Beatrice Read online

  Her sketchbook is full of portraits of me. I was her most convenient model. I remember not wanting to be drawn and being irritated by her insistence but then I always gave in. I had to sit still for ages. It used to drive me crazy.

  When I was thirteen I was good at art at school, but I lacked confidence. I let Beatrice’s talent overshadow mine. Beatrice loved the Romantics. The Artist had given her a book on Delacroix. I remember each page as we leafed through that book: Dante and Virgil in Hell, The Death of Sardanapalus, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel and all those Algerian women.

  I always thought the pictures were over the top, but Beatrice loved them. She was always talking about Delacroix as if she knew him. She loved quoting a sentence from the book – that he was ‘A volcano artistically concealed beneath a bouquet of flowers’. She said that she wanted to marry a man like him. She even wrote a poem about him. It’s lost now.

  After Beatrice disappeared, Mammy burnt that book. I don’t know why she didn’t give it back to the Artist.

  When Beatrice was gone, I started to read all her art books. I was avid; hungry for knowledge. It was as if what she had read might somehow deliver up clues. Then I started to draw properly and with intention. They were angular rough drawings of places, not people. I never wanted to draw people. Grief gave me an edge that most of my contemporaries at school could barely identify with. I took solace in painting.

  But my way is different from Beatrice’s. I don’t want to engage with humanity. Instead I walk – in the city or at home down to the bog, the woods, the lough, carrying my box of charcoals, and then I create violent and bleak compositions. I remember when I was a teenager I would sit for hours marking the paper with thick, black lines, an abstracted view of a wood on the horizon. There was little comfort in this landscape, but then that was my view of the world at the time.

  BEATRICE

  Beatrice’s anger made her walk fast. Why was she so mad? Nobody got to her the way Phil did. She had really thought they were kindred spirits – soul mates. But he had turned out to be like all the others, thinking she was something she wasn’t, just because she was different.

  Beatrice had always stood on the outside. She could not help it. She had never been shy – always speaking out and saying what she thought. She always seemed to view things from an altered angle. Beatrice had thought Phil was the same as her. Now it seemed he was not. Tonight she had seen an expression on his face which she did not like. He thought he was better than her – that was it. She had told him her story, about how she had always known that Joe wasn’t her real father in her heart of hearts. She had told him about the day her mother had told her everything . . . she had told him about trying to meet Jonathan. She had turned inside out for him. Now she felt as though he had punched her in the stomach; she was winded, knocked back and hurt. She would never forgive him.

  It’s true she had never talked about Jakob, but what was there to tell? He was her art teacher and her friend.

  Beatrice stopped walking. Where was she going? What had made her go back? She was so tired now, she felt she could drop where she stood.

  The moon lit the road ahead of her. The shadows of the distant mountains spread around her, inky blue and insolent. Their presence reminded her of her elders – Mammy and Daddy. She wished it were judgement day, so the hills would crack open like volcanoes and everything suppressed would be released; like hot molten lava. Mammy’s true feelings for Daddy would be out in the open, and that would be so much better. Then they could all stop pretending.

  A cloud drifted across the moon. It was suddenly very dark. Beatrice climbed over a gate and ran back home across the fields as noiselessly as any other animal of the night. By the time she got to the front door it had begun to rain. Heavy, humid drops splattered her face. She tossed her hair.

  The house was in darkness. Of course, Mammy and Eithne had gone to visit Auntie Aoife. She went into the kitchen and immediately lit the fire. It was nice to have some space.

  EITHNE

  Granny died when I was four. I only have one clear memory of my grandmother. She is sick, as usual, and seated by the range in the kitchen. She has a rug over her knees, and I am sitting on her lap. I remember the tug of her fingers on my waist. For someone so ill, she still possessed a strong grip. Every so often she coughs, then shakes and I wobble, but I do not want to get off. As I suck my thumb, she starts to play with my hair. It is something I have always loved, having my hair brushed, plaited and twisted around someone’s fingers. I find it the most comforting thing in the world. Granny and I are both looking across the kitchen table at Beatrice. She is nine years old. She is wearing her school uniform, and her hair is in pigtails. She stands to attention, her hands behind her back. She is reciting a poem. What is it now? Let me think . . .

  Oh to have a little house!

  To own the hearth and stool and all!

  The heaped-up sods upon the fire,

  The pile of turf against the wall!

  To have a clock with weights and chains

  And pendulum swinging up and down!

  A dresser filled with shining delph,

  Speckled and white and blue and brown!

  I could be busy all the day

  Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,

  And fixing on their shelf again

  My white and blue and speckled store!

  I could be quiet there at night

  Beside the fire and by myself,

  Sure of a bed and loth to leave

  The ticking clock and the shining delph!

  Och! but I’m weary of mist and dark,

  And roads where there’s never a house nor bush,

  And tired I am of bog and road,

  And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!

  And I am praying to God on high,

  And I am praying Him night and day.

  For a little house – a house of my own –

  Out of the wind’s and rain’s way.

  The room is full of women. Mammy and my aunts Bríd, Aoife and Mary sit at the table sharing a pot of tea. Mammy’s eyes sparkle with pride. Aoife’s two little girls are under the table, tugging each other’s skirts and whispering; her boys are running around, wild and noisy. Someone kicks them outside to play, and then the room is peaceful again. We are all spellbound.

  The poem is sad and Beatrice delivers it beautifully. Of course, I didn’t understand the poem, just words here and there. I was only four. But I understood about Beatrice, that she was special. We all knew it.

  Granny died just a few weeks later. Daddy and Uncle Jack came back from England for the funeral. I hardly knew my father and I had never met my uncle. When Daddy arrived home, he got out of the car and came straight over to me, not to Mammy, not to Beatrice, but to me first. He smoothed my hair, bent down and looked me straight in the eyes. There was recognition, immediately, like two animals from the same species.

  As we walked behind the coffin, Daddy held my hand. He was shaking but he did not cry. In the church, Beatrice recited the poem again. But the words rang hollow. Without Granny they fell flat, the poem seemed slight and empty among the shuffling and inattentive crowd.

  All those things were Granny – the hearth, the stool, the heaped-up sods on the fire, the big clock on the wall, and the dresser stacked with shining delph. That’s what she means to me now – a bunch of quaint old things. Will it ever be that way with Beatrice? Will she ever be the trail she left behind? Pearls, scarf, beret, sketchbook. All bound together in Mammy’s kitchen drawer.

  I wake up and look out of the window. All I can see is the blank white of a thick fog. There is not a breath of wind, and a heavy mist has descended upon the landscape. I open the window. The air is moist yet freezing, a cloying cold. I shut it quickly.

  The house is completely quiet. Mammy must still be asleep. Lisa is snoring softly, in the bed next to mine, Beatrice’s bed. I hope Daddy got home all right.

  I try to go back to sleep but it’s no go
od, I need to clear my head. I fling on a few clothes, and pick up the car keys.

  The roads are treacherous, people are crawling to work and I wish I had not gone out now. I slide down the hill, past Jakob Rudin’s house. A For Sale sign is up. Driving conditions are terrible. The fog is so dense I can barely see in front of me. I put on my lights. Suddenly I see movement in the fog. Something is coming towards me. I do exactly the wrong thing and brake. The car starts to skid, quickly I go down a gear and try to steer. The car slides across the road in a graceful semicircle and cuts out. I take three deep breaths and start her up again. I turn the car, and start driving back towards the village. In my rear-view mirror I can see a stray sheep emerging out of the fog. It peers at me.

  As I go back up the hill, light begins to break through the fog. A rosy cascade floods the road, yet I cannot see the sun. It is almost a divine sign – so utterly singular and incomparable is the light. To my left, very slowly, the fog begins to lift. The tip of Witch’s Hill appears, wreathed in mist. It looks preternatural. I have lived here all my life, and yet this landscape has an aspect to it I have never seen before. Even though the heating in the car is on full, I shiver. Something terrible has happened.

  Both Jack and Joseph came home for good when their mother died. She died in May, her favourite season, Our Lady’s month.

  The two men were shocked to find that the May Bush was still as it always had been, every year since they were children. They remembered, vividly, being sent out to collect bluebells, cowslips and buttercups. Running barefoot across the thistly heath to reach a copse of trees, which would yield up their flowery treasure. Then they would decorate the same old bush every year. It wasn’t a special bush, just an evergreen. They tied the flowers into bunches using coloured wool, and attached them to the bush.

  This tradition had never died. For years Granny had made the May Bush herself and, since she could walk, Beatrice had helped her. That year Beatrice and I had made the May Bush. Really she had done it on her own as I was only able to pick the flowers (and then I picked far too many dandelions). I could not reach most of the bush, and I couldn’t tie the wool.

  Jack had not been home for a few years, having devoted all his energy towards his failing marriage. Besides, his wife hated Ireland. But now that she had finally left, Jack had decided he might as well throw in the towel and come home. He always regretted not seeing the light sooner, and missing out on his mother’s last years. But he had had to make a choice – his little boy, Philip, or his ailing mother.

  Now he had effectively lost them both.

  At the funeral Jack cried. He was a smaller man than Joseph, but more expressive. I liked my Uncle Jack from the day I met him. Apart from Daddy, he was the only other person who believed in me, and told me I was special. Joe and Jack were close. When I was smaller they were very alike, you would have thought they were twins from their gestures and animated story-telling. But as Daddy’s heart slowly turned to lead he spoke less and almost shunned his brother’s company. Jack’s determination to be positive in the face of losing his wife and child was almost too much to bear. Daddy had everything – a family, a house, land – yet he felt he could not look forward to one single thing in his life. Each time he looked to the future, he drew a blank. His wife hated him. Where could it end?

  Jack was one of nature’s philosophers. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of natural history, but his approach was not purely scientific. He treated nature with a reverence that was quite unusual in a farmer’s son.

  He said to me once, ‘There is enough beauty, truth and nourishment in one small flower to last a lifetime.’

  He always put things into perspective. When Uncle Jack lived in England he worked in a bank, even attaining as high a position as assistant manager. Back home he seemed to have no interest in finance. He got a job as a barman in a pub in town and seemed quite content with that. He said he preferred to work in the evening because it left the daylight hours free for him to wander about. He loved walking.

  Like me.

  Uncle Jack moved in with us when he first came home. We all lived in Granny’s house, Mammy, Daddy, Beatrice, Bríd, Jack and me. It was a squeeze, but I loved the gatherings we would have in the evenings, before I was put to bed. Jack and Beatrice would sing, Bríd would play the fiddle. I had a little tin whistle which I could barely play (to be honest I ruined the ensemble). Daddy would tap his feet and Mammy would watch. Now I look back, I remember how strange they both were. Rigid and miserable amid such joy and love. It never once occurred to either of them that they should separate.

  When Daddy finally built our house and we moved in, Jack stayed on in Granny’s house. It was just himself and Bríd. Bríd would be out all day with Daddy, working the land and looking after the stock. Jack would clean and cook and walk. When Bríd came home, they would eat dinner and then Jack would head off into town on a battered old bike. They were an odd couple. Sometimes Bríd would follow him into town a few hours later. She’d pull up outside the pub on her tractor. She always sat at the bar with the men and drank pints. At the time, you could be sure Daddy would be there as well. His brother and sister let him drink. It was the only time they ever saw him smile.

  SARAH

  The summer of her second pregnancy, Sarah slept with Noel Chaney every day for two weeks. The dust gathered, the house remained unswept, the sheets unlaundered. Upon her return the housekeeper could never quite work out what on earth Sarah Kelly had been doing every morning in Mr Chaney’s dirty Georgian house.

  Sarah was living out her dreamworld. When she lay in Noel Chaney’s bed, and let him caress her, she closed her eyes and imagined her fantasy life. Noel Chaney was Anthony, the baby was theirs. They were living in a country manor, somewhere in England. She didn’t have a dull mundane life and a loveless marriage. Instead, she had shiny hair, a beautiful wardrobe and a man who admired her. Beatrice was their lovely daughter. She had a pony, and played the piano. Every day that Sarah visited Noel Chaney her fantasy gathered momentum. She was in ecstasy, and approached their love-making with a devout enthusiasm.

  Noel Chaney was bowled over. He had never thought a local girl would be so willing; then again, she was English.

  He had been bored all summer and now this was a delicious diversion. He was engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Lizzie, and they were to be married in September. This was the perfect opportunity to have a little fun before he had to settle down. Besides, there were things Sarah would do which he could never imagine Lizzie agreeing to. The fact that she was married and pregnant was even better – no complications or possible accidents. The husband was conveniently away in England. It was the perfect set-up.

  Each day started the same way. Noel Chaney would be downstairs in the library when Sarah arrived. She would go upstairs to his bedroom to make the bed. He followed her a few minutes later. They would spend an hour or two in bed and then Sarah would get up and go downstairs to get his lunch.

  On Sarah’s last day, Noel opened a bottle of wine. They drank it in bed, in between their love-making.

  ‘Will I come again after today?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I think not,’ said Noel

  ‘Right,’ she said. Her voice was suddenly cold.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘you know that to think we might have a future together would be ridiculous?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m getting married in September, remember, and you, of course, are married yourself.’

  ‘I would hardly call it a marriage.’

  ‘But you’re having his baby . . . you must be intimate.’

  ‘I hate him,’ she spat. ‘He is thick and ignorant. I didn’t choose to get pregnant. He forced himself on me.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry.’ He paused, embarrassed. ‘We will always be friends. I am very fond of you.’

  His last words hit her. It was like a flashback. Noel was not Anthony, but Jonathan. All of a sudden, Sarah was seventeen again, broken-hearted
and destitute in a cafe in Oxford.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she said sourly.

  He put his arm on hers.

  ‘Sarah!’

  She pushed him off, got out of the bed and dressed quickly.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ said Noel. ‘Don’t ruin our last hour together.’

  ‘You’ve spoilt everything!’ she said, her eyes blazing, and strode out of the room, leaving his lunch to burn to a cinder in the oven.

  For two weeks, Sarah’s anger kept her going. She shoved Noel Chaney to the back of her mind and tried to focus on her family. She took Beatrice for walks in the woods, where they would collect wildflowers and press them when they got home. She tried to get as excited as her daughter about the new baby.

  ‘I hope it’s a girl,’ Beatrice would say. ‘I want a little sister to play with. But then,’ she’d add, ‘I don’t mind if it’s a boy either . . . if it’s a boy, Mammy, can we call him Peter like Peter Pan?’

  Sarah winced. She put her hand on her belly. She had been trying her best to feel ambivalent about the new life inside her, but she could feel already the seeds of resentment in her heart. She didn’t want this baby.

  The third week, there was a full moon. Sarah hadn’t been able to sleep for three days. She was being driven crazy by moon-fever. Her dream-world was over, and she felt suffocated by the mundane world she inhabited. Here she was, her life ticking away, sitting in the small front room – Margaret coughing in the corner, Aoife talking about babies, Mary about the hospital, Bríd about the farm. She had to get out.

  She waited until the others went to bed, then crept out of the house. She cycled the four miles to Noel Chaney’s house in her nightdress; a ghost in the moonlight. When she got there she crept round the back, and threw pebbles at his window. After a few minutes it opened. Noel stuck his head out. When he saw her he closed the window. She waited. A few seconds later the back door opened.