The Shelter of Neighbours (3 page)

A deer rampant. Young and lovely. Full of energy and full of joy.

The board was gathering in a bistro on the banks of the Liffey. ‘We deserve a decent lunch!' Alan, the chairman, declared cheerfully. He was a cheerful man. His eyes were kind, and encouraged those around him to feel secure. People who liked him said he was charismatic.

The board was happy. Their tedious meeting was over and the bistro was much more expensive than the hotel to which Alan usually brought them, with its alarming starched tablecloths and fantails of melon. He was giving them a treat because it was a Saturday. They had sacrificed a whole three hours of the weekend for the good of the organisation they served. The reputation of the bistro, which was called Gabriel's, was excellent and anyone could tell from its understated style that the food would be good, and the wine, too, even before they looked at the menu – John Dory, oysters, fried herrings, sausage and mash. Truffles. A menu listing truffles just under sausage and mash promises much. We can cook and we are ironic as well, it proclaims. Put your elbows on the table, have a good time.

Emphasising the unpretentiously luxurious tone of Gabriel's was a mural on the wall, depicting a modern version of the Last Supper, a mural of typical Dubliners eating at a long refectory table.

Alan loved this mural, a clever, post-modern, but delightfully accessible, work of art. It raised the cultural tone of the bistro, if it needed raising, which it didn't really, since it was also located next door to the house on Usher's Island where James Joyce's aunts had lived, and which he used as the setting for his most celebrated story, ‘The Dead'. In short, of all the innumerable restaurants boasting literary associations in town, Gabriel's had the most irrefutable credentials. You simply could not eat in a more artistic place.

The funny thing about the Last Supper was that everyone was sitting at one side of the table, very conveniently, for painters and photographers. It was as if they had anticipated all the attention that would soon be coming their way. And Gabriel's had, in its clever, ironic way, set up one table in exactly the same manner, so that everyone seated at it faced in the same direction, getting a good view of the picture and also of the rest of the restaurant. It was great. Nobody was stuck facing the wall. You could see if anyone of any importance was among the clientele – and usually there were one or two stars, at least. You could see what they were wearing and what they were eating and drinking, although you had to guess what they were talking about, which made it even more interesting, in a funny sort of way. More interactive. It was like watching a silent movie without subtitles.

A problem with the arrangement was that people at one end of the Last Supper table had no chance at all of talking to those at the other end. But this, too, could be a distinct advantage, if the seating arrangements were intelligently handled. On this sort of outing, Alan always made sure that they were.

At the right end of the table he had placed his good old friends, Simon and Paul. (Joe had not come, as per usual. He was the real literary expert on the board, having won the Booker Prize, but he never attended meetings. Too full of himself. Still, they could use his name on the stationery.) Alan himself sat in the middle, where he could keep an eye on everyone. On his left-hand side were Mary, Jane and Pam. The women liked to stick together.

Alan, Simon and Paul ordered oysters and truffles and pâté de foie gras for starters. Mary, Jane and Pam ordered one soup of the day and two nothings. This was not owing to the gender division. Mary and Jane were long past caring about their figures, at least when out on a free lunch, and Pam was new and eager to try everything being a member of a board offered, even John Dory, which she had ordered for her main course. Their abstemiousness was due to the breakdown in communications caused by the seating arrangements. The ladies had believed that nobody was getting a starter, because Alan had muttered, ‘I don't think I'll have a starter', and then changed his mind and ordered the pâté de foie gras when they were chatting among themselves about a new production of
A Doll's House
, which was just showing at the Abbey. Mary had been to the opening, as she was careful to emphasise; she was giving it the thumbs down. Nora had been manic and the sound effects were appalling. The slam of the door that was supposed to reverberate down through a hundred years of drama couldn't even be heard in the second row of the stalls. That was the Abbey for you, of course. Such dreadful acoustics, the place has to be shut down. Pam and Jane nodded eagerly; Pam thought the Abbey was quite nice but she knew if she admitted that in public, everyone would think she was a total loser who had probably failed her Leaving. Neither Pam nor Jane had seen
A Doll's House
but they had read a review by Fintan O'Toole, so they knew everything they needed to know. He hadn't liked the production, either, and had decided that the original play was not much good, anyway.
Farvel
, Ibsen!

In the middle of this conversation Pam's mobile phone began to play ‘Waltzing Matilda' at volume level five. Alan gave her a reproving glance. If she had to leave her mobile phone on, she could at least have picked a tune by Shostakovich or Stravinksy. He himself had a few bars by a young Irish composer on his phone, ever mindful of his duty to the promotion of the national culture. ‘Terribly sorry!' Pam slipped the phone into her bag, but not before she had glanced at the screen to find out who was calling. ‘I forgot to switch it off.' Which was rather odd, Mary thought, since Pam had placed the phone on the table, in front of her nose, the minute she had come into the restaurant. It had sat there under the water jug, looking like a tiny pistol in its little leather holster.

In the heel of the hunt all this distraction meant that they neglected to eavesdrop on the men while they were placing their orders, so that they would get a rough idea of how extravagant they could be. How annoying it was now to see Simon slurping down his oysters, with lemon and black pepper, and Paul digging into his truffles, while they had nothing but
A Doll's House
and one soup of the day to amuse themselves with.

And a glass of white wine. Paul, who was a great expert, had ordered that. A Sauvignon Blanc, the vineyard of Dubois Père et Fils, 2002. ‘As nice a Sauvignon as I have tried in years,' he said, as he munched a truffle and sipped thoughtfully. ‘Two thousand and two was a good year for everything in France, but this is exceptional.'

The ladies strained to hear what he was saying, much more interested in wine than drama. Mary, who had been so exercised a moment ago about Ibsen at the Abbey, seemed to have forgotten all about both. She was now taking notes, jotting down Paul's views. He was better, much better, than the people who do the columns in the paper, she commented excitedly as she scribbled. No commercial agenda – well, that they knew of. You never quite knew what anyone's agenda was, that was the trouble. Paul was apparently on the board because of his knowledge of books, and Simon, because of his knowledge of the legal world, and Joe, because he was famous. Mary, Jane and Pam were there because they were women. Mary was already on twenty boards and had had to call a halt, since her entire life was absorbed by meetings and lunches, receptions and launches. Luckily, she had married sensibly and did not have to work. Jane sat on ten boards and Pam had been nominated two months ago. This was her first lunch with any board, ever. She was a writer. Everyone wondered what somebody like her was doing here. It was generally agreed that she must know someone.

One person she knew was Francie Briody. He was also having lunch, in a coffee shop called the Breadbasket, a cold little kip of a place across the river. They served filled baguettes and sandwiches as well as coffee and he was lunching on a tuna submarine with corn and coleslaw. Francie was a writer, like Pam, although she wrote so-called literary women's fiction, chick lit for PhDs, and was successful. Francie wrote literary fiction for anybody who cared to read it, which was nobody. For as long as he could remember he had been a writer whom nobody read. And he was already fifty years of age. He had written three novels and about a hundred short stories, and other bits and bobs. Success of a kind had been his lot in life, but not of a kind to enable him to earn a decent living, or to eat anything other than tuna submarines, or to get him a seat on an arts organisation board. He had had one novel published, to mixed reviews; he had won a prize at Listowel Writers' Week for a short story fifteen years ago. Six of his short stories had been nominated for prizes – the Devon Cream Story Competition, the Blackstaff Young Authors, the William Carleton Omagh May Festival, among others. But he still had to work part-time in a public house, and he had failed to publish his last three books.

Nobody was interested in a writer past the age of thirty. It was all the young ones they wanted these days, and women, preferably young women with lots of shining hair and sweet photogenic faces. Pam. She wasn't that young any more, and not all that photogenic, but she'd got her foot in the door in time, when women and the Irish were all the rage, no matter what they looked like. Or wrote like.

He'd never been a woman – he had considered a pseudonym but he'd let that moment pass. And now he'd missed the boat. The love affair of the London houses and the German houses and the Italian and the Japanese with Irish literature was over. So everyone said. Once Seamus Heaney got the Nobel, the interest abated. Enough's enough. On to the next country. Bosnia or Latvia or God knows what. Slovenia.

Francie's latest novel, a heteroglossial, polyphonic, post-modern examination of post-modern Celtic Tiger Ireland, with special insights into political corruption and globalisation, beautifully written in darkly masculinist ironic prose with shadows of
l'écriture féminine
, which was precisely and exactly what Fintan O'Toole swore that the Irish public and Irish literature was crying out for, had been rejected by every London house, big and small, that his agent could think of, and by the five Irish publishers who would dream of touching a literary novel as well, and also, Francie did not like to think of this, by the other thirty Irish publishers who believed chick lit was the modern Irish answer to James Joyce. Yes yes yes yes. The delicate chiffon scarf was flung over her auburn curls. Yes.

Yeah well.

He'd show the philistine fatso bastards.

He pushed a bit of slippery yellow corn back into his sub. Extremely messy form of nourishment, it was astonishing that it had caught on, especially as the subs were slimy and slippery themselves.

Not like the home-made loaves served in Gabriel's on the south bank of the Liffey. Alan was nibbling a round of freshly baked, soft as silk, crispy as Paris on a fine winter's day roll, to counteract the richness of the pâté, which was sitting slightly uneasily on his stomach.

‘We did a good job,' he was saying to Pam, who liked to talk shop, being new.

‘I'd always be so worried that we picked the wrong people,' she said in her charming, girlish voice.

She had nice blond hair but this did not make up for her idealism and her general lack of experience. Alan wished his main course would come quickly. Venison with lingonberry jus and basil mash.

‘You'd be surprised but that very seldom happens,' he said.

‘Judgements are so subjective vis-à-vis literature,' she said with a frown, remembering a bad review she'd received seven and a half years ago.

Alan suppressed a sigh. She was a real pain.

‘There is almost always complete consensus on decisions,' he said. ‘It's surprising, but the cream always rises. I … we … are never wrong.' His magical eyes twinkled.

Consensus? Pam frowned into her Sauvignon Blanc. A short discussion of the applicants for the bursaries, in which people nudged ambiguities around the table like footballers dribbling a ball, when all they want is the blessed trumpeting of the final whistle. They waited for Alan's pronouncement. If that was consensus, she was Emily Dickinson. As soon as Alan said, ‘I think this is brilliant writing' or ‘Rubbish, absolute rubbish', there was a scuffle of voices vying with each other to be the first to agree with the great man.

‘Rubbish, absolute rubbish.' That was what he had said about Francie. ‘He's persistent, I'll give him that.' Alan had allowed himself a smile, which he very occasionally permitted himself at the expense of minor writers. The board guffawed loudly. Pam wouldn't tell Francie that. He would kill himself. He was at the end of his tether. But she would break the sad news over the phone in the loo, as she had promised. No bursary. Again.

‘I don't know,' she persisted, ignoring Alan's brush-off. ‘I feel so responsible somehow. All that effort and talent, and so little money to go around …' Her voice trailed off. She could not find the words to finish the sentence, because she was drunk as an egg after two glasses. No breakfast, the meeting had started at nine.

Stupid bitch, thought Alan, although he smiled cheerily. Defiant. Questioning. Well, we know how to deal with them. Woman or no woman, she would never sit on another board. This was her first and her last supper. ‘I feel so responsible somehow.' Who did she think she was?

‘This is a 2001 Bordeaux from a vineyard run by an Australian ex-pat just outside Bruges, that's the Bruges near Bordeaux of course, not Bruges-la-Morte in little Catholic Belgium.'

Paul's voice had risen several decibels and Simon was getting a bit rambunctious. They were well into the second bottle of the Sauvignon and had ordered two bottles of the Bordeaux, priced, Alan noticed, at eighty-five euro a pop. The lunch was going to cost about a thousand euro.

‘Your venison, sir?'

At last.

He turned away from Pam and speared the juicy game. The grub of kings.

Francie made his king-size tuna submarine last a long time. It would have lasted, anyway, since the filling kept spilling out onto the table and it took ages to gather it up and replace it in the roll. He glanced at the plain round clock over the fridge. They'd been in there for two hours. How long would it be?