Four

Anna’s mornings were usually spent writing in her study, while over the rest of the house her cleaner, Ludmilla, roamed at will, tidying up and making the house ready for the afternoon. Anna often joined Ludmilla for a cup of coffee and a sandwich at lunchtime, but her mornings until then were her own. Her eleven o’clock coffee she took in solitude, or in the company of the family cat, Chekhov – so-named by Alex, who said he knew at least ten cats called Pushkin. There was an electric kettle conveniently placed close to her desk, to ensure that she avoided distractions while engaged in the important task of working at her books.

The study was at the front of the house, which overlooked Killiney Bay, and there she spent two or three hours every day writing novels for young people, as she liked to call them. So far, three had been published. All were historical, one set during the 1798, one during the Great Famine, and one during 1916. But now she was working on a contemporary fantasy story, in which supernatural beings played no small part. Her work was, she knew, highly original in execution, but its genesis had not been uninfluenced by the success of Harry Potter and its plot owed a certain amount to the books in which he features as the eponymous hero.

There were good sales for historical fiction for children, at least in Ireland. Teachers liked it, and children, the most tolerant of all readerships, did not mind, even if their first preference was for cheap humour and contrived nonsense literature. Competing with books called The Unfortunate Adventures of the Goosebump Grundies and authors with unlikely names like Snivelly Crickets, Anna Kelly Sweeney’s historical novels for young people had done not too badly. Her third novel had sold twenty thousand copies, which, her publisher assured her, was very good for Ireland. But her royalties on the twenty thousand copies had amounted to just over six thousand euro, not a lot for a year’s work. True, she did not need money, since Alex made so much of it, but like many children’s writers she looked at the Harry Potter phenomenon with a rush of competitiveness. She would like to know that her books, too, were worth millions of euros. It was not just about the money: the money, she believed, would be no more than a token of the success of her work, of its ultimate value as literature, or entertainment, or whatever – Anna was not entirely sure what, exactly, she was writing, just as she had never really asked herself why she was doing it. So how else could its value, or her value, be assessed, except in terms of the market? It was the only objective criterion of literary success, any success, when it came right down to it. That was the point. Of course, she would not mind being a multimillionaire in her own right as a little bonus. If J.K. Rowling could do it, why not Anna Kelly Sweeney?

Thus reasoned Anna, and no doubt hundreds or thousands of other writers for children all over the world.

Fantasy was the way to go.

The children liked it.

The market demanded it.

Anna had never written fantasy before, but so what? She had fantasy. You couldn’t write anything, even history, without at least a modicum of that.

What she was finding, though, was that you needed an awful lot of the commodity to write this fantasy stuff. It was easy at the start, but after about chapter two she began to understand that it was much harder than the historical novels. You had to make the whole thing up and go on making it up right to the end, whereas with historical fiction you could pick and choose: invent a bit, copy a bit, steal a bit. If invention failed, research – on the net as often as not, what could be handier? – would fill the gaps.

But there was no website for ‘Great ideas for Harry Potter-style novels’. She had checked, and under other similar sounding words as well. (There were plenty of other ideas, and even programmes you could buy with your credit card, which would give you a template for a novel. All you had to do was fill in the names, the places, the descriptions, the dialogue … Easy-peasy. She had added some of those sites to her ‘Favorites’, for a rainy day.)

Oh well, she was enjoying the challenge of flogging her imagination as if it were a sluggish galley slave, and trying to get some work out of it. So she encouraged herself. And her imagination was becoming more active, as it got more exercise. It was learning to stand on its own two feet. Looking out at the ever-changing sea, opening her window to sniff the salt air, ideas came to Anna – most of the time anyway. She was working diligently, busily making a vast plan – this was what J.K.R. had done, she had made a plan – with chapter headings and content descriptions, character biographies, maps of locations, before moving on to write anything. It was like being an architect, something which she had often thought she might have been had she not gone the literary way. (She had also thought she might have been a doctor, or a teacher, or a journalist, or an organic farmer – the trouble with life was that the choices became more and more limited as soon as you reached the age of about twenty-five.)

At one o’clock she stopped to have lunch with Ludmilla, and to give her her instructions for the next day. Ludmilla was a treasure; she cost very little and worked like a trooper. But there was something about her that Anna didn’t like – like Ulla in Bray, Ludmilla was aloof, and, unlike Ulla, Anna sensed, disapproving. But she felt this about almost everyone who came into the house to work for her. They all seemed to see through Anna, and reach the same conclusion: namely, that she was not up to scratch.

Ludmilla seldom revealed anything to Anna about her own life. She was Lithuanian and had let it be known that she came from a village fifty kilometres from Klaipeda and that she had been a teacher once, but that was about all. Anna did not know where she lived in Dublin, or what she did when she was not cleaning the Kelly Sweeney homestead, still less whether she had a boyfriend, or any friend at all.

After these uneasy, largely silent, lunch breaks, Anna usually drove around the Vico Road to the multidenominational school where Rory was a pupil. Then she gave Rory a snack and handed him over to Luz Mar, the Spanish au pair, who supervised his homework or brought him to his riding, music, swimming, football or karate lesson. Meanwhile, Anna spent her afternoons shopping, or going to art exhibitions in town, or meeting someone for coffee.

Today, the day after the launch in the House of Lords, she had planned to go to the Dundrum Shopping Centre to buy an evening dress, which she needed for a do they were invited to in three weeks’ time - a dinner at Áras an Uachtaráin. Alex had been invited by the President. Spouses had been included in the invitations, and since Anna had not been to the Áras before, she was happy to accompany her husband on this occasion.

She changed her clothes, from the tracksuit in which she wrote her books to something smart – jeans and a new jacket – and put on her make-up. Normally she would not have bothered changing clothes to go shopping, but after one unpleasant occasion when she had dropped in to the Dundrum Centre in an old anorak and baggy trousers, she realised one had to dress up for this particular consumer experience. Her toilet complete, she hopped into her Land Rover and drove to Exit 15 and onto the M50. In a miraculous ten minutes she was swinging into the Green car park deep under the village of Dundrum. Guides in yellow jackets waved her to a free spot. Then she followed various colour-coded arrows to a lift that elevated her into the shopping centre – a modern apotheosis.

She emerged from the dim underground into a brilliantly lit palace of glass and mirrors. Everything was shining, reflective or transparent: the lifts were made of glass, so were the sides of the stairs; everywhere she went she caught sight of herself, reflected in some bright surface, rubbing shoulders with well-dressed people. Even in the early afternoon there were no old people here, hobbling around with their trolleys, or flabby women with streaky orange hair and plastic bags, the kind of people you found shopping in the afternoon in ordinary places. And there were no men. Not one. Only young women with good coiffures and elegant bags bearing the logos of the most fashionable shops and smiling brightly at one another as they made ironic comments. Most of them hunted in pairs, which was convenient for the coffee breaks.

Anna still found the place seductive but bewildering. She stood at the edge of the mall, sniffing the aroma of confectionery and coffee that floated up from the many cafés, gazing at the bright vista, and tried to get her bearings. She had no idea where she was, in relation to anything that lay outside the walls; the points of the compass were meaningless in here; she did not even know which floor she was on, or how many there were - there was a confusing arrangement of storeys and mezzanines, which meant that one always felt lost, but lost pleasantly, as in a dream of wonderland, a paradise of pleasures.

The newest and most prestigious shop was the one she wanted to visit first. With luck she would find what she needed there, and then get out of the place. But there was no indication as to where it was located. Bracing herself, she set off along the gleaming concourse.

Distractions abounded. Almost all the shops were dedicated to women’s clothing, and so there was reason to pause at each and every window, and to pop inside on most occasions, even though she had a firm design and purpose. An hour passed, as she fondled textiles and riffled through rails of dresses and wraps, and also suits and trousers and shoes and bags, things she was not intending to buy today. She found herself with a new pink handbag and a short tweed skirt, and still not in the shop she had intended to visit first, when her phone rang.

‘Hi, it’s Gerry,’ said her brother.

Anna was taken aback. Gerry never telephoned her.

‘Hello Gerry,’ she said. She wondered if her mother had had a heart attack. Usually if Gerry phoned it was with some bad news connected with her mother, whom Anna neglected guiltily. The light in the shopping centre seemed to grow dim.

‘It’s not Mam,’ he said quickly. ‘Can I come to see you?’ he asked, in a voice that sounded vulnerable.

‘Sure, of course,’ she said. What had she on this evening? A poetry book launch, but she could pass it up, if necessary. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Everything is upset at home,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain when I see you.’

‘ok then. I’m out right now but come around in … whenever. When would you like to drop in?’

‘After work,’ he said. ‘About six? Is that ok?’

‘Great. We’d love to see you,’ she said. And she added, ‘Will Olwen come too?’

There was a pause.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain when I see you. ok? Thanks, Anna, you’re a star. See you later.’

So that was it. Suddenly the whole shopping centre changed. Like fairy gold, it was transformed to a heap of dry leaves before her eyes. Its lights no longer dazzled, but irritated. Its heaps of sparkling things no longer charmed, but took on the quality of ephemeral rubbish. The sounds, human voices, ringing registers, clattering crockery, buzzing machines, were a cacophony of misery – the voices of the damned.

‘She’s thrown me out,’ Gerry said. He paused, then repeated a sentence he had used on the phone. ‘Everything is upset at home.’

He was sitting at the kitchen table drinking red wine, while Anna stirred chopped-up chicken in the pan. Rory was watching television in the den and Alex was at a meeting of one of his boards. A lot of them met at dinner time.

‘Oh dear,’ said Anna. ‘I’d no idea all this was going on.’ She looked into the pan to ensure he would not notice that she was not telling the whole truth.

‘It’s my own stupid fault,’ he said. ‘I deserve it. I don’t blame her in the least.’

‘No,’ said Anna thoughtfully, looking over at him.

‘Though I worry about the kids. Not that I’m the world’s best dad … still …’

‘You’re a good dad,’ Anna said.

She believed he was exemplary, or would have been if he didn’t drink too much and carry on with the au pair. He played with his children, though, and brought them to football matches and events they enjoyed. The ice rink at Christmas, the beach in the summer. Alex loved Rory better than his life but became bored if he played with him for longer than five minutes. Alex felt any time spent away from his work was time wasted. Gerry, on the other hand, carried on like a ten-year-old child. It was curious how men differed from one another in these respects, when in so many others they were alike.

‘Anyway, I’ll have to find somewhere, a flat, I suppose, a bedsitter.’

‘Yes. You shouldn’t have a problem. They say it’s easy to find rented accommodation in Dublin right now,’ she said. Alex owned six apartments in the docklands area – much too expensive for Gerry – and had mentioned that letting was not as easy as it had been when the pool of flats was smaller.

‘Mm.’ Gerry considered his financial situation. Well, at least Olwen worked. But together they managed to pay the mortgage and live a reasonable lifestyle. Would she expect him to go on footing the mortgage and paying for his own place? Would he be able to stop his standing order without her consent?

‘You’re welcome to stay here for a week or so, until you find a place,’ Anna offered, knowing Alex would not be best pleased. They had two spare bedrooms, however, so he would just have to put up with it.

Gerry looked around the kitchen, appreciating the size of his sister’s accommodation. This room was five times as big as his kitchen in Bray. It had a beamed ceiling and one wall made entirely of glass, which looked out on a marble patio and large terracotta urns overflowing with trailing plants; in the distance, down the garden, large beech trees and small birches spread graceful branches, their leaves a deep, luscious yellow that glowed in the autumn twilight.

‘Thanks, you are an angel.’ He gave her a slightly cold kiss. He’d been hoping she would offer him one of Alex’s apartments. ‘I won’t impose. I’ll get somewhere as fast as I can.’ Mean, they were. That’s how they had it. An apartment would have solved all his problems.

‘You’ll have to,’ she laughed, as she carried the pot of rice to the sink and poured it into the silver colander. You know what Alex is like, she might have added, but did not. She watched the water draining into the sink, forming a gelatinous grey puddle on the porcelain, faintly disgusting, as the rice became dry and pure and snowy. She gave it a few smart shakes and rinsed it for a second under the tap. She always enjoyed straining rice. It was the child in her that took pleasure in the simple task, she mused, as she turned back to Gerry and his problems.

‘He’s found a place in Sheriff Street,’ she said to Olwen.

Anna was at another kitchen table, Olwen’s, in the house in Bray. Two weeks had passed.

‘I know,’ said Olwen. ‘It feels very strange. But what can I do?’

Anna looked around Olwen’s kitchen, reading it as a symbol of her sister-in-law’s life, as Gerry had looked around hers a few weeks ago. They had made every attempt to make it attractive, with terracotta tiles on the floor and fitted beech presses all around, but nothing could compensate for its cramped dimensions. It was full of furniture, and cluttered up with all kinds of things: on the counter top there was a packet of cornflakes, a bottle of ketchup, several jars of coffee, a slice of toast, cups, jugs, a little pile of pills, letters, a few newspapers, and other items. The place smelt strongly of cat pee, which Olwen did not seem to notice. She had no help now. No au pair, no cleaner, and now not even a husband who might occasionally throw out the cat. Olwen, who had been brought up in a comfortable house in Foxrock where there had always been hired help, was reduced to this, thanks to having married Gerry. Anna suppressed a shudder, seeing Pushkin, crouched on top of the cooker, staring malevolently at her. You too could have ended up like this, his hard green eyes seemed to tell her. But Anna had eluded Olwen’s fate, quite unconsciously, so it seemed, by the simple expedient of falling in love with Alex. Alex, rich and dutiful, and kind as well. Alex who would not in his wildest dreams consider being unfaithful to her. Anna got Alex, and Olwen got Gerry. That was the luck of the draw.

‘I’m partisan, no doubt, but I wonder if you couldn’t try to patch it up and start again?’

Olwen was stony-faced. Stubbornness was her staunchest characteristic and she would not capitulate easily. Still, the lines in her skin and the mess in the kitchen told their own story.

Anna realised she would have to employ a more indirect strategy to persuade Olwen to do the sensible thing. She hugged Olwen warmly. ‘He’s been a complete eejit,’ she said. ‘You’re doing the right thing and you are very brave.’

She let this sink in and was rewarded with a minuscule but perceptible lightening of expression in Olwen’s sad eyes.

‘You seem to be doing fine.’ She smelt the cat pee again and suppressed another shudder. ‘And Gerry is grand too, in his little flat. It’s quite nice. I visited him a few days ago.’

‘Actually it’s very tough, being here alone with the children,’ Olwen said crossly.

Anna feigned a look of surprise. ‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is. There’s nobody to do anything … At least he used to bring them to football, and mind them on Saturdays. And he did the washing up. Apart from anything else, I’ve got all that to do myself. I’m a wreck.’

‘Mm.’ Anna looked at her carefully. She was indeed a wreck. Her hair needed cutting, and colouring too – could some of her hair have turned in just a fortnight? ‘Probably the thing to do is to get another au pair, or at least a cleaner.’ And an appointment with a good hairdresser.

‘Yeah right,’ said Olwen, shaking her head. ‘I need that, but I haven’t got the energy to look for them. And I can’t afford it either.’

Exactly.

That was what would save the marriage, eventually, Anna knew. People like Olwen and Gerry could not afford to separate. Divorce was available in Ireland these days, but it had arrived, strangely enough, at the same time as the big increase in house prices. When people could afford to divorce, it wasn’t available, and then when it became available, it became unaffordable. Almost overnight. The free market economy was doing what the Church had done for centuries: reinforcing the institution Joyce had dubbed ‘the Irish marriage’: couples who stayed together even though they couldn’t stand the sight of one another.

Anna did not really consider this a very bad arrangement. Life was easier for everyone if couples stayed together and made the best of it. It made for a cohesive society. So they said.

‘You might consider it in the short term?’ Anna suggested. ‘It would make life so much more manageable for you, I think. I mean, I don’t know what I’d do without Ludmilla.’

‘And you don’t even work,’ said Olwen.

Anna coloured and felt an angry retort rising. It was astonishing how many people believed that writing, especially writing for children, was not really work, but something that happened by some sort of magic and did not require time or effort. You switched on your computer and the book appeared on the screen, was what they seemed to believe. They insisted on regarding Anna’s work, Anna’s job, as one of the more undemanding hobbies, like flower-arranging or embroidery, just because she did it at home and was not paid by the hour or the week, or whatever way they operated. And this was one more reason to finish her Harry Potter-style bestseller and show the blighters. They only believed writers who made masses of money and became household names counted as real workers. On a par with themselves in their nine-to-five slavery. Or, in Olwen’s case, nine to half past two, seven and a half months of the year.

But for the sake of her brother, she suppressed these thoughts and smiled sweetly at Olwen. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’ It was very hard to utter those words. ‘And I only have one child. But even so … think about it. I’ll ask Ludmilla if she knows anyone.’

Fat chance.

‘ok,’ said Olwen, in a voice that was flat and despairing.