Fragile Lies (4 page)

She lifted the receiver and pressed it against her ear. “Is she with you now?”

“I followed her but she insisted on going off with her friends. They’ll take care of her. We have to meet soon. This is a ludicrous situation. It can’t continue.”

“
No
. I’ve told you already. I can’t meet you. I’m not ready –”

“But this is not just about us.” Impatiently, he cut across her protests. “Whether you like it or not, we have to sort something out for Emily’s sake.”

“I’ll ring her on her mobile. Thanks for contacting me, Adrian. Goodbye.”

“Don’t hang up, please. You know I’m right. We must work out some kind of routine –”

“That’s up to Emily to decide. I’ll discuss it with her when she returns.”

“You did a cruel thing by removing her from everything that was familiar to her and this is the result.” His breath rasped down the line, judge and jury, accusing. He once had the power to cajole and comfort her, to raise her to heights of pleasure. But as she hung up the phone she felt nothing except an aching regret that tightened like a fist, knuckles digging deep into her chest.

She poured a glass of wine and flung another log on the fire. The glow from the flames reflected ruby splinters off the glass, imbued the kitchen table with a tawny sheen. She liked cottage furniture that had absorbed many lives into its grain and the table, an ancient hunk of wood with scrubbed ridges, bleached of colour and slightly hollowed in the centre, had once belonged to Celia Murphy, the original owner of the house. Lorraine had discovered daffodils among the weeds in the garden and had heaped them in vases around the kitchen. They added to the illusion of comfort and lifted her briefly into a future where she could imagine how everything would look when the house was restored. Small gestures she could manage. Illusions she could create. But nothing drowned the echoes. She sat by the window and stared into the impenetrable darkness of the countryside. Such silence. She breathed into it. The stars shone with a clarity she had never seen in the city but they only made her yearn more fervently for the glare of street lights, the noise of traffic, sirens, burglar alarms, the acceleration of motorbikes passing too close, too fast, the march of footsteps across the Ha’penny Bridge, the loud pealing of bells, the whispering sighs of passion satiated. Her hand was steady as she poured another glass of wine. In the past, on such a night, she would have lifted the phone to Virginia. Perhaps she would have driven to her cousin’s house in Howth and they would have sat on the balcony overlooking Dublin Bay, sharing laughter and confidences, and everything would seem manageable again.

The bottle was empty, the glass smeared. Her breath shortened. Her skin shivered. As loneliness gave way to all-consuming grief, Lorraine Cheevers began to weep. Her crying echoed, unheard, throughout the empty house.

B
rahms Ward
, 10 p.m.

D
on’t look so lost
, Killian. I’m here beside you. The moon is tossing high in the sky and the wind would slice the nose from your face. You’re warm and safe here. Snug as a bug in a rug. I dreamt about you again last night. A wonderful dream, filled with colour and movement, but silent, as if sleep had granted me this one concession. I was standing on the Great South Wall and you, light as a feather and aged about six, were perched on my shoulders. A red lighthouse winked and warned at the foot of the pier and we were flanked by the Dublin Mountains, the curve of Sandymount strand and the Bull Wall jutting like a crude finger into the sea. How strong I felt standing there, the tide lapping the rocks below. A Saturday father again and you were mine for the allotted time span.

Do you remember our walks on the pier? How long ago it seems now. We trained our binoculars on the ferries as they sailed back and forth across the bay. We made up stories about the passengers: spies, pirates and gangsters, monsters, ghouls and werewolves too. You’d a taste for the bizarre, my son. A chip off the old block, some would say. When it was time to return to your other world, you sometimes cried as I drove away from the docklands; a dead place in those days, filled with derelict warehouses and empty wasted sites. How short those hours seemed then, hard-fought and won. But it was real time. Our time. Not stolen from dreams.

I’m going to slip away. It’s late now and I’ve an outline to finish before tomorrow. The writing’s not going well, I’m afraid. No inspiration. How Harriet would snort if she knew. She doesn’t believe in writer’s block. “Let your fingers do the thinking and your mind will catch up,” she always says. “It hates being left out of the action.”

So, it’s black coffee and a long night. I’m working on the problems between Gary and his father. Can’t sort it out, Killian. They spar with each other, old bull, young buck, but their dialogue has no life. It’s fake, contrived mush. I’ve always found fathers to be tricky characters to handle. I never knew my own father, not on Saturdays or any other day. So there you have it, Killian. No role model. It’s not an excuse for failing you – or for bad dialogue. Just a fact of life.

F
ather
… Our Father … heaven … father … daddy … Saturday Daddy … cakes … pocket … daddy come home …

T
he Donaldson brothers
started work on the studio, converting the old stable where Celia Murphy once stabled her donkeys and, in a time before then, her father kept his two plough horses. With their sturdy bodies and strong, ruddy faces, the brothers were so alike that Lorraine had difficulty distinguishing one from the other. They sang in harmony as they worked. Garth Brooks fans. Although they harmonised surprisingly well they stopped self-consciously whenever she entered the studio. Their taste in music drove Emily to despair. Discordant, desperate, dreary, dreadful dirge. What had been an amused tolerance for country music had swelled to a passionate hatred. Every hammer blow they made was a reminder that her young life was changing inexorably.

One evening, while unpacking a crate that had been blocking the landing, she discovered an old photograph album of Lorraine’s. Listlessly, she turned the pages that chronicled her mother’s childhood holidays. Lorraine discovered her sitting cross-legged beside the crate, the album open on her knees. She knelt down beside her and stared at the photograph of two small girls sitting on a dry-stone wall, bare legs dangling, their swimsuits clinging to their tanned, skinny bodies. Virginia’s straight black hair swung over her cheeks. Her eyes peered from under a long fringe. She was thin and leggy, her stomach almost concave in a red bikini. She held a dead crab which, seconds before the camera clicked, she had pressed against Lorraine’s face. Lorraine, in an identical bikini, looked startled, as if she was trying desperately to hold her balance on the wall. A pair of donkeys grazed in the background and the old two-storey house looked exactly the same as now: dingy grey pebble-dashed walls, a hall door in the centre with a window on either side. Three windows on the top floor, two large and a small one in the centre, offered a distant view of the ocean. Celia Murphy stood in her doorway, her hand raised in a wave as if she was personally greeting the camera.

Emily turned the pages: the girls older now, tank tops and bell bottoms, outrageous platform shoes, standing outside O’Callaghan’s pub. Mr O’Callaghan stood between them, an argyle jumper stretched across his imposing stomach. Everyone smiling, always smiling.

Emily pressed her nail into the last photograph. “People used to say I look like Virginia. But I can’t see the slightest resemblance, can you?”

Lorraine stared at the young Virginia, thinking to herself that the hoydenish grin did indeed resemble Emily in one of her more impish moods, but before she could reply Emily flung the album back into the crate.

“Live in the past if you want to. I’ve more important things to do with my time.” She entered her bedroom and defiantly turned up the volume of her stereo in a determined effort to separate herself from the poisonous, putrid prison her mother had imposed on her.

Lorraine could empathise with her daughter’s sense of dislocation. The local women smiled when they met her in the supermarket and asked how she was settling in. But it was the politeness they showed to a tourist, superficial conversations about the weather and the rising price of groceries.

“You probably intimidate them,” Emily had declared, shortly after their arrival. “They think you’re a
celeb
just because you were on the
Late Late Show
with your nudes. Naked, naughty, nauseating nudes. It’s
so
embarrassing.”

In Dublin she had basked in the brief notoriety that had followed her mother’s last exhibition but in her new surroundings she took no delight in being the daughter of an infamous artist.

The controversy that followed the exhibition had hardly touched Lorraine. Was
Painting Dreams
an erotic or a pornographic exhibition? Such an argument was always bound to evoke a strong reaction, offering a platform for anyone with an opinion – and there were many who had much to say. In a splintering world, how easily we are aroused by the unimportant issues, she had thought, listening to empty words, puffed up rhetoric, reviews that praised or criticised her work. As far as she was concerned, it was a trivial spat compared to the private battle she waged against herself and her fears.

By mid-May, her studio was complete. The exterior white-washed walls and green window frames had a crisp newness that demanded more than an indifferent nod of approval. She forced enthusiasm into her voice as she thanked the Donaldson brothers. It amazed her that she had once been unable to tell them apart. Brendan was the taller of the two, a tenor who played guitar in O’Callaghan’s lounge bar at the weekends. Con was a baritone and a skilled horseman. She had noticed a rough-and-ready jumping arena in the field where the holiday caravans once stood and sometimes saw him riding on the beach, horse and rider cantering through the incoming tide. He had offered to teach Emily to ride, a suggestion that reduced her to hysterical laughter at the thought of coming into contact with hideous, horrendous, horrible horseflesh.

The shelves Con had built in the studio looked solid, practical, like his posture on his horse. Into this high-ceilinged space with its white pristine walls, a sink had been plumbed and a table, shelves and presses built to Lorraine’s specifications. A small outhouse, adjoining the stable, was converted into a dark room. She could fill her new studio with clutter and colour if she so chose. But as the weeks passed the crates containing her painting materials remained unopened.

Emily arrived home from school one evening shortly before the start of the school holidays and announced that her art teacher had requested a meeting with Lorraine.

“He actually
owns
one of your paintings.” She cupped her hand around her mouth and hissed. “The one with Cherie. I nearly died of mortification when he told me. Of course he pretended it was meant to symbolise the universal repression of the anarchistic desire of the male species – but he wasn’t fooling me. Not for one single minute. I know a lap dancer when I see one.”

John Falmer, Emily’s art teacher, was far too handsome to instil knowledge into a class of pubescent girls, Lorraine thought when she sat down in front of him the following afternoon. He was quick to reassure her that Emily had adjusted well to her change of school and appeared to be enjoying her art classes.

“I’d an opportunity to view your last exhibition when I was in Dublin. An unusual concept. Well executed … provocative, to say the least.” He cleared his throat and briskly tapped his pencil off the desk. “Emily told me you used to give art classes. Have you heard about the adult education programme we run at St Peter’s?” Without waiting for her reply he added, “I hope to persuade you to run a series of night classes when we reopen in September. We’ve excellent facilities available, especially our studios. It would be an honour to have you as part of our tutorial team.”

Lorraine explained about the pressure of work. Commissions, deadlines, maybe some other time. He seemed genuinely disappointed when he shook her hand and said goodbye.

“So? How did it go?” Emily demanded on her return from school.

“He asked me to take on art classes in September.”

“Oh my
God
!” Her daughter screamed in mock-horror. “Promise me you’ll stick to still life. I’ll die if you start teaching the population of Trabawn to paint nudes.”

“You needn’t worry. Trabawn is quite safe. I haven’t the slightest intention of teaching anyone to paint.”

For the first two weeks of her school holidays, Emily lay in bed, her Walkman to her ears, appearing only to raid the fridge or watch the latest episode of
Nowhere Lodge
. In Dublin, as soon as each episode of the teenage series ended, it had been earnestly analysed on the phone with her classmates who formed the
Nowhere Lodge
fan club. She still watched it three times a week, blankly staring at the screen and displaying little pleasure in the antics of the characters whose lives had become as familiar to her as those of her best friends.

By the third week of her school holidays she began moving the crates containing Lorraine’s painting materials into the studio. She unpacked the paints and brushes, erected the easels, stacked half-finished canvases against the walls, filled the shelves with books and the compact discs Lorraine always played when she was working.

“Can’t you at least slosh some paint on the walls and let me know you’re alive?” she snapped one evening when she returned to the kitchen and found Lorraine lying on the sofa, a rug draped over her knees. “What’s the big deal about painting a picture? You’ve done nothing since your nudes. Am I supposed to face a life of destitution, deprivation and despondency?”

Lorraine sighed. “Emily, do me a favour. Turn the page to E.”

“Emotional, empty, enraged.” She chanted the words with grim determination. “Endurance, entombed, excrement. Would you like me to move to the F words?” Her smile was brittle, her attempt at humour barely disguising her fury as she glared at her mother. She lifted an empty bottle and held it upside down. A trickle of wine spilled across her fingers. She placed it back on the table and waved her stained hand before Lorraine’s face.

“When can I have my life back again? Are you listening, Mother – or am I communicating with a zombie? You turn my world upside down then lie around all day drinking and feeling sorry for yourself. I’m sick of it, do you hear me? Sick …
sick … sick!
I keep trying to help you but you can’t even be bothered thanking me. What do you think I am? Your skivvy?”

“I never asked for your help.” Lorraine pulled the rug across her knees. “Nor have I deprived you of anything, not now, not ever. All I’m trying to do is build a new life for us both –”

“No – no! Stop it right there. That’s a lie. You want a new life for yourself, no one else. I
loathe
living here but you keep treating me like some kid having a tantrum that will soon pass. Where do my needs come into any of this? I’ve lost my friends. They’re getting on with their lives while I’m stuck here with a mother who won’t even comb her hair in the mornings. I’m sick of it, do you hear me? I can’t stand what’s happened and, what’s even worse, no one cares how I feel. I don’t want to live with you any more.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “I want to go back to Dublin and live with Sharon. She says I can share her room. Her mother won’t mind, I know she won’t … and that’s what I’m going to do so don’t try and stop me.” She ran from the kitchen. Her footsteps thumped against the stairs, her bedroom door slammed.

“What’s the sense in talking,” she screamed through the door when Lorraine tried to gain entry. “Nothing’s going to change. I
hate
you.”

In the bathroom where they were plumbing in a new sink the Donaldson brothers fell silent. Oh well – Lorraine collapsed back onto the sofa and closed her eyes. Let all of Trabawn know that the new arrivals drew blood when they fought.

Later, after the brothers had left for the evening, she entered Emily’s bedroom. Her daughter lay sleeping, her face buried in the pillows, crumpled tissues on the floor. Lorraine touched her hair, stroked the thick black tresses. A montage of family photographs had been mounted on one of the walls. A close-knit family of three, their arms around each other. A day on the beach. Another at one of Emily’s birthday parties. The candles on the cake numbered ten and Emily’s cheeks ballooned as she blew them out. All the small and big occasions, the milestones, the forgotten incidents, the oft-remembered excursions, they were all there; a constant reminder of how much she had lost. Lorraine left the room and silently closed the door behind her.

In her studio, she switched on the lights. How clinical it looked, the white walls and harsh overhead beams. Con had screwed a large mirror into the wall. She placed a chair in front of it and removed a sketch pad from the shelf. Using charcoal she began to sketch, her eyes darting from her reflection to the page. It was years since she had drawn a self-portrait, probably as far back as her student days. She had no idea how long she had been drawing, an hour, probably two if the darkness outside the window was any indicator. Some sketches were abandoned, others finished. Her movements grew more frantic as she slashed and scored the paper. She pulled the mouth downwards in exaggerated grimaces, added violence to the eyes, stretched the lips in a scream.

Finally, exhausted, trembling, she flung the sketch pad on the floor. Perhaps she would never paint again. The thought would once have terrified her, forced her to contemplate a vast emptiness in her life. But, as she looked towards the easel, the weight of a paint brush in her hand was more than she could tolerate.

Emily entered, wraith-like in a pale yellow dressing gown. She picked up the sketch pad and stared at the drawings. “Please tell me it’s going to get better.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “I need to find you again.”

“I’m still here, Emily,” said Lorraine and she held tightly to her daughter’s hand as they walked back to the house.