The Empty Family (9 page)

A few times she thought to approach him to suggest that they might scrap the idea of using a real pub and assemble a much more manageable space in the studio. She watched the director looking through the camera at each frame and then moving away, talking to no one, brooding over what he had seen, appearing like someone who had not slept, or washed, or combed his hair, or spoken a civil word to anyone for a very long time. The lighting cameraman was working almost in competition with her; each day was a war of nerves between them as she tried to anticipate how he might frame and light. She had no intention of allowing him to find out that she had gone to the director with a problem she could not solve.

She found that the manager of the studio knew the publican, the owner of the bar where they would film. He lived near the bar and was a regular customer. When she asked the manager if he thought she could have one extra day preparing the bar, clearing it of almost everything and then re-creating it so that it could be filmed, he said that he did not think so. The director really wanted it as it was and the owner was proud of how it had been preserved. Because he liked his regular customers and had not much time for outsiders, the owner had agreed to allow the bar to be used in the film only because he knew both the manager and the director. But it was against his better judgement. In the way the manager spoke to her, she felt that the owner of the bar had reported on her visit and had not liked her.

It was clear to her that the pub could not be repainted; the modern beer taps could be hidden or temporarily removed, the pictures taken down and unnecessary bottles and glasses put out of sight, but nothing else. When she returned for one last viewing of the pub before they would dress it for filming, she did not try to ingratiate herself with the owner, who recognized Gabi and herself immediately and then pretended that he did not see them. When they finally got his attention and ordered glasses of beer, he gruffly served them and charged them and handed Frances the change without speaking.

The following day the studio manager told her that she could have the pub from four o’clock on Sunday but filming would begin at eight. When she protested, insisting that she needed more time, he shrugged and told her that he could do anything else she wanted, he could build her a life-size model of the Eiffel Tower or the General Post Office, but four hours’ preparation in the pub was as much as she would get. Even then, he said, it had taken persuasion to acquire. She arranged that the studio manager would be present in case there was any difficulty while she dressed the place and that four of his best workers could be at her disposal.

‘Lighten up,’ he said.

‘I want everyone there on time,’ she replied.

‘It’s just a three-minute sequence,’ he said.

‘Tell them to make sure to bring all their tools. I don’t want them driving all over the country because they have forgotten something.’

‘I’ll make sure they have their kango hammers and everything,’ he said.

‘Yes, you do that.’

The director had left this pub sequence until the last week of shooting; some of the less important actors had already departed. The crew, aware that something interesting and special was being made, were ready to do anything to make sure that nothing was spoiled. That Sunday, she had lunch in her hotel room with Gabi as they went through the plans. The director had not been consulted about making the space so sparingly furnished, but it would, Frances thought, take only an hour to change it if he should wish it to be changed. She hoped, however, that he would see the sense of it. As they drove to Wicklow, Frances realized that she had become used to the driver and grown almost to like him, although they had not spoken a civil word to each other in all the time. She realized that Gabi’s natural tendency was to speak to everyone but she, nonetheless, refrained from speaking to the driver out of a mixture of loyalty to Frances and fear.

As they arrived early, they waited until the customers began to drink up and go, all of them having been alerted by the owner, using a dry tone, that a film was going to be made in his pub. The props manager and the studio manager appeared and then two assistants, who slowly and meticulously, with the owner’s help, began to dismantle the taps and the connections for the draught beer and then carry the parts into a store at the side of the pub. Frances asked the manager if he would take the owner out of the way for a while as she was not sure how he would respond as every single item was removed from two of the walls and every single glass and bottle from behind the bar.

As both men went out, she noticed that there were two drinkers left sitting at a table close to the door, an older woman and a young man, and that they had full drinks, having just been served by the owner before he left in what had seemed like a parting act of defiance. She and the props manager began to unpack boxes. After a while, when she looked over, she saw that Gabi was sitting down talking to this couple and that they looked like a relaxed group of friends in a quiet country pub on a Sunday afternoon. She almost shouted across the room to Gabi to come and help immediately, but waited instead until Gabi came towards her.

‘Could you help, please? Or is that too much to ask you?’

‘I was saying hello, just saying hello.’

For the next while Frances moved between the props and the bar, standing back all the time to study the scene as it changed. A few times as she walked around the small space she noticed that the couple still had not left, instead were nursing their drinks and observing the scene with interest and amusement as though they were tourists who had hit on a fascinating way to spend an afternoon. When she found Gabi talking to them a second time, she watched from the shadows. The older woman was glamorous, did not look Irish; the young man had an agile face and seemed to be doing most of the talking as the two women laughed at what he said. Since she needed to summon up a fierce concentration for the next two hours, replace some pictures with others, perhaps rethink some ideas, she believed that the scene Gabi was involved in was precisely one that she did not need and would not tolerate. She waited until Gabi stood up and made her way nonchalantly back to her work, unpacking the bottles of Guinness, before she approached her.

‘Can I talk to you?’ she asked.

Gabi looked at her darkly.

‘I’m working. I’m back working.’

‘Could you ask those people to go? They’re a distraction.’

‘They’ll go in a minute. They’re friends of mine. Shane is an actor, he knows everyone in the film.’

‘Could you ask them to go?’

‘Don’t push this, Frances. They’ll go in their own time. They’re not in our way.’

‘Did you ask them here?’

‘No, they just happened to be here. Rachael used to come here years ago. She hasn’t been here for years.’

‘Rachael? Who’s Rachael?’

‘Rachael Swift. She’s Luke Freaney’s widow.’

Frances looked over at the couple; the woman was busy listening to her companion.

‘She’s his widow,’ Gabi repeated. ‘She used to be an actress.’

‘Did you tell her who I was?’ Frances asked.

‘She isn’t that interested in the film,’ Gabi said. ‘She’s just finishing her drink.’

‘Did you tell her my name?’

‘No, I didn’t. For God’s sake, why are you asking?’

Frances went out to the car, where she had left her handbag. She sat on the back seat without speaking to the driver and took out her make-up bag. Slowly, she began to work on her face, putting on some light mascara and some eye-shadow and eye-liner. She had learned years before from one of the greatest make-up artists in Hollywood that the area around the mouth for someone of her age was the most important, to keep the line of the lips defined and to cover wrinkles around the mouth and on the chin. She brushed her hair, and when she was finished she checked herself carefully once more in the hand-mirror. She sighed. There was nothing else she could do. She walked back into the bar and straight over to the table where the couple were sitting.

‘Rachael,’ she said, ‘I’m Francie.’

What she saw when the woman looked up at her was veiled sorrow and then a smile with even more sadness in it than her first look.

‘Oh God! I didn’t have any idea.’

‘I know. We never met before, did we?’

‘He talked about you,’ Rachael said and stood up awkwardly to shake her hand. Her accent was English.

‘He talked about you,’ Rachael repeated.

‘I didn’t know it was you,’ Frances said, ‘until Gabi told me just now.’

‘I thought you lived …’

‘I do, Rachael. I’m just working here.’

‘I hope we’re not getting in the way.’

‘Don’t worry at all.’

‘Can you sit down and talk with us for a moment?’ Rachael asked.

‘I can, of course, Rachael.’

Rachael introduced Frances to her companion.

‘She was with Luke before me,’ she said, and once again her smile had a terrible sadness in it, but there was something elegant about her too, almost beautiful.

‘This woman was the love of his life,’ Rachael said to her companion and then smiled again at Frances.

‘He was lucky with both of us, wasn’t he?’ Frances asked.

‘He was the love of my life,’ Rachael said. ‘I can say that.’

In her voice and in her face Frances could see how kind she was, and how good she must have been with him.

‘He loved this pub,’ Rachael continued. ‘He knew Miley, the owner, for years.’

‘I never knew that,’ Frances said. ‘You know, we were never in Ireland together, never once.’

‘I did know that. He talked a lot about you, especially when he got sick, but other times too. He was happy out of Ireland. It was just a few funny places he missed.’

They looked at one another, but neither spoke now as the noise of the work went on all around them. Frances could say nothing. She knew there was nothing Rachael could say either that would make any difference. The years had passed; it was as simple as that. Luke had been loved and cared for; this woman would have watched over him as he was dying like no one else.

‘I’m so glad to have met you,’ Frances said.

‘I was going to write to you when he died, but I wrote to no one, and then it was too late.’

‘Yes, it’s always hard.’

‘He talked about you. He said that there was no one like you.’

‘I’m sure, I’m sure.’

In the way she glanced down to check where her handbag was, Frances realized that Rachael wanted to go now. She stood up to make it easy for her.

‘There’s always work to do, isn’t there?’

‘Yes,’ Rachael said, ‘and we must leave you to do it.’

As Rachael and her companion were ready to leave, Frances shook hands with her.

‘It was wonderful to meet you,’ Rachael said as they made their way towards the door.

‘Yes, it was. It was a big surprise.’

When they had gone, she stood with her back to the door for a moment as though guarding the place from intruders.

‘What was that about?’ Gabi asked her.

‘Let’s get on with things,’ she said.

‘Have they gone?’

‘They have,’ Frances replied and then moved to the middle of the room to inspect the shelves and the bottles of Guinness in a row.

‘Behind the bar needs one more thing,’ she said to Gabi. ‘One more thing. Let’s think and see if we can work out what it is.’

Gabi nodded.

‘Why did you put on make-up?’ she asked.

‘I needed to talk to your friends for a minute, that was all.’

‘Did you know Rachael?’

‘No. I never knew her.’

‘You seemed all talk, the two of you.’

‘That’s the way it might have seemed all right,’ Frances said. ‘That’s the way it might have seemed.’

The Pearl Fishers

In the late 1980s Gráinne Roche and her husband Donnacha moved to Dublin, where Gráinne became a fierce believer in the truth. When she argued, in her weekly newspaper column or on the radio, about the state of the Church and the soul of the nation, her tone made some people dislike her intensely. Nonetheless, her country accent and her insistence that she and other like-minded lay people represented the true Catholic Church more than the bishops and priests gave her a role in most debates about the changing Ireland; she insisted always that she stood for some middle ground, dismissing the attitudes of the country’s liberal smart class. The few times I saw her in the city I enjoyed reminding her that when I had known her in Wexford she was young and walked around the town in her school uniform chewing gum. But in general I kept away from her. I had long before lost interest in arguments about the changing Ireland. But that is not the only reason I kept away from her.

I live alone now and I work hard. And when I am not working I am away. I do not see anyone I have no desire to see. It is easy to screen calls and avoid answering emails, and then they peter out. I love a long day when the night promises nothing more than silence, solitude, music, lamplight, the time broken by maybe half an hour on Gaydar to see if there is anyone new, or even anyone familiar, in the city centre who might stop by for what they call sex with no strings attached.

Viewed in the morning, it often seems a perfect life; once darkness falls it is sometimes sad, but only mildly so. It is easy being middle-aged, needs and appetites reduced to a level where they can be satisfied without much effort or pain or hardship. I make enough money from the grim, almost plotless thrillers with gay sub-plots I produce, which are popular in Germany and in Japan, and from overwrought and graphically violent screenplays, one of which paid for the top-floor apartment where I spend my days, to live as I please. I let no one irritate me unless I can expect in return some compensation such as sex or serious amusement, or unless there are old and intimate attachments involved.

Thus when Gráinne left a message on my answering machine one day when I was out, I did not reply. I had no idea why she might want to speak to me. I pressed 9, which meant her message would be preserved on the machine for a week and then would have to be erased. When the week was up I erased it without a thought. She called again, and said into the voicemail that I was hard to get hold of. I might have smiled at the idea that this was as it should be, but I still did not reply.