Hugo Hamilton - Every Single Minute

She was in New York at that time. She had her writer’s room in Manhattan and her speaking engagements, so she was unable to come back to look after him, so they said. She received letters from him. She recognized his quiet handwriting. There was no bitterness in the words, even when he was speaking about his father.

Her brother was like a child. He was unable to sort himself out with accommodation, so she got him an apartment in Dublin. She could afford to do that for him with all her success. She was still hoping that he would pick himself up and become independent. But she was hoping for too much. She drew the line at giving him money, because she was afraid of him ending up like their own mother. So then he went to Noleen asking for money. They told me that Noleen leaves the door of her house open while she’s working at the kitchen table writing, all the neighbours say hello to her passing by. It’s the way it was when Noleen grew up and there was no need to change any of that, the door was always left open for somebody coming back.

This was long after Úna and Noleen had broken up, they said. Úna got used to being away, travelling on her own and giving talks right across America in places like Aspen. And Noleen always loved her. Noleen loved her so much that when her brother came asking for money she got out every penny she had in her bank account and gave him the lot.

Manfred says you can buy everything you want. You can buy every coat. Every perfume. Every television. You can buy shoes made from the eel, he says. They are no more than a strip of skin. It’s not true that the eel is ugly, he says. It’s not true that the eel will suck a baby’s blood and the eel does not milk the cows. People tell lies about the eel, he says. He read quite recently in one of the papers that KaDeWe are selling eel-skinned shoes and that people pay a lot of money for them, a Russian woman bought three pairs without even trying them on.

Úna says she has no intention of looking at eel-skinned shoes.

Everything you want is there, Manfred says.

And sheets?

Yes. Every sheet.

She loved the warm air of KaDeWe blasting towards you as you went inside, like arriving on holidays. She loved the height of the ceilings. She loved the spotlights shining on the merchandise like a stage lit up, ready for the actors to come out and speak. She loved the display of fountain pens and watches for men. She loved seeing people going up and down the escalators, standing still, crossing over each other.

She got one of the men at the perfume counter to spray perfume on a card for her and she let him know the smell reminded her of women at the horse show dressed in big hats with chewy sweets in their handbags, or Glacier Mints. She said she loved to do that whenever she had the time, at home or anywhere else in the world, she smelled the perfume they sold. Not to buy it. Only for the chance to talk, really. She said she used go into the toilets of Brown Thomas in Dublin and get a free squirt of perfume on the way out before going to the pub.

Come on, she said. Let’s ask the man in the uniform.

She got me to push her out to the lobby again to ask the man with the top hat where to find the sheets. She said she wanted to give him a function and one of these days he’ll be retired and they won’t replace him, she said, too many people probably just walk past him as if he doesn’t exist, even though he’s dressed in tails and a top hat, like he’s at a wedding, or at the races. He told us what level we needed to go to. She said people can be a bit blind in a department store, they would walk right past their own mother and father. She stopped for a while to watch a woman wearing a black headscarf buying a pink handbag without looking at herself in the mirror, only lifting it up to smell the leather and asking her husband if it suited her, as if he was the mirror.

She said you buy something and it’s not the same thing when you get home. You bring something home and it’s the last thing you wanted. She said she loved the smell of new leather especially. She said everybody is a child in a department store.

The shop assistant spoke in English, how can I be of assistance to you? She liked to give the shop assistant a chance to tell her what they had in stock, what was to be recommended. You can’t go and buy a sheet, she said, without allowing the assistant to show you some of the different fabrics. You don’t have to worry about wasting time because they love to tell you what’s most comfortable. They can usually guess what kind of sheets you need by the way you look. Cotton. Linen. Satin. The assistant pointed to various brands and designs and also explained the different levels of quality and sheen in the fabric. They had all kinds of patterns. Black and white stripes. Diagonal stripes. Half green with yellow frogs and half yellow with green frogs. Leopardskin sheets. Sheets with the head of a zebra in the middle. Sheets with the alphabet. Sheets with red and yellow leaves tumbling down. Some of the beds were made up already and you felt like getting straight into them, no matter how many people were walking around looking at you asleep.

While she was examining different patterns, her bag was left abandoned in the middle of the floor, like a see-through bag that belonged to nobody.

The shop assistant was a tall woman. She crouched down beside the wheelchair holding out one pair of sheets after another. She allowed time for her to feel the fabric in her hands. The assistant said sometimes a colour feels warmer than plain white, even though it’s only an illusion that people have built up in their minds.

Whatever gives you the best sleep, the assistant said.

Úna said writers don’t sleep. She was an insomniac. The only time she ever slept properly in her whole life was when she was writing a novel. The truth keeps you up at night, she said. Fiction makes you sleep.

The assistant said silk sheets are the most beautiful to touch, and the most expensive, of course. But for me, personally, the assistant said, they are very delicate. If you catch your nail or snag a piece of jewellery, that’s the end, you can say goodbye to the sheets because the thread will run free.

The assistant spoke like a man and kneeled down like a woman, with her knees together. When the assistant went away to get out more and more sheets, Úna wanted to know my opinion.

Do you think she has an apple?

The assistant?

She has a deep voice, don’t you think?

She said a man or a woman like that will always give himself away, like we all give ourselves away. We always leave some small piece of information out for people to find, like something accidentally dropped for somebody to pick up after us. It’s not like a woman to cough at that angle, up towards the ceiling, she said, with the apple showing. And maybe that was the whole intention, dropping a clue, letting people know that you are a man pretending to be a woman. Or a woman pretending to be a man. Or a woman pretending to be a woman.

These are the some of the finest sheets we have, the assistant said, coming back with sheets made in France. Or maybe it was Switzerland. They have the quality mark, they will last for ten years, minimum.

Ten years?

Longer, the assistant said.

I don’t need them that long, she said. She was bringing them home to Dublin and the assistant said she understood, Ireland.

For the big sleep.

The best sleep, the assistant said.

The last sleep.

Ach , the assistant said.

It was only afterwards that she asked me if I knew what the assistant said. What does Ach mean? Because the word Ach is the Irish for But. And I knew that the word Ach is also the German for Ah.

Ah what?