The Adulteress

by Noelle Harrison

  ‘Are you any good?’ she asks, still staring at the noticeboard.

  He bristles with annoyance. ‘Well, I am professionally qualified, as you can see from my card.’

  She nods, still not looking at him. ‘How much?’

  ‘Fifteen euros for half an hour.’

  Finally she turns to look at him. He is startled by the colour of her eyes. They are such a dark brown they look almost black. The effect is unsettling.

  ‘When can I start?’ she asks, smiling. ‘I’ve always wanted to learn the piano.’

  ‘Oh, for you . . .’ he stutters, presuming she had children whom she wanted taught.

  ‘Yes, just me. I can only do mornings while my daughter is at summer camp.’

  ‘Right, well, how about tomorrow? Around eleven?’

  ‘Great. Where do you live?’

  He describes where his house is. He has no address, just the name of the townland. She frowns, and her black eyes turn brown again.

  ‘Oh, the old Fanning place.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She hesitates, and again he has the sense that she knows something about where he lives, like the woman at the till.

  ‘See you tomorrow then.’

  She picks up a basket laden with vegetables, a cabbage falls out, and Nicholas picks it up and hands it to her.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Oh, it’s Geraldine. Geraldine Mulraney.’ She looks up at the board. ‘And you’re Nicholas Healy, with a Masters in Music from London University.’

  He blushes, feeling ridiculous. He doesn’t want to teach this woman. He would rather teach children. Adults are nosey.

  The next day Geraldine Mulraney brings the sunshine with her. As she pulls up outside his house in a dirty white Ford Fiesta, the sun breaks out from behind the grey clouds and illuminates rainbows in the puddles. She is wearing a blue summer dress with a green cardigan, the colour of the new summer sky, and the grass in the field.

  ‘I just knew the sun was going to come out,’ she says brightly as he opens the door to her. ‘Sure it’s hard to believe summer is nearly over and we’ve had no decent weather.’

  Nicholas leads her through the kitchen to the back room. He senses her eyes taking everything in, looking at his handiwork.

  ‘You’ve done an awful lot to the place.’

  ‘Have you been here before?’

  ‘Oh, years ago,’ she says vaguely. ‘It was derelict then. But my granny knew the family that lived here a long time ago, before the last owners. In fact she used to work here when she was a young one, before she got married.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, she’s always reminiscing. She loved Mrs Fanning. Adored her, so she did.’

  Nicholas pulls out the piano stool and Geraldine sits down. He wants to ask her more about her granny and Mrs Fanning, but she is here to learn the piano. They only have half an hour and he can tell that this woman is a chatterbox.

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Will we start?’

  She nods, fingers the keyboards gingerly and then clasps her hands.

  ‘This is so exciting,’ she exclaims, smiling at him with shining eyes. Nicholas looks at her and he can see how sad she is, how lonely.

  Geraldine Mulraney becomes Nicholas’s friend. One lesson a week becomes two, then three. Geraldine is married, but she rarely mentions her husband. She has only one child. Nicholas thinks it odd because all of the mothers have at least two. He acquires six other pupils, ranging in age from six to thirteen. He discovers he is enjoying teaching, being with young people. They seem to like him. He had always thought children didn’t like him.

  Nicholas has no brothers or sisters. After his father died, it was just him and Mum, who had only remarried when Nicholas left home. He had grown up surrounded by his mother’s adult friends and had always preferred their company to the other boys at school. Apart from the piano teaching, Nicholas had managed to avoid children most of his adult life. He had always wondered if God had never blessed him and Charlie with a baby because of his failure to like children. In Dublin his relationship with his pupils had been formal and aloof. But country kids were different. Somehow they managed to make him drop his guard. The day he actually said something funny and made Eamonn Bennett crease with laughter was a revelation for him.

  Every day that she comes Nicholas bakes apples for Geraldine, and after her lesson they sit at his kitchen table, drinking coffee, eating hot sweet fluffy apples and chatting.

  ‘Are you from Cavan?’ Nicholas asks Geraldine as he pours cream over his hot apples.

  ‘Yes,’fraid so.’ Geraldine digs her spoon in. ‘These are just yummy.’

  It is a dark day, raining outside. The kitchen feels cosy, scented with the cooked apples, and warm from the lit stove. Geraldine looks out of the window.

  ‘Oh dear, I hope Grainne doesn’t catch a cold. But she just adores the riding. The rain doesn’t bother her a bit.’

  The lights flicker, and Nicholas can feel that the ghost is there in the room with them. He wonders if Geraldine senses anything too. She shivers.

  ‘Sorry, do you have a window open?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Here have some more coffee, it will warm you up.’

  Geraldine sits back in her chair and sighs. ‘This is so lovely,’ she says. ‘You go to so much trouble. I really do look forward to my lessons.’

  ‘I enjoy it too. It’s a good distraction from all the work I have to do on the house.’

  The renovation is painful. Nicholas feels worn out most of the time. He wishes he had moved to France, bought an old farmhouse there, so at least he would be warm.

  ‘My husband, Ray, is a builder. But he’s better doing modern houses. I wouldn’t want to let him loose on this place. He renovated our house, and I think he sort of took the soul out of it. It was my parents’ homeplace, but it doesn’t feel like home any more.’

  Geraldine breaks open the skin on her second baked apple.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m still here,’ she says suddenly.

  Nicholas glances at his watch. It is half-past eleven. ‘Are you late for Grainne?’

  Geraldine laughs. ‘No, I mean here. In Cavan still. I always thought I’d leave, live in a city like Paris or New York. Even London.’

  ‘And why didn’t you?’

  ‘I was going to. I was heading off to London, had the boat ticket bought and everything, and then Daddy died sudden, of a heart attack. Mammy was in an awful state, so I stayed. It was only meant to be for a year, but she kind of lost it. She couldn’t cope on her own, and my elder brother was living in Australia by then. There was no one else to mind her.’

  Geraldine sighs.

  ‘Poor Mammy. I got a job in a factory in Oldcastle and that’s where I met Ray. We went out for ten years before we got married.’

  ‘Is your mother still alive?’

  ‘No, she died about eight years ago now.’

  ‘So why didn’t you leave then?’

  Geraldine shakes her head and gets up. She picks up her dirty bowl and brings it over to the sink.

  ‘It was too late. I thought about it, I really did, because I had a tiny bit of money left me and the house, but I was all entangled. And then Ray asked me to marry him, and he moved in. And that was it.’

  Geraldine leans on the sink staring out the window.

  ‘I got pregnant. I lent him the money for his business. Before I knew it, I was stuck.’

  Nicholas is not used to having such a frank conversation with a woman, apart from his wife. But it feels safe. He doesn’t fancy Geraldine, and besides, she is married to someone else. He is enjoying talking with her. He misses talking to a woman. But maybe she has told him too much? He doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘Oh, look,’ Geraldine suddenly points out the window. ‘Did you get chickens?’

  Nicholas gets up from the table. ‘Not as far as I know.’

  Geraldine looks confused. ‘It’s gone now. I’m sure I just
saw a chicken in your yard.’ She laughs. ‘I must be going nutty.’

  Nicholas stands next to Geraldine and they look out of the window together. He can’t see a chicken anywhere. The rain pounds the yard, and gathers in pools in the broken concrete. Geraldine smells of mimosas, a perfume similar to the one his mum used to wear.

  ‘What do you think of it round here?’ Geraldine asks him.

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Why?’ She turns to look at him, her eyes narrow so that she almost looks angry.

  ‘Well, it’s so peaceful and unspoilt, and the people are very kind.’

  She huffs. ‘That’s what you think. It’s all right for you. They leave you alone. You’re an outsider.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s just that I always feel like I’m being criticized, by my husband’s family mostly. And I’m just so . . . bored.’

  ‘Bored?’

  She laughs. ‘Yeah, bored. Busy, but with what? Cooking, cleaning, looking after other people, but still bored.’

  ‘Well, how can we make your life more interesting?’

  As soon as he speaks, he regrets it. He turns on the tap at the sink and begins to wash the bowls and spoons. Geraldine doesn’t move; he senses her looking at him.

  ‘How?’ she says in a small voice.

  ‘You know, you’ve started the piano and you’re really good at that, and isn’t there anything else you’re interested in?’ Nicholas blusters. ‘Now your daughter is older and at school, isn’t there something you’d like to do? You could start your own business.’

  ‘Ray wouldn’t allow it.’

  Then she brings her hand to her mouth as if she is trying to swallow the words she just said.

  ‘Sorry, I have to go.’

  She picks up her bag and almost runs to her car. He can see her scarlet cheeks as she drives away, and he wonders whether she will ever come for another lesson.

  JUNE

  I am under the eaves, catching strands of straw through my fingers, listening to the rustling thatch and dreaming.

  I remember when I was a girl, and I needed my mother to love me and my father to be well. But all I had was Min, and we made up for what we did not receive by giving more to each other.

  I am going to have a baby.

  There, it is said out loud. The fact of it. Spoken with my head bent backwards, looking into the dark roof of my husband’s house. This is a good thing. I must tell Robert.

  But I have not yet, because I am afraid he will not see any joy in my face. He will know I am lying when I tell him how happy I am. Then will he think it is a slur on him, for can I not love him enough to want his child? Am I my mother’s daughter?

  I am thinking of my time in university when I was so attached to my studies. All that work belonged to me, and I lived through the lives of the pagans. I loved them. They made me want to carry on, and show others what I knew. How I wanted to share my Romans. Is this what it is like to have children?

  Will I lose all the secret parts of myself to live through them?

  I lie flat on my back, my fingers pressed down onto the bare boards, and I am lying on a raft, drifting out to sea. There are birds chattering in the eaves, but the music in my head begins to drown them out. It is Debussy, his song of the Sirens. Min and I went to hear his Nocturnes just before the war. Neither of us could speak once we left the concert hall. We sat opposite each other on the train staring into each other’s eyes, both of us brimming with longing. I hear the female chorus, no need for words, just their sighs weaving like ether through the orchestra. It makes me feel like a particle of dust spinning in the golden light. It makes me want to sink to the bottom of the ocean. What is a life anyway?

  Some things you cannot say, some things you cannot write, you can only feel them, for if my sister had asked me to jump off the cliff, there was a time I would have done so gladly. And the ocean would have applauded at my pagan abandon.

  Sometimes when I look into a mirror I think I see Min’s face, not mine. I think I am becoming more like her. I have lost a little weight and now my cheekbones are more pronounced, my eyes larger, my chin more pointed. Just eleven months between us, to the day, 11th May and 11th June, and we were like two little leaves from the same stem. I was the bigger baby. Mother said I sucked all the strength from her, and Min was born so tiny and frail. She called her Minerva, Goddess of War, because she was a little fighter. Mother said my sister earned her name.

  I can hear footsteps below me. They stop, and pause at the bottom of the steps. Robert calls. I should get up. I want to get up, but the sea still holds me, and I am swaying on the cold floor, cresting waves, going home.

  ‘June!’

  He comes up the staircase, and pushes open the door.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  I open my eyes, surprised it is now almost dark. Robert’s face appears before me, and it is so familiar and so safe that I feel a sudden surge of hopefulness at the news I am about to tell him. He crawls in under the eaves and comes towards me.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll come down,’ I say.

  But he is beside me now, and takes my hand, before saying, ‘There is something I must tell you.’

  He looks so serious that I am alarmed, shaken out of my own little world. ‘What is it, Robert?’

  He looks quite pale now.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask. ‘Has something bad happened with the foot-and-mouth?’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’

  Then he lifts my chin, and stares straight in my eyes. At least he does not look away. At least he lets each word pierce me one by one.

  ‘I am joining up.’

  I shake my head. I cannot believe what he has just said. ‘But the farm, you can’t just walk away from it,’ I protest, the first silly thing that springs to mind.

  ‘That is all taken care of,’ he says. ‘SeanTobin and a couple of his sons are going to run it for me.’

  ‘But, Robert, where are you joining up? Where?’

  It is impossible to imagine there is a way off our little island.

  ‘I am going up to Belfast, by train . . . tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow!’ my voice wails under the eaves. I am on the verge of hysteria.

  He wraps his arms about me. ‘June, darling June, I have to do this.’

  ‘But you’re not English, Robert,’ I say angrily. ‘Ireland isn’t at war. None of our neighbours are joining up.’

  I try to calm down, breathe slowly. I cannot believe he would leave me here, all alone.

  ‘But I spent many years in England, as you know, June, and it gave me an education, and work, and you . . .’

  He looks at me, and I believe in the devotion I see in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, Robert,’ I whisper, ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘What!’

  He sits bolt upright, clasps my shoulders.

  ‘What did you say?’ he repeats, stunned.

  I flop like a rag doll in his arms. ‘I am expecting,’ I say tremulously, and my fingers grip his flesh, holding onto his muscular arms. ‘So you can’t leave now, not now . . .’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ he kisses me passionately, and I collapse into his embrace, relieved that the crisis has been averted. I would rather have a baby than lose Robert to the war and be left here by myself. Now I know why I have miraculously conceived. It is to save Robert, and to save me.

  We kiss again, and he puts his hand on my belly, laying me down on the boards again.

  ‘Don’t be such a silly,’ I giggle. ‘You won’t be able to feel anything yet.’

  We make love in our loft, and it feels like such a naughty and such an innocent thing to do, all at once. The thatch murmurs above our heads, and we are as snug as if we live in it.

  I had brought no lamp or candle up with me earlier, and now it is completely dark. We cannot see each other’s faces. We are just able to discern the shadowy outlines of our bodies.

  ‘June,’ Robert says quietly, his voice i
n a hush. ‘You mustn’t speak about it to anyone, apart from the Tobins.’

  ‘All right. I wasn’t going to for a while, not at least until I am showing. I thought it might be bad luck.’

  ‘No, darling,’ he says, putting his arm around me in the dark, ‘I didn’t mean about the baby. I meant about me and the war.’

  I stiffen in his arms. My heart begins to thump inside my chest. ‘But, Robert, are you still going to fight?’ I ask breathlessly.

  ‘I have to.’ His voice sounds desperate in the dark. ‘I have to do my bit, June, surely you understand that? You, of all people, should.’

  I slide back into the black attic, shaking. ‘No, Robert, you can’t leave me here.’

  ‘It’s not about us any more. I thought I could, but I can’t hide away. It’s what my parents would have wanted, and it’s what James did.’

  ‘So is this about measuring up to your brother? Do you think you have to prove something?’ I raise my voice, furious that his dead family has priority over me.

  ‘Of course not,’ he says wearily, ‘I am just doing my duty.’

  Love versus duty. I think of Virgil’s Aeneid. How I loved ‘The Tragedy of Dido’. She was my heroine, the champion of love, and how indignant I was when Aeneas left her, for what? For duty, pietas. Dido cursed him, didn’t she? She cursed him as she threw herself upon her very own funeral pyre. So I do not come first, and neither does Robert’s child.

  He continues talking. In the darkness he cannot see the look on my face, my unspeakable anger.

  ‘I don’t want to leave you, but my conscience won’t allow me any peace. Every day when I go out to work in the fields I try to flog myself, and do three times the work of the others because I am ashamed. I know what is at stake, I need to help somehow, and now even more so, because I want to ensure that our child grows up in a world free from Fascists. We all have to make sacrifices.’

  His words are swallowed up by a sob, and although I cannot see his face in the evening gloom, I am aware he is crying. I crawl back towards him, take his hand in mine, and kiss his wet cheeks. His tears dissolve all my peevish and selfish thoughts.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, humbled. ‘You are right. You are doing a brave and noble thing, and I’m very proud of you.’