Bibliofemme: Extras

It was by accident that I met Jack Loveday. I had dipped into the art gallery to escape a rain shower - one of those hot, sulphurous ones that means thunder is on its way - and got sucked into the hush and reverence of the place by its smell: it was ancient and fresh at the same time. I wandered through the front atrium, past rows of brooding stained-glass panels, and into the first exhibition room. My trench-coat was soaked, so I took it off and shook it out; it spluttered plump raindrops onto the parquet floor. Some of the drops hit Loveday's shoes.

'Oops-a-daisy,' he laughed and I looked at him. Something about his face was so chirpy that I laughed too.
'Sorry, I didn't mean to splash you, it's lashing out there.'
'It's OK,' he said, 'but I think you need one of those.'
He pointed at the painting in front of him and I turned to look at it. The picture was big, thick with people under a jumble of pigeon-back-blue umbrellas. In the foreground, a hatless woman carrying a bandbox gazed out at us, and a little girl stood coyly by.

'Oh, you mean an umbrella? I'll be fine without one, it's only a shower.'
I squinted at the name-card on the wall: Auguste Renoir, Les Parapluies. I smiled at the man and moved off. He stayed where he was, looking at the painting. I glanced back and watched him swinging on his heels and smiling to himself; he was older, a bit tweedy looking, but I liked his friendly face and soft-looking hair. The gallery was small and the rooms were in layers, each one stacked behind the last, like a Mayan temple laid out on its back. I moved past the exhibits and got caught up in the speed of the changes: one set of paintings was all languid, light-dappled Breton landscapes; the next was abstracts, exploding their colours and textures across the walls. I stopped in front of a canvas that held a huge fragmented red circle, trying to decide if I liked it or not.

'We meet again.' He was at my elbow and, when I turned to him, his face was almost touching mine. For whatever reason, I didn't want to pull back. 'What's your name?'
'Hannah.' I blushed. 'Yours?'
'Loveday. Jack Loveday. Have some tea with me, Hannah.'

I nodded and we walked back through the rooms to the table-cluttered café. At the counter, he put his hand on my waist and I slipped my arm around him; my fingers landed on the comforting wad of pudge over his trouser waistband.

It started from there. He took me back to his house that afternoon; he petted my hands on the bus, the palms and the backs, and we delivered slow smiles back and forth to each other. His place was near the coast - a tall Georgian house filled with bachelor's things: there were piles of newspapers and books everywhere, a clatter of uncomfortable chairs, an old stereo. A fruity-grassy smell, like olive oil, hung over everything. We sat side by side on a collapsing sofa and I curled my hands through the ends of his hair while he kissed my neck. Through the sash-window I watched soapy sunlight finger through storm clouds and crawl across the floor to my feet.

'Would you like to go upstairs?' Loveday whispered into my collar and I said that I would.

He took my hand and led me up two flights; the stairwell was hung with rows of prints and photographs and watercolours, in gilt and black frames. I didn't stop to look at them, but followed him up the stairs. A large iron bed stood in his room, the quilt cascading over the edge.

'It's a bit messy,' he said, bending to lift the ends of the covers out of the rolls of hairy dust that were scattered around the bed like rain-clouds.

I stopped his effort at tidying, took his face in my hands and kissed him deeply, pushing my tongue between his teeth. He kissed me back; the heat of his mouth sent ripples to my stomach. Loveday slipped his hands inside my clothes and unhooked my bra; I pulled my shirt off and my breasts swung free. He lifted and held and kissed them in turn. We undressed quickly - only glancing at each other's nakedness - and lay down together. It was my first time in a long time; I was conscious of the pouch of my stomach and the wispy hair under my arms that I'd stopped bothering to shave. While he lapped at the skin around my throat, I tried to figure out how it was I felt so comfortable lying naked in his bed on a wet Saturday afternoon. He moved down my body, stroking my sides with his fingers, stopping to kiss my nipples.

'You're beautiful,' I said to him, and he lifted his face to me and smiled. I put my index fingers into the hollows at the top of each of his cheeks, then slipped my hands around his neck and lay back on the pillow.

We met at Loveday's house every Saturday after that; I would take the bus or the train and stroll to his place, watching the waves churning on the water in the harbour and the yachts pushing over the sea like toys in a pond. He would open the front door with a smile and hold it wide to let me in. We always talked a little about our during-the-week lives; I told him about the people I worked with in the office, made them all sound a bit more interesting and flirty than they actually were. Loveday would nod and smile in his avuncular way, rubbing my hand all the time, and remember things I'd said about this one or that one; he'd ask me if I'd been to the theatre or a film since. He talked a little about meetings he'd had, or places he'd been, and called me his sweetheart. We sat together on the sofa facing the window, reading the papers and drinking tea, until we climbed the picture-crowded stairs to his room.

In Loveday's bed we grew hot together, moving across, over and around each other, kissing and tasting and thrusting through hours, until we were sleepy. He was a slow-moving lover, gentle and generous, and I responded to him, forgetting any shyness. I loved to watch his chest tighten as he moved over me, the pull of muscle under skin; I tracked the changes in his face and kissed him everywhere I could reach - face, chest, shoulders, arms. His hands would rub and coax me and he'd watch my face, ask me if he was doing OK, and smile when I said he was. We would sleep in snatches and wake up to touch and play with each others bodies again. I loved the damp-sweet smell of his skin, the hot taste of his tongue on mine.

We sometimes met in town on a Sunday afternoon. We inspected the statues in St Stephen's Green, had coffee and buttery biscuits in hotel foyers, and often ended up back at the Municipal Gallery.
'She reminds me of you, you know.' We were standing in front of Les Parapluies.
'Because this is where we first met?' I asked, slipping my hand through the crook of his elbow.
'Well, yes, I suppose, but you look like her too. The same sloe eyes, the superior look.'
'What?' I poked his belly with my finger. 'What are you on about?'
'I don't know, just look at the way she carries herself. She's a hat-maker but she acts like a princess; her head is thrown back.'
'Why shouldn't she act like a princess?' I laughed. 'And what are you saying about me - that I'm snooty-looking?'
Loveday laughed and kissed my cheek. 'Look at how flustered you get. I love it.' He held me by the shoulder and we lingered in front of the painting. 'Renoir liked blue - he had a gift with it. But it never made his work dark or sombre, like you'd expect.'
'Maybe he was in love with blue.'
'Maybe,' Loveday said, taking my face in his hands and kissing my mouth. 'Come on - we need some tea.'

It was a tepid autumn Saturday, when we lay wrapped together in Loveday's bed, half-in half-out of sleep, that his telephone rang. It was such an unfamiliar noise in his house that my eyelids jerked wide and I lay rigid for a minute, not knowing what bed I was in or who lay spooned around me. Loveday was already lifting the receiver by the time I came back to myself and knew where I was.

'Hello.' His voice became deep and dull, like a civil servant's. I could hear a babble at the other end of the phone-line. 'Margaret, is that you?' I rolled into the quilt and listened, hearing the lilt of concern in his voice. 'Calm down, sweetheart, and start again. Deep breaths, now, come on, I'm listening.'

I listened to the voice on the line - it sounded jerky and tough - but I couldn't make out the words. He soothed and cajoled, asked if she had been drinking, said he would come straight over. The other voice grew louder but Loveday stayed calm and repeated that he'd be with her soon. He told her to go and lie down until he got there. He plopped the receiver back and turned to me; he didn't say anything but ran his hand over the mound of my belly and down my inner thigh.

'I have to go out for a while, Hannah; you're welcome to stay.'
He sighed and pushed his hand over his face. I waited for him to tell me where he was going and who the woman on the phone was, but he was already lurching out of the bed and reaching for his clothes; a sting wound its way into my chest.
'Who was that?'
He continued to dress himself, his back to me, and I watched his flesh roll as he bent and moved, lifting his legs one at a time into his trousers. I wanted him to touch me.
'That was Margaret.' He buckled his belt, knelt on the floor by the bed and took my hand; he kissed it and looked into my eyes. 'My daughter.'

'Oh.' It was all that came out of me. His daughter. 'I didn't know you were married.'
Loveday laughed; the kind of laugh parents use with a child who has said something naïve.

'You don't need to be married to make babies, sweetheart.' He tapped me on the nose with his finger. I blushed, furious with him for making fun of me. 'Give me a couple of hours and I'll be back in there beside you.'
He blew a kiss at me before leaving the room; I listened to him trot down the stairs and held my breath for the click of the front-door. Then I lay, marooned in the quiet of his bed, and let scalding tears slide from my eyes into my ears. I got up quickly, tussled into my clothes and left.

The following Friday I took the train home to visit my mother. She was happily retired in a tiny bungalow on the edge of the town; the farm I'd grown up on was too far out now, she preferred the movement of neighbours around her. Mammy was glad to see me, full of the news of the parish: births, deaths, small scandals. She hinted at her own death, then looked at me slyly and we both laughed. My mother was - and is - robust. She asked, as usual, about my love life.

'Oh, there's no one special,' I said.
'Hmmmm,' she said, staring at me above the rim of her mug. '"No one special", she says.'
'Oh shut up, Mammy.'
I made a curry for her; she liked it and sat spooning rice into her mouth long after I'd finished eating.
'Whoever he is, he's put you in bad form.'
I looked at her and said nothing; I couldn't decide whether I'd been childish to leave Loveday's the previous week, or whether I'd been right. Who keeps the fact that they have children a secret? The thought made me wince.
'Oh, I'll get over it.' I fiddled with the oilcloth on the table and looked at the floor.
'Go out to the farm and see Gerard while you're here; he'd love to see you, I'm sure.' She scooped the rice around her plate, following it with her spoon to try to catch the last few grains. 'Now, that was gorgeous,' she said when she'd finished and she smiled at me.

I hadn't spoken to my brother Gerard in months; we weren't close, not since I'd moved to the city. The family worried about him in a vague way but, being us, we never really did anything to help. It was as if it would be too embarrassing to offer advice, too presumptuous. Gerard was just odd; he still ran the farm in a small way, but he always seemed to choose his own company above anyone else's. I said I'd go to see him the next day.

The bus left me at the top of the valley. I decided not to ring Gerard for a lift; I'd walk. The breeze cleaned my head after the bus and I welcomed the gravelly road underfoot. The day was misty but I could make out the hump of the mountain beyond the houses and the blanket of dark sky draped above it. It was quiet as I tripped down the road. I knocked on the front door, enjoying the familiar weight of the brass knocker Daddy had put there years before. Gerard answered after a minute or two; he looked empty.

'Do you not have a key?'

I did, it just didn't seem like the house had anything to do with me anymore. I stepped into the hall and breathed in the smells: must, onions and furniture polish. I ran my fingernails along the scratchy striped wallpaper. He walked ahead of me to the kitchen; it struck me that not so much as a handshake had ever passed between us.
'Any news?' I asked.
'No, not a thing.'
Gerard sat by the fire, stooped like an old man, the newspaper in his hand; he looked like Daddy before he'd died.
'So,' he said, half-smiling. 'How's the Big Smoke treating you?'
I hated when people called Dublin that; it seemed rude and provincial.
'Oh, you know…' I unbuttoned my coat, laid it across the back of a chair.
'Come in beside the fire,' Gerard said. 'I'll put the kettle on.'
There was a vague smell of pee in the kitchen and the toffee-coloured walls were sloughing paint.

'This place is a shambles.' Gerard just grunted and stared into the fireplace, uncomfortable that I was there. We sat without talking. After drinking my tea, I got up. 'I'm going out for a walk.' 'OK.' He didn't offer to come with me and I was glad. I wanted to do something, other than wonder if Loveday was waiting for me, with the day's papers laid out for us to read, the tea wet in the pot. I tramped through the lane into the back field, swinging left at the old estate wall. The big house there had been idle for years; I'd romanced as a child that I might live in it someday. It all looked less imposing now, not the mansion I used to call it. The pathways were clogged with mulched leaves. I thought about Loveday as I picked through a tangle of plants, feeling like a giant in a child's game. I hoped he was thinking of me. I thought about the way he said I was shaped like a little girl: bud breasts, ripe belly, the small of my back a concave loop. I loved the way he liked to curve around me in bed: his front to my back, my head under his chin and my feet standing on his, as if we might dance. He'd tuck his hand over my stomach and press into the flesh with his fingers.

In the mornings, I often sat and stared into the mirror at his dressing table, complaining that my eyes were drooped over, old-looking, and that if I didn't dye my hair I'd be known as the Grey Lady. Loveday always told me I was beautiful, knowing that that was what I wanted to hear; he said it like he meant it. I stopped kicking through the grey weeds, stood and looked back at the old house and over at the mountain. I love him, I thought, and I want to tell him.

Gerard was gone up the top field to the sheep when I got back to the house; I could see him from the lane. I let myself in and went to the phone; Loveday's number rang out. I sat at the table and read the newspaper, thinking I'd try to phone him again in a while. I flicked the paper from front to back; I didn't normally read the death notices, because when I did I always seemed to find someone I knew there - a school-friend's mother or some distant relative of my own - and reading of children's deaths always made me feel sad. But as I turned the page an entry stopped me: 'LOVEDAY Máiréad (Margaret) - October 9 (suddenly), deeply regretted by her loving father, family and friends.' I gripped the paper, read it again and went to the phone.

I trailed my fingers through the crumbs on the blue and white plate, pushing them over the scene that showed a pagoda surrounded by trees. My eyes lifted constantly to the café door. Loveday appeared at last, his face tired-looking. He smiled when he saw me, I stood and we hugged for a long time. He whispered my name into my hair. I ordered more tea and we sat down together.

'Thanks for coming back,' he said.
'I had to see you,' I said. He leant over and kissed my lips. 'Tell me what happened.'
He sighed, rubbed my fingers. 'Margaret was an artist, like Maud, her mother.' He frowned. 'I loved Maud, very much, but she was married, you know, so we couldn't be together; she wouldn't leave her husband. Everyone knew that Margaret was mine - it was the worst kept secret in Ireland.' He paused.

'Go on,' I said. 'I was Maud's main dealer, I sold her work all over the world. And later, after Maud had passed away, I became Margaret's. But as her illness took hold, the quality of her work slid and I couldn't sell it anymore. She became very angry with me, accused me of sabotaging her career to get back at Tony, Maud's husband. We fell away from each other for a long time; years.' He hung his head. 'I feel so bad about that now.'

'If she was sick, there was probably very little you could do to help.' I fiddled with my tea-cup.
'I could've tried harder. When she was well, she was magnificent: cutting and funny and big-hearted. But when she was depressed, there was a prison-wall around her.'

I patted his arm. 'Prison-walls are notoriously difficult to break through.' He nodded.
'She changed her name to mine a few years ago, she became a Loveday. I think that got to Tony, but I was touched really, honoured. It was the sort of gesture she was capable of: impulsive and well-meant, but hurtful to some.' He half-smiled and I kissed his cheek.

'Come on, let's walk.' I stood up and held out my hand to him. He looked up at me.
'She killed herself, Hannah.'
'I know, Jack.'

He got up, put his two hands on my waist and thanked me again for coming back to Dublin. I hugged him close and we walked arm-in-arm through the gallery, looking for the shelter of our favourite umbrellas.

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