by Neil Jordan
And she opened the old wooden door and walked inside as if she expected me to follow. And I did.
Hello home, she said in the darkness. and as she closed the door on her peering neighbour, goodbye Mrs.
We stood in the darkness then, before she fumbled for the light.
I remember you.
And the light came on and as my eyes grew accustomed to it I saw one of those crumbling interiors, again larger than the door outside might have intimated. High, unpainted walls, and a patchy ceiling with the cornices falling off. There was an old sofa with a cello lying on it.
She walked to the sofa and plucked one of the cello strings. The note echoed and lost itself amongst the old plasterwork above.
You’re a musician? I asked.
I was, she said. Once.
Can I use the bathroom? I asked.
Over there, she said, and nodded her head.
I walked towards the door she had indicated and closed it behind me. There was a small basin with a cracked mirror above it. I washed my hands under the tap and some sandy residue flowed off them into the plughole. I heard the cello sound from inside, a series of notes from long ago. Something by Bach, I imagined, though music wasn’t my speciality. I washed the mud of the river off my face then and looked at my face in the misted mirror. There was a dark blue robe hanging from a nail in the wall beside me. It was a man’s robe, and it seemed to have its own story, hanging there. I turned from the mirror and dried my face in the old fabric and inhaled the odour of someone else. Male, undoubtedly. And I wondered was he the one who drove her to that place on the bridge. He was vain, whoever he was, I remember thinking, because the towelly fabric smelt heavily of cheap hair oil.
8
When I left she was playing the same notes from long ago that flowed around her like a slow river. I asked her what the piece was and I had a sad frisson of satisfaction when she told me it was Bach, one of his cello suites. I asked would she be all right and she nodded and when I said goodbye she nodded again and never paused in her playing. There was nothing left to say, although it seemed there was something I should have said, but whatever it was, I couldn’t think of it. So I traced my way back down the steps and saw the woman in the adjacent apartment pull back her lace curtain again.
Goodbye Mrs, I said, echoing her phrase, and the steps led me to the courtyard where the arch framed the traffic passing by outside. I hailed a taxi and I was already halfway to our suburban home before I realised I had never asked her name.
A small faux-rustic two-storeyed home in a winding street. It had fake wooden beams embedded in the concrete walls and something Tyrolean about the roof, chimneys that looked like miniature turrets. It could have been in the Austrian Alps or the Pyrenees, but it wasn’t, it was here and we had rented it and it had been home for the past several years. There was a sad garden of trees, laurel, linden or willow, I had never bothered to find out which, though they left a bed of yellow pods and shrivelled flowers in the springtime, so they may have been willows. Somebody had built it, if not with love, at least with obsessive attention to fanciful detail. There was a wooden gate carved with something like hunting horns, or they could have been meerschaum pipes with strange gargoylish faces round what may have been intended as pipe-bowls. However many times I swung it open, I never worked it out. There was a name for them, maybe in some Mitteleuropean encyclopedia, but let me for the moment describe them as grimly fantastical and oppressively strange. It always creaked when I opened it and sometimes Jenny was alert enough inside to hear the creak and run to the door so that when I was turning my key in the lock she already had it open. But this didn’t happen, that evening.
I walked down the small gravelled pathway and put my key in the lock. I turned the key slowly and when the door swung open I saw Jenny sitting in the beam of light that came from the kitchen, her dolls arrayed around her on the parquet floor.
It’s Daddy, Jessica, and he’s late again.
Sorry, my love, I said, as I closed the door behind me and trod my way quietly down the hall towards her.
And his feet are wet, she said. How observant of her, I thought. She gave names to her dolls that I could never remember, and to her ever-widening variety of imaginary friends.
And now you’re stepping on Melanie’s dress.
Say sorry to Melanie for me.
I stepped sideways and left a footprint on the empty floor.
She heard you. But now her dress is all yucky.
Oh dear. I shifted my feet sideways again.
And now you’re on Rebecca’s toe.
So there was a Rebecca as well, I thought. She was a new addition. I jumped sideways again.
And when did Rebecca join us?
Oh, I forget. She just turned up, sort of.
Sorry, Rebecca.
Apology accepted.
Rebecca doesn’t hold grudges?
No. She’s not the grudgy type. But if you walk all over her again she may not come back. Then what will Melanie do?
She’ll have you to play with, I said. I did a slow kind of shuffle towards her, without crushing any more imaginary limbs. Then I reached down and lifted her towards me.
She needs more friends than me.
Why would anyone need more than you?
She likes a crowd around her. At all times.
A little like my Jenny then.
I kissed her where the curls of her hair met her neck. She twisted and giggled.
Maybe.
If she hasn’t got enough friends, she can always invent them.
Maybe so, she repeated.
It’s a wonderful ability, I said. Means you’ll never be lonely.
And she looked lonely for a moment, unbearably lonely, and I was sorry I had mentioned the word. So I brought up another word, equally loaded.
Where’s Mummy?
She’s cooking dinner.
Maybe she needs a hand?
And I edged into the kitchen with her, and only then became aware of it. The sound of a cello.
Maybe it had only started then. Or maybe I had only then become aware of it.
Sarah was sitting at the bare wooden table, reading by the light of the table lamp, while an array of pots bubbled behind her. And the music was coming from the CD unit on the wall.
What’s that? I asked her.
Some kind of curry.
No, I meant the music.
Oh. That’s Pablo Casals. The cello suites. I found them in an old suitcase. They were still wrapped.
A present from somebody?
Must have been.
Not from me.
You would have remembered, surely. Or I would have.
She looked up, eyes peering above her reading glasses. She seemed like the academic Sarah again, and I liked that.
I’m reading about them now.
Mmmm?
I moved around the kitchen and kissed the top of her head. And wonder of wonders, she allowed me to do it. And we stayed like that, three heads bowed together for a moment or so while the cello, rich and dark as treacle, filled the room.
He revived them.
Who? I asked.
Casals. They were regarded as nothing more than training exercises until he recorded them in the 1940s. And now they’re regarded as – she quoted from the sleeve notes she was holding – ‘the pinnacle of musical perfection’.
Wow.
Yes. Wow. And shall we have some curry now?
Let me do it, I said, and set Jenny on the floor, who immediately clambered up on her mother’s knee.
Daddy’s shoes are all wet.
Are they?
Yes, I lied to her. It was raining for a bit. Must have stepped in a puddle.
And I wondered why I was lying. Or was I even lying? It had been raining and I could well have stepped in a puddle. But the truth seemed too complicated to relate at this juncture, and the events earlier that evening seemed as remote as a dream.
There were three bowls: one with rice
, one with chicken bubbling in a curry sauce and one with steaming vegetables. I laid out three plates and did my best with the ladle.
Daddy’s messy, Jenny observed.
Yes, darling. Daddies generally are.
And we ate then, in silence for a while, with the cello winding its spell around us, until Jenny asked could we turn it off.
You don’t like it?
It’s not me, she said. Melanie thinks it’s too sad.
And I got a quick glance from Sarah, who disapproved of imaginary friends. She considered them a pale substitute for real friends, of which Jenny had all too few.
Melanie doesn’t take violin lessons. Jenny does.
You could learn from this, darling, Sarah said. He was a legendary cellist.
Cellist, Jenny repeated, between mouthfuls.
It is good? I asked. I felt the need to change the subject. And after dinner, bedtime, I said.
Mmm, she nodded, and her eyes were already half-closed. She seemed too tired to eat.
Have I had enough? she asked.
One more mouthful, Sarah said. Then Daddy will take you to bed.
OK.
And she opened her mouth the way children do and stuffed it with the largest spoonful she could manage, so the curry sauce dribbled from her closed lips down towards her chin.
Yuck, said Sarah. Table manners.
Gnnrnrym, said Jenny. Or something without vowels anyway. Her mouth was so full, she couldn’t have managed them.
I lifted her, as her cheeks worked away.
Kiss Mummy goodnight.
When you’ve wiped your mouth.
So I grabbed a handtowel and wiped it clean, and brought her puckered lips down towards Sarah’s.
Yuck, said Sarah. And double yuck.
I told her a story as I tucked her into bed. About Johnny McGory will I begin it; that’s all that’s in it. She laughed again, as expected, and asked for a real one. So I made one up, about an imaginary friend and a real friend who swapped places every now and then. The imaginary friend was left-handed and the real friend was right-handed. They had identical dolls, the real and imaginary, and identical families and were identical in every respect except for the hands with which they played their violins. The imaginary friend played her bow with the right hand, the real friend played hers with the left hand. And it didn’t really matter, since in the imaginary world left was right and right was left, a mirror image of the real one. It only became a problem when they had to practise violin. Dreadful amateur screechings ensued where once there had been just a beautiful tune. And I was at my wits’ end as to how to conclude this story when I heard her breathing turn into a low soft snore and saw that her eyes were closed. So I pulled the cover over her and tiptoed back to the kitchen.
Do we have to talk about it all? Sarah asked. And when I shook my head, she took the cork out of a bottle of wine and poured two glasses.
But I still can’t believe you went to that psychic.
Why not? I asked. The jealous mind will do anything.
Is that a quote? she asked. From a security handbook?
No. But you went to a therapist.
Didn’t we say we wouldn’t talk about it? she murmured, and took a sip of wine.
You started.
I know, she said, and she gripped my hand. She almost crushed the fingers together. Please.
Tell me something then.
You want me to tell you that I love you?
That would be refreshing, I said.
How? she asked. Since you must know that.
She drank more wine.
We found a girl, in a bog.
A corpse?
It looked like a squashed leather bag. Early Bronze period. The skull was crushed. The throat was cut. Either a murder, or some kind of ritual killing.
So it happened even then.
What happened?
Abduction. Rape. Murder.
We’re talking about a pre-pastoral society. She smiled. They did things differently then.
So you can’t blame the jealous husband?
The nipples were cut off. There were symmetrical slashes round the torso. Some ritual we don’t know of yet was involved. Or—
Maybe a serial killer with a nipple obsession.
It was all about you, you know. Not him.
And it was a sudden shift, this, from the Bronze Age nippleless shrivelled body in a bog.
Was it?
Yes. You were away. I needed someone to talk to. I had my own Jonathan obsession.
Ah.
I wanted to get your office done before you came back.
Please.
Well. You don’t want to hear. I understand.
She brought my hand to her shirt. She was wearing no bra. I could feel her nipple underneath the cloth.
Maybe she cut them off. As some kind of penance.
The girl in the bog?
Not really a girl. She’s more like a pressed piece of leather now. Or a sculpture by one of those post-modern whatsits.
Conceptual artists?
Yes. Whatever they call themselves.
She was a little drunk. And the cello, from some kind of allegro movement, had gone into a more contemplative mode. It sounded like thick, syrupy brown bog water. I thought of the leathery girl with her nipples cut off. And I felt Sarah’s nipple harden under the cloth.
What do you think, she asked, could we try again?
Is that what we call it now? Trying?
For a long time we didn’t need a name for it. But maybe now we do. The thing we did without thinking needs to be thought about.
And talked about, too?
Maybe.
Isn’t that what the therapist is for? Talking about it.
Oh God, she said, Jonathan, please.
I’m sorry.
You’re always sorry. And so am I. And maybe that’s where we live now. In the land of sorry.
Sorrow?
No. I said sorry. One is sorry. One acts sorry. One makes up. Sorrow is different. Sorrow is a state, like depression. And I’m going to bed.
She stood up, swaying slightly.
You can come if you want. You can stay if you want, and finish that bottle. But that’s where I’ll be.
And I sat there, listening to the brown, syrupy music for a while. I thought of the jumping girl, and I wondered what her name was. I thought of little Petra in the small room that she couldn’t leave. I thought of Jenny’s imaginary friends. And I realised that all of this thinking was a way of forgetting about the thing that couldn’t be thought about. And with that thought I followed Sarah to the bedroom.
She was already asleep. I crept in silently beside her and curled up my body the way hers was curled, close but not close enough to touch. She was wearing those short flowered knickers she always wore and she still had the body for it, like a youngish girl. She shifted a little in her sleep and moved her buttocks automatically towards me and I didn’t move, towards her or away. It felt like a memory of something more than a promise of something. And I must have fallen asleep.
9
I was woken by the sound of falling water. I wondered, was it the sound of rain? I turned my head slowly and saw the curtains drawn on the French windows and the sun hitting the garden trees and I realised Sarah was having a shower. The clear glass of the bathroom door was mottled with steam and there was a blurred female shape standing in the bath beyond it. There was too much glass in this house, I remember thinking. All of the alpine promise of the exterior, the gate, the roof, the chimney, was not carried through into an interior of mottled glass, plastic curtains, false marble tables and once-clear Perspex. But she was there, behind two layers of steamed surfaces, like a pointillist nude painted by whom? Odilon Redon, maybe. She came through then, wrapped in a towel, and smiled at me, as she began assembling her clothes for the day. She slipped thin underwear on with a lace floral rim and wrapped an athletic brassière round her thin breasts in one of those deft movements that onc
e stopped my heart. How did women do it? I wondered. the arms crooked round the shoulder-blades and the hands clasping the unseen clip. She dipped her head and massaged her dangling hair with the towel and smiled at me again, upside down this time, and asked me would I be taking Jenny to school.
I would like that, I said.
Well, you’d better get a move on then, she said, and struggled into a summery dress and stepped into two canvas slip-on shoes. I’ve a lecture at nine.
So I began to get a move on. I angled my legs out of the bed on to the floor and she came towards me and bent her head down so that her hair was all around my face.
You smell musty, she said.
Bad? I asked her.
No. Just kind of musty. Take a shower. I’ll wake Jenny on my way out.
And she brought her lips towards me and moved her head this way and that so they brushed off mine. It was more a nuzzle than a kiss, but it felt more than fine. We were shy when we first met, so our hands and lips would touch without our eyes really meeting, and it reminded me of that. Our lovemaking had been urgent and immediate, but rarely discussed. We didn’t need to discuss it and we didn’t know then it was a paradise that would be hard to return to.
I had a quick shower, dried my hair, pulled my clothes on, listening to the sounds of plates and cutlery clinking from the kitchen inside. And only when I heard the sounds of goodbyes and the front door slam did I finish the charade. I walked out into the hallway and realised, with a large dollop of shame, that I had been waiting until Sarah had left. Jenny was playing idly with the star-shaped cereal in her bowl. She was fully dressed and had her hair twisted into a ponytail.
Hey there, sweetie, I said and palmed the hair on the top of her head.
You’re taking me to school? she asked.
That seems to be the case, I told her.
Why don’t you both do it?
Because, I said, parents lead busy lives.
Busy busy busy, she answered, as if addressing some fundamental fact about life in the twenty-first century.
But there was peace in that kitchen, even if it was the peace of absence. I poured myself juice, boiled the kettle, made us both some toast and realised I had traversed the floor several times without stepping on imaginary presences. Maybe they lived busy lives too, I surmised. And I was wondering what life would be like with just the two of us when she, with uncanny precision, voiced my thoughts.
