Nothing is Black Read Free Page A

Claire said. ‘Just what I need for the summer.’
    ‘Ah now, Claire, don’t be like that.’ And by the pleading tone in her father’s voice, she knew he wanted her to say yes. ‘Family’s family, after all. She took it very hard when your Auntie Kate died. And don’t worry, it isn’t that she’s depressed. I asked Kevin particularly about that, because I thought if she was, maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea for her to go to such a quiet place.’
    ‘What do the doctors think?’
    ‘They think she ought to get away from the city, get away from everything for a while.’
    Claire didn’t respond. She was still staring at the painting. ‘Hello? Are you still there, Claire?’
    ‘Yes I am. Listen, Daddy, it’s all right. She can come here if that’s what she wants.’
    ‘Ah, aren’t you very good.’ She could hear the relief in his voice.
    ‘Yes, I am, aren’t I?’ she said.
    ‘By the by, you’re not to worry about money. She’ll give you a good amount for her keep each week. Kevin told me to be sure and tell you that you wouldn’t be out of pocket.’
    He would say that, Claire thought, but she made no comment to her father.
    ‘I think Nuala would like to get away as soon as possible: certainly within the week, if that’s all right with you.’
    Claire said that would be fine. They chatted about a few more things and when she had finished she put the phone down, went back into the sitting room and wondered aloud to herself in the empty house what she had let herself in for.
    Nuala’s late mother, whom Claire still spoke of as ‘Auntie Kate’, had been a sister of Claire’s father. She had left Donegal as soon as she finished school, moved to Dublin, got married, changed her accent, and tried to convince everyone, not least herself, that she had never lived as she dismissively put it ‘up the country’. Nuala, who was her only child, was exactly the same age as Claire, and the two cousins had nothing in common. There had never been any hostility between the two branches of the family. Instead, a kind of uneasy affection prevailed, and they silently and amicably agreed to differ. ‘We’ve always given each other the benefit of the doubt,’ Claire’s father had said, after a rather stilted visit when Claire was a teenager. She’d never forgotten that remark.
    Nuala and Claire had never had much occasion to be together, as they lived so far from each other when theywere children. True, Claire had gone to art college in Dublin, but Nuala was at university by that stage, studying economics, and they moved in completely different worlds. By a strange coincidence, Kevin had been in Claire’s year at art school: he’d been one of her best friends at that time. Nuala and Kevin got married within a year of their leaving college. Claire’s parents went to the wedding, and over the coming years they kept her posted with news of the couple which they heard through Auntie Kate and Nuala’s father, Uncle Jack. When Nuala and Kevin bought the restaurant, when they moved house, when Kevin had a minor car accident, when Nuala became pregnant: by means of her parent’s weekly letters all this news found its way to Claire, wherever she was, first when she was travelling on the Continent, and in more recent years when she had moved back to Donegal. She wished them well, and followed their lives with detached interest. The last thing she would ever have expected was that Nuala would express a desire to come and stay with her. And yet there she was now, sitting in the chair opposite Claire and leafing through a book about the mosaics of Ravenna with a desultory air. Claire realized with a start that this woman was in many ways a stranger to her.
    Suddenly, Nuala looked up and caught Claire watching her. She didn’t comment on it, but only said, ‘You’ve been there, haven’t you?’
    ‘To Ravenna? Yes,’ said Claire, ‘I have. Of course, a book like that can only give you an idea of what it’s