Life Drawing for Beginners (13 page)

J
ackie’s phone beeped as she brought the empty cereal bowls to the sink. She fished it out of her pocket and read
Private Number
. She opened the message and the words appeared on the screen:

He’d gotten her note on Monday, two days ago. It had been very polite and not at all pushy. Jackie had suggested that Charlie come to play with Eoin on the following Sunday. She’d offered to collect Charlie and drop her home again, she’d said they’d give her dinner. Nothing that he could possibly take offense at.

And this was his response. No mention of possible alternatives, no number so she could get back to him. Clearly he wasn’t interested in his daughter making any friends in her new home. Poor girl, with a dead mother and a father who didn’t seem to give a damn.

Jackie deleted the message as Eoin walked into the kitchen with his schoolbag. She’d say nothing, she’d wait until he asked again and then she’d tell him Charlie’s dad was too busy. What else could she do?

“Did you get your PE gear?” she asked. “I left it on the chair on the landing.”

“Forgot.” He disappeared again.

J Sullivan. He couldn’t even be bothered to write his full name.

“I’ve come to apologize,” she said as soon as the customer before her had left the shop. “I was rude to you the last time I was in here.” The pink in her cheeks almost matching the little circles that dotted her white blouse.

She was the last person Michael had expected to see in the shop again. He was bemused that she felt it necessary to apologize. Her conscience was clearly a lot more active than his.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve been called worse. You may have noticed I’m an antisocial bastard. Excuse my French,” he added, thinking she was probably the type who didn’t appreciate bad language.

He didn’t think he was being funny, but to his surprise her features relaxed, and he fancied he saw the ghost of a smile cross her face. He thought a smile was probably easy enough to coax from her, if you wanted to. He remembered the ice cream cone in the park, and decided she was probably predisposed to being happy.

He wondered what that felt like.

“Well,” she said, turning towards the door, “that’s really all I wanted to say.”

“How’s the dog settling in?” He had no idea where the question came from.

“Getting a little easier to manage, thank you.” She paused. “I asked the vet for advice, and he was very helpful.”

The significance of the remark didn’t escape Michael, but he sensed no malice in it. He didn’t think she was trying to make him feel bad—or maybe she was, a little, but not in a nasty way. Just giving him a gentle nudge.

“Glad to hear it,” he said. “They can be a bit tricky at the start. Dogs, I mean,” he added, “not vets.”

No harm to coax another smile from her. Had a pleasant effect on her face, causing two small dimples to crease her cheeks. Smiling suited her a lot more than frowning—but maybe that was true of everyone.

“Well,” she said, “good-bye then.”

“Good-bye.” It occurred to him as she walked out that it was the first civil conversation they’d had—and quite possibly the last. He didn’t imagine she’d be in again, now that she’d said her piece and was coping with the dog.

He put her from his mind and began making out a pet food order.

James squeezed toothpaste onto Charlie’s brush and handed it to her. “Up and down, remember, not sideways.”

Charlie took the brush and began to scrub. It had been Frances who’d taught her to brush her teeth, Frances who’d cut her nails when they got too long, Frances who’d washed her hair and bathed her, and bought new pajamas when the old ones didn’t fit anymore.

The first time James had taken Charlie to get new shoes, he hadn’t had a clue what size her feet were. How would he explain his ignorance to a shop assistant? Would she think it strange that he didn’t know? He’d been vastly relieved when he hadn’t even been asked for a size before the assistant placed one of Charlie’s feet into some kind of a measuring device. He’d had no idea that every child’s shoe shop had a similar facility, that children’s feet grew so quickly that sometimes they skipped a whole size between one pair of shoes and the next.

Of course he knew that now; talk about a steep learning curve. Since Charlie had started school he’d learned not to panic over playground bumps and bruises, and he’d become pretty good at removing paint and other stains from her clothes. He’d learned to check her schoolbag each day for lunchbox spills and notes from teachers, and he’d also mastered the art—after a few unpleasant head lice encounters—of tying up her hair in two vaguely symmetrical bunches. Braids, he felt, could wait until she was able to do them herself.

But there were some things he was still unsure of, and one of them was bedtime. Was half past eight too late for a six-year-old? Charlie never seemed tired before then, but maybe he shouldn’t wait until she started yawning. He’d feel stupid asking anyone such a basic question, so he didn’t.

“Finished.”

She handed him the toothbrush and he ran the head under the tap and filled the plastic tumbler with water. “Rinse.”

Their nightly routine, never varying except on Tuesdays when he went to drawing class, and Saturdays when he gave her a bath. It suddenly occurred to him that at some stage in the future it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to be bathing his daughter, but when? So many minefields ahead of them.

“Will you read
The Cat in the Hat
?” Charlie asked.

He made as if to collapse. “Again? That’ll be six million zillion times.”

“But I love it, Daddy.”

“I know you do.”

The note from Eoin’s mother had taken him by surprise, although he probably should have been expecting some sort of approach. “What’s this?” he’d asked, pulling the envelope out of Charlie’s lunchbox.

“Mrs. Grossman gave it to me,” she’d told him—but it wasn’t her teacher’s handwriting, and Mrs. Grossman wouldn’t write
Charlie’s Dad
on the envelope. He’d opened it and pulled out the single sheet and read
Hello—wondering if Charlie would like to visit Eoin next Sunday. I can collect and deliver her back if that suits. (And we can provide dinner, as long as she’s happy with roast beef!)

She’d signed it
Jackie
, and added
Eoin’s Mum
in brackets. And below the signature, a mobile phone number.

Jackie—whose partner, according to Charlie, was dead; and hadn’t grandparents been mentioned? So chances were she was currently unattached, if she and Eoin were living with her parents. And if James knew that Eoin’s father was no longer around, this Jackie was probably aware that Frances wasn’t on the scene anymore either.

He couldn’t help wondering if there was a hidden agenda here. What if she was looking for a replacement father for her son, or maybe just a new partner for herself? Was he being ridiculous, thinking like that? Had what happened to him made him paranoid, along with everything else?

He appreciated that parents needed to make contact with each other in order to manage their offspring’s friendships; but even if the invitation was entirely innocent, he discovered he simply couldn’t face the prospect of having to socialize with another adult to such a degree.

Because this would just be the start, wouldn’t it? He’d have to reciprocate, and before you knew it there’d be sleepovers and trips to the park together, and he and Eoin’s mother would of necessity become a couple, of sorts.

He supposed it was the same reluctance he felt for mixing with the four other students in the art class. Mixing meant talking about yourself at some stage, mixing meant surrendering your secrets, sooner or later.

He knew, of course, that he couldn’t avoid Eoin’s mother, or any other parents of Charlie’s friends, indefinitely. For one thing, it wasn’t fair to Charlie, who had every right to a social life. And for another, she’d surely wear him down eventually. For somebody who still had trouble tying her shoelaces, and who needed him to check for trolls under her bed each night, his daughter was surprisingly good at getting what she wanted.

But not yet; he wasn’t ready yet to risk it all coming out again. He couldn’t face another round of unasked questions, hostile looks, whispers behind hands. He couldn’t go through all that again, not when they’d barely settled into Carrickbawn.

He’d texted a response to the mobile number, knowing how unfriendly it would sound to Eoin’s mother. No doubt she’d be put out by his blunt refusal, but there was nothing he could do to help that. He hoped he wasn’t jeopardizing Charlie’s friendship with Eoin, who sounded like a nice boy. Surely the mother wouldn’t take it out on the children if she was annoyed?

It was a chance he’d have to take. He sat on the edge of his daughter’s bed and opened her bedtime story.

Not a single sarcastic comment, not a look or a gesture Audrey could object to. On the contrary, he’d been quite civil—almost pleasant, in fact. Even making a joke about the vet.

Of course his language had been a little choice, but considering how much more objectionable he’d been on previous occasions, Audrey was willing to overlook that. And he had excused himself afterwards, which had been gratifying.

Anyway it didn’t matter, it was all over and done with. She was glad, though, that they’d parted civilly. And she’d apologized for her outburst, so her conscience was perfectly clear. She could put him out of her head now with no hard feelings.

She strode happily along the path, enjoying the soft warmth of the September sun on her face—no, October now, could you believe it? The year was flying by.

She was looking forward to a pleasant hour in the garden when she got home. That bed near the patio badly needed to be weeded—she’d change into her old blue trousers and set to it. And then she’d make dinner, and after that there was her bath and the usual Wednesday-night telly to look forward to.

She turned onto her road and saw a slender, dark-haired young woman coming out of Pauline’s next door. They smiled at each other as they passed.

“The weather is holding,” Audrey said cheerfully.

“Certainly is,” the other agreed.

It was the first time they’d said more than hello to each other.

After letting herself in, Audrey went straight upstairs and changed quickly into her gardening clothes, ignoring for once the frantic scrabbling at the kitchen door. From her bedroom window the signs of Dolly’s presence were all too evident in the garden, from the little piles of upturned earth here and there to the ruined dahlia bed at one side and the complete absence of foliage on the lower parts of the hydrangeas.

Back downstairs she received her usual rapturous welcome in the kitchen. She opened the back door and Dolly tumbled into the garden, yapping joyously. Audrey went to the shed and collected her gardening tools and made her way back to the flower bed, Dolly snuffling busily into all her favorite places.

As Audrey positioned her green foam kneeler Pauline emerged from the house next door holding a mug.

“You’re putting me to shame.”

Audrey smiled. “You clearly haven’t noticed that my garden has been demolished lately. This is just a little damage-limitation exercise.” She pulled on her gloves. “I saw your visitor leaving when I was coming home.”

“Oh yes, Valerie was here. She wanted the recipe for my chicken and pineapple dish. She’s inviting people to dinner at the weekend.”

Audrey dug around a dandelion. “It’s lovely that she still keeps in touch with you. How long did you say since you stopped keeping house for them?”

“Ten years, just about.” Pauline shook her head, cradling her mug. “Poor things haven’t had it easy.”

The wife had died, which was why Pauline had been recruited as housekeeper, but there’d been a second tragedy in that family, some months after Audrey had moved in next door. She’d forgotten the details now, but she dimly remembered Pauline being terribly upset at the time.

“She doesn’t say much about it, but I gather that things between herself and her father haven’t been good for quite a while,” Pauline went on. “That’s the last thing she needs now, with only the two of them left in the family.”

Kevin emerged from the house next door just then, looking warily over the hedge for Dolly, and the subject was dropped. As the plot of a Disney film he’d just watched was being recounted to them in great detail, Audrey dug and poked and filled her trug with weeds, and found her mind wandering.

He mightn’t look too bad if he smartened himself up a bit, if he bought a few nice shirts and shaved off that awful beard. It might be hiding a receding chin or something, but honestly, the state of it—as if he went at it every so often with the bread knife.

“Audrey, you’re miles away.”

She looked up at Pauline, and at Kevin’s handsome, empty face. She felt the heat rising in her cheeks.

“Sorry, I was thinking about…school.”

Lord, trying to smarten up the man in the pet shop—she really must be getting desperate.

Irene pulled her phone from her bag. “Irene,” she said.

“I called a few days ago, about taking you up on the free trial.”

“Who is this?” But she knew who it was.

“I did the panel beating on your car,” he said. “You gave me your card, said I could have a trial.”

“Oh yes…well, I’m pretty much booked up for the rest of the week, but I could squeeze you in on”—she flicked the pages of her magazine—“Friday, around half past three.”

“I work till five,” he said.

“In that case”—another flick—“it’ll have to be Monday. Say five thirty?”

“Okay.”

“What’s your name?” she asked.

A tiny pause. “Ger Brophy,” he said.

It didn’t escape her, the second it took him to make up a name. Not surprising, though, seeing as how he probably had a wife at home. Irene scribbled
Ger? Mon 5:30
in the margin of the magazine page and gave him directions to the gym and told him what to wear.