The South (22 page)

The other work was bigger and more risky. Her chances of success were slim. She had not seen the work framed and hanging in the gallery. She had left others to arrange her work.

“I’m nervous,” she said. “Do you remember the way Miguel used to be? I feel just like that. The week before an
exhibition, Miguel always reminded me of a dog looking for a place to hide a bone, even if he had only one painting in the show. He could not keep still. You were never like that.”

“I never put so much of myself into a painting as either Miguel or you did. I only used to worry about what would sell,” he said.

“I’ve put so much into these paintings, I’m not sure if I’ve anything left. I’ve exhausted myself. Maybe I should have left something over.”

Gorey, Arklow. Now the sky was completely clear. For weeks there had been nothing to do. Odd memories trickling in and Miguel back on her mind, preying on her, almost talking to her sometimes. She spoke to Richard about it one day, and once the subject was opened, they discussed it over and over. Sometimes if they had talked at lunchtime and he had to go, he would come back that evening with questions. He wanted to know when things happened, did this happen before or after this, what year was that, what were the results and consequences of various actions? Katherine left out her feelings, she told him what happened, where they had gone, what they had done, what Miguel had said, what he looked like, anecdotes, unconnected events, days. Later, he wanted her to fill these in, to add in the feeling, the colour. Did you love him then? he would ask. Or how did you feel when that happened? Or what did you think then? And these were the difficult questions.

“It’s going to be a great day. You’ll be swimming soon,” Michael Graves said. They drove through Rathnew.

“Not today though,” she said. “I’m afraid to go and look at the paintings. I’m not afraid of the opening. That will be bearable. There will be people I’ll have to talk to. The gallery will be full of people. I won’t know any of them and that will be even better. And there will be all that wine. No, it’s seeing the paintings I’m afraid of.”

“Have a drink first,” he said.

“I don’t know. That might make things worse.”

Newtownmountkennedy. Bray. Richard and Deirdre would drive along the same road later for the opening. They had never been to one before. She was glad when they said they would not stay long; she did not want to be responsible for anyone else. She had herself and Michael to look after.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“You mean today?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever you want to do.”

“I want you to come to the gallery with me now.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to have lunch with me.”

“Okay.”

“Then I’ll go home and I’ll meet you in the gallery later on. I’ll have to wash and change.”

She parked in Nassau Street and they went around the corner to the gallery. It was nearing lunchtime, the streets were filling up. She went into the gallery in Dawson Street feeling that she was waiting for news: what would they look like? It was easy downstairs, as she knew it would be, to look at the watercolours.

“You’ll have no trouble selling these anyway. If I’d money I’d buy one myself,” Michael said.

The front room of the Taylor Gallery had six of the large paintings. What amazed her seeing them again was the thickness of the paint, how much work each painting contained, how many decisions she had made, working over and over each new change on the canvas in a way that would be impossible to repeat. And yet some strokes had been left there without any work.

The paintings took over the room; each was the same
size and depicting more or less the same landscape. But the colours were different; there was simply a mood and shape to each painting, a sense of a river flowing through well-cultivated land, a sense of similar horizons that illustrated the same place.

The effect in the back room was even stronger.

“What do you think?” she turned to Michael.

“I think they’re good,” he said and smiled.

“Let’s go before anyone sees us,” she said.

They walked back along Nassau Street towards Lincoln Place.

*   *   *

“We haven’t seen you for a long time,” the waitress said when they went into Bernardo’s.

“You do have a table, don’t you?” Katherine asked.

The waitress pointed to a table against the wall and they sat down.

“Here we are again,” Michael said. “What are we going to have?”

The waitress came over and Katherine ordered.

After the meal they had liqueurs and coffee. They walked back to the car.

“I’ll see you later,” she said.

She drove down the quays to Blackhall Place and turned up towards home.

*   *   *

The silence in the house. It struck her as she closed the door that there would be silence in the house. She put her back against the door and listened. This was what she had gained: an appreciation of the subtleties of silence, a calm joy each time she came in the door that there would be silence. She went upstairs and took off her clothes in the back bedroom and put on her dressing-gown and slippers. There was time
to sit around for the afternoon, have a bath, listen to a record, think. She got some orange juice from the fridge. She lay back on the couch with a cushion under her head.

It must have been March when they first arrived in Llavorsi. Even in the early afternoon the air had been freezing and sharp, like no air she had ever breathed before and the stream was swollen with ice just melted. It had resembled some point near the edge of the world after seven punishing hours on the bus from Barcelona, up and up, twists in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It was noon when they reached the summit after an hour’s even steeper climb and she had seen the valley down below for the first time, fertile like a promised land.

She was afraid that day to touch Miguel or talk to him. It had been so fraught between them on the journey, it reminded her of the air in Barcelona when it became purple before a thunderstorm: a fierce tension while you waited for the rain. It reminded her of travel, of being in a strange place for the first day, walking the streets of London, Paris, Barcelona.

It reminded her of mornings in Barcelona when she’d had no sleep, or two hours’ sleep and all she wanted was some small physical contact before falling into a day’s weak sleep.

Her mind began to wander to the time before Richard was born, just after she was married, and it was the summer, one of those high, rich, summer days in Enniscorthy. For some reason she had had no sleep and it was early, maybe ten or half ten in the morning. She walked across the fields looking for Tom; at first her search was casual, almost indifferent but as she proceeded and was unable to find him she became more concerned and almost frantic. There was the smell of warm grass that day, all these years later she could still smell the warm grass. When she found him, she could not explain. She called him from the gate where he was standing with some workmen.

“I want to talk to you.”

“Now?”

“Come back to the house with me. I want to talk to you.”

“There are things to be done here. Not now.”

“You must come now. You must come now. You must come now,” she had pleaded.

He asked her what it was, but she insisted he come back with her and she would tell him.

“Come upstairs,” she said.

“What is it?” he asked and smiled, as though puzzled.

She came towards him; she was almost unable to breathe.

“It’s twelve o’clock in the morning,” he said.

“I want to make love,” she said.

He turned away from her and began to unbutton his shirt. The whiteness of his bare back was made more noticeable by his red arms and neck. She was already naked behind him. She put her hands on her own breasts and held them. The silence between them was only broken by her breathing; he stood still for a moment when he was naked and she moved towards him and put her arms around him. After a few moments she grasped his hand and brought him to the bed. He seemed heavier, fleshier in the morning light. When she took his penis in her hand and held it he gasped for a second and his hands seemed to tighten on her back as though she was hurting him. He lay on top of her and stopped her when she tried to push his penis into her. He lay on top of her without entering her and kissed her slowly on the mouth. She detected an anxiety in him, a sort of weariness, but there was still something forcing him to go on. She kept her hand down between her legs, massaging herself with her fingers, doing what he would never do for her. After a while he came into her and moved his hands along her breasts as he began to push in and out. One hand she kept down on herself and
the other she held at his neck. When he began to ejaculate she heard him breathing faster and whimper for a moment as though he were in pain. Her orgasm came after his and she began to cry out as though she was having a fit.

“Don’t make noise,” he said to her. “Don’t make noise.”

He put on his clothes quietly as though it was the early morning and he didn’t want to wake her. She didn’t look up when he touched her on the shoulder for a moment before he left the room. He left her to fall into a long, satisfying sleep. But for days afterwards he avoided being in the bedroom when she was there and at night kept to his side of the bed; he seemed afraid of her.

*   *   *

Over the mantelpiece now in her house in Dublin hung
The Hammock
, the painting she had bought from Ramon Rogent almost thirty years before. Her old teacher; she had kept the painting with her to remember him and his studio in Puertaferrisa. There was still a power in the painting which she had not observed for many years, how he had traced the twine of the hammock using every colour under the sun: yellow, pink, red, black, white. And the intricate, colourful designs on the woman’s dress and the hill behind. But governing everything was the hard light of Majorca, harder than anything in Catalonia, the soul taken out of every colour and just its dead, hard body left glinting like granite.

Ramon was dead; and Tom; and Miguel. And this was an ordinary day among the days she had been allotted during the time she would be alive, a day when they would all live with her, old ghosts.

*   *   *

She phoned for a taxi to take her to the gallery when she had had her bath and dressed herself. Dublin was quiet; the quay was deserted.

John Taylor who ran the gallery introduced her to the man who was to make the speech, the man from the Arts Council. He was much younger than she had imagined.

“Did you come up from Enniscorthy this morning?” he asked her.

“Yes, we drove up.”

“Do you often come to Dublin?”

“I live in Dublin,” she said and noticed that the man’s attention seemed to have focussed on someone else who had just entered. She excused herself and walked into the back room and found Michael Graves.

“Do you know any of these people?” she asked him.

“No,” he whispered.

“Let’s go and have a drink, we can come back,” she said.

“You can’t do that.”

“I can. I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Are you all right?” He stood beside her and helped her to stand and lean against the wall.

“I think I’m fine.” She put her hands to her face. “I feel awful,” she said.

“You go down,” she said. “See if Richard and Deirdre are here.”

When he had gone she stayed there, leaning against the wall. She could hear her blood thundering in her head.

A man came towards her in the gallery and shook her hand. “Delighted to see you again,” he said. She smiled. Several people turned to look at her as she moved across the gallery which was now filling up, to where Michael stood with Richard and Deirdre. John Taylor brought her a chair and a glass of water.

The man from the Arts Council was introduced and began to speak.

“What’s his name?” Deirdre whispered to her.

“I don’t know. I think it’s in Irish,” Katherine said. “An Irish name.”

He spoke for some time about Ireland and Spain, he ended by talking about her skill and brilliance. She approached him when he had finished and thanked him.

Michael introduced her to a critic from one of the Sunday newspapers who wanted to meet her.

“Do you know all these people?” Her tone was sharper than she meant it to be.

“Yes, I suppose I do,” he said.

“Who are they all? What do they do?”

“Didn’t you invite them?”

“No, the gallery did. I don’t have any objection to them. I just want you to tell me who they are.”

“Some of them are painters, some are buyers, others just go to openings all the time; they enjoy them.”

“Isn’t that interesting?” Katherine said and looked at Michael.

*   *   *

They went with Richard and Deirdre to the Royal Hibernian Hotel, had a drink there and then said goodbye on the steps. Michael said he wanted to go to Larry Tobin’s pub in Duke Street.

“Am I going to be a millionaire?” Katherine asked John Taylor, when they were seated in the pub.

“The watercolours were going fast,” he said.

“And not the paintings?”

“Not yet anyway.”

They were joined in the pub by a number of people she had met with Michael before. They talked about her exhibition.

By ten o’clock she wanted to leave, but the conversations kept on around her; more people joined them and others
went away; more brandy appeared in front of her each time she wanted to go.

“Michael, I’m going this time. I can’t stay on drinking.”

“No, just hold on.”

“I haven’t eaten.”

“I’ll get you a sandwich,” he went up to the bar and came back with a ham sandwich and some mustard.

“I’m going to go home soon. I really am.”

*   *   *

They stood together out on the street.

“I’ll walk up towards the Green with you. I’ll get a taxi.”

“Do you want to go and eat?”

“No, I want to go home. Ring me tomorrow. I’m exhausted.”

“I hate going home on my own,” he said.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Your exhibition was very good.”