After the Rising

by Orna Ross

  Maeve sees a chance to step in: “We’ll be good, Mammy.”

  Mammy momentarily parts the folds of her anger and lets out a smile. “I know you will, love. It’s not you I’m worried about.”

  She turns back to her food and the unfairness of everything sweeps over her again, eats into her. Her eyes travel around the table looking for a target and land on a bowl of unfinished soup. My bowl.

  “Who owns this?” She lifts the spoon so the soup slops back into the bowl from a height, looking straight at me. Anxiety curdles my stomach. Maeve perks up.

  “Do I have to ask again?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “How many times do you have to be told? Only take the amount you’re going to eat. Don’t I always tell you? If you don’t want it, don’t take it.”

  “OK.”

  “God above, isn’t that reasonable? Isn’t that fair enough? I can’t stand good food going to waste. You’d better eat up that fry, every bit. You’d better clear that plate, young lady, do you hear me?”

  She takes the bowl away. My sausages swell on my plate. Gran sees my face, cuts them up small for me.

  “And what about herself above?” She is picking on Gran now. “Is she ever coming down at all this morning? How am I supposed to keep the food hot?”

  “She won’t be long,” Gran picks up Auntie Norah’s plate. “Here, I’ll stick it under the grill for her. You have your own.”

  Mammy settles into silence at the foot of the table, nursing her teacup, staring out at the grey sea. It’s all right for her not to eat, but I know it won’t be for me. My sausages show pink where Gran has cut them; a pink that twists my stomach shut. What am I going to do? Mammy’s anxiety is inside all of us now but at no relief to her.

  The door opens and Auntie Norah comes in. She doesn’t look like herself today: her hair is swelling out from her face in fat grey curls and a peacock brooch glitters on a new blouse. A tidemark of make-up wobbles along the fold of her double chins, spoiling the dressed-up effect, and her red lipstick has wandered outside the borders of her mouth.

  The lipstick makes the non-stop motion of her mouth more conspicuous. Though Auntie Norah rarely speaks out loud, she talks a soundless stream of patter to herself all day, every thought that rises in her head getting turned over by her lips. Gran smiles to see her, says: “Norah, you look lovely.”

  Auntie Norah shoves her big hips between the arms of the chair as Gran gets up to fetch her food. “There you are now. And I’m just going to tie this tea towel round you so you don’t get any mess on your nice blouse. Did you sleep all right with those curlers in? They’ve done a lovely job. Isn’t Auntie Norah’s hair lovely, children?”

  Auntie Norah puts a soft hand up to its surface, as if to make sure it’s still there. Maeve sniggers.

  “Auntie Norah is lovely,” I say, to please Gran, making Maeve snigger again.

  Mammy cuts across us all, saying Maeve is to help Gran clean up and I am to come with her in the car. “We’re going to town to fetch your father.”

  This is even worse than being punished for not eating, but to say no to Mammy in this mood isn’t an option. She clicks open the front door of the Renault, her car not Daddy’s, and I step into the back, feeling misplaced inside its glass and pastel-blue steel, the colour of summer and babies and the wrapper on my favourite sweets. It takes us 35 silent minutes to drive in.

  “Right,” she says, pulling the hand-break into a stop on the hill outside Larkin’s. “Go in and tell your father I want him.”

  “What if he won’t come?”

  “Make him come. Tell him we’re not leaving until I speak to him.”

  The handle of the pub door is high up. Unlike my sister, I am small for my age and I have to stand on tiptoe to reach it. The door puffs open into a smell like that of our own pub, but also different. Daddy is on the wrong side, the serving side, of the counter. Has he got mixed up, I wonder, about which pub he’s in? He has a pint of Guinness in one hand and is leaning over a newspaper, pointing something out to another man. “Iron Jack,” he says. “Fifteen to two.”

  Mrs Larkin is standing behind the counter too, and it is she who notices me first. She nudges Daddy and points at me through her tea towel, making everybody turn. Daddy puts on the pretend face he always wears when he turns to see what everybody is staring at, and finds it’s me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Mammy wants you.”

  “Tell her I’ll be home later.”

  I move around his side of the counter, so he doesn’t have to speak so loud.

  “Mammy wants you.”

  He shakes his head.

  “She said we won’t go unless you come out and talk to her.”

  “Is that a fact? She’ll get to know the inside of that car right well, so.” He doesn’t keep his voice down. He is looking at Mrs Larkin while he speaks, like he’s talking to her, not me.

  I can feel the other men looking and it feels like they are laughing, though they’re not. One of them says to me, “Would you like a lemonade, love?”

  What I would like is to sit down at the little table in the corner and have a Coca-Cola and a packet of crisps and a comic the way I did once before, but I can’t. That time Mammy walloped me across the head, said that having a Coke like that was one of the worst things I had ever done to her. So instead I say, “No, thank you,” to the man and try to get closer to Daddy. I whisper to him. “Please, Daddy. Please. She’ll go mad.”

  He makes his show-offy voice even louder. “Tell your mammy to go ahead, I’ll follow on home when I’m ready.”

  And he goes back to the talk about horses. “Did yours come in, Francie?”

  “Not at all, a dead loss, he’s running still. But Nick had ten bob on Deuteronomy.”

  “Did you hear that, Maisie? The drinks are on Nick.”

  I go back out to the car. The door is open, waiting.

  “He won’t come,” I say.

  “Were you listening to me at all?” she screams. “Go back in there now and get him to come out or you’ll get what’s good for you.”

  I go back in. Daddy looks up at me immediately this time, expecting me while pretending he isn’t. “Jesus, did you not hear what I told you?” he says. “Is it Easter weekend or is it not? Am I to have no peace?”

  “Ah now, Christy, go easy,” says the man who offered me the lemonade. “It’s not her fault.”

  Mrs Larkin speaks up. “Maybe you should go on ahead, Christy.”

  “D’you think so, Maisie?”

  “I do.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am.”

  He nods his head, slowly. “Maybe I will, so.”

  The men are like children in school, laughter forbidden but just under their skin. Daddy picks up his Guinness from the counter. It’s more than half full but he lowers it down in one big swallow, then bangs his glass down.

  “And what are you grinning at, Nick O’Leary?”

  “Nothin’, Christy.” The man has two teeth only, and both of them black. “Nothin’ at all.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Daddy takes a long time putting on his coat. The froth from his drink slides down the inside of the glass, settling into a slop at the bottom. The clock on the top shelf whirrs then chimes: one o’clock, dee-dah-dee-dah. He makes a great show of taking his ease, not letting anybody rush him. Then he puts on his hat, tucks his Irish Press under his arm. “Goodbye, men. See you, Maisie.”

  “See you, Christy.”

  Out to the car we go. Mammy has what she wanted but she’s not happy. Daddy makes himself very small, pressed against the passenger’s door, trying to seal himself off, but she’s not having that.

  “That place must be the dirtiest hole in Wexford town.”

  Silence.

  “If you must stay away from your family, you think you’d go somewhere with a bit of class, but oh no, you’d rather be with the dregs.”

  Silence.

&nbs
p; “Acting the big fella with a crowd of no-good townies. Have you no shame?”

  Silence.

  “For the love of God, answer me. Is there no shame in you for what you do to us?”

  “I’d be ashamed to behave as you are behaving now.”

  “And how am I supposed to behave? Am I to say, ‘Welcome home, Christy’? ‘Thanks for coming home to your wife and family, Christy. Thanks for doing what every other man does every day of his life without thinking about it’?”

  “What man would want to come home to the likes of this?”

  Mammy starts to cry. “Oh, the disgrace of it…That dirty townie tart—”

  “That’s enough now.” He says it twice. “That’s enough.”

  “Near young enough to be your own daughter…”

  “Christ, Máirín, would you mind your mouth in front of the child?”

  “Oh, the child, is it? It’s little you care about the child or the other one either when you decide to take yourself off. On this day, of all days, to be away from us. You know what this day means to our family.”

  Daddy refuses to talk any more, no matter what she says now he won’t answer her. On she goes anyway: how could he, that filthy place, no respect, the talk of the village, the talk of the town…I know why Daddy isn’t talking: it’s because he only has bad things to say. Gran told me about it, how important it is to keep the bad words to ourselves. Our thoughts come from the same place we came from ourselves, Gran says, from the Good Lord above. We can’t help what we think; it’d frighten the heart out of you some of the things that pop into your head, but as long as they stay in your head, no harm done. Spoken words are a different thing entirely. The wrong ones let out don’t fade. They stay in the air, smoking it up. Bad deeds are even worse.

  I sit in the back of the car, holding my own breath, fingers discreetly plugged in my ears, trying to stop any bad words from getting inside me.

  As soon as we get home we have to leave again, because Daddy has made us late. We squash the others in: Auntie Norah and Gran in the back beside the windows, Maeve in the middle, me on Gran’s knee. Daddy is driving now and it’s Mammy’s turn to be quiet and stare out the window with ruptured eyes.

  At the old cemetery, we all pile out again and walk up the little hill towards The Grave, where Granny Peg’s mother and father and husband are buried and her brother, Uncle Barney, with his high cross all to himself, taller than the other cross that’s for three people not one. Taller than Daddy, even.

  Once we’re arranged in a circle around The Grave, Gran makes a speech, the words coming heavy out of her mouth: “We offer this rosary for the repose of the souls of all our family and friends but especially for the soul of Barney Parle, who fell nearby in a glorious fight for Irish freedom on the 10th January 1923, who sacrificed his life for comrades and country. Dílis do Dhia agus dÉirinn.”

  We leave Uncle Barney’s grave and plaque behind and set off again. In Wexford, the traffic is heavy along the quay, making Daddy swear and wipe the windscreen with his handkerchief, as if he could wipe the other cars away. Gran is listing off dates and battles as we go. The numbers melt in my ears but I like the words she fires. Rising. Resistance. Freedom. Rebellion.

  By the time we get to Enniscorthy, we are cramped and glad to get out. The rain has stopped but the paths are still wet. Big drops fall from the trees and telegraph wires. Flags flutter everywhere: rectangles of green, white and orange hanging from poles and trees and windows and strings of little triangles in all colours stretched across the streets. In the distance, we can hear the boom-boom of pipe-and-drum music.

  People I don’t know nod at us as we pass, or tip their caps, or come up to say hello. Men and women admire us: “Aren’t they lovely girls!” “Isn’t the little one the spit of her mammy?” I wonder how that can be as five minutes before somebody said I was the image of my daddy. Hands pat my head, smiles shine down at me, coins are pressed into my hand. Gran accepts and returns the smiles and chat on behalf of us all. Mammy and Daddy are stiff as two trees but they won’t fight here in front of everybody, so we’re all right.

  Auntie Norah’s lips are whirring talk to herself. Too many people, that’s the problem: Auntie Norah hardly ever goes out or sees anyone but us. Seeing her distress, Gran takes her by the arm and talks to distract her, as if she’s talking to us all, telling us about President de Valera, and how if he didn’t have to be at the big celebration in Dublin he would be here with us in Enniscorthy, because Enniscorthy was one of the few places outside Dublin that rose in 1916. President de Valera always had a soft spot for Enniscorthy, Gran says.

  Gran has a soft spot for President de Valera. Once, a long time ago, he slept in our house and afterwards she had the bed moved into her room. Dev’s bed, she calls it, and she sleeps in it still. He wasn’t President then – this happened the very first time Fianna Fáil went for an election.

  “In the olden days, Gran?” I ask, making her laugh.

  “Yes, modern millie. All the way back in 1932. Like yesterday for some of us.”

  Mr de Valera was in our part of the country to canvass for votes and he stayed in our house to acknowledge that our family had made the Ultimate Sacrifice. When we won that election, he was ushered into Enniscorthy by fifty white horses. Gran will never forget it.

  We are at the square now where she is to get up on the stage and make her speech. A band is playing ‘A Nation Once Again.’ Other old people are up on the platform already. Gran hands Auntie Norah over to Mammy and we squeeze through to the seats that have been reserved for us up near the front.

  We sit and wait. The music changes to ‘God Save Ireland’ then stops.

  A man comes out. “Testing,” he shouts into the microphone at the front of the stage. It lets off a loud squeal. “Testing one…two…squeeeak…Testing one…squeeak…three…”

  Once he gets it working, another man walks on and everybody claps. He talks for a long time about Easter 1916 and the Rising, about Ireland and England, about brave men and fine soldiers. He’s boring.

  Another man gets up and goes on with more of the same but at the end he turns around to point out Gran and the other three old women behind him. “Without the brave girls of Cumann na mBan,” he says, “Many a flying column would have collapsed. When almost everybody deserted the soldiers, those girls stood by them and the more dangerous the work, the more willing they were to do it.”

  I stare at the old women, sitting in a row in their black coats and hats, like blackbirds on a wire, wonder if he’s made a mistake.

  Then, at last, it is Gran’s turn. Maeve and I stand up to join in the clapping for her. We listen with great pride to the speech we all know inside-out by now, about how Ireland can never call herself free while her six northern counties remain part of the United Kingdom and how we need a new movement for freedom in our country. She’s just getting herself to the part where she gets all worked up when Auntie Norah shifts in her seat and stands up, holding her hand above her head like we do in school when we want to talk to the teacher.

  Gran puts her hand over the microphone and leans past it.

  “What is it, Norah?” Her voice sounds low without the microphone, as if she is whispering, though really she’s almost shouting.

  Auntie Norah’s fat cheeks are jumping and twitching like two small animals are having a fight inside her mouth. Words whirr through her lips, louder than usual, but indistinct. Mammy catches hold of her coat, tries to pull her back down into her seat. I can see that Gran, up on the stage in front of everyone, doesn’t know what to do. She looks across at the man who did the talking earlier and he shrugs back. She looks again at Auntie Norah, who still holds her hand above her head but seems unable to do any more.

  Gran decides she has to ignore her, turns back to the microphone but just as she is about to resume, Auntie Norah finds her voice. Her out-loud speaking voice that I’ve hardly ever heard. “What about Dan?” she asks.

  Now the silence crackles all
around us. Gran’s face and body collapse, like gravity just got twice as strong. Daddy’s lips fold around a nervous smirk. Mammy pulls harder at the coat and hisses, “Sit, Norah. Dear God, what are you trying to do to us?”

  Behind us, a buzz of talk breaks out, people passing around what she said like a parcel.

  “Sit, would you? For the love of God, sit yourself down.”

  Auntie Norah tugs her coat out of Mammy’s grip and turns around to face the audience behind us. She says it again, addressing us all. And then again. “What about Dan?” she says. “What about Dan?”

  1995

  “Can I do it?” Rory asks. “I’ve always fancied pulling my own pint.”

  I hand him a glass. “Let the first one run off. What’s in the pipes will be stale.”

  “I can’t get used to this place being closed,” he says, tilting the glass as the creamy black liquid pours in, then letting it settle. He and I are together, alone, in the pub, the business that sustained our family for generations, now closed. Maeve and Donal and Ria left for Dublin this morning, after the reading of the will, and it’s been a long day here alone with the ghosts and memories.

  So I was glad, I admit it, when I answered the doorbell and found Rory standing on the step, tie loosened, excuse for calling on his way home from work in place. The German buyers have been on, could he come in and let me know what the Germans said. I brought him through to the kitchen but it felt too awkward to sit him there and the sitting room would have been worse, so I said, “Would you like a drink?” and, without waiting for an answer, walked him through to the pub instead.

  So here we are, with the shutters closed so the punters know not to try to get in, and all the lights on. He seats himself on the high stool behind the bar. Mrs D.’s stool. I uncap a bottle of fizzy orange for myself, take it round to the customer side to pour, putting the counter between us. The place smells of musty smoke and alcohol and feels abandoned, like it’s shocked to have been stopped so suddenly in its daily doings.