The Book of Evidence (6 page)

! were something that might b l o w up in his face at any m o m e n t . I was very fierce in those days, b r i m m i n g with impatience and scorn. We must have been a peculiar pair, yet we g o t on, at some deep level. Perhaps I seemed to him the son he w o u l d never have, perhaps he seemed to me the father I had never had. (This is another idea put forward by my counsel. I don't k n o w h o w you think of them, Maolseachlainn.) W h a t was I saying? Charlie. He took me to the races one day, when I was a boy. He was all kitted out for the occasion, in tweeds and b r o w n brogues and a little trilby hat tipped at a raffish angle over one eye. He even had a pair of binoculars, though he did not seem to be able to get them properly in focus. He looked the part, except for a certain stifled something in his manner that m a d e it seem all the time as if he were about to break d o w n in helpless giggles at himself and his pretensions. I 35

was fifteen or sixteen.
In
the drinks marquee he turned to me blandly and asked what I would have, Irish or Scotch —

and brought me home in the evening loudly and

truculently drunk. My father was furious, my mother laughed. Charlie maintained an unruffled silcnce, pretending nothing was amiss, and slipped me a fiver as I was stumbling off to bed.

Ah Charles, I am sorry, truly I am.

N o w , as if he too were remembering that other time, he insisted on buying a drink, and pursed his lips disapprovingly when I asked for gin. He was a whiskey man, himself. It was part of his disguise, like the striped suit and the wom-down, handmade shoes, and that wonderful, winged helmet of hair, now silvered all over, which, so my mother liked to say, had destined him for greatness. He had always managed to avoid his destiny, however. I asked him what he was doing these days. Oh, he said, Fm running a gallery. And he glanced about him with an abstracted, wondering smile, as if he were himself surprised at such a notion. I nodded. So that was what had bucked him up, what had given him that self-sufficient air.

I saw him in some dusty room, a forgotten backwater, with a few murky
pictures
on the wall, and a frosty spinster for a secretary who bickered with him. over tea money and gave him a tie wrapped in tissue-paper every Christmas. Poor Charlie, forced to take himself seriously at last, with a business to take care of, and painters after him for their money. Here, I said, let me, and peeled a note from my rapidly dwindling wad and slapped it on the bar.

To be candid, however, I was thinking of asking him for a loan. What prevented me was — well, there will be laughter in court, I know, but the fact is 1 felt it would be in bad taste. It is not that I am squeamish about these matters, in my time I have touched sadder eases than 36

Charlie for a float, but there was something in the present circumstances that held me back. We m i g h t indeed have been a father and son — not
my
father, of course, and certainly not
this
son — meeting by chance in a brothel.

Constrained, sad, obscurely ashamed, we blustered and bluffed, k n o c k i n g our glasses together and toasting the g o o d old days. B u t it was no use, in a little while wc faltered, and fell g l o o m i l y silent. T h e n suddenly Charlie looked at me, with what was almost a flash of pain, and in a l o w , impassioned voice said, Freddie, what have you d o n e to yourself? At once abashed, he leaned a w a y f r o m me in a panic, desperately grinning, and puffed a covering cloud of s m o k e . First f was furious, and then depressed.

R e a l l y , I was not in the m o o d for this kind of thing. I glanced at the clock behind the bar and, purposely misunderstanding him, said yes, it was true, it had been a long day, I was o v e r d o i n g it, and I finished my drink and shook his hand and took up my b a g and left.

T h e r e it w a s again, in another f o r m , the same question: w h y , Freddie, w h y are y o u living like this? I b r o o d e d on it next m o r n i n g on the w a y to C o o l g r a n g e . T h e day looked as I felt, grey and flat and heavy. T h e bus plunged laboriously d o w n the n a r r o w country roads, pitching and w a l l o w i n g , with a dull
zip
and roar that seemed the sound o f m y o w n b l o o d beating i n m y brain. T h e myriad possibilities of the past lay behind m e , a strew of wreckage.

W a s there, in all that, one particular shard — a decision reached, a road taken, a signpost followed — that w o u l d s h o w me just h o w I had c o m e to my present state? N o , of course not. My j o u r n e y , like everyone else's, even yours, your honour, had not been a thing of signposts and decisive marching, but drift only, a kind of slow 37

subsidcncc, my shoulders bowing down under the gradual accuinulation of all the things I had not done. Yet I can see that to someone like Charlie, watching from the ground, I must have seemed a creature of fable scaling the far peaks, rising higher and ever higher, leaping at last from the pmnaclc into marvellous, fiery flight, my head wreathed in flames. But I am not Euphorion. I am not even his father.

The question is wrong, that's the trouble. It assumes that actions are determined by volition, deliberate thought, a carcful weighing-up of facts, all that puppet-show twitching which passes for consciousness. I was living like that because 1 was living like that, there is no other answer.

When I look back, no matter how hard I try I can see no clear break between one phase and another. It is a seamless flow — although flow is too strong a word. More a sort of busy stasis, a sort of running on the spot. Even that was too fast for me, however, I was always a little way behind, trotting in the rear of my own life. In Dublin I was still the boy growing up at Coolgrange, in America I was the callow young man of Dublin days, on the islands I became a kind of American. And nothing was enough. Everything was coming, was on the way, was about to be. Stuck in the past, I was always peering beyond the present towards a limitless future. N o w , I suppose, the future may be said to have arrived.

None of this means anything. Anything of significance, that is. ! am just amusing myself, musing, losing myself in a welter of words. For words in here are a form of luxury, of seiisuousiiess, they are all we have been allowed to keep of the rich, wasteful world from which we are shut away.

O God, O Christ, release me from this place.

0 Someone.

1 must stop, I am getting one of my headaches. They come with increasing frequency. Don*t worry, your 38

lordship, no need to s u m m o n the tipstaff or the sergeant-at-arms or whatever he's called — they are just headaches. I shall not suddenly go berserk, clutching my temples and bawling for my — but speak of the devil, here she is, Ma Jarrett herself. Coine, step into the witness box, mother.

IT WAS early afternoon when I reached Coolgrange. I got down at the cross and watched the bos lumber away, its fat back-end looking somehow derisive. The noise of the engine faded, and the throbbing silence of summer settled again on the fields. The sky was still overcast, but the sun was asserting itself somewhere, and the light that had been dull and flat was now a tender, pearl-grey glow. 1 stood and looked about me. What a surprise the familiar always is. It was all there, the broken gate, the drive, the long meadow, the oak wood — home! — all perfectly in place, waiting for me, a little smaller than 1 remembered, like a scale-model of itself. I laughed. It was not really a laugh, more an exclamation of startlement and recognition.

Before such scenes as this — trees, the shimmering fields, that mild soft light — I always feel like a traveller on the point of departure. Even arriving I seemed to be turning away, with a lingering glance at the lost land. 1 set off up the drive with my raincoat over my shoulder and my battered bag in my hand, a walking cliche, though it's true I was a bit long in the tooth, and a bit on the beefy side, for the part of the prodigal son. A dog slid out of the hedge at me with a guttural snarl, teeth bared to the gums.

40

I halted- I do not like dogs. This was a black-and-white thing with shifty eyes, it m o v e d back and forth in a half-circle in front of me, still growling, keeping its belly close to the ground. I held the suitcase against my knees for a shield, and spoke sharply, as to an unruly child, but my voice came out a broken falsetto, and for a m o m e n t there was a sense of general merriment, as if there were faces hidden a m o n g the leaves, laughing. Then a whistle sounded, and the brute whined and turned guiltily toward the house. My mother was standing on the front steps. She laughed. Suddenly the sun came out, with a kind of soundless report. G o o d G o d , she said, it is you, I thought I was seeing things.

I hesitate. It is not that I am lost for words, but the opposite. There is so much to be said I do not k n o w where to begin. I feel myself staggering backwards slowly, clutching in my outstretched arms a huge, unwieldy and yet weightless burden. She is so much, and, at the same time, nothing. I must go carefully, this is perilous ground.

Of course, I k n o w that whatever I say will be smirked at knowingly by the amateur psychologists packing the court. When it comes to the subject of mothers, simplicity is not permitted. All the same, I shall try to be honest and clear. Her n a m e is D o r o t h y , though everyone has always called her Dolly, I do not k n o w why, for there is nothing doll-like about her. She is a large, vigorous w o m a n with the broad face and heavy hair of a tinker's wife. In describing her thus I do not mean to be disrespectful. She is impressive, in her way, at once majestic and slovenly. I recall her f r o m my childhood as a constant but remote presence, statuesque, blank-eyed, impossibly handsome in an Ancient R o m a n sort of way, like a marble figure at the 41

far side of a lawn. Later on, though, she g r e w to be top-heavy, with a big backsidc and slim legs, a contrast which, when I was an adolcsccnt and morbidly interested in such tilings, led mc to spcculatc on the complicated architecture that must be ncccssary to bridge the g a p under her skirt between those shapely knees and that thick waist. Hello, mother, I said, and looked a w a y f r o m her, casting about mc crossly for something
neutral
on which to concentrate.

I was annoyed already. She has that effect on me, I have only to stand before her and instantly the irritation and resentment begin to seethe in my breast. I was surprised. I had thought that after ten years there w o u l d be at least a m o m e n t of gracc between our meeting and the first attack of filial heartburn, but not a bit of it, here I was, j a w clcnchcd, glaring venomously at a tuft of weed sprouting f r o m a crack in the stone steps where she stood. She was not much changed. Her b o s o m , which cries out to be calicd ample, had descended to just above her midriff. Also she had g r o w n a little moustache. She w o r e b a g g y corduroy trousers and a cardigan with sagging pockets. She c a m c d o w n the steps to me and laughed again. Y o u have put on weight, Freddie, she said, y o u ' v e g o t fat. Then she rcachcd out and — this is true, I swear it — and took hold of a piece of my stomach and rolled it playfully between a finger and thumb. This w o m a n , this w o m a n — what can I say? I was thirty-eight, a m a n of parts, with a wife and a son and an impressive Mediterranean tan, I carried myself with gravitas and a certain faint air of menace, and she, what did she do? — she pinched my belly and laughed her p h i e g m y laugh. Is it any w o n d e r I have ended up in jail? Is it? T h e d o g , seeing that I was to be accepted, sidled up to me and tried to lick my hand, which g a v e me an opportunity to deliver it a g o o d hard kick in the ribs. That m a d e me feel better, but not m u c h , and not for long.

42

Is there anything as powerfully, as piercingly evocative, as the smell of the house in which one's childhood was spent? I try to avoid generalisations, as no doubt the court has noticed, but surely this is a universal, this involuntary spasm of recognition which comes with the first whiff of that humble, drab, brownish smell, which is hardly a smell at all, m o r e an emanation, a sort of sigh exhaled by the thousands of k n o w n but unacknowledged tiny things that collectively constitute what is called home. I stepped into the hall and for an instant it was as if I had stepped soundlessly through the m e m b r a n e of time itself. I faltered, tottering inwardly. Hatstand with broken umbrella, that floor tile, still loose. Get out, Patch, d a m n you! my mother said behind me, and the d o g yelped. T h e taste of apples unaccountably flooded my mouth. I felt vaguely as if something m o m e n t o u s had happened, as if in the blink of an eye everything around me had been whipped a w a y and replaced instantly with an exact replica, perfect in every detail, d o w n to the last dust-mote. I walked on, into this substitute world, tactfully keeping a blank expression, and seemed to hear a disembodied held breath being let go in relief that the difficult trick had w o r k e d yet again.

We went into the kitchen. It looked like the lair of s o m e large, scavenging creature. Lord, mother, I said, are you
living
in here? Items o f clothing, an old w o m a n ' s nameless rags, were stuffed between the dishes on the dresser. T h e toes of three or four pairs of shoes peeped out f r o m under a cupboard, an unnerving sight, as if the wearers might be huddled together in there, stubby arms clasped around each other's hunched shoulders, listening. Pieces of furniture had migrated here f r o m all over the house, the narrow little bureau f r o m my father's study, the walnut cocktail cabinet f r o m the d r a w i n g - r o o m , the velvet-covered recliner with balding armrests in which my Great-43

Aunt Alicc, a tiny, terrible w o m a n , had died without a m u r m u r one Sunday afternoon in summer. T h e huge old wireless that used to lord it over the lounge stood n o w at a drunken tilt on the draimng-board, crooning softly to itself, its single green eye pulsing. T h e place was far from clean. A ledger was open on the table, and bills and things were strewn amid the smeared plates and the unwashed teacups. She had been doing the accounts. Briefly !