The Living (2 page)

I decided Lawless must be one of Uncle Fintan's friends from that unlikely dreamtime before my memory,
his radical youth
– like George, in fact, who had offered me this job, sight unseen, on the strength of the association. They probably all knew each other back in the day. I tried to picture the three of them together – my neat little uncle in his jacket and tie, dwarfed by these bulky men.

Lawless nodded in confirmation of his assessment. ‘You'd be Nora's daughter, so.' He turned back to George. ‘The offspring of the Countess herself, is it? You'd better watch your back, now, George, with a child of Nora Sullivan's at large. She'll be rising through the ranks in no time at all. Look to your laurels, I'd say, ha?'

‘Oh, sure, I know, sure,' said George. ‘Cate'll be running the show before we know where we are.'

I went to my desk. Apparently my late arrival was going to be overlooked. As my computer woke up I tried to reconcile my idea of Mum with this fresh view of her. ‘The Countess'? I couldn't see it, frankly.

George said, ‘Come on, so, we'll get down to business. I have Eddie's first draft here.' The two men moved towards the inner office.

‘Any word on the revision?' asked Lawless.

‘Ah, no. We're still waiting on him to find a way to get it to me. He won't trust the e-mail or the post. Old habits die hard, says you.'

Lawless left in the mid-morning, and George interrupted Paula for a report on her doings. In the middle of their discussion – final text of
The Irish Horse
just in, revised design spec sent to the typesetter, image proofs overdue – George looked at the time and announced that he was late for his meeting. He bundled some papers and a laptop into a new-looking case, swapped his jumper for a greenish tweed jacket, and whirled out the door.

I heard his footsteps on the stairs stop suddenly, then return. His grey mane popped round the edge of the door. ‘Paula, I nearly forgot. Eddie's book.'

‘Oh, yeah?' Paula wrinkled her face into a sceptical mask.

‘Your man in London wants sight of the full manuscript before he'll talk to us.'

‘And?'

George came all the way back into the room. ‘And … John agrees with me – it's weak – it's full of Eddie's usual bullshit. I've
basically told him to rewrite it. I don't want to show it to your man as it is. What do you think?'

‘Lookit, George, how is this even a question? You have to show it to him. He's not going to make an offer until he sees what he's buying.'

George made a dismissive sound and shook his head.

Paula pressed on. ‘He's a publisher, for god's sake, he knows what a first draft looks like. It might be a bit raggedy, but it's all there. Wouldn't you want to see it, if it was you? You would of course. This is totally normal, George.'

‘Arrah, it's annoying, is what it is. It's sensitive stuff. We need some guarantees.'

‘It's just bad timing, is all. Any idea when we'll have the new version?'

‘Haven't a clue. Sure you know the way Eddie is. We know not the day nor the hour.'

‘Well, what about … Could we put off talking to your man until we have the revision?'

George considered this. ‘Not really. He's ready to turn tail, I'd say. I want to get the contract signed, sealed and delivered. It's a case of strike while the iron is hot.'

‘Then you're going to have to show him the bloody thing, George.'

George turned on his heel, clutched his hair, then spoke to the ceiling. ‘OK. If he rings, tell him it's in the post.'

‘It will be,' said Paula, unsmiling. ‘Go to your meeting.' I admired
how Paula stood up to George. They'd worked together for years, and she had no reverence for him.

George left again, and an ecclesiastical silence descended upon the office. Paula hunched and frowned over her work, sucking coffee at intervals from an insulated mug. I opened up the database for the new Bell Books website and continued copying information across.

Most of the firm's recent output had titles like
Castles of Ireland
,
Coastal Walks in Ireland
,
The Secret Life of the Irish Lighthouse
. I'd seen them on the shelves: thick, heavily illustrated volumes with hard covers and dust jackets – the worthy sort of book you might find in Uncle Fintan and Auntie Rosemary's house in Swords. Besides these, there were several series of State and semi-State publications – policy papers, research reports and other institutional utterances. George called this ‘the bread-and-butter work', and I'd picked up the impression that it might have been given to Bell Books as a favour.

There was also a rather more intriguing category, which hadn't been added to in some years. It included titles like
Thatcher's Gulag
,
This Is My Country
,
Red Hand of Murder
and
Heroes of H-Block
. Most of them were out of print now. As a teenager, when everything was clear and there were no grey areas, I would've devoured them. I'd half-wondered about getting hold of some of them for Mícheál, my brother – he seemed to be even more steeped in all this stuff than I'd been at his age.

Yes, I liked this job. I loved that George had named the company
after a detail in an old legend: the story of Mad Sweeney, undone by the tolling of a church bell. The atmosphere in this quiet, messy office was unlike any I'd encountered before. There was little of the activity I was used to from temping: the flurries of coming and going, the constant phone calls, the dance of drafts and deadlines. Work here was methodical, slow and thorough. It reminded me of the library in college, but during the more peaceful parts of the year, not the frenzy of exam time. I'd thrived in that industrious calm, researching my essays, reading in spacious circles around my courses – and further, often spending entire afternoons browsing through the shelves of the Stacks.

After several weeks at Bell Books, I'd grown adept at navigating the office landscape – the network drive, stationery, e-mail templates and phone enquiries – and I enjoyed George's confidence in me with regard to the new website. George was irascible, but warm and articulate, and he clearly cared a lot about his work. He had a trick of looking at you sideways through those narrowed eyes, sizing you up, making mental notes – then opening out into a disarming smile.

‘How are you getting on, there, you OK?' Paula rose from her desk.

‘Grand, yeah.'

‘I've to go down to the post office now, before George gets back and changes his mind. If Martin Bright's office phones from London about the MacDevitt project, tell them the manuscript is on its way.' She disappeared into George's office, to emerge a few
minutes later carrying a large envelope and wearing a sour expression. ‘I think Eddie's the only author we've had this century who won't use e-mail. I ask you. In this day and age.'

‘Is he a bit eccentric?'

‘Fuckin' throwback, excuse my French.' And with that, she left.

J
ULY ROLLED INTO
August, the limpid evenings just beginning to deepen at the edges, with perhaps a faint impatience to get on to autumn. The weather continued fine, and I continued to like my job. My parents and Mícheál went on their annual holiday in Kerry; I consolidated my recent tradition of declining to join them there.

On a Thursday evening at the end of the month, I headed into town for the first choir rehearsal of the season. I arrived a few minutes early and went to join some of the others by the piano. Tom Silke, impeccable as always in a waistcoat and tie, turned to greet me. ‘Well,
a Chaitlín
, and how are we this clement evening?' Tom was one of very few people from whom I'd tolerate my given name. He leaned in close. ‘Come here to me, did you see our new tenor?'

I looked around but noticed nobody unfamiliar.

‘Oh, is he not here? He must be in the jacks. He's an absolute dish, if you like them a bit grainy.'

‘Fresh blood, is it?' It was rare enough in Dublin choral circles, particularly on the tenor line.

‘Yes, indeed,' said Tom. ‘Mizz Duffy has come up trumps. Our
lightning conductor. Connections in all directions. Don't ask me how she got hold of him.'

The choir began to cohere; I took my usual seat among the altos. The door to the corridor squealed, and a stranger edged into the room. He was quite tall, slim but not skinny, and he had curly dark hair and large, deep-set eyes. I put him in his late twenties, maybe even thirty. He carried himself well – straight-necked, square-shouldered, graceful as he walked towards the empty chair beside Tom. He hadn't shaved. I could hear Tom's voice in my head:
if you like them a bit grainy
.

Diane Duffy, our faultlessly coiffed conductor, raised her hands for quiet. ‘Welcome everybody, welcome back! OK, I'd like to start …' She waited for the simmer of talk to subside. ‘I'd like to start with a very warm welcome to Matthew Taylor. Wave to the nice people, Matthew.'

Heads swivelled to acknowledge the newcomer, who said, ‘Hello.'

‘Matthew's here to help with that little tenor famine we were having,' Diane went on. ‘He'll be joining us for our Belfast gig in November, anyway, and I hope for the Christmas concert as well. Matthew, thanks for coming on board – I hope you enjoy yourself.'

‘I'm sure I will, thanks,' Matthew said. He sounded English. I decided I wouldn't hold it against him.

‘Speaking of Belfast,' Diane went on, ‘I hope everyone got the e-mail about that. Here's the sign-up sheet. Pass it round, and cross out your name if you definitely can't be there.' She handed the
list to one of the sopranos. ‘Now, they want a twenty-minute set from us, the usual old favourites, plus we'll be joining with two other choirs to perform a newly commissioned work – of which more later. This is a big opportunity for Carmina Urbana, and we'd obviously all like to do a superb job, yes? OK, good.'

The sign-up sheet reached me with no names crossed out; I passed it on.

Diane was still speaking. ‘And I'm also putting the finishing touches to our Christmas concert programme. It will feature, by popular request,
Chichester Psalms
, which if you don't know it is by Leonard Bernstein and is absolutely delicious.'

An appreciative murmur ran round the room.

Diane turned away to the piano and thumped out a major chord, then faced the room again, hands poised, commanding. ‘Now, on a very gentle
ooo
.' She pointed at each section and gave the notes. ‘Listening for tuning and blend, then altos drop a semitone on my cue – three, four …'

We settled into our warm-up exercises, then worked through a Mendelssohn
Benedictus
. I noticed Matthew Taylor's voice behind me on the tenor line – full and strong, but light. It sounded like a trained voice. He was better than Tom, I realized, and much better than any of the other tenors.

During the break I drifted over to where the two of them were talking.

‘Allow me to present Cate Houlihan, the
sine qua non
of the alto line,' intoned Tom. ‘Matthew went to Cambridge, it turns out.
He seems to have picked up one or two singing tips there.'

A shy dimple appeared on Matthew's cheek. ‘I was just asking Tom about these concerts that are coming up.'

Tom took the cue. ‘Yes, well, we've got this gig up North in November – vee prestigious although musically bankrupt, one suspects – and then I think our proper concert is in the second week of December.'

‘Our
proper
concert,' Matthew repeated. ‘I see how it is. I take it Belfast will be improper?'

‘That's entirely up to you, dear boy – I'm not responsible for your conduct.' Tom was caricaturing himself.

‘What brings you to Dublin?' I asked Matthew.

He was a PhD student, he explained, come to do some research in the UCD history department. He'd been in Dublin for just a few weeks. He'd visited on a family holiday several years ago, but he couldn't remember much. He liked it, so far.

‘UCD,' sniffed Tom. ‘Well, you weren't to know.'

Matthew looked a little alarmed.

‘Tom lectures in Trinity,' I told him.

‘And my father before me!' said Tom.

Matthew gave a slight bow. ‘I'll bear it in mind.'

Diane called the choir to order. ‘Little treat for you now.' She had a stack of music, which she distributed in bundles to be passed along. ‘It's our peace anthem for Belfast!'

I looked at my copy:
A Song of Ireland
was printed across the top. Over to the right, the composer's name.

‘Trevor Daintree?' Tom rumbled behind me. ‘Never heard of him.'

We started with a relatively easy passage from around the middle of the piece, in which the men held long, mild discords on open vowels while the women ambled above them in thirds and fourths. After that, though, the harmonies became less obvious, the Latin text twisted itself around our tongues, and we became mired in the complex rhythms.

‘Is there a particular reason,' Tom mused, ‘why this Trevor Daintree person was not drowned at birth?'

Diane laughed with the rest of us. ‘We're not really feeling the love, are we? Maybe it'll grow on us. OK, once more from bar one-eighty-three, and then we'll do some nice Bernstein.'

T
HE LITTLE PUB
round the corner, where we always went after rehearsal, was hot and full of breath. The television was on, tuned to some match. Ollie, the barman, knew us well. He raised his hand in greeting as we trooped in, and spotted Matthew. ‘What's this, a new victim?'

We ordered drinks. Matthew had a Guinness, earning much macho backslapping from the others. ‘I drink it in England too,' he said, ‘but it's really not the same.'

In the jostle for seats, I ended up beside him. Or was it that he ended up beside me? That was an appealing thought. He smiled as we sat down, as though to acknowledge our prior acquaintance. His mouth was finely contoured, with a perfectly crisp boundary
where the dusky pink of his lips ended and the white skin began.