Nothing is Black (5 page)

Her mind had been quite made up. She would always remember the weeks which followed as calm and contented, as she settled down with the decision she’d made. It was early summer. College ended for the holidays, but Claire stayed on in Dublin, which was undergoing a heatwave. She felt more nauseous than ever, and the sweltering weather made it worse, but she felt peaceful and happy for all that.

She lost the baby in the fourth month of her
pregnancy
. It happened at home: she’d finally gone there to explain the situation to her parents. It was all over even before she had had time to tell them. Her mother cried but she didn’t reproach her, as Claire had been afraid she might.

‘How could I blame you?’ her mother had said, ‘when exactly the same thing happened to me?’

What happened to her mother had been worse. She was only fifteen at the time, and when her father found out, he’d beaten her so hard she lost the baby at once. The family hushed it up. Her father told her he’d beat her again, that he’d throw her out of the house if word got around the neighbourhood about what had happened.

‘I hated men after that,’ Claire’s mother said frankly. ‘They’d brought me only trouble and sorrow, and I wanted nothing more to do with them. I was going to be my own woman. It was fifteen years before I could trust a man again, and even then it wasn’t easy.’

She’d been thirty when she met Claire’s father. ‘I got fond of him, in spite of myself. I loved him, but I was afraid. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. In the end, I went away to Galway, but he came after me. Said he’d keep coming after me, wherever I went. But he made me a promise. He said if we got married and I went away after that, then he’d leave me in peace. “What sort of promise do you call that?” I asked him. “It’s a promise that if you marry me, you’ll always be free,” he said. So I married him, and I’ve always been glad that I did.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?’ Claire asked.

‘Same reason, I suppose, that you’re only telling me now, when it’s late in the day, and the horse has bolted. I’m still ashamed of it. Just think. All those years ago, and I’m still ashamed.’

Claire had spent the rest of that summer at home in Donegal, and when she went back to Dublin in the autumn she moved into a different flat. It was no more appealing than the one in which she had previously been living: the only thing in its favour was freedom from the associations and memories of that time. She didn’t tell any of her friends, although she suspected that Alice guessed what had happened, but was good enough not to ask for confirmation or denial. Unlike her mother, Claire didn’t feel ashamed, but her mother’s story was such a significant part of the whole experience that she felt the only option could be silence. It troubled
Claire that had she not got pregnant, that side of her mother’s life would always have remained shut to her. People might often unwittingly remind her of what had happened (as was the case this evening), but other than that, no one had ever been able wilfully to bring up the subject and attempt to reproach her with it.

Years later, what was the net result? It left her a fatalist. She would wince to hear people talk about what they wanted to happen in life, foolishly confident that they knew their own best interests; worse, that they could have whatever they wanted by effort of will.

She hadn’t ruled out having children in the future, nor dismissed the possibility of spending her life with one particular person. These things had not yet happened, there was no way of knowing whether or not they would happen, but trying to wring out one’s own destiny was doomed, of that she was convinced.

But fatalism was no insulation against hurt. Claire still felt sad when she thought of the baby. To think ‘what if?’ was permissible, never ‘if only …’

Still, her sense of irony had not been diminished by life’s vicissitudes, so she was able to appreciate Nuala’s presence in the house. Nuala had noticed that Claire wasn’t really paying attention to the photographs after a certain point, but it didn’t bother her. Suddenly she realized that one of the things she liked most about Claire was that she wasn’t judgemental, and how rare that was. She wanted to tell her, but when Claire looked her in the eye, she faltered, and said something else instead.

ONE NIGHT IN JULY
, Claire found that she couldn’t get to sleep, even though she had worked hard during the day and was tired. She put it down to there being a full moon. The moon always made her think of her father, the most superstitious person she had ever known. On a night such as this, he would always go outside and turn his money over in his pocket, in the hope that it would double. Once, years ago, he had discovered he was ten pounds short of what he should have had, and the whole family had been enlisted to help him look for it. Only after every possibility had been considered without result did he remember that two nights before that, the moon had been full. Shamefacedly, he admitted that in turning the money over, he must have inadvertently pulled the note out of his pocket, and lost it to a gust of wind. Over the years it had become a family joke, but Claire could still remember how annoyed her mother had been at the time. ‘Maybe that’ll put the pagan practices out of you,’ she’d said, (which of course it didn’t). Not that Claire’s mother was herself free of such superstition: she wouldn’t allow whitethorn in the house, and couldn’t bear to see shoes on the table. Claire had picked up these taboos from example, and it made
her feel uneasy to see other people break them.

Anna had taken a keen interest in all this when she talked to her about it once. Claire didn’t understand her neighbour’s attitude, which combined fascination in these things with the most rational, unmystical cast of mind Claire had ever come across.

She was quite enjoying having Nuala to stay. She liked the company, but until her arrival now almost a month ago, Claire hadn’t considered that she lacked
companionship
. She felt Nuala didn’t merit the interest she was taking in her. Markus would have said that it showed there was too little going on in her life, and that she just hadn’t realized it until then. But of course Markus would never have seen her choosing to live in such a quiet place as anything other than folly. He’d once spent a year in a remote corner of France, much as she was doing now, living alone and painting. ‘Never again,’ he said afterwards. ‘From now on, I’m only ever going to live in big cities. I find my level of vitality rises or falls to meet the level of vitality of the place where I happen to be.’ He’d spent time in Paris after that, and he’d been happy there. Claire didn’t agree with what he said. She thought it wasn’t true as a general rule, although it was probably true for Markus. But then, that had always been part of the problem: he always had to be doing. Markus had never understood the value of passivity, much less laziness.

Sometimes she wondered if Nuala understood
anything
else. Before her arrival, Claire had been worried that she would be bored in the country. Now that she was installed in the house, Claire was amazed that the tedium didn’t get to her, but it didn’t appear to bother
her in the slightest. She spent more time reading the papers every day than Claire would have thought possible: even old papers from under the stairs. ‘It’s all news, isn’t it?’ she would say, settling down. ‘Just because something terrible happened a month ago, or even years ago, doesn’t mean that it deserves less attention than something that happened yesterday.’

Washing newsprint off her hands before beginning to prepare lunch she said one day, ‘I always think it’s right, somehow, that you’re filthy by the time you’ve finished reading the paper. I always feel grimy inside, so why not outside too?’

Another day she remarked casually, ‘The difference between papers and magazines is that they’re both like mirrors, but only one of them flatters you when you look into it.’ Claire knew what she meant, but pretended she didn’t, because she was interested to know how Nuala would explain it.

‘Well, look at it this way: there was a piece in the paper yesterday about a woman who had a neurosis about touching things when she was out. She felt she had to buy everything she touched in shops, and it was in the paper because she got into trouble with debt. Bought all sorts of things she didn’t want and couldn’t afford. Now, that’s a very rare problem, but I bet lots of people know at least the germ of the feeling behind that. In magazines you get the idea that everybody is, or could be, perfect, but in papers you get the sense that
everybody
is at least slightly mad. And sometimes that can be a comfort, because you see you’re not the only one. You know, Claire, people are afraid of the most everyday things, but they’re too ashamed to admit it. A friend of
mine confided in me that she’s afraid of going to the hairdresser’s. She’ll go to the dentist without a second thought, but has to steel herself for days to get her hair cut. After she told me I thought about it, and I watched people, and I came to the conclusion that there’s nothing so mundane that someone, somewhere, doesn’t feel uneasy about it. Things like using the telephone, even. Or eating out. I see it in the restaurant quite often. But we all go around thinking everyone is more confident than we are, and that no one else knows what it’s like to feel insecure or ill at ease with some everyday thing.’

It wasn’t a consolation to Claire to think about this: the idea stuck in her mind like a hook, making her think of her own inadequacies. That might be constructive during the day, but fatal when lying awake at two in the morning, and she tried frantically to get her mind on to another track.

Painting. Think of her work, yes, think of that. She was glad she was a painter, she’d rather be that than anything else, no matter that it brought her up frequently,
painfully
, against her own limitations. Sometimes people said painting had come to the end of its natural life. Sometimes she believed them. Strangely enough, this did not make an enormous difference to her. Claire’s father had been a devout Catholic, and once when she was in her teens, she’d asked him, teasing but genuinely curious too, ‘What would you do if somebody proved to you that there’s no God? I mean, beyond any doubt?’

‘Ah, it wouldn’t make much odds,’ he’d replied mildly. ‘I wouldn’t let it keep me from Mass of a Sunday, whatever else.’ Claire’s own dedication to painting was something in the order of this line of reasoning.

Her exchanges with Markus on the subject had always been interesting, not least because there was almost nothing on which they agreed. He used to lament being a sculptor, and insist that the visual arts were inferior to literature. In reply, she would accuse him of despising his own gifts. Images could never have the precision of language, that had been his main argument. That was what she disliked about words, she thought they lacked subtlety. She refused to believe that by writing about apples you could ever say much about things that weren’t apples, but when you looked at a Cézanne painting of a bowl of fruit, it expressed knowledge of other things – mortality, tenderness, beauty – in a way that was only possible without words. Markus claimed this was pure emotionalism.

‘You only think that because you’re afraid of your emotions,’ she’d replied.

‘Better that than be a slave to them,’ he said.

‘You must respond to art with your nerves and your heart,’ she insisted. ‘When you look at a painting, you should
feel
something. If not, then there’s something amiss.’

She wondered what he would think of the work she was doing now, so different to what she had been doing when she knew him. She thought he would like it. People used to say to Claire that she had ‘mellowed’ since college. It used to annoy her, for she didn’t believe that it was meant as a compliment, and suspected it was just a sly accusation of softness and loss of energy. She had certainly changed, though, that she would never have denied. Alice had been largely responsible for that, just through Claire having known her.

It hadn’t been an easy friendship. Lots of other students had found it impossible to get along with Alice, she’d been so frank and direct. Claire had admired her even when she hadn’t always agreed with her, or even liked her. Alice might have been hard on other people, but she was harder still on herself. Her aesthetics and morality, her political and religious views were all carefully thought through and were not open to
compromise
. The idea of saying something just to please someone else, or to spare their feelings would have struck her as bizarre. Holding an opinion simply because it was in vogue was unthinkable. It was only by knowing someone of such relentless integrity that Claire had come to learn how rare a thing it was, and how often social pressure influenced not only what people said, but even what they thought. She realized that she, too, often went with the prevailing opinions through lazy-mindedness, or worse, want of courage. And courage was something Alice had never lacked. She was,
without
doubt, the bravest person Claire had ever known, and she’d had a relish for life that Claire, when she first knew her, had rather resented. No, be honest, she’d been jealous of her, for her wit and energy. And her talent, yes, that above all. Alice had been a confident, gifted painter. Looking at her work in the studio Claire had known Alice was a better painter than she would ever be. She’d felt jealous, and realizing that made her feel small-minded. It was a long time before she could admire her work freely and honestly. She’d bought from her the painting which now hung in her sitting room. Alice said she could have it if she wanted it, but Claire had insisted on paying. She’d taken it everywhere with
her, and it was a touchstone from which she could draw strength, and realize the need for compassion.

Alice’s background was similar to Claire’s, having grown up on a farm in Roscommon, but Claire could never understand how she could have come so far so fast. She seemed to have freed herself from her society at a remarkably early age. Like Claire, she had gone to the local convent school; unlike Claire, her rebellion against the religion she had instilled into her was not just a poorly thought-out reaction against authority, but a considered and deeply held position from which she would not be budged. While Claire thought there could be some value in religious ritual, Alice had dismissed it. ‘All or nothing. You’re just afraid.’ She considered that death was the end, and meant complete annihilation, a view which remained unaltered even when she fell ill and was told that she was going to die. But when Claire talked to their mutual friend Tommy about it after Alice’s death, he said, ‘Don’t ever imagine it was easy for her. Of course she was frightened. She might have liked to think that things could be other than they were, but she didn’t believe that it could be so, and she couldn’t pretend, simply to comfort someone, least of all herself. What Alice believed was bleak and she felt the bleakness of it, every day, right up to the end.’

What this had challenged in Claire was the
thoughtless
faithlessness that she had drifted into when she was at school, and the full consequences of which she had never properly thought through. She couldn’t fully accept Alice’s view of things, but she wasn’t clear what a valid alternative might be.

When Alice died, she left strict instructions that she
didn’t want a religious funeral, even though it was difficult for her family to accept that. Claire was abroad when Alice died, and when she came back it was important for her to talk to friends like Tommy who had been there with her. He didn’t share her view that Alice’s integrity could only be admired.

‘You might not have thought that if you’d seen her mother at the funeral. It was in Dublin, it had to be, for she’d insisted on being cremated rather than buried, and they don’t have the facilities for that down the country. Her mother came to me after and she said, “I still can’t believe she’s gone, I don’t feel I’ve been to a proper funeral at all. I still haven’t had a chance to say
goodbye
.” It bothered her too, that she wouldn’t have a special place she could go to, to bring flowers and feel close to Alice. I just thought it was so wrong, Claire. You can be too pure, too high-minded, you know. Sometimes you have to compromise.’

‘I still don’t think it would have been right to have a Mass for her,’ Claire argued. ‘She was so at odds with that, so against it, that it just couldn’t be right.’

‘But Claire,’ Tommy replied, ‘funerals aren’t for the people who’ve died, they’re for the people who are left behind. Haven’t you grasped even that much?’

She understood what he meant, but stubbornly refused to yield the point. She wanted to take the strict line on Alice’s behalf, and needed to do it for herself, to make what had happened bearable.

Claire had been in Germany when Alice died. She’d been looking forward to seeing her again when she went back, for although she was ill, it was thought she would live for at least another six months. Then Tommy rang to
tell her Alice had got much worse quite unexpectedly. He rang again three days later to say it could only be a matter of days. Claire had been with Markus at the time. He encouraged her to go out, not to take her mind off Alice, but just because that was what had been
planned
for the day, that they would go walking in the mountains.

That afternoon, they came across a tiny church, with a graveyard. Some of the tombs had photographs, from many years earlier. Looking at them, Claire had a creeping horror that Alice was right about death. Claire went into the church, and was aware of the different qualities of silence. Outside, the peace of the mountains was full and inhuman, the more complete for being broken by the sound of the wind and the cries of birds. The silence of the chapel was brittle, unnerving: she wanted to laugh, even while this appalled her. It struck her as a dreadful thing to do. She stayed only for a few moments, in a stillness so complete that she felt she had somehow moved outside time, and this intimation of eternity appalled her.

As they walked back down the valley to the house where they were staying, dusk was falling, and she had never seen the valley look so beautiful. After the sun went down, the colours of the trees and the grass suddenly became more vivid than when the sun shone full upon them. They watched the grey clouds cover the peaks of the mountains, and the clustered villages became crowns of light in the dimness. As they rounded a curve in the path they startled some deer, which ran away and hid, shy and light, running in the dusk. And all the time she was thinking of Alice, of her having to
leave life. The full moon shone that night, too. It had been there, blank white during the day, and they watched it fill with silver light as the dusk fell.