by Tim Buckley
But she was my daughter and, more importantly, she was a little piece of Caitríona. Despite all the nagging fears and suggestions to the contrary, deep in my heart I knew I would like her and love her and she would be charming and perfect. I knew she would.
I sat back and stared at the canvas, trying to see a way to undo and repair the work. I thought about going into the house to see if Lochlann could give me some advice, but I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to him. And I had a childish determination not to show him he was right and that I was out of my depth after all.
The sound of voices grew louder as Oran and some of his charges approached the Gallery door. To give my addled mind a break from its deliberations, I got up and went in to talk to him.
“How’re ya?” he said when I came out of the studio. He turned back to his two workmates. “Listen, lads, them tiles have to be finished tonight, end of. So get crackin’ and nobody leaves here this evening until I say so. Right?”
With mumbled assent, the two men shuffled off to get tiles and grout and to start work.
Oran turned to me again with a grimace.
“Snowball’s fuckin’ chance,” he said under his breath, raising his eyes to the roof. “How’re you anyway? I saw the French bird leavin’ earlier. You haven’t pissed her off again, have ya?”
“No. The ‘French bird’, as you so eloquently describe her, is playing a gig down in Naas tonight, so she had to go and get ready.”
“Right.” He nodded with a mischievous smile. “So let’s see this paintin’ then.” He pushed past me and into the studio. I followed him in. He was already standing at the easel, nodding almost undiscernibly.
“So, do you approve then?” I asked.
His tone became suddenly serious.
“Not fuckin’ bad, Aengus,” he said, looking at me then back at the canvas. “Not fuckin’ bad. So when do you add the paint?”
“Soon. Next week I’d say.” I shook my head in frustration. “But I just can’t get the background right. It’s driving me fucking mad.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “It’s a bit on top of her, isn’t it?”
I nodded. He never ceased to surprise me, this oafish thug with a streak of artistic sensitivity.
“Exactly right. When did you become a critic?”
“I’ve been around your father for a long time. Even a monkey learns eventually.”
“And your solution would be…?”
He shook his head.
“That’s the great thing about being a critic – you can criticise, but you never have to actually do anything! Have you asked Lochlann?”
I shook my head.
“Fuck sake, Aengus,” was all he said.
We studied the canvas in silence for a few minutes to the strains of a tiler’s plaintive whistling. Then I had a thought.
“Maybe it’s not so much that it’s all closing in on her – maybe it’s because it’s dwarfing her?”
He said nothing. I went on, sensing a crack of light in the blackness.
“If it was a bit smaller, or not as high even, it might look further back.”
“Deeper?” he ventured.
“Exactly, Oran.” Once again, he hit the nail on the head, and I stabbed a finger into his chest. “Deeper.”
“So how do you do that?”
I pointed to the top of the wall on the canvas.
“If I take this a bit lower –” and then pointed to where the wall met the floor “– and take this up a bit, then I can maybe make the wall shorter, so it dominates less. What do you think?”
He struggled for a moment to see what I was saying, but then nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” His voice was not fully convinced. “But then the bricks’ll look huge?”
He was right.
“So I’ll have to make the layers of stone thinner, make it look a bit farther back in the room.”
“Right. Might work. Do you think?”
“I think it might, yeah.”
“Look, I’ll leave you to it then. Get it done before the thought goes away.”
“Thanks, Oran. Really, thanks.”
“No bother.” He made for the door, then turned around. “Listen, I’m going down to Parnell Park this evening, there’s a Minor Football challenge match, against Laois. Brian Molloy’s young lad’s playing. You want to come down?”
“I’d love to. If I get this done.” I pointed at the canvas. “Give us a shout when you’re going.”
He nodded and left.
I set to work on the portrait with a new-found vigour.
It was a couple of hours later when Oran came back into the room. So engrossed was I in what I had to do that he was in the room and standing almost beside me before I heard him. I looked at my watch.
“Jesus, is it that time already?”
“Are you comin’?” he asked with a backward toss of his head.
I looked at the board. I had made some progress in the painstaking task of shifting the wall backwards, and it wouldn’t take me long to finish the job. Besides I was tired and needed a break.
“Yeah, sure. Let me wash my hands. Two minutes.”
I made for the washroom at the end of the Gallery. When I came back, he was standing in front of the easel again.
“Looks better,” he said.
“Thanks. Did the boys finish the tiling?”
“Would you believe they did?” he said, shaking his head with a smile of exasperated disbelief. “And it’s not a bad job either.”
“Airborne bacon?” I said.
“Exactly,” he grinned.
Parnell Park, or “The Nell” as we knew it in the mandatory abbreviation of children-speak, is on Dublin’s North side, beside the church in Donnycarney. On a big day, it might hold over 10,000 baying Dublin fans, but that evening’s less tantalising prospect drew only a few hundred. Oran and I, with our old friends, used to go there regularly to watch club games and the odd inter-county game. I hadn’t seen the place in nearly twenty years, and it had clearly benefitted from the success and growing affluence of the GAA, and in particular of the sport in Dublin. It was summer and championship time, and I had been surprised to see so many people of all ages and both genders walking around town in replica county colours. As children, we were proudly decked out in the football shirts of our English footballing heroes, but today’s plumage was of a decidedly more native hue and the colours of Dublin or Galway or Kildare vied with those of Arsenal and Manchester United and Liverpool.
Oran had arranged to meet Brian and another friend of his at the ground, both of whom I knew from our school-days but neither of whom I had seen for years. I wouldn’t have recognised either of them. Blessed, predictably and inevitably, with more weight and less hair, they reminded me immediately of so many fathers of my childhood who watched us play football and took us to the Nell on days and evenings just like this. Surroundings and circumstances might change, but maybe little else really does.
The game was a drab affair, and we spent much of it distracted by Oran’s lewd observations about three young women in Laois shirts sitting not far from us and who glanced back at us from time to time, huddling in giggled conspiracy. Whether their giggling was borne of derision or attraction mattered little, it was good entertainment. Half-time came and Brian pulled four cans of lager from his back-pack. We drank them and a few more that he produced from his tardis-like bag, and settled down to watch a second half that was as turgid as the first.
A poor game of football, in an empty stadium. Four grown men behaving like adolescents and drinking warm beer. It was good. We have access to so much entertainment in our modern lives that the very abundance of choice is overwhelming. I sometimes think that the breadth of what’s on offer just adds to the stress of our lives – the nagging fear of having devoted scarce and precious free t
ime and money to the wrong option takes away from our enjoyment of it in some self-fulfilling circular reference. It is a fear that is exacerbated by people’s immutable determination to be luckier or better, their intense anxiety that somebody else might have done or seen or experienced something richer. And yet in the face of the exciting and expensive delights offered by far-flung destinations, lavish restaurants and luxurious getaways, often the greatest satisfaction comes from the simplest pleasure.
Dublin eventually ran out undeserving winners, and we all trudged out of the ground.
Brian and Terry made the usual excuses of children to put to bed and work the next day and declined our invitation to join us in the pub. So we shook hands and said our goodbyes and Oran and I headed for the DART station at Killester.
“Good lads, aren’t they?” I said to Oran as we crossed the road.
“Yeah, they are. Hard workers, the pair of them. But not obsessed, you know what I mean?”
“I do. But it’s hard not to be, it seems.”
“Too right.”
We got the train back to Howth and couldn’t quite resist the lure of McGrath’s as we left the station. Oran stopped to talk to someone and I took a seat at my already regular table in the corner. It was surprisingly quiet and Ella came straight over.
“Hey there, how are you doing?” she asked, wiping the table and throwing down some beer mats.
“Good, thanks. Just been up to watch the worst game of football we’ve ever seen, so we deserve a couple of pints I reckon.”
“Sounds fair,” she grinned. “You having a good time in Dublin?”
“Yes, thanks. It’s nice to be home”
“So you’re sticking around for a while then?”
“For a while, I suppose. Yes.”
“Where is it you live?”
“London.”
“Oh right,” she said. “But you’re from Dublin? Originally, I mean?”
“Yes. From Howth, actually.”
She was surprised for some reason, then more animated. She leaned towards me and whispered conspiratorially.
“I spent a year working in London. Bloody hated it.” She was suddenly contrite. “Shit, sorry. That was a bit rude, slagging off your home.”
I held up my hand.
“It’s where I live. I never said it was home. Don’t worry.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” she said, her voice rising as though she had found an unexpected ally. “It’s so hard to settle down there, don’t you think?”
She put a hand on my shoulder and smiled a mischievous smile.
“Come back to Dublin. It’s great here, I promise!” She winked and nodded towards the bar. “I’ll get your beers.”
Oran came over and sat down. Another DART had just pulled into the station and the pub was suddenly buzzing with its discharged cargo of thirsty drinkers.
“Sorry. Bit of business,” he said, mysteriously. “Shite match, eh? Sorry I dragged you out.”
“Don’t be daft,” I replied. “I enjoyed it actually – not the football, mind – but it was nice just to go to a match again. And they’re good lads, Brian and Terry. And a minor football challenge match this time of year is never going to be fantastic now, is it? Anyway, I needed a break.”
“Did you get anywhere, do you think?”
“I think so, yeah. I think I should be able to finish off the changes in the morning, before Hélène arrives.”
“How is she? To work with I mean. She seems like a good girl.”
“She is, she’s great. I’ve been very lucky to find her, to be honest – and lucky to keep her.”
“Where did you find her?”
We used to joke that, when someone said something stupid or asked an awkward question, a silence would descend and you could hear the tumbleweed rolling down the street outside. It was one of those moments.
For no reason, I was suddenly emphatically tired of the secrecy, of twenty years of hidden truths. Caitríona and I had carefully crafted answers to so many simple, natural questions that I sometimes felt that whole relationships were fraudulent, built on fabrications. And just in that moment, I had had enough. I wasn’t ashamed of Aoife. I wasn’t going to endanger her or expose her in any way, and I had nobody else to protect anymore. Lochlann had confided in the Master, and so I wasn’t breaching his confidence. In that moment, I felt free of a burden I had carried my whole adult life.
I looked at Oran, whose face had become puzzled by my delay.
“That,” I said, with a spontaneous grin that I couldn’t quite control, “is quite a story.”
He raised his eyebrows, his curiosity piqued.
I drew a deep breath and herded the story’s loose ends in my mind.
“Do you remember,” I set off, not really sure where the road would lead, “when I was in University, in first year, and I met Caitríona?”
He nodded.
“Well, Caitríona got pregnant.” I paused, more to recover than to let him catch up. When I started speaking again, the words came tumbling out and I could barely keep up. “We had a baby. In the Summer after my first year. I got a flat in town so she could come back to Dublin to have the baby. We couldn’t look after the baby, so she was adopted.” I paused again. “Apart from Lochlann, you’re the first person I’ve ever told.”
He looked at me and was silent for a couple of minutes. He seemed to be processing the information in his head, formulating a response. I searched for an emotion, a reaction in his face.
“Aengus,” he said eventually, then paused, trying to find the words. “Aengus, I know. I’ve always known. Everybody knows.”
As his lips moved and the sound came out in slow motion, I heard the words I expected to hear. For a nano-second of reality but for minutes in my head, he said what I knew he would say and I nodded in knowing appreciation of his comradely concern.
“Jesus, Aengus, you poor bastard,” he was saying. “I can’t believe it. How did you cope? That must have been tough. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Then, like a cartoon car screeching to a halt, the flow of imaginary words stopped and I heard the real Oran. I heard what he said and I frowned. Then I closed my eyes and laughed quietly and with no humour to myself. In that instant, everything seemed so ridiculous and I laughed at the absurdity of it all. But it was also, maybe moreso, a laugh of relief that released years of pent-up tension and angst.
Ella came over with our drinks and we shared a joke about something or other, then she left us be.
“How did you know?” I asked him, taking a long draft from my glass.
“I actually don’t know, Aengus,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, I don’t remember how it came out, or even when. It just seems like it’s one of those things we’ve all always known, and that was that.”
“Why did you never say anything?”
He shrugged.
“At first, because it was a bit of a dark thing, you know? Like a dirty secret –” he raised a hand in apology, “sorry, like – but you know, something that you didn’t talk about. And we were all young and easily embarrassed. And it just wasn’t right. And sure I hardly saw you then for ages. And afterwards it was old news and awkward and you obviously didn’t want to talk about it. And then the pair of you fucked off to England.” He shrugged a QED.
“And did people talk about it?”
“A bit. For a while. Then something more interesting came along. Like a paint drying competition!”
We laughed, then went quiet. He broke the silence.
“Listen. You didn’t know ‘cos you never asked. But I was there for you, man. You only had to ask.”
I nodded, because I knew, or had always hoped so.
“I know.”
A pack of suits near the bar had clearly been in the pub for most of the afternoon, and had beg
un singing a selection of bawdy songs. Ella was in the middle of the group collecting glasses, and asked them to pipe down, but her plea was met only with wolf-whistles, puerile quips and loud sniggering. Oran glowered at them, and finally put his glass down on the table. He was about to go over to confront them, when the barman came round from behind the bar and jovially diffused any trouble.
Oran muttered a few obscenities in their direction and resettled himself.
“Listen,” I said, “I know they piss you off, but you can’t afford to go getting involved. Not with the case coming up.”
“I wasn’t going for a fight, just to shut them up.”
“Yeah, because your self-control in inflammatory situations is the stuff of legend.”
“Jaysus, hasn’t fatherhood made you all mature, eh?”
“Am I going to have to put up with Daddy jokes from you from now on?”
“Too fucking right!” he retorted, pointing a finger at me and grinning, recovering his composure. “So what’s all this got to do with the French bird anyway?”
I had forgotten where this trail had started.
“Well, I’ve started looking for Aoife…”
“Aoife?”
“Our daughter. Her name is Aoife.”
He looked at me and was quiet for a moment, and nodded gently.
“Nice. Nice name.”
I was surprised to feel flattered, and I smiled sheepishly in spite of myself.
“Thanks. Anyway, I think it’s time, and I’ve started looking for her.” I told him about the Adoption Agency website and how it had led me to Paris, about the club and the scribbled farewell in the photo album. “And that convoluted trail led me to… Malahide. Of all places, to Malahide for fuck sake!”