by Karen Perry
They sit in silence, Anton with his eyes half closed, his face angled towards the house. Leah listens to the distant sounds of tennis being played in the park, the magpies yacking in the trees beyond, and wonders when Jake will be home. More and more, lately, he has been absent in the evenings, taking jobs on the bike when they come up. Often, he meets up with the other couriers for a pint afterwards. There is talk of a new short being filmed in Wicklow before the autumn, a chance of a part. He needs it. Leah knows this. She feels how unsettled he has become, restless and agitated.
‘Do you believe it’s a sin?’ Anton asks, his voice startling her from her thoughts.
‘What is?’
‘Despair.’ His eyes are fixed on hers. There’s a faint wheeze in his breathing.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t know either.’
He gives a slight shake of his head, a baffled look on his face.
‘A priest came to see me when I was in the hospital,’ he tells her. ‘He said despair was a sin. That turning your back on life was turning away from God.’
‘I don’t believe in God,’ she answers simply, and she is pleased to see the amusement that enters his eye.
‘But you did once.’
‘I suppose I did.’
‘So what changed?’
His voice is soft, measured, but his eye holds her with a look of clear enquiry.
She shifts in her seat. ‘I grew up. Started thinking for myself.’
‘So you matured and shrugged off the indoctrination,’ he remarks, in a way that sounds sceptical. ‘It wasn’t something that happened to you – some dire circumstance that shook your faith?’
The patient stare – a knowingness to it. She feels the inward squirm, and sips her tea, feels the warm surface of it against her teeth.
‘Never cared much for priests myself,’ he remarks, looking away now. ‘Until my stay in the hotel.’
Released from his gaze, she can breathe again. ‘The hotel?’
He grins, as if he’s made a little joke.
‘The Grand State Hotel. The finest hospitality the Republic has to offer to her most penitent citizens.’
‘You mean prison.’
‘I prefer to think of it as the hotel.’ He crosses his legs. ‘The chaplain there was a decent sort. We became friends, I suppose.’
She doesn’t know what to say to him. So many questions crowd her thoughts, but shyness and insecurity hold her back.
‘He used to tell me I must make my peace with Charlotte, and with God, before I died,’ Anton says, ‘for it would be too late afterwards and I would regret it for eternity.’ A puff of laughter escapes his nose. ‘I thought it was nonsense. But …’
He looks at her now.
‘When I was in the ambulance that night, when I looked across and saw you there, I thought … I thought I had died already, and that Charlotte was with me.’
‘And what would you have said to her?’ Leah asks.
His eyes cloud with consternation. ‘I don’t know,’ he tells her.
The garden around them swells with lush summer greenness. Inside her womb, a baby is growing. How strange it is to be discussing the dead in the midst of all this life.
‘Perhaps,’ she tries, ‘you might have said sorry.’
A brief flash of surprise in his face, before it dissolves into something flatter, harder. ‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘I would have said sorry. But not for what you think I should.’
His eyes slide away from her, his expression changing as he straightens in his chair, smooths down the front of his dressing-gown.
‘Evening,’ he says, and Leah turns to see Jake standing in the shadows of the patio, silently removing his cycling gloves, his face unreadable.
‘You on the mend, then?’ Jake asks, making no attempt to come and join them.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Anton replies stiffly. Then, getting to his feet, he touches a hand to her shoulder briefly and, softening his voice, he says: ‘I’d best go in.’
She watches him retreat back up the steps into the house. Jake has already gone inside.
Leah bends down and picks up Anton’s mug, discards the tea into the grass, and steps down into the shadows.
Over dinner, they discuss work, an upcoming audition Jake is preparing for, news at the office that one of the senior partners is leaving. Polite, civil conversation, but Leah feels the strain of all that is left unsaid. A ripple of discontent has been running through their relationship ever since the night she’d found Anton. In the immediate aftermath, there had been a full-scale row – the first of their relationship. Leah is not good at confrontation – she seizes up and becomes monosyllabic or mute – while Jake quivers with nerves and a frantic uneasiness, both of them unable fully to communicate their true feelings.
She had come home from the hospital in a taxi just as he was wandering up Wyndham Park, still puffy-eyed from sleep. He hadn’t been home all night – had no idea of where she had been, of the drama that had occurred – and this seemed like a betrayal to her. When she’d needed him, he had been unavailable to her. Quietly, she had said as much, and he had recoiled at the accusation, then reacted. ‘Nothing happened!’ he had said. ‘I fell asleep on Mattie’s bed, that’s all! I was putting him down for the night, and he asked me to cuddle him for a few minutes, and I fell asleep. All that sun – I just passed out.’
‘Your phone was switched off,’ she had countered coldly.
‘So?’
She had turned away from him, exhaustion creeping through her bones, but waiting for an answer nonetheless.
‘So it was switched off. So what? Mattie was falling asleep. I often turn my phone off when I’m with him. Haven’t you yourself remarked on how I ought to spend less time looking at the phone when he’s there?’
She had waited. His answer was so flimsy. The screechiness of his tone grated on her nerves, fed her suspicions.
‘Is this how it’s going to be?’ he had asked her. ‘Every time I’m with them, every time I don’t jump to answer the phone to you, you’re going to just leap to some ridiculous conclusion?’
‘Is it ridiculous?’ She had met his gaze with a cold clear one of her own. Her voice was firm and hard. ‘If there’s something going on between you and Jenna, I’d rather you just told me. I won’t fall to pieces, but I do want to know.’
He had stormed out then, muttering under his breath that he wasn’t going to stay and listen to that crap. And he had left her with the ceilings still dripping, the power gone, her mind and body reeling from all that had happened.
He was only gone a few minutes. He couldn’t have got further than the tennis courts before regret seeped into his self-righteous anger. When he came back through the door minutes later, she was swept up in his storm of apologies, his desperate need for her to understand. She chose to believe him. It was not out of character for him to get lost in his son’s company, to forget everything else. And Leah knew that if she allowed doubts and suspicions about Jenna to creep in and take a hold of her this relationship would not stand a chance.
Still, it remained. Like a hair caught at the back of her tongue. An uncomfortable doubt that wouldn’t go away.
He has been careful with her since that night, handling her like a piece of fruit that might bruise easily. But now, as they finish their meal, and he is about to gather up their plates, she sees him stop, put his hands on his thighs, and look at her.
‘You know, I can go and check on him in the evenings instead,’ he says, a small inclination of his head towards the rooms upstairs, and a firmness in his voice that sounds like a challenge.
‘Thanks, but it’s fine. I don’t mind.’
‘But I do mind. I mean, aren’t you scared?’
‘Of course not.’ She laughs – it seems absurd to think of Anton as a danger. His vulnerability from the night she’d found him is still so present in her mind. And how can she explain to Jake that she feels comfortable in the older man’s company? That
she doesn’t believe what’s said of him. That she likes him.
Jake shakes his head, unhappy.
‘You’ve seen him,’ she says, ‘how frail he is. Surely you can’t think he’s any kind of threat.’
He thinks about this for a moment, and she can see the battle inside him over whether to pursue it. The morning after it had happened, when she told him how she had discovered Anton in the bath, Jake had said: ‘How come the door was unlocked?’
It hadn’t occurred to her to question that, but under his distrustful gaze, she had become flustered. She remembered the time Matthew had locked her out of the flat, and Anton had let her go down the inner staircase. She had unlocked the door then. Perhaps it had remained unlocked. Jake doesn’t know about that time. He doesn’t know that she had been up there, playing the piano while Matthew was downstairs in the flat alone. So she hadn’t mentioned the door. Merely mumbled: ‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she says softly now, reaching out to touch his hand. ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’
But he doesn’t look happy. Instead, he appears to be waiting for her to relent, and it is this that makes her resentful. What about all the evenings he’s been absent lately, spending time with Jenna and Matthew? Has Leah once pulled him up about it, made a complaint?
‘It’s not like I’ll be staying with him long,’ she says, quietly insistent. ‘Just checking in on him to make sure he’s okay.’ It seems reasonable to her, but Jake’s unconvinced.
‘I don’t trust him,’ he tells her plainly, and then he gets to his feet and clears away the dishes.
On the second evening, she finds that Anton is out of bed and dressed. He is in the kitchen, two cups and saucers laid out on the table, the kettle on, as if he has been waiting for her.
‘You look a little better,’ she remarks, and it’s true that some colour has returned to his cheeks.
‘I feel it,’ he replies, pouring tea into the cups.
She has told Jake she won’t linger, but when Anton offers her the cup, suggesting they take their tea out to the garden, she thinks: Why not? Jake is not home yet and, besides, she’s not a child, but an independent woman capable of making her own decisions.
‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ Anton says. ‘With all the work that has been done on the house in recent days, I can’t help feeling I should do some work of my own. Clear some things out.’
‘Sounds like a good idea,’ Leah tells him. ‘A spring clean.’
The evening is balmy. The grass is starting to look scorched. It’s been weeks since there has been rain of any significance. A hosepipe ban has just been announced.
‘I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder,’ Anton goes on, ‘but today I found myself looking around my house, all these things I’ve been holding on to, and wondering why. They’re just things – they have no meaning. And it’s not as if they have any sentimental value. I mean, I’ve spent the past nineteen years inhabiting one room, and I managed. The world didn’t end. It makes me wonder why I didn’t just tackle this when I got out, instead of allowing myself to get holed up in a cave of nostalgia.’
‘Perhaps you weren’t ready.’
‘Perhaps not.’ He sips his tea, and when he returns the cup to the saucer, he glances up at her. ‘Could I ask something of you, dear? I feel bad, as you’ve already done so much. It’s just …’
‘What is it?’ she asks, her attention caught by the flash of alarm that crosses his gaze, the slight tremor in his hand making the cup rattle on the saucer.
He puts them on the grass, says: ‘I want to go through Charlotte’s things and I’m afraid. I’m rather dreading it. I wonder … Would you mind helping me with it? Not now, obviously. But some evening next week, perhaps.’
The request unsettles her. She puts a hand up to her face, draws a stray strand of hair away from her eyes. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if Mark helped you with that once he’s back? They’re his mother’s possessions after all.’
His face falls with disappointment, and for just a second she regrets her answer, wishes she could change it. Then he nods quickly, forces a smile. ‘Yes. Of course. I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘No, that’s all right. It’s just …’
‘I quite understand.’
Then he says he’s getting tired. He picks up his cup and saucer, takes hers from her hands, and she watches as he goes back inside.
It is late in the evening when she gets home on Thursday. She had gone to the shops after work to pick up groceries, taking the trouble to buy a few essentials for Anton. It’s unclear to her whether he is ready, yet, for the outside world. Earlier today, she had a text from Mark: ‘Everything going okay?’ She had responded positively, reassuring him that Anton was fine, improving a little each day, but he didn’t reply. She has no idea of when he will be returning.
‘I haven’t heard you playing,’ Anton tells her that evening. ‘Not for a long time.’
‘I can’t, I’m afraid.’
‘But why not?’
She offers him a rueful smile. ‘My piano got water-damaged.’
He sits forward, his expression changing. He looks as if he’s been struck.
‘It’s no big deal!’ she says. ‘I’m sure it can be fixed. The tuner is coming the week after next.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. Then, seeing she’s about to shrug it off, he says firmly, more insistently, ‘No. I really am. Your piano. My God.’
He closes his eyes, puts his hand to his face. He looks anguished, so much so that she leans forward, touches his knee.
‘It’s just an old piano,’ she says softly, but his eyes fly open.
‘Your parents gave it to you. I know what it means to you.’
For a moment, she is too taken aback to speak. How does he know this? Did she tell him? She tries to think.
‘You must come upstairs and play mine,’ he tells her.
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t.’
‘You must,’ he says again, this time forcefully.
Then, softening his tone, he tries again: ‘Please, Leah. I would feel so bad if you didn’t. I would feel even more guilty than I do already.’
Her eyes glance at the French windows, closed to the flat. Jake isn’t home. She has arranged to meet him in town, at a concert in the Button Factory. If she leaves now, she can catch the Dart and make it on time. And yet she feels a wavering inside her.
‘Just for a few minutes?’ he tries again.
In the evening sunlight, he looks brighter than he has done in days. The lines on his face have diminished, and his skin once more looks tanned and healthy. But it’s the liveliness in his eyes that marks the real difference – a warmth there that draws her in – from the lifeless body she’d rescued.
‘Please?’ he asks, his smile broadening, his expression fixed on her in a way that is almost flirtatious.
What harm? she thinks. ‘Very well,’ she tells him, and follows him up the steps into the house.
19
Anton
How easy it is to reel her in.
Tea in the garden, then watching her unwind at the piano in the front room. After the music they talk, only the talk is different now. More relaxed. Intimate. It’s as if when she plays the pieces he sets in front of her the natural barriers between them come down. Communication finds a different level.
Evening after evening, she comes.
‘Why don’t we go for a walk?’ she suggests, and he feels his heart soar.
They don’t go far, just across the road to the park. It’s quiet at this time of the evening, no one around except the dog-walkers. Anton notices the tents that have appeared in the shade of the trees on the west side. Ireland’s homelessness crisis has reached the leafy environs of Wyndham Park, he thinks, with something close to satisfaction.
He tells her about his marriage, the difficulties within it.
‘It was not the easiest relationship,’ he confesses. ‘I had my own weaknesses, and I didn’t always under
stand what she needed from me. But I still loved her.’
‘And Charlotte?’
‘Oh!’ He laughs and looks out across the wide expanse of grass.
At one end of the green a stone plinth holds up the bronzed head of a local playwright, long deceased. The memorial has been there as long as Anton can remember.
‘Do you see that?’ Anton says, pointing it out for her. ‘I once came across Charlotte kissing Ken Tansey from across the road right there, up against that lump of rock.’
She stares at the plinth, then at Anton.
‘I can still remember it,’ he tells her. ‘The Kellys’ annual Halloween party, we were all drunk on blood-red punch. I’d staggered out here in search of Charlotte. The bonfire was a smouldering heap at that stage, a few stragglers in fancy-dress weaving through the park. And there they were, Morticia Addams and Rob Roy, locked in a lusty embrace.’ He laughs, pleased with the image he’s summoned. ‘There was Ken wiping away her lipstick with the back of his hand, muttering: “Sorry, mate. I’m shit-faced.” But Charlotte just stood there staring at me, a prideful little smile on her face.’
He is warming to the topic now. In the cooling heat of the day, the park almost to themselves, breathing the free air, he lets his imagination roam. ‘It was one of the things I found so hard to take about Charlotte,’ he tells Leah. ‘The lengths she went to in order to rouse my temper.’
‘Is that how it happened?’ she asks him tentatively. ‘Did you come across her with someone? Did something just snap?’
Disappointment is instant. The positive mood that she always brings out in him instantly deflates.
She sees this, and adds, in a quietly defensive manner: ‘Even the most temperate man has a breaking point.’
He turns away from her and lets out a sigh. There’s a low wall by the tennis courts, and he goes to it now, drops his weight on to it. It’s so hard having constantly to fight this battle.
Wordlessly, she follows him, and he can tell that she is waiting for him to explain. He knows she wants to understand.
