Nothing is Black (12 page)

‘MAYBE YOU WON’T LIKE ME
for this,’ Nuala said. ‘Maybe you’ll never forgive me, but we probably won’t ever see each other again, so I’m going to risk it.’ Anna smiled and put her head to one side. ‘You already know what I’m going to ask you.’

‘Do I?’ said Anna.

‘Yes, you do. But you’re pretending you don’t, to make it as difficult as possible for me.’

It was the evening before Nuala’s departure, and she had come to say goodbye to Anna. They had been sitting by the fire for over two hours now, and darkness was falling. Anna did not get up to draw the curtains and switch on the lights. On the contrary: it was as though by tacit agreement that they waited for the dark, talking only of inconsequential things while they could still see each other clearly. The only light in the room came from the flames in the hearth.

‘Don’t think badly of me, Nuala. Yes, I know exactly what you’re going to ask me.’

‘And you don’t mind?’

‘Let me just make this condition: that I can ask you exactly the same question, which is this: What’s wrong?’

Now it was Nuala’s turn to smile. ‘You see, you did know.’

‘So answer me. I’m asking you first. What’s wrong?’

Nuala was silent, but Anna didn’t persist. She allowed her the time she knew she needed. The silence stretched out. The clock ticked. The fire collapsed in on itself with a hushed sound, and then the flames began to burn more brightly than before, throwing shadows across the room. There was rain falling against the window, and a wind rising. Nuala didn’t want to answer because she didn’t want to break the peace of the moment, or lose the kindness of Anna’s waiting silence. After a long time she spoke.

‘I’m unhappy because I don’t know how to live.’

Anna did not reply. It was so dark now that Nuala could not see the expression on the other woman’s face at all, just the outline of her where she sat. Nuala felt warm and calm. She listened again to the fire, the rain, the clock, and only gradually did she notice another sound. Anna was crying.

‘Oh Nuala,’ she said eventually. ‘How to live: do you really think that any of us know that?’

Anna insisted on keeping her side of the agreement, even though Nuala kept saying that it didn’t matter, afraid that Anna would become even more upset.

‘I’m going to tell you,’ Anna said. ‘I promised I would and I try to always keep my word. I probably should have talked to you like this a long time ago.’

‘Well then,’ said Nuala, ‘when you’re ready.’

Slowly and very quietly Anna told Nuala about how her marriage had broken up, and how Lili blamed her for it. She told her that she’d heard over the summer that
Lili had had a baby. She hadn’t even told Anna she was pregnant, and she couldn’t bear it that her own daughter was so cold to her – that she hated her so much.

Nuala said nothing while Anna spoke, and listened patiently to the end.

‘Well,’ she said eventually, ‘you’re right about one thing at least: you should have talked about this before now, to me, or to somebody. You shouldn’t have kept it bottled up ail these years. Because you’ve got it all completely wrong, don’t you see?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Lili doesn’t blame you. I’d bet my life on that.’

‘But she does, I know. She’s told me so.’

‘And you deny it every time. The one thing you insist on is that it’s not
your
fault. So she knows you don’t blame yourself. Then who does she think you do hold responsible?’

‘My husband, of course.’

‘No Anna,’ Nuala said. ‘Not your husband. Lili thinks you blame her.’

‘Lili? But it’s not possible, it’s ridiculous. You don’t understand. She was a child of ten when it happened.’

‘Precisely.’ Nuala paused to let this sink in.

‘But she’s never said this to me, never in all these years.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she? Because if she did, you’d have denied it, just as you’ve denied it to me right now. So she’s been waiting for you to make the first move and you never did. You’ve only ever defended yourself, and she’s given up waiting.’

Anna was still having trouble taking this in. ‘Just think about it,’ Nuala said. ‘You’ll see I’m right. Anna, I’m
being very blunt with you. Maybe you have left it too late. Maybe she’ll never forgive you. But then again, she just might. There’s no knowing.’

‘So what should I do?’ Anna said.

‘You’re going to have to make the first move,’ Nuala said, ‘and you’re going to have to take it very gently. You could buy something nice for the baby here in Ireland, and then send it to her when you get home, with a card or a letter saying that you want to be on good terms with her. Explain that you see now how she must have felt. Ask her to forgive you.’ She could see Anna balk at this, and added quickly. ‘I didn’t say this would be easy. Remember it’s not just a question of swallowing your pride. Don’t make any approach to her until you’re reasonably convinced that what I’m saying is correct. And don’t expect miracles. Maybe she won’t want to have anything to do with you. Even if she does, it’ll probably take her a long time to thaw out. Just go gently, and give it lots of time.’

‘Do you think it’ll work?’ Anna said timidly.

‘I wish I could say yes,’ Nuala said. ‘But I just don’t know. I hope it does. Will you write and tell me?’

‘Yes of course,’ said Anna. ‘And you must write to me too, to tell me how things are.’

Nuala smiled to herself, again grateful for the
darkness.
She had gone down to the beach that afternoon and thrown her teaspoon into the waves. Maybe it would be washed up on the beach and someone would find it. They’d wonder how a spoon from a hotel in Dublin came to be on a beach in Donegal. They’d never guess.

Nuala was surprisingly decisive about her departure.
She insisted on going back to Dublin as she had arrived, rather than have Kevin travel up to Donegal to collect her. Anna offered to drive Nuala into town to catch the bus, an offer which was accepted.

‘Please don’t wait to see me off,’ she said to Claire. ‘Go and start your work as usual, I don’t want to hold you back.’ Claire went along with this, keen to avoid sitting around with her for twenty minutes or so, with their goodbyes made and nothing else to do but grow tense and awkward with each other. Relieved, she went upstairs to her studio.

Over the course of the summer, Claire had stopped painting the view from the window, and started to draw a still life every morning instead. For the past week now she had been drawing the same apple over and over, trying to catch its essence as quickly and simply as possible. This morning, she deliberately worked slowly, waiting to hear Nuala leave the house. She knew she wouldn’t be able to settle to her real work today until she was alone, even though she hadn’t been bothered by Nuala’s presence all summer. She drew a line with a soft pencil, then smudged it with her finger, and put her eye close to the sketch book. The paper was soft and fuzzy, like the skin of a peach; the pencil mark was pearly.

She wouldn’t see Nuala any more often than she had done in the past, but through her family she would always know how she was, and what she was doing. It struck her as absurd that this should be so, while she would probably never hear of Markus ever again or know where he was, or what he was doing; and yet she still thought about him all the time. She had dreamt about him the night before, and remembered when she
woke that what she had dreamt of had once actually happened, but she had forgotten it until now.

They’d travelled a lot during the time they were together, mainly in Germany and France. One hot afternoon, they had sat at a pavement café in Paris, drinking wine. At the gates of a nearby church, an old woman was begging. The passers-by ignored her: no one gave her anything, and most of them looked straight through her, as though her age and her poverty had rendered her invisible. Claire looked at her face: it was hard to imagine that she had ever been young.

Markus didn’t notice the woman until Claire pointed her out to him.

‘Before God,’ she said, ‘we are all like that.’ She could see that this angered him: she had known it would, but she persisted. ‘Don’t you see how the people shun her? In her weakness and destitution they recognize
something
of themselves, and it frightens them. They want to deny it, so they try to pretend that she doesn’t even exist.’ He stared at her coldly, and she realized then that their life together was over.

‘Why do you despise people?’ he asked, after a moment’s pause.

‘I don’t, Markus, and you know that I don’t.’

‘What do you feel, then, when you look at the world? When you look at this?’ And he gestured at the street.

She was going to say, ‘Pity,’ but when she spoke, she said, ‘Love.’

She picked up the apple she had been drawing, and examined it as closely as she had examined the texture of the page which bore its image. The fruit had lost its lustre during the days she had kept it in the studio. The
skin was puckered and shrunken; and the deep fragrant scent of the apple had diminished to an unpleasantly sweet smell, redolent of decay. What would she draw tomorrow? A loaf. Roses. More fruit.

Sometimes it was easy to forget that life was driven by necessity. The world today conspired to induce such forgetfulness. What was worth knowing in life? The limits, the severe limits of one’s understanding and abilities, the power of love and forgiveness; and that life was nothing if not mysterious.

She heard a car drive up to the house. The front door slammed, she heard voices, then the car drove away again and there was silence. Claire put aside the sketch book, and turned her attention to her real work.

HIDDEN SYMPTOMS 

THE BIRDS OF THE INNOCENT WOOD 

REMEMBERING LIGHT AND STONE

Deirdre Madden is from Toomebridge, Co. Antrim. Her novels include
The Birds of Innocent Wood, Nothing is Black, One by One in the Darkness,
which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and
Authenticity.
Her novel
Molly Fox’s Birthday
also was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She teaches at Trinity College, Dublin and is a member of the Irish Arts Academy Aosdana.