The Dead House

by Billy O'Callaghan

  The problem, the most pressing of the innumerable problems, was working open a window in what had become an extremely crammed schedule. At around this time, one of my artists picked up a major prize, for a piece that neither he nor I particularly rated as being properly representative of his talent but which broached a subject matter controversial enough to get itself noticed, and this drew an intense – if inevitably short-lived – flurry of media attention, an always desirable result but also incredibly time-consuming. For the greater part of June and on through into July, I had to spend hours every day handling requests for interviews and public appearances, speaking with newspapers, magazines, researchers from various television programmes, as well as entering into negotiations with a number of the major European and American galleries about possible exhibition space. Because the artist recognised this as a rare opportunity to etch himself a place in the social fabric, he agreed when I suggested that we move with caution and not let cash alone become the dictating factor. But such terrain was new to both of us, and we quickly discovered that some offers were simply too substantial to dismiss. And then, just as one frenzy began to wane, a second erupted. One of my newer clients, a dissident Chinese sculptor living the exiled Parisian attic existence, suddenly, on the back of a New York show that I’d arranged, fell into vogue. As a young artist, he’d been among those most fervently involved in his native country’s pro-democracy movement, railing against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution. He was present at the protests in Tiananmen Square, had helped design the placards and banners, witnessed the massacre and suffered imprisonment and worse for the part he’d played in one of his nation’s dirtiest days. Following his release from captivity, after two and a half years of the most horrendous physical and psychological torture imaginable, one that included frequent beatings, sleep deprivation, the twice-daily forced head-first submersions in a barrel of iced water and, once, a savage, guard-organised gang rape, he fled via Hong Kong to Taipei, where helping hands succeeded in getting him to Europe. The New York exhibition, which I’d had to push hard and even call in certain long-owed favours to arrange, represented the first significant exposure of his art beyond the Chinese diaspora, and he chose that moment to unveil his masterpiece, a stunning coal and alabaster monstrosity that stood as both a personal catharsis and a towering defiance in the face of oppression, a roaring assurance that the human spirit can be beaten and brutalised but never broken, never completely silenced. Some who came looked and saw horror, others chose to recognise hope, but all understood, critics and public alike, that they were in the presence of a major piece of art.

  In this way, between work and Alison, the bulk of my summer was taken up, and I confess that with my heart so violently dragged in such directions I had little time free to worry about Maggie. The night we’d spent around the Ouija board came to seem less and less real, until I could no longer easily connect with the emotions I’d felt in that peculiar darkness. And yet, a kind of dread did smoulder within me. I wrote and sent a letter in July, and followed it with a second in late August, short scribbled notes that were the only way I had of staying in touch. Both went unanswered, which deepened my sense of disquiet, but I tried not to let it bother me too much. Letters had fallen out of fashion. Few people sent them any more, and fewer still bothered to write in reply. And I understood artists, I knew what they were like when the work was flowing, when everything beyond the canvas became an inconvenience. But Maggie didn’t need to write. A call would have sufficed, even a few words left on the answering machine, just to assure me that everything was as it should be. Because she didn’t call, my concern began to eat up every spare minute.

  And when I could bear no more, I laid out my diary, cancelled and rearranged a few things, and caught a flight to Cork. The relentless months of summer had worn me to a nub, both mentally and physically, but I’d worked hard and earned the time. My world could afford to stop turning for five days. The plan, only barely thought out, was to settle myself without fuss in Dublin and fall again into the embrace that I’d almost begun to believe had been imagined. West Cork would be a small detour, three-quarters of a day sacrificed in the best of causes. And worth it, Alison and I both agreed over the phone, for a little peace of mind.

  *

  Circumstances had changed since my previous visit. With September drawing to a close, the season’s fringes were clearly evident. Late morning and early afternoon were warm and fine, with the sky a blue so pale as to be nearly colourless, but the implication of approaching winter felt undeniable. Probably because I knew the way, the road seemed to pass more quickly than before. I’d eaten at Heathrow – coffee and two bacon sandwiches – and so decided to forgo the temptation of some Skibbereen nourishment, which allowed me to make decent time. Traffic was light, and practically non-existent once I’d crossed the Healy Pass, but as I neared the peninsula’s western end and came to within touching distance of Allihies, the light seemed to shift, and the open sky closed in with a kind of shadowy whiteness. A pale thin hide of cloud raised itself in every direction, coating the day. I eased the hired car up onto the roadside verge just as the radio’s three o’clock headlines were breaking yet more of their wearying sameness, and I listened for a moment then shut off the engine.

  The silence came down hard. Without the glare of a summer sun, the land that lay spread out before me had become muted, and the ocean beyond was the flat, dry white of stone and less of a feature than I’d remembered. Even from this elevation and distance, though, the cottage remained imposing. The recent renovations had lost their buffed freshness and had begun to sport the first subtle bruises of time and weather, and the shadows seemed to fit the place better now than they had before.

  Once again, I was struck by the absence of birds.

  I followed the path down the hillside, thinking about how difficult it would be to hold your footing once the rains set in and the ground had turned to slush. Maggie had talked of plans to finish this path, but it was as I remembered, mud and cinders. I moved slowly, with gravity pressing like a hand against my back. Just ahead, the cottage loomed. I shuddered. All was calm, yet the overwhelming sense was that of tumbling headlong into something wrong. I knew I was being foolish but couldn’t help myself.

  As the ground levelled out I slowed my approach, searching the empty windows and straining to listen for the least evidence that I was not alone. But the world was still.

  Ahead, the front door stood a few inches ajar. I eased it open a little further and called Maggie’s name once and then again, the second time with more voice. There was no answer, and no sound at all apart from my own harried breathing. My urge was to turn away, to run. I had never wanted anything more. But instead, I stepped inside.

  The air tasted foul. In the open doorway, cloying with a tinge of decay; worsening, once I’d advanced a few steps, to the rancid sweetness of meat gone bad and then far beyond. The living-room area, which I remembered as being so happily coloured, had become cluttered and dishevelled. Sheets of paper cloaked the walls, overlapping at careless angles and either smudged with charcoal or else laden and smeared in wide, senseless black and red brush-strokes. I was used to seeing Maggie’s work in its rawest and most preliminary state, and had always assumed that I’d be prepared for anything where her art was concerned, even if and when she wandered beyond the Pale. Straining to absorb their detail in the poor light, I leaned in close and told myself that I could recognise elements of her style, a certain dextrous muscling of the brushwork, the vaguely familiar fall of the lines. But the truth was that these pictures – if that’s what they even were – seemed to be something not only new but indefinable. Without sense or focus, devoid of subject matter, the paint lay in slobs across the paper, like the blistered welts of a recent flaying.

  I turned away, not wanting to see any more, not wanting to have to think too much. But the turmoil was unceasing. Candle stubs in their dozens littered the table and fireside, and the old walnut and cherry tambour clo
ck, inherited from her father’s mother and which had been such a presence in all the homes of her life, now lay dead on the mantelpiece, stopped in vicious fashion by a nail driven through its face.

  The other rooms were no better. The kitchen sink lay choked with weeks’ worth of unwashed dishes, and the floor along its perimeters shifted with small things almost seen. Again my urge was to run, to get outside, away from the stench and the chill of anxiety, away even from this ground, which seemed to pulse with its own kind of horror. I had the feeling of being not only watched but studied. Mocked, even. The light inside was dim, as if something had been smeared into the glass of the windows so as to diffuse the daylight, and I felt constantly certain that I was about to be touched, grabbed. I was afraid. I admit it. Forget logic. The stillness and the sense of decay stirred a primal dread. Just wanting to get away, I hurried on. Her bedroom was a mess of torn and scattered books, tossed-aside items of clothing, crushed tubes of paint, the colours of some bloating like tongues from uncapped mouths, stained rags and wads of ruined paper, brushes poking their own odd angles from pint glasses and clear jars. Canvases large and mid-sized leant stacked three or four deep against the low of the walls, plastered in a relentless convolution of shapes, images that meant nothing to the eye but that somehow left a mark in you, a suggestion of something. The queen-sized bed lay tossed and dishevelled, the sheets pulled most of the way back to reveal in parts a heavily stained mattress, and a dark wool shawl masquerading as a curtain hung across the single narrow window, coming close to the sill on one side but drawing up short by several inches on the other. The day spilt in as an odd, boxy whiteness, but Maggie was not a part of it.

  Outside, the air felt heavy, damp with heat and coming rain. I hurried beyond the reach of the cottage and then stopped and took several deep breaths. The taste of the house lingered, but the domineering flavour had become that of the ocean. I told myself that I could leave, that I’d earned the right. I’d looked and really looked. I’d done my duty, and that was enough. Except, it wasn’t enough. I had to know. Too much had gone awry in the time since my last visit, some balance had been tipped. And Maggie was out here somewhere and clearly in need of help.

  I surveyed the landscape. The world seemed deserted at first, the matted greenery, even after a hot summer, wild and overgrown, spilling down from the hillside towards the ocean with little but the occasional interruptions of rock to catch my eye. And then, down on the shoreline, something. A movement at first, a paleness indistinct against the stony water, but as I stared, and moved a few paces closer, it became recognisable as a figure, a girl or woman with long black hair, apparently naked, standing on the rocks and turned away from me, facing the ocean.

  I almost called out. It didn’t look like Maggie. A waif-like similarity, perhaps, but not quite her shape. Taller, I thought, and with the hair too dark and too long. But distance made me uncertain, and size was difficult to judge. So much had changed over these past months. I hurried down to the beach, cautious of the uneven ground, and the land rose and fell in ridges and clefts around me so that sometimes the figure was there, clearly a girl or young woman now, a stranger, and sometimes she was gone, hidden by the tuck of land. Confusion washed through me and quickened my pace still further until I was almost running, and then the pathway widened and I came to the beach a little out of breath, to find myself completely alone. The flint pebbles and cockleshells cracked and shifted beneath my last few steps and then there was no sound at all apart from the hush of the waves breaking hail-white across the strand.

  Convinced that she must have gone in, that she had to have been stripped for swimming, I held my breath and waited, studying the surface, watching for the least break. But all I could see was the rise and spill of the waves, gentle but relentless, and after a minute or so, once it had become clear that nothing was coming up from that water, I went slowly towards the rocks that lay off to my left still wet and shining from the receding tide.

  The sight of Maggie startled me. Tucked into a talon of sand beyond the first reef, she was kneeling before an easel and a mid-sized canvas, seemingly oblivious to everything but water and sky. When she heard her name being called, she turned, and what I saw then frightened me more than anything I’d so far seen. Still on her knees, her mouth moving to some silent chant, she’d become old, ruined. Her hair was a mess, spooling filthy and unkempt to her shoulders and in webs across her forehead, and her cheeks and eyes had sunken to pits in a way that fixed attention on the edges, the cheekbones, nose and chin. A simple paint-spattered grey cotton dress, sleeveless and thin as a nightgown, emphasised her emaciation, and I could see the spidery trace of her bones through the material’s chalky, thinning skin. She watched, unmoved, as I clambered down from the rocks and seemed slow in recognising me. Even when I spoke her name, her trance held, a vagueness that kept her disconnected from the world and anchored instead to inner things.

  ‘Maggie? Are you all right?’

  ‘Hmm? Yes, fine. Thank you.’

  Her voice was a blur of sound, the words shaping themselves in dazed fashion.

  ‘I was up at the house. You haven’t called in weeks. I was worried about you.’

  She continued to gaze at me, and then something shifted in her eyes and a kind of life returned to them. She smiled. I held her hands and helped her up from her knees, and standing in that spur of sand between the rocks we embraced for the longest time, with the intimacy of friends who held an unbreakable bond. Her hair and skin carried a putrid stench, the sharp vinegar reek of sweat and decay that in other circumstances would have caused me to draw back like I’d been burnt, but I felt such an overwhelming confusion of relief and dread that I couldn’t even think of letting go. She’d always been slight, but now her breasts and hips pressed stony hard against me and the nubs of her spine raised themselves for the touch of my hand sliding the slow length of her back. In my arms, she felt as if she’d break under an extra pound of applied pressure, but I held tight anyway, not wanting to let go, not yet ready to give her up. I kissed her cheeks again and felt her smile, but finally, after what must have been close to a minute, and largely at her gentle prompting, we eased apart.

  ‘You left your door open.’

  ‘This isn’t London, Mike. It’s safe to do that out here.’

  ‘Also, I think you might have mice.’

  She shrugged. ‘I hear them sometimes. At night, in the walls, coming down from the thatch. When they’re not scratching, they make the sound of babies crying. And by day I only ever sense them ahead of me. They’re like ghosts, or a bit like the wind. It’s nice that they’re nothing but movement.’

  ‘Why don’t we drive into Castletownbere? Get some traps. Maybe poison. And it’ll give us a chance to catch up. If you like, I’ll even let you buy me dinner.’

  ‘No. I can’t. Anyway, they’re only mice. Just let them be. They don’t bother anyone.’

  Over her shoulder, I could see what she had been working on before I’d arrived. A skinned form of seascape, contorted from the surface facts and free of the late afternoon’s pale, balmy comfort. Her ocean was a tartan of rust, loosely laid swathes of reds and tans, her huge clotted sky oppressive above the harried waves. Whether by accident or intent, she had achieved something I’d never thought possible: an almost complete diminution of technique, with all power derived completely from the subject matter. I wanted to say something, to ask her about it, to find the words that would express both my awe and my disquiet, but the painting seemed to demand silence. With effort, I averted my eyes.

  The light thickened around us, the way it does after a late autumn day’s sun has burnt itself out and left only its warmth behind, and I was surprised to find that it was already five o’clock. Without discussion, we gathered her belongings, she taking the canvas and leaving everything else, the easel, the box and scattered paint tubes, the jar of brushes, for me to carry. But it was only as we cleared the rocks and started back in the direction of the cottage that she s
eemed to properly register her surroundings, and the lateness of the hour. She stopped, gazed up along the beach and then, in a slow half-turn, out across the ocean, her eyes wide, her lips slightly apart. I stood, laden down with her belongings, and waited.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s beautiful out here?’ she said, as if seeing it all for the first time, or the first time in quite this way. I told her I did, and she turned, looked at me and settled into a smile that seemed touched with sadness. We walked on, without hurry, and I let her talk. She asked me about work, whether or not I was busy, if I was doing much travelling, if I’d made any decent sales, whether the market was currently bouncing or in a slump. And then the smile climbed back into place and she glanced at me and asked how Alison was keeping, these days, and if I’d slipped yet from my best behaviour. The softest possible breeze sifted the air, and for those few minutes, as we went, everything seemed almost fine again. She walked beside me, keeping to half an arm’s length of distance, though probably not consciously so, and if I didn’t look too closely it was just about possible to believe that she’d reverted once more to the Maggie I’d always known. Buoyant with the flavours of laughter, mischievous and full of inner serenity, and possessed of that stillness necessary for seeing everything as it needed to be seen. I was clinging to a false impression, of course, and I realised as much because distance gaped like a valley between us, but it didn’t stop me from trying, and wanting, to believe.

  ‘I paint every day,’ she said, in answer to the question I hadn’t asked. ‘Something has changed for me. It’s difficult to put into words. The isolation, I suspect. I breathe the work now, in a way I never did before. I feel like I’m being absorbed by the land. And I’ve begun to lose the concept of time. You know, this is a place that can’t age. It changes faces sometimes, with the wind and the weather, but it always changes back. And the touchstones don’t shift. It’s about existing, as part of something bigger. Just look around and you’ll get a sense of what I mean, but to really see it, to really feel and understand it, you have to look close. And that’s what I’m doing now. I’ve started to see surfaces differently. Colours, too. As a child, did you ever stare at the world through a piece of coloured glass? Or plastic? Change the shades and everything changes. Try it for a while and you feel cut loose. You feel free. For me it’s not that exactly, but it’s like that. When I pick up a brush now, I’m no longer only painting scenes, I’m painting their insides, and their potential.’