The Reckoning by Chonghaile Clár Ní;

Author:Chonghaile, Clár Ní;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Legend Press

CHAPTER 14

Sometimes, Diane, I try to imagine where you are reading these letters, if indeed you are reading them. This exercise requires a double-dose of what my literature professor used to call the willing suspension of disbelief. Maybe you have a special routine. Perhaps you read my letters over breakfast. Or maybe you read them late at night in your bed. Do you discuss them with Paul or keep them for yourself? Perhaps you take the pale yellow envelopes to your favourite café before you go to work. Maybe you don’t work any more. Do other people run the gallery now that you’ve done the hard work of putting it on the map? Oh yes, I have followed your career, darling. I am a very British stalker. Very polite, very unassuming and very passive-aggressive. You never even knew I was there, did you?

I visited the gallery once. It must have been five or six years ago. I pretended to myself that I might as well pop in as I happened to be in the neighbourhood. Of course, there was no other reason for me to be on that street in Mayfair. Nothing other than an old woman’s penchant for poking her nose into things that are none of her business. Fooling myself again.

I love the name: Silent Poetry. You are a clever girl. I had to look it up when I got home. I’m afraid I hardly remember what was on the walls. I was so nervous and I know so little about art anyway despite my experience with wartime posters. I have a vague memory of vibrant colours, strong asymmetrical shapes. There were also twisted, disturbing sculptures, little wooden nightmares, on plinths in the centre of the room. I liked those.

I approached a slender, austerely pretty brunette with the most beautiful knee-high leather boots. She was behind the desk but she could have been one of the exhibits. Boots On The Ground, perhaps.

“Hello, could I speak to Diane Spencer please?”

She raised her perfect eyebrows.

“Do you mean Maria Spencer? The owner?” she asked.

I ignored her tone. I’ve been hearing it a lot since I hit old age; a mixture of annoyance and slightly contemptuous pity. I just nodded.

“She’s out this afternoon, I’m afraid. Can I take a message for her?”

I said no. I was already regretting my fake spontaneity. I left as hastily as a 70-year-old woman can, feeling her eyes on my back as I tottered out. She probably feared I might stumble into the sculptures or careen into one of the pictures. She was not entirely wrong to be concerned.

It was February, a depressing nowhere month, neither winter nor spring. It was cold and the skies were low and leaden. I’d had a bout of pneumonia over Christmas and I suppose I was feeling feeble and lonely and that drove me to seek you out. My only excuse for such appalling behaviour is that rational thought becomes more and more of a luxury as we age, Diane. Increasingly, I find I am ruled by my emotions.

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