Authenticity (39 page)

As Roderic and Julia listened to the bells of Christchurch ringing in the New Year, he gave silent thanks for the year that was ending, for everything in it that had been joyful and complete. Two weeks later he returned to Italy to visit his daughters. He rang Julia at the end of every day during his time there, and although this trip was much more relaxed and enjoyable than his last visit, still he valued and needed these calls. On the rare occasions when he was briefly wrongfooted by some tension between himself and his family, to hear Julia’s voice was a comfort; when all had gone well his conversation with her made it perfect, and in both cases it succeeded in bringing his daughters and lover into a single reality. In themselves they were inconsequential, these late-night chats, drowsy and rambling. From the sound of her voice he could summon up her presence, her whole world, could see her curled up on the sofa with her skirt tucked in around her feet, her book spreadeagled beside her where she had abandoned it to answer the phone. He could visualise the low-lit room, its fire, its faded rugs. Once or twice he could even hear Max purring, fast asleep beside her so far, far away.

And then at the end of the first week, something happened. He knew it as soon as she spoke, knew her so well that, even from the inflection of her voice when she said ‘Roderic, hello,’ he understood at once that something was wrong. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, ‘that I feel I can talk about over the phone.’ In the following days he probed gently, asked leading questions about her father, her work, about Hester and the shop, but her responses gave him no real clues.

He spent his last night in Italy in Rome and flew back to Ireland early the following day, went straight from the airport to find Julia finishing up her morning’s work amongst the wardrobes and what nots, her delight to see him again matching his at being back with her. They went up to her flat and immediately he asked what was troubling her.

Julia frowned. ‘It actually happened before you left, but I only found out about it after you’d gone.’

‘It’s to do with William, isn’t it?’

Again she nodded.

‘What happened?’

‘He’s dead.’

For a moment neither of them spoke. Roderic was genuinely shocked by the news, and was struck by Julia’s demeanour, for she looked angry, resentful even, rather than grieved.

‘What happened? Tell me,’ he said. ‘How did you find out?’

‘In the strangest, most banal way you can imagine.’

She had been feeding Max, whose bowl and dish stood in a corner of the kitchen on a sheet of newspaper that she used to change frequently. Spooning chunks of meat and jelly out of a tin, she noticed that the bowl was sitting on a page of death notices. And then all at once she recognised the name:
Armstrong,
heavily printed and then in lighter type,
William
. Max spat and hissed as she pushed him aside roughly, spilling his food as she pulled out the paper.
The wife and
family of the late William Armstrong wish to thank all those who
sympathised with them in their recent tragic bereavement.
Stunned, Julia sat back on her heels on the kitchen floor. There was silence but for the sound of the cat, William’s old enemy, wolfing down its meat.

‘He was dead a month by that stage,’ Julia said. It had evidently happened shortly after she saw him outside the newsagent’s in Dame Street; the thought chilled her. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to simply ignore it even
though we had had a falling out, as I told you.’ She hadn’t known what, if anything, William might have said about this to Liz and was therefore unsure how any communication might be received. ‘Anyway, a few days afterwards I wrote her a letter, mainly on account of the children. I told her that I had only just heard the news. I sent her my sympathy.’ By return of post, Julia received a formal printed acknowledgement, a rectangle of cream card with the text printed in sepia, ‘Such a cold and impersonal thing, it seemed to me.’ Standing in her sitting room with the card in her hand she felt for the first time, she told Roderic, genuine sorrow for William’s death. ‘For we had been friends, you know. We had good times together for all that it ended badly I know that you always found it hard to understand why I liked him, but there was a side to him that was completely real. He had that core of artistic integrity, of genuine discrimination that you always hope to find in people but almost never do. And that made him good to know, in spite of that social mask he hid behind, that formal manner.’

She had thought that the card was the end of it and expected no more contact from William’s family when a few days later Liz rang. ‘She was glad that I had written to her. She said she wanted to see me.’

‘And how did the meeting go?’

‘It’s tomorrow.’

Roderic had been studying Julia carefully throughout all of this, still struck by how angry she was. ‘I feel sorry for his wife,’ he said. ‘How is she, do you think? How is she bearing up?’

‘Still very shocked, I’d say. After a death such as that, you know …’

‘What do you mean?’

Only then did Julia realise that she hadn’t told Roderic the manner of William’s passing, and yet still she was surprised that he hadn’t known.

‘What do you think I mean? What else could have happened? Didn’t you guess? I knew as much as soon as I saw it in the paper, and liz referred to it obliquely when I spoke to her on the phone. Oh, the stupid man!’ she said. ‘The stupid, stupid man. Now those children will have to go through everything I’ve gone through for the rest of their lives, only it’ll be far worse because it wasn’t an accident; it didn’t have to happen. He didn’t deserve it, Roderic.’

‘His death, you mean?’

‘I’m talking about his life. He didn’t deserve his life: his gift, his children, none of it’

Never had he seen her in such a fury; never had she seemed to him so young. Roderic was full of compassion now for William, whom he had never liked in life. ‘It’s extremely difficult,’ he said, ‘to come through. Not just as an artist but on a human level – to come through fully and completely. And life is very long.’

‘Not always it isn’t,’ she said. ‘Not always.’

‘Months ago you said that you befriended William in the first instance because he reminded you of me. Do you remember that? At the time I wouldn’t hear tell of it but you were right.’ What shocked him about William’s fate was that he understood it all too well and saw in it an icy version of his own destructive ways. He had always known that a certain kind of cold rectitude was every bit as deadly as more generally acknowledged ways of wrecking one’s life: drink, drugs, a sex life that was completely out of control. ‘Perhaps it’s even worse,’ he said to Julia, ‘William’s way, because the damage is hidden. By the time anyone realises that something is seriously wrong, it’s too late.’

‘But
I
knew. I knew right from the start. And yet there was nothing I could do.’ Her anger was waning into sorrow.

‘The last time I saw him,’ she went on, ‘he said that art could destroy lives and that it had almost destroyed his. I told him that he was wrong but now I understand.’

‘He
was
wrong,’ Roderic insisted. ‘It isn’t art that’s the problem. It’s when it’s thwarted or denied, that’s where the danger comes from,’ Julia said nothing. Some fundamental point about all of this was still, he thought, eluding her. He studied her where she stood leaning against her own kitchen table with her arms tightly folded. ‘Is Liz aware that you had a row with William?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. She gave no indication of it.’

‘Where are you meeting her tomorrow?’

‘In the Shelbourne in mid afternoon.’

Roderic was correct in thinking that the full import of William’s death had still not got through to Julia, and Julia herself began to realise this when she met Liz. Julia was somewhat late in arriving at the hotel and William’s widow was already there, installed on a sofa beneath the chandeliers, gazing out of the window at the bare trees of the Green, black against a colourless winter sky. The shock of what she had gone through in recent weeks had translated her and in spite of her familiar pearls, her cream wools and linens, she looked fundamentally different from the woman she had been when Julia visited her at home almost exactly a year ago. Simply seeing her today removed another layer of denial and incomprehension, and moved Julia closer to the heart of the mystery that was William’s death.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t let you know as soon as it happened. To be honest, in the confusion of that time I simply didn’t think of it. He didn’t speak of you often in the last weeks; I had the impression that perhaps you had drifted out of each other’s lives. Most everything connected with his painting fell by the wayside after he went back to the office. And I set no store by it. I thought it was all just a whim, something he’d got out of his system during those months he was off work, and that now life was getting back to normal. How could I not have seen the risk? That’s what I still don’t understand.
You
saw it, you, a stranger, the very first time you met him.’ And although Julia had made exactly this point to Roderic the day
before, she now disclaimed it. ‘But you did see the danger,’ Liz persisted, ‘and you took the time and trouble to warn me. I’ll always remember you for that. Also you helped William with his work, you gave him moral support. He valued all of that more than you might realise. He always spoke well of you, both you and your friend. He said you were authentic. Whatever happiness and fulfilment there was in the last year of his life was in no small part due to you. I asked to see you today because I wanted to thank you,’ Liz went on ‘and I wanted to give you this.’

From the floor beside her she took a dark green folder tied shut with wide black ribbons. ‘Open it,’ she said as she handed it to Julia. Inside was one of William’s paintings. It was a watercolour, one of the dark blue series that he himself had shown to her and that she had particularly admired, but on looking at it now she felt a kind of terror. It emanated bad energy of a type she had previously experienced only when looking at certain artefacts from ancient Egypt: a tremendous power that was wholly negative.

She couldn’t speak the words of gratitude that Liz was doubtless expecting to hear; it took a huge effort of will not to say, ‘I don’t want it. Take it away from me.’ Dumb, she sat there.

Liz could see that Julia was completely overwhelmed but fortunately she appeared to misunderstand the reason. ‘It’s as much a souvenir of William as anything,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how good he really was – I don’t know anything about painting – but he told me you thought he was gifted. And so I wanted you to have this, because of the friendship there was between you.’

A dark thought blossomed in Julia’s mind: did Liz really mean all of this? Did she perhaps know that things had ended badly between her husband and his friend and was she baiting Julia, curious to see how she would react? Was she not deeply hostile to art and everything connected with it and was this gift not then as poisonous in intention as it was
in effect? Julia had never been close to Liz. She looked at her closely but the other woman was inscrutable. ‘Thank you,’ Julia said and she closed up the folder again. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘He left such a lot of work. Again, it’s hard for me to judge but it seems like an astonishing amount, given the length of time involved.’

‘What shall you do with it?’

‘I really have no idea. I’ve closed the room up for the moment. I have too many other things to deal with, so many practical details. No, the paintings are going to have to wait.’

Their conversation continued for some time longer. They did not speak explicitly of what William had done, but by the time they parted the enormity of it had been fully borne in to Julia. She found herself out on the cold street with the unwanted painting under her arm, thinking ‘William is dead. He took his own life. William is
dead
.’

She crossed the road and went into the Green to be alone, sat down on a bench and put the folder beside her. It was late in the afternoon and the light was failing; the February sun made a vast pale watery nebula amongst the clouds. Overwhelmed by sudden grief she bent forward with her right arm coiled protectively around her head. She wanted to close out the world, wanted to be in bed, completely hidden under the blankets. The tears came and she didn’t try to stop them.

‘Excuse me?’

Julia unfolded herself, looked up.

‘Are you feeling all right?’

His navy suit and tweed overcoat were impeccable, his leather briefcase fashionably scuffed. He had the slightly jowly look of a man who habitually ate too well and didn’t take enough exercise, but his face was kindly and he was looking at her with an expression of genuine concern.

She immediately sat up straight. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and she wiped her eyes. ‘Never been better,’

‘You don’t look fine to me,’ the man said. ‘Do you need any help?’

‘No, really, I’ll be grand.’

From her pocket she took her cigarettes: a smoke would steady her nerves.

‘The least I can do is give you a light,’ the man said, holding out a box of matches, and she could see how bewildered he was when she said, ‘Oh God no, anything but that,’ and tossed the cigarette aside.

‘Look, I’m going home now,’ and she stood up.

‘I can go part of the way with you, if you like.’

‘No!’ Julia said. It came out with more vehemence than she had intended. ‘I mean, no thank you. You’re extremely kind, but it’s not necessary.’

Still he looked doubtful.

‘I’d best be on my way,’ but he called her back.

‘You’re forgetting this,’ and he picked up the folder she had left sitting on the bench, handed it to her. And then he smiled. For a moment there was between them a connection that was as profound as it was brief and she was genuinely grateful for this stranger’s kindness. ‘Be sure,’ he said ‘to go straight home.’

She didn’t go home: she went directly to Roderic’s house and told him of all that had passed between herself and Liz, showed him the painting. ‘What am I going to do with it?’ she said. ‘I don’t want it but I can’t simply burn it or throw it away. I’ve never in my life destroyed anyone else’s art, and I’m certainly not starting with this.’