by Tim Buckley
“So this Aoife, she’s a good friend?”
She didn’t answer straightaway, her face took on the look of someone who has asked themselves the same question and hadn’t found an answer.
“Yes, I think we are friends. At least, I thought we were.”
“But...?”
“I don’t know,” she said, with a hint of resignation, “some people are hard to predict I think.”
I tiptoed forward in my mind, afraid to push too far but desperate to see what lay beyond.
“Did she... let you down?”
Hélène’s face darkened, then brightened again as though clouds had been dispersed by a gust of wind.
“We all have dreams,” she said finally, her dark eyes fixed on mine intensely, “and we must chase them. Nobody can stop us and nobody should, especially our friends. She has a dream and she is chasing it.”
“What is her dream?” I asked, carefully.
“I don’t know,” she said with an air of finality, clearly unwilling to continue the conversation.
But I couldn’t turn back now, and foolishly pressed on.
“Is that why she isn’t here, in Malahide?”
“Maybe,” she threw up her hands with the frustration of one who has looked for the answers already and found none. “I don’t know.” She stood up. “Can you tell me where is the toilet please?”
“Er, yes, of course.” I pointed into the house. “Go through the kitchen and it’s the first door on the left.”
The nagging fear that had haunted me after that first time I had spoken to Hélène sneaked again into my head: what if the angel I had constructed in my head was far from the truth, what if she was less than perfect? Of course she was. It was ridiculous and naive to expect her to be the paragon whose image I had so lovingly sculpted. And it was unfair, grotesquely unfair. I, who had deserted her, now expected her to somehow comply with my standards, to live by my mores? It was arrogant and it was obscene, and I loathed myself for thinking it. But I couldn’t dispel it.
Hélène came back into the garden, her face brighter again, but there was something a little forced about the smile she wore.
“So when are we going to start painting?” she asked, with an outstretched left hand. “Or drawing?” she offered, with the right.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “If that’s ok with you? Say nine thirty? I need to go into Dublin this afternoon, to the art shop, to get some supplies.”
“OK. And I should wear what we talked about?”
“Yes, please. If you want, you can bring the clothes and get changed here? You can always leave them here if you want?”
We walked back to the studio in silence. The sound of angry voices crashed across the garden from the Gallery as we approached. Oran was berating one of the workmen in the Gallery, his colourful language filling the room. Once in the safety of the studio with the door closed behind us, Hélène turned to me.
“Who was that?” she asked with wide eyes.
I laughed.
“That is Oran. Don’t worry, he’s a good man and his bark is much worse than his bite.”
Her eyes asked for a translation.
“I mean, he shouts a lot and loses his temper, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Then I remembered the critic, but shook the thought away.
“He’s a good lad, really. He’s been my friend since we were kids.” I hoped that was still true.
She looked unconvinced as Oran’s angry diatribe reached fury-pitch again.
I ventured again onto unsafe terrain.
“You know what friends are like, you only ever see their good side.”
I laughed a laugh that had no mirth. And went again where I had no right.
“So what’s she like, this Aoife?” I asked, carelessly.
Her brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed a fraction.
“She’s...she’s... I don’t know,” she said, clearly frustrated to be back on this track. “She’s very determined – but she’s not always a very good friend.”
“How do you mean?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know. I think honesty is the most important thing, you have to be honest, especially with your friends. Even if the truth is not what they want to hear or what you want to tell.”
“Has she not been honest?”
“We all tell the lies we need to tell, I suppose.”
“What does she look like?” I tried to make it a throwaway question, like the answer was of no real consequence. But my voice cracked – it actually broke mid-sentence – and betrayed me. Laid bare the importance of the question and my preoccupation with it.
Her forbearance ran out.
“Look,” she said with matter-of-fact impatience, “if you want Aoife for your painting – drawing, whatever – then fine, I really don’t care. You haven’t even seen her, but she is obviously the one you are interested in.”
She picked up her bag.
“I didn’t ask for this work,” she went on, pointing a finger at me, “but I maybe lost a job because of you...”
She stopped abruptly, stood still, her accusing finger still suspended in mid-air. The annoyance and irritation that clouded her face gave way to brow-furrowed puzzlement which was slowly replaced by a dawning realisation.
“My God,” she said, her voice lowered to a whisper. “You’re... her father.”
We stood forever on the edge of an abyss, she on one side, I on the other.
“You’re her father,” she said again slowly, barely audibly. The significance of the revelation took a few moments to unfurl. Nothing I could say would soften its impact.
“You’re her father. You betrayed her, and now you think you can use me?”
I stepped forward and reached out to her, started to deny and object but the words were a rag-tag mob, unruly and disorganised, and they would not be spoken.
“Get away from me,” she spat, recoiling.
With that, she spun around and strode out through the door past an opened-mouthed Oran and his workmate.
I started after her, but then thought better of it. She was gone. And she had taken Aoife with her.
I slumped into the chair and held my head in my hands. There was a crushing sense of inevitability about the scene that had just been played out. I had spent so long searching, so long following the trail that had ended here, how could I still have been so hopelessly unprepared? Like a bad soap opera, I was lurching from one shambolic episode to the next, not knowing what to do or how to react. If it had just been my life on the line then I could have – would have – ignored the perils of this self-focused mission. But the danger was that I would blunder in on Aoife’s life as I just had on Hélène’s, with who knew what implications. For her and for me.
“That’s the problem with you artistic types, all temperamental.”
I looked up to see Oran leaning against the doorframe. I said nothing.
“I take it that’s your model?”
“Was.”
“Still smooth with the ladies, I see?”
I shook my head, willing him to leave.
“Ah sure, I’ll sit for you. How do you think Lochlann would feel about this: the role of the handyman in the world of Irish women? Mind you, it’s been a while since an Irish woman had a roll with this handyman, or any woman for that matter. Not too handy in that department, by the looks of things.”
In spite of myself, I laughed.
“You talk a huge amount of shite, don’t you?” I said, looking up at him.
“Guilty as charged.”
“Fuck it, Oran, now what am I going to do?” I buried my face in my hands. He could have no sense of how desperately I asked the question, no idea how desperately I needed an answer.
And he didn’t.
“She’s
just a model,” he said, scoffing despite himself at the depth of my over-reaction, “sure there has to be more where she came from?”
The irony reminded me starkly of the role I had to keep playing.
“Lochlann will fucking love this, eh?” I said, with genuine bitterness.
“Ah, now, give him a chance. He’ll understand – sure if anyone knows what a gobshite you are, he does.”
I stood up.
“Yeah, well gobshite or not, I’m going to finish this fuckin’ painting,” I growled, stabbing an emphatic index finger in the air, “and he’s going to fuckin’ hang it.”
My despair became anger and sought out a new target.
“Fightin’ talk, eh?” he grinned, with a clenched fist. “You go get ‘em, Tiger!”
“Tomorrow.” I picked up my jacket. “Right now I’m going to get pissed. You coming?”
He looked at his watch.
“No, some of us have real work to do. Might come down later.”
“See you later then,” I nodded and walked out the door into the early evening air.
McGrath’s was full of the same commuter crowd as it had been a few days before, when I had gone to drown my sorrows after finding Hélène. Now I had lost her, I was back to do the same again. But something had changed. The resigned despair of that evening had given way to the seeds of a bloody-mindedness that had set my face in an angry scowl that parted the assembled throng as I made for the same quiet corner. I was, I suppose, tired of losing, tired of coming off second best.
Ella, the young New Zealand barmaid, spotted me and came over.
“Hello again,” she smiled. “How are you doing?”
“Not too bad, thanks,” I said.
Lochlann used to complain at length about people who, when he made a polite enquiry as to their well-being, replied with a detailed answer based on the true facts in which he had little or no interest. With that in mind, I was always sparing with the truth.
“But I’ll be better when I get a pint inside me.”
“Coming up,” she said with a wink and a grin, and she floated away to the bar.
I sat back and sighed a long sigh. It might not have been an inevitable course of events, but hardly unimaginable. If they were as close as it would now appear, then it was hardly a surprise that Hélène would know about Aoife’s past. And a man of my age, in Dublin, asking so many questions – well it didn’t take Holmes and Watson to add together the two and two. I had cautioned myself against pushing too hard too soon, lest I should frighten her off. But true to form, I had ploughed on and screwed up.
Ella arrived back with my drink.
“Here you go.” She shook her head. “Looks like you could use some happy pills.”
“I don’t think drugs are the answer,” I replied, sternly.
She was aghast, horrified at my interpretation. She leaned forward, eyes wide and darting around to see who might have heard. She gestured denial with a sweeping downturned palm.
“Oh Christ, no, you don’t understand, I didn’t mean...”
She caught my smile and realised I was pulling her leg. She put her hand to her chest and blew out her cheeks with relief.
“Bastard,” she giggled, “you know what I mean.”
I smirked.
“I bet you’ve never offered the Master a few poppers to liven up an evening.”
“Mr O’Dwyer doesn’t need them. You, on the other hand...!”
I handed her the price of a pint and raised my glass.
“Well, let’s start with this and see how we go,” I said.
“Fair enough,” she winked and was gone.
I looked around the pub filled predominantly with a homogeneous crowd of my contemporaries in business suits or the new smart casual uniform of chinos and open-necked Ralph Lauren shirts. That might have been me if I had stayed here. Just off the train from the city, ready to drown the day’s stresses in the evening’s first pint. My hair might not be thinning, but perhaps I would be a portlier, more ruddy version of my current self. Maybe Caitríona would have left her job; maybe she would be waiting for me at home, my dinner in the oven, the house sparkling and bright and my little boy – boys? – playing obediently in the lounge, ready to rush to the front door at the sound of my key in the lock, shouting “Daddy! Daddy!”.
That’s the way we see the lives of others – like showhomes, perfectly constructed, beautifully accessorised. Would we in fact have grown apart under the stresses of family life? Would Caitríona have resented the loss of her career? Would she ever have agreed to that in the first place, or would we have been forced to juggle two careers and a family, each trying to fit domestic responsibilities around work diaries? Of course we would probably never have had a family, even if we had stayed in Dublin.
But for some reason that I couldn’t quite understand, I didn’t find myself wishing we had stayed – even though the course we chose was destined for such pain. And even though, at that moment in my life, I could scarcely have been less content.
“Now, gosso’n, I hope this isn’t how you plan to spend all of your evenings while you’re back!” I looked up, and a smiling Master was waving an admonishing finger. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Please,” I said, taking my jacket of the chair.
He took a seat with the muted groan of an old man and a sigh.
“And how are you doing this fine evening?”
I laughed.
“Now that’s quite a story,” I said, ruefully.
“Oh?” he raised his eyebrows.
“Yes. Where to start?” I took a long draft from my pint and put it down on the table. “Hélène came round this morning for our first session.”
I paused, trying to get the sequence of events straight in my head. It had only been a few hours, but so much seemed to have happened that day. The Master waited, didn’t fill the silence, just kept his eyes on me.
“It was all going so well. She seemed very comfortable with my ideas for the pose, what she should wear. She thought maybe I wanted her to be too sad and we talked about that a bit, but no problems. Then I asked her about Aoife again, and she got annoyed. I think I’ve made her feel like she’s second choice, a substitute that I only asked because I couldn’t find Aoife. And then it hit her. Somehow she figured it out, she realised that Aoife is my daughter.”
The Master sat back in surprise, in shock almost. It took him a few moments to process what had happened.
“But how on earth did she arrive at that?” he asked, eventually. “Did you let something slip?”
I shook my head.
“No. I don’t think so. She obviously knows about Aoife’s past, and I had obviously dropped enough clues, however obscure. And bang – she hit me with that and stormed out. Said I’d betrayed Aoife and now I was just using her.”
He was quiet again, shaking his head in shocked disbelief.
“Well that’s not the way we thought events would unfold, and that’s for sure,” he said, almost to himself. “So what will you do now? Can you go see her tomorrow, maybe?”
I shook my head again.
“Don’t think so. She was pretty angry. She might cool down I suppose, but I can’t see it happening.” I raised my glass to him in mock salute. “Welcome to square one. Again.”
We sat a few moments in silence, then the Master beckoned to Ella to bring us two more.
Silence again.
“I don’t know what to say, Aengus,” he said at length, leaning forward to put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m truly sorry, honest to God I am. I just wish I could tell you what to do next.”
And I knew he meant it, as sincerely as a vow.
“What about the painting?” he asked.
“You know, I think I’m still going to try to do it,” I said.
I felt, I don’t
know... mistreated that this chance had been taken away from me, and I could almost feel the determination rising in my chest.
“I want to, I really do. It’s the first thing that I’ve been excited about for so long, I don’t want to give it up.” My voice threatened to shout and I had to take a breath to calm my frustration. “And anyway, I need to think about where I go now to look for Aoife, and maybe I can do this at the same time, while I’m trying to figure out the whole sorry mess. It’s like you said – I need to take control, and this is maybe the first step.”
“Good man.” He nodded his approval. “I’m glad. Good man.”
“Actually, Lochlann came into the studio this morning.”
“Did he now?” The Master looked a little surprised. “And what did he have to say?”
“Gave me some advice, pulled some supplies out of the store-room for me. Thing is, deep down, I don’t think I want to do what he suggested.”
“And what was that?”
“He said I should work in pencil. It would be easier and quicker.” I shrugged. “He’s right, of course. But it feels like a cop out. I just don’t think I’d ever really get into it, might never be really fully committed, you know?”
I took another long draft.
“All academic now, maybe” I went on with a dark ironic smile, “given I don’t currently have a model.”
“But you can find another model. Sure isn’t Dublin full of girls who’d give their eye-teeth to be models. Plenty of them too who’d love to get paid for it, I’m sure.”
“I know, but her background was perfect, she personified exactly what I want to say.”
“But your model doesn’t have to be an immigrant, surely? It’s not like anyone’s going to know? The story you tell can still be the same.”
“Maybe. But I think she would have inspired me. When I looked at her I knew exactly what I wanted to do, knew exactly how I wanted it to be. I won’t find that again. And I’ll never find a better way to Aoife.”
“Well, all you can do is give it a try. I’m glad to see you’re not giving up. I’m proud of you, Aengus.”
I actually blushed under the unexpected compliment.
“Thanks, Master.” I said, taking a drink to mask my embarrassment. “Thanks.”