by Tim Buckley
She looked down at her glass. “And Hélène? You’ll stay for her too?”
I looked over at Hélène.
“In a way yes. But not in the way you’re thinking.”
The music had stopped, and I looked over to where they sat. The gathering area had filled slowly and was now full of guests discussing and considering and no doubt criticising what they had seen. The lull in the music caught their attention, and the din of conversation faded as they looked to the stage. Hélène had put down her violin, and was standing at her microphone. To the strains of Eimear’s single violin, and with her eyes closed, her angel’s voice rose softly on the lilting words of Raglan Road.
The remaining voices in the room went quiet as, to a person, they stared at the young woman on stage. The power of a female vocal taking on such a masculine song disabled the crowd and there was no other sound. The hopeless regret of the ballad was made achingly poignant by the vulnerability in her voice. In the second verse, Nuala’s flute joined suddenly and the melancholy was complete.
The crowd was rapt and for a brief moment after the final words and notes had faded away, there was silence. Then a cheer and loud applause of unfettered appreciation for the pure beauty they had been given. Eimear and Nuala stood and they, all three, took a bow and, smiling nervously at each other, they left the platform.
Lochlann greeted Hélène with a gentle embrace as they left the stage, nodding and smiling in his own uniquely paternal way. It was, for Lochlann, a display of unadulterated emotion. Then he took to the platform himself and stood behind the lectern. The crowd applauded again then hushed.
“I chose, unwisely as it turns out, to speak directly after the musical finale. I fear I cannot hope to follow that.”
The guests laughed kindly and applauded again, then allowed him to continue. He thanked them for coming and hoped they would leave fulfilled. Thanked those who had made it all possible, and hoped he had been worthy. Paid the necessary dues to his staff and hoped he had made clear his gratitude. The requisite, unavoidable banalities of the public occasion.
Then he paused, looked down at the assembled dignitaries, and took a deep breath.
“There have been dark moments when I doubted that I would present my work in a forum like this again. Dark moments when I feared that I had lost my eye and, with it, my way. You had your doubts also, I know that, and I understand your scruple. But I see now what has been hidden from me for so long – I see now that my capacity for recognising and capturing and expressing beauty is in the hands of the people and the place around me. It is born of agreeing to belong. Thank you.”
The applause began softly, and slowly grew, and by the time his guests had deciphered his message and its humility, it had risen to its peak. The triumph the Master had predicted was complete.
Hélène, who had been standing by the side of the stage, joined in the applause and beamed her delight. As the guests returned to their conversations and their drinks, she and the two girls gathered up their instruments and various belongings and climbed down from the stage again, walking over to where Hélène had seen me.
I hugged her, and then held her by the shoulders at arms length, shaking my head and smiling.
“Jesus, Hélène, I don’t know what to say. I love that song, but I’ve never heard it like that before. That was just beautiful…” I searched for the words that would do her performance justice and express the depth of the emotion it had conjured. But I couldn’t find them, so I just embraced her again. “You’ve made a real impact tonight, Hélène. Well done.”
I suddenly remembered Niamh, who was standing awkwardly to my side. I introduced Hélène and her colleagues and she congratulated them warmly. She took Hélène’s hands in her own, and smiled with genuine affection for this girl she didn’t know. She spoke to her as though she was the only person in the room, as though we weren’t there.
“I really don’t know how you can manage to get out a single note in front of a big crowd like that, never mind sing and play so beautifully. You made this evening even better than it might have been, you really did, Hélène. You should be delighted with what you’ve done tonight, it was very special.”
Hélène flushed slightly, and squeezed Niamh’s hands.
“Thank you so much,” she said. She beamed again, and put her arms around the other two. “We did well!” she said to them, and they all laughed with relief and delight and giddy excitement.
“Let me get you girls some champagne,” I said, waving to one of the waiting staff.
“No, Aengus, thank you,” Hélène said. “We have a rehearsal early tomorrow, I really have to go. But I will come tomorrow and we can have a coffee or something?”
“OK, sure. I’ll see you then.”
I kissed each of them goodbye, and they marched out like proud children through the admiring crowd.
Oran, whom I hadn’t seen all evening, appeared beside me, uneasy in a collar and tie. I hijacked a glass of champagne from a passing tray and handed it to him.
“If anyone deserves this,” I said. “Cheers.”
He smirked and took a mouthful as though drinking beer, then grimaced.
“Never could get the hang of this stuff,” he spluttered, “no stout, I notice?”
“Later, man,” I assured him. “We’ll have a few later.”
Niamh threw her arms around Oran and hugged him.
“Well done, Oran, this is fantastic. Fantastic. You’ve done him proud.”
Oran nodded wearily.
“I thought we’d never get here,” he admitted. “But thank Christ that’s over.” He raised his glass to me. “And thank you. Who’d have thought you’d turn out to be useful?!”
I grinned and toasted him back. “Stop it, or I might cry.”
Niamh raised her eyes and punched my arm playfully.
“Honest to God, do you two ever say a civil word to each other?” she laughed, shaking her head. “You’re still the same two bold children you were when we were in the school. Worse, probably.”
“Oh, you mark my words, Niamh, it’s definitely worse they’re getting, not better,” said the Master, coming over to join us and still grinning with the heady glee of Lochlann’s success. “It’s only a pity they’re too big now for me to give them a scelp!”
“Too true, Críostóir,” Niamh laughed, “too true.”
“Actually, I was hoping to catch you two boys,” the Master said, becoming suddenly more serious.
“This sounds serious – I’ll leave you men alone,” Niamh joked, ever tactful. “I should make sure Daddy hasn’t had too much champagne!”
Niamh’s father was a professor of Art at University College, Dublin and it was on his arm that she had come to the evening’s event.
When she had left, the Master turned to Oran.
“Now, Oran,” he said, all traces of flippant camaraderie suddenly gone and his tone serious and stern, “how did you get on with the solicitor?”
“It was a bit of a shock to the system to be honest,” he said with a sigh and a weary shake of the head. “He gave it to me straight. I’m looking at a few months if the judge is the hard-arse he’s supposed to be. He made it very clear. But he thinks he can help me.”
He shrugged.
“So we wait and see, I suppose.”
The Master nodded and was silent for a moment, his mind processing Oran’s words beneath a furrowed brow.
“Hmmm,” was all he said. “Did he suggest you do anything?”
“Not really,” Oran shrugged, looking to me lest he was missing any important detail.
“No,” I agreed. “He said that character references will count for a lot with the judge, from you, from Lochlann, from Oran’s old boss at La Bella Cucina.”
My frustration was clear, I think, in my face.
“The guards don’t really want t
o pursue it,” I said, raising my hands in despair, “old man McGrath doesn’t want to pursue it – but Joyce has them all over a barrel. And then we get Tobin on the case. Pearse was clear that we’re up against it, but he’ll do what he can. I’m sure he’ll be able to help.”
The Master nodded.
“If he thinks there’s anything I can do or Lochlann can do,” he said, “anything at all, just make sure you let us know. And if he needs a good word put in with anybody else who might be able to help. Same thing.”
“I will, Master,” said Oran, humbly. “Thanks.”
The buzzing noise that had been barely audible had grown louder and though, still faint, registered in Oran’s still on-duty mind.
“That’s the PA – I’ll just go turn it off.”
He left us and headed for the gantry.
The Master looked after him.
“He’s putting a brave face on it,” he said, “but it’s not good, is it?”
I shook my head and my frown betrayed my fear.
“It’s not, Master,” I said, quietly. “If it was anyone other than this Tobin character, I’d say he’d maybe get away with a severe rap across the knuckles. But it seems like this one is always out to make a point. And this is cannon fodder for him.”
The Master groaned silently and took a long and recuperative draft of red wine.
CHAPTER 33
The emptiness of loss is what takes you most by surprise, I think. Anyone we lose occupied a greater or lesser place in our lives, but a place nonetheless, and that place is suddenly and permanently empty.
Do you remember the old Indian man who had the grocery shop at the corner of our road? A kind, warm man but quick with a sharp rebuke and with a mournful narrative on social decline always at hand for a customer with time to listen. I would drop in every morning on the way to the Tube to buy the newspaper, and often on the way home to collect whatever we were short for the evening. If I was coming from the pub and he detected the waft of beer, he would frown and warn me about the perils of casual drinking. If I was late home from work, he would look at his watch and wag a finger of warning that “life will simply pass you by”, his head bobbing sternly from side to side. He would ask about you and when we would have children, unable quite to understand that we would not, then putting it down to some medical flaw in our reproductive systems and squeezing my arm in knowing sympathy.
And then he wasn’t there. Suddenly, abruptly, he was gone. It was three or four days before I asked the young man behind the counter, worried that perhaps he had a bad cold or flu or worse. His uncle, he told me simply, was dead. A heart attack.
I called in for my paper for the next few mornings as I always had, but then I stopped. And I never called in again on my way home from work, preferring instead to go to the cold convenience store beside the station. The old man meant nothing to me, I never even knew his name. But the space he filled was empty, and it disturbed the equilibrium of my world.
And I can still see in my mind’s eye the image of my grandmother standing alone in the crowd by her husband’s graveside at his burial. Tiny and frail and white, she stood wrapped in black against the chill graveyard wind. It was just after the priest had finished the service and the mourners had crossed themselves and the low murmur of conversation slowly and respectfully swelled and mothers finally dared to let their toddlers run loose and watched them carefully as they bent to pick up and carefully examine a shiny white pebble or a petal or a leaf.
I was standing nearest her, talking to some cousins or aunts, and I heard her softly start to sing, low and shrill and cracking. Nobody else heard, I’m sure. Just me. And the empty sadness of it almost overwhelmed me. It was his favourite, his party piece. It had been with her and filled their home for her whole adult life. And she would never, ever hear it again. The chair by the fire, his place at Mass, the very air around where he used to be, would be forever empty, a vacuum that would haunt her, always.
She finished, her old voice quivering with the pain of it, and she nodded a conspirator’s nod to the grave. And I know she nodded to say that she would see him soon. Because there was nothing left here. Not a grief-stricken wail of wretched anguish, but the nodded acknowledgement of a simple truth.
I can never fill the empty place you left, the vast cavern will forever be a vacuum, sucking the very life out of me should I get too close. But maybe I can learn to survive. I can never, perhaps, go back to the corner shop, but I can take you with me to a new place, maybe? I can’t go back there, love. You know that it only existed because you were there, was only a home when you were home. I don’t belong there, and I can’t be there without you.
So I might try somewhere else. I’m not leaving you, I promise. I will always take you with me because you are such a part of me, you complete me. But maybe we need to start again somewhere new. Somewhere old.
CHAPTER 34
The crowd had slowly dwindled and only the last coterie of six or seven guests was still engaged in recounting flowery stories or making their point in wine-fuelled animation. Lochlann was in their midst, sharing their good humour with appreciative laughter and faux-admonishment, while ushering them gently and imperceptibly to the door and out. Having bid them all goodnight, he made his way over to us with raised eyebrows and a guilty smile.
The Master reached out to clasp Lochlann’s hand, to congratulate his friend and to share his own delight at the evening’s success, the peppering excitement of earlier replaced by a deep and calm satisfaction. Reinforced, perhaps, by a strong sense of relief.
“You must be a happy man, Lochlann,” he said, shaking his head at the almost impossibly successful realisation of his plans.
“I am, Críostóir,” Lochlann replied, clearly weary and obviously content. “I am. It was a splendid evening, everything I had hoped for and indeed more.” He paused and looked hard at the Master. “And thank you for your support, Críostóir. Not just this evening, but these past weeks, during which I was, no doubt, insufferable. Thank you.”
The Master accepted his thanks with a gracious nod and a smile, and no words of protest. He had contributed greatly to the exhibition’s genesis and its evolution and was proud to have done so.
“Well, I for one am positively shattered,” he said. “So I’ll be off to my leaba and I’ll see you boys tomorrow.” He turned for the door, and looked back just as he reached it.
“You two have a bit of talking to do, I suppose,” he said, deliberately so that we could not misconstrue his meaning, “and tonight would be an excellent night to start. Goodnight now to you both.” He saluted with no flourish and was gone.
We stood awkwardly looking after him, as though half-expecting – and half-hoping – that he would come back. But he didn’t. And so we shuffled and looked around for a distraction to delay the inevitable.
I saw an open bottle of wine on a table, so I went over to pour two glasses and took one back to Lochlann.
“Thank you,” he said, and raised the glass slightly. “Your good health.”
I raised mine and we took a sip in silence.
“You know,” he said eventually, choosing his words with obvious care, “I have had a number of comments this evening about your work, all of them very positive, very complimentary. It is a very fine piece, and not only in my opinion.” He looked at the floor then back at me, and then sighed and seemed to lose an inch in height as his stance softened. He shook his head, then looked almost through me, stared into my eyes.
“I didn’t know how to tell you that,” he said. “I’ve been trying to think all evening how to tell you, but I couldn’t.” He shrugged as though perplexed by some great mystery. “Perhaps Críostóir is right.”
And so the box was open.
I looked down and then back at him and then out through the window and into the murky after-dusk.
“How did we get here?” he asked me.
“We’ve always been here,” I said, simply. There was nothing else to say.
After a moment, he nodded.
“I suppose we have,” he said, to himself more than to me. “I suppose we have.”
I poured another glass of wine, I felt that I was going to need it.
“Why do you suppose that is?” he asked, suddenly
“I suppose,” I started uncertainly, “I suppose we have a history. We got off to a bad start, and it just didn’t get any better.”
And then, without warning, I couldn’t hold back the feelings that a whole life had failed to express.
“You see, I have always felt that you blame me for her death – that you would have preferred to have lost a baby than to have lost your wife. The two of you could somehow have got through that, but I left you with nobody.”
I drew a deep breath, there was no point in stopping now.
“And then I let you down over Aoife. That I was stupid enough to get myself in that position for a start, but more that I gave her up. It was in such sharp contrast to the sacrifice that Claire made for me.”
He said nothing, didn’t move, just stared at me.
“And then, I suppose, I took the filthy penny – I used whatever talent I had been given and whatever I had learned in university and took it across the water to work in the corporate world. You see me, I have always thought, as unreliable, weak even. I don’t think it’s fair, of course. But it’s what I think.”
I shrugged at the patent clarity of it.
“You can’t help blaming me for Claire, I can see that. You’re not wrong about Aoife, but maybe you don’t understand the full story – not that it absolves me. And if I had ever believed I had the ability to dedicate my time to my art and to earn a living from it, then maybe I would have chosen that route. I have never let you down carelessly or with any pleasure. If I have failed you, then it was because I couldn’t see a different way.”