Portobello Notebook

by Adrian Kenny

  Someone said, ‘The landscape’s changed since our day.’

  A lot has changed since I came here as a boy. It seemed a shabby, out-of-the-way place then, where no one would find me as I savoured bitter Guinness, a Bristol cigarette and the newspaper list of banned books. We were so oppressed then, we didn’t know we were oppressed. The titles were like gifts from a munificent ruler: Sins of Cynthia … Velvet-Tongued Suzi … Nurse’s Weakness … Wicked Work. Even when I came here to live, this pub was the same: bare walls and partitions, lino on the floor. I was in the bar the night the news of John Lennon’s murder came through. The car park was still a harbour then.

  I wanted to say to Alex, ‘I slept with her once.’ It would draw a circle around everything. But you can’t say that.

  SHE WAS COMING ALONG the canal bank. I hadn’t seen her for years. Her hair was dyed brown, she had some crazy brown lipstick on. She looked terrible. ‘Triona,’ I said, ‘how are you?’

  She said, ‘I’m fucking separated.’ She took a big scissors from her handbag, stooped and snipped at the grass. Her laugh was too loud.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ She noticed my wedding ring. ‘Oh God, you’re married.’

  I was working in the language school. I had stepped out between classes for a breath of air. I said I’d call to see her one evening. She was back home.

  We had hardly known each other, but growing up in the same suburban road, walking to Mass, seeing our parents nod to each other had made us part of one family. You heard things somehow. Her father was supposed to go through The Observer on Sunday morning with a scissors, cutting out unsuitable bits. We think when we are young that no one notices us, but she had noticed me, as I had noticed her. I remember her sailing over Portobello Bridge on her bike one day, as if going into town for some adventure. ‘You looked so serious,’ she said afterwards. I was probably going to the Lower Deck, to read the latest list of banned books.

  When I called she was in the kitchen, sitting beside the Aga in a small armchair. Her mother asked about my parents, made tea, mouthed the word depressed, then left us alone. Triona hardly raised her head. I had never seen anyone bite their knuckles before. I didn’t see her again for about a year.

  I was at an auction; she was sitting behind. Afterwards I showed her an old painting I had bought, of two boys riding horses into the sea. ‘Are you serious?’ she said. She had a dry sad tone that was attractive. We chatted as we walked down the road.

  She had gone to Barcelona straight after her Leaving. She would have gone anywhere, but she had done Spanish at school. She married some academic there and settled down. Her life passed in a daze of cooking and having sex all over the house. He used to put his hand up her skirt when she was on the phone to her mother. When he ran off with one of his students, she had come home.

  ‘You look better,’ I said. She did too. There was sparkle in her eye as she told me she had a new boyfriend. ‘Remember Alex?’

  Things happen that can twist you. She had flown from home; thinking abroad would be like those parties we all gave when our parents were out. But when no parents came home, she had been left alone with her innocent wildness. It had pulled her in, like a sleeve caught in a machine. All that was part of the nightmare became her definition of what life should be. It had to be – otherwise her flight would have been a failure.

  She was living in a redbrick terrace, just a few streets from mine. When I told her that, she said, ‘Just like the old days,’ and gave another dry smile. She pointed to one of the houses. ‘That was a brothel until last week. Twenty quid for a ride. Not bad.’ Her eyes had that fixed sparkle again. ‘Do you want to come in?’

  Of course she had been ‘wild’, but we all had been, like butterflies fluttering against a windowpane. The windows were open by the time she came back, but she was stuck fluttering inside. It was sad. The living room was shadowed by an old backyard wall of rubble-brick and stone. She set two mugs on a counter littered with envelopes. ‘You look busy,’ I said.

  She was a dressmaker now, and while the kettle boiled she showed me her workroom, a big bright room upstairs, overlooking the yard. There was a table covered in cloths, pins and scissors. A mannequin was fitted with a silky evening gown. She picked up a ribbon of black velvet and tied it around her throat. She said, ‘Alex jumps on me when I wear this.’

  She left it on while she made coffee. I looked at old prints and shelves of old books. ‘And you’re a collector,’ I said.

  ‘They belong to Alex.’ She raised her eyebrows in a way that made me feel guilty when he came in.

  In the way of childhood we had been friends for a short while, walking home together after school. I remembered the shift and crunch of gravel on their front path, the big garden at the back. I had a memory of his mother gathering ripe blue damsons from a tree buzzing with wasps. Now Alex was a heavy-faced, middle-aged man in a pinstripe suit, a red silk handkerchief spilling from the breast pocket. He wore a signet ring, God help him. He lay in an armchair, flopped one leg across the other and drawled, ‘I’ve seen you about.’

  ‘Strange,’ I said. ‘I never noticed you.’

  A soft hurt smile showed through his manner. ‘I’m used to that.’

  Triona turned to me. ‘What flirtatious socks you’re wearing.’

  Alex looked up. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’

  His voice slipped into something rougher. ‘You’ll find your head in your lap, if you’re not careful.’

  She went up to her workroom, but her mocking presence remained. As if defying it, Alex talked of old school friends and what they were doing now, of priests and parents who had died. The books had been his father’s. Some of them, wrapped in brown paper, were first editions. He turned on the light and pointed out a rare print on the wall. Triona called down, ‘Don’t forget to show him the old school photo.’

  Stubborn, Alex drawled back, ‘I won’t.’

  She came down only when I was leaving, with pins between her teeth, a scissors in her hand. My heart went out to him. She was back with a man like her father to mind her, whom she could punish now.

  Next time we met, she was walking along the canal bank. She had a dog on a leash, a fox terrier – she was doing her best to settle in. A handsome young man in white shirt and tight black trousers went by. ‘Yum, yum,’ she murmured. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘He could be a waiter in the restaurant.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s where I met Alex.’

  ‘There was money there all right.’

  ‘Not any more. He’s a waiter.’

  ‘Alex is a waiter?’

  ‘Head waiter, actually.’ She did a genteel voice.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The usual Irish. Drink.’

  That explained a lot: Alex’s flushed face and guarded manner, the assertive prosperity, the turning back to the good old days. Passing the restaurant one night, I looked in the picture window and saw him showing people to tables, drawing out the chairs with little flourishes. His pinstripe suit and floppy red handkerchief seemed a big bluff, like the restaurant. It had been a fashionable place once, where businessmen with expense accounts brought clients for showy meals, the chef signed his name in vanilla scribbles along the side of square dessert plates, and a saucer of handmade chocolates took the sting from the rip-off bill. Lately, another smaller restaurant was taking its trade away.

  I saw him another night having a smoke outside the kitchen door with an old waiter. His cheeks sucked in as he drew on the cigarette, then he threw it in the gutter and went back inside. One evening I saw him crouched double, looking across a tabletop to see that the knives and forks were aligned. Our eyes met, but he showed no recognition, as if he was ashamed.

  ‘I mean, it’s the ideal set-up for an affair,’ Triona said. ‘He’s out every night.’ She didn’t even disguise her indifference now.

  ‘Do you want that?’

  ‘I think staying with him would be a t
otal cop-out.’

  ‘Alex is nice.’

  ‘Alex is nice. Everyone says that. But he doesn’t interest me.’

  ‘Why not find someone who does?’

  ‘I was down in the Clarence the other night, and this country guy asked me up to his room. I said, I suppose you want to fuck me? Do you know, he turned crimson? Nothing has changed here. It’s just the same as when I left.’

  She was just the same. She smiled to an old man walking a Yorkshire terrier. When he had passed, she said, ‘What’s the story there? That dog’s always on the go.’

  It was a joke in the neighbourhood. The old couple clung together but didn’t get on. As soon as the husband came in from a walk, his wife set out for another one.

  ‘That’ll be me, if I stay with Alex.’

  We came to her terrace, and though it was late she asked me in for tea. She didn’t turn on the light. When I kept my distance, she turned on the TV. A small tenor was singing some duet with a deep-chested soprano. ‘I’d say she’d be the one on top.’ Her eyes gave their sparkle. ‘What do you think?’

  I shrugged but that seemed cold, and as I was leaving I kissed her cheek. She took my hand and placed it on her breast. Her eyes closed. She was like a child alone with a box of sweets. She looked relieved when I drew away.

  Alex was right for her. There was something between them: her failed marriage, his comedown in the world; his old rarities; her silk gowns. I could see how they had come together. I wanted their dream to come true.

  What had not happened between us made us friends. I was going for the paper one morning when she called me. She wore a black suit and carried a red plastic folder; she was talking with some builders who were gutting an old house. ‘Well, lads, I’ll leave you to it,’ she said in a voice that tried to be like theirs. As we walked down the street I heard her news. She had a job in a property business. Her dressmaking was too much work for too little return. She was settling down, growing up.

  ‘How’s the job?’ I said, next time we ran into each other.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘It’s better,’ I said. ‘Regular work, regular pay.’

  ‘That. And I’m having an affair with the boss.’

  I felt sad, but just said, ‘He should be flattered.’

  ‘I don’t care if he is or not. I’m doing it for myself. We were in Madrid for the weekend.’

  ‘Does Alex know?’

  ‘He’s sleeping downstairs. Pathetic. He dragged the spare bed down the other night.’

  I left them to it, glimpsing how things were now and then, as you glimpse bits of a programme in TV shop windows: Triona coming home in the morning, looking dreamy; Alex coming out of the pub, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, a Times clipped under his arm, his polished heavy black shoes crunching the grit. It brought home the struggle that was still going on. Neither would yield. But when I met him buying flowers in Camden Street one evening, it seemed a good moment to smile and say, ‘How’s Triona?’

  He looked at me coldly and drawled, ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  Passing the restaurant that night, I saw the flowers in a tall vase in the window. She had gone.

  She was driven; she still needed excitement, trouble, as the boats needed locks to raise them in the canal. Without that, she couldn’t live. I soon heard more of the affair with her boss: it had been exciting, but she had been out of control. Her voice faltered, she had a frightened look in her eyes; she said, ‘Why do you think we do these things?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She smiled again. Now it was over. She was back with Alex, the calm water of the canal. She said, ‘Why don’t you come over some evening?’

  ‘I must,’ I said.

  ‘You always say that. You don’t want to, do you?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  She was in the charity shop, buying men’s clothes: cord trousers, a tweed sports coat. When I saw them on Alex, he reminded me of her mannequin.

  I didn’t recognize him for a moment. His hair was grey, and I realized that he had been dyeing it for years. The house had changed too. A velux window, a raised ceiling of new rafters made even his old books and prints look bright. Hands clasped behind his back like the Duke of Edinburgh, he studied a print of her own, a Schiele nude. Over a single glass of wine he talked of the old days. After a couple more, Triona was talking of a day she had cycled into town to look for work as a model, but turned back at the art college gate. ‘I was ashamed,’ she said.

  Alex smiled, nodded. ‘That was natural then.’

  ‘No, I was ashamed my tits were so small.’

  Shaking his head, smiling again, Alex stood up. ‘I’ll get more wine.’ He stopped at the door. ‘Would you like some chocolate?’

  Maybe the chocolate remark did it. As the front door closed, she pulled her dress open. ‘What do you think?’ Desire didn’t come into it, I knew. It was a last spit in the face of the past.

  She had found her limits, he had found his way home. They faded into the general scene like other neighbours, like other wrongs done. Standing at the window one day, looking out at a downpour blister the pavement white, gush from drainpipes and flow in shining sheets across the street, I thought of old neighbours who had passed on. I had come to know others, but not so well, and hardly noticed when they too passed out of sight – the small blonde woman no longer cycled by with the fat boy on the back carrier – but when I did notice, I missed them all the more. I was part of this place. When Alex approached one morning, he put a hand on mine as he spoke.

  ‘Triona’s not well. If you want to see her, you should call soon.’ He said the word, ‘cancer’. When I had finished work that evening I went over with some flowers.

  The way he first took them into the kitchen and put them in water reminded me of that long-ago orderly world. The door of memory opened, it wouldn’t close. As we went upstairs to a large bright bedroom, I remembered that it had once been her workroom. The bed was luxuriously double, with white soft pillows, white starched sheets. She was lying on it like a queen, the cover thrown back, her knees up, watching a bedside TV. She wore pearl-grey silk pyjamas. Her hair was cut short, which suited her. Her face had the yellow of an expensive suntan. Her eyes were bright, from morphine.

  ‘Triona.’ I said. ‘You look great.’

  ‘I sleep all day. You came at just the right time.’ She put her arms behind her head, rested one leg sideways on a knee. Evening sunlight came in the window. There was a roof garden outside, a patch of gravel with a small olive tree in a big earthen pot.

  ‘You’ve done a lot with it.’

  ‘Alex is good like that.’ She wriggled her toes in the gold beam of sun.

  I knew that I wouldn’t see her again, but I said it again. ‘You look great.’

  ‘Better light a candle anyway,’ Alex murmured as we went downstairs.

  ‘Who’s her favourite saint?’

  ‘Augustine? Remember his remark?’ He gave a smile, keeping the good side out. ‘Chastity, God, but not yet.’

  I COULDN’T mention it then. It wasn’t the right time. There never would be a right time, I knew. It will be always between us. I could feel it like the night air as we left the bar and crossed the car park and walked along the canal lit bright by traffic crawling bumper to bumper into town.

  The Mermaid

  I WENT UP to the club on Sunday evening and watched the end of a game. Jack was there, and Eddie, and afterwards we sat in the bar. Jack told us about his son. Eddie went on about his wife. Then Rogers joined us – I hardly know him but he included me in a round. Soon we were on that magical drink when everything grows clear and warm. He began to talk.

  HE DEALT in dreams with lonely women. They had the dream already; all he had to do was listen. All the dreams were the same: love.

  He met her at a party. Her name was Madeleine. She was French. She wore a white silk scarf; a thin cream pullover scarcely tautened by her breasts. Her hair was short, tinted. She was in her
forties, he guessed. She danced badly, but at his age it was a relief not to dance, so they stood against the wall and talked. She had been living in the west of Ireland; she was interested in folklore. He was tortured by beautiful women squeezing past.

  Around midnight the older guests began to leave, the younger ones turned up the music and serious dancing began. Now it was too noisy to talk. He said he was going, and asked if she was going too. Her eyes were blank as she agreed. He felt sad as she appeared down the stairs wearing a wheat-coloured woollen poncho and a large white knitted peaked cap.

  They walked through the dark cold streets to where she lived. There was something wrong about her, a stiff unease, but when she smiled her face was natural for a moment, like the glimpse of throat above her silk scarf. She talked of Sheela-na-gigs, pagan rites suppressed by the Catholic Church, feminine wisdom passed on by old women, and other things he had no interest in. Stragglers from an English hen party passed by: drunken girls in miniskirts and wedding veils, one of them waving a phallus-shaped balloon. Through their laughter, the clatter of their high heels on the cobblestones, Madeleine described a stone cross carved with dolphins she had seen in the west of Ireland. She was interested in writing about these symbols from ancient mythology taken over by the Church. At last, in a street running down to the river, she stopped outside a Georgian house. He wasn’t disappointed when she didn’t ask him in. He kissed her cheek, said they must meet someday.

  ‘When?’ Her face was bright.

  ‘Some day I’m passing, I’ll knock on your door.’

  She didn’t like that Irish casual habit. She preferred a phone call, even half an hour before. It was only good manners. She wrote her number down.

  He still had dreams of fleshy, handsome, peaceful women. But he hadn’t found any. He had some revenge in disappointing other women’s dreams of love. He phoned, a couple of weeks later, one long afternoon. She invited him to her flat the next Saturday at 11 am. He couldn’t remember when he’d had a date in the morning.