Free Authenticity by Deirdre Madden

for the night. It was raining hard now and a wind had picked up. William would take a cab home; would ask the driver, as always, to take him out along by the sea. He thought of the rain, the roads falling away: it depressed him to consider the journey ahead.
    Julia came back into the room with a teapot and mugs, as unceremonious with him as she had evidently been with her last visitor. ‘You can have some of that if you want,’ she said, pointing to the cake on the table. ‘Or I think I might have biscuits.’ She went back into the kitchen and returned holding a packet of shortbread and a carton of milk. ‘I’m a bit low on milk, but I think there’ll be enough. Max would drink me out of house and home. Good thing cats don’t eat biscuits or there’d be no hope.’ The cat opened its eyes, and Julia laughed. ‘You know I’m talking about you, don’t you, you divil?’ she said, bending down and tickling it under the chin.
    ‘Do you like cats?’
    ‘Not particularly,’ William said. He actually loathed them.
    She poured two mugs of tea and as she leaned over to hand one to him she was closer to him physically than she had been since the first moment they met, when he lit her cigarette. Oddly, this proximity made her seem more separate and distant, bringing home the fact that she was, indeed, a stranger to him.
    ‘Thank you, Julia,’ he said as he took the mug. It was the first time he had addressed her using her name. ‘I’m William, by the way, William Armstrong.’ They were both conscious of how odd it was that they should have got to this point without having exchanged names.
    ‘Help yourself to whatever you want,’ she said, indicating the sugar and milk, the cake and the shortbread. This lack of finesse was, like the cluttered, shabby comfort of her home, a novelty to him.
    ‘I like your flat.’
    ‘Yes, it’s magnificent, isn’t it? It’s to be the main feature of House Beautiful magazine next month. Be sure not to miss it’
    ‘Really?’ It was out before he realised she was joking.
    ‘It’s a simple place, I know, and small, but it suits me. This part of town has become much more chic since I moved in, but then where hasn’t in Dublin? I keep thinking Hester’s suddenly going to triple the rent and sling me out.’
    ‘Hester?’
    ‘The woman who owns the shop downstairs. I work for her part time.’
    ‘What do you have here?’
    ‘Well, this room, and the room directly above, which I use as a studio.’
    ‘Studio?’
    ‘I’m an artist.’
    ‘Really? Why, you should have said!’ He was genuinely astonished and pleased to hear this, but she looked suspicious at his enthusiasm. ‘I love art.’
    ‘Do you?’ She thought he was trying to flatter her, as she had when he said he thought the book looked interesting.
    ‘Could we go up and see your work?’
    He knew he was being pushy, knew that she would refuse, but he hoped she would give him some kind of opening, that she might even say, ‘Maybe the next time.’ Instead she said nothing at all, just sat stroking the cat’s head. Her silences were eloquent and tactful; she knew how to say a great deal by saying nothing.
    ‘There’s a little bathroom beside the studio,’ she went on a moment later, as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘and that’s directly above the kitchen, which is equally small. And that’s the lot.’
    She hadn’t mentioned a bedroom. Maybe in the circumstances, the peculiar intimacy of sitting drinking tea with thisstranger late at night, she didn’t want to mention it, and William himself was too embarrassed to ask.
    ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said, ‘and the answer is, no, there’s no bedroom.’
    He could scarcely believe this.
    ‘So where do you sleep, then?’
    ‘You’re sitting on the bed.’ Then she laughed. ‘I wish you could see your face,’ she said. ‘It’s a study’
    William laughed along with her, with some effort.
    ‘You sleep on the sofa? Really?’
    ‘It folds out,’