Beatrice Read online

  ‘That’s just the way I am,’ he says, holding me again, ‘but I’m very, very excited underneath.’

  And his eyes are shining.

  We cook. Leo has bought a bottle of wine to celebrate. We talk about our work. Leo is worried that his budget won’t be big enough to cover the costs.

  ‘But you’re getting thirty-five thousand euros!’ I say.

  ‘You’d be surprised how expensive it is,’ he says, nodding knowingly. This is his fifth public art commission; his second since we got married three years ago. Apart from this he has had three solo exhibitions of his sculpture, as well as a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. No wonder he has problems squeezing in his day job at the college. For me it’s been harder. Leo has a way with people, especially gallery owners, clients and students. They all love and admire him. I don’t have that ease, and I’m constantly distracted. Sometimes I know that Leo is thinking that print-making is somehow less pure than sculpture; that I’m not quite as professional as he is, that maybe I’m just dabbling. I’ve never had a solo show.

  ‘I’ve a meeting tomorrow with Eliza Wright,’ I say.

  ‘Wright Gallery?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, I sent in a submission, ages ago. She rang me this morning.’

  ‘That’s great,’ he says.

  ‘Katie says Eliza likes print.’

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘Katie in the studio. You know, Katie Bryan.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. But how would she know that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know . . . she just said so.’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe a word that girl says, she’s cracked.’

  ‘Thanks for the encouragement,’ I snap, taking the dishes to the sink.

  The mood suddenly changes.

  ‘I was only telling you that I wouldn’t believe anything that mad Katie says, I’m not saying that Eliza Wright doesn’t like etchings. I think you’ve got a really good chance . . . your stuff is excellent at the moment. Jesus, what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing . . . I’m just nervous.’

  ‘Come here,’ he says.

  He holds out his arms and folds me into him. I am still annoyed but I let him pull me to him, and gradually my hostility ebbs away. I turn my face up to him. We kiss for a long time.

  He leads me by the hand.

  ‘The washing-up . . .’ I begin.

  ‘Fuck the washing-up, let’s go to bed.’

  I let him take me through the kitchen, into the sitting room and up our tiny little staircase into our loft. This is where we sleep. The lamp is on and it casts a golden glow around our den.

  Safe is our bedroom. The walls are painted an ever so pale lilac; ‘Spirit’ on the can. We have a giant-sized futon, piled with a billowing duvet and opulent throws picked up on our honeymoon in India. There is only one painting in here – it is by Noreen, a friend, and is called In Anima Vitae – The Aran Kiss. A man, half human, half nymph, cradles his lover’s head; her white arms reach up and touch his black, curly hair, as her own red glory tumbles and dissolves into their surroundings. Tiny white daisies frame the couple as little fish dart by.

  Leo holds me, and I feel like this woman. I am completely in his grasp. My devotion is fragile, but now utmost. Maybe he senses this, as we slowly fall back onto the futon, as if in slow motion, and gently peel our clothing off. Naked, we rub our bodies against each other, until we are both brimming with expectation. I reach over to get the condoms out of the locker, but Leo puts his hand over mine and stops me.

  ‘What do you think?’ he whispers to me.

  I freeze, shaking my head.

  ‘No, not this time, Leo, I’m not ready.’

  ‘Eithne, I love you – I want us to be a family.’

  My body tugs at me to let him in, but my fear is stronger.

  ‘But we are a family – you have Shauna.’

  ‘Don’t you want to have my child, ever? If we want to have children don’t you think we should start soon?’

  ‘Yes, I know. Soon – but not now – I . . .’

  How can I tell him the truth? That I never want to have children – that he is all I want – he is enough.

  I’m scared that a baby is something too precious. If I lost it, I might fall into a void, like Mammy did when Beatrice went. I know how much that hurt.

  I look up through the skylight at the stars. I make a wish. It is the first time that I have wished for something other than for Beatrice to return. As soon as I think of her I feel guilty and turn my gaze back to the painting.

  The reason I really like this picture is because it reminds me of her. Not that she looked like the woman in the painting, although the hair is similar, but because its abandon reminds me of her spirit. She never held back.

  A pearl necklace bought in a small boutique on the Playa de Palma in Majorca by my sister Beatrice. She bought our mother one too, and a bracelet for me. In Majorca pearls are not expensive. These pearls I could almost eat, tiny drops of opaque pleasure from the sea. When Beatrice gave me my pearl bracelet I was only thirteen. I had never been outside Ireland. I had never swum in the Mediterranean Sea. Beatrice told me how warm the water was, how soft the sand, and how hot it was. She made me laugh with her descriptions of stacked-up tourists like sausages on a grill, and the fights for the sun loungers. She told me she had sunbathed topless and to prove her claim removed her top to show me the unbroken brown of her tanned chest and back. When I asked her what she and the girls did on their holiday she was vague, ‘We just sunbathed and went out at night.’

  *

  Last year Leo and I went to Majorca for a sun holiday, a quick, cheap break. The second day there, when we had seen all we needed to of the rows of identical hotel blocks and the artificial beach, Leo suggested we take a bus into the interior of the island, to a place called Valledemosa. Perched on top of a mountain, this old monastic settlement was a breath of fresh air. Although there were still plenty of tourists, this was miles away from the bleak monotony of apartment blocks. Later that day we decided to go even further up the coast, and took another bus to a small village called Deia.

  After a hair-raising drive, where the road wound tighter and tighter uphill, the bus ground to a halt in a tiny village, perched high up on the edge of a cliff. We had read that there was a way down to a tiny cove so we followed a long, hot and dusty trail downhill, past houses, parched gardens and terraced olive groves. We didn’t see a soul – it was time for the siesta. Orange trees marked our route – it was a thrill to be able to pick an orange straight from the tree. We hopped across a ditch. Leo took my hand. His face was completely obscured by his sun hat and glasses, but I could tell he was concerned.

  The night before I had drunk too much. One sangria had led to another, after all, we were on holiday. Before I knew it, I was up performing my own unique version of the flamenco with the amused dancers. But my high spirits were swiftly followed by gloom.

  ‘I keep seeing Beatrice,’ I said to Leo. ‘I see her everywhere I look.’

  It was true; there were lots of laughing, carefree single girls with big smiles in wild, heathen groups, just like Beatrice and her friends. Who would think a holiday to Majorca would bring her memory back so keenly to me?

  Leo had said nothing; he just twisted his fingers through mine, and then got up.

  ‘Come on,’ he had said, ‘let’s go back to the hotel.’

  So today I feel fragile. I had been sick all morning, but Leo made me go out. Now the heat was getting to me, I was so thirsty I could hardly speak.

  ‘Jesus, where the hell is the beach?’

  ‘It says a short ten-minute stroll in this guide book.’

  ‘Well, either the guy must be the fastest hiker in the universe or he should be taken out and shot. Fuck!’

  I had slipped and, to prevent myself falling, I had grabbed hold of a thistly bush. Leo examined me.

  ‘All clear. No thorns in your side,’ he said sardonically.

  Finally, we came to a sma
ll, stony cove. It had been worth it. A few people were sunbathing, and some more were in the sea. I collapsed, and then abruptly sat up and looked about me. A tiny restaurant was to our left, on a slab of rock overlooking the sea. It was not a particularly remarkable place, but it looked familiar. Then I remembered.

  ‘Leo,’ I said excitedly, ‘Beatrice was here. She drew this cove in her sketchbook. It looks exactly the same – the restaurant here to the left, and the flag.’

  Leo put his arm through mine.

  ‘Maybe it was a mistake coming to Majorca,’ he said. ‘Everything seems to remind you of your sister.’

  ‘No, it’s good for me. I have to remember.’

  It was ironic. Here we were eighteen years later sitting in the same spot where she had sat drawing her picture. But still my sister did not feel real, not as real as the salt I could taste in my mouth or the sweep of the sea breeze through my hair. She was just a memory as elusive as a dream.

  The rest of the holiday we spent walking. Leo paced beside me, witnessing the pain and the memories.

  In my first and second years at art college, I did not fully catch on to my style. My tutors criticized me for being too distant from my work; they said I had to find my own individual voice. It was as if they were encouraging me to be tortured, hurt.

  The vacation before my finals I decided to go home for the summer. At first I did not touch a pencil, I just spent a lot of time thinking. I started looking at the fields, at the trees, the river, the loughs, and the lie of the land, especially the bog. I took black and white photographs of the landscape and searched for a way through: a path. This was the cycle of life in its raw state. It was such beautiful countryside, yet with such darkness beneath. Like my sister. It began to make sense; she had become the landscape. Beatrice had disappeared into the peaty, midlands earth, and all my emotions, which the landscape raised, reflected my state of mind concerning her. That summer I began to mourn Beatrice for the first time.

  I took pictures of myself in the bog using a tripod and timer. A commemoration. I sat in the bog plucking its cotton and letting myself grieve. I was obsessed with the tiny: a small stone, a piece of lichen, a leaf, a small flower. I examined my flowers: dead now, but so beautiful, at one time complete and nourished. This was enough for me; this was all I needed. For the first time I truly believed my sister was dead and would never return.

  When the summer ended I was frightened to go back to the city. Why would anyone ever want to leave where they came from? My soul was there. But return I did, to complete my degree. That autumn I was transformed from mediocre student to promising young artist. I left my first print in the acid too long, but the lecturers thought it was great. It was of a bog near home, very dark with deep cuts. They said it had a real feeling of turf, it evoked the Irish countryside – it’s density – the dark.

  So here I am several years later, with only a few group shows behind me. My new work focuses more precisely upon my sister’s disappearance. I am trying to remember everything, to keep a record of memory and emotion. I print my landscapes, but they are no longer merely just that. Objects enter the arena, all hidden in the woods behind our house, by the lough, under the aspen trees, on the bog, by the rag tree and under the yews: a string of pearls, a scarf, a hat, a sketchbook and a small compact.

  TWO: THE SCARF

  EITHNE

  There is a series of paintings of Beatrice wearing the scarf. I only discovered this a few months ago.

  The paintings are by a man known back home as the Artist. He was a sombre man, tall and dark with a shaggy, grey beard. The Artist was Beatrice’s mentor.

  Leo discovered the pictures. It turned out the Artist was called Jakob Rudin, who was an uncle of a childhood friend of Leo’s called Mick. Mick’s and Leo’s mothers and Leo’s father were Polish Jews, who had escaped the Nazis, and through this unique bond the two boys had become very close. Their childhood was spent in the south inner city of Dublin, where Leo’s parents ran a Jewish bakery. Mick, on the other hand, had been brought up a Catholic, like his father, but the two boys shared the drama of their parents’ past.

  Jakob Rudin had escaped from being sent to the concentration camps in the Second World War along with his sister Gertie, Mick’s mother. They went to London first, but soon afterwards moved to Dublin. As soon as Gertie was old enough to fend for herself, Jakob left her there and moved to the countryside. He preferred isolation. Now that his perimeters of humanity had been destroyed, he distrusted everybody.

  I remembered that the Artist hadn’t mixed with the locals. He didn’t drink in the pub and he didn’t go to Mass, so the only time you might see him was in the corner shop where he bought his groceries. He had a very old car, a Ford Anglia, which used to clatter up the hill, but it got him around, and sometimes he would disappear for days on end. Most of us would see him painting in different locations – by the river, at the top of a field, or even on the roadside, that’s how he got his nickname, although as far as I know no one ever saw any of his work, apart from Beatrice that is.

  Beatrice had always wanted to be an artist. I remember her saying so from the time I was tiny. Before she went to college, she decided she needed extra lessons, and so one day, no bother to her, she marched down the hill and knocked on the Artist’s front door. Instead of turning her away, he looked at the drawings she had brought with her and agreed to give her tuition. I don’t think he ever charged her – I think after years of solitude he enjoyed her company.

  Jakob Rudin died last year, leaving a house full of dusty canvases and nothing else. We discovered the connection when Leo said he was coming home with me one weekend.

  ‘I’m meeting Mick,’ he said. ‘His uncle used to live near you. He died last week.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Jakob Rudin. He was a Jewish refugee; like my parents. Mick told me that he was a painter. That’s why he wants me to come down.’

  ‘The Artist! I thought he died years ago.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘No, not really. But Beatrice did, he taught her,’ I said.

  The Artist had lived in a large stone house about a mile down the road from us. He had a wild garden with a stream running through it, and a scrabble of mangy chickens. His house was a mess. Mick had roped Leo in to help him sort out his uncle’s paintings; to see if he thought any of them were worth anything.

  ‘Piles of unoriginal oils,’ Leo said that night in the pub.

  Mick sighed.

  ‘Did you ever visit your uncle when you were a child?’ I asked Mick.

  ‘No. This is the first time I’ve ever set foot in the house. My uncle disapproved of my dad. He could never get over the fact that he was German. I never saw him, even though my mam sent him a monthly allowance. She did try to keep in contact. We drove down once, but he would not even open the front door. He just didn’t want to know.’

  ‘You can’t really blame him after what he went through,’ said Leo. ‘I still can’t get my dad to talk about his childhood – I know nothing about his family, who he lost and who survived. As for my mother – she does talk about the past – it’s awful and she has a thing about Germans too. I don’t think she can help it.’

  ‘Yeah, but my father has never even been to Germany. His parents were German, and his name is German, but he’s always lived in Ireland. He had nothing to do with the war. My mam was really hurt when Jakob rejected them.’

  ‘He was older than her, wasn’t he? Maybe he saw more than she did – people deal with trauma like that in different ways,’ Leo said, taking a slug of his Guinness. ‘If you met my dad you’d think he was grand,’ he continued, ‘always cracking a joke and full of beans. But that’s on the surface. I used to think about the war a lot when I was a little boy. There were all those war movies on then, you know like The Great Escape and the Bridge on the River Kwai – I was obsessed with them. But my dad hated me watching them. I always had to do it in secret, when he’d gone out. Once I wasn’t th
inking and I asked him, just blurted it out, had he ever seen a dead body? I’ll never forget the look he gave me – like I’d punched him in the stomach. Poor guy.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ said Mick. ‘When my mother came to Ireland with my Uncle Jakob she was only twelve and he was sixteen. They had gone the whole way from Germany to Ireland on their own. I still don’t know how they got here. She never told me, and I suppose I’m afraid to ask. I don’t want to carry that burden too.’

  Leo and Mick nursed their pints. My husband looked stern, he was almost scowling. Everything about him was light – his pale blond hair, cut short, like a shaved halo, and his skin, several tones lighter than mine, even his lips seemed bled of colour. His navy jumper made him look even fairer. He was not from this land. His family, his heritage of pain was as real as mine, but buried deeper, further away. And he had learnt to leave it behind. It hung around him, but he would not engage with it.

  ‘Would you never ask your father, Leo, what happened in Poland? How he got away?’ I asked him.

  ‘I can’t – I should have, I know – but it’s too late now. He seems happy, I don’t want to ruin that.’

  The Artist had become a real person, with a history and a family. To me he had always been a mystery, someone tragic and strange. The Gardaí interviewed him when Beatrice vanished, and I don’t think he ever got over the fright of three large uniformed men entering his home with their air of authority and their interrogation. He was a foreigner, always the prime suspect.

  The following day, Leo and Mick went down to finish up at the Artist’s house, while I stayed home with my mother. At around midday he phoned.

  ‘You had better come down here,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when you get here.’

  Mystified, I pedalled down the hill on an old bike. Mick and Leo were in the attic.