by Tim Buckley
The café filled up, and I could feel the scavenging eyes fixed on my table, hovering mothers eager to bed down their young. I looked out the window and sporadically checked my phone and glanced at my watch to assure them that I was expecting company. I caught the eye of an angry-looking woman, her lip fixed in a disapproving curl as she snapped at the child by her side, and finished my coffee. To linger further would be to draw the wrath of the gathering mob, and still there was no sign of her. I looked at my watch – it had been half an hour. Maybe she had better things to do, maybe she didn’t trust me, maybe she was on the phone at that very moment laughing with a friend about the painter and his transparent proposition. And yet, despite the folly of my situation, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Not yet. Not now. And so I had put my jacket back on and I was about to go to the counter to order another coffee and leave my table to the circling vultures when she walked in. She scanned the room and waved to me. I waved back and it seemed to me that every eye in the café followed her as she glided to my table. Even the scavengers admitted defeat and withdrew.
“Sorry,” she said, “the telephone rang.” She waved her hand dismissively.
“No problem,” I replied, in what I hoped was an airy tone. “Can I get you a coffee?”
“Yes, please. A double espresso.”
I walked smugly to the counter amid the dagger-glares, and I had to shake myself. It was really happening. I hadn’t found Aoife, but wasn’t this the next best thing? I had broken the ice with the only person in the world I knew who also knew her. A tenuous link perhaps… but no, not tenuous. Real. Tangible. Real.
I brought our coffees back and put them on the table. I took off my jacket, and sat down.
“Thank you,” she said, taking a sip from her espresso. “I need a coffee.” She smiled. I smiled back.
“My name is Hélène,” she said, proffering her hand formally.
“Sorry… of course… Aengus. It’s, eh, a pleasure…. Hélène.” I took her hand and she shook it firmly.
“Aengus,” – n-goose – “that is Irish?”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“So, Aengus. You need a model.”
I sighed, relieved even to have got to this point, the point where I could relay concrete facts that required little fabrication.
“I do. My father is an artist – he’s very good in fact, quite famous in Ireland. And he is putting on an exhibition in a couple of weeks. He’s asked me to paint a portrait for the show, but I have only a few weeks to do it. So you can see, I really need to get started.”
“What kind of exhibition?”
“It’s about women in Ireland, how they have changed as the country has changed, grown up I suppose.” I took a breath and risked a lie. “That’s why my friend thought Aoife would be a good subject – an Irish woman doing something that Irish women haven’t often done.”
She nodded slowly.
“But I am not Irish?”
“I know, and that’s why I thought you would be such a perfect subject too. You are one of a new breed of women in Ireland – an immigrant, like so many Irish women in the past, but you have come here, to make a life in this country. The very fact that you are so not Irish makes you a perfect study. You represent how women in Ireland – if not Irish women – have changed.”
She was silent, staring at me. Her dark eyes were a screen I could not breach. She sipped her coffee.
“And you have done this kind of thing before?”
I sat back and paused.
“No. Not really. I studied art at university, and I’ve painted and drawn all my life. But never professionally. I’ve been working as a designer, for a marketing company, but I left that job a few months ago, to go back to art for art’s sake. I’m lucky to have this chance.”
“So what would it mean? You would need me every day? For how many hours? And for how many weeks?”
“I don’t know really. I suppose it depends on what you can do, on how much time you can spare?”
“I’m free in the morning, most days.”
“You don’t work, in the day I mean?” I asked, waving a reference to her business suit and office-attire.
“This? Oh, no,” she looked down at her pin-stripe jacket and skirt and smiled. “I had an interview today, to be a secretary. I hate offices. I thought maybe you would have a better idea.” She sipped her coffee again and smiled from under long eye-lashes.
“I work at night as a musician. I play the violin. Maybe your friend saw me too. But he chose Aoife,” she smiled a soft reprimand. “So I am free in the morning. Perhaps.”
“I’m really sorry you missed your interview. I’m sorry, but to be honest I’m really glad. I hope you think it was worth missing it too?”
“Well, I have to find a job and now I have missed my interview. I hope you will have a good offer!”
I had expected this to be so difficult, to be painful, excruciating. I had feared flat rejection, ridicule even. And yet here I was, joking and being gently teased, feeling lighter than I had since… since I couldn’t remember. Though I could barely process it, the girl sitting across from me had shared a life or part of a life with Aoife. I was desperate to ask her the questions I had hoarded for so long. What does she look like? Is she happy? Is she loved? Does she love dogs and is she afraid of the dark and does she always mispronounce “remuneration”? Does she giggle like her mother?
But I dammed that torrent. Now was not the time. I dared not startle her and frighten her away.
“OK. How about this,” I tried to adopt a business-like tone. “We work from 9am to 1pm Monday to Friday. I need a couple of days to get some supplies and set up the studio, so can we start in two days? For three weeks. To start with.”
“And how much will you pay me?”
I had no idea.
“I… don’t know.”
She looked at me.
“You don’t know?”
“Not really. How much did the secretarial job pay?”
“Twenty Euros an hour.”
“So how about forty Euros an hour.” The going rate for a five-year-old Malahide guide.
“Fifty.”
She could have asked one hundred.
“OK.”
“Done,” she smiled her bewitching smile and held out her hand.
“Done,” I grinned back and we shook to close the deal.
Activity impersonates progress. Sometimes you are entirely unaware. Sometimes you recognise the deception, but being busy begets optimism. But activity – even treading water – requires energy. It wears you down, leaves you exhausted so that you can no longer maintain the illusion. The screen drops and the full extent of the deceit emerges – the grail remains as far away as it ever was. My reality had perhaps not been so bleak – the database had led me to Paris, Paris to Malahide, Malahide to Hélène. The illusion of progress, however, had been abruptly shattered that first morning I visited the house in Malahide.
But like a pawn’s opening move, meeting Hélène that second time in the Crock of Gold had propelled me forward two squares on the board. Maybe the wee boy playing on the step had been a worldly manifestation of my bearded elf, sent to guide me safely to the end of my rainbow. I felt a new energy surge inside me and a renewed, or perhaps entirely new, optimism. It took me a step closer to Aoife – not only closer, but it allowed me to pass for the first time into her world. And it wasn’t only that. Almost in spite of myself, I was now committed to the creative process. For how many years had I searched in vain for a vehicle to make real what I felt compelled to express? But I had never known how. And as so often, I had found what I was searching for where I wasn’t even looking.
CHAPTER 11
Injected with a new impetus, I went back to Howth and set about making preparations with a fervour I thought lost. Even Lochlann’s guarded responses when
I looked for advice and counsel failed to douse the fire, fanned the flames in fact. And so the following morning, I padded down the stairs in a silent house once again to the kitchen, made a coffee and some toast, and brought them to the gallery and my studio. I liked the sound of that. My studio.
I sat at the huge desk, leaned back and looked around the little room. Without the Master and Lochlann and Oran, it was quiet, only the gentle breeze in the poplars outside for a soundtrack. It was early, before Oran and the other tradesmen had arrived – or failed to arrive as was more likely to be the case – and I had a chance for the first time to really think about the piece of work on which I was about to embark.
I knew my work could not bear comparison with Lochlann’s. It wasn’t just his experience, it was his raw, natural ability. It was the way one of his paintings struck you the first time you saw it. If you never knew the theme of one of his pieces, you would understand it immediately it was unveiled before you. You might not be able to immediately articulate or explain it, but deep inside you would understand because his work touched people on an almost subliminal level.
It was clear that if I stood toe to toe with him, I would be knocked down. If I tried to tell the same story, to deliver the same message, my work would fade into the background. And that was if he even deigned to show it. I had to tell the same story, but from a new angle. Lochlann’s theme was the evolving nature of Irish womanhood, how Irish women have grown in strength and influence over his lifetime. How much more prominent a role they play in society than in the generation of his mother and grandmother.
If that was his message, then mine would be its corollary. It was Hélène’s dark eyes that sparked the thought, the lost melancholy that first time on her front step – soon dispelled but unmistakeable. A strong, able young woman, yet cowed perhaps by a strange city and its forthright people. And perhaps especially by its strong women. Thousands of Irish women had made the same journey to England and America and Australia, to live in awe and a certain fear of those who seemed so confident, so at ease in their home towns and cities. And those Irish women had rarely made the journey alone, they had gone with their men and had been protected by them. Or terrorised by them? Today’s immigrant women were as likely to travel alone.
Of course I knew so little about Hélène. Her pathos might have flowed from an entirely different source, she might well have arrived in Ireland with a boyfriend, husband even for all I knew. But for the thousands of immigrant women who had made their way to Ireland from Eastern Europe and Asia and from nearer shores, this new Dublin must be an uncomfortable place. And Hélène’s eyes told me at least their stories.
And what of Ireland’s new class of strong, dominant women? Were they too consumed with their new-found status and role to recognise the cries for help, to comfort and welcome the new members of their sisterhood. Were they as guilty as the women of London and New York before them, who cast a cold eye on the immigrant classes and even imposed a new hierarchy to keep them in their place?
That would be my message to Irish women – now that you have assumed your rightful place in Irish society, have you the time and the kindness of spirit to help those who, like your mothers and grandmothers, remain in its shadows?
I could see the image in my head. Hélène sitting in a chair leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees, her head tilted slightly back so that her eyes stare at you. Eyes filled with the lost melancholy I had witnessed that first day. Her left hand holds a violin by its neck, the right a bow. The symbols of her skill and craft, symbolising the ability and talent which have so far been unable to save her. And her eyes ask for you to help. With these newcomers, the evolution of Irish womanhood turns full circle.
Although I scarcely dared acknowledge it, the portrait opened a new chapter, provided me with a whole new direction. Unlike my job, I felt released and free to chase ideas without the constraints of client engagement and commercial success. Unlike the search for Aoife, it was a tangible goal that, if I applied myself, I could realistically attain. Oh, I knew that Lochlann would probably choose not to include it in the show, and I knew that I would struggle to complete it in time. But in my mind it was a beautiful thing and it spoke on my behalf.
It was, I suppose, the first time in a long time that I had had a spark of passion in my belly. And it made raw and stark the absence of the one person who would have rejoiced in sharing it with me. Caitríona would have been so enthusiastic, so opinionated even! We would have spent hours arguing and debating. She would have asked if I was trying to tarnish the blossoming of Irish women with an accusation of cold, harsh dispassion for those less fortunate? Was I trying to drag women back into the dark days? Was I suggesting that men had no role to play in welcoming strangers? But whatever my decision, whatever message I chose to deliver, I know she would have supported and helped me. And she would have been proud of me. So often, she had encouraged me to break out of corporate life, to give into the yearning to create. And here I was.
I know she would have been pleased that I had finally taken up the challenge. My ulterior motive might not have pleased her so much.
The din of crashing metal from the gallery and the volley of expletives that followed announced Oran’s arrival. After a moment’s hesitation, I got up to go see if I could help mitigate this morning’s disaster. From the door between the studio and the gallery, I could see him stare dumbstruck at his toolbox handle, which had somehow worked itself free of the rest of the toolbox, dropping the box and spilling its contents all over the floor. The dumbstruck phase lasted only a brief moment and gave way to a further salvo.
“Fuckin’ stupid bastard of a thing, useless fuckin’ stupid bastardin’ bollix,” he shouted at the handle, which he then threw violently at the pile of tools. “Fucker!”
He sensed I was there and swung around.
“How’s it goin’,” he said, not at all embarrassed at what I had witnessed. “Fuckin’ handle broke, useless piece of feckin’ shite!”
“I gathered,” I replied, trying to suppress a smile. It was not the time for humour, especially given how our reunion had worked out yesterday. “Listen, I’m just going to make a coffee. You look like you could use one?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I could use one alright.”
“Grand. I’ll be back in a minute then.”
I dallied over the coffee to give him time to cool down, then made my way back to the Gallery.
“Here we go,” I said, putting the tray down on the desk in the studio. “I made some toast as well, I’m starving. Help yourself.”
The tools were back in the box, and he had at least stopped swearing. He came into the studio, took a coffee and a slice of toast, and sat down on the low sill under one of the two floor-to-ceiling windows that took up almost all of one of the studio’s external walls.
“You’re in early,” he said, as though surprised to see me this side of noon.
“Wanted to make a start, I suppose. Not much time until the opening, I need to get stuck in if I’m going to have any chance of getting this thing done.”
“So you’re goin’ to do it? The portrait I mean?”
“Yes. Look, I don’t know if it’ll be good enough or if I’ll get it finished in time or if I’ll even get it started. But I have to try at least.”
“Or the Master’ll give me a clip round the ear!” I added with a rueful smile.
He grinned. “You wouldn’t want to cross Críostóir, that’s for sure.”
He stared into his coffee for a moment, then looked up at me.
“So have you done this before? Exhibited, I mean.”
I shook my head. “Never. No idea what I’m doing, to be honest. I’ve never really created a piece other than for work. Not properly, I mean.”
“So what are you going to do?”
I told him my initial thoughts. He raised his eyebrows a fraction and nodded slowly.
/> “Sounds like you’ve got it sorted in your head anyway. Sounds good.” From Oran, lavish praise.
“An idea’s one thing. You can’t hang an idea.”
“So who’s going to be the model? Have you someone in mind?”
I hesitated, trying to get my story straight.
“A friend of mine happened to mention that he had seen someone who he thought would be a good subject, for a project at work. Turned out she had a friend in Dublin. Long story short, I found her and she’s agreed to sit for me.” It was a story that wouldn’t bear even the most superficial scrutiny, but it was the best I could do and it would buy me time. I cursed myself for not having a story prepared, one that rang true and didn’t hinge on the unlikeliest coincidences.
“So you’ll be working in here then?” he said, looking around the little room. “Bit small.”
I followed his gaze. I had spent many a long hour day-dreaming through some client presentation or internal meeting of setting up my easel in a place just like this. To me, it was perfect.
“It’ll be fine, just needs a bit of straightening out.”
He got up from the window sill and paced the length and breadth of the room.
“Hmm. That desk’ll have to go.”
He was right, and I didn’t need a desk that size.
“But I’ll need somewhere to sketch and write and… draw, I suppose, when I’m not at the easel.”
“There’s a small desk in the store-room, we’ll bring that in here and move this monstrosity to the store. Come on.” He put down his coffee mug and went to the far end of the desk.
He caught me by surprise. “Now?”
“Had you something more pressing that needed your immediate attention?”
I put down my cup and got into position by the desk.