Excerpt from Authenticity

“A strange thing happened to me yesterday.”

“Mmmn.” There was no point in continuing: he was still asleep. Julia turned, her neck tight in the crook of his arm, and stared at where the morning light fell on the wall between the bookcase and the window. She thought of how, painted, it would appear as pure abstraction: the sharply defined oblong of lemon light on the pale surface, the two dark lines that bound the planes. It would be understood according to the titles one might give it: Dawn Light: Window, Wall, Bookcase, or simply a number.

“Mmmn? Well?” Roderic said. He was awake after all, but his voice was still slurred with sleep. “Go on. Pleasant strange or horrible strange?”

She thought for a moment. “Neither,” she said. “Just strange.”

She told him that she had been walking across Stephen’s Green, on her way home from having met a friend. Passing the ponds and the flowerbeds she reached into her bag for a cigarette and stopped only momentarily to light it. Her lighter was a cheap disposable thing made of transparent red plastic, and she flicked at it once, twice, three times. Nothing: not so much as a spark. Only then did she notice that she was standing level with a man who was sitting on a bench. Julia didn’t even speak to him, simply held out the unlit cigarette with a quizzical smile. The man reached mechanically into his pocket and pulled out a heavy silver lighter. At the first touch it sent up a hard bright flame around which Julia cupped her hand to shield it from the breeze as she leant down and lit up. She exhaled deeply. The lighter snapped shut. “Thanks.” She turned away, but had gone no more than three steps along the path when the man called after her.

“Excuse me?” She glanced back over her shoulder. He was looking at her with an expression of utter desolation, such as one rarely saw, an expression that literally stopped her in her tracks. “Excuse me, please, would you do me a favour?” The voice was trembling and hesitant. “Would you mind… would you just sit beside me here for a few moments?”

Julia did not reply, but stared hard at the man, taking stock of him and of the situation. They would not be alone or isolated, for the Green was far from deserted. “Please,” he said. “You don’t have to talk or anything, just sit beside me.” There would be no danger with this man, of that she now felt sure. Julia trusted her own intuition as far as men were concerned. She said nothing, just nodded and retraced her last few steps to sit down beside him. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much.” His voice was still shaking, and so low now as to be almost inaudible.

“So we sat there,” Julia said, turning over in bed so that she could rest her head upon Roderic’s chest, “and we didn’t say anything.”

It was exceptionally sunny for February and the railings of the nearby summerhouse cast dense, regular shadows upon its own ceiling, but between them flowed glittering, rippling light reflected from the surface of the pond. The quacking of the ducks made mad laughter in the distance. Julia opened her bag and took out her cigarettes, offered them to the man, who took one gratefully. He lit it with his own silver lighter, but his hands shook, and lacked the assured fluency of her own actions. He dragged desperately on the cigarette, narrowing his eyes, as though he had been parched and she had offered him cool, pure water. As they sat there smoking Julia stared straight ahead, drawing her own conclusions from what she had seen of him before she sat down. A businessman, that was clear from his suit and briefcase. He was in his mid to late forties, she guessed, although she always found it difficult to judge someone’s age. The impression he gave was of painstaking exactitude, with everything buttoned and fastened and polished and correct. No greater contrast could have been possible with her own wild style, her loose velvets and dangling earrings, her barely controlled mop of hair tied back with a green ribbon. Why was he there? Why was he so upset?

The world in which Julia lived was so far removed from the life of a middle-aged businessman that she didn’t expect to fathom him. Her best guess was that he had been fired from his job. Given the boot. Not that it would have been put like that, of course. Let go. That’s what they would have said to him. I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go. A man like this didn’t do a job, he was his job. No wonder he was distraught. Later tonight he would go to a pub where he wasn’t known and would drink and drink and drink, and as she thought this, she remembered Roderic. The man was crying now, very quietly and discreetly; she could hear him sniffle and gulp beside her. “What am I going to do?” he said. “What am I going to do?”

Having no adequate response to this, she answered his question with a question.

“Where do you live?”

“Dalkey,” he said.

“You might think to head for home.” He shook his head. “Well you can’t stay here all night,” Julia said reasonably. “Have you a car with you?”

“I came on the DART.”

Julia thought about this for a moment. “I’m going out in that direction. We can go together, if you like. Would that help?”

“That’s very kind,” the man said. He was making a significant effort now not to cry, wiping furiously at his eyes and clearing his throat harshly. “That’s very kind,” he said again as they stood up.

They left the park and crossed the road, walked down Dawson Street together and turned right, continued on to Lincoln Place. As they passed a pub, Julia half thought he might suddenly dart into it and that would be the last she would see of him, but he didn’t seem to have registered it at all. He walked with his gaze fixed on the pavement. She was struck at how there was no tension between them; thought how strange it was that this should be the case, that she should be here in the unexpected company of this anguished stranger. At Westland Row they entered the station, bought tickets and boarded the green train that was heading south. Julia settled down opposite the man, who sat bolt upright and stared blankly out of the window. She was struck again by how tense and exact he looked, how overly correct and how thoroughly miserable. People boarded the train and others left, children shouted and laughed, and none of them paid any attention to Julia and the man, were probably not even aware that they were travelling together as they did not speak to each other until the rain stopped at Monkstown. Then the man said, “You weren’t coming out in this direction at all, were you? You’re doing this just for me.”

Julia considered lying, but didn’t think she’d be able to carry it off. So she shrugged, said lightly, “You looked like you couldn’t be trusted to go straight home on your own. When I start something, I like to see it through to the end.” She had thought he might remonstrate with her, but instead he gave a brief, weak smile, which astonished her. Up until then, he hadn’t looked capable of smiling. “You really are,” he said, “tremendously kind.”

“Don’t mention it,” Julia said, embarrassed, and now it was she who turned to stare out of the window.

They didn’t speak again for the rest of the journey until they arrived in Dalkey. Even then, they walked in silence, the man now leading the way down the main street. He turned into a quiet road and pointed at an elegant house painted the colour of buttermilk, with a flight of steps leading up to the front door.

“That’s it?” He nodded and held out his hand. “Good luck,” she said. The man said nothing. She was glad he didn’t thank her again, but when he took her hand he held it for slightly longer than was usual for a handshake, and so tightly that he crushed her ring into her fingers and hurt her. It was the first, the only thing about him that had made her feel ill at ease. Then he crossed the street and walked towards the pale house. She watched him go up the steps, fumbling in his pockets for his keys, but before he could find them someone inside opened up. He went in and the door closed. Julia watched for a moment longer, then turned and walked back slowly to the train station.

Roderic had been listening to all of this with great interest. “And he gave no clue as to what the problem was?”

“None whatsoever. To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to know.”

“You’re tremendously kind, do you know that? Tremendously kind.”

She was taken aback that he had repeated so completely the stranger’s compliment: out of modesty she had omitted this detail from her account. Uncomfortable with praise for such a small act, she sought to change the subject. “Look at the wall,” she said, “how the light falls there.”

But while she had been talking, the sharply defined edges of the rectangle she had noted earlier had expanded, grown softer as the light became more diffuse, dissolving completely now to fill the room with the clear light of a new day.

From Authenticity.  Copyright 2005 by Deirdre Madden. All rights reserved.