Life Drawing for Beginners (28 page)

A
tap on the door. “Eight o’clock,” he called, like he did every weekday.

Her eyes still closed, Carmel smiled. “Okay,” she called back, and listened to his footsteps going back down the stairs.

It wasn’t all sorted, far from it. He hadn’t said they could stay with him for good, he hadn’t said anything like that. What he’d said was
for the moment
, which could mean anything. She couldn’t relax, not completely.

And there was still the question of her getting a job. There was still no sign of anyone wanting to take her on. She would just have to keep on trying, every day until she found something.

But Barry had a granddad, it was official. And his granddad seemed to be okay with Barry being his grandson—not that he’d said anything, but she thought he was okay with it. And tomorrow Barry was going to start playschool, which would be good for him, even if thinking about it made her feel horribly lonely.

And his granddad knew now that Carmel had been telling the truth—which had somewhere along the way become the most important bit of all this.

She leaned over and kissed the top of Barry’s head. “Good mornin’, sleepyhead,” she said. “Time to get up.”

“The thing is,” Irene said, lowering her cup, “Martin and I have been having some…difficulties.”

“Difficulties?” Her mother’s perfectly shaped eyebrows rose. “What kind of difficulties?”

Irene dabbed at her lips, leaving an imprint of cherry-red lipstick on her heavy linen napkin. “It’s hard to explain,” she said, wondering what had triggered her sudden impulse to confide—in her mother of all people. “We seem to have…drifted apart a bit lately.”

Her mother picked up the coffeepot and refilled Irene’s cup. “Darling, that’s perfectly normal in any marriage. Your father and I regularly drift apart. I shouldn’t worry about it.”

“You’re right,” Irene replied, adding a few drops of cream to her cup. “It’s nothing, I’m sure.”

“Put on your best outfit and get him to take you out to dinner,” her mother said. “Flatter him a bit, men love that.”

“I will,” Irene promised. “I’ll do that.”

The bleakness pooling inside her as she sipped coffee and nibbled almond biscuits so thin you could see right through them.

The day at the lake must be going well, past six o’clock and no sign of Pauline’s car. Maybe they’d stopped for tea somewhere on the way home, decided to make a real day out of it, even though the sun had slid behind a cloud at around three and hadn’t been seen since. Hopefully Kevin had gotten his swim in early, before the chicken wings.

She hurried indoors, hauling her shopping bags with her. Barely enough time to put something together for dinner before she’d need to get ready for the art class. She opened the front door, thinking about beans on a toasted bagel, with a couple of rashers and a soft poached egg.

That would do nicely.

As Zarek tucked his sketch pad into his bag the apartment door opened and Pilar walked in.

“You have luck?” he asked hopefully. Her third interview since the previous Monday.

She made a face as she unraveled her scarf. “Five childrens—​
five
! How I look after five childrens and clean house too? How? She think I am machine?”

“Five is big family,” Zarek agreed, zipping his bag closed, “but maybe childrens all good, maybe they help with jobs.”

Pilar flapped an arm out of her jacket sleeve, almost whacking him in the face. “
Pah
—no childrens help with jobs, childrens make
more
jobs.”

Zarek edged towards the door, hoping to make his escape before the subject of the café could be raised. “Well, I must—”

“Your boss say about me today?” Pilar demanded. “She give me job?”

“Not yet,” Zarek answered, his hand on the doorknob. “She very busy. Maybe tomorrow.” He opened the door and fled, Pilar’s indignant voice following him all the way down the stairs.

A quick glance around the room confirmed what Irene had assumed—​there was no sign of Fiona. Of course she hadn’t come, she wasn’t the type for confrontations.

Not that Irene had been planning any kind of confrontation. In the unlikely event that Fiona had shown up at the life drawing class, Irene had planned to say nothing, to pretend their meeting on Saturday night hadn’t happened. She doubted very much that Fiona would approach her, let alone mention the encounter.

But now there was no need to pretend anything. She nodded at the others and took her usual place and began to lay out her materials as Audrey plugged in the fan heater and their model entered the room in her blue dressing gown.

“Anyone seen Fiona?” Meg asked, and Irene shook her head along with the other four.

“By the way,” Audrey said just before the break, as they laid down pencils and pulled sheets off their boards, “I wanted to invite you all to my house for a little drinks party, as we’re finishing up next week. Just a glass of wine and some nibbles, nothing fancy. I was thinking Saturday night, say from eight to nine, so you’ll still have plenty of time to go out afterwards.”

“That’d be lovely,” Meg said. “Count me in.”

Zarek looked uncertain. “Maybe I work Saturday, I am not sure.”

“I don’t think I’ll manage it either,” James said. “It’s not that easy for me to get out in the evenings.”

Audrey’s smile slipped. “Oh, that’s a shame. Do try, both of you.” She looked at her one remaining student, uncharacteristically silent. Was she imagining it, or was Irene a little subdued this evening? “Irene? Can you make it?”

“Should do,” Irene said lightly. “Sweet of you to invite us.”

“I just wanted to do something small.” Audrey turned to her model, who was slipping on her shoes. “Are you free, Jackie?”

The girl looked pleasantly surprised—did she imagine Audrey would have issued an invitation in her company that didn’t include her?

“Thanks,” she said, “I’d love to.”

“Great, that’s settled then, Saturday it is. I’ll give Fiona a ring, hopefully she’ll be able to come too. Remind me to give you my address before you go home.”

The class trooped out for coffee and Audrey wrote
Ring Fiona
in her notebook before following them. Her first party, or whatever you wanted to call it, was officially on—even if the attendance might be less than she’d expected, only three definite guests out of a possible six. Still, she’d make the best of it, and maybe they’d all get there in the end, or most of them.

She walked slowly down the corridor towards the muted buzz of conversation in the lobby and joined the queue at the coffee station. Drinks, nibbles, music. A fire if the evening was chilly—​no, a fire either way; it made the room look much better. Dolly would have to be banished to Audrey’s bedroom in case anyone was allergic. Maybe softer lighting for the sitting room, get a few low-watt bulbs, add a bit of atmosphere.

She filled her cup with coffee. When you thought about it, it should hardly take any effort at all.

The fabric of her sweatshirt was textured, like waffles, and colored the same shade of blue as tiles on swimming pools. Her eyes weren’t blue, they were grey, and fringed with dark lashes. Her eyebrows were thick and dark.

“Hello,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

She smiled. “Only on Tuesdays.”

He sat next to her on the low wall. “I tell Charlie a bedtime story at break time,” he said. “That’s why I go to the car, she made me promise.” Feeling the need to explain, not wanting her to think he was avoiding everyone.

“That’s nice. Make sure she doesn’t tell Eoin though—I’d hate the pressure.”

He laughed.

And then she said, all in a rush, “By the way, if you wanted to go to Audrey’s thing on Saturday night you could bring Charlie over to my house and my parents would babysit. She could sleep over, I mean. Just a thought, just if you fancied it.”

James glanced at her, but she was poking at something on the ground with her shoe. “Well,” he said, “that’s…nice of you.” And then he stopped.

“We have a camp bed,” she said, still intent on whatever had taken her attention on the ground. “We could drop her back in the morning. Just, if that was all that was stopping you, I mean. Feel free to say no.”

Wasn’t it the last thing he wanted, to get involved with other people? To put himself into a position where someone might start asking questions, looking for the reasons that had brought himself and Charlie here, forcing him to revisit the past, when he’d vowed to leave it behind them?

Hadn’t he been dreading something like this ever since he’d moved to Carrickbawn?

Evidently not.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m sure Charlie would love that.”

As she listened to Fiona’s phone ringing Audrey wondered belatedly if she should have waited till the morning. Just gone half past nine, not very late—but Fiona could be sick, probably
was
sick, since she’d hadn’t turned up to the class. She was about to hang up when the phone was answered.

“Hello?”

Low, barely audible. Audrey pressed the phone to her ear. “Fiona? It’s Audrey, from the life drawing class.”

“Oh…hi.”

“I was hoping you weren’t sick, when you missed the class. I hope you weren’t in bed just now.”

“No, I mean, yes, I have…some bug, but I wasn’t in bed.”

She certainly sounded below par. “Oh dear,” Audrey said, “I’m sorry to hear that, with the baby coming and everything—but hopefully you’ll be better by Saturday, because I’m having a little get-together at my house—you know, just because we’re getting to the end of the classes. Next week is the last one, if you can believe it.”

“Oh…right.”

“About eight o’clock, just for an hour or thereabouts. I’d love if you can make it.”

“Yes…thanks. I’ll see how I feel, thank you.”

“Great—well, I won’t keep you. Take care, get well soon.” As she hung up Audrey realized that she hadn’t passed on her address. No matter, she’d phone Fiona again on Saturday morning, see if she was feeling up to it.

She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and left the empty classroom.

T
he playschool was warm, with miniature tables and chairs scattered about, and children who chattered and played with toy cars or scribbled with crayons on pages or pulled on dress-up clothes from a big plastic box in the corner. A few of them stared at Barry but most ignored him.

The teacher, who was very tall and who wore purple glasses and had a nice smile, crouched in front of him.

“Hi there,” she said. “My name is Meg, and I’m delighted to meet you.”

He pushed himself closer into Carmel’s side, his thumb stuck in his mouth. “Sorry,” Carmel said, “he’s a bit shy.”

“That’s fine, that’s no problem,” the teacher said, straightening up. “Can you stay awhile with him? Are you rushing away?”

Carmel shook her head. “I can stay as long as you like,” she said. “I don’t have no job.” Maybe she shouldn’t have said that, maybe it sounded bad to say that.

“Perfect,” the teacher said, pointing to one of the tables where two of the other children were sitting. “We’ll put Barry over here, with Ciaran and Emily. Ciaran never stops talking,” she added under her breath to Carmel as they walked across. “He’ll be perfect for Barry.”

She pulled out a small chair and Barry was persuaded to sit, as long as Carmel crouched beside him. The little girl with the blonde curly hair looked familiar.

“This is Barry,” the teacher said to her and the little boy. “He’s just arrived and he doesn’t know anyone yet, so I’m hoping you’ll be really nice to him, okay? And this is Barry’s mammy, who’s staying for a little while.”

“I saw him in the park,” the little girl said, looking at Barry, “when I hurted my knee from the ladder.”

“You met Barry?”

“Yeah, an’ his mammy too.”

The teacher looked inquiringly at Carmel, who nodded, remembering the mother in her white jeans who’d given Carmel a fiver to go away.

“Maybe you and Barry would do a jigsaw together,” the teacher was saying, and Carmel watched as the little girl began to assemble the jigsaw, picking up pieces and slotting them into place. Barry watched her too, but clung tightly to Carmel’s arm and made no attempt to join in.

“I’ll leave you to it,” the teacher whispered, disappearing to another group. Carmel reached for a book that lay on the table. She opened it and saw a picture of an apple with a word underneath.

“Apple,” she murmured, looking at the shape the word made.

Michael pressed the bell beside
V BROWNE
and waited. After a few seconds the intercom crackled.

“Yes?” A man’s voice, which threw him for a couple of seconds.

“I’m looking for Valerie,” he said. “I’m her father.”

“Please come up,” the man said, after the tiniest of pauses.

The door buzzed and Michael pushed it open and ascended the stairs to the second floor. Valerie was waiting for him in the doorway, wearing her nurse’s uniform.

“I haven’t much time,” she said. “I’m due at work.”

No hello, no how are you.

“This won’t take long,” he said, following her into the apartment’s cramped hallway. She led him through to the sitting room, where a man was standing by the window. As soon as they walked in the man crossed the room, holding out his hand.

“Tom McFadden,” he said, gripping Michael’s fingers tightly. “Good to finally meet you.”

Good to finally meet you? Michael had no idea who the man was, or what he was doing in Valerie’s apartment, appearing very much at home. Older than Valerie, a good dozen years older, maybe more. Receding slightly above his temples, well-cut suit, shiny shoes. He smelled of some aromatic wood.

“Can I make you tea or coffee?” he asked.

“There isn’t time,” Valerie put in, before Michael had a chance to respond. She made no attempt to explain who Tom McFadden was. “What was it you wanted?” she asked Michael.

Not even inviting him to sit, for God’s sake. Michael decided to ignore the other man’s presence. “It’s about the boy in the shop,” he told her. “The paternity test results have come back, and it turns out that he is Ethan’s child. Your nephew,” he added.

Her blank expression didn’t change. The man stood off to the side, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. Michael hoped he felt uncomfortable.

Valerie gave a tiny nod. “Okay.”

Okay? Was that it, was that all she had to say about the fact that her brother had fathered a child before he died? Michael stood his ground, watching her face, willing her to add something, to ask him something.

She turned abruptly. “I won’t keep you,” she said. “Thank you for letting me know.”

“That’s it?” The words were out before he could stop them. “That’s all you have to say?”

She opened the door. “That’s it.”

“You don’t want to meet them?”

But she’d vanished into the hall. Michael followed her.

“Valerie,” he said, lowering his voice, “I’m trying to make amends here. Don’t you see that? I’m trying to do good by Ethan.”

She held the front door open. “You’re a bit late,” she said, looking past him.

Michael shook his head. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “You’re not cruel like that.”

No response, her gaze steadfastly refusing to meet his.

“You know where I am,” he said, “if you change your mind.”

He walked out and turned towards the stairs, and the door clicked shut before he’d taken half a dozen steps.

There was an unfamiliar yellow car parked outside Pauline’s when Audrey got home from work. It had a Cork registration number. Audrey wondered if it belonged to Pauline’s sister. She knew the sister’s daughter had split from her husband not so long ago: Hopefully there wasn’t another family crisis. And where was Pauline’s red Escort?

She walked up her driveway and let herself in, and hung her blue jacket on the banister post, on top of the two others. She really must invest in some kind of a hall stand.

She opened the kitchen door and as usual, Dolly leapt at her ecstatically. Did she think, every morning when Audrey went to work, that she was being abandoned forever? The joyous reunion every afternoon seemed to suggest it.

Audrey bundled the newspaper sheets from the kitchen floor and stuffed them in the bin, and let Dolly out to the garden. The weather had definitely turned chillier, but as yet there was no sign of rain. She inspected the lawn and decided that a final cut would be needed at the weekend.

Back in the kitchen she switched on the local radio station and heard
“…late last night. The man’s name has not yet been released.”

That didn’t sound good. She’d have to wait for the next news to hear the full story. She filled the kettle and plugged it in. She took coffee from the press and milk from the fridge. She lifted down the biscuit jar that sat on an open shelf and chose a Kit Kat from the selection inside.

When the kettle boiled she made coffee. She was taking the Kit Kat out of its wrapper when her doorbell rang. She went out to the hall and opened the door, and smiled inquiringly at the woman with the very pale face and pink-rimmed eyes who stood on the step. She looked like a diluted version of Pauline.

“You must be Sue.”

“Audrey,” the other said quietly—and Audrey’s smile faded at the hollow sound of her voice.

Pilar was not happy. Nine days of unemployment had taken their toll. “When?” she demanded. “When I get job?”

“Soon,” Zarek assured her. “Few more days, you find job.”

“I have forty-seven euros,” Pilar announced, pulling an onion from its net bag. “When it is gone, I have nothing. I hate this bugger country.”

Zarek considered suggesting a move back to Lithuania, and decided against it. “You find job soon,” he repeated. “I am sure.”

“How you sure?” she asked, pulling a knife from the block. “How you know? You have big ball that say what happen in future?”

“Er—”

“Why your boss not phone? Why she not want me?” Pilar sliced off the ends of the onion and yanked away the skin. She’d taken to frying onions at odd hours of the day. The apartment smelled constantly of them. “You tell her about me? You say I am honest, and work hard?”

“Yes, I tell, but many other peoples also looking for work,” Zarek told her. “Very little job in Ireland now.” Keeping his eyes on the knife, just in case.

“You say I your flat mate, you tell this?”

“Yes, yes, I tell everything.”

She sliced the onion furiously, sending slivers flying. “
Pah!
” She flung the onion slices onto the pan and they began to sizzle loudly. “I am fed up bored from the waiting, I am
sick
from the waiting.”

“One more day, maybe,” Zarek said. “I go for walk now. You like something from shop—some chocolate?”

Pilar shook the pan, making the onions jump. “No chocolate,” she cried, “I want
job
, not chocolate.”

“Okay, I go, I see you later.” He made his escape and approached the front door just as Anton walked in, sniffing the air.

“Pilar is frying ze onion?” he asked.

Zarek nodded. “I go for walk.”

Anton dropped his bag of groceries. “I come too,” he said.

“Well? Did you like your new school?”

Barry nodded. Michael looked at Carmel.

“He got on okay,” she said, taking off her jacket before bending to remove Barry’s. “But I had to stay all the time.”

“Did he mix with the others?”

“A bit. An’ he made a snake out of plasticine, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“An’ he drew a picture, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Will we show—” a pause “—your granddad?”

Granddad. The first time the word had been said aloud. Michael thought it best not to react.

She took a folded page from her plastic bag and held it out to him. Michael unfolded it and saw a very wobbly blue circle with a few wavy lines radiating from it.

“It’s the sun,” Carmel said.

“It’s very good,” Michael said. He looked at Barry. “Will we put it on the fridge?”

Barry nodded.

Granddad.

Michael turned to Carmel. “I have something for you.” He took a ring with two keys on it from his pocket and held it out.

She looked at the keys but made no attempt to take them.

“Go on,” Michael said. “Just make sure you don’t lose them.”

She looked up at him. “I never had no key to no place, never.”

“Well, you have them now,” he told her. “It’s just to make things easier, that’s all. Take them, it’s no big deal.”

She took the keys from him. She held them in her palm and studied them.

“It is a big deal for me,” she said, still looking down at them. “It’s a huge deal.”

“No, it’s better this way,” Pauline said, her fingers pleating and releasing the hem of her skirt, over and over as she’d been doing since Audrey’s arrival half an hour earlier. “It’s the best way, it is really.”

Not a tear, not a tremble to her lip, her face a greyish white. Her hands working ceaselessly on the blue cotton hem, her voice hardly there, barely above a whisper. And a terrible calmness, an awful acceptance of the fact that she’d just lost her only child.

“What would he have done, when I was gone?” she asked them. “He’d never have managed, never.” Pleating, releasing, frowning at the hem as if that was the only thing she had to concern herself with.

“I left him alone, you see,” she told Audrey, “while I went to the toilet. And when I got back to the rug there was no sign of him. He’d left everything very tidy, all the leftovers back in the box. And his clothes in a lovely neat bundle. He was always such a tidy boy, right from the start, never a mess.”

Listening to the broken words, Audrey felt so helpless. What could you say, what on earth could possibly be of any use to Pauline now? Better to listen maybe, just to let her go on talking about him, and listen.

“But it’s for the best, it really is,” Pauline said, ignoring the cooling tea on the table in front of her. “He’d have had to go into a home, you see, after I was gone. He’d have hated that, it would have killed him.”

“I’d have looked after him,” her sister Sue put in, weeping, a sodden piece of kitchen roll clutched in her hand. “You know I’d have done that, Pauline.”

But Pauline shook her head in a way that suggested she wasn’t even considering it, that she’d never considered it. “Ah no,” she said softly. “No, you couldn’t have done that, not at all. You’ve enough on your plate, dear.”

Kevin’s body hadn’t been found for eight hours. Pauline had refused to leave the lakeside, refused anything to eat or drink, had stood with a blanket around her shoulders until two police divers had brought him back to her.

A doctor had been summoned by the policewomen who had brought Pauline home. He’d given her some Valium, which Pauline had refused to take, and a prescription for more. Kevin’s body had been transported to the hospital mortuary, where a postmortem was being carried out.

All this had been conveyed tearfully by Sue on the way back to Pauline’s house. “We got a phone call at one in the morning,” she’d told Audrey, blotting her eyes with the end of her sleeve. “We couldn’t believe it. It was a nightmare.”

“He’s better off now,” Pauline repeated, smoothing her skirt over her knees before starting to pleat it all over again. “He’s happy now, nothing can happen to him.”

Audrey had cried too, the tears coming in waves with each fresh memory of him. Standing on his side of the hedge, telling her in great detail about a program he’d seen on television, or a pizza he’d eaten the night before. Reaching out warily to pat Dolly, snatching his hand back when the little dog had lunged at it.

Handing Audrey a blue plastic mug that spelled out her name on its side. Walking to the shop with his mother each day for milk and bread and the paper, and a packet of Jelly Tots.

The idea that he was gone forever, that Audrey would never see him or talk to him again, was too sad to take in. But for Pauline’s sake she had to pull herself together. She pulled a fresh sheet from the kitchen roll on the table and blotted her eyes and blew her nose.

“Dear,” she said, putting a hand on her neighbor’s shoulder, “would you take a small brandy maybe?” She had no idea if there was brandy in Pauline’s house, but she’d had a bottle in her own house for years. She couldn’t recall the circumstances that had led to its purchase—or maybe she’d gotten it as a present—but it lay on its side in the drawer under the DVD player, barely touched.