He got up and went out to the kitchen for more beer.
While the room was empty, I stood up. I saw the phone on a small wooden table with a green library lamp. Beside it, the notepad with the recently entered name and phone number. There was a letter opener lying next to the pen. I picked it up like a dagger in a Shakespeare play. I grabbed the cable connecting the phone to the socket in the wall and began to cut the wire. It felt like cutting through the rubbery tail of a rat. The letter opener was not sharp enough. It took ages, it squeaked, like the animal was alive in my hand, refusing to die. It produced a small ring, somebody calling in response to the ad in the paper and changing their mind at the last minute. Maybe a journalist with some news story, not all that urgent.
Was this my only way of speaking? The letter opener turned into a utensil for communication? It was hard to know if what I was doing even mattered. Would it be noticed? Would it make any difference? Maybe it was nothing more than a symbolic gesture I was after, severing contact, putting an end to this treacherous friendship.
I looked around and saw the dog standing behind me. He had quietly come back into the room without me hearing a thing. He stood no more than two feet away, his eyes friendly and hostile at the same time, as if he was expecting me to give him something, an explanation for what I was doing.
The silver dagger threw back a flash of light from the big window. I saw my reflection. I was being watched by myself, standing in a large room with a weapon in my hand and the dog a witness. I heard them talking to each other in the kitchen. Her book was left upturned on the sofa, the roof of a cottage. A dip in one of the cushions where her elbow had been. The chessboard was stalled in mid-game. I was unable to get back to my chair while the dog blocked my way. Without altering my position, I reached over and replaced the letter opener beside the notepad, neatly in line with the pen. The dog watched every movement with a tilt of his head. I tried to move but he moved with me. I remained in that helpless situation for a moment. All I could think of doing was to point across the room and the dog finally walked away, returning to his place by the window. It allowed me to get back to the chessboard. My face was red, my teeth were clamped.
I could not stop shrugging.
John came back, we resumed playing. A loud fizz of beer bursting inside my ears.
The remorse was instant. It was one of those things that felt right for a moment and triggered off the inevitable supply of guilt. Only a failed artist will act out his rage.
I began thinking about war.
My mind could not hold back the images of houses on fire, people running, sirens whining, the ruins of a bombed-out building. I did my best to snap out of it, but the uncensored run of details kept coming. I found myself thinking of a book in which a couple make love in London during the Blitz, a bomb destroys the house around them, they walk away with their faces white, hardly sure they are alive. Or maybe love in wartime made you more alive than ever. I remembered the apartment block where I lived with Helen in Berlin, the days people spent in the basement taking shelter from the bombing raids numbered on the walls. I remembered my mother standing in the garden with the laundry basket looking up at a low flying aircraft passing overhead. The terror in her voice as she told me how the sound comes from under the earth, it’s only at the last minute you can tell it’s from the sky. I remembered the photographs I had seen of Berlin in the library, an open mouth full of bad teeth, nothing but screaming stumps.
I thought of a town destroyed by a car bomb. At a wreath laying ceremony for the dead of the First World War. I thought of my father banning the commemorative poppy from the house, even though his own father died in the British navy. My German grandfather was on the opposite side of the same war, two grandfathers fighting each other without ever meeting. Will the first world war ever come to an end? Soldiers underground in Ypres and the Somme fighting the same battles into infinity, never allowed to be dead, forced to die over and over, every year. It must be the hardest thing, grieving for your enemies. I could only imagine a time when the Remembrance Day poppy would take on a more forgiving blend of colours. Poppies with a mixture British and Irish and German flags together, a wreath of combined enemies laid at the Cenotaph.
I thought of a story I had read about two lovers somewhere in America secretly meeting in a bar one night when a man sitting beside them takes out a small box containing the remains of a human ear. Every love affair leads back to a silent moment of cruelty deep in the green foliage of Vietnam. The man with the shrunken human trophy was letting the lovers know how close they had come to being immortal. He was showing them how much they were still alive, how human, how full of body parts we all are.
I stood up and said I would let myself out.
John smiled and shook my hand, he didn’t get up.
The dog followed me as far as the door, then he was called back with a click and I went down the stairs.
It was not until I got all the way down and reached the hall that I heard Audrey calling after me. She stood on the top landing, her face was framed by the bend in the bannister rail, a floating head, her hair hanging forward. Her eyes seemed full of tragedy, concern, maybe regret. Like there was part of the bargain not fulfilled. The exchange was incomplete. I was running from an unspoken promise. Her voice took the shortest route, falling through the stairwell like a coin dropping straight down with a spinning glint. Bouncing on the floor of the hall and rolling towards me, coming to a stop at my feet.
What have you done?
I didn’t reply.
I heard them talking to each other. The light was spilling down the stairs. Her face was replaced by his face in the bannister bend. He called down, telling me to come back. His voice kept me in the hall, trapped by my crime. The bark of the dog echoed through the house. I heard his feet coming down the stairs, his speed of thought leaping the last half dozen steps, sliding along the polished wooden floor.
I heard the door closing behind me, I heard it open again, I heard the steel gate clang in my hand, I heard the dog running along the gravel path.
I heard my name called after me. My name catching up, hurling itself in the shape of a dog through a gap between two parked cars, following me in a panting run as far as the corner. I continued running. I slowed down along the seafront. The streets were full of accusation. The lighthouse was pointing the finger. The beam went searching all around the bay and came back each time to point directly at me.
Helen was in bed when I got back. She didn’t ask me where I had been. I told her nothing. Talking would have turned our love into a courtroom.
Audrey continued teaching yoga classes, poaching clients. She had the edge, a big room with lots of space, good heating, good art, the chessboard laid out on a side table, cushions placed around the floor. No loud buses passing close by only metres away outside the window. We saw her on the street, walking with her head high, the dog didn’t recognise me. At the furniture auction, she put her hand up for a Persian rug, we heard her name being called out.
I brought the hard-backed envelope with the photographs of Helen to work with me. They became part of the native basement production line. I arranged meetings with graphic designers and printers to get the yoga brochure made up. They must have heard the emotion in my voice while I was talking about the size of the print run, the density of the paper, card or laminate. A choking sensation rose in my throat when they made helpful suggestions on typeface, the spacing around the main image, bullet points on the back. No matter how much I tried to deepen my voice and make it sound more commanding, it remained in the upper ranges, elated, over-excited, short of words. The people I was doing business with were the greatest friends I ever had, I wanted to embrace them, the price didn’t matter.
It was clear that the person in the photographs laid out across my desk was somebody I loved and could not afford to lose. I wanted this to be the best brochure ever printed. To me it was a piece of
art.
They came back with a mock-up for my approval. There was a problem with the first batch, Helen too black, Helen too pale, Helen with demonic eyes like a burned-out rock singer, reject brochures on the floor of the printing works with people walking on her face. When they delivered the finished product, I sat at my desk for hours holding the brochure in my hand, she kept her name – Helen Boyce.
Some months later, in the supermarket below ground, I ran into Audrey by chance. She was with her daughter, Lucinda. It was the London voice that made me look up. We were both going for peanut butter, crunchy, but she changed her mind and smiled out of politeness, withdrawing her hand. She caught me judging her by the items in her shopping basket, oven chips, pet food, my basket included cartons of juice with straws, a couple of intimate things Helen asked me not to forget, the lives of shopping baskets.
By then, her husband John had gone to live with a young Polish woman, we heard.
Was I part of their break-up?
The redbrick house was sold, she had gone to live in a new suburb. She must have returned in a moment of nostalgia to do her shopping near the sea, unable to drop the established routes. I was the last person she expected to see. The lighting in the supermarket was bad, the music was disturbing. She hurried away into detergents as though I was going to do something, when all I wanted was to wish her well. The words refused to come. My mouth was left at home.
I kept the shrug. I found myself shrugging for no reason at my desk in the basement, shrugging at lunchtime in the National Gallery as I opened the package with the two slices of brown bread and the slab of cheese. Shrugging furtively as I ate the sandwich with the gallery attendant keeping an eye on me. I was spending more time there, sitting in front of a nude bathing scene, a religious scene, the painting of a small girl sitting on the ground listening to a piper in another century.
It was a defensive thing. Shaking off the onlookers. Shaking off my doubt, my history, my languages, my family, my brothers and sisters, our open faces, our emotions on the surface. I was shaking off the people we were, our slow knowledge, the mixture of countries we came from.
Over time, the shrug gradually moved into my legs. It was hard to sit still, I was full of restless, electrical jolts. It kept me walking like a truant around the city, away from the dead basement.
Was I taking on my father’s limp?
I was so busy shaking him off that I was becoming more like him. In the same way that Irish people were busy trying not to be British, and German people were trying not to be German, and British people were doing their best to stay British, I wanted to undo everything received from my father. I made sure not to wince. I taught myself not to inhale through my teeth, not to stick my tongue out the side of my mouth while concentrating, not to take fright at leaves moving in the street, not to pick up the phone as if it was a gunfight. I was the sum of things I could not allow myself to be. My aim was to appear less conscripted to where I came from, more the touring singer of sad songs I used to be in Berlin.
All these parts of myself I was avoiding.
I had no myself.
I became an impersonator. The emptiness of my composite being longed to take on the mannerisms of the latest person I met. I appropriated other people’s traits, I took on a borrowed posture, anything to escape my own biography.
For an afternoon, I was the sales representative from the printing firm, his wink with both eyes was a natural piece of trust. Another day, I played with my watch, taking it off and putting it back on again, like the recording engineer. Getting off the train one morning, a man in front of me had such a fine rhythm in his walk, I followed him as far as the Custom House, I longed to slip into his place, sit at his desk, go back home to his family at the end of the day. I stepped in and out of lives, sampling human features like trying on a suit, constructing the person I wanted to become. I gave an outdoor yelp like the shadow singers did at the recording studios. I stamped my foot like a horse to show how much I loved the music. Whenever I was dealing with people who spoke in a Dublin accent I instantly broke into a Dublin accent to feel included. I wore clothes that matched the time, a second-hand jacket with a copper sheen in the fabric.
I admired the laughers. A man who laughed like a machine gun. A woman who spun like a washing machine. Another man appeared to be choking on the same piece of bread every night. The most powerful people were those who had the ability to withhold their consent, allowing the joke to die in thirst before their eyes, those who never laughed at themselves. My laugh was more like capitulation. Blushing like an animal betraying itself, turning red to announce my own fear, guilt, my slow mouth.
I did my best to get into the character of the country I was living in. I taught myself to speak without saying anything. I practised friendship. I found ways of slipping in and out of conversations unnoticed. I had no need to brag about being a good loser. No need for a great exit line.
I was the man who left the pub early without a word. At home, I had begun working on a new carving. This time it was an ear. Mahogany. Much harder wood to carve. It was not easy to get it anatomically correct. It took a long time before it finally went on display beside the carved mouth. It heard everything. It heard what people were thinking. What they were going to say before they said it. People in packed bars all around the country speaking with the sound turned down. It heard children asleep. It heard a book being read. It heard music coming from a long distance. Wind across the bogs. Water running by the side of the road. Voices underground.
What makes me so badly need friendship? I am either inside or outside, pulled into the sphere and left out again? Always arriving, never arriving. I step too close, not close enough. I find myself looking in, watching instead of being. I trust the story of a life more than the life itself. I trust the furniture in which a person has been sitting, the empty glass, the remains of a smile, the mark they leave on me.
The safest places are those where I am alone. I long to be unseen. Unknown. Unexplained. Un-found-out. In the park of lovers. In the National Gallery. On the streets, in motion. There is nothing better than the freedom of walking through the city, new and unrecognised.
Across the river at O’Connell Bridge where the photo of my father and his brother was taken by a street photographer, my mother’s family said they were hoping it was the taller brother on the right. Past the woollen mills where she brought her sisters when they came over to visit. They turned the shop upside down, burying their faces in handwoven blankets, inhaling the wool like mountain air. The German excitement in their voices. Multiple packages tied up with white string carried under their arms as they went on a tour of cafés to find the best scone in Dublin, not the floury scone, not the papery scone, please, not the scone from yesterday heated up again.
Can I escape the landmarks of my childhood?
My former school, for example, with the railings and the basement pit full of rubbish and rat poison, where they once got my brother. Railings running alongside like a bad companion, muttering in my ear. I try to re-imagine the streets like a city planner, removing all the railings, how open the place could be, how calm and trusting and European. I satisfy myself with the thought of all railings being collected and brought out to be erected as a tower in the Phoenix Park, a monument of discarded separation.
Somewhere beside the Zoo, with the old signs with the finger pointing, left over from the empire. The empire in which my father grew up, my grandfather enlisted in the navy, before the landscape of West Cork lost its memory. I miss the country before I was born, I miss the place we come from, I miss the world before it was discovered.
Where possible, I avoid the General Post Office on the main street by going parallel along a side street, happier passing the spot where the uprising came to an end. I am more comfortable with surrender. Losing is the only way of winning. I have no interest in Croke Park, the national sporting arena, I am no better than my father in con
test. Crowds make me feel excluded, or maybe they impose on me an obligation to be included – you have no right to be alone.
On the street of national surrender, I listen to the voices of the fruit vendors calling out the prices of oranges and bananas. I stand among them, at one of the stalls I buy an apple, the woman is disappointed, she wants me to take a dozen. I look at pears individually wrapped in paper, trays of tomatoes displayed at an angle with the price per dozen written out by hand. A bargain called out like the words of a song across the street, the echo coming back from the other end, a better offer. The vendors carry a range of traditional produce – oranges and apples, bananas, lemons, grapefruit, along with potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables. Year by year, they add a new fruit like kiwis. Now they are being joined by merchants selling varieties of fruit and vegetables never seen before. There is a demarcation in trade, the traditional vendors stick to their customary range of exotic produce while the newcomers bring in items such as plantain, chillies, lemongrass, lots of things for which there has previously been no demand.
At one of the stalls I get a strong scent of strawberries. I remember that smell all over the bus, the day my father brought us to the market early in the morning to buy fruit for making jam, boxes on the seats going home, the passengers smiled, the conductor took a raspberry. The labels on the jars had the name of the fruit abbreviated in German.
I walk to the central sorting office, with the looping railway line overhead. I stand watching vans driving in and out under the vast roof of the postal warehouse. I know the place well from a previous job at a newspaper where I had to collect a bag of mail every night at twelve o’clock, letters and cards from readers around the country emptied out on a wide table, entries to the crossword competition, entries to the spot the ball contest, cranky letters to the editor.
At one point, I find myself looking for Prussia Street, only because I like the name, it sounds promising, like it might be inhabited by people from another part of history, soldiers from Frederick the Great’s army of giants. I have no idea how to get there, I would need directions.
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