‘It’d scare the life out of you,’ Helen said, shooting Thomas a look of disgust.
‘Well, Helen,’ Colette said, ‘fiction is a safe way to explore the darker reaches of the mind. It reminded me a little bit of Edgar Allan Poe – the sense of foreboding, the imagery, the classic set-up of a man faced with his own mortality.’
‘The classic set-up that’s like a hundred other things I’ve read before,’ Fionnuala said.
‘Now, Fionnuala,’ Colette said, ‘could you frame that differently?’
Thomas was staring at Fionnuala.
‘Well, it’s always the same thing in these horror stories, isn’t it – man sees a ghost of himself, man thinks he’s alive but he’s dead, man glimpses his own death . . .’
‘Yes,’ Colette said, ‘we’ve discussed this before – the use of archetypes – the limited number of stories that are available to us and how it’s up to us to make something original out of the components we’ve been given—’
‘And if I’d been allowed to finish, you’d have seen that this story goes in a very different direction to what you’re expecting,’ Thomas said.
‘The date of his death is written on the gravestone, it’s a date in the future, and he ends up dying on that date,’ Fionnuala said.
‘Well, I didn’t see that coming,’ Helen said.
Thomas tossed his pages onto the table. ‘And where is the groundbreaking, original work of fiction you’ve written, Fionnuala?’ Thomas asked.
‘I haven’t had a minute’s peace all week. I have two teenagers at home and if one of them’s not slamming every door in the house then the other needs driving to football training. I have no time to be sitting around writing stories.’
‘I’ve said it every week,’ Colette said, ‘you don’t have to present work to attend – you’re always welcome here, but I would ask that you keep your comments as constructive and respectful as possible. Now, let’s move on.’
Eithne Lynch read her poem ‘Life After Death’ about the ‘multiple selves’ within her, and the number of times she’d been reincarnated and the number of times she’d be reincarnated again. She was a ‘vessel’ for these different lives and would finally ‘take refuge in her own womb’. Nobody really knew what to say about that. Fionnuala moved around in her seat a lot, pulling at the hem of her jumper. Then Helen read her poem ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’, about the great turmoil that resulted from her death. The rain poured, the wind howled, animals cowered – generally nature was all askew. But despite the great impact her death had, no one showed up at her funeral. It was typical of the kind of thing she wrote, and after Colette had offered feedback and she had asked if the rest of the group had anything to add, Fionnuala, no longer able to stay silent, told Helen that she needed to go home to her husband and have a good ride. Even Helen laughed at that.
‘And would you like to share with us what you’ve written, Izzy?’ Colette asked.
Izzy looked down at the notebook. ‘I’m afraid I struggled a bit with this one,’ she said.
‘That’s all right.’
‘I mean, I’ve written very little, I really couldn’t think of anything.’
‘It’s OK, you don’t have to share but it really doesn’t matter how short it is, we’re not here to judge.’
That’s precisely what you’re here for, Izzy thought.
‘Well, I just kept coming back to the same thing over and over again and so I tried to do something with it, to shape it into a haiku, in the way that you’d shown us.’
‘Ah yes, they’re trickier than they look, aren’t they?’
‘But in the end, all I could come up with was two lines – the second line and the last line.’
‘That’s fine, Izzy. Why don’t you just read that to us.’
Izzy looked around at the faces of her classmates staring so intently at her. She looked down at the page again. ‘On her gravestone was written / “She was found wanting”,’ Izzy said. And then a silence seemed to swell around her, to expand beyond the confines of the hall to take in the night outside, and she felt herself to be falling through vast, soundless space. She could feel Colette’s eyes upon her and when she met her gaze, she was looking at her with such focus, like Izzy was the horizon, the point she’d had to fix upon to steady herself.
‘I think that’s very beautiful, Izzy,’ Colette said. ‘Does anyone else have any thoughts on that?’
Her classmates began to shift in their seats.
‘I don’t think there’s anything you can add to that,’ Fionnuala said, looking down into her lap. ‘That says it all really.’
‘There you go, Izzy,’ Colette said. ‘You’ve silenced us. Although I might suggest that you try something else with it. What if you reduced it further? What if you just said, “Found Wanting”? That could be your title and you could use it as a jumping-off point. Removing the pronoun, or whoever the “she” is, from the poem might allow you some distance from it, a greater freedom to explore images connected to this idea, and give you a greater depth of meaning. But well done.’
When the class finished Izzy stayed behind. Colette was placing one red plastic chair on top of the other when she suddenly stopped. She stood to her full height and placed the fingers of one hand to her bottom lip.
‘You know, Izzy – I think I will remember those words for a long time,’ Colette said.
Izzy set down the chairs she was carrying. ‘Colette,’ she said. ‘On Saturday I’m going to take the boys to Bundoran. I’ll let them have a couple of hours at Waterworld and afterwards I’ll take them to the Great Northern for a bite to eat. I don’t suppose there’s much else to do around there this time of year – the funfair might be open for a bit in the afternoon. Anyway, we’ll be in the foyer of the Great Northern at four o’clock.’
Colette bowed her head and closed her eyes. ‘Thank you, Izzy,’ she said.
Izzy picked up her canvas bag from the floor and bid goodnight to Colette. She stepped outside into the cold night and as
the door of the hall shut behind her, found herself adrift in that silence once again. A little unsteadily, she made her way
through the darkness to her car.
Chapter 9
When a fourth envelope addressed to Colette dropped through Donal’s letterbox, he got angry. He opened the door just as the postman was getting into his van. ‘Here, you,’ he said, holding up the envelope, ‘can you not read or are you too lazy to go up there and deliver this yourself?’
The postman just stared at him, wide-eyed, but made no movement to suggest he would get out of the van and reclaim the letter.
‘Forget it,’ Donal said, slamming the door.
He took the other three letters from the drawer in the hall and headed to his van. He laid the envelopes out on the passenger seat, all written in the same hand on the same grey, marbled stationery – he’d held on to them for weeks.
The cottage had become somewhere to be avoided. He’d invited enough trouble upon himself lately. He’d been doing the wiring on an extension for a woman in Donegal Town and he’d recognised the unhappiness in her as soon as he’d walked through the door. After her husband left in the morning and the kids went off to school, she floated around the place like she was haunting her own life. When he’d calculated the risk of starting something, he’d reasoned that she had as much to lose as he did. But after they’d slept together a few times, she’d started getting notions. When the job ended, he told her that this was a natural conclusion to things, an opportunity for them to save their marriages before any real damage was done. He tried to make it sound like the sacrifice he was making was so great that she’d have no other choice but to match his bravery. Still she’d clung to him and pleaded until he’d grabbed her wrists, removed her hands from his chest, and thrust them back at her. What he saw in her eyes then, he’d thought, was just the right amount of fear.
