The Truth About Love (16 page)
He was right. No one talked of victory marches. And it was all somehow low-key. After all that time and at the end of that long and bitter story we were only front-page news for a day. “Thirty years of killing and in the end you sit down and talk.
“That’s the lesson Olivia. Kill if you must but in the end you will have to talk. It’s not the subject that matters. Remember that. It’s the conversationalists. Who talks. That’s what matters. But you know that already. Gerry certainly seemed happy. He smiled at the camera. He’s used to smiling now. Starred in
VIP
magazine. Now that’s not something one would have expected of Patrick Pearse or Wolfe Tone. Ian hadn’t smiled much and who could be surprised at that? Martin McGuinness was thrilled. He can now get back to elucidating the virtues of education. He loves children and takes his responsibilities towards the education of the young very seriously indeed. Though the smiles were stunning the rhetoric was muted, I thought. Still, Gerry’s take on it all was very positive. Ian Paisley’s was positive. They were each of them positive. Which was great.
“But did you notice they were positive about different things? Entirely different things. And each of them was determined to write the last word. It’s yes. Once Gerry said yes and accepted the Police Service of Northern Ireland. So it’s yes all round. But say nothing yet. We all know that for the real last, last word you must wait.
“And bear in mind, Olivia, certain uncomfortable lessons are being learned by Gerry and Martin and Ian, lessons in realpolitik. And mark my words, Olivia, when Gerry comes marching down to Dublin and the South where all anyone is interested in is now and the future—well, the welcome won’t be great. No. Gerry won’t be hailed as the hero. Which will be a shock to him after all he’d done so much to bring the old dream closer? I’ll give you a few reasons, Olivia and it won’t matter what Gerry says. The bank robbery? God, Olivia, they looked stupid and then when they got the money they couldn’t spend it. Now that’s failure! Oh, the amnesia issue. Amnesia about Armagh. Which was clearly contagious, because when poor Robert McCartney was stabbed and sliced to death the seventy-two people who were there at the time, none of whom rang for an ambulance, simply couldn’t remember a thing, not a thing. Isn’t drink a demon? And even later, nothing came back to them, nothing. No matter how long those infuriating McCartney sisters persisted with their questions, all over the world meeting Presidents, Prime Ministers and even the Pope, trying to encourage someone to give justice to our Robert.’ And we the land of memory and memories! Nothing came back. Blank. And I suppose the powers that be—always a mysterious group—thought, get those girls off the stage. We’re in the middle of a Peace Process here.”
In May 2007 I was honoured to be invited—as a “prominent Irish actress”—to the Taoiseach’s address to both Houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister, Mr. Blair, spoke first. He was optimistic, very positive about everything. Very generous. Paid proper tribute to John Major and Alfred Reynolds, John Hume and David Trimble. However, it seemed to me he made the conflict sound as though we’d had a minor tiff for about thirty years, which was strange considering he really had done so much to end it. Maybe he finds numbering the dead too painful a task. Mr. Ahern—Bertie—was more grave, acknowledged the ghosts in the room. He paid tribute to Daniel O’Connell who’d built a mass civil rights movement and who’d died 160 years ago. But it was not, it seemed to me, the ghost of O’Connell who had brought us to this day. Other ghosts joined us and were acknowledged in that impressive hall. But as the litany of heroic sacrifice progressed the latest victims, who were perhaps only beginning to adjust to the eternal darkness into which they had been plunged, seemed folded, however unwillingly, into an ancient congregation. They were not named as they passed us by. For on that bright May day when our future shone before us we wished for neither their echo nor their shadow. Begone. We fare forward.
All in all, it was an historic moment. Which everyone seems to be studying now. Everyone is learning our lessons. Slowly. And old soldiers leave the stage not necessarily in the time of their own choosing. Dr. Paisley suddenly just slipped into the shadows and Bertie followed him: nothing terrible, slipstreams of life, I suppose, and love had at least something to do with it …
TWENTY-ONE
It was late spring of the next year and I went to Ireland, “one week, no longer, I promise,” and was driving down to Wicklow with the radio on, which is unusual for me as I can never get the right station, when they announced Thomas Middlehoff’s death. He must have been better-known than I’d realised, or maybe it was a poor day for news. I stopped the car and I rang Bridget. She was heartbroken. His family, his brother, was coming to take his body home to be buried in their family plot in Bavaria. “Where he’d started from, I suppose. A nice man, Olivia. Very lonely. That woman! Couldn’t forget her. My God, the day she died. Horrible. Years ago and I still can’t forget it. The sounds he made! Frightening. I never told anyone. He was mad for weeks. Not screaming, oh no. Other sounds. Like I said, horrible. Love, Olivia, it’s a terrible thing. That kind anyway. But I stayed. Faithful, I suppose I’m faithful by nature. I said to myself, ‘Pretend this never happened.’ I kept saying that to myself, ‘Bridget, pretend it never happened.’ And honestly, in time, it was like it hadn’t happened at all. We never referred to it. He was an abrupt man sometimes. But I grew very fond of him. He said I’d be looked after. As if I needed it! I’m a rich woman. I only worked for him a few days a week to keep me out of the house when I was divorced. Crazy what happened to Paddy and me. We were married for all those years, Olivia. And happy. I was left in my sixties for a girl in her forties. That seems to be the sum of it. What an old age he threw me into. Paddy isn’t even happy with Finnoualla. At least Bogus will be happy with Marjorie Brannigan. Now that Jim’s incarcerated she has a clear conscience. Well, reasonably. Better late than never. They’ll have a few years together and I suppose everyone grabs what they can. A depressing thought, Olivia. I saw Brendan Begley’s daughter the other day. She’s off to Canada to join Brendan and Sorcha. Bitter pill for poor Mary who spent all this time bringing her up. God, that was a scandal when he upped sticks and left with Sorcha. A trained psychiatrist but couldn’t run his own life. Are they happy, Brendan and Sorcha? Who knows. It’s just a new fad, divorce in Ireland. Money brought it around. I’m beginning to think that’s the reason. Love has nothing to do with it. We do it because we can afford to. Anyway, I’m a rich woman, Olivia. I’ve got my mother’s house in Kilkenny. People commute from Kilkenny now. Did you know that? And I’ve got Granny’s house down in Kerry. I rent it in the summer and it’s worth a fortune. People crawl all over it in the summer. County Kerry, I mean. Yes. I’m rich. Mr. Middlehoff may have been writing all that stuff about Ireland and our economic miracle but he still thought I was poor. Irish poor. Prejudice! Land! Land, Olivia. You were mad to sell your mother’s house. Anyway, I’ve got to go now. Comfort your self with the knowledge, Olivia, that at least a heart attack is quick. Like your mother.”
And I thought, too quick. And it must have been the shock but I started to cry, which upset Bridget.
“Now, now Olivia darling, it was the best way for her. And as for Mr. Middlehoff, Olivia, his time was up. He was a very old man. I think his time was up the day Mrs. Calder died. Yes, it was over then, for him. I know you’re sad, very sad, Olivia. I know you liked him a lot.”
“I did,” I said.
And I thought to myself, I suppose I loved him, in the way that you love grace in your life. He was a graceful man. Who knew the battle. And knew that it’s for ever. That there was no escape from love and loss and guilt. That it can’t be helped. “What can’t be cured, love must be endured, love.” Yes, my father was right, Thomas Middlehoff was a man “of a special understanding” who’d understood the event on that hot summer day when the sky rolled over us. And he understood how we’d cried out against it. And that it was to no avail. Oh how we’d cried out against it. Yes, he knew that. And above all he knew that however much one gets lost in the present, however much one thinks the past has been obliterated, it comes back. It comes back to judge you. And you judge it, in the moral landscape of memory. Yes, he understood that the event, which had occurred in a small town in Ireland and had long been remembered by us all, had also been survived. But not without much difficulty.
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A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josephine Hart is the best-selling author of
Damage, Sin, Oblivion, The Stillest Day
, and
The Reconstructionist
. Her work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. She lives in London with her husband, Maurice Saatchi, and their two sons.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by Josephine Hart
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published in Great Britain by Virago Press, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, London.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hart, Josephine.
The truth about love / by Josephine Hart.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27305-5
1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Ireland—Fiction. 3. Grief—Fiction. I. Title.
PR
6058.
A
694845
T
78 2009b
823′.914—dc22 2009021375
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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