Deceptions (25 page)

“But not a lot about you. Are these recent sketches?”

“As I already said, they’re not for public consumption.” Firmly she took the sketch pad from him and pushed it to one side. “We were talking about your son. Those drawings are not typical of my work but if you’ve changed your mind about the portrait I understand.”

“No, I’d like you to meet him. When will you be in Dublin?”

Before she could reply his mobile phone rang. He turned from her, his voice changing, becoming more urgent. “No, I’m not at home. Why?”

His breath caught and was released on a whistling sigh. “I’m on my way, Jean.” He had already reached the studio door before he clicked off his mobile.

“Are you all right?” She followed him outside. “Has something happened?”

“I have to leave right away.” The drizzle had turned to heavy rain. Despite his protests, she took the umbrella she used when walking the beach on rainy afternoons and held it over him.

He fumbled for his keys and opened the car door. In the overhead light his face was haggard. “I’ll be in touch with you again and then we’ll talk.” Without saying goodbye he accelerated away.

He had only travelled a short distance when his car swerved and came to a standstill.

She hurried towards him. “What’s the problem?”

“Jesus Christ! I can’t believe this!” He was already hunkered down before one of the front tyres. “I hit something sharp on the way down the lane and it obviously punctured the wheel.”

He removed a jack and wheel-brace from the boot. When the car was fully jacked he tried to twist off the wheel nuts. Despite his strenuous efforts he was unable to loosen them. After ten minutes he wiped his sleeve across his forehead.

“I can’t do it without a machine.” His voice shook. She wondered if there were tears or raindrops running down his cheeks.

“I’ll drive into the village and bring back a mechanic. I know the garage owner. He’s very obliging. I’ll get my car.”

“Your car?” His furious voice stopped her in her tracks. He gripped the wheel brace in his hand and she thought for a shocked instant that he was going to fling it at her. Abruptly, as if he sensed her fear, he flung it to the ground. The rumble of Frank’s tractor drowned out his reply. The ground seemed to vibrate around them as the tractor drew nearer and shuddered to a halt.

The farmer took in the scene at a glance. “Wait a minute and I’ll get the lads,” he shouted and juddered past them towards the farmyard gate.

He returned shortly with his sons who hunkered beside the wheel, each taking a side of the wheel-brace and holding it firmly in position while Frank in his muck-splattered wellingtons stood firmly on it. Lorraine winced as the men took their father’s weight but they were obviously used to working as a team. As Frank jumped lightly and persistently on the wheel-brace, the bolts twisted and loosened. They watched while Michael put on the spare wheel, standing around him in a protective semi-circle. His frenzied movements, his haste, the tension emanating from him as he tightened the bolts increased Lorraine’s nervousness. She wanted him on the road, speeding towards whatever emergency had drained the colour from his face. She was standing by her gate when he finally drove away, her face shaded under the brim of the umbrella.

He had left his business card with one of the photographs on the table. She studied his son’s features, his fine cheeks and slim nose, the tremulous smile. A sensitive face, she decided, easily hurt or frightened. She recognised the Poolbeg lighthouse at the end of the pier and remembered a Sunday afternoon, two figures walking slowly. A vibration passed through her fingers and the photograph trembled, as if a breeze blew gently but persistently by her.

She entered her studio and opened the sketch pad containing her self-portraits. How haunted she looked, those skeletal cheeks and distraught expressions. She remembered the fury that had consumed her that night as she sketched, snapping sticks of charcoal, rubbing, shading, highlighting, shaping.

Trapped and vulnerable, without any concept of a future, she had sought refuge in childhood and the belief that the past held the key to what was to come. Perhaps it did. Sometimes it flickered, a will-o’-the-wisp taunting her to take a step forward, mocking her when she fell two paces back. Slowly, deliberately she ripped out the pages and flung them into the rubbish bin. She turned up the volume on her compact disc player and began to draw a boy standing on a pier. Michael Carmody’s face came to mind. She remembered his whistling breath and the tremor in his voice when he spoke on the phone. The caller had been a woman. Lorraine had heard the high tones, her words inaudible, her panic unmistakable, and that same fear had taken hold of Michael Carmody and sent him speeding homewards.

The thudding guitar beat and world-weary lyrics of Bob Dylan singing “Just Like a Woman” echoed around her studio. When she finished sketching she tacked the drawings to the wall. She pinned the photograph to the top of her easel and painted without interruption until the small hours of the morning. She had no idea when it happened, the shift that lifted her over the self-consciousness and forced discipline that had gripped her for so long, but suddenly her mind was free and she was painting with free, easy strokes that created a blurred impression of ships sailing over the horizon and, watching them leave, a young boy standing lonely on a pier.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-N
INE

Killian

Black horses on the ocean. Riding through the waves. The sea sings, drum-beat engines, fog horns call. The lighthouse flares the rocks. He watches the lady. Daisies in her eyes. And in the moon, Bozo tumbling.

See where you’re going, Ferryman. This road only has one signpost. I was your age once. The world in my hands. I flung it into an empty bottle.

Where’s your stammer, Bozo? Where’s your big fat red nose?

Left them on the shore. Stop asking stupid questions and go home to your family, you squandering, reckless boy. Don’t you know where you’re heading? One road, one signpost. Fuck off out of my sight. I want to sing with the angels.

Shady Lady, take me away. Smother me. Mother me.

I’ll be waiting for you, Killian. We’ve all the time in the great beyond. But my arms can’t hold you yet.

Why did you leave Michael? Why did you make him sad?

I reached too soon for heaven. I squandered the daisy days.

Stay … Shady … stay … stay …

Killian, I’m here beside you. Keep breathing, please keep breathing. Don’t leave us now. Not when you’ve endured so much. Feel my hand. Hold it tight. Jean rang. She said hurry … hurry. Pneumonia. They warned us it could happen. I scorched the miles from Trabawn, sparks on the road. I fought with my mother every inch of the way.

“Leave him with me,” I yelled. “Get off your fucking cloud and take a look below. What the hell do you think you’re doing? Why aren’t you watching out for me the way a proper mother should? Open your bruised eyes and see my son. He’s not ready, not near ready to go to you yet.”

How I raged, Killian. Right on the chin, I gave it to her. I told her what it was like to be without a mother and a father who passed like a ship through my nights. I demanded from her, temper tantrums, kicking, screaming, the way I never could when I was a child. I demanded your life in exchange for my anger. When I came here I was punch drunk, reeling.

Jean said, “You were praying,” and I laughed at the notion, even though there’s no room for laughter tonight. She’s drifted off to sleep on the chair beside your bed. Terence has gone to the kitchen to make tea and see if he can scrounge some biscuits. He loves you as much as I do. Love has no divisions. It’s a river, an effortless flowing river. Flow with it, Killian. Let it carry you back to us.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

The men, handsome in tuxedos and black ties, and the women, glittering in designer eveningwear, gathered in the reception room of the Congress Hotel to drink champagne. Bill Sheraton moved among the guests, an affable host, stopping here, stopping there, stepping out a skilful minuet between business and pleasure. Virginia cast her experienced gaze over the proceedings and welcomed a photographer from
Prestige
. He flirted with her, as he always did on such occasions, and obeyed her instructions to photograph Andrea. The Sheratons posed beside a prominent government minister. Lorcan, ordered by his mother to smile, looked as if his teeth were being pulled without an anaesthetic. His habitual look of boredom disappeared when a young woman shrieked his name and flung her arms around him. Marianne Caulfield. The name clicked instantly into Virginia’s mind. She had directed the film which would be shown later in the evening.

The guests swept towards the ballroom where tables were laid for the gala dinner. Chandeliers shone kindly on bare arms and there was much excitement over the foil-wrapped gift resting beside each place card. Despite Andrea’s insistence that the places at the top table could not be changed, Lorcan demanded that another setting be organised beside him for Marianne.

Waiters streamed from the kitchen with silver platters balanced on one hand. Throughout the meal the young couple sat closely together, locked in a conversation that excluded everyone at the table. Occasionally they giggled and lowered their voices in a conspiratorial whisper. No doubt the adults surrounding them were the source of their merriment.

The level of noise reached the animated pitch that accompanies good food and fine wine. How handsome Adrian looked compared to the other men present. Virginia willed him to meet her eyes across the floral centerpiece. How often in the past had they dined in company, separated by convention, yet linked by the magnetic pull of desire. He was seated next to Jennifer Dwyer, the financial controller of Sheraton Worldwide Travel. His gaze never wavered from her face as he talked knowledgeably about the breeding patterns of pure-bred Siamese. Her laughter suggested that his comments had a
risqué
edge but she seemed amused and behaved towards him in a mildly flirtatious manner. Virginia turned her attention to the accountant’s husband, a barrister who would always look insignificant without his wig.

Marianne gestured dismissively at the wine waiter. Her voice had an assertive ring when she demanded a jug of still mineral water with ice and slices of lime. She bestowed a contemptuous glare on those around her who were drugging legally and merrily on alcohol and explained to the table at large that she and Lorcan were on an addictive-substance recovery programme.

“Marianne,
really
. This is not the time or the place –” Andrea coughed warningly into a table napkin and left the perfect imprint of her shocked lips on white linen.

“This is a fund-raiser for the Patterson Centre.” Marianne was prettily defiant. “We have to talk about these issues.”

“Of course, dear. But is it necessary to do so tonight?”

“Why not?” Lorcan placed his arm protectively around his companion. “Marianne made the film we’re going to watch. I helped with the editing. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m in recovery.”

The barrister gazed slyly at Virginia’s cleavage and declared that addiction had many forms. He was occasionally tempted to steal items from Brown Thomas. In particular he enjoyed staking out the ladies’ shoe department. Not that he would ever attempt to steal anything, he hastened to assure her. Being a pillar of the legal establishment had its obligations. It was just an urge. Like the desire of a recovered alcoholic to lean his elbow on a bar – or a reformed smoker to breathe in the carcinogenic fumes of other people’s cigarettes. He glared peevishly at Bill Sheraton who unabashedly lit up his black cigarillos between each course.

At the end of the meal a large screen was lowered from the ceiling and the film began. Virginia had little interest in witnessing the daily routine of recovering junkies whose earnest revelations about life on the mean streets set her teeth on edge. Polite applause greeted the end of the film then increased to a crescendo when Sulki Puss, the drag queen who was conducting the charity auction, appeared.

Over six feet tall, Sulki Puss had become an overnight celebrity since the start of his late night game show on television. He cut a dramatic figure as he strode on stage in a red lamé dress, his height increased by an exotic turban in the same material. His dress was slit from ankle to hip and he was balanced gracefully on red stilettos, his muscular legs sleek under fishnet tights. Sonya and her red high heels. Virginia forced herself to concentrate on the auction but Sonya continued flickering like the faded rewind of an old long-forgotten film.

Sulki Puss was in full swing … titty-titty bang-bang … going, going, gone … he brought the hammer down on a black lace bustier donated by a famous cabaret singer.

“Jesus, I’d put myself on hard labour for those spikes.” The barrister, enraptured by the drag queen’s stilettos, chortled into his brandy. His wife cast a blistering glance in his direction before turning her attention back to Adrian.