Authenticity (2 page)

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.

The law firm for which William worked was in a side street off Dame Street, up near Dublin Castle, and as he approached it this morning he could smell hops from the brewery. When he stepped into the building Martin Kane was there, laughing uproariously at something the doorman Declan had just told him. ‘It’s a good one that, isn’t it?’ Declan was saying. ‘It’s a good one.’

Speechless with mirth, Martin stepped into the lift with William. ‘Jesus, your man’s a turn,’ he said, pressing the button for their floor. ‘He’s lost in this place, he should be in the Gaiety.’

There was a mirror in the back of the lift, and William could not but be struck by the contrast between his own face
and that of his colleague. They were like the masks for comedy and tragedy, Martin relaxed and jolly, still chuckling at whatever it was Declan had said; William tense and grim, with a frown cleft deep in his forehead.

‘Few jars after work tonight, what do you say?’ Martin asked as the lift stopped and the doors opened.

‘I’m not sure,’ William replied.

‘No bother,’ Martin said, heading off down the corridor to his office, ‘I’ll give you a shout later in the day, see how you feel.’

The fog that enveloped him still did not affect his capacity to work and William quickly settled down to dictate letters and read reports. No one else seemed to notice anything unusual about him today, and he was aware that his comportment and behaviour were exactly as always. But he felt distant from everyone: cut off. Sometimes it was as if there was a thick sheet of plate glass around him, sometimes it felt as though he was underwater, and was looking up through the refracted light at people who gazed down calmly at him. It was wretched. He was relieved to know that it would soon be over. At eleven o’clock there was a lull in his tasks, and on an impulse he picked up the phone, dialled the direct line to the office where Liz worked. ‘Kelly and Begley, good morning.’ Her voice was formal and crisp. He hadn’t thought through what he was going to say and so he said nothing. ‘Hello?’ she said. A pause then ‘Hello?’ again, with a note of irritation now. Then the line went dead. He imagined her sitting at her desk in her stone-coloured suit and her lipstick.

He went for a late lunch to a sandwich bar which he liked because no one else from his office ever patronised it. The circular table at which he sat was cluttered with the debris of other people’s food: tea stains, broken crusts, pieces of bitten apple. An elderly waitress who often served him came over and began to dear away the mess.

‘Are you tired, love?’ she asked.

‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’m absolutely and completely exhausted.’

‘Good that it’s Friday,’ the woman said. ‘You’ll have the weekend to rest up.’

He thought of the weekend: he saw a blank; he said nothing.

When William went back to the office he continued to work diligently and mechanically. It was important to him that everything should be left in good order. Someone brought him a cup of coffee at three o’clock, and as he drank it he took time to look around the office. How strange it was to think that after twenty years of coming in here, day after day, he would never see the place again. On his desk there was a framed picture of Liz and the children, and taped up beside the filing cabinet were some of Gregory’s paintings. His colleagues genuinely admired the child’s work, but William knew, too, that behind his back they laughed at the photo. The only person who dared to make any comment about it was a sly temp from the North, who had worked there for a fortnight. ‘So that’s what you looked like when you were a wee fella,’ she said, pointing at Gregory in the photo on her last day with the firm, as though she hadn’t noticed the resemblance until then. He disliked displaying the photo and paintings, recognising that they were nothing more than signifiers of a conformity against which he increasingly chafed. It was like having to play golf or talk about the Six Nations. There were certain things about which you weren’t supposed, under some unspoken but iron rule, to express an interest. He remembered the insouciance with which the temp did embroidery during her tea break.

Just at that moment, Martin’s bright face appeared around the door. ‘Are you game for a pint later?’

‘Think I’ll give it a miss, if that’s all right.’

‘Fair enough. Another time.’ William made no reply. He logged off, put his papers in his briefcase and ensured that everything in the office was in perfect order before leaving.

After the stifling atmosphere in the office the air of the street was agreeable to him, and he stood for a moment before walking down to the river. The fine weather enhanced the classic colours of the city, the grey stone of the churches and the Four Courts, the green copper dome of Adam and Eve’s. He walked along the thronged quay in a daze, past the Ha’penny Bridge and down towards D’Olier Street, aware of the contrast between the absolute ordinariness of the day and the singular nature of what he was going to do. Or rather, what was about to be done, so passive did he feel by this stage. That was what he found so terrible about life – its brutal inevitability, while always there was the illusion of liberty, of free will. Still in a waking dream, he wandered through the city streets, not quite sure where he was going. Afterwards he would remember the oddly circuitous route he took to Stephen’s Green, going first to Merrion Square then up to Baggot Street and eventually to the place that had become, for no particular reason, his destination.

William sat down on a bench and thought seriously about how he would proceed with the task in hand. He had no idea how long he had been there when he realised that someone was standing in front of him. He glanced up vaguely. It was a woman, and she was holding out an unlit cigarette, with a quizzical smile. Mechanically he reached into his pocket and pulled out his lighter. The woman put the cigarette in her mouth and leaned down towards the flame he offered her, cupping her hand against the breeze.

And as he looked at her, something extraordinary happened. The fog, the dreamlike state in which he had been wrapped all day, suddenly melted away. The woman’s face: her fine skin, her Half-closed grey eyes, startled him utterly and woke him up, like the kissed princess in his daughter’s storybook. It was as though this woman was the first real person he had seen all day, the first he had seen for years. She straightened up and blew out a long column of smoke, smiled her thanks and turned away.

The enormity of what he had been contemplating broke over him; stunned and winded him. The thought of being alone for a second longer was terrifying. ‘Excuse me.’ He heard his own voice, hesitant and trembling. The woman turned round, and he heard himself tearfully asking her to sit beside him for a moment. She stood looking at him, sizing him up. Her face was inscrutable. She was young, in her early twenties: flat shoes, big coat, dangling earrings, remarkable hair. If she said no, he did not think he would be able to bear it. But she nodded, retraced her steps and sat down beside him.

Sitting now, past midnight, in the dimly lit drawing-room of his own home, his mind shrank from what had happened next. Thinking about it was like touching a wound, as if not just the unfelt pain of the early part of that day hit him, but of all his life. The young woman had actually seen him home and he’d meekly, gratefully gone with her. The whole day had fallen apart by that time, and with it, he realised, his life.