Therese had matt skin. Mrs O’Malley’s was transparent, green where veins showed through. Vulnerable. Like a water nymph. Changeable too. Slightly watery eyes. Too big for reliable beauty, they could look like raw eggs or, with a twitch of the head, remind you of certain formal styles in painting or sculpture – old Mesopotamian, Etruscan – in which the immense eye cavity probably figured receptivity and submission. He was moved by the alternations of beauty and homeliness and tempted to tell her how to paint her lids.
It wasn’t the woman qua woman who appealed to him, but the glimpse she was giving him of alien lives. He was the demon in an old story – which came suddenly to mind – who lifts the roofs of houses and looks inside. Asmodeus?
Reminded of his intrusiveness, he said he ought to be calling a taxi. Better not wear his welcome out at one sitting. He was coming alive, feeling full of beans but that was jet-lag and she must be bushed.
She showed him the phone. No dice with taxis. Most of the people he rang seemed resentful at being woken up. Between calls he heard her talk to the drunken husband. Her tone surprised him for, he suddenly saw, he had misread his feelings completely. Also hers.
‘Darling!’ he heard her cry, ‘whatever’s wrong? I thought you were asleep. Feeling all right? Sure? … Listen, did you get any dinner? … Oh, I was but I’ve got over it … Yes, promise. Listen, you’ll catch your death … There is, but he’s leaving now. He’s ringing a taxi. I’ll be up in a … Oh, sweetie, stop being so silly. Really, why should anyone have cut down your trees? … What? … Well, no, I didn’t but it’s dark now and it’s pouring with rain. Can’t you leave it till the morning? Mmm? Please.’
The cajoling tone annoyed him. He was jealous of the drunken sot. What was that about trees? His own intrusiveness confirmed, he was now anxious to get a taxi and leave but could find none. Humiliated to find he had been dallying in his mind with a woman so thoroughly bespoke – surely she had indicated that she wasn’t? – he was now doubly so at having to throw himself on her mercy for a ride.
‘I’ll walk,’ he suggested, ‘if it’s at all possible. But you’ll have to tell me the way.’
‘Which hotel are you at?’
‘The Shelbourne.’
‘Too far,’ she told him. Worse: she couldn’t, she explained, take him there in her car. She was tired, had drunk too much, and would never pass a breathalyzer test if stopped. ‘Michael’s already barred, which means I’ve got to be extra careful if the household is not to be driverless.’
‘I’ll walk.’
‘No, no. It’s miles and it’s raining. Listen, why don’t you spend the night? It’s the easiest thing. This happens quite often so we keep the spare-room bed made up.’
‘I hate to …’
‘You’re not. Come. I’ll show you the way. I’ll get you some towels just as soon as I check that my son’s gone back to bed. He’s gone slightly dotty tonight. There must be a full moon.’
‘Was that your son you were talking to just now?’
‘Yes. Cormac. Here’s your room. I’ll be back in a jiffy with the towels.’
She forgot to come back to show him the bathroom. Minutes after she had left him, he came out into darkness and began slapping walls in search of a light switch. When he located and got one on, he found all the doors on the landing closed. He proceeded to examine them with some stealth, thinking that it might be embarrassing if he were to burst in on the nutty aunt.
Bending, he laid an ear to the keyholes of the first and then the second door. Nothing. Listening for breathing, he screwed his ear into the third door aperture then, exchanging it for an eye, became aware that he must look like a Peeping Tom caught redhanded to the boy who – he knew in afterthought – had been watching him for some minutes from the upper landing.
James stood up. The boy leaned over the bannister. Silently. The ball was in James’s court.
‘Hullo,’ James attempted to sound off-hand. ‘I’m looking for the bathroom. Didn’t want to disturb anyone. My name is James.’
The face above him did not adjust to accommodate this. James reflected that the boy himself was an unwinning figure: nervous-looking with wrists and ankles protruding from outgrown pyjamas. Gas-jet blue eyes blazed with hostility.
‘Did one of them ask you to stay the night?’
‘Yes. Can you show me the bathroom?’
The boy gave a minimal sideways nod at one of the doors. ‘Which?’
‘Your father. Is he expected to clear things with you?’ James was sorry when he’d said this but could see no way to soften its impact.
Surprisingly, the boy looked a shade friendlier. ‘Thought you might be one of my mother’s cases,’ he said.
Can of worms, thought James. ‘You’re Cormac?’ he supposed.
‘Yes. Go and use the bog,’ the boy told him. ‘I’ll wait.’
James went into the bathroom. It was the right sort for the house: high-ceilinged, draughty, cold, with a claw-footed bath, plaster roses on the dado, a flowered porcelain washbasin and towels which had the impermeable texture of old suede. He had his pee, washed his hands in medicinal-smelling soap, threw water on his face and came out. The boy was still there.
‘If I show you my collector’s badge will you cough up a donation for the IRA Prisoners’ Defence Fund?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m afraid I won’t.’
‘May I ask why not? Don’t you believe the money is going to be used for peaceful purposes? Are you opposed to their aims or their methods?’
‘What’s this? A survey?’
‘Sort of. I’m doing it for a group I belong to. You’re the twentieth person I’ve asked. Each of us is to ask twenty then pool our results.’
‘What are the results so far?’
‘Anti-IRA. Some of the others will have a different cross-section. What’s your answer?’
‘Don’t know. Unsure. Suspect there are better causes.’
‘It’s got to be for, against, or indifferent. Are you an indifferent?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Those who are neither hot nor cold I spit them out of my mouth.’
‘The Bible,’ James acknowledged. ‘But I’ve got company it seems.’
‘Oh, this is the Age of Indifference,’ said Cormac. ‘The only one who said “yes” was my Grandaunt Judith but then she’s daft. Hasn’t got the money for a donation anyway.’
‘Well, what about you?’ James asked with curiosity. ‘Are you for or against?’
‘For,’ said the boy, and gave him a suddenly good-humoured grin and a clenched-fist salute. ‘Good night,’ he said.
*
James slept dreamlessly and awoke at what his digital watch claimed was twelve o’clock. That would make it about eight a.m. local time. He heard the boy argue with his mother in the hall down the stairs from James’s room.
‘Got your sandwiches?’
‘Stop pretending to be a good mother. You’re not. You took me to live with daft zombies. Everyone knows about it around here. I’ll never hear the end of it. You know what they think, don’t you?’
‘They can think what they like.’
‘Do you know what it’s like to be me? Do you? They say we only went there because Daddy battered you. Do you know why they say he battered you?’
‘Cormac, they don’t bother me.’
‘You must be mad. You live in the world, don’t you? I had a fight with a fellow at the club. He said you’d have to be a nut-and-fruitcake case to have gone there for no reason. He asked did you like a bit now and then on the side. And he was bloody big, a big moron. They think the same thing at school. I want to leave that school.’
‘You said you wanted to come back. You didn’t like it in England.’
‘I didn’t like being with yobbos. I don’t want people here knowing we went there. It’s all part of the same thing.’
‘Rise above it. We’re back now.’
‘I can’t rise. I’d have to be a karate black belt. I don’
t want to have a mad mother. Can’t you settle down?’
‘It was social work, Cormac.’
‘Nobody believes that.’
‘Doesn’t the truth matter?’
‘No, no. What matters is what they believe. Besides, you did desert Daddy, leaving him on his own. Why do you think he’s drinking?’
‘Listen, you’re only fourteen, Cormac. There are things you don’t understand …’
‘And you?’ The boy’s voice wheezed hoarsely, broke, wheezed: ‘Are you sure you understand?’
James heard the door slam and the mother’s footsteps retreat.
*
Sister Judith’s memory had been shaken up. She’d had some sort of shock.
‘It’s better now,’ she told the girl who had asked how she felt. ‘It’s sifting back.’
Judith pictured her memory as a library. At the moment it was a library put to the sack. Feet stamped behind her eyeballs. Who was this girl?
‘You’re the principal girl now, aren’t you?’ she said, and waited cunningly for clarification. None came.
A headache flamed through her skull and she had to let it simmer down before trying to rebuild her retrieval systems.
‘I’m a bit moidered,’ she apologized, in case she had been making a bad impression. It was best to show you knew you’d slipped up. Stole their thunder. ‘My poor head!’ She scrutinized the girl. Another sly Miss.
There were definite losses. Volumes were smoke-blackened. A shelf of books gave way and, in spite of her efforts, crumbled.
She hoped she wasn’t making a bad impression on that girl who might report her to the Reverend Mother. She would give them no excuse for further action.
When a newer, gentler girl came to wash her, Judith thought she might as well complain about the last one.
‘Very rough,’ she said, ‘she pulled out handfuls of my hair.’
‘There was nobody else here,’ the girl said. ‘It was me. Grainne. I’m sorry if I hurt you.’
‘She was not at all like you,’ said Judith, making a stand. ‘She was rough.’
‘Well, she won’t come back then.’
‘There was a boy here too,’ Judith said. ‘He must have come to repair the television. Men are not permitted in the community rooms except for such purposes. He was inquisitive. You should be careful about people like that. They might be casing the joint for a burglary.’
Later she asked, ‘Where is Sister Gilchrist?’
‘She’s staying with her sister in England.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Grainne. Your niece.’
‘Are you a nun or a lay teacher?’
‘Neither You’re living in our house now. The convent is closed down’
Sister Judith did not believe this. She probably hadn’t heard it at all. It was her brain playing tricks on her and she mustn’t let them think she was thinking such silly things or they might take the kindergarten teaching away from her, as she knew they were scheming to do. They said it was because she hadn’t a diploma in education but she guessed that what they really thought was that she was going soft in the head. Maybe they were testing her?
‘Where are the children today?’ she asked, trying to sound alert and capable. ‘I’d like to tell them a story.’ She had done Trojan work with the kindergarten, nobody could deny her that. With or without a diploma.
‘There are no children here,’ the girl told her. ‘Only Cormac who’s fourteen.’
But there were no male fourteen-year-olds in the convent. She knew then that they were laying traps for her.
‘Where are my clothes?’ she asked. ‘My habit. Where is it? Who produced these rags? I can’t leave my cell in these.’
‘These are the clothes you came in. I’ll buy you some dresses if you’d like me to.’
‘I don’t want dresses. I want my habit. I can’t teach the kindergarten wearing these things.’
‘There are no habits any more,’ the girl told her. Sister Judith had a feeling that she’d heard that before. Maybe it was true then?
Later the TV repair man came back. ‘Are you for the IRA?’ he wanted to know. ‘Would you give money to the IRA Prisoners’ Defence Fund?’
‘We take vows of poverty here. We’re not even allowed to handle money except in exceptional cases,’ she said carefully, ‘such as when one is in charge of the children’s lunches.’
‘But you support the IRA?’
‘Yes.’
‘Aren’t you worried by their methods? The Church condemns wars which cannot be won since they expose people to needless suffering. Now, the IRA can’t win by arms since they are a minority.’
‘Are you here to repair the TV?’
‘I’m Cormac. I’m conducting a survey for our citizenship class.’
‘You’re a spy!’ she shrieked, her terrors confirmed. ‘Go away.’
When the girl came back she refused to answer her questions or say why she was crying. She thought now that taking the kindergarten teaching away from her might be the thin end of the wedge. Owen might have heard that she had stopped wearing the habit. He would protect himself. Woe to her by whom scandal cometh.
‘Please, can’t I have my habit back?’ she wheedled. ‘What is it you’re after?’
‘Aunt Judith, calm down. We’re on your side. We’re family.’
‘Who?’
‘Me. I’m your niece.’
‘Ha!’ shouted Judith, seeing it all. ‘Owen sent you. You’ve been trying to drive me mad. You,’ she remembered with a horrid lucidity, ‘made me bayonet – what did I do with a bayonet?’
‘It was a hockey-stick.’
‘Stool pigeon,’ shrieked Judith. ‘Blood tells. Owen’s daughter. Blood!’ she screamed.
The girl went away and came back later with a man who asked: ‘Are we feeling better?’
‘You’re a doctor!’ Doctors called you ‘we’.
‘Clever girl. I’m Doctor Doherty.’
Doctors who called an old woman ‘girl’ had something up their sleeve. Judith felt exhilarated by visible danger. ‘I want you to know,’ she took a deep breath and gripped the arms of her chair, ‘that I am in command of my faculties. I never had any intention of throwing off the veil and if I am wearing these odd garments it is because she,’ pointing at the intriguing, bold-faced slip of a thing, ‘hid my habit.’ She remembered then that habits had perhaps been abolished. Had they or hadn’t they? Memory refused to yield up the vital fact. ‘Clothes,’ said Judith with supreme craftiness, ‘are unimportant. Saint Francis gave his to the birds.’ There was something wrong with that. ‘I am content to wear poor garb,’ she added hastily. Silence after all might be best.
‘It has been a tiring week, hasn’t it?’ said the doctor. ‘We need a little rest. What about a little injection?’
Here Sister Judith’s television knowledge came to her aid. He could have anything in that hypodermic needle: drugs, poison, something which might make her truly mad. There had been a case in ‘Colombo’ unless it was ‘The FBI’. One or the other. ‘Little’ was a sinister adjective.
‘Owen’s arm is long, isn’t it?’ she said, trying to sound as casual as she could. ‘I suppose a Cabinet Minister can buy a doctor any day.’ That was unwise. The man must not be made angry. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I have been threatened in the past, you see. There is nothing personal in this,’ Sister Judith pleaded. She was at the end of her resources. ‘I don’t know you, after all. Try to see how it is for me,’ she begged.
‘Who threatened you?’ the doctor asked.
‘My brother-in-law.’
‘He’s dead,’ the girl said, then added surprisingly: ‘He might have though. He was quite capable of it. Let’s forget the injection, doctor. A nice glass of warm punch would probably do as well. Would you like that, Aunt Judith? I’ll share it with you since you’re so suspicious.’
Later she came back with two glasses of whiskey-and-lemon punch. They drank them while watching some progr
amme on social questions. Sister Judith was bored but she saw the girl wanted to watch and, as she was beginning to feel guilty for having been so distrustful, she pretended to enjoy it.
*
‘That,’ said Doris, the O’Malley’s char, ‘will put lead in your pencil. Eat up.’
She was feeding Cormac who had stayed home from school, saying he was sick. ‘Yer terrible jumpy for a kid your age,’ she said. ‘You should be on tranquillizers. Now stop talking and eat and I’ll tell ye about the film I seen last night at the Regal. I went with my girl friends because Ted’s after joining a men’s club. Off out every night of the week. Playing darts and the like, and in the weekends now it’s golf. Golf for the working man, if you don’t mind, and drinking fancy drinks.’
Cormac, who knew all there was to know about Ted, was not listening. He was worried about his own family and wondering was it time he took a hand. At first he had thought his mother was the flighty one. Certainly it was she who had started people gossiping, and Cormac had had to put up with fellows too big to fight asking him had she had it off with English fellows on the q.t. and would he maybe be having a little English half-brother one of these days. On the other hand, it had to be admitted that his father drank and didn’t have a real job. Cormac had only recently come to realize that his father’s was a joke job and that his father, and in time Cormac himself, would have owned the family woollen mills if the grandfather hadn’t disinherited them in favour of Great-Uncle Owen Roe. That sort of news made you wonder about the old man. Feeble.
‘Coming home stocious five nights a week,’ said Doris, but was talking about Ted.
Cormac had learned a lot in the last year about family life. What shocked him were not the things people did to each other in secret. Nothing he’d heard in the Halfway House had been new Though it was upsetting to hear stories from people they’d happened to, the stories themselves were no worse than the ones Doris told about what went on in her street, where houses were small and the walls too thin for anything to be kept hidden. So it wasn’t hearing about someone’s Dad bashing their Mum so that she had to have ten stitches that was so bad. It was the way families covered up for the bullies and the shame they felt. When you came from a family like that, people thought the badness rubbed off on you. Kids in the Halfway House had known that and picked on Cormac who wasn’t one of them and might feel superior. Now that he’d got home, the shoe was on the other foot. People here thought he was tainted. They’d seen a TV programme on the Halfway House and had pumped Cormac with questions. Then, they turned on him because the things he’d told them had made them sick. Their own families, they let him know, were disciplined, religious and nice to each other. They drew strict pictures of their homes. Cormac was annoyed and envious of the ordered perfection in which they claimed to live.
No Country for Young Men Page 12
