Bad Things Happen Read online

  My work had suffered from the general apathy that consumed me since I lost Caitríona, and I think it was with a sense of concerned relief that my boss accepted my resignation. I left for Paris the following week. I didn’t know where she was nor the names of the clubs in which she played, but I never doubted that I would find her. I made lists of all the clubs I could find, and arondissement by arondissement I went to every one, asking if they had ever had a young Irish musician called Aoife. Months passed, and my optimism waned.

  During the day I painted in the little studio apartment I had rented. I had bought a second-hand easel and some brushes and paints in a dusty old art shop near the Sacre Coeur, and I started to copy scenes from tourist postcards of Paris’s famous landmarks. Much of what I had learned was locked away in recesses of my mind as dusty and forgotten as the old shop, but slowly I remembered and slowly I began to blow the dust away. Partly it passed the time, but partly also it assuaged the growing need in me to create something – to do something positive, no matter how insignificant it might be.

  Every evening was spent trawling Paris’ clubs to find my daughter.

  Then it happened. It was called La Caleche, deep in the 15th. I walked in at around 8pm one Friday evening, before the evening’s entertainment drew the bustling crowds kicking off the weekend. Like every evening, I planned to visit seven or eight clubs, to be told that nobody by that name or of that description had ever worked there, to finish my demi and walk outside, crossing the club’s name off my list.

  The barman first shook his head, then stopped. “Attendez”, he said, waving an index finger at me.

  “Claude? Claude?” he called to an old man busy carrying crates of bottles from the cellar. “That girl,” he said in French, “the pretty Irish one, who played the violin here last summer – what was her name?”

  Claude put down the crate and scratched his head.

  “Oui, oui, I remember her,” he said, “but her name… her name…”.

  After what seemed like forever, a light went on behind his thick glasses and he beamed a wide smile.

  “Eefa”, he said, clicking his thumb and forefinger. “Oui, Eefa.” His expression darkened. “Who are you, what do you want with her?”

  “I’m her… friend, from Ireland,” I responded. I turned back to the barman. “You said last summer – where did she go?”

  The barman looked at the old man.

  “Claude?”

  Claude looked uncertain, suspicious.

  “Please,” I begged, “it’s very important. I mean her no harm, but it’s very important that I find her.”

  Claude went into a small back-room and emerged with what looked like a tattered old photo album. As he thumbed through it, I could see it contained handwritten farewell messages from, it was obvious from the messages, people who had worked in the club. He showed me a page with two messages scrawled almost illegibly, and pointed at the second.

  “She went with her friend, Hélène. This is by Hélène.”

  “Will miss you all!” it read in French. “I’ll sing a song for you every night! Come visit, Hélène.”

  Below she had scribbled her forwarding address.

  “That one?” I asked hoarsely, pointing to it.

  He nodded. I could scarcely believe what was written before me. After years living in London, and months searching Paris, the address was in Malahide, a town near Dublin, just miles from my old home. The barman handed me one of the pub’s advertising cards and, with a shaking hand, I scribbled the address on the back and put it carefully in my wallet.

  I looked at Claude, and asked slowly:

  “And… I know this sounds odd, but… what was her… her surname?”

  The old man stared at me.

  “You said you were her friend. And yet you do not even know her name? Who are you? What is this?”

  I raised my hands in a plea of innocence.

  “You have to trust me. It’s not how it seems.”

  He waved me away contemptuously, picked up the album and went back to the cellar, a trail of expletives left hanging in his wake.

  I stood up and offered my hand to the barman. He took it reluctantly. My voice was faint, hoarse.

  “Thank you.”

  The aching in my legs put a stop to my running, and so I made my way slowly back past the harbour towards my hotel. The small foyer of the hotel was full of noisy holiday-makers heading out for the day, equipped with picnic baskets and rugs and sun-cream and over-excited children. I suspect the reason I never challenged Caitríona about having another child was that, if I was honest, I never really wanted all of this. I didn’t want to spend my hard-earned time off work in the equally, if not more, stressful environment of the family holiday. And it made me a little guilty to think that, if we had kept Aoife and maybe had more children, this would have been my life and I might have hated it. I went back up to my room and took a long shower. Scrubbed clean and tingling from a few minutes under the cold tap, I came out draped in a towel and lay on the bed.

  I pulled the small card from my wallet and flipped it over and over between my fingers. Scrawled on the back was the address, 23 St Mary’s Terrace, my destination, the terminus for this long journey. Aoife’s address. Of course I didn’t know if she was going to be there, but I felt sure she was. After a year of searching, I found myself back in Ireland, in this little fishing village in the holiday sunshine beside a benign sea and I sensed that the stars were aligning. It just felt right.

  Now, perhaps inevitably at the culmination of the odyssey, I was scared of what lay ahead. I had thought about writing to her before venturing down here, to at least give her notice, but I was afraid of frightening her off and losing the best lead I’d had. And so I had chosen to take her by surprise. I knew it wasn’t really fair. I’d had the chance to prepare, but had denied her that opportunity. I knew I was being selfish. Maybe the search for an adopted child is based on that irony – you began all those years ago thinking only of yourself, and here you are full circle. But if I didn’t find Aoife I would maybe lose the chance to hold on to my last remaining piece of Caitríona, and that was too bitter a truth to bear. I got dressed and made my way downstairs.

  The hotel foyer was empty, the milling throng of an hour or so before having departed for the beach and the park. The light breeze from earlier had strengthened a little and tempered the heat of the sun. I walked to the train station and bought a ticket. Sitting on the train, watching the coast and the coastal suburbs zip past, I had a sense of an emerging reality. What had for the better part of a year seemed like a hopeless quest had somehow led me here, to where all of the imagining and wishing and dreaming would become, at last, tangible.

  The train pulled into the station at Malahide. I looked again at the little map of the town that I had printed from the Internet, although I had long since committed it to memory. Turning right from the station, I crossed the main street, and turned right again and walked along St Mary’s Terrace. The odd numbers were on the right, so I kept to the left hand side to give me the opportunity to walk past the house before approaching the door. The house was part of a three storey terrace, narrow and tall. The front door and the shutters on each window were painted a bright blue, in vivid contrast to the grey walls. At each window, brightly coloured flowers grew abundantly from window boxes, spilling over the ledges and draping the wall below. I stood across the street and stared at the house. With a deep intake of breath, I lowered my head, crossed the street, climbed the front steps and rapped on the door. After a moment, I heard the growing echo of footsteps on a tiled floor and the door opened. A young woman looked at me, and raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes?”

  She was beautiful. Her skin was fair, her eyes dark and wide, striking and vulnerable. Her prominent cheekbones gave her a regal air, accentuated by a strong, aquiline nose. Her long black hair was wet, and cascade
d wildly over her shoulders as she dried it with a towel. She was tall, almost as tall as me, but her slender body looked fragile. She wore a plain white t-shirt and denim jeans cut off just below the knee, and simple sandals on her feet.

  She looked at me curiously.

  “Can I help you?” she said, more forcefully, and this time I could hear her strong French accent.

  “I’m looking for Aoife?” I managed to get the words out, but only just.

  She stopped towelling her hair, and paused before answering.

  “Aoife is not here. She does not live here,” she said evenly, eventually. “Who are you?”

  In the previous two years, and maybe in the years before that, I had become accustomed to bad news, to disappointment. But I had so convinced myself that Aoife would be here that I had not considered the possibility that she might not be the one to answer the door. Involuntarily, I stepped back from the door, trying to lasso her words and pin them down to make some sense of them.

  “Who are you?” she said again, putting her hand on the door and closing it almost imperceptibly.

  I couldn’t think, couldn’t decide what to do. Did I tell this person who I was? But I had no idea who this young woman was and I didn’t want to risk all of my progress thus far with one indiscretion. Did I turn and run? Tempting though it was, it would have been ridiculous, the end of my search for sure. I grasped for a reason for my presence.

  “I’m a painter,” I said. It was half-true and current and the only thing I could think of. “An artist.” I hoped the repetition would mask my efforts to construct a story.

  “I have a friend in Paris who has seen Aoife play. He suggested that I should paint her. He said she might be willing, said she would be here.”

  My mouth had taken over, and the words came out independently, unrelated to the muddled thoughts and emotions thrashing around in my head.

  “Saw her where?” she asked, her voice suggesting that I amused her, aroused her curiosity.

  “In La Caleche.” I risked, proffering my half-knowledge of the truth, conscious that at any moment I might blow my tenuous cover.

  She paused again, clearly weighing up her response.

  “Well, she is not here,” she finally offered.

  “But she’s coming back? Or coming here?” I begged, clutching at any available chance.

  She shook her head.

  “She is supposed to – was supposed to – come here, but she hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “Do you know where she is?” I asked, an increasing desperation welling up inside me.

  “No. I haven’t seen her for… for a long time. I don’t know where she is now. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you know if she is still coming here?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I am no wiser than you.”

  She began to close the door. I stepped forward and gestured for her to stop.

  “Wait!”, I cried. “Please. Is there anything you can tell me, anything?”

  “You are very eager to find her?” She seemed sceptical.

  “Yes.”

  She shrugged again. “Well, like I said, I can’t help you. Aoife is perhaps not the most reliable girl I know, she does precisely what she wants. So she might turn up, she might not. That’s the way she is. If I were you, I would not count on finding her. You will probably just be disappointed. I am sorry.”

  She shrugged another curt apology and closed the door.

  I stepped back onto the street, and an old man driving an old Ford Anglia blew his horn at me impatiently. I jumped clear. My head spun. With no right to hope, I had still been sure that Aoife would be here. I had given no thought to a contingency plan. I thought of knocking again on the door, but I had nothing else to say and didn’t know what to do. I turned and shuffled slowly back toward the station in a daze. The sun had taken cover behind some dark clouds and the breeze had picked up. I took a seat on the station platform and tried to calm my mind, to come up with a plan. But I could think of nothing. The young woman in the house had been so dismissive of Aoife. I realised that I had never imagined her as unkind, or selfish, or careless. I had been realistic enough to try not to paint her as an angel, not to impose on her my version of perfection. But I had built in my heart a model of such faultlessness that no mortal could possibly live up to my expectations. I just assumed that she was someone whose company I would enjoy and whose character I would admire. I assumed she would be someone whom I would be proud to call a friend. I had worried endlessly that she might not like me. I had come all this way, and maybe I wouldn’t like her.

  CHAPTER 3

  Do you ever wonder if you saw her? Ever spoke to her even? In Dublin for a holiday or a weekend, and walking down Grafton Street on a Summer Saturday afternoon, swept along in the milling crowds, did you see her? Was she there? Was she the girl whose eyes you caught for the briefest second, a lightning flash of intimacy as soon over and immediately forgotten? Was she the girl playing the violin outside Brown Thomas? Maybe when you stopped to listen to her for a few moments, you were spirited away on the back of some melancholy melody that made you shake yourself imperceptibly, drop some coins self-consciously in the open violin case and move quickly on. Was she the girl who served you coffee in Bewleys, overwhelmed by the unyielding pressure of the weekend throngs? You felt chastened by her indignantly, impertinently dismissive response when you questioned your change, and you wished you hadn’t made such a fuss over a Euro. Was she the assistant in the clothes shop who helped you choose a skirt or a sweater or a shirt? Who lingered a little too long to help you, told you with a slightly embarrassed and wistful smile that you looked so young in it, that it made your eyes look somehow brighter. Was she the girl with the clipboard, carrying out yet another survey or collecting for yet another spurious charity? When she chased you down, you were disarmed by her questions and opened up a little more than you should or contributed a little too generously. Was she the teenage mother pushing a buggy through the sea of shoppers, furiously fingering the keys on her mobile phone. You were maybe subconsciously critical of her short skirt or that she couldn’t hear her baby’s crying over the metallic din of the music playing through the ear-phones of her iPod. Was she the self-conscious young lover stealing furtive glances up at the boy whose hand she held as they moved uncertainly through the melée? When you caught her eye, she reddened and smiled and dropped her gaze to the ground ahead. Was she the sullen teenager in designer jeans slouching along beside her perfectly-presented mother, laden with bags from a day-long spree. Your lips tightened with disapproval at her whining protest that all her friends had those jeans and that they were not too tight and that it simply wasn’t fair. Was she the girl loitering by the cigarette counter in the crowded newsagents when you went in to pick up a paper? Who beat a hasty retreat under the weight of your frown?

  I wonder if you saw ever her, ever had a brief exchange that maybe in some way changed the course of her life. Did she go home that evening and, à propos of nothing, fleetingly recall your face from the crowded city street? Did she wordlessly concede that her mother was only trying to look out for her or wonder if she would ever be as pretty as the woman who bought the blue shirt or resolve never to smoke again, ever? Did you, in a quiet moment on the train or the drive home, recall the innocence in her eyes or the softness of her hands or the urgent passion in her music? Or did you shake your head at the sharpness of her words or the pointless waste of yet another young life?

  Maybe Aoife was one of those strangers, casually encountered and as soon forgotten. Maybe she, like those countless others, left her indelible mark on your life, like the initials of children carved into the trunk of a tree. Maybe you inadvertently and innocently deflected the course of her life by even a few degrees. And maybe she deflected yours.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was late afternoon by the time I found my way back to Howth. On the train back fr
om Malahide, I cursed my own stupidity, my naiveté. I had been so sure that Aoife would open the door that morning, and based on what? On an old man in a Paris bar and a scrawled note in an old photo album from who knows how many months before. And I had leapt aboard a plane to Dublin as though the very fact of my arrival at her door would have her dissolve in tears of joy and collapse into my out-stretched paternal arms. Twenty years of separation could be bridged so easily.

  The train pulled into Howth station. I stepped onto the platform and made my way slowly to the exit gate, which spilled the early commuter crowd onto the harbour front. I sat down on a bench over-looking the small working harbour with its fishing boats and lifeboat launches. The west pier extended away from me out into the bay and towards Ireland’s Eye. Along its length, proprietors of the small seafood shops stood at their doorways to catch the last of the day’s sun. Shouted conversations between fishmongers and the fishermen on the boats, punctuated by swearing and laughter, drifted back along the pier, carried by the gentle on-shore breeze.

  “Francie, how’re ya’ doin’?”

  “Arra, Bobby, I thought you were dead!”

  “No, that was only the smell of your feckin’ pollack.”

  “Go on ourra tha’! How’s that young fella of yours doin’ in the big school? Is he still playin’ football?”

  ”He is surely. Payin’ more attention to the ball than the books, I’d say. But sure there’s no talkin’ to these young lads.”

  “You’re right there. Only thing they’ll listen to is a clip round the ear. And you can’t even give them one of those these days. Political correctness gone fuckin’ mad.”