Girl Unknown(67)

‘We’re relying on anyone hoping to gain the professorial grade to secure a minimum of external funding each year …’

‘McCormack is bringing in more than I am?’

‘In a word, yes. I want this to be an ongoing conversation. We don’t have to hash out the whys and wherefores right now.’

‘How much?’

‘David, it’s not the time for those questions, or for disclosing actual figures.’

‘You know I’ve been in talks with the Royal Historical Society, who are in the process of securing commercial funding …’

‘How is Caroline? How are the kids?’ He hadn’t disguised his desire to sidetrack me.

I lied: ‘They’re all good, Alan. Tip-top.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said, sounding utterly unconvinced. ‘Perhaps you should get away. Take a break.’

‘I took a week off after the radio interview.’

‘I mean a holiday,’ Alan said, trying to sound upbeat, the words scraping across his throat in a husky cough. ‘A proper one. Abroad.’

Was the department trying to sideline me, to get me out of the way? ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ I said.

‘I have a place in France,’ Alan said. ‘A villa on ?le de Ré, not far from La Rochelle. Small but comfortable – a winding road that brings you down to a very quaint village. It’s a place of tranquillity.’

‘It sounds idyllic but –’

‘There’s enough room for you to bring the family … It’s really rather lovely.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Alan, really, but I couldn’t …’

He suggested July. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘just consider it.’

There was no point in returning to my office, no point even in remaining on campus. As I packed my bag and locked the door to my office, I thought that, for the first time in my life, the university seemed hostile to me. For years I had been stitched up in the cocoon of academic life, blanketed by the security of tenure, but now, as I walked through the corridors with their tiled floors and characterless breeze-block walls, I felt the hardness of every surface, the smugness of the cliques in their cosy coffee groups. It was like a giant country club that had just refused me membership. What had once seemed a friendly, liberal environment now seemed elitist, unforgiving, archaic.

I had no intention of going home. The thought of hanging around an empty house waiting for Caroline to get back so I could give her my bad news just filled me with despair. Instead I cycled into the Dublin Mountains and the Blue Light, where I sat with a pint of Guinness and gazed out over the city, bathed as it was in a great burst of sunshine that had arrived without warning on that May day.

I was exhausted, and on edge. I felt the torpor of my mother’s death in my limbs. Everything was falling apart. The university had rejected me. My wife was barely speaking to me. I had lost the knack of communicating with my children. And now there was that other daughter – a grandchild my mother had never known – who, despite my best efforts, I had somehow managed to push away.

I drank another pint, and decided about France. Alan was right. I needed to get away. I needed to sort things out, and gain some perspective. I finished my drink and free-wheeled home to tell Caroline, but as soon as I came into the hallway and rested my bike against the stairs, I knew all was not well. I heard her through the open kitchen door. She was crying.

‘What is it?’ I asked, and she looked up from where she sat at the counter, a glass of wine in front of her, tissues scattered on the counter.

The skin around her nose and upper lip was red, as if she had been crying for some time. A lurching feeling came over me. The children. She must have seen the panic in my eye: ‘No, it’s not that. They’re fine.’

My heartbeat calmed a little. I approached her nervously. Whatever it was, I wasn’t sure I had the energy for it. Already I was assailed by the feeling that I was somehow at the root of her misery.

‘It’s everything else,’ she said.

Just saying those three words seemed to threaten what little composure she had summoned. She took a deep sip of wine. ‘I’m forty-one years old,’ she said quietly, ‘and on the surface of it, my life is just fine. I’m married with two wonderful children, a comfortable home, friends. So why do I feel utterly useless? Completely expendable?’

Her job, I thought. Of course: today was her last day. I heard the bitterness in her voice, as if she had been conducting a kind of accounting of her life, looking over her achievements with a critical eye, withdrawing from what she had seen.

‘I don’t seem qualified to do anything. I’m at the mercy of my husband, a kept woman.’ She enunciated the words in a way that brought home to me the dangerousness of her mood. ‘And my husband hardly speaks to me. Can barely stand to be in the same room with me, in fact.’

‘That’s not true, Caroline.’

‘Isn’t it? I can’t even remember the last time we made love.’

I sat down so that we were facing each other.

Her expression was flat and unreadable. She took me in as if I were a stranger. ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re thinking any more, David.’

It was not acrimonious, the way she said it. It was not an accusation. It was said more out of exhaustion than anything else – a last-straw relinquishment, a reluctant capitulation – and despite my earlier thoughts in the same direction, I felt a growing sense of panic. It felt as if she had almost surrendered, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t realized she had been fighting so strongly, or for so long, for herself and for us.