Time Present and Time Past (3 page)

As promised, Colette has roasted a chicken. She has cooked small potatoes; she has steamed carrots and green beans. When Fintan goes into the kitchen their younger son, Niall, is there with his mother, preparing salads. The back of his tee shirt reads, ‘. . . do all the other trees laugh?' Niall is a strict vegetarian. He eats with the family but makes his own meals, an arrangement that has been in place without rancour for years now. Fintan, who is interested in all food, approaches and looks in the pottery bowls on the worktop. Niall has made a three-bean salad with a vinaigrette dressing; a green salad; quinoa with tomatoes, red onion and mint. Fintan says, ‘The beans look tasty, Niall.' Niall turns to him and smiles amiably. ‘Yeah, but you're not getting any, Dad.' The front of his tee shirt reads, ‘If a tree falls in the forest . . .'

Lucy arrives in the kitchen, followed by Rob, her eldest brother, just as the chicken is being carried to the table. Rob is small and pale and dressed all in black which makes him look sinister, a look he might well be cultivating, Fintan thinks. The whole family is now here for dinner, and this is not an unusual event. It is something Fintan has always encouraged ever since the boys were small. He is not a strongly paternalistic man, at least he thinks so, but, in his fondness for seeing his family gathered around a table laden with food, he is as traditional as Bob Crachitt. Rob brings the serving dishes with the vegetables while Colette sets a stack of heated plates beside Fintan, who is now sharpening the carving knife.

Like her husband, Colette could do with losing a little weight. She is also rather a plain woman, something of which she is acutely aware, but which other people almost never remark upon because she is inordinately kind, and this kindness, suffusing her face, makes her look more attractive than many a cold beauty half her age. She is wearing a dreadful old jumper with a hole in the elbow, a green Aran knit that she bought on a holiday in Connemara when the boys were small. It looks a fright, and Colette knows this, but it is comfortable as a second skin. She hands Fintan a two-pronged fork with a folding safety guard, and he begins to carve the fowl, as Lucy digs serving spoons into the vegetables.

‘This is great, Mum,' Rob says.

‘It looks like a chicken in a cookery book,' Lucy says brightly, which it does, with a charred half-
lemon
protruding from its rear end, and its varnished breast scattered with sprigs of thyme.

When Rob was born it had been a shock to Fintan, who realised immediately he knew nothing about babies. With hindsight he saw that he had expected something fragrant and beguiling, something more like a teddy bear than the vital little animal that Rob turned out to be.

While still in his cot he had the thousand-yard stare of a hostile banker. His physical strength and his strength of will astounded Fintan. At six months the baby sucked his thumb, and Fintan discovered that he couldn't dislodge the digit from his mouth by using gentle pressure; was alarmed to realise that he couldn't do it even if he applied brute force: Rob was still able to resist him. Fintan took to calling him ‘Stalin', but Colette didn't see the joke, and made him desist. Unlike her husband she was skilful with the baby. She could hold him at her hip with one arm while engaging in some complicated domestic chore with the free hand; could sling him artfully over her shoulder and make him burp; could make him stop crying any time she wanted by cunningly distracting him with small stuffed toys. It was a relief when, around the time of Rob's first birthday, Colette said she was expecting another baby.
Yes, let's have another go at this,
Fintan had thought.
Let's get it right this time.

It was certainly different second time around. So placid was Niall that he quickly became known as ‘The Potato'. He lay in his pram smiling and cooing, gazing into space, as if he hadn't noticed that he had been born, as if he was still in some Edenic, prenatal world where everything was beautiful and good. Complete strangers stopped in the street to peer in at the beaming baby; and he grew into a blissed-out toddler who was happy to share his toys and treats with all-comers. To his dismay, Fintan wasn't completely at ease with all of this, and couldn't help finding Niall's extreme gentleness, his even temper and his Buddha-like smile slighty spooky. He found himself wondering if there could have been some kind of mix-up in the maternity ward, so that they had brought home someone else's baby. Aged five, when told to say goodbye to Joan on a family visit, Niall took her hand and said solemnly, ‘Granny, I hope you will always have love and peace in your heart,' a moment that has passed into family legend and which Niall himself now finds hilarious
.
(Rob: ‘You totally mad little hippy.') At six he made the connection between animals and meat and displayed an unexpected moral rigour about it, pushing his rashers and sausages around the plate, refusing to eat, and weeping inconsolably for the fate of the poor pig when pressed to do so; even at times displaying an uncharacteristic sharpness and sarcasm, holding up a chop on his fork: ‘What did you have to kill to give me this?' The family doctor reassured them, and gave Colette diet sheets as they realised they had no choice but to accept the tiny vegetarian in their midst.

In the meantime Rob had continued to grow into a tough little alpha male, and Fintan, to his shame, found it hard to connect with either of them. He felt like Charlie Chaplin in
The Kid
when he gives Jackie Coogan a gentle boot in the arse, trying to get shot of him, trying to make out that he wasn't responsible for this little tyke. It had been a relief when Colette had indicated that the family was complete with the two boys.

Niall now looks pointedly at Fintan's heaped plate.

‘Weren't you having lunch out today, Dad?'

‘Yes, but I didn't have anything much, and anyway, that was ages ago. I saw Granny and Beth in the restaurant, quite by chance.'

Rob laughs ironically. ‘Lucky you. And how was Granny? Sweet as ever she is?'

‘Granny was fine,' Fintan says evenly, glancing meaningfully at Lucy and then back at Rob with narrowed eyes, mutely warning him. ‘She sends her best, as does Beth.'

‘Where did you go?'

Fintan names the restaurant.

Rob says, ‘Cool,' and he laughs. ‘Fair play to Granny and Beth for doing things in style.' It is a restaurant he likes: unlike his brother, who is somewhat ascetic, he is developing expensive habits and tastes. Colette names another place which she prefers and they fall to talking about restaurants as they eat, then about how the day has been.

They all do a double take when Niall says, ‘I saw a woman on Grafton Street today with no skirt.' Lucy whoops with delight.

‘What was she wearing then?' Fintan and Rob ask simultaneously, and they all laugh.

‘Her knickers. And a pink sash thing over her blouse, like a beauty queen, you know? And a tiara. She was with a bunch of friends. They were all wearing sashes too, with “Tracy's Hen Night” printed on them, but they didn't have tiaras and they all had their skirts on. I know what you're thinking,' he adds, looking frankly at his brother, ‘but to be honest, it wasn't a pretty sight. You were lucky you missed it.'

‘But why?' asks Lucy, who is still laughing. ‘Why was the woman going down Grafton Street in her knickers?'

‘Because she's getting married,' Colette says. ‘Eat your carrots, please.'

‘But why?' Lucy asks again. ‘Did you do that, Mum, before you got married? Did you walk down the street with no skirt?'

‘I did nothing of the sort!'

‘Perish the thought,' says Rob with feeling, and his mother flicks at him with her napkin. But they are all laughing now, Colette most of all and Lucy without really understanding why.

‘I'm invited to a sleepover at Emma's house next Friday,' Lucy says, and again Fintan narrows his eyes. This time he stares hard at Colette, quizzically. She stares back unblinking. Emma is Lucy's best friend. Emma's parents are divorced and she divides her time between her mother, who also lives in Howth, and her father, who lives somewhere in the vicinity, Fintan isn't exactly sure where. Fintan dislikes Emma's mother intensely. She has a new boyfriend and a new baby with the new boyfriend. He hates Lucy spending time at the mother's house, although Colette has no problem with it. Emma is a sullen, rather difficult child, and Fintan doesn't know what Lucy sees in her.

‘Emma could come here instead,' he suggests.

‘That's what I said,' Colette adds.

‘But it's my turn to stay with her.'

‘It doesn't always have to be turn and turn about, does it? There's no rule. If she comes here,' Fintan adds, ‘I'll plan a special surprise for the Saturday.'

‘Will you, Daddy? Something nice?' Lucy asks coquettishly.

‘Something horrible,' Rob says. ‘A cold bath and turnip sandwiches.' She giggles with delight at this. ‘Raw turnip. That would be a surprise, wouldn't it?'

Fintan is about to say, ‘Something amazing,' and then he thinks better of it, because he has no idea what the treat might be. He remembers the children with the mallards on the Green that afternoon, but wonders now how he had ever thought that such a blasé and frankly spoiled child of the early twenty-first century as Lucy might be charmed by such a modest outing. She habitually visits the seals down in Howth harbour, the seals that are such a fixture they are drawn on the tourist map, emerging from the waves like sea monsters or mermaids on a medieval map.

‘A surprise,' he says again, to buy time to think of something. ‘If I told you what it was then it wouldn't be a surprise any more, would it?' Lucy accepts the logic of this.

Talking to Lucy reminds him of his chain of thought in the Green and in the cafe, of her remark about the photographs.

‘Niall,' he asks, ‘do you know when colour photography was invented?'

‘The early twentieth century.'

‘As early as that? Are you sure?'

‘Pretty sure. I don't know the exact date though.'

Fintan says, ‘I thought it was later, maybe the twenties or thirties,' but Niall insists it was earlier.

‘Why do you want to know, Dad?'

‘I was just wondering.'

‘Painting's more my thing than photography,' Niall says.

There are yoghurts and fruit for dessert. Rob makes a pot of tea for everyone and Lucy sets out the cups. Fintan wants biscuits. ‘I didn't have dessert after lunch.' This is true, although somewhat disingenuous, and Rob says, ‘But I bet you had a muffin in the middle of the afternoon, didn't you, Dad?' which is getting dangerously close to the fact of the carrot cake. And then at the very end of the meal, just as they are about to rise from the table, Fintan suddenly says, ‘Stop.'

They all look at him.

‘Could everyone just stay where they are for a moment? Don't say anything, just sit there.'

Bemused, they look at each other, but do as requested. For a short time they sit in silence, like worshipping Quakers waiting for the Spirit to move through the room. The kitchen clock ticks. Fintan looks at them all earnestly. Then he simply says, ‘Thank you,' and stands up.

They begin to move plates, to tidy things away. Niall and Rob clear the table and fill the dishwasher with speed and efficiency, a routine that astonishes visitors to the house who observe their domesticity. Colette, an only daughter who was much put upon for household chores, has trained up her sons ruthlessly from an early age. Lucy insists upon putting in the powder and pressing the button to turn on the machine, and she is indulged in this, as in many things. The remains of the chicken are still on the worktop, its ravaged little carcase reminding Fintan of Christmas night; and he recognises the familiar feelings of being sated and melancholy that he experiences every year late on the twenty-fifth of December, the sense of the feast being over. Fintan loves Christmas.

He takes Lucy upstairs to prepare her for bed and to read her a story. Niall goes off to finish an essay. In the sitting room, Colette turns on the television and flops down on the sofa to watch it. Rob puts on his jacket and leaves the house to meet a friend. The dishwasher churns. The evening passes.

Colette can't sleep. It is four in the morning, a difficult hour for humanity. It is a time when one's conscious defences are down, when one is psychically most vulnerable, prey to brooding and regrets, to dark thoughts. But Colette has no darkness in her soul, no demons. She is brooding, yes, but about nothing more sinister than the lasagne she left out of the freezer the night before. She realises now that it is too big. Rob will not be home for dinner, it has to feed only herself, Fintan and Lucy. She should have left out the fish pie instead. Beside her, Fintan is sleeping deeply. In her wakefulness she tries not to fidget and disturb him. Eventually she slides out from under the duvet, takes her dressing-gown from the hook behind the door and creeps down to the kitchen.

She considers a cup of camomile tea, and then makes the hot chocolate that she really wants. The lasagne is thawing on the worktop. It looks singularly unappetising at the moment, both icy and clammy, and it is very big indeed. Fintan will be delighted. He will have second helpings.

Colette puts out the kitchen light and takes her hot chocolate through to the sitting room. She pulls back the curtains so that there is enough light coming in from the street for her to see by; she does not need to switch on a lamp. The eerie streetlight and the green plants on the windowsill make her feel as if she is a fish in an aquarium. The chocolate is comforting, both drinking it and nursing the mug carefully against her body: she can feel the heat through her nightdress and dressing-gown.

Whatever about tomorrow's lasagne, last night's dinner was a great success, she thinks. The chicken had turned out particularly well, and even though it had only been an ordinary week-night meal it had been a happy and cheerful event. Fintan had been brooding when he arrived back at the house, not quite glum, but in an odd frame of mind. Even at the end of the meal, it had to be said, asking them to sit there for a moment, what was all that about? But he'd certainly been in a better mood at the end of dinner than he had been at the start, and there was nothing new in that. Colette knows that sitting around the table with his family is what Fintan likes best in life. He is contented and relaxed then as he is at no
other
time. They have solved many a problem, thrashed out many a family difficulty at the end of a meal, over the last fragment of a shepherd's pie, its edges scalloped by the marks of the serving spoon; over crusts and crumpled napkins; over apple tarts that have had great wedges taken out of them.

She chuckles to herself to think of the talk of the hen party. She sees them frequently in town: little groups of women, all of them wearing pink stetsons, or all wearing angel wings; even once, mystifyingly, all dressed as bees. Colette hadn't had a hen party, not even a sedate one, and she had hated her own wedding day, had thought she looked fat and ridiculous in her big white dress. It had been like some kind of bizarre ordeal she had to go through to get Fintan. An only daughter, her mother hadn't allowed her to have the tiny private ceremony she had wanted. But Fintan had loved their wedding. He had laughed and wept and eaten and drunk and sang and danced and wept again; would even yet, in his cups, insist that there had never been a day like it.

Instead of thinking about her wedding day, Colette far prefers to dwell on the time when she had first known Fintan, when they were both students. She'd been studying modern languages (French, Spanish) for no better reason than that she had an aptitude for them, and her parents had been determined that she go to university and study
something
. He was her best friend's boyfriend's best friend, and, to begin with, they found themselves in each other's company by default, but friendship and fondness soon developed. They began to meet together on their own account. His considerable brilliance was tempered by a slight gormlessness, and while this was an unusual combination she found it both reassuring and appealing.

At that time she was still living with her parents and her brothers on one of those long, long suburban roads of identical houses, all stuck together, with little front gardens. The houses were called things like Sorrento or St Judes; it was the quintessence of suburbia. It had seemed to her when she was a teenager as if it was expressly designed as a place to be bored in: a long bus ride from the city centre, far from the shops and the sea, far from anything that might be appealing; a wilderness of pebbledash, with Jack Russell terriers barking in the night.

Fintan was a cut above all this, with his Sandycove childhood, the good school he'd attended and his expectation of a career in law. He had a certain social sophistication that he took for granted, but he was generous and kind, with a willingness to share his world with her. He wasn't remotely bothered by her more modest background, and in any case, their relationship was never predicated on their families. His father, of whom he appeared to have been very fond, had died when Fintan was in his last year at school. He spoke little about his mother, displaying when he did what Colette realised to be, when she herself finally met Joan, admirable restraint. One day in the street they heard someone calling, ‘Martina! Martina!' and Fintan had remarked, ‘That's my sister's name.' Colette finds it oddly moving to remember that, now that Martina is such an important and beloved presence in her life.

He had been slightly taken aback by the limits of her experience, of how little she had known of the city, indeed of life itself, up until then. She had
never
had a hot port! She had never eaten an oyster! He took her to places in the city that were unfamiliar to her, to dim snugs in pubs on rainy afternoons where they sat talking for hours, and to noisy coffee houses. They went to Wicklow on the bus and they took walks in autumn along the banks of the Grand Canal. (Perhaps they also went there in other seasons, but Colette can now recall only coloured leaves heaped along the banks above the black water.) One Sunday afternoon they went to Howth and she realised that a particularly special honour was being accorded to her, that this was somewhere that Fintan wouldn't have shared with just anyone. With hindsight she couldn't help wondering if part of its appeal was that it was on the coast but right on the far side of the bay, a long way away from where Joan lived. Colette loved it from the first, this little hilly village with its steep and winding streets, its extraordinary views out to sea. They walked along the harbour and peered down onto the oily decks of trawlers, as seabirds cried overhead. ‘I'd like to live here,' Fintan had remarked on that first day. ‘That would be nice,' Colette replied. She didn't think to say, ‘Me too,' because it was so far beyond her aspirations, with or without Fintan.

And now the circle has closed, here she is, living with Fintan and their three children in Howth all these years later and, even though it is her own life, to think about it, to
really
think about it, astonishes her. She looks around the dim room where their possessions loom: the table she bought in an auction; the lamp that was a wedding present and which she
never
much liked but which has become a part of home so that she would be vexed if it was broken; Lucy's books on the table and Rob's shoes in the corner, even though she had told him to put them away in the hall cupboard before he went to bed. She has
never
taken taken her life for granted, and she loves her home, is grateful for it.

When she was leaving the house this morning to buy the chicken she had noticed, as she sometimes does, the sound that the front door makes. It is a sort of sigh that becomes a sharp creak as she pulls the door over, and then it closes silently, but for a click as the lock engages. After that, she has to get hold of the metal boss in the middle of the door and pull it hard towards her to properly align the second lock, the bottom one, so that it will engage when she uses the mortise key. The metal bar is audible as it slides into the jamb. All of this happens quickly as a rule – sigh – creak – click – and she doesn't pay it any special heed. But she had noticed it this morning. Although she is not particularly religious, at that moment when she locks the door she is always mindful of a thought caught somewhere between a prayer and a simple wish, that the place will be safe until she returns. As she walked away today she had thought of the empty house, of it sitting there deserted and silent, intact and sealed like a snow globe, a little closed world onto itself. Not that it was perfect, far from it: there were always things to be done – the perfection for her was that it was home.

But it was fragile too, and could be destroyed, as a snow globe can be broken, reduced in an instant to fragments of glass and the gimcrack contents that had been magnified and made magical by the water. Their lives could be overtaken by calamity; the dark act of some blank force could bring it all to an end tomorrow.

‘I want to take you to meet my auntie and uncle.' He'd said it artlessly, as a child might, and even Colette, herself quite artless and up until now more than happy with some exceptionally low-key, low maintenance dates – those noisy cafes, those walks by the canal – even Colette had demurred at this. But Fintan had coaxed her into it, albeit with nothing more original or enticing than, ‘They're really nice,' and, ‘I know you, you'll like them.'

Fintan's auntie and uncle lived in Drumcondra, in a slightly dingy street of red-brick houses made lovely by the cherry trees that lined it, and that happened to be in full bloom on the day of the visit. Remembering this on the sofa Colette realises that it must have been at exactly this time of year, for the cherry trees are all out now; and she remembers how the door had been opened by Christy, a little gnome of a man, and how the force of his sudden and sincere delight had blown away her shyness.

‘Fintan! And . . . Colette! Colette! You're very welcome. Come in! Come in! Beth, come and see who's here.'

It was the strangest house she had ever seen. It was the house in which, Christy told her, he had grown up, and his father before him. Little or nothing had been done to change it over the years, so that it was remarkably old-fashioned. It was all wainscoting and dark-green paint, hooked rugs and framed tapestries. There was a stuffed fish in fake weed, with the name of the lake where it had been caught painted in gold letters on the glass case. There was a black piano, and an old-fashioned gramophone with a great golden horn. Even though it was spring it was a cold day, and there had been a fire burning in the grate, and on the table there was a huge vase full of daffodils that blasted the room with their yellow energy; that lit the place up more than any lamp could ever have done. It had been like going back in time, like stumbling into the pages of a story book, so that, Colette thought, if the cat on the hearth – and there was always a cat, even back then – had sat up and spoken to her, she thought that she would hardly have been surprised.    

‘Here's my lovely girl,' Christy said, as he introduced Beth, ‘here's my sweetheart.' For that had been another strange thing about the day, strange but beguiling, as the house itself was: the affection between them, the way they looked at each
other
like newly-weds, even though they were old. (Old! Colette thinks now. Why, they could only have been in their fifties.) But then again, they had only been married for a couple of years at that time, something Fintan told her on the way home afterwards, which surprised her greatly.

There had been music playing in the house that day, Beethoven and Mozart, always music, Christy's great love. He told her that he would have liked to have been a musician, but as an only child in a family of modest means, it had been more important for him to find a more solid job, and he had become a music teacher.

She wonders now why she doesn't think back consciously to that day more often, for the charge of happiness it gives her. It had made her feel closer to Fintan at the time, or rather, it had made her want to be closer to him, to remain in his life. Although already somewhat besotted with him, she found he rose considerably in her estimation after she had met Christy and Beth. To have such family enhanced him in her eyes; she wondered at the luminous hinterland of his life and what she might find there, if this was his auntie and uncle. But when she had tried to intimate as much to him, he had only said drily, ‘Wait till you meet my mum.'

A lifetime ago all that had been, nigh on thirty years, and it had ended so sadly. She looks around the room again. All this will end too. It is changing all the time, although she doesn't much like to think about it. Soon the boys will be gone, would have left home already were it not for the high rents in the city. Rob in particular is keen to go, and Fintan, she suspects, is keen to see him gone. Niall feels guilty about the comfort in which he lives and that too grates on Fintan; on Colette too at times, if the truth is to be told. Maybe her own good intentions have backfired here, for when they were small she would always say to them, ‘Aren't we lucky to live in such a nice place? Beside the sea, with the boats and the harbour, in such a house?' Had this been the cause of Niall's highly developed social conscience, which she found admirable and irritating in equal measure? She can see that Rob aspires to something more, that he fully approves of the moneyed climate which is contemporary Ireland, and which even Colette and Fintan feel slightly uneasy about, let alone Niall. Rob wants more material things, much more than they have given him, whereas Niall wants less, and wants to share what he does have with others.

Colette sighs and rolls over on the sofa. And what about Lucy? What about this sleepover that's supposed to happen soon and that Fintan's not keen on? How can that be squared so as to keep everyone happy? And then she's back where she started, thinking again about the lasagne. Would she be able to stretch it over two days if she made a really big salad? She decides to go into the kitchen and have a look at it, and is alarmed to find when she goes into the hall that the kitchen door is ajar and the light is on, even though she distinctly remembers turning it off, and she hasn't heard anyone coming downstairs. Gingerly she opens the door.