Authenticity Read online

  DEIRDRE MADDEN

  Authenticity

  In memory of Johnny Madden

  and for Harry Clifton

  with love

  The practice of an art demands a man’s whole self. Self-dedication is a duty for those who are genuinely in love with their art.

  Eugène Delacroix

  I thought, everything can be used in a lifetime, can’t it, and went on walking.

  Joseph Cornell

  My Aunt Mary was very kind and asked me to come and stay with them in Massachusetts. Jack Kerouac said that hardly any American artist can survive without an Aunt Mary.

  Charles Brady

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  When she was a child, she used to wake early in the winter, when it was still dark; and she remembers that she used to lie there and make believe that she was at once both inside and outside the house. The hall light would be left on all night, but instead of quenching her imagination, which was the reason for it, it gave her something upon which to fasten by illuminating the semicircle of glass above the front door. She believed that she was a bird in a tree opposite the house. In the utter dark of night only that fragile fan of yellow light was visible, and it was the only proof that the house was there, standing against the sky like a black ship on a black ocean. She could feel the branches rise and stir under her as she waited for dawn, when the light would thicken and coagulate, and when that happened she would see that the yellow fan of light was not something floating in space, but that it was part of the solid rectangle of a house. The sky would continue to lighten and the darkness to melt away, and the big black shape of the house with the arc of light wedged in it would be standing hard against the bare sky. There might yet be the odd star; and she was the watching bird who, when the sky attained a certain degree of paleness, sang first, sang alone; and she was also the child who lay under the patched and faded quilt and heard the bird singing, heard and imagined; the child who thought of the plates and bowls sitting on the table in the dim kitchen; the child who had fallen asleep the night before to the sound of those same plates and bowls being lifted from the press and set out in preparation for breakfast; the child who drifted off to sleep again, to dream about a set table in an empty room, about a bird in a tree, about a fan of yellow light.

  Chapter One

  ‘A strange thing happened to me yesterday.’

  ‘Mmmn.’ There was no point in continuing: he was still asleep. Julia turned, her neck tight in the crook of his arm, and stared at where the morning light fell on the wall between the bookcase and the window. She thought of how, painted, it would appear as pure abstraction: the sharply defined oblong of lemon light on the pale surface, the two dark lines that bound the planes. It would be understood according to the titles one might give it: Dawn Light: Window, Wall, Bookcase, or simply a number.

  ‘Mmmn? Well?’ Roderic said. He was awake after all, but his voice was still slurred with sleep. ‘Go on. Pleasant strange or horrible strange?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Neither,’ she said. ‘Just strange.’

  She told him that she had been walking across Stephen’s Green, on her way home from having met a friend. Passing the ponds and the flowerbeds she reached into her bag for a cigarette and stopped only momentarily to light it. Her lighter was a cheap disposable thing made of transparent red plastic, and she flicked at it once, twice, three times. Nothing: not so much as a spark. Only then did she notice that she was standing level with a man who was sitting on a bench. Julia didn’t even speak to him, simply held out the unlit cigarette with a quizzical smile. The man reached mechanically into his pocket and pulled out a heavy silver lighter. At the first touch it sent up a hard bright flame around which Julia cupped her hand to shield it from the breeze as she leant down and lit up. She exhaled deeply. The lighter snapped shut. ‘Thanks.’ She turned away, but had gone no more than three steps along the path when the man called after her.

  ‘Excuse me?’ She glanced back over her shoulder. He was looking at her with an expression of utter desolation, such as one rarely saw, an expression that literally stopped her in her tracks. ‘Excuse me, please, would you do me a favour?’ The voice was trembling and hesitant. ‘Would you mind … would you just sit beside me here for a few moments?’

  Julia did not reply, but stared hard at the man, taking stock of him and of the situation. They would not be alone or isolated, for the Green was far from deserted. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to talk or anything, just sit beside me.’ There would be no danger with this man, of that she now felt sure. Julia trusted her own intuition as far as men were concerned. She said nothing, just nodded and retraced her last few steps to sit down beside him. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much.’ His voice was still shaking, and so low now as to be almost inaudible.

  ‘So we sat there,’ Julia said, turning over in bed so that she could rest her head upon Roderic’s chest, ‘and we didn’t say anything.’

  It was exceptionally sunny for February and the railings of the nearby summerhouse cast dense, regular shadows upon its own ceiling, but between them flowed glittering, rippling light reflected from the surface of the pond. The quacking of the ducks made mad laughter in the distance. Julia opened her bag and took out her cigarettes, offered them to the man, who took one gratefully. He lit it with his own silver lighter, but his hands shook, and lacked the assured fluency of her own actions. He dragged desperately on the cigarette, narrowing his eyes, as though he had been parched and she had offered him cool, pure water. As they sat there smoking Julia stared straight ahead, drawing her own conclusions from what she had seen of him before she sat down. A businessman, that was clear from his suit and briefcase. He was in his mid to late forties, she guessed, although she always found it difficult to judge someone’s age. The impression he gave was of painstaking exactitude, with everything buttoned and fastened and polished and correct. No greater contrast could have been possible with her own wild style, her loose velvets and dangling earrings, her barely controlled mop of hair tied back with a green ribbon. Why was he there? Why was he so upset?

  The world in which Julia lived was so far removed from the life of a middle-aged businessman that she didn’t expect to fathom him. Her best guess was that he had been fired from his job. Given the boot. Not that it would have been put like that, of course. Let go. That’s what they would have said
to him. I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go. A man like this didn’t do a job, he was his job. No wonder he was distraught. Later tonight he would go to a pub where he wasn’t known and would drink and drink and drink, and as she thought this, she remembered Roderic. The man was crying now, very quietly and discreetly; she could hear him sniffle and gulp beside her. ‘What am I going to do?’ he said. ‘What am I going to do?’

  Having no adequate response to this, she answered his question with a question.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Dalkey,’ he said.

  ‘You might think to head for home.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Well you can’t stay here all night,’ Julia said reasonably.

  ‘Have you a car with you?’

  ‘I came on the DART.’

  Julia thought about this for a moment. ‘I’m going out in that direction. We can go together, if you like. Would that help?’

  ‘That’s very kind,’ the man said. He was making a significant effort now not to cry, wiping furiously at his eyes and clearing his throat harshly. ‘That’s very kind,’ he said again as they stood up.

  They left the park and crossed the road, walked down Dawson Street together and turned right, continued on to Lincoln Place. As they passed a pub, Julia half thought he might suddenly dart into it and that would be the last she would see of him, but he didn’t seem to have registered it at all. He walked with his gaze fixed on the pavement. She was struck at how there was no tension between them; thought how strange it was that this should be the case, that she should be here in the unexpected company of this anguished stranger. At Westland Row they entered the station, bought tickets and boarded the green train that was heading south. Julia settled down opposite the man, who sat bolt upright and stared blankly out of the window. She was struck again by how tense and exact he looked, how overly correct and how thoroughly miserable. People boarded the train and others left, children shouted and laughed, and none of them paid any attention to Julia and the man, were probably not even aware that they were travelling together as they did not speak to each other until the train stopped at Monkstown. Then the man said, ‘You weren’t coming out in this direction at all, were you? You’re doing this just for me.’

  Julia considered lying, but didn’t think she’d be able to carry it off. So she shrugged, said lightly, ‘You looked like you couldn’t be trusted to go straight home on your own. When I start something, I like to see it through to the end.’ She had thought he might remonstrate with her, but instead he gave a brief, weak smile, which astonished her. Up until then, he hadn’t looked capable of smiling. ‘You really are,’ he said, ‘tremendously kind.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ Julia said, embarrassed, and now it was she who turned to stare out of the window.

  They didn’t speak again for the rest of the journey until they arrived in Dalkey. Even then, they walked in silence, the man now leading the way down the main street. He turned into a quiet road and pointed at an elegant house painted the colour of buttermilk, with a flight of steps leading up to the front door.

  ‘That’s it?’ He nodded and held out his hand. ‘Good luck,’ she said. The man said nothing. She was glad he didn’t thank her again, but when he took her hand he held it for slightly longer than was usual for a handshake, and so tightly that he crushed her ring into her fingers and hurt her. It was the first, the only thing about him that had made her feel ill at ease. Then he crossed the street and walked towards the pale house. She watched him go up the steps, fumbling in his pocket for his keys, but before he could find them someone inside opened up. He went in and the door closed. Julia watched for a moment longer, then turned and walked back slowly to the train station.

  Roderic had been listening to all of this with great interest. ‘And he gave no clue as to what the problem was?’

  ‘None whatsoever. To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to know.’

  ‘You’re tremendously kind, do you know that? Tremendously kind.’

  She was taken aback that he repeated so completely the stranger’s compliment: out of modesty she had omitted this detail from her account. Uncomfortable with praise for such a small act, she sought to change the subject. ‘Look at the wall,’ she said, ‘how the light falls there.’

  But while she had been talking, the sharply defined edges of the rectangle she had noted earlier had expanded, grown softer as the light became more diffuse, dissolving completely now to fill the room with the clear light of a new day.

  Chapter Two

  As was his habit, William sat up late that night after Liz had gone to bed. He poured himself a whiskey as he did every Friday, but a larger one than usual. Often he listened to music at this time but tonight he didn’t want it, couldn’t bear it. In silence he sat, and in darkness, but for the single lamp which burned beside his armchair. Through the shadows all the familiar objects glimmered: the brass fender before the ashes of the fire, the paintings and the mirror, the silver tray with its bottles and decanters. After such a day it seemed to William miraculous that he was there, at home in his own drawing room.

  Why today? What had triggered it? It was absurd but, looking back, the only way he could define it was to say that he had never properly woken up that morning. All day he had been in a strange way half asleep, in a kind of waking drowse so that everything had seemed curiously unreal, like a dream, even as he lived it There had been more to it than a simple lack of sleep, although that was something from which he often suffered, because of his insistence on being always the first to rise in the house and the last to go to bed. Liz used to say he was the only person she knew who was both a lark and an owl, used to marvel at his energy. She didn’t realise how much it took out of him. He followed this pattern because the early mornings were the pursuit of hope, the late nights a quest for consolation. Liz thought it was kind of him to bring her coffee to bed, not realising it was a way to buy time alone.

  Even in a suburban garden there was a kindness, a mercy, in the freshness of the day, the purity of the light; and from the kitchen window he would watch the birds at the wooden bird table, where the children put out fat and nuts in the winter. Magpies chattered and fought, a robin came often, and a pair of thrushes, but the bird he liked best was the blackbird, with its vivid eye and orange beak, with its liquid river of song. On dark mornings he would simply watch the light seep into the sky. He knew in his heart that it was foolish to draw comfort from such things, that if such a notion as banal transcendence was possible then this was it, for the day would not ultimately be redeemed. And yet, he had come to depend to an extraordinary degree on these little islands of peace. Then he switched on the radio and started to prepare breakfast for Sophie and Gregory.

  He listened to one of the commercial stations and there was comfort, too, in the fake urgency of the news reports and the traffic updates, as there was fellowship in seeing the lights come on in the houses across the street. Yes, life is a struggle, these things seemed to imply, but we’re all in it together. Now he could feel the day breaking like a wave around him, could feel the tension between the pristine silence of the early morning and the increasing tide of the world that would gradually engulf it. The idling radio, the racket as the children clattered downstairs demanding cereal and juice, the rush of the shower when Liz rose, even the very thought of people all over the city rummaging for clean shirts, making tea and toast; he valued the tremendous pathos of this shared necessity.

  So what had gone wrong this morning? He had failed utterly to make the transition from the night world into the day. Right from the start, everything had been grey and unclear, as though he were looking through a veil or a mist. He hadn’t even felt particularly unhappy, hadn’t felt anything, just a strange numbness. William remembered now that Liz had noticed something was wrong, had paused in helping Gregory on with his shoes to say, ‘Are you all right? Are you not feeling well?’ ‘I’m just a bit tired,’ he’d said, ‘that’s all,’ although he’d known even
then there was more to it than that. Liz was too busy to pursue the matter. She looked in the hall mirror and slicked on her lipstick, then left the house with the children in a flurry of car keys and school bags, anoraks and lunch boxes. William heard the car doors slam and they drove off.

  A short time later he picked up his briefcase, typed in the code of the house alarm and set off for the DART station. On the train into town he looked out across the great sweep of Dublin Bay. He noticed how clear Howth Head was on this fine morning at the end of the winter, the houses white and evident on the vast dark hump of the promontory. They drew into Booterstown station and he gazed at the patch of wetland on the other side of the wall, at herons and oystercatchers. The idea that came to him now was one that had played at the edges of his consciousness for years. The first time it had entered his mind as a personal possibility rather than as an abstract concept it had frightened him. Appalled, he pushed it away, forced it down. That he had largely succeeded in doing so was because William was an expert in mental control, in will, in closing out things that were too painful, too difficult to bear. But the idea had always been there from that day on. Perhaps his control over it had been too complete, for when it broke it was like a dam exploding. This was the moment. The idea sprouted before him like a huge, dark, marvellous poisoned flower. The train moved off. Why had he resisted until now? It was the obvious solution. It would be a relief. It would be best for all concerned. He believed that nothing had been farther from his mind when he boarded the train in Dalkey, and yet, by the time he got out, together with crowds of other people at Westland Row, the idea was fully formed and resolved in his mind.

  He kept exactly to his usual routine, buying a copy of The Irish Times in the station shop, then crossing the road into Trinity, past the herb garden outside the botany department, past the physics building, and then up between the playing fields. He turned right, as always, into New Square, past the garden with its benches and roses, and looked up at the first-floor window that he always liked to think of as his, ever since the year he had had a room there as a student. It gave him pleasure to think back to his time in Trinity; he had been happy then. As he walked past the end of the Rubrics into Front Square, he thought of how little it had changed over the years, unlike other places he had known in Dublin, and how he liked that, because it meant he could pretend that time had not passed, could pretend that at any moment he might see Liz as she had been then, with her files and her books, on her way to a French lecture. Even as William thought this he saw ahead of him, as if to deliberately point up the foolishness of such a thought, one of his own former lecturers crossing the square. He wore in his face and body every day of the twenty years and more that had passed since he taught William land law. He walked between the two small lawns with their boundary of chains to which many bicycles were fastened, into the darkness of the front arch, with its glass-fronted notice boards and its floor of wooden blocks, past the security office and out again into the brightness of the day, through Front Gate and into College Green.