about somethin’?”

  Michael shook his head. “It’s not—”

  “Did Barry do somethin’ in the shop?”

  “Stop interrupting me,” he said irritably. “It’s nothing like that.” He reached into his inside pocket and brought out the brown envelope. “The result came today. It’s positive.”

  “Oh—”

  She made a sound between a gasp and a moan, her face crumpling. She laid the plates down and sank her head into her hands and began to weep quietly, and Michael realized he’d been too abrupt. He should have led up to it, not blurted it out like that, but all he knew was how to be direct.

  He glanced at Barry, who was regarding his mother anxiously, his own lower lip trembling.

  “It’s okay,” Michael said quickly, “she’s fine, she just got a surprise, that’s all.” He put out a hand and patted Barry’s shoulder awkwardly. “She’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

  “I told you it was Ethan,” she said brokenly, her voice muffled behind her hands. “You wouldn’t listen.”

  “It’s all right,” Michael said, not sure now which of them he was addressing. “It’s all right.”

  Carmel got up abruptly and crossed the floor and pulled a sheet off the roll of kitchen paper. She buried her face in it and blew her nose noisily.

  “Mammy?” Barry said tremulously, and she went back to him and scooped him up. She sat and rocked him as she pressed the wadded paper to her eyes.

  “Sorry,” Michael said quietly. “I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that.” He felt awkward. His hands didn’t know what to do with themselves. “I suppose whatever way I’d told you, it would have been a—”

  He stopped. Not a shock, because she’d known already. A reminder then, maybe, the past coming back to slap her in the face. Ethan’s ghost, here in the kitchen with them.

  Ethan’s son. Michael looked at Barry, and the little boy looked back from the safety of his mother’s arms. They were Ethan’s eyes, of course—how had he not seen that before? Or had he seen, and chosen to ignore? Ethan’s son, sitting across the table from him. His grandson.

  Valerie’s nephew.

  “I must make a phone call,” he told Carmel. It would give her a chance to pull herself together if he left for a few minutes. In the hall he dialed Valerie’s mobile, but after half a dozen rings her voice mail clicked on. Michael hung up. This wasn’t something you could tell a machine.

  Tomorrow he’d try again. She’d have to be told, even if she didn’t want to know. Even if she cut him off for good. He’d have to tell her she was an aunt.

  He walked into the sitting room and put a match to the fire he’d set earlier. They’d have a bit to talk about this evening.

  —————

  Happy Monday, he typed. He was about to press send—and then he stopped.

  What was he doing, flirting with a girl years younger than him? Where did he imagine it was going to go? There was nowhere it could possibly go, not while he was still in the no-man’s-land he’d been catapulted into two years ago.

  They were parents of children who were friends. That was all they could be, he needed to remember that. When they met, it was for the children.

  He deleted the message and laid his phone back on the arm of the couch, and reached for the TV remote control.

  Tuesday

  A tap on the door. “Eight o’clock,” he called, like he did every weekday.

  Her eyes still closed, Carmel smiled. “Okay,” she called back, and listened to his footsteps going back down the stairs.

  It wasn’t all sorted, far from it. He hadn’t said they could stay with him for good, he hadn’t said anything like that. What he’d said was for the moment, which could mean anything. She couldn’t relax, not completely.

  And there was still the question of her getting a job. There was still no sign of anyone wanting to take her on. She would just have to keep on trying, every day until she found something.

  But Barry had a granddad, it was official. And his granddad seemed to be okay with Barry being his grandson—not that he’d said anything, but she thought he was okay with it. And tomorrow Barry was going to start playschool, which would be good for
him, even if thinking about it made her feel horribly lonely.

  And his granddad knew now that Carmel had been telling the truth—which had somewhere along the way become the most important bit of all this.

  She leaned over and kissed the top of Barry’s head. “Good mornin’, sleepyhead,” she said. “Time to get up.”

  —————

  “The thing is,” Irene said, lowering her cup, “Martin and I have been having some…difficulties.”

  “Difficulties?” Her mother’s perfectly shaped eyebrows rose. “What kind of difficulties?”

  Irene dabbed at her lips, leaving an imprint of cherry-red lipstick on her heavy linen napkin. “It’s hard to explain,” she said, wondering what had triggered her sudden impulse to confide—in her mother of all people. “We seem to have…drifted apart a bit lately.”

  Her mother picked up the coffeepot and refilled Irene’s cup. “Darling, that’s perfectly normal in any marriage. Your father and I regularly drift apart. I shouldn’t worry about it.”

  “You’re right,” Irene replied, adding a few drops of cream to her cup. “It’s nothing, I’m sure.”

  “Put on your best outfit and get him to take you out to dinner,” her mother said. “Flatter him a bit, men love that.”

  “I will,” Irene promised. “I’ll do that.”

  The bleakness pooling inside her as she sipped coffee and nibbled almond biscuits so thin you could see right through them.

  —————

  The day at the lake must be going well, past six o’clock and no sign of Pauline’s car. Maybe they’d stopped for tea somewhere on the way home, decided to make a real day out of it, even though the sun had slid behind a cloud at around three and hadn’t been seen since. Hopefully Kevin had gotten his swim in early, before the chicken wings.

  She hurried indoors, hauling her shopping bags with her. Barely enough time to put something together for dinner before she’d need to get ready for the art class. She opened the front door, thinking about beans on a toasted bagel, with a couple of rashers and a soft poached egg.

  That would do nicely.

  —————

  As Zarek tucked his sketch pad into his bag the apartment door opened and Pilar walked in.

  “You have luck?” he asked hopefully. Her third interview since the previous Monday.

  She made a face as she unraveled her scarf. “Five childrens—​five! How I look after five childrens and clean house too? How? She think I am machine?”

  “Five is big family,” Zarek agreed, zipping his bag closed, “but maybe childrens all good, maybe they help with jobs.”

  Pilar flapped an arm out of her jacket sleeve, almost whacking him in the face. “Pah—no childrens help with jobs, childrens make more jobs.”

  Zarek edged towards the door, hoping to make his escape before the subject of the café could be raised. “Well, I must—”

  “Your boss say about me today?” Pilar demanded. “She give me job?”

  “Not yet,” Zarek answered, his hand on the doorknob. “She very busy. Maybe tomorrow.” He opened the door and fled, Pilar’s indignant voice following him all the way down the stairs.

  —————

  A quick glance around the room confirmed what Irene had assumed—​there was no sign of Fiona. Of course she hadn’t come, she wasn’t the type for confrontations.

  Not that Irene had been planning any kind of confrontation. In the unlikely event that Fiona had shown up at the life drawing class, Irene had planned to say nothing, to pretend their meeting on Saturday night hadn’t happened. She doubted very much that Fiona would approach her, let alone mention the encounter.

  But now there was no need to pretend anything. She nodded at the others and took her usual place and began to lay out her materials as Audrey plugged in the fan heater and their model entered the room in her blue dressing gown.

  “Anyone seen Fiona?” Meg asked, and Irene shook her head along with the other four.

  —————

  “By the way,” Audrey said just before the break, as they laid down pencils and pulled sheets off their boards, “I wanted to invite you all to my house for a little drinks party, as we’re finishing up next week. Just a glass of wine and some nibbles, nothing fancy. I was thinking Saturday night, say from eight to nine, so you’ll still have plenty of time to go out afterwards.”

  “That’d be lovely,” Meg said. “Count me in.”

  Zarek looked uncertain. “Maybe I work Saturday, I am not sure.”

  “I don’t think I’ll manage it either,” James said. “It’s not that easy for me to get out in the evenings.”

  Audrey’s smile slipped. “Oh, that’s a shame. Do try, both of you.” She looked at her one remaining student, uncharacteristically silent. Was she imagining it, or was Irene a little subdued this evening? “Irene? Can you make it?”

  “Should do,” Irene said lightly. “Sweet of you to invite us.”

  “I just wanted to do something small.” Audrey turned to her model, who was slipping on her shoes. “Are you free, Jackie?”

  The girl looked pleasantly surprised—did she imagine Audrey would have issued an invitation in her company that didn’t include her?

  “Thanks,” she said, “I’d love to.”

  “Great, that’s settled then, Saturday it is. I’ll give Fiona a ring, hopefully she’ll be able to come too. Remind me to give you my address before you go home.”

  The class trooped out for coffee and Audrey wrote Ring Fiona in her notebook before following them. Her first party, or whatever you wanted to call it, was officially on—even if the attendance might be less than she’d expected, only three definite guests out of a possible six. Still, she’d make the best of it, and maybe they’d all get there in the end, or most of them.

  She walked slowly down the corridor towards the muted buzz of conversation in the lobby and joined the queue at the coffee station. Drinks, nibbles, music. A fire if the evening was chilly—​no, a fire either way; it made the room look much better. Dolly would have to be banished to Audrey’s bedroom in case anyone was allergic. Maybe softer lighting for the sitting room, get a few low-watt bulbs, add a bit of atmosphere.

  She filled her cup with coffee. When you thought about it, it should hardly take any effort at all.

  —————

  The fabric of her sweatshirt was textured, like waffles, and colored the same shade of blue as tiles on swimming pools. Her eyes weren’t blue, they were grey, and fringed with dark lashes. Her eyebrows were thick and dark.

  “Hello,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  She smiled. “Only on Tuesdays.”

  He sat next to her on the low wall. “I tell Charlie a bedtime story at break time,” he said. “That’s why I go to the car, she made me promise.” Feeling the need to explain, not wanting her to think he was avoiding everyone.

  “That’s nice. Make sure she doesn’t tell Eoin though—I’d hate the pressure.”

  He laughed.

  And then she said, all in a rush, “By the way, if you wanted to go to Audrey’s thing on Saturday night you could bring Charlie over to my house and my parents would babysit. She could sleep over, I mean. Just a thought, just if you fancied it.”

  James glanced at her, but she was poking at something on the ground with her shoe. “Well,” he said, “that’s…nice of you.” And then he stopped.

  “We have a camp bed,” she said, still intent on whatever had taken her attention on the ground. “We could drop her back in the morning. Just, if that was all that was stopping you, I mean. Feel free to say no.”

  Wasn’t it the last thing he wanted, to get involved with other people? To put himself into a position where someone might start asking questions, looking for the reasons that had brought himself and Charlie here, forcing him to revisit the past, when he’d vowed to leave it behind them?

  Hadn’t he been dreading something like this ever since he’d moved to Carrickbawn
?

  Evidently not.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’m sure Charlie would love that.”

  —————

  As she listened to Fiona’s phone ringing Audrey wondered belatedly if she should have waited till the morning. Just gone half past nine, not very late—but Fiona could be sick, probably was sick, since she’d hadn’t turned up to the class. She was about to hang up when the phone was answered.

  “Hello?”

  Low, barely audible. Audrey pressed the phone to her ear. “Fiona? It’s Audrey, from the life drawing class.”

  “Oh…hi.”

  “I was hoping you weren’t sick, when you missed the class. I hope you weren’t in bed just now.”

  “No, I mean, yes, I have…some bug, but I wasn’t in bed.”

  She certainly sounded below par. “Oh dear,” Audrey said, “I’m sorry to hear that, with the baby coming and everything—but hopefully you’ll be better by Saturday, because I’m having a little get-together at my house—you know, just because we’re getting to the end of the classes. Next week is the last one, if you can believe it.”

  “Oh…right.”

  “About eight o’clock, just for an hour or thereabouts. I’d love if you can make it.”

  “Yes…thanks. I’ll see how I feel, thank you.”

  “Great—well, I won’t keep you. Take care, get well soon.” As she hung up Audrey realized that she hadn’t passed on her address. No matter, she’d phone Fiona again on Saturday morning, see if she was feeling up to it.

  She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and left the empty classroom.

  Wednesday

  The playschool was warm, with miniature tables and chairs scattered about, and children who chattered and played with toy cars or scribbled with crayons on pages or pulled on dress-up clothes from a big plastic box in the corner. A few of them stared at Barry but most ignored him.

  The teacher, who was very tall and who wore purple glasses and had a nice smile, crouched in front of him.