II
The same winter that I began to follow Barnaby and Bartleby I met Kate O’Mara. We met at Nora Moran’s.
Nora Moran was a painter who gave parties round people she hoped would buy her paintings or get her grants from foundations to advance her career or self-esteem; in some way they were all intertwined. We used to make fun of Nora. ‘I ran into Nora Moran today. She’s in a bad way. She’s down to her last three houses,’ after listening to her money worries in some coffee shop off the Green for hours as the coffee went cold and the cups were taken away. In our eyes she was a rich and successful woman. Still, we went to her parties, knowing we were being used as butcher’s grass or chopped-down rhododendron branches to cover up the dusty margins of the processional ways in June. We went out of respect for Nora’s early work and, less honourably, because it took a greater energy to stay away once Nora had made up her mind that we should go. As young women were not Nora’s idea of either butcher’s grass or rhododendrons, it was with surprise that I found myself facing a tall and lovely young woman at a party close to Christmas.
‘Hi,’ she said at once. ‘My name is Kate O’Mara.’
‘How do you happen to be at Nora’s?’ I asked as soon as the courtesies were over.
‘I used to work on a magazine in New York,’ she said. ‘The editor is a friend of Nora’s. We did a profile of her last year. When I was coming to Dublin everybody said I must see her.’
‘You’re here on holiday?’
‘No,’ she said, laughing. ‘I guess you won’t believe it. I came here to write.’
There are so many voices here already, and so little room. Who will hear all the voices, I thought. When I saw Nora Moran coming towards us I asked quickly, ‘Will you let me take you out some evening?’
‘Sure,’ she answered uncertainly, surprised.
I had just time to write down the telephone number before Nora came between us. ‘Well, what are you two getting up to here?’ and when the social laughter ceased, I said, ‘Kate was telling me about this profile of you …’
There was no need to say more. Nora was launched on her favourite subject.
III
‘Why were you so anxious to keep from Nora that we were going out?’ were the first words Kate asked the following Saturday when we were seated in a restaurant.
‘She’d want to come.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s true. She’d control the whole world if she could,’ and then I asked, looking at her ringless fingers, ‘Were you ever married?’
‘No. Why do you ask?’ The soup spoon paused at her lips.
‘No why. It’s probably stupid. We think of Americans as much married.’
‘My mother would have a fit if she heard that. We’re Catholics from way back. Nuns and priests galore. “No one was ever divorced in my family,” my mother is fond of boasting.’
‘Has that anything to do with your coming here?’
‘In a way. The whole family is rotten with nostalgia about Ireland. I said I’d come and see into it once and for all. And it was easier to come here. If I said I was going to wicked Paris, there’d be an uproar, but old Dublin is nice, clean. So here I am.’
‘And you look quite lovely,’ I said sincerely.
‘Why don’t we split this? This place isn’t cheap,’ she said when the bill came.
‘This is mine. Another time you can take me if you wish,’ and when we were outside I said, ‘It’s only a few streets. I’ll walk you home.’
Below the granite steps that led to the Georgian doorway where she had rooms I leaned to kiss her. She did not withdraw, but made it clear that it was no more than a courtesy at the end of the evening.
‘Would you like to come out some other evening?’ I asked awkwardly in the rebuff that was not quite a rebuff.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘The next time I must take you. When?’
‘Next Saturday?’
She thought for a moment and said, ‘Next Saturday’s fine,’ and waved as she took the key out of her purse.
Aimlessly, like old people grateful for mere human presence, we went out together that winter. Only once did I challenge the sexual restraint.
‘Is there someone that you’re involved with?’ I asked one evening.
‘Yes.’
‘Is it someone in Dublin?’
She named a man I knew, in public relations, whom she had met at Nora Moran’s.
‘He has this dream of an Irish Ireland, free of outside influences, and he’s fiercely anti-American. I get abused all the time,’ she explained.
‘Do you want to marry him?’
‘No,’ she laughed. ‘I’m not quite that crazy.’
‘But you sleep with him?’ I felt deprived and jealous.
‘Yes, but it’s a bad business. He always leaves before morning. Whenever we meet he does all the talking and we only meet whenever he wants. Yet I keep missing him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said in the face of an openness I was unused to.
‘I’m sorry too but it’s a relief to talk about these things sometimes.’
After that evening she must have suspected my desire or jealousy. Whenever I would ask about her life outside our meetings she would avoid a direct answer and then try to make her life sound humdrum and dull. She always wore her plainest clothes when we met.
IV
I could not help but feel irony when I noticed the light of competition in Nora Moran’s eyes when next we met.
‘We hardly ever see you now,’ she said. ‘I hear you and Kate see a great deal of one another. She’s a very attractive girl.’
‘We see each other very little. People exaggerate. I was going to call you but I always think you’re busy.’
‘Why don’t we drop everything today? I’ve been intending to go down to the farm. We’ll drive down.’
‘I’m free all day.’
There was a mist that promised to break into a fine day as we drove out of the city. Nora had a large heavy car, with warm mahogany panelling, and she drove very fast and badly, continually taking her eyes off the road to search my face for responses.
‘Do you see that beech tree over there, Nora?’ I resorted to saying when we got out into the country. ‘There’s something about its trunk that reminds me of some of the recurring shapes in your work,’ leaning cravenly towards the windscreen to narrow her angle when she would look back. It was a relief when the car lurched into the long gravelled avenue that led to the house.
‘I lose money on it all the time,’ she said as we looked over the rich acres, ‘but it’s the last thing I’d ever sell. My father built up this place from nothing. I like to think he’d approve of everything I’ve done if he were to come back.’
‘Still, it’s a solid investment.’
‘He was fond of saying that. “Never be fool enough to keep your money in cash.” You’d have loved my father,’ she said. ‘He was that sort of a man if he were to take a fork to his soup at a dinner table all the others would take up their forks. “You have us all brainwashed, Mr Moran,” old Michael, the gardener, used to say to him. He was the only one who dared say it, he was with us so long.’