Girl Unknown (18 page)

He got to his feet and began moving towards the house.

‘Robbie.’

He turned to me with a withering stare. ‘How can you stand it?’ he demanded. ‘After what she did?’

‘Marriage is complicated,’ I said, but already he was stalking back towards the house, uninterested in my reply.

So that was how he saw me: a cuckold, a worm, spineless and ineffectual.

Back in the house, I put my coffee cup on the draining-board, my notes in my bag. Without saying a word to anyone, I took my things and left.

The conference was well attended and lively, a buzz about the university as the lectures attracted students and those outside academic life who had an interest in the history of the world wars. By coincidence, an old pal of mine from my Queens days – Giancarlo – was also attending. He had become something of a star in academic circles in his native Italy, but to me he was the same mischievous, irreverent student I had known twenty years before. On the first night of the conference, we headed out together to revisit some old haunts around Belfast and it was late when I got back to my hotel room, a little the worse for wear. There was a missed call from Caroline, but I chose not to return it. I was still peeved over my conversation with Robbie in the garden that morning, and I guess I blamed Caroline, tracing the roots of his grievance back to her fling.

My lecture took place on the second morning and passed off well. Afterwards, there was a lunch in the dining hall alongside some of my old professors. I enjoyed their company, and we talked about the passing years, as well as engaging in a lively discussion about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the West, so it was with some reluctance that I excused myself, found a taxi outside the
main entrance and instructed the driver to take me to an address in Holywood, outside the city.

I sat in the back of the cab, staring out at the massive yellow Harland and Wolff cranes, the concrete bridges under which the road passed, the verges becoming green and lush as we left Belfast behind us. I thought of Linda, curious to see how, where and with whom she had lived all those years without me. It was hard to imagine the Linda I knew – flighty, scornful of formal commitments, loath to be tethered to anyone or anything – succumbing to marriage, an institution she had roundly derided in the heady days of our love affair. I felt a little nervous, unsure as to what I wanted to happen at this meeting. I hoped to smooth things over, let Gary know that I was on the scene now, and that whatever kind of relationship he had with Zoë, the role of father-figure he might have played, it was different now.

The taxi stopped at a terrace of houses with pebble-dashed walls and small gardens, facing out on to a green. Some of the gardens were well maintained, while others were strewn with kids’ bicycles and plastic slides, dustbins shoved alongside breeze-block walls. A group of sullen teenagers were sitting on a wall, staring as the taxi approached. I tried to imagine Zoë playing on the green as a child, cycling along the road.

I paid the fare and stepped out to a house at the end of the terrace, purple and blue hydrangea bushes in the garden, a green Volkswagen Golf in the driveway. I imagined Linda coming home from work every day, pushing a buggy along that footpath, opening the door every morning to take in the milk.

Holywood, I knew, was an affluent town, part of Ulster’s gold coast, but there was something down-at-heel about this street. Not that there were flags hanging from the lampposts or kerb-stones painted with the Union Jack. But for all its neatness, there was an impoverishment. I used to think all of Belfast was a bit too small to contain Linda, let alone this choked suburb.

I rang the doorbell, and after a moment’s wait, a shadow appeared behind the frosted glass. The door opened and I was met by a tall, gaunt man. He was, I guessed, in his early fifties. In brown cords, a black knitted cardigan and horn-rimmed glasses, he reminded me of a geography teacher I might have had at school.

‘David,’ he said, extending his hand to shake mine.

His voice was deep and his handshake was strong. At his request, I followed him inside. He led me through a narrow hallway into a kitchen at the back of the house. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

‘Please.’

The kitchen was long and narrow, lined with white cabinets, a butcher’s block surface that was almost entirely free of appliances apart from a red Gaggia next to the sink, which Gary began fiddling with.

‘Please, make yourself at home,’ he urged, directing me to a light-filled room that opened out of the kitchen.

What I had seen of the house so far had seemed fairly mundane – even characterless – but when I stepped into the sunroom, I understood I was in its heart. Floor-to-ceiling windows gave on to an immaculate garden, and even on that gloomy afternoon, light poured through the skylights in the ceiling on to honey-coloured wooden
floors. The walls were filled with books and prints, shelves stacked with paperbacks in haphazard arrangement, a reading lamp sitting on top of a neat tower of magazines. There were framed photographs everywhere, photographs of weddings and parties and visits to foreign cities – some with Gary, some of Linda alone, one or two of her among a group of people I didn’t recognize. My eyes were drawn to them, searching for her. How strange it was to see that woman with her careful smile, her monochrome clothes, and realize she was Linda –
my
Linda. It was a shock to see her hair cut short, tamed into a neat bob, still blonde but dark at the roots. I suppose she might also have been surprised at how I had aged – the young man she had fallen in love with had grey hair, a forehead furrowed with age-lines.

I picked up one of the framed photographs from the side table. It was of Linda, standing outside Belfast City Hall in a yellow dress, holding in one hand an umbrella, in the other an oversized hat.

‘We thought it was going to rain,’ Gary said, coming into the room and putting a tray on the coffee-table. ‘Our wedding day. I insisted we bring an umbrella,’ he said, smiling. ‘Linda was holding it up because it hadn’t rained.’

‘When was that?’

‘Twelve years ago in March. I’ll let you help yourself to milk and sugar.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, putting the photograph back where I had found it, but not without wondering where Zoë was when the picture had been taken. In my mind’s eye I saw a six-year-old girl in a blue dress, hair in plaits, gaps in her teeth showing as she smiled for the camera. But she was
not in that picture, or any other. As my eyes took in the room, I found there wasn’t a trace of her anywhere.

‘The last time I saw Linda,’ I told Gary, as I took my cup and sat in the armchair opposite his, ‘she was preparing to go to Canada to do her PhD.’

‘Yes, well, she did go, but things happened. She dropped out and came home.’

Things happened. Pregnancy. Motherhood. I listened for the trace of unspoken accusation in his voice but there was none.

‘She never finished her PhD?’

He shook his head, adding: ‘That’s not to say she never studied again, though. Quite the opposite. She was always working away at something. City and Guilds courses, Open University. Night classes in creative writing or women’s studies. One year she decided to learn Italian, another she took up Mandarin. “Mandarin?” I said to her. “Sure, what would you want with that?” I used to tell her she’d be better off learning how to drive, but she wouldn’t hear of it.’

Something snagged in my brain. ‘She couldn’t drive?’

‘No. Preferred to get the bus. Or a taxi, when she was feeling flush.’

He filled me in on the scant details of their life together: she had worked in a book-shop; he taught at a local school, taking a leave of absence when his wife became sick. I thought of Linda and all those night courses, desperately seeking an outlet for her busy intelligence, and heard the wild flapping of wings tossing against a closed window. An exotic bird trapped in a room.

‘I was so sorry to learn of her death,’ I told him. ‘It seems wrong. She was too young.’

He nodded slowly, growing solemn, and neither of us spoke.

‘Linda’s mother also died in her forties,’ he said after a minute. ‘Did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘The same type of cancer.’

‘So it was hereditary?’

A frown-line became pronounced on his forehead while he considered that.

‘They couldn’t say so for sure. And, you know, our lifestyle … Well. We weren’t exactly health freaks.’

I heard the scratch of cigarettes in his voice, and thought of Linda smiling mischievously at me over her glass of wine. The air in the room had changed, the sadness within him dragging at me. I had an urge to get out of there and thought it best to get to the point, and address the purpose of my visit.

‘About Zoë,’ I began. ‘I just wanted to let you know that she’s living with us now – with my family.’

‘Right,’ he said, as if the information didn’t weigh too heavily on him.

‘Also, I’m going to be paying her tuition fees from now on, just in case you felt any responsibility in that department. I’m happy to step in now.’

A pucker of confusion around his brow. ‘Her fees? But she has money for that.’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘She does,’ he said firmly. ‘Linda left Zoë money specifically to pay for her education. Believe me, I know. I put the cheque into Zoë’s hand myself. Six thousand pounds.’

I stared at him, unsure what to believe.

‘She failed to mention that, did she?’ Gary said drily, reading my confusion.

‘She did.’

He gave a brief, mirthless laugh. ‘She has a loose association with the truth, that one.’

The way he said it only served as a reminder of all the hints and intimations Zoë had given of this stepfather with whom she didn’t get on. Suspicion rolled over in my mind.

‘God knows what she’s told you about me,’ he added.

‘She said you two never hit it off.’

Another laugh, more a quick exhalation of air through his nose. ‘That’s putting it mildly.’

The hardness of his manner faltered a little as he ran a hand over his forehead as if to rub away the tension there. Adopting a softer tone, he said: ‘It’s not all her fault. I suppose I’m partly to blame. It was such bad timing, you see, her coming along when she did, just after Linda’s diagnosis.’

‘Sorry, what do you mean?’ I asked, confused by the turn the conversation had taken.

‘You asked me about Linda’s cancer,’ he said patiently, ‘was it hereditary or lifestyle or just pure misfortune? Perhaps all three. But the one thing that keeps me awake at night is the thought of all the hormones she pumped into her body. We couldn’t have kids, you see. Unexplained infertility. We did IVF seven times,’ he went on, with a brief shake of his head. ‘Seven times. All those hormones, all those tests and procedures.’

All those disappointments, I thought. I tried to imagine how they managed on their salaries – fertility treatment
wasn’t cheap. The house, the estate, it began to make sense to me.

‘All those hormone injections she’d had,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help but think they contributed in some way. That was how I felt when the diagnosis came. And when Zoë showed up on the doorstep like that, the child she had given up all those years before, well, the timing of it … It felt like a cruel irony.’

I stared at him blankly. A buzzing feeling had started in my head, the room seeming to dip and sway around me. There was a radio on in the next room and I wished, irritably, that he would turn it off so that I could think. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What do you mean, the child she had given up?’

He scrutinized me again, in a way that suggested he was still making up his mind about me. ‘Yes. After she was born. You didn’t know?’

‘No,’ I said, hardly trusting myself to speak with all the emotions and questions clawing around inside me.

‘It was the one real regret of Linda’s life,’ Gary continued. ‘She never forgave herself for it.’

He was talking now about a letter that arrived, indicating the girl’s desire to reach out to her natural mother, the subsequent meeting and how euphoric Linda was afterwards, but all I kept thinking about was Zoë, sitting in my car, the orange glow of streetlights outside as she told me about Linda bringing her to UCD –
driving
her there – when she was a little girl.
I could tell she had never forgotten you
, she had said, and I had latched on to those words. But Linda never learned to drive. Was it all lies? Was there truth in anything she had said? Other accounts came
back at me: the Greystones cousins, shopping trips to Grafton Street, occasions that my mind had fixed upon, imagining the scene had I happened upon them – had I rounded the corner at the Blob that day and spied my Linda and a little blonde-haired girl, had I stopped dead on Grafton Street, Linda holding a child’s hand, walking towards me saying, ‘Hello, David,’ the memory of her voice saying my name coming to me in a painful jab. All of it lies.

‘At first, she seemed sweet,’ Gary said of Zoë, his words shaking me from my confusion. ‘She used to come around here and sit for hours, the two of them talking, swapping stories. In a way, it was a bit like watching a love affair unfold.’

Hard as it was, I tried to imagine it: Linda and Zoë sitting in those chairs, their eyes and voices locked on each other, anxious to make up for all the lost years.

‘When Linda suggested that Zoë move in, I wasn’t too sure. It all seemed to be happening so fast – and Linda was quite sick, the treatment taking its toll. She loved having Zoë here but was always exhausted afterwards, you know? Still, I couldn’t object – Zoë was her daughter, after all. She moved in, and it was fine for a while. Then things began to change.’

‘What things?’ I asked, my coffee cooling in my mug.

He crossed his legs, frowned a little, staring not at me but at some spot on the floor, his mind casting back through memory. ‘Small things, at first – she’d tell Linda that I’d done something or other to upset her when I hadn’t. Making out that I was being cool with her or trying to shut her out – Linda became upset. When she
confronted me, I denied it – tried to explain to her that Zoë was imagining it or, worse, making it up. It was ridiculous – the poor woman was in and out of hospital, as thin as a stick, and here we were arguing over silly little lies a teenager had told.’