Read Online Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden - Free Book Online

Buckley . It soothes him. He feels the give in the nib of the pen. The black ink is wet as he loops the letters. Fintan Buckley , Fintan Buckley . That is me. He lifts his head and gazes into Imelda’s eyes, troubled by what has happened between them, and trying to connect. She stares back at him blankly.
    â€˜I don’t know how you’re bothered with a pen like that. The ink takes ages to dry.’

 
SEVEN
    As Fintan is crossing the landing that evening Niall calls out from his room, ‘Dad? Is that you?’
    â€˜It is,’ he says, and he puts his head around the bedroom door.
    â€˜I’ve got something for you.’
    Â Fintan, who has only just returned from work and is still carrying his briefcase, steps into his son’s bedroom rather shyly. It is a place he rarely visits. This is partly out of respect for Niall’s privacy: he is acutely aware that both his sons are grown men. Unlike Colette, he feels that the sooner they are out of the house and gone, the better for everyone. It is also for the more practical reason that Niall’s room is so small, and so packed with things, that there is barely room for two people to be in it at the same time.
    Niall’s is the smallest bedroom in the house, no more than a box-room really, into which, obliging as ever, he had mildly agreed to move when they found out that Lucy was on the way, his old room becoming the nursery and then her bedroom. Niall’s only request had been for built-in bookshelves, floor to ceiling, which his parents had provided with alacrity. These bookcases are another thing that Fintan dislikes about the room, for they make it tremendously claustrophobic: it is like being trapped in library stacks. He does not know how Niall sleeps in such a place. Fintan himself feels sure that he would have nightmares about the laden bookcases moving inexorably together, crushing him where he slept in the little narrow bed; it gives him the creeps even to think about it. Although it is stuffed with things it is the room of an ascetic, the room of a man for whom little matters more than the life of the mind. Books and music-related technology predominate. There is an open laptop on the desk, with a Renaissance painting as its desktop picture. The room is oddly lit. Apart from the glow of the computer screen, there is an angle-poise on the desk, and another small lamp clipped to one of the bookcases.
    All at once, there is the confusion of feelings that the seeming poverty of his son’s desires habitually triggers in Fintan. Impressed and humbled by Niall’s frugality, there are also moments when he finds it irritating that he should be satisfied with so little, with his tatty paperbacks and shabby clothes. In fairness, it had been worse when Niall was in his early teens, when he had been a vocal and frequent critic of Fintan’s own little pleasures, his Christmas cigars, his holiday lobsters. (‘It’s just a symbol, Dad, a symbol of luxury.’ ‘No, it’s not, it’s a glass of cognac. Now feck off and let me enjoy it in peace.’)The only criticism these days was either implied or imagined.
    â€˜We should get you one of those fancy shed things,’ Fintan says, as he sits down on the edge of the bed. ‘Put it in the garden and give you a bit of space.’
    â€˜Oh, you don’t have to go to that sort of trouble, this is fine,’ Niall says vaguely, rummaging through a bag of books on the floor. ‘Do you remember you asked me the other evening about early colour photography? I’ve been looking into it for you. There’s a ton of stuff online, but I know you’re kind of old-school, so I got some books out of the university library.’ He hauls them out and clears a space on the desk, sets them down. ‘You sort of did me a favour asking about it, because it’s something I didn’t know much about, and it’s actually very