Dancing in the Dark (29 page)

Among the envelopes and packages, a crumpled brown one, fresh label stuck over former addressee's name, postmarked Dublin. Scrawly, unfamiliar writing repeats itself on half a piece of lined paper inside.

Thought you might be interested in this. It was
grate
great seeing you the other day now. Sean

This
is an article from
The Irish Times
on his own work, native son, spellbinding, blah blah, weaving myth and actuality, magic realism, crap and bollox, arty-farty the lot of them, kissing each other's backsides. He imagines Sean carefully cutting it out of the paper, finding envelope and sticky tape, tongue cornered, doing up his message to the man who's not his son, all the son he has now.

On the reverse side is part of the story about the visiting cardinal he'd read while he was in Dublin. He reads further, the man brought up in Oregon, youngest child of seven, studied here and there, shooting up the hierarchy from teaching to bishopric and onwards to archbishopric and cardinal, ending up in Rome with the future bright around him, damn him and all who sail in him. There's a bit of a picture of the man, eyes as pale as moonlight, ringed hand raised to bless the cringing multitudes, embroidered this and gold-fringed that, must have cost a fortune while, all over South America, people starve.

And then he's looking again at the man's face, he's rereading the accompanying text, he's thinking, have I stumbled over something here, is this a secret of which only I am aware? Me, and one other person on the planet? And if I am, what do I do with it?

I could take it to her, he thinks, an excuse to see her again, and if she shows the least bit of reluctance there, so much as an iota of hostility then I back away with my dignity intact, as if dignity is what matters.

B
ack from Boston, I'm too tired to bother with the stuff Marnie has left for me in the office. Dumping my bags in the hall, I scroll through the messages waiting on my private line. There are only three. One from Jenny. One from my mother. One from Regis Harcourt. Nothing from Fergus. Why do I expect there might be?

Jenny's message asks when we can meet. Luna says she'll call me back. I dial her number but no one answers. I long to talk to her, even if she is not prepared to tell me what I want to know. At this stage, any kind of conversation with her means another brick removed from the wall which divides us.

Although it's early, barely ten o'clock in the morning, nowhere near lunchtime, I fix myself an open beef sandwich, lavished with butter and mustard, a pot of strong coffee, gather up the scatter of mail on the doormat, and carry the lot out to the pergola at the end of the flagged walk. The sun throws an amber light over the borders which stretch behind the house. Birds chitter as I reflect that I ought to do some deadheading of the roses, that the wisteria needs tying back. There's a buzzing sound, either a large bee close at hand or a distant plane preparing for its descent into Heathrow. Dew glimmers on the bending spikes of orange lilies and lies like glass beads in the cupped leaves of lady's mantle.

The mail is mostly bills, but there is also a stiffened manila envelope, addressed in my mother's handwriting. I toy with the idea that she's relented, that inside will be certificates, photographs, papers that prove my father's identity. I hold it in my hand and try to gauge whether its contents are hostile or friendly, but in the end all I have is a brown envelope which tells me nothing and probably contains even less. I put it to one side.

Fergus was right to insist that the best thing I could do was go searching for information in the States, and I feel, perhaps unjustifiably, that in some way, I have taken two or three steps closer to my goal. Yet, apart from the St Joseph's connection, I've come back with very little more information than I left with. The abbot, Dom Francis, stalks skeletally through my mind, hugging his knowledge close to his chest. Is it him my mother's been afraid of all this time? Did he offer her eternal damnation in return for her earthly sins? Did he threaten her? Is that what frightened her thirty years ago, set her on the run?

Half asleep, I linger as the sun climbs above the old brick wall and catches the roses I've trained over the pergola.
Wedding Day. Mermaid.
I look down to my herbaceous borders – slowly recovering from the drought – and note that the old
Albertine
needs to be dug out. I wonder if Fergus is still on Corfu, how his book is progressing, if that's why he hasn't left a message on my machine.

I remember how perfect we were together, the look on his face as he waved me off on the caïque, and suddenly I am afraid. Fergus, the Love Rat. I remember the scandal earlier in the summer and feel terror in my loins. Did it,
could
it have meant as much to him as it had to me? And if not, then the least I can do is not to let him see that I am affected. If nothing else, I can maintain my dignity. As though dignity mattered . . .

Perhaps my precipitate departure from Corfu signalled the end of something which had scarcely begun. Perhaps I have lost something more valuable than I realize.

He has a habit of entering my mind shortly before he enters my world, and when I hear the distant peal of the doorbell, I know already that it's him. I run to let him in.

‘Good afternoon,' he says, formal as a judge, when I open the door.

I feel shy. He is tanned and fit, his black hair plastered down on his skull. ‘I thought you were still on Corfu.'

‘I came back three days ago then flew straight on to Dublin.' He's so brisk and businesslike that I realize how foolish my fantasies have been. Men like Fergus don't fall in love.

‘Did you see your father?' I ask coolly.

‘I did indeed. I came down to tell you how I got on. And hear how your own trip went. And –' he looks over my shoulder – ‘to have a look at your garden, if that's OK.'

I motion him into the house. ‘Since when did you get interested in gardens?'

‘All that talk we had in Corfu about roots. It was interesting.'

‘Right.' I lead him out into the neutral territory of my garden. Any emotion, whether good or bad, is easily buried in talk of mulch and wall building, the merits of one hybrid versus another, the problems of keeping a garden going year-round. He is – or appears to be – fascinated by my greenhouses, where I nurture the multitude of miniature plant versions which I use in my Decorations.

‘As you can see, this,' I say, ‘is the orchard. Mostly apples past their prime, some marvellous Victoria plums, two kinds of pear and several cherries. There's even –' I wave at a big trunk – ‘a wonderful walnut tree.'

‘So you're practically self-sufficient?'

‘With the stuff from my vegetable garden, I guess I nearly am. I just need a few hens and a cow.'

‘And a sheep or two, then you could spin your own wool and make your own clothes.'

‘Indeed.'

The crumbling old wall at the end is covered in clematis and
lonicera fragrantissimna
and as we pass it, I close my eyes, breathe in the deep perfume.

‘No peaches or apricots?' Fergus asks.

‘I thought about it, this wall's obviously perfect for them, but I couldn't bring myself to train them up.'

‘Why not?'

‘Maybe it sounds stupid, but espaliering always seems so cruel, kind of like crucifying them, torturing them, as though they were just fruit-producers, not trees.'

He nods. ‘I can understand that.'

At the edge of my meadow-wilderness, he stops. ‘Even I could manage this kind of gardening,' he says.

‘It's a lot harder than you think.'

‘What, just to stand back and let the grass grow?'

‘No, to make the grass appear as if all it's doing is growing. It may look like a piece of meadow to you, but it all has to be carefully monitored. There are bulbs in there, and different kinds of grasses, you have to plan when to cut, and how much to leave, you have to keep down the things like nettle and dock which can take over if you give them half a chance. I'm constantly experimenting – for instance, this year I seeded part of the area with hay rattle, which reduces the richness of the soil.'

‘Why is that good?'

‘It takes a lot of its nourishment from the plants round it, so it means that the other grasses and meadow flowers don't grow so vigorously.'

‘You know a lot.'

‘I know about gardens, you know about novels.'

‘I used to.' He looks down at me and then quickly elsewhere. ‘You are such a beautiful woman.'

I'm not going to fall for it again. Already I am packing my heart away. I smile up at him. ‘Thank you.'

‘I brought some wine.' His eyes whisper to me but I pretend not to hear. ‘Want a glass?'

Into my head flashes a brief image of the two of us tumbling among the rich green stems of knapweed and bent, while grasshoppers and crickets chirrup above our heads. ‘It's too early for me, I'll stick with water.'

Settled on a bench in the orchard from where we can hear the trickle of the spring in my bog-garden, and the frogs croaking like a Greek chorus, he describes for me his trip to Dublin. ‘And Theodora,' he says, his eyes alight, ‘when he told me that he wasn't my father, it was extraordinary. I literally felt a burden drop from my shoulders.'

‘Why was that?'

‘It meant that since he isn't my father, I can be free of him.'

‘He was still your brother's father.'

‘Yes, and for that he deserves condemnation, I know that. But life goes on, doesn't it, such a cliché, yet so bursting at the seams with truth. Brendan's dead, yes, and he shouldn't be, but I can't go on holding it against Sean for the rest of my life.'

Something in the expression on his face tugs at my heart. There is a lesson for me too here. ‘Sean?'

‘That's his name. It wasn't his fault that my mother died. I saw that I just had to let go. There are so many other places in this world that I don't need to be in that one.' He chuckles. ‘I can't thank you enough, Theodora, for persuading me to go and see him. If I hadn't, I'd never have found out.' He hums a few bars of
Amazing Grace
.

‘If Sean's not your father, Fergus, don't you want to know who is?'

‘Some farm lad in County Clare, no doubt, or a roving tinker passing through with a nice line in fake pearls or cheap watches. False promises of marriage. It doesn't matter. Who he was isn't important to me. I am who I am. Now –' he leans towards me – ‘tell me about
your
trip; I want to hear every last detail.'

He takes my hand and the mood changes. Colour creeps along his jawline. ‘I was going to bring you flowers,' he says, awkwardly, ‘but it seemed like coals to Newcastle, since you're bound to have a gardenful already.' A creamy-pink petal has fallen from the roses on the table where we're sitting and he picks it up, strokes it, raises it to his face. ‘Tell me about it,' he repeats as though he really wants to hear.

‘At my mother's old college,' I say rapidly. ‘I was put on to a Catholic liberal-arts college called St Joseph's. An all-boys' school.'

‘Ah.' Thoughtful sip from his glass. ‘And where would that be?'

‘Vermont.' I describe Father Francis, the conversation we had, my conviction that he knows something. I tell him about Vernon Barnes, and the garden in the portrait which still hangs above my hearth. I imagine the weight tumbling from Fergus's back, and wish my own could as easily drop from my shoulders.

‘The upshot is,' I say, ‘I'm not really any further on than I was. And much more than that . . .' I pause. How to put this without sounding neurotic at worst, melodramatic at best? ‘I think – sounds ridiculous, I know – but I think I may have put myself in danger.' I explain my feelings about the abbot, my strong impression that I am in some way a stumbling block to his plans, my belief that he could eliminate me without a second thought. The surge of something close to terror that seized me at the sight of his face.

‘Are you serious?'

‘Perfectly.'

‘But . . .' Fergus wrinkles his brow. ‘He's a Catholic priest.'

‘So? Look at the way they treated you and your brother.'

‘Surely you don't imagine he'd come after you, like some hitman in a thriller.'

‘Perhaps not. But . . .' This is my home, my sanctuary; I wonder if I will ever feel safe again here. Or elsewhere. I imagine the creak of floorboards in the night, a car screeching behind me, the shove of a hand in the back as I wait to cross the road. ‘Look: I suffer from an overactive imagination.' I try out a laugh. ‘By the way . . .' I tell him about the Lennart Wells exhibition I'd read about on the plane, to be held in San Francisco in a few weeks' time. ‘Are you still working on that book you talked about?'

‘I certainly am.' He looks excited. ‘I must go to that.'

‘Good idea.'

‘We could go together.'

Is this another of his carelessly tossed invitations? Does it mean anything? I am nonchalant. ‘Right.'

The two of us sit in silence for a while. Frogs croak at the edge of the pond beyond the thickets of may and bramble. A combine harvester whirrs in a neighbouring field, reminding me that summer is ending, the harvest must be safely gathered in, nature is regrouping in order to face the challenge of the coming winter.

‘It's beautiful here,' Fergus says. ‘You've made it beautiful. Tranquil. I can see why, if you were to meet Mr Right – which we're emphatically agreed is not me – you might be reluctant to up sticks.'

‘People invest a huge amount of themselves in a garden.' For a moment on Corfu, I'd truly believed there might have been things worth leaving a garden behind for.

The edge of his shoe has mud on it and he leans down to brush it off before he takes my hand in his. After a while, I pull gently out of his grasp.