No Country for Young Men

by Julia O'Faolain

  Did James know, he asked, that in the sixteenth century one of the Cecils, chief minister to Queen Elizabeth, had been in the pay of her country’s enemy, the King of Spain? ‘Harder to infiltrate on that level now,’ O’Toole admitted. ‘In this country the Senate Inquiry and journalistic tripwire catch up. In Ireland maybe not? They have a muzzled press. “Mafia” they called us,’ he growled, still smarting at the slight to the Honourable Heirs. ‘Maybe it’s what they are: a mafia? You’ll never know what you can get away with till you try, eh James? Listen, I won’t hold you. You’ve got that plane to catch. Keep in touch, eh? Oh, and I want the motto and war cries of the O’Tooles on that Coat of Arms. Know what they were? Fianna Abu or “victory to the fighting men” and Semper et ubique Fidelis. Don’t forget your cigars.’

  *

  The new maid, Mary, had a voice for calling cattle home across three fields. ‘We have her nicely installed now, Mr O’Malley,’ she yodelled down the well of the stairs to Michael.

  He’d been having a quick one in the drawing room. There were peppermints in the drinks cabinet. Popping one in his mouth, he laboured upstairs to the nun’s room. Mary was a treasure all right. A niffy treasure. He’d have to drop a hint about washing, now Grainne would be coming back. On the bedside table, the nun’s possessions were all laid out: a missal with beaded ribbons, a sewing kit, a silver crucifix and a framed photograph of two girls and a young man. All three wore hats pulled low over their foreheads. Michael recognized one as his grandmother. The younger girl would be Judith. Christ, Grainne had a look of her now – when would she turn up, he wondered. The man had a look of James Cagney.

  ‘That’s Sparky Driscoll,’ said the nun. ‘Did you know him?’

  Waiting for chat, he saw, lonely, hopeful. What the hell sort of a chat could you have with someone who thought you might have known a man who was killed sixteen years before you were born? She was bonkers all right. Grainne would be as sour as vinegar when she saw what he’d landed her with. And here was the poor old thing desperate for company, her vowels lengthening in wistful refinement. ‘Did you kneugh him?’ she’d asked.

  ‘No,’ said Michael, whose impulse was to cut and run for the pub. Thank God for Mary – he’d got her from an agency after sacking Grainne’s spy – whatever her shortcomings, she had country warmth to her. She was teasing the old thing now, asking had Sparky been her boyfriend or what.

  The nun ignored this robust note and began to admire the room they’d given her. ‘It’s in lovely taste,’ she gushed. ‘I’ve always liked pink.’ Her false teeth slid when she smiled.

  ‘Glad you like it.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘If there’s anything you …’

  ‘Oh, I’m easy to please. I need very little.’

  ‘Well, but if you do …’

  ‘You’ve been too good to let me come.’

  Deferent and over-polite, she reminded him of something and he saw now what it was: the Governess arrives, as shown in old cartoons. Generations of women must have stood like this in unsatisfactory bedrooms, protesting their love of pink. Corralled off from servants and family, they would have eaten lone meals on trays, as Sister Judith was going to have to do in a little while since Michael definitely did not feel up to dining with her en tête à tête. There was no point overestimating your forces. He felt weepy already, might weep, would certainly get drunk. Out, out. The house had depressed him before but with this voice from the siren past there would be no getting through the evening. He must leave before he disgraced himself. Without hurting her, if that could be managed. A governess. Yes. Hers was the governess generation. Ireland had peopled the world with them: nannies, governesses, mother’s helps. Catholic and English-speaking, they’d been in demand all over Catholic Europe and had travelled in their thousands: decent spinsters for whom there was nothing at home. At least the Granddad’s failed social revolution had got rid of that deference. Had it? No. It was gone everywhere now. Not just here. The grandfather was not God Almighty, Michael. Beware of the personality cult, post hoc ergo propter hoc and other pitfalls. She was smiling sadly, shyly and with a decided shiftiness to her teeth. He couldn’t stand it: the pain of the world. Grandfather, etcetera, let this chalice pass.

  ‘Listen,’ he fumbled. ‘Mary here will make you comfortable. Snug. Can you bring up the TV set, Mary? On your own? You can? Ah, you’re a fine strapping girl. Unfortunately I have to go out or I’d have enjoyed a chat. My wife will be coming home soon. Our son too. Then we’ll make acquaintance as a family. Meanwhile I have this errand. Will you be all right? You will? Grand.’

  He smiled. They smiled. He fled.

  *

  Rain fell in ropes and wind shuttled through them, webbing the city in its ephemeral weave. Vertical rain, horizontal wind. Vertical. Horizontal. Sister Judith concentrated her mind on the monotony of this but couldn’t daze herself into sleep. Monotony was what she craved, missed and would probably not recover. In the convent, clocks, bells and timetables had been reliable. Holy Offices, the sounds from the school – breaks for prayer or hockey, elevenses or singing – had been as cosy as the functions of her own body. More predictable. Reassuring.

  It was extraordinary being without them. Like a loss of gravity or the proper alternation of night and day. Some science-fiction thing she’d seen on TV had taken its characters to a place where these were lacking and psychic disturbances had been set up. Sister Judith understood completely. You needed your routines. You needed them more as you grew older. She would have liked to explain this to the girl but felt she wouldn’t be interested. The girl was kind but scatty.

  ‘Need anything, Ma’am?’ she’d asked, ‘I’m dashing out for an hour or so. Can I take you to the lavatory now?’

  ‘Not now, thank you,’ said Sister Judith, who needed to be able to count on having someone there at given times. She could arrange her needs but only if she had a schedule.

  ‘Like a cup of tea before I go?’

  The girl was some sort of maid, a bit like their own maid, Bridie, at home long ago. Long, long ago. Bridie, if she was alive at all, would be ninety.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Ah no, thanks.’

  Tea would make a trip to the lavatory more necessary and if Bridie was going out, better not. This house was a desperate rookyrawky of a place. Nothing was on the same floor as anything else. Sometimes Sister Judith could manage stairs very well. Sometimes she felt quite spry. But she couldn’t count on being spry in an hour’s time. When your body was not predictable, other things had to be. Sister Gilchrist had helped her in the past. She was getting on herself and understood. Now she’d gone to Birmingham to stay with a married sister. Later, she would come back and teach Latin in the slums. It surprised Sister Judith that they should want to learn Latin in the slums but Sister Gilchrist said there was a big enrolment and the nun teaching it now wanted to be released for more active work. So Sister Gilchrist could still be of use, unlike Sister Judith who was a burden to poor Bridie. ‘No thanks, Bridie,’ she said.

  ‘My name’s Mary,’ said Bridie.

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Sister Judith a bit nervously, the way you did when you didn’t see the joke.

  GRAINNE

  ‘No point travelling First,’ the man at the Euston ticket office had advised and Grainne took him at his word If he was wrong, Cormac and she could pay the difference on the boat. They bagged seats on the top deck in what seemed to be the prow and she was just as glad she had decided against taking the plane. Returning to one’s husband from an escapade should not be done too extravagantly on family money.

  Shopkeeper’s ethics, she jibed at herself, then thought, why not? Hadn’t her great-grandfather kept a pub? She laughed at the way the wind was ruffling Cormac’s hair It was the colour of kelp and some shades lighter than her own. Freckles the same colour saddled the bridge of his nose. Apart from them, his skin, like her own, was bluish white; skim-milk colour. ‘Like a corpse warmed over,’ his mates liked to tea
se but in fact he’d be smashing-looking once he got out of the awkward stage.

  ‘Oh Mummy, we’re turning,’ he wailed. ‘The boat is turning.’

  She too felt stricken by the omen for now they would be travelling at the back. Engines thudded. Fixtures creaked and a sudden turbulence of wind whipped women’s hair into their eyes.

  ‘Want to change to First then?’

  ‘The best seats will be taken now. Let’s stay here.’

  ‘Righto.’

  A man near them leaned over the deck rail, holding a schooner of beer. Drinking at 9 a.m. She noted this with the trained eye of a woman married to an alcoholic. The man waved and foam from his beer flew sideways then alighted on the foam below. People on the departure jetty waved. On the deck, four small children, each with a miraculous medal safety-pinned to its sweater, waved too at the last of the green Welsh coast, then turned to their mother to ask for food. Their carnival greed had something moving about it. Maybe it had its origins in some memory of the famine days?

  ‘Wotcha got there, Mammy, eh?’

  Toppled, the mother’s shopping bag disgorged mince pies, Mars bars, Jacobs’ Club-Milk biscuits, potato crisps, apples and bottles of sticky lemonade. Grainne turned to nudge Cormac, then remembered that her amusement might be taken to be snobby and that she was on duty as a Mum. Cormac was only fourteen.

  She had a brief, forlorn yearning for adult company and reproached herself for this. Lots of women liked being with children. It made them feel fulfilled. It made Grainne feel useless and used up like a ruff of old blossom drying in the dimple of an apple.

  In the seat next to her, a teenage boy and his girl, dressed in motorcycling gear, sucked lollipops and a small child practised with consistent ineptitude on a toy flute. The boat had begun to heave. Sooner or later, some of these people would be sick.

  ‘Sure you can stand it here?’ she asked Cormac.

  ‘I don’t care about anything except that we’re going home.’

  That was a reproach. Or it might be forgiveness now that she was taking him back. Don’t inquire. Don’t confront. Cormac had some legitimate gripes.

  ‘I’ll see how far forward we’re allowed to go,’ he said, and left her with a quick, apologetic grin. Wanted to be alone? All right. She watched him pick his way between orange and blue-bag blue backpacks. A girl smiled at him and Grainne felt a nip of sorrow and excitement, a thrill as tart and mouth-puckering as a first bite into unripe fruit. Her own sensations were always taking her by surprise. Cormac would be a tall man, taller maybe than his father. He was already as tall as herself: five feet eight. His wrists stuck out from his school blazer. Poor Cormac, what a mistake the English sojourn had been for him. Well, if she left again she wouldn’t take him. She didn’t suppose that she would leave again.

  ‘Remember you’re always welcome,’ Jane had said. She’d have to say that, wouldn’t she? Grainne laughed aloud, then, embarrassed, pretended to be choking a sneeze. She’d been thinking of a joke about two old biddies discussing the hospitality of a third. ‘Did she offer ye a cup of tea, same?’ the first one asks. ‘Ah, she did,’ the other tells her, ‘she asked me but she didn’t press me.’ A towny’s joke, it was an affectionate and nostalgic mocking of old-time country rituals whereby you were meant to refuse once from politeness and so the first offer didn’t count. Grainne had seen the same thing happen in Italy when she was there as a girl. People sitting in a train would never eat without asking you to have a bit, but you were expected to say no. She sighed, remembering. Italy was where she’d really got to know Michael. Fifteen golden years ago. Ah well. She and Michael had been apart five months now and the separation had resolved nothing. He was drinking – she had her sources – as much as ever.

  ‘You can’t carry him,’ Jane had said. ‘Leave him. Take a job. The longer you hang on the worse it will get. You’re thirty-three. You’re not getting younger.’

  This was disturbing advice to get from someone as good and concerned for others as Jane. It boiled down to saying: put yourself first, and this, besides running counter to tradition, was risky. Supposing you took the advice and then messed up your life? You’d have neither sympathy nor the rewards of virtue. Jane was unmarried, had never, Grainne guessed, had a man at all; her counsels sprang from an amputated logic which left out most of the things which swayed Grainne.

  ‘What things?’ Jane had asked, and Grainne had been unable to say.

  ‘Look,’ she’d tried, ‘I don’t mean sex.’ Because people who had never had any gave that the wrong weight and Jane, who had taken courses in psychology, saw it everywhere.

  ‘My whole adult self grew up with Michael. Oh, I know people like me divorce, but then people lose their minds and memories too and are cured and function. They must be diminished. They’d have to be. They’d be emotional amputees remade with false bits and hollows in their heads. Horrid. Sad.’ She was stopped by Jane’s face which said, plain as a pikestaff: sex, habit, inertia.

  Michael, at good moments, though, was still the best company Grainne knew. He wasn’t only part of her; a partner in a shared past, he justified her, needed her – they were fond of each other, damn it. Those who did understand were the women at Jane’s Halfway House for Battered Wives, where Grainne had spent the last five months. Jane had been begging her to come since she’d started the place. There was no therapy, she claimed, like helping others and it would give Grainne a new perspective on marriage.

  Michael had found one of these letters and read it. ‘That cow!’ he’d shouted. ‘She’s in her element. The fox who lost his tail put it about that tails were an excrescence. She’ll never get a close perspective on marriage anyhow.’

  Men and Jane had never seen eye to eye. Listening to her on Michael or Michael on her would drive you into the arms of the one under attack. Grainne felt like a bone between dogs. The other women at the Halfway House said they knew just what she meant.

  ‘Of course, she’s a very decent person,’ they would start out cautiously and Grainne would know that they wanted to gossip. ‘Buts’ were implicit.

  ‘Yes,’ she’d say.

  ‘God help us, though, she doesn’t know much about life! I suppose she’s as well off the way she is.’ Their laugh was pure subversion.

  Most of the women were Irish and Grainne understood them. They wanted to gossip because, in the Home, Jane was boss. She was in the position of the men they had fled and one of their consolations had always been complaining about these men. Analysing and cutting them down to size restored pride. Anyone in authority must expect the same treatment.

  Grainne, Jane’s assistant and a refugee from marriage, had a foot on each side of the fence and found that this made her look harder than was comfortable at divisions within herself. Her coming here had been an impulse: a light-hearted i exasperated bolt from Michael, who needed shaking up. Let’s see how he manages. A spell on his own should teach him a thing or two. Only slowly did it strike her that it might also teach her. She resisted the doubts which comparison with the other refugees aroused. Their predicaments were unmanageable; hers was not. She had taken French leave from her husband on the assumption that everyone would tell her to go back. Surely that was the safe advice to give? Grainne had been prepared to reject it but never got a chance. Mores, it seemed, had changed and she was shaken to find how fashionable it was to attack marriage and how little resistance the institution seemed to have. She had recently heard women pull it apart as they might unravel a knit shawl and say: ‘See, all there was to it was some crinkly wool, a few warped impulses.’ ‘Let’s break down the argument,’ someone was always saying at the group meetings where the battered women were encouraged to take a cold look at their problems. Grainne didn’t want to look coldly at hers, and breaking things down began to fill her with indignation. She wanted to warm up, solder and stick things together. She preferred fights to analyses and missed the nesty vigour of family life. What did it matter if her concern for Michael was ‘really’ co
ver for her fear of independence? It was still concern. She didn’t care to find out whether her move here had been theatrical or neurotic, directed against Michael or herself. She was just glad that it was here she had come and nowhere else. Precisely because this was a ‘halfway’ oasis, return home from here would not look like the capitulation it would have seemed if she had taken a job or signed up to work for some diploma or degree. Maddening though Michael might be, she didn’t, she began to see, really want to break up her comfortably unsuccessful marriage in which the worst fights had long ago been fought, the sourest words spoken, and bad memories begun to mellow into jokes.

  When the time came to go home, she felt some shame at leaving the other women behind. But one felt that, she remembered, even on leaving a hospital. It just showed how you could get sucked into a group, especially when the common denominator was pain. Oh dear – might that apply to marriage too? Nonsense! Pull yourself together, Grainne!

  She thanked Jane sincerely, saying that the experience had indeed given her a new perspective on marriage and that she hoped Jane would not regard her as one of her failures. It was the wrong note to sound and Jane did not smile The real failures of the Halfway House were the women who went back to violent husbands and, worse, came back again with blacked eyes, broken ribs or punctured kidneys. Each time this happened Jane got very upset.