She got one of the men at the perfume counter to spray perfume on a card for her and she let him know the smell reminded her of women at the horse show dressed in big hats with chewy sweets in their handbags, or Glacier Mints. She said she loved to do that whenever she had the time, at home or anywhere else in the world, she smelled the perfume they sold. Not to buy it. Only for the chance to talk, really. She said she used go into the toilets of Brown Thomas in Dublin and get a free squirt of perfume on the way out before going to the pub.
Come on, she said. Let’s ask the man in the uniform.
She got me to push her out to the lobby again to ask the man with the top hat where to find the sheets. She said she wanted to give him a function and one of these days he’ll be retired and they won’t replace him, she said, too many people probably just walk past him as if he doesn’t exist, even though he’s dressed in tails and a top hat, like he’s at a wedding, or at the races. He told us what level we needed to go to. She said people can be a bit blind in a department store, they would walk right past their own mother and father. She stopped for a while to watch a woman wearing a black headscarf buying a pink handbag without looking at herself in the mirror, only lifting it up to smell the leather and asking her husband if it suited her, as if he was the mirror.
She said you buy something and it’s not the same thing when you get home. You bring something home and it’s the last thing you wanted. She said she loved the smell of new leather especially. She said everybody is a child in a department store.
The shop assistant spoke in English, how can I be of assistance to you? She liked to give the shop assistant a chance to tell her what they had in stock, what was to be recommended. You can’t go and buy a sheet, she said, without allowing the assistant to show you some of the different fabrics. You don’t have to worry about wasting time because they love to tell you what’s most comfortable. They can usually guess what kind of sheets you need by the way you look. Cotton. Linen. Satin. The assistant pointed to various brands and designs and also explained the different levels of quality and sheen in the fabric. They had all kinds of patterns. Black and white stripes. Diagonal stripes. Half green with yellow frogs and half yellow with green frogs. Leopardskin sheets. Sheets with the head of a zebra in the middle. Sheets with the alphabet. Sheets with red and yellow leaves tumbling down. Some of the beds were made up already and you felt like getting straight into them, no matter how many people were walking around looking at you asleep.
While she was examining different patterns, her bag was left abandoned in the middle of the floor, like a see-through bag that belonged to nobody.
The shop assistant was a tall woman. She crouched down beside the wheelchair holding out one pair of sheets after another. She allowed time for her to feel the fabric in her hands. The assistant said sometimes a colour feels warmer than plain white, even though it’s only an illusion that people have built up in their minds.
Whatever gives you the best sleep, the assistant said.
Úna said writers don’t sleep. She was an insomniac. The only time she ever slept properly in her whole life was when she was writing a novel. The truth keeps you up at night, she said. Fiction makes you sleep.
The assistant said silk sheets are the most beautiful to touch, and the most expensive, of course. But for me, personally, the assistant said, they are very delicate. If you catch your nail or snag a piece of jewellery, that’s the end, you can say goodbye to the sheets because the thread will run free.
The assistant spoke like a man and kneeled down like a woman, with her knees together. When the assistant went away to get out more and more sheets, Úna wanted to know my opinion.
Do you think she has an apple?
The assistant?
She has a deep voice, don’t you think?
She said a man or a woman like that will always give himself away, like we all give ourselves away. We always leave some small piece of information out for people to find, like something accidentally dropped for somebody to pick up after us. It’s not like a woman to cough at that angle, up towards the ceiling, she said, with the apple showing. And maybe that was the whole intention, dropping a clue, letting people know that you are a man pretending to be a woman. Or a woman pretending to be a man. Or a woman pretending to be a woman.
These are the some of the finest sheets we have, the assistant said, coming back with sheets made in France. Or maybe it was Switzerland. They have the quality mark, they will last for ten years, minimum.
Ten years?
Longer, the assistant said.
I don’t need them that long, she said. She was bringing them home to Dublin and the assistant said she understood, Ireland.
For the big sleep.
The best sleep, the assistant said.
The last sleep.
Ach, the assistant said.
It was only afterwards that she asked me if I knew what the assistant said. What does Ach mean? Because the word Ach is the Irish for But. And I knew that the word Ach is also the German for Ah.
Ah what?
She bought only the one sheet, one double sheet. Satin. Plain white. No pillows. The assistant asked about measurements but she said it was just for herself and they allowed for an overhang. The assistant wrapped the sheet in a parcel, with a ribbon. The assistant thanked us like a man and smiled like a woman and coughed like a man with her hand over her mouth.
39
We had time to spare. She wanted to look at some other things. Things we didn’t need, like kitchen utensils, pots and sets of cutlery. Ceramic knives that she found interesting, and white ceramic frying pans. Imagine doing sausages in that, she said. She went around admiring things, touching everything. She turned to me like a mother and asked me if there was anything I wanted to bring back with me, but I couldn’t think of anything. Honestly. Surely there was something I could do with. A shirt, maybe. A new jacket, something for the wedding. I told her I was all sorted out with my suit. And anyway, the wedding was not even happening. It’s been called off, I told her.
Liam, she said. Do you never buy anything?
I laughed.
You never go to the opera and you never buy any decent clothes, you wear clothes that make you look like an overgrown teenager. Look at that jacket you have on, it’s like something a soccer player would have worn about ten years ago.
It’s kind of stuck to me now, I said.
In the children’s department she was looking at summer dresses. She had to let an assistant know that she was only looking, only having a look, she said, pointing at her eyes.
Then she started asking me questions again, if I knew who Maeve’s real father was. The biological father. Is it who I think it is?
Yes, I said.
Are you certain?
He was my best friend, I said.
You never told me that, Liam.
I’m only trying to figure this out now, I said.
He used to call for me all the time. We’d go out drinking together, let’s do some damage, he would say, you never knew where it would end up. He was very generous, I told her. He was so generous you would have to say it was overpowering, something you’d nearly be afraid of. I always had the feeling that I was in debt to him. He was great fun, no question. Everybody loved him. He would turn up at the door without warning, smiling, saying Ra Ra. The same two words every time. Ra Ra. I can’t remember ever having a real conversation with him. He preferred everything to be erased. Maybe that’s what I liked so much about him, there was no obligation to remember, only to forget. Never look back, he said to me many times. Always walk away. I knew why Emily wanted to escape. Emily had good reasons to ask me to take her away, anywhere away. That’s why I brought her to Milltown Malbay and the seaweed baths and all that swimming in the Pollock Holes and lying on the cliffs to make sure we were not being followed.
How could he remain my friend?
He disappeared as soon as Maeve was born. I thought I was bound to run into him somewhere,
sooner or later. Dublin is a small place. The odds were in favour of me seeing him in one of the bars we used to go into. Somewhere, waiting at the traffic lights. Maybe getting a take-away coffee. I told her I saw him once in the foyer at the Abbey Theatre. No, at a concert, I think it was, the Olympia. Long ago. This was well before I found out that I was not Maeve’s biological father. I walked right up to him and put my hand on his shoulder and said how’s tricks? Which was a stupid thing to say, I fully agree. How’s tricks? I don’t know anyone who says that any more, only that he used to say that to me all the time and that’s where I got it from. And anyway, it wasn’t him. I was mistaken, it was somebody else.
He’s keeping out of your way now, she said.
He might be at the reunion.
Maybe you should go, she said. Clear the air.
She held a child’s party dress across her lap and spread it out over her knees with her hands, as if she was going to be wearing it.
I told her I sent him a letter, to his home address. I didn’t think it was right to send an email or leave a message on his phone. I didn’t want to send anything to his office either in case his secretary might open it.
What does he do?
Strictly private and confidential, I said, that’s what I wrote at the top of the envelope.
You don’t have to tell me, she said.
Of course, I said. He’s a barrister.
I told her it was a very polite letter. I didn’t accuse him of being the father or anything like that, because I have no definite proof, do I? I didn’t even link him to Maeve. I congratulated him on his success in the legal world and told him about my daughter having trouble finding her biological father. I think I might have made it sound a bit like a legal letter. I asked him if he could think back and remember anything that might help Maeve locate her real father, if he had any information that might be helpful, that is, then I would be very grateful to hear from him.
And did you?
No.
Maybe he never got it.
She had no intention of buying a dress for a five-year-old girl. She only remembered spilling red lemonade on her favourite dress once and she always wanted to buy the same dress again for the rest of her life.
I told her it was a mistake to send the letter. I was angry with myself for sending it. Angry with myself for letting him know and angry with him for taking my daughter away from me. I wanted to reverse all that, but you can’t, can you? You can’t just knock on somebody’s door and demand a letter back. You can’t walk into somebody’s house and say excuse me, you were not meant to know that. You were not the intended recipient.
You wouldn’t do that, she said.
Out in the country, I said. Near Trim. That’s where he lives now. It’s a bit hard to find at first, the sat-nav sends you all around the world. Beautiful place, with a long driveway and lawns and a tennis court. He has two stone greyhounds on either side of the front door, covered with yellow lichen. There’s a fanlight over the door. The front room is full of bookshelves, wall to wall. A painting of a field of wheat after a storm over the mantelpiece. And the kitchen has black and white tiles, diagonal.
How do you know all that, she asked.
Imagine if I let myself in the back door, I said, through the kitchen. Imagine if I walked right up the stairs. The two of them sitting up in bed, him and his wife. Him reading some legal journal and her reading what? Poetry? And me appearing out of nowhere, in the door of the bedroom. If you don’t mind, I need that piece of information back. About my daughter. Pretend you never heard it.
You didn’t, Liam.
You couldn’t do that, I said. She would puke all over herself with the fright, so she would. She would puke all over the book and the duvet. And him saying, it’s OK Julia, it’s only a friend of mine from school I haven’t seen in years.
You’re not going to do that, Liam.
I’m different now, I said.
When I’m gone, she said.
I swear, I’m not like that any more.
And then I saw myself in the mirror. At first I thought there was somebody watching me. Maybe security personnel, checking me out. But it was nothing more than a mirror in front of me and I was standing there live, in person, not recognizing myself.
It was the shoes I noticed first. They were just like mine, I thought, only a bit more shabby-looking in a place where everything was new. And the trousers, bunched up over the shoes. I looked second-hand. I was in my own world, a bit lost, maybe, not sure if I was in the right place, that kind of expression. I could see myself in all honesty, nothing hidden, the way other people see me. I was not being anyone but myself. I recognized the nose, the crooked nose, more broken in reverse. I could see for the first time how I ended up. This is what I had ended up looking like, this reflection, standing in a department store in Berlin with a parcel under my arm and a sheet inside. I looked found-out.
40
They want to know if there was anything more I found out about Úna. While I was in Berlin. As if I had the missing clue. Something about her I was keeping to myself, some tiny detail she left behind that would reveal who she really was. But who am I to describe her life? We were just good friends, don’t forget. I was her companion, not her lover, we had no previous history between us.
All I can say is read her books, that’s who she was. That’s her story, in her own words, you can’t get better than that. Talk to the people who loved her. Talk to Noleen. Talk to the men in her life. Talk to her family, her friends, the people she worked with, the people who know her better than I do. The only thing I can add is that she loved travelling. I brought her to Berlin and she loved every single minute, that’s what she said. She didn’t want to stop, she said she was having the time.
What am I trying to say? I can give you a kind of summary of what I know, but it’s nothing like meeting her, hearing her speaking for herself. So maybe that’s the missing clue? Her presence. Her being alive. A memoir is not a living person, no matter how true it is, that’s what I’m trying to say. I know this goes against her opinion that everybody is the sum of their own story and people are nothing more than walking stories, but I don’t know if putting together what she told me is ever going to match listening to her live, in her own voice.
She was the kind of person who was no good at inventing things. She preferred real facts. She liked to be at the centre of the facts herself. That’s how she wrote her books, putting down a list of facts, first-hand. And sometimes she got the truth mixed up with the facts. She thought you had to tell all the facts to tell the truth. She said some facts were so true you couldn’t make them up and some facts were so true they spoke for themselves.
She didn’t know how to keep things to herself. She was the kind of person who spoke to everyone in the street. She usually took the leaflet for the free pizza offer and she would sign the petition for an environmental impact study and stop to say hello to the man with two dogs, the man singing ‘Angie’ on a portable amplifier. Whatever city she was in, she got people talking about themselves, because she knew only too well what it’s like when people pretend you don’t exist. And sometimes she was in too much of a hurry and there was no time for any of that, taking notice of people. And the thing she hated most was somebody you had already given money to coming back two minutes later as if they had never seen you before.
She was full of anger, plenty of it. She would be the first to admit that herself, we can all be like that from time to time. She could be jealous and hurt and those things people feel in the course of their lives, afraid of others doing better, more money, more successful, women more beautiful. She was on the side of women and she was also afraid of women. She stood up for women and she was jealous of them. She would walk over any women in the world to take a man away from a woman. She was straight and she was gay. She turned in every direction for love.
She loved bells. At one point, while we were driving through Berlin, she wanted to listen to the bells. She sat forwa
rd suddenly and told Manfred to stop the car, I thought there was something wrong. Manfred, she shouted, stop the car, this minute. Here. Stop, right here, anywhere, she said. So Manfred had to pull in at the nearest loading bay so that she could roll down the window to let the bells in.
We were right next to the church and it was deafening, you couldn’t hear a thing. It was like a roof closing down on the city, the bells were gone mad. They were furious, so it seemed to me. Even the traffic going by was silent. Manfred switched off the engine and we sat there and listened, like New Year’s Eve. You could feel the bells more than hear them. Actually, we realized that we were also hearing other bells from other churches farther away. The bells had some kind of harmony going. Maybe not so much a harmony but the sound of each bell layered on top of the other, humming in our ears. And the thing was this, when the bells stopped ringing, they didn’t really stop. We continued hearing them as they were fading away, like somebody getting his breath back.
She was not the kind of person who went into churches much. She had no time for God, only that couldn’t get out of the habit of using God as an expression. God Almighty. God help us. She didn’t see the point in God, but she still wanted her funeral to be held in a church and she still wanted to go into the church left in ruins, it was on the itinerary which Manfred had on the dashboard, to light a candle for her brother.
And after all that she said about her brother, she still could not help but admire her father. She loved it when people came up to her and said she was her father’s daughter. And when he died, there was such a big funeral for him, as big as her own funeral, because he was so well loved, he was the king. She was in bits after his death and started drinking like her mother. She said she didn’t see any point in drinking unless you drank too much. As a child she was used to people coming home drunk at night. Every time somebody came in late she expected them to be drunk, crashing into things, laughing or angry. She said she would never forgive her father for any of that, and still when she heard his voice on the radio it tore the lungs straight out of her chest. She tried to talk to her mother but her mother was always too drunk to listen. She found her mother often collapsed on the floor and she was left banging on the window, thinking she was dead. And then one day her mother was found dead, lying face down on the bathroom floor with all the bruises from previous falls.
Every Single Minute Page 15
