The same night, a Thursday, Margaret is doing front-of-house for a performance of the Goldberg Variations. Young pianist from Belfast, some nice notices in the press, and a good audience in, she thinks, closing the outer foyer door. Plenty of the regulars, the music crowd, and elderly Mrs Harrington in her beautiful winter coat, and Eleanor Lawless with her husband, and students, some of them, young, with bad skin, and no coats at all, and at the last minute Anna, out of breath, laughing, wrestling with a half-broken umbrella. One by one Margaret has torn their tickets and directed them to their seats, and from the lighted foyer now she enters the hall herself, into the murmuring darkness, swinging the heavy door shut behind her, pulling the curtain clinking and stuttering along the rail. Fragrance of warm bodies, boots and overcoats damp with rain. Standing up on the stage-step she feels the light bright on her face, dust motes large and mobile before her eyes, while the murmur falls into hush. Danny upstairs in the control room tonight, his silhouette she thinks she can make out through the glass. Good evening and welcome to Clogherkeen Arts Centre, she says aloud. From backstage, while she without even listening to herself explains the location of the fire exits and asks the audience to switch off their mobile phones, she can hear underneath the so familiar noise of her own voice the sound of a footstep in the wings behind her, careful weight of tread. Thank you for your attention and please enjoy the show, she says. Scattering of applause. Making her way to her seat in the pleasant excitable quiet before the performance, she feels Anna’s hand on her arm, voice saying in her ear: You’re so glamorous. Absurdly, happily, Margaret laughs. Then the lights, dazzling, the young musician all in black, the sound of applause, wall of noise as she seats herself at the piano, tapering off into silence.
Into the still silent darkness, the first notes float high and even hesitant. Lighter higher tones followed slowly by lower, dragging a little, strange echo: an almost straggling effect. Pink fingers of the pianist on the glossy white keys, frowning in focus her youthful pink face. Margaret brought her a cup of coffee earlier, balanced on a tray with a plate of biscuits, and they talked about the tour, the musician soft-spoken and smiling uncertainly. Her bitten nails, reminding Margaret of Ivan. Reminded again now listening. On the phone with him last night, she mentioned the recital, and he told her that Bach was his favourite composer, that he would be sorry to miss the show. It gave her a tender feeling, this remark, suggestion of another reality. That he might, under different circumstances, be here with her in the darkness. After the performance, to hear his thoughts, and Anna’s also. The three of them having a drink together, his gentle frowning manner, his thoughtfulness, ideas about mathematics and the baroque style. Pain in her heart to think. Abruptly now she hears the music changing: jaunty and rapid, clever, chattering back and forth. Quickly and easily the pianist’s hands move over the keys, her head it seems nodding with the complex play of rhythms, faster and faster. Brighter now and glimmering the notes rise into the dark, chasing, light footsteps. The tense thrilled hush of listeners gathered together around the sound: sharing in silence this one brief consciousness. Hearing and listening together, following together the almost too quick bright brilliant passage of melody, dispersing and vanishing in the air. For an hour to share this without speaking. To sit here with other people in the dark. A small experience, small enough to hold in the hand, to touch and smooth later in a pocket. Last night on the phone, Ivan said he could come and see her during the week sometimes, if she wanted. Work at her house in the daytime, while she went into the office. Dinner together in the evening, maybe watch a film afterwards, his arm around her shoulders. All the unhappiness that life has visited on them both: dissolved however briefly in that feeling, shared image of that quiet contentment. Maybe, she said. Light and silvery high the music feathers through the air around her, sadly soft. And why not after all. Why not accept wholeheartedly life’s offerings. This chess event he has coming up, the night she’ll be in Dublin for the Music Ireland conference: they could meet in town, go for dinner. Or she could stop by the tournament, catch the end of one of his games. How they first met, after all: she the spectator, he the conquering hero. Introduce her to his friends afterwards perhaps. And she him, to her own friends, why not. Anna, this is Ivan, he’s twenty-two. And extremely serious about chess. Is it impossible? Anna knows there’s someone, each knowing that she knows. But Margaret can guess what she must imagine. Some nice man in his forties living above in Sligo, a paramedic or a librarian. Divorced or perhaps even widowed. Margaret bringing him hot meals and holding his hand in the cinema. It could never occur to her, how could it occur to anyone? A boy with braces on his teeth, mumbling in her ear: Ah, fuck. Anna cannot condemn what she does not know: and doesn’t perhaps really want to know, not wanting to condemn. What the two of them have suffered together: grief, childbirth, sickness, misery. Full complement of the human body’s excesses and inadequacies. Blood, excrement, vomit, yes, the accident and emergency, the late-night chemist, tears at the kitchen table. Anna tired now and happy, lines over her brow, arms strong with the weight of her firstborn. Margaret secretive and glamorous in her green velvet jacket doing front-of-house for a midweek piano concert. All their lives they have known each other. One loose handful of years left now before they are middle-aged together. Companionable silences of friendship. They will go on facing side by side the awful shocks of life, offering one another when needs be the old comfortable blanket of tacit understanding. Say no more. Better not to speak. I understand. Resounding now the music beats over them both, insisting, cresting, and then falling to silence. Margaret waits, watching, fluttering sensation, and finally, into the silence, the same quiet halting passage from the beginning, she thinks, uncertainly trilling itself into the dark, a tentative descent. Inexpressibly moved she feels by the strange stilted sound of the music, so strangely lilting, the final slow hesitant notes hanging suspended and trembling glittering in the empty air.
Into the silence at last spills the sound of applause. The audience rise to their feet, the noise grows louder, too loud, while the musician takes her bow, smiling with small white teeth. Bead of sweat trickling down her temple. Deafening the clamour of applause, Margaret’s hands and arms growing sore with effort, and after returning for a second bow, the musician is gone. From upstairs in the box, Danny turns the house lights up, and Margaret goes to pull back the curtain from the door. Voices in the lobby, lights bright, dazzling, burbling laughter, rattle of car keys, while Margaret bids everyone goodnight. Eleanor Lawless stops to chat a minute, buttoning her coat up, good to see you Margaret, and you Anna, how’s the little man, beautiful music wasn’t it, take care now. Cold rush of rain from the street. Margaret and Anna walk across the car park together, linking arms. Great crowd in, Anna says. Pink halo of mist glowing around each streetlamp. I know, Margaret answers. Busy tonight the Cobweb with its old framed advertisements, sweetish stale odour of hops. Anna goes to order the drinks and Margaret settles into a little booth near the back of the bar, finding on her phone the photograph of her mother’s dishwasher. When Anna returns with the lemonades, ice knocking softly against slices of lemon, Margaret shows her the picture, and Anna loyally takes the device from her hand for closer inspection. I hope you’ve sent this to your siblings, Anna says. Margaret laughing lifts her cold glass, condensation collecting wet at her fingertips. I’m not that bad, she says.
Handing the phone back, Anna answers: No, I’m being serious. You know your mother isn’t going to tell them.
Margaret, after surveying briefly once more the resplendent white machine, puts her phone away. No, she agrees. But look, it doesn’t matter. You start making a fuss over these things and you’re just playing their game.
Anna looks pensive, turning her glass around on the branded yellow beer mat. Mm, she says. But you don’t want to be the family martyr, either.
Margaret says the danger there lies not in buying dishwashers, but in growing emotionally invested in the buying of dishwashers. For a time, sipping their lemonades, they discuss, as they often have before, the personalities of their respective mothers. Margaret’s mother Bridget, once the beleaguered matriarch of her household, assailed perpetually by the competing demands of her husband, her three young children, and her work as the principal of a local secondary school. Against this onslaught she developed in middle age a kind of permanently harassed disposition, almost a siege mentality; and at times, their family dynamic resembled nothing so much as an all-out tug-of-war for her attention, children imploring, mother withholding. This way of life, exasperating though it must have been for Bridget, did, however, come to an end a long time ago. She has long since retired, Margaret’s father has passed away, and Margaret herself, though living close by, sees her mother in person perhaps once a month. And yet Bridget communicates, each time they do see each other, the same weary, overburdened attitude that is so familiar to Margaret from her early life, as if Bridget is still working full-time and parenting three children, while Margaret is still a teenager refusing to get out of bed on a school morning. Anna’s mother Nuala, on the other hand, exerts influence over her husband and children primarily through a tendency to become irrationally anxious and ‘upset’. Much of the family life has therefore always been arranged around their collective efforts to prevent Nuala from becoming ‘upset’, which involves concealing from her, by almost any means necessary, the existence of any problems or potential conflicts within the family circle. Nuala lives, to some degree, in a fictitious world acted out for her by a special dramatic troupe consisting of her own children and husband, a world in which none of her loved ones have ever been unhappy, sick, depressed, disappointed, hurt, anxious or frightened. But this, in Anna’s view, has also had the perverse effect of making Nuala feel as if her own anxieties are in fact the only anxieties that anyone on earth has ever experienced, and that her suffering is something she alone, the only unhappy person in a world of thriving and self-confident individuals, can understand.
What kind of a life is that for her? Anna asks.
Well, I suppose it’s the life she wants, Margaret says. There has to be some level on which she’s actively working to make you all behave that way.
But we don’t have to be so compliant.
No, of course. You just wonder whether at this stage she has the resources to cope with anything other than compliance.
Swallowing the last of her lemonade, replacing the glass softly on the beer mat, Anna says: I do wonder.
Can I get you another? Margaret asks.
Quickly Anna checks the time on her phone. Smiling up at Margaret then she says: Okay, why not.
At the bar, Margaret orders two more lemonades, and watches the barman turn away to fetch the glasses and bottles. She’s thinking again about her family, her mother. Is Bridget really so cross and dismissive? Yes, often, but not only. A competent, dependable woman also, level-headed in a crisis, a rock of sense. On practical matters, insurance, car problems, treatment for sunburn, Margaret does, even now, sometimes solicit her mother’s advice, which is invariably prompt and helpful. The most distressing thing about Bridget’s attitude to Margaret, and especially towards her marriage, is not the belief that Bridget is being cruel, so much as the suspicion, bred in the bone, a lifelong instinct, that after all she might be right. Can the deep childhood impulse to trust one’s mother, to agree with her against oneself, ever be wrestled down by the comparatively thin force of reasoned argument? Are there even reasoned arguments to be made in matters of love, marriage, intimate life?
From behind her now, Margaret hears someone calling her name. Turning her head, she spots Ollie Lyons, the captain of the town chess club, waving from the other end of the bar. The sight of him, his outsized significance in her present life, makes her want to laugh; instead she smiles politely and says: Ah, Ollie, nice to see you again. He makes his way almost elbowing towards her, through a knot of others at the bar. Well, now, he says. How is life at the old town hall? His face has a bright beaming flushed quality, the lenses of his glasses glinting in the dim light. All well, she says. How are things in the world of chess?
Not bad, says Ollie. Not bad now. You know, on that subject, a funny thing.
The barman returns with two small lemonade bottles and two glasses with ice and lemon. Margaret roots in her handbag for her purse, saying distractedly to Ollie: What’s that?
Just on the subject of chess, Ollie says. I was coming down Spencer Street in the car the other day, past the bus station there. Friday evening, it would have been. And who do you think I saw?
Margaret, turning her back to him, taps her card to pay for the drinks. Dry feeling in her mouth she swallows. Over her shoulder she says: Go on.
Ivan Koubek, says Ollie. I thought for a minute I must have been seeing things, but no, it was him alright. Distinctive-looking young chap.
She lifts while he speaks a small glass bottle of lemonade, yellow label moisture-wrinkled. Pours the hissing carbonated liquid into the glass. Is that so, she says.
You remember him.
She empties the first bottle and lifts the other. Yes, she says. I do.
We’d love to have him back again, Ollie says. If he is in town. His workshop went down a treat that morning.
Watching the liquid spill slowly over the ice, lemon slice slipping free now and bobbing to the surface, she answers tonelessly: Did it.
It did indeed, says Ollie. He was great with the kids. They’re still talking about him.
Both glasses filled, she lifts them. Turning away from the bar to face Ollie, she tries, with what must be visible strain, to smile. That’s nice, she says.
People say he could be our first grandmaster. Homegrown.
Cold and somehow heavy the glasses feel in her hands. Right, she says. I’m afraid I don’t know much about that, Ollie. Have a nice evening now.
With a satisfied smiling look he answers: You too.
As if borne forward mechanically, a train along rails, she finds her way to the table where Anna is waiting, bent over her phone. I shouldn’t stay long, Anna says without looking up, but I meant to ask you— She glances up and, seeing Margaret, her face changes, tenses. What? Anna says. Quickly she looks around, even rising slightly from her seat, half-crouching, surveying the bar. Then leaning over the table she adds in a low urgent tone: Is Ricky here? Margaret touching her earlobe gives a strange hollow laugh. No, she says. No one’s here. Everything’s fine. Anna reaches to touch her hand. What’s wrong? she says.
No, nothing, says Margaret. They look at one another, and again Margaret laughs, horrible rasping sound. Oh, Anna, she says. I’ve been very foolish. I think I should go home. Is that alright?
Why don’t you come back to our house? says Anna. We’ll have a cup of tea. What do you think?
Drawn briefly to the image, Anna’s house, baby clothes drying over the stove, Luke and his woodwork class. But it’s not possible now, she thinks: she has made it impossible. No, she says, no, thanks. I should get home. I need to make a phone call. I’m sorry.
Anna watches her closely across the table, saying only: Don’t worry, that’s alright. Let’s get going. I’ll walk with you to the car.
They leave their drinks untasted, putting their coats on together under the pendant lights. If he didn’t know before, Margaret thinks, he’ll know now, seeing her leaving, white as a sheet probably, hanging on the arm of her friend. Raining again outside and she fumbles for her keys in her bag, Anna squeezing all the while her hand. Wide black car park deserted, the buildings of town looming dark all around, streaming, gutters dripping.
Are you okay to get home? Anna asks.
Sure, Margaret says. Of course.
Squeezing again her hand, Anna says in a whisper, although there’s no one near: Is it to do with— someone you’ve been seeing?
With what feels like the last of her energy, Margaret lifts her head to look at her. Why, you’ve heard something? she asks.
Me? says Anna. God, no. After a moment’s pause she says: Did someone say something to you at the bar just now?
Miserably she feels herself trying to shrug. I don’t know, she says. It might have been nothing. Maybe I’m being paranoid. I should get home.
Anna puts her arms around her. Call me if you need me, she says.
For a moment Margaret rests in the pleasant bony discomfort of Anna’s embrace, the scent of her house, apples, dish soap, all the fond unsuspecting loyalty of long friendship. Drawing away, she says bracingly: Thank you. See you soon. She gets into the car, turns on the engine. Lifts her fingers from the steering wheel in a final salute as Anna stands with her arms crossed in the rain, watching. Crunch of the wheels over gravel.
Driving home Margaret’s thoughts are jumbled, almost as if she’s been drinking. But no, she thinks: faster, not slower, tumbling forward over one another. Ollie’s greasy little smile. Great with the kids, he said: about Ivan. As if that might be of particular interest to her. God in heaven. Talk of the chess club presumably. That man Hugh. And the chemist Tom O’Donnell, whose wife knows Margaret’s mother. Her mother, yes. Hasn’t she been longing for years to catch Margaret in the wrong? Running off on her poor husband to throw herself at some young lad hardly out of college. What has Ricky ever done to compare with that? And to think of Ricky. Anyone could tell him, could have told him already. What then? Turning up at the office again, drunk, asking to see her. Margaret, is that you upstairs? Come down, I want to ask you a question. I’ve heard something in town about you. Hand on heart she never when leaving had a thought of meeting anyone else. Only wanted to sleep alone in a safe clean room in the peace of her own company. Book on the nightstand, cup of tea, turning out the light at eleven o’clock. Cleanliness and quiet, that was all. No one could have imagined. Out of nowhere it came, unforeseen. And now she has to tell them. Can’t now not, has to explain. Joanie. Linda at the office. Anna: better she hear it from Margaret surely than someone else. Lurid gossip in the supermarket. Old school friends sharing the latest. Margaret Kearns, can you imagine? I always had her down for a bit of a wild one. God forgive me she thinks.
Letting herself into the house with numb fingers, sightless, she forgoes the light switch. In the empty darkened kitchen she pulls a chair from the dining table and sits down, lights the screen of her phone. Selects his name from the contacts list. Ringing. Clicking sound and then Ivan says: Hello?
Muffled sort of thumping in the background she can hear: music, voices. Oh, you’re busy, she says. I’m sorry.
No, no, he answers. I’m actually not at all. My roommates are having a party, kind of. If you can hear noises. But I’m just in my room, I’m doing nothing.
Calm familiar sound of his voice so soothing. In his room she has never seen, has only imagined from his descriptions. She closes her eyes. Ah, she says. Okay.
Was the music good?
Weakly, she smiles. Yes it was, she says. It was beautiful. You would have loved it.
I’m jealous, he replies. Bach is the best, isn’t he? You listen to the later composers and it’s actually sad how much lesser they were, in terms of talent.
She wipes at her nose with her fingers. In the oven door, a dark blue reflection of the window behind her, distended curvature in the glass. I went for a drink with Anna after the concert, she says. And I happened to run into Ollie.
Who?
Ollie Lyons. You remember, the captain of the chess club, here in town.
Oh, that guy, Ivan answers. I remember, you said he had a crush on me. Not that I think he did, I just remember you saying that.
Finds herself nodding her head, swallowing. He made quite a point of coming up to talk to me this evening, she says.
Yeah? That’s funny. Maybe you’re the one he has a crush on.
The sound of Ivan’s voice with its inexplicably deep power to soothe her. Touching her forehead she says: He told me he saw you in town the other day. At the bus station. He was driving past.
For a moment Ivan says nothing. Then he says: Ah. After another pause, he adds: Hm. Finally he says: That’s awkward, I’m sorry. I didn’t see him, obviously.
It’s not your fault, Margaret answers. Don’t say sorry. From the way he was telling me about it, I got the impression— that maybe he thinks it has something to do with me. I don’t know why he would think that, it’s just the impression I got.
Over the confusion of noise in the background of the call, she can hear Ivan sighing. Then he says: Okay. Now that I’m thinking back on it, someone did say something to me at the workshop that time. About you. It was just a passing comment, I didn’t think it was necessarily hinting at anything. But I guess, if you think about it, maybe it’s possible someone saw me in your car that morning, or something like that.
With her hand she massages her forehead. Of course: all along in that case they have known, or suspected. And Ollie, seeing Ivan at the bus stop, would merely have been gloating over the triumph of a rumour confirmed. Right, she says. That makes sense.
He falls silent for a time. Is this really bad? he asks.
Breathing in and then out again slowly. No, she says. It’ll be okay. Nothing awful can happen.
Cool. I’m glad you’re saying that. I think you’re right.
In the cold dark emptiness of the kitchen she sits, hand moving over her forehead, back up over her hair. But if people are talking, she says, I suppose it’s possible that someone might tell— my ex-husband.
Yeah, says Ivan.
I’m sorry about this. I don’t want you to get dragged into it.
He answers in a sensible tone: It’s not dragging me, Margaret. I’m actually the one who’s causing the problem for you. Are you scared of what he’ll do?
I don’t know, she says. I mean, sorry, he’s not violent or anything like that, obviously. Not at all. I’m just scared he’ll be upset.
I get you. You don’t want to hurt his feelings. But you haven’t done anything wrong.
She closes her eyes. Well, I don’t know if other people will see it that way, she says.
He pauses, as if to let her complete the thought, but she says nothing more. I know what you’re saying, he says. People can be judgemental.
Opening her eyes again, swallowing, she answers weakly: Yes.
And you’re judgemental on yourself, as well. So that doesn’t help too much.
Feebly she feels herself trying to smile. I’m sorry, she repeats.
Yeah, I wish I was older, he says. It would make everything so easy. Like if I could be your age right now, I would take that in a second.
With painful fondness she replies: Ivan, that’s your life. Don’t wish it away.
It hasn’t been that great of a life, believe me. To make you happy, I would wish it away, no problem. It’s nothing, only a few years. Before I met you, the years were pretty bad anyway, I’m sorry.
She laughs. Her head uselessly shaking. Cold and dark the house around her, surfaces delineated dimly in the window light, blue and silver. Structure of her life she feels disintegrating: and yet the feeling is strangely calm. Her phone growing hot against the rim of her ear. His thoughtful silences. At last she says: We don’t have to talk about it. How are you?
She hears him on the other end of the line clearing his throat. As it happens, he says, I have a small bit of news to tell you as well, although it’s not important.
Swallowing, she tries again to smile. Oh? she says. Is it chess-related?
Actually not. It’s no big deal. But remember my dog who I told you about?
Of course. Alexei. He’s with your mother now, isn’t he?
In response, Ivan makes a noise like: Hm. Then with what sounds like a nervous laugh, he says: Yeah. It’s nothing to worry about, I’ll figure it out. But basically, he’s not staying with my mother anymore. He’s actually staying with me. For the moment. Until I find somewhere else.
Bemused, Margaret says: He’s there with you right now?
Literally, he’s curled up beside me on my bed.
Image of Ivan on his bed: lying down, maybe, his head propped up on the pillows. The dog slim and soft beside him, small heartbeat. Oh, how nice, she says. I thought you weren’t allowed to have pets in the flat.
We’re not. It’s just temporary.
She pauses a moment. Then, smiling, she says: Ah, I suppose you might not be able to visit this weekend, then.
Well, I was thinking about that.
It’s okay, don’t worry. We’ll see each other another time.
After a moment, he asks: Your landlord is pretty strict about pets?
Mine? I have no idea. Why?
I was just thinking, I could bring the dog with me for the weekend. Theoretically I could, because I’m still insured on my dad’s car. I would just need to get to Kildare somehow, to our old house, and then I could get the car from there and drive to Leitrim with the dog. He likes going on drives. And he’s well behaved, he wouldn’t be a big burden.
She’s laughing again, puzzled, oddly touched. I’m not worried about that, she says. But how would you get to Kildare?
I know, it’s so complicated. It’s like the problem with the goats and the cabbages. Where you have to cross the river. But anyway, I could leave Alexei here for a few hours with Roland and get the train to Kildare myself. Because you can’t bring pets on the intercity trains. And then I could drive back here to pick up the dog afterwards. It actually makes sense when you think about it, because once I have the car, I can just stay in Kildare for a while. Like however long I need to, really, while I’m figuring things out.
That sounds sensible, she says.
Cool, he replies. Then it’s all arranged. I’ll be there tomorrow evening like normal. Except you don’t have to collect me, I’ll drive straight to the house. Is that okay?
Perfect.
Neither of them speaking, they both stay on the phone. Margaret in the darkened kitchen with her elbow on the table, hand at her face, imagining Ivan on his bed, the dog asleep beside him. In shared silence the seconds pass.
Well, I’ll let you go, she says. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Yeah. Everything will be okay, you know. In my view. I don’t really know what I’m talking about, obviously. But I just feel like it’s going to be okay.
I think you’re right. I hope so. See you soon.
They hang up. Margaret rises from the table, turns the lights on, fills the kettle. Rushing sound of the tap. Her reflection dim and bubbled in the dark window glass. Gradually these situations arise, she can see that now, just one step after another, and by the time a few weeks or months have passed, your life is no longer recognisable. You are lying to almost everyone you know. You have come to care too passionately, too fully and completely, for an unsuitable person. You can no longer visualise your own future: not only five years from now, but five months, even five weeks. Everything is in disarray. All this for one person, for the relation that exists between you. Your fidelity to the idea of that relation. In the light of that, you have come to hold too loosely many other important things: the respect of your family, the admiration of your colleagues and acquaintances, even the understanding of your closest friends. Life, after all, has not slipped free of its netting. There is no such life, slipping free: life is itself the netting, holding people in place, making sense of things. It is not possible to tear away the constraints and simply carry on a senseless existence. People, other people, make it impossible. But without other people, there would be no life at all. Judgement, reproval, disappointment, conflict: these are the means by which people remain connected to one another. Because of Margaret’s friends, her former marriage, her family, colleagues, people in town, she is not entirely free to live the limitless spontaneous life that she has imagined for herself. But because of Ivan, because of whatever there is between them, she is, on the other hand, not entirely free to return to her previous existence either. The demands of other people do not dissolve; they only multiply. More and more complex, more difficult. Which is another way, she thinks, of saying: more life, more and more of life.