Authenticity (31 page)

‘And perhaps it would have been better if Liz and I had separated then. We could have, you know, got on with our lives differently.’

‘What about your children?’ Julia said.

But he dismissed this: ‘We didn’t have any children then. Having them was one of the conditions of our staying together. Liz insisted on it’

His confidences embarrassed her. ‘William, I really don’t think you should be telling me all these things.’

Having made the point she hoped he would be more reticent in future, but as she drank her tea today he told her that it was exactly a year since his father had died.

‘From that text I wrote for you, you may have thought we were close but we weren’t, not at all. He was a completely overbearing man, always finding fault with my brother and me, always banging on about achievement. My brother wanted to be a physics teacher but my father thought that showed a scandalous lack of ambition and nagged him out of it, pretty well forced him to do a doctorate. He’s a research scientist now, but he went to live in Australia years ago: you can draw your own conclusions from that. I always knew that when my father died I wouldn’t be grief stricken, but I don’t think I ever expected to be as relieved as I was. Knowing he wasn’t there made me feel free.’

It was a view with which Julia, given her own family circumstances, could neither identify nor sympathise. It struck her that the crisis into which he had plunged in the year since then was perhaps not unrelated to the loss of his father, and she wondered if this had also occurred to William. From the way he spoke, she doubted it.

She kept her own remarks limited and neutral until such time as there was a lull in the conversation, then pointed to the bookshop bag on the chair beside him and asked what was in it. He passed a huge volume on Venetian art across the table to her.

‘It’s only just been published,’ he said. ‘I bought it on something of an impulse. As soon as I saw it I thought, “Why not?” The text looks intelligent. I read something by the same man last year and it was good, lucid and to the point.’

‘You’re lucky to be able to buy something like this whenever the notion takes you.’

‘I suppose so,’ William said. ‘You can borrow it in due course, if you wish.’

‘Thanks. I’ll take you up on that.’

He watched her as she turned the pages, more relaxed now that it was reproductions of Titian, Tiepolo and Veronese that she was examining, rather than his own work. Viewed from this angle, with her head down and her eyes lowered, she looked quite attractive, her face small and pointed against that great tangle of hair that framed it. He could see today what Roderic admired in her, something he couldn’t always do.

‘I’m sure you’ve been to Venice,’ she said, without looking up.

‘Many times.’

He wondered what it would be like to make love to her, a thought rooted in curiosity rather than desire, the curiosity that drove his sexual life more than any physical passion. Until you had been to bed with someone you never could tell how they would be and for William making the comparison between what he might imagine and the reality was where the interest lay. What he was imagining today was being above her, leaning over her, entering her, kissing her, brushing that great mane of hair back from that small face…

All of a sudden she lifted her head and stared him straight in the eye, forbidding and stern.
Stop that right now,
the look said.
Don’t even think about it.
William was mortified. How could she possibly have known, he wondered. She was looking down at the book again, at a welter of angels in an updraught, golden clouds and long slender trumpets, as though a great wind were blowing through heaven. ‘I always think the spirit of Tiepolo is the spirit of springtime, and of Tintoretto’s as winter,’ and she turned the page. Her voice was completely neutral, as if nothing unusual had passed between them a moment earlier and he began to ask himself if it had actually happened or had it all been in his mind. The sleeves of the senators’ wine-dark robes dripped ermine.

He was disappointed that Roderic hadn’t been along with her today, regretted that he showed so little interest in him,
although he would never have had the courage to show his paintings to the other man. He would have liked to be able to count Roderic Kennedy amongst his friends. Julia was a nice girl but there was no real cachet in knowing her. She would never have admitted it but she was probably secretly thrilled to have such a successful and eminent man as her lover, even if he was old enough to be her father. Perhaps she was the kind of woman who only liked much older men.

‘I suppose Roderic goes back to Italy from time to time.’

Julia didn’t look up from the page she was examining and didn’t reply.

‘He has family there, doesn’t he?’ William persisted.

‘He does,’ she eventually agreed.

‘Has he been back there recently?’

‘You’d have to ask Roderic that,’ Julia said.

‘I would, but I never see him. Sometimes I even get the feeling that he’s trying to avoid me.’

‘We try not to live too much in each other’s pockets,’ she said. ‘We each have our own lives, our own circle of friends.’

‘I suppose you do. I suppose you have to. Being involved with someone so much older must present all sorts of difficulties.’

She lifted her head and closed the book. ‘And what sort of difficulties might they be?’

‘Well, what you’ve just said, for example, about not being able to have friends in common. There must be lots of things in your lives that you can’t share with each other. And then of course he does have this family off abroad and that has all sorts of implications for the future.’

‘Such as?’

‘Obviously he won’t want to have any more children. He’s about my age and I can tell you this, the last thing any man wants years down the line from nappies, broken nights and the rest of it, is to start the same thing all over again.’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Julia said. ‘I don’t believe it. Let me set you straight on a couple of points. First, you are
not the golden mean against which all other men are to be measured. Just because you think or feel something doesn’t mean Roderic is bound to think and feel in the same way. He’s not like you; not a bit like you. He listens to people and you don’t. I didn’t say that we can’t have friends in common, I said we each have our own life, our own circle of friends, and that’s a different thing altogether. Second, there are no problems or difficulties between Roderic and me, but we’re getting a bit fed up with other people trying to make out that there are, people who hardly know us. I put it down to jealousy. So there’s an age difference – so what? I have everything I want in Roderic. Do you understand that? Do you hear what I’m saying?
Everything
.’

He wondered how she managed to load one small word with such a charge of erotic satisfaction. It sent a tremor through him but it wasn’t pleasurable. He imagined that this was how a woman must feel, touched intimately by a man completely against her will. As she said it she passed the book back across the table to him, shoving it into his hands and releasing it as soon as it was in his grip, its great weight almost causing him to drop it. Then she nodded towards the empty cups. ‘I’m paying for this.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Julia.’

‘Well, I’m paying for mine.’ From her pocket she took a small grubby purse and William watched her as she fished from it coins to cover the price of a cup of tea, shoved them in under the saucer.

‘I’m sorry if I offended you,’ he said, but the tone suggested he was the one who was put out.

‘Save it,’ Julia said. ‘I don’t need this.’

She was on her feet now, was off, and although he called after her she didn’t turn back, just lifted to him the back of her hand.

He had arranged to meet Serena in a café in the square near his hotel at three o’clock, but three o’clock came and went and did not bring her. Five past three, ten past three, a quarter past three, and Roderic’s anxiety gradually changed to annoyance. He had finished his coffee and had all but given up when, at three thirty, he heard a roar in the distance. A large motorbike tore into the square and everyone stopped what they were doing to stare as it went round twice before squealing to a halt. The pillion passenger, a young woman with long dark hair – neither she nor her companion was wearing a helmet – climbed down and looked across at the café, then turned away again. She gave him a long kiss and then stepped back as he fired up the bike and roared out of the square in an explosion of noise. She stood and watched him go, listened to the racket die away in the distance and then, when there was silence again, ambled slowly over to the café and dropped herself into a chair beside Roderic.

‘Hey, Daddy,’ she said, as casually as if she had last seen him only that morning.

‘You’ll kill yourself if you fall off that thing,’ he said severely. ‘You should always wear a helmet.’

Serena frowned and shrugged.

‘What would you like to drink?’

‘I’ll have a beer,’ she said, adding as a gibe, ‘want to have one too?’

‘Maybe I will. Have you got a problem with that?’

For one brief second she believed him. Her defiance melted away and she stared at him with sheer terror, terror he recognised, terror he remembered, her face now
the face of a little child, afraid of her drunken father. This was the Serena he remembered; and she, evidently, hadn’t forgotten him.

The waiter appeared at their table. Completely rattled, Roderic ordered a lemonade. ‘I’ll have the same,’ Serena mumbled.

‘Would you like anything to eat?’ She shook her head. Although he had won the first round he’d been too heavy handed and would have to go more gently. It was Marta who had urged him to go on the offensive as quickly and completely as possible. They sat in silence until their drinks arrived and even then he was at a loss to get a conversation going.

‘You look extremely well,’ he said eventually.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re very tall.’

‘Yeah,’ and for the first time she gave a glimmer of a smile.

‘I must have inherited it from you.’

‘You could be a fashion model.’

‘Yeah, I know I could. The last time I was in Florence a woman stopped me on the street, a scout from one of the agencies in Milan. She gave me her card and told me to ring her.’

‘And do you think you’ll follow it up?’

Serena considered this for a moment. ‘No, I probably won’t bother. I thought at first it could be fun. Then I thought it would be sort of boring, just walking up and down a platform thing all day in stupid dresses.’

‘Are you interested in fashion?’

‘No. It’s a stupid business, isn’t it?’

‘Still,’ Roderic said, ‘it was nice to have the offer.’

‘Suppose so,’ she said lightly, but he could tell she was secretly delighted.

Marta had made some offhand comment about Serena’s looks the other day, something about how she had grown up to be ‘quite fine’. By this modest understatement she had
failed to convey their eldest daughter’s remarkable beauty. Leaning back in her chair, Serena radiated a lazy but potent sensuality. Long-limbed, tanned, with thick glossy brown hair that fell to her waist and a fine oval face, what made her unique were her eyes. She had the same large limpid blue eyes as Roderic’s mother and his sister Maeve, and combined with the Mediterranean complexion she had inherited from Marta the effect was unforgettable. As with his youngest daughter, he would have been happy simply to sit and look at her for some time without speaking, trying to square the child in his mind with the person now before him.

‘So if you’re not going to be a model, what would you like to do?’

‘No idea.’

‘What do you enjoy at school?’

‘Greek,’ she said, surprising him, although he knew from letters that she was doing
Classico,
the most difficult option in the Italian school syllabus. Marta had told him that in spite of Serena’s laziness, her marks were consistently excellent. ‘I like Greek.’

‘You could study that at university when the time comes,’ he said.

‘Not much use, though, is it?’ she replied. ‘Don’t know how I’d earn my living with Greek.’

He could see her weighing the next remark in her mind and deciding to risk it.

‘Bit like studying painting, I suppose.’

‘Oh you’d manage,’ he said, refusing to rise to the bait.

‘Best to do something you like and let making a living look after itself, that’s what I always say.’ He looked at her again out of the corner of his eye. ‘You’ll do all right in life,’ he said, ‘that’s for sure.’

He intended this as a compliment and Serena took it as such. She understood exactly what he was getting at, and drank her lemonade in an attempt to conceal the smile his words provoked.

Suddenly, when he least expected it, she put her glass down hard upon the table and said, ‘It was unbelievable when you didn’t show up last year.
Unbelievable.
The fuss and the disappointment, I mean. Allegra cried for three days. I wasn’t surprised, though. I knew you’d let us down.’

‘Well, I’m here now,’ Roderic said, and she threw him a look that plainly said
Big deal if you are.

‘It’s good that Mamma met Gianni. I’m glad about that.’

‘Yes, it’s wonderful, isn’t it?’ he replied insincerely, marvelling at how exactly she found all his weak points, all the areas in which he was most vulnerable.

‘They get on really well together,’ she went on pitilessly. ‘I mean really,
really
well. Know what I mean?’

‘Mmn,’ Roderic said. ‘And what about you; do you like him?’

To his surprise, this caught her completely on the hop. ‘He’s all right, I suppose,’ and she shrugged. ‘I could live without him.’

‘Oriana thinks he’s nice,’ he said, being at something of a loss as to what else to say.

‘That’s just because
she’s
so nice,’ Serena said, adding, ‘Oriana’s a great kid.’ Then she said with fierceness, ‘I love Oriana. I absolutely love her.’

‘I know that. She told me so.’

They sat in silence for a moment. ‘Your Uncle Dennis sends his love.’

‘Give him mine when you see him,’ Serena said. ‘I like Dennis. Dennis is cool.’

Roderic drank his lemonade and considered this novel assessment of his brother.

‘He still always sends us cards and stuff, remembers our birthdays. It would be nice to see
him
again.’

‘For that you’ll probably have to go to Ireland. He almost never goes abroad now, he hates flying.’

‘We have aunts, too, don’t we? Maeve and Clee – something, I can never remember.’

‘Cliona, yes.’

‘We never hear from them.’

‘I don’t have a great deal of contact with them either, to tell you the truth.’

Serena shifted in her chair and crossed her legs. She was wearing cut-off jeans and sandals, and there was a dark blue butterfly tattooed just above her ankle bone.

‘Is that permanent?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Do you like it?’

‘It looks great.’

In the last question and answer of this brief exchange, something strange passed between them. It was as though they were simply a man and a woman rather than father and daughter. Roderic had a particular knack of being able to tune in suddenly to a sexual level in a deep, fleeting way. It was a singular trick and the ability to do it was evidently something Serena had inherited for it was there, manipulative and sly, in the way she had asked him:
Do you like it?
and the identical impulse was there in his immediate, unthinking reply:
It looks great.
Each had surprised the other and they sat in silence for a few moments afterwards. For the first time ever Roderic knew exactly, but
exactly
what it was like to be on the receiving end of his own charisma. The whole of his life seemed to flash before him. Serena, for whom this was quite a new game, wasn’t shocked at all. It pleased her immensely to think she could do to other people what she had just seen done, and a glimmer of a smile crossed her face.

‘It’s good that it’s only a temporary tattoo,’ Roderic said eventually. ‘It looks well but you might not always want to have it’

Higher up her leg, on her shin, there was a faint scar. He stared at it for some moments for it reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what. Then it all came back to him. The cherry tree at Marta’s parents’ house. Serena lost in the branches, behind the screen of long pointed leaves, searching for the fruit she craved; then a shriek and a rush of
air as she fell, a tiny female Icarus in a blue summer dress. It was Roderic who reached her first where she lay in the grass screaming, who saw the cut on her leg, ‘The rake, the rake, she’s fallen on the rake.’ It was Roderic who carried her in his arms to the doctor’s surgery, Roderic who sat beside her and held her hand as the wound was stanched and stitched. ‘It’ll leave a scar,’ the doctor said, as he washed his hands afterwards. ‘She’ll have a mark there for the rest of her life.’ And here was the mark; here was the proof that this was Serena.

Ever since meeting her today he had been trying to square, somewhere in the back of his mind, the sensual young woman before him with the child he remembered. Where was she now, that little girl? He hated being disturbed when he was in his studio, was unable to work with others around, but his daughters had been the exception to this and had always been welcome. Serena’s footsteps as she walked over the gravel path in the back garden, then the uneven clumping noise as she scaled the four wooden steps up to the studio, the squeak of the opening door: ‘Papà?’ This little fugue of sounds was branded into his soul for ever. She would settle into the blue chair and chatter to him, or make pictures of her own at the low table in the corner that Roderic had set up and furnished with papers and paints for this express purpose. Sometimes she would cross to the easel and inspect his work before passing eccentric judgement on it. Lithe, mischievous, blue-eyed sprite, she was like a creature from another world where the life of the imagination was taken for granted, taken as truth. He remembered the profound companionship of those hours they spent together in the studio. Because of the strange beauty of her consciousness, his relationship with her was unlike any he had had in his life before. He found in fatherhood riches and pleasures he had never expected.

‘Do you remember,’ he said to her now, ‘do you remember when you were a little girl?’

‘You shouldn’t ask me that,’ she said, but he was too wrapped up in his own memories to notice the warning sign in the sullen tones of her voice. He demurred, insisted, until she turned on him with venom.

‘Since you ask, I remember everything.
Everything,
do you hear me? I remember lying awake at night waiting for you to come home, with that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach of dread, like before an exam or before going to the dentist. I remember your getting drunk at the Christmas lunch, and Mamma being disgraced before the whole family. I remember … no, no, you asked, and I’m not going to stop now. I remember how after you’d gone, when you went back to Ireland, you used to ring Mamma at two in the morning. The sound of the phone would wake me, and I heard her trying to reason with you, but there was no point, because you were drunk. Then at last she would hang up, and leave the phone off the hook. I would hear her crying, and I didn’t have the words to tell her that she was lucky, lucky you were gone and not coming back.’

Serena was only beginning to get into her stride now. She recalled to Roderic incidents he had long since pushed to the back of his mind as being too shameful to be thought of. She reminded him too of other things he had actually forgotten, and her angry words called them up again before him in vivid and agonising detail. As she became more and more upset she started to cry and he offered her a clean handkerchief, which she accepted. She blew her nose, and then went on haranguing him through her sobs. Neither of them seemed to care that people were staring at them now, for they cut a curious figure in the quiet town square: the exquisitely beautiful teenager, furious and weeping, and the ravaged melancholy giant beside her.

Her anger, Roderic thought, was wholly reasonable. What astonished him most of all was that no one had ever called him to account in this way before. Over the years, from long before he stopped drinking, he had pointed the finger quietly
at himself, had been aware of how deeply culpable he was. Marta had not reproached him in this vehement way, and Dennis’s love – there was no other word for it – had been wholly unconditional. He felt a kind of gratitude to Serena for pulling him into line. He would have hated it if everyone had turned on him, unleashing ire and recrimination: it was exactly that he had feared a year ago, so much so that it had made him unable to travel. But it was right that someone did it, and Serena did it now.

‘Then there was the time you went to Ireland and you stopped in Rome on the way back for two days and you never even bothered to tell us where you were. Mamma was frantic; she didn’t know what had happened. You were too cowardly to ring her. I was sorry when you did come back. I’d hoped we’d never see you again. When at last you did leave for good, we were all glad, do you know that? It was a relief to be rid of you.’

Was this the truth? ‘Serena,’ he said gently, ‘why did you come here today? You didn’t have to meet me. You could have said no.’

Her response was to lower her head until it touched the table and utter a long primal howl, the meaning of which Roderic understood immediately. He was her father: that was why she had come to him.

‘My darling,’ and he tried to put his arm around her shoulders but she shrieked, punched him away, still howling. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, feeling utterly helpless.

She was so far gone she could hardly get the words out. ‘I want to go home.’