by Orna Ross
“Everybody misses it. And it looks like it’ll be gone for quite a while.”
“Is that what the Germans said?”
“They don’t intend to open again until they’ve done major renovations.”
“When are they arriving?”
“Next Tuesday.”
“Oh.”
“Is that too soon for you?”
“Oh no, the sooner the better.”
“I thought you might hang around for a bit. It’s been so long since you were home.”
“I need to get back. I’ve already stayed longer than I intended.”
“Somebody pining for you over there?” He says it lightly but I know he’s been waiting for an opportunity to ask.
“No significant other, if that’s what you mean.” I match his tone: we are Ms Bright and Mr Breezy, dipping and swerving around our history.
“And you can send in your work by email, can’t you?”
“Mmm.”
“Well, then…”
I shrug.
He levels off the Guinness, tops it into a perfect ring of white topping a glassful of black and holds it up for me to admire.
“Not bad,” I say. “For a first attempt.”
“Cheers.”
I lift my drink to his and we clink glasses, our eyes meeting. The air between us becomes charged and we drink and swallow and put our glasses down with an unnatural awareness.
“I was telling Margie about your mother and her bequest…the suitcase, I mean…and she dug out this for you.”
Margie is his sister, one of the O’Donovans who was most vigilant about never speaking to our family. What could she have for me, I wonder? He reaches over to his briefcase. He puts a yellowing newspaper cutting on the counter between us. “It seems our two uncles, Barney and Dan, were great friends. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Friends and comrades. They ended up in an English prison together, for drilling IRA soldiers and for playing the Sinn Féin trick of the time, carrying on as if the British courts had no jurisdiction over them.”
I smooth it out on the counter, careful not to tear the brittle paper, and he starts to read:
Unprecedented scenes of excitement accompanied the trial of two Mucknamore men, Ibar Parle and Dan O’Donovan, at the Wexford Assizes on Tuesday last. A large crowd of onlookers congregated outside the courthouse before the trial, and the District Inspector billeted 20 local RIC police to the building to keep order.
The two prisoners were brought out and put in the dock and immediately began to speak amongst themselves. They also ignored the order for Hats Off. The police were forced to remove hats from the prisoners, leading to shouts and jeers from some among the assembled crowd and it took some time for the magistrate to bring the court to order.
The magistrate said he would bind them over in sum of £50 to be of good behaviour for twelve months, in default of which to go to jail for six months.
Magistrate: “Do you intend to go to jail?”
O’Donovan: “We do not recognize this court.”
Rory interrupts himself. “Do you remember the background to this?”
“Not really. What year are we in?”
“Spring 1921, just before the British Empire agreed a truce.”
“I don’t remember. I think our history classes in school leaped straight from the glorious Rising of 1916 to the glories of living in a theocracy.”
He laughs. “I can’t quite hear the nuns putting it like that. And they must have taught you that after the rising, Sinn Féin won a landslide election, declared the Irish people had voted for an independent Republic and set up a ‘Republican’ government to run the country.”
“Ignoring the minor detail of the English government that was already there?”
“Exactly. And all the Irish who had voted for any other party. The Brits were scathing, of course, but plenty of the Irish too thought the whole thing a joke, especially the older people. Their laughter stopped when the IRA got going.”
“Which, I’m guessing, is where the great-uncles come in? Soldiers of the Irish Republican Army?”
He nods. “Here. You read on.”
Ibar Parle made the following statement: “We do not recognise any authority in this courtroom. The only authority we recognise is that of Dáil Éireann, elected by the free will of the Irish people. The British Government may dub it a crime to drill soldiers for the defence of Ireland but it is no crime in the eyes of the authority we recognise and to which we owe allegiance.”
At this, widespread applause broke out in the court. There were cries of “Up the Rebels!” – “Good on you, Dan!” – “See you in six months, Barney!” Some members of the public began to sing ‘The Soldier’s Song’. The magistrate ordered the court to be cleared and an ugly conflict broke out as the police set to do so with baton freely used. Many were injured in the mêlée.
“So they were comrades together in jail?”
“In jail and out. Comrades and best friends, Margie says. But they took opposite sides after the treaty with England was signed. You and I talked about that, do you remember? Back in college?”
“Did we?”
“Yes, don’t you remember? My family voted for Fine Gael, yours for Fianna Fáil. And we wondered whether the bad feeling between them went back to the Civil War.”
I feel good that he remembers something I’ve forgotten.
“But it didn’t account for why they were so much at loggerheads,” he goes on. “Other families were Fianna Fáilers and we weren’t expected to shun them like we were to avoid you and yours.”
“It was something to do with Auntie Norah.”
“Possibly. Anyway, I thought you might want this, if you’re going to dive into that suitcase your mother left you.”
“Hmmm. Big if.”
He opens his mouth to say something and, changing his mind, takes a long swig of his drink instead. “Margie showed me your magazine too, your column.”
“What? Really?” My two worlds plough into each other. I never thought of anyone in Mucknamore reading Sue Denim, especially him. Eventually I say, “It’s a living.”
“A good one, I’d say.”
“She’s a character, the person who writes that column. She’s not me.”
“I wondered why you don’t use your own name.”
Because, dear Rory, after the mess we made of everything, how could Jo Devereux ever give anyone advice? Instead I answer, “It was Lauren, my editor’s, idea. Sue Denim. Get it? Pseudonym.”
“Ouch!”
“I know. That’s magazine land’s idea of wit, I’m afraid. Lauren was so chuffed with herself, I had to go with it.”
“What about the actual work? Do you enjoy that?”
“Enjoy? I don’t know about enjoy. I find it riveting at times — you wouldn’t believe the problems that arrive on my desk.”
“Really? I always thought they were made up.”
“Everybody thinks that.”
But no. You couldn’t make it up, the misery that people endure about sex.
“Quite flattering, I’d have thought, to have people see you as an oracle.”
“What about you?” I say, wanting Sue Denim and her world out of here. “Are you still taking pictures?”
He shrugs. “I had an exhibition a few years back, in the Dublin Bay Arts Centre. Black-and-white stills of deprived kids on special ed. programmes in Dublin. ‘Velvet Shoestring’, it was called. Except the Irish Times listed it as ‘Velvet G-String’ so it didn’t quite attract the audience we were hoping for.”
I laugh. “You must show me the pictures. I’d love to see them.”
“I don’t know where they are, up in an attic somewhere. Those kids were something else, though.”
“And now?”
“I thought the exhibition would give me impetus but the opposite happened…fewer and fewer pictures until…It’s been more than four years since I picked up a camera.”
> “So? Pick it up again.”
“I don’t even take photos of my own children.”
So he suffers it too. Block, self-sabotage, resistance. Forever failing yourself.
You wanna write? So write. That’s what Richard used to say to me. He made it sound so simple and when he was alive, living around the corner from me, that’s how it felt: not easy but simple. Just write, he would say and I just did. I filled notebooks with words and plans and poems. I had ideas. I was moving towards something, I could feel it. But now Richard is gone and I am all wound down. I have no writing, no man, no child, nothing I thought I’d have by now. No child. Ah yes, there’s the rub.
“Begin again,” I repeat to Rory, knowing there’s nothing else for it, knowing — as only Sue Denim knows — how much easier it is to give advice than take it.
“I just might,” he says. “Now you’re here.”
“Me?” I turn pink. “What’s it to do with me?”
“I’ve been looking at these.” He reaches into his briefcase again. “I brought them along tonight for you to see. You can add them to the other pictures in the suitcase.”
He lays a large brown envelope on the bar counter between us.
The flap is unsealed. I reach inside and bring out a sheaf of black-and-white photographs, all of the same young woman, doing all kinds of things — in the park, at the beach, reading on a deckchair. And a set of black-and-whites where she is lying naked on a tousled bed. It takes me a minute to recognise her, then my hand flies up over my mouth. “Jesus, Rory.”
He is laughing. “Don’t you like them?”
“Look at her. My God, just look at her.”
“I know. Gorgeous, isn’t she?”
So young. So unguarded. So trusting. Me but not me.
“How can you say I haven’t changed?” I say to him, staggered by her naivety, as I flick back through the pictures, faster than I want because I am aware of his eyes on both of us, me and my young image. Each of these black-and-whites shows me in a different position: lying, sitting on the side of the bed, sheet folded strategically across my thigh in one shot, thrown emphatically aside in another. I am flooded by the feelings we had for each other when he took them and I can’t look up. Once, I knew every inch of this man’s skin, the taste of his sweat, his spit and more. The time we had together is there between us but everything that happened since is also there, crowding it out. I feel like I am swaying on top of a wall.
I put them back in their envelope, shaken.
“Jo.” His voice is gentle as he leans across the counter towards me. “Why don’t you stay in Mucknamore? Stay for a while. Do what your mother wanted.”
“I can’t, Rory.”
“Why?”
I repeat the objections I’ve already raised with myself and try to explain how impossible it is for me to stay a second longer than I have to in Mrs D.’s house. How memories I thought I’d sorted keep assailing me, hard and heavy as the day I put them away. How her spirit is so solid here, a boulder on my ribs. “I don’t know if I’ll even be able to last until the German couple come.”
“What about staying at The Sea View? Or one of the B&Bs?”
I shudder. “Possibly even worse.” The long looks of their owners slanting after me as I came in and out. Intolerable.
“You could stay at our place. We have a spare room.”
Is he crazy? A flash of anger whips through me.
“OK, maybe not a great idea. Don’t look at me like that, Jo. It’s just that I’d say anything if I thought it would make you stay.” He stares into his drink. “I don’t want you to go.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that, Rory.”
“I know. I know I shouldn’t. But I hate the thought of you disappearing again. I’d like if you could…if we could…” He hesitates, takes a breath, plunges on. “I want to tell you something. I lied to you that first day. I don’t love living in Mucknamore. My family does, but it’s killing me.”
“Too small?”
He nods. “Too Mucknamore.”
My heart shudders. Stupid, treacherous heart. It makes me say, “I lied too.”
“Did you? Don’t you like San Francisco?”
“It’s not that. I mean about everything being wonderful. Things aren’t wonderful, they’re a mess.”
He waits.
“A while ago, I lost somebody.”
“A boyfriend?”
“No. But a dear friend. A special friend.” It incenses me that there is no title for what Richard was to me. Friend, yes. And brother and mentor and therapist and cook and minder…He was my lover, in every way but the sexual, and meant more to me than many husbands do to their widows. “I loved him,” I say. “He loved me.”
Over-worn words that feel threadbare but it’s okay, Rory is looking past them, at me, and he understands. “So your mother dying now was a double blow?”
“For a long time, it’s been one death after another.” I check his face again. It’s still okay: no false sympathy, just a clear face held open to me. “Mrs D. now,” I say. “Richard a while back.’ More than a while, much longer ago than I want to admit. “Auntie Norah. Before her, Gran. Daddy. And…you know…back then…”
That brings on a flinch so small that few would see it. I do -- but I also see that his eyes are with me, still. And his hands folded across the bar counter are open, small hairs curling round the edge of his shirt cuff. What if he were to touch me, I think, and as I think it, that’s what he does. He runs the outer edge of his index finger along my cheek.
“Don’t,” I say, pulling away, though I want to take the hand and hold it there forever.
How easily my traitor body rises to meet his but another part of me is appalled. He makes these moves so easily, as if he is not married at all, as if our not seeing each other for twenty years was some kind of accident.
I try to fold myself back into place. I decide to tell him what I have told nobody yet except Dee. “Rory, you should know…Remember when you came into the bedroom, yesterday? And you remarked that I don’t look sick?”
He nods.
“You were right, I’m not sick. Just vomiting all the time.”
He looks at me, blank. A woman would know immediately what I am trying to say.
“Especially in the mornings.”
Still vacant.
“Morning sickness.”
“Oh…” The message gets through. “Oh. Oh my God, right. Yes. I see.” His brain winds slowly around all the implications. “So that was why you threw up at the funeral…”
“Yep. Happens every morning. Not usually on other people, though.”
Lost in spiky thought, he doesn’t smile. “The father?” he asks.
“Nobody. He doesn’t know.” Everything we are saying bumps into the past.
“Oh.”
I put a hand on my belly though there’s nothing to feel there, not yet. The changes are in other parts of me: the chaotic stomach, the tender breasts, the seeping tiredness. “I feel like that line of Oscar Wilde’s that everybody’s always misquoting. ‘To conceive once, Ms Devereux, may be regarded as an accident but to conceive twice…’”
He is staring at me.
“Even if there is twenty years between the two,” I add.
* * *
After he’s gone I go to the sitting room and slide the pictures out of their envelope, to look again at the face and body that seems so clean, so clear. One picture in particular draws me and, as I’m looking, it blurs. I squeeze my eyes shut and it clears but then mists again, and now I find I can’t keep them down, these tears of mine that live in my chest these days, forever waiting for their chance to erupt.
I let them come. Encourage them even, feeding them memories of the old heartache until they become loud and harsh and ugly, the sort of sobs that nobody wants to hear.
I cry and cry until eventually I fall asleep, staring into the wild and glittering eyes of the girl who used to be me.
Hours late
r, I wake with the dawn, cold and cramped, with stomach churning, still holding the photo. I go to the kitchen to make some toast, though I have no appetite. If I don’t have something to throw up, I’ll soon be retching on bile, which is worse.
After I’ve pushed down some food, I go upstairs and open the blue suitcase and take out the notebook entitled ‘Diary 1922’. Slipping the photograph in between the last page and the back cover, I bring it outside. For a walk.
I ignore The Causeway this time and walk eastwards along the beach towards Rathmeelin, for two miles or more. I keep going until I reach the green slope of land studded with crosses and gravestone, that is the old cemetery. For a moment, I stand on the beach with my back to it, looking out over the water at a world where everything is horizontal and vast, except me. Then I turn and walk up, diary in hand, to the very top, to the Parle graves.
I crouch in front of them and they stare back at me. Auntie Norah’s little cross. The family grave that holds so many, Gran’s parents and grandfather and herself — Margaret Mary Bridget Parle. 1900 to 1989 — and now Mrs D too. And the big, strutting Celtic Cross that commemorates Uncle Barney, her brother, her hero.
What am I to do? I ask Granny Peg. Tell me?
Please?
But I hear nothing. Nothing but blood rushing around my head, in time with the waves.
Weary, I lie down on the stones. From up here, I can see over the other graves, over the wall, over the waves. I can see all the way out to Coolanagh and beyond, to the horizon. I lay down my cheek. The stones are sharp. But beneath them is the smell of earth.
I close my eyes. The chip-stones stab my skin but still I lie there, like that.
Reflux
1995
They are unmaking the house. From the door of my shed, I stand and watch the diggers trundle around it: forwards and backwards; claws up, claws down; buckets full, buckets empty.
Drills puncture the walls and bricks that have supported each other for more than a hundred years fall apart.
On and on it goes, day after day. Inside, steel struts brace the structure they want to retain, stop the whole from collapsing.
