by Edna O'Brien
“ ‘Tis all right for you, Mr. Gaillard talks to you,” Anna said. Denis had only a kind word for the baby and the sheep dog; I used to notice him myself not answering her for days, as if he wanted to punish her. I liked her better than at first. She gave up talking about Laura. I’d bribed her with ten-shilling notes and odd nylons. She began a dress for me on the new sewing machine and was saving porridge package tops to get me a necklace. We had porridge every morning.
But on the evenings that Eugene did not work I sat in the study with him and rubbed his hair while we listened to records on the wireless. In rubbing his fine hair I kissed his neck to smell it, and we would embrace each other and eventually go up to bed. We undressed very quickly and made love in the dark room, between cool sheets with the owl crying in his usual tree outside. Later we got up again, washed, and had supper before going out for another walk.
I cannot describe the sweetness of those nights, because I was happy and did not notice many things. There always seemed to be a moon and that fresh smell that comes after rain. I’m told now that some men are strangers with a woman after they have loved her, but he was not like that.
“Love suits you,” he often said, “makes you prettier.”
I felt pretty; happy. We walked under trees, and down to the bottom of the wood to see the moon on the lake and on the curving stretch of river that flowed out from the lake to the distant sea. Once, we saw a whole troop of deer, but in that split second after they had seen us, as they were already running. A dead, shot deer drifted down from the upper reaches of the lake and Denis helped him to bring it home. We gave away a lot of the meat. It reminded me of long ago when they killed a pig at home and I carried plates of fresh pork to the houses of neighbors and was given sixpence or a shilling—but there was still a lot left for eating, and by the time it was finished, the smell of it remained in my mind, no matter where I went.
At night, the bog, as he called it, had a strange quality of timelessness, as if the scrub oak and rushes and little half-grown birches had never been trod on. He got no turf from it; it was just a sanctuary for pheasants and the gray deer. One night we came on the afterbirth of a deer and we looked at it for a long time, under the moon, as if it were something of great importance. It may have been, to him.
After about a month, Baba came unexpectedly, and brought the Body with her. They blew the horn so much as they drove up the avenue that we thought it was the police coming to take me away. It was only Baba, in the Body’s battered blue van, which smelled of greyhounds. The Body opened the back door of the van to let Baba out (the side door was permanently broken), and a flock of greyhounds tumbled out with her and set off down the field to chase the cattle.
“Who is that?” Eugene said. We were in the front room having tea.
“The Body,” I said, and my heart sank, knowing that the meeting between them would be awkward.
Baba climbed the steps—wearing a green jacket which I had left behind at Joanna’s—and the Body came in, full of welcome for himself. He took a whiskey bottle off the sideboard and proceeded to drink from it. It was cow’s urine, which Eugene was to take to the veterinary surgeon later in the day. After the first taste, the Body threw the bottle down, and went over to the fireplace to spit out what was in his mouth.
“Eugene!” Baba said, embracing him. That helped a bit, because he liked Baba.
The Body looked at me quizzically and said, “What have you done to yourself? You don’t look the same anymore.” He frowned, trying to puzzle out what it was about me that had changed, and I thought slyly, Being in bed and being made love to has altered my face, but in fact it was that I looked tamer because Eugene had asked me to make up more discreetly. He bought me paler powder and narrow black velvet ribbons for my hair and a pair of flat, laced shoes which I saw Baba eyeing at that very minute. He had showed me diagrams of ruined feet, but I still wore high heels when I was going out.
“I know you well,” the Body said to him. “I often saw you around town and took you for a Yank.”
I was afraid that Eugene might say something sharp such as “There are no Yanks nowadays,” but he didn’t; he offered the Body a chair, not a soft armchair, but a straight-backed chair. He had told me before that some of the armchairs were likely to come to pieces and not to encourage fat people to sit on them. Life with him carried many rules, which I resented slightly.
I got extra cups out of the sideboard and poured some tea, which was still hot.
“Well?” Baba said, looking at me for a full explanation of everything. “What happened?”
“I almost got kicked to death by a rabblement of drunken Irish farmers,” Eugene said.
The Body winced, and I knew that he was saying to himself, What is Caithleen doing with a cynical bastard like that, but I could not explain to him that Eugene guarded me like a child, taught me things, gave me books to read, and gave pleasure to my body at night.
“Show us,” Baba said, and Eugene pulled down his sock and showed her the scabs.
“That’s a luscious scab, ‘twould win a prize,” she said, mocking a Dublin accent.
The Body picked at his tooth with a matchstick, and looked at me with a smile which asked, Are you happy?
The four greyhounds had come to the window, their moist black snouts pressed to the glass as they sniffed and moaned to be let in.
“Are these yours?” Eugene asked the Body.
“They’re mine,” the Body said proudly. And pointing to one of them he said, “She’ll make a fortune one day, that little lady. Mick the Miller will only be trotting after her,” but Eugene had never heard of Mick the Miller. I had grown up with a photograph of the greyhound pasted on a kitchen calendar. His childhood had not been like that: it was full of silences, and sheet music, and tripe, or sweetbreads for dinner, and his father bringing home oranges, until the time he left them.
The Body slugged the tea down, and told Eugene that he’d like to see the outhouses, and have a breath of air. With relief I saw them go, and heard the Body say, “Did you ever hear that one about the woman who took her son to Killarney and stayed in a big hotel—’Monty, Monty,’ said she, open your mouth wide, we’re paying for the air down here!’ “ He laughed at his own joke. I knew that his next joke would be the one about the Vice-President, and after that the incident of how he had been struck by a grandfather’s clock in Limerick and had been obliged to break the clock.
“Well, Jesus, you’re in a nice mess,” Baba said to me.
“I’m not in any mess,” I said, “I’m very happy.”
“Are you fixed up yet?”
“Fixed up what?”
“Married, you eejit.”
“That’s my jacket you’re wearing,” I said, to get off the subject.
“This old rag,” she said, holding a corner of it up to the light, “you could strain milk through it.”
“Did you bring my clothes?” I had written to her to post me my clothes.
“What’n hell clothes are you talking about? There are no clothes of yours except a few dishcloths that Joanna gave to the rag man in exchange for the saddle of a bicycle. She said you owed a week’s rent anyhow.”
“Where’s my bicycle?” I said. I had put it in a shed with a torn raincoat over it, to keep the mudguard from rusting.
“Old Gustav goes to work on it. You should see him! He’ll break his bloody neck some morning; you’d know he was a foreigner the way he sits on that saddle, you’d know he didn’t speak a decent word of English.”
“It’s my bicycle,” I said.
“Are you preg?” she asked. “ ‘Cos if you are, you won’t be able to cycle. Your aul fella is writing to me every day to get you back.”
“Is he coming?” My heart began to race again. I hadn’t heard from him for over two weeks.
“You’ll have to get a layette—lay it—if you’re preg,” she joked.
“Is my father coming?” I asked again.
“How would I know? I suppose
hell come some fine day when he’s blotto and shoot the lot of you.” She shot at the portrait of Eugene over the fire. “Blood and murder, and then he’ll start singing—’I didn’t know the gun was loaded and I’m so sorry, my friends; I didn’t know the gun was loaded, and I’ll never, never do it again.’ “ Baba hadn’t changed a bit.
“What are you doing with yourself?” I asked in a piqued voice.
“I’m having a whale of a time,” she told me. “Out every night. I was at an ice show last night. Terrif. The Body and I are going to a dinner dance tonight, and someone wanted to paint my picture last week. I met him at a party and he said I had the nicest profile he ever saw. So next day, as arranged, I went along to his den and he wanted the picture in the nude. ‘Chrissake,’ says I, what has your nude got to do with your profile?’ He was in a pair of shorts whanging a dog whip about in his hand. God, you wouldn’t see me running!” She looked around the room with its brown furniture and shelves of books. “How long are you staying in this bog?” she asked, and answered for me, “Till he gets tired of you, I suppose. You’re a right-looking eejit in those flat shoes.” She had her black high-heelers on.
“Have you a boy?” I asked. She made me restless.
“Oh, def. You can ask Joanna how many cars call now. I’ve got oodles of men, and John Ford is giving me a screen test this week.”
“It’s a lie,” I said.
“Of course it’s a lie,” she said. “Give us another cup of tea; any grog in the house?”
There was a bottle of whiskey hidden in the gun bureau, but I did not want to open it, as it was not my house. When they came back, Eugene did not open it either, and they left soon after, disappointed, I suppose, because they weren’t offered a drink. Before she left, Baba told me that she had heard from her mother that my father was coming to see me along with the bishop of the diocese. I didn’t think that she was serious, but in fact she was.
Next day my father came. We were in the study, giving instructions to the local plasterer about doing the hole in the ceiling.
“My father, my father,” I said as I saw the Ferret’s car drive up to the hall door.
“Get back from the window,” Eugene said.
“What’s up?” the plasterer asked.
Then the knocker was pounded.
I ran down to tell Anna not to answer it, and we locked the back door.
The knocking resounded all over the waiting house; the dog barked and my heart beat rapidly, just as it had done the first night they came.
“Caithleen, Caithleen,” my father’s voice called plaintively through the letter box. I ran to the study and whispered to Eugene.
“If he’s alone, maybe we should see him?” His voice calling my name had made me pity him.
Eugene had been looking through the binoculars to see who was in the car, and he whispered, “There’s three others in the car, there’s a bishop or something, I can see his purple dicky.”
“Caithleen,” my father called, and then he knocked steadily for about two minutes. It was a good thing we didn’t have a doorbell or we would all have been deafened.
“I’ll settle it,” Eugene said, and he went out and put the chain on the hall door and then opened the door suddenly. It could only open a few inches, because of the chain.
“Anything you want to say to your daughter will have to come in writing to her.”
“I want to see her,” my father said.
I stood behind the study door, praying and gasping. The plasterer must have thought I was going to die. The cement was going hard on him, but he couldn’t start work because Eugene had told him not to make a sound.
“Your daughter does not want to see you,” Eugene said. The words sounded very cruel when put bluntly like that.
“I just want to have a chat with her. I have a friend of hers here, Bishop Jordon; he knows her since she was a child, he confirmed her. We won’t lay a finger on her.” I knew from the pitch of his voice that he was frightened and ashamed.
“Look, Mr. Brady,” Eugene said, “I have written to you through my solicitors; I do not want you here and I do not want any Monseigneurs meddling in my affairs. I thought that we had made that clear.”
“We’re not doing any harm,” my father said in a desperate voice.
“You are trespassing on my property,” Eugene said, and I wrung my hands in shame. “She’s twenty-one years old and here of her own free will.”
“You think you’re very important,” my father said, “but this is our country and you can’t come along here and destroy people who’ve lived here for generations, don’t think that …” But his voice faded, because suddenly Eugene shut the door.
Outside, my father knocked with his fists on the wood, but after a few minutes he went down the steps and then I saw the car driving off. He sat in the back and looked through the back window as they drove off.
That was Saturday afternoon, and for the rest of the evening I cried and disliked myself for having been so cruel to my father. I did not bother about my hair or my appearance, as I wanted to look awful so that Eugene would realize how wretched I felt.
“I’m in love and I’m miserable,” I said aloud to myself. He overheard me and said, “Take two aspirins.” I couldn’t cry, or wash my hair, or talk to myself but he noticed it.
“Will you take me to Mass tomorrow?” I asked. I could feel the goodness going out of me, as I had not been to Mass for five weeks.
“Of course I’ll take you to Mass,” he said. He was very unpredictable like that; he would sometimes say yes when you expected him to say no.
“Of course I’ll take you to Mass, you poor little pigeon,” he said as he put his arm around me and patted my shoulder.
“You’ve got no shoulders,” he said. I had sloping shoulders like Mama’s, and they were very white and frail-looking.
We did not go to the local chapel because I knew that the priest would accost me on the way out, as he had written me three letters. We drove instead to a village eight or nine miles away. It was a new concrete chapel set on a treeless hill and there was a white notice board outside stating the extent of debt which the new church had entailed. Although it was a February morning, the sun shone, as it sometimes does in Ireland, to compensate for a whole week’s rain. I left him in the sun, sitting on the low mossy wall opposite the chapel gate, reading the New Statesman. The inside of the chapel was cheerless, the brown plastered walls had not been painted, and there was scaffolding in one of the side aisles.
I had no prayer book, just the white beads that a nun gave me in the convent, so I tried hard to say a Rosary. The people distracted me—their coughing, their ill-fitting clothes, and that sour smell which comes from drying their faces with dirty towels. I could see Eugene’s bright eyes mocking me, “Only egomaniacs see Christ as God come especially to save them. Christ is the emanation of goodness from all men”—and I lay my forehead on the new oak rest and thought of the time when I had a crush on a nun, and decided to be a nun, too, and another time, for a whole week, I had decided to be a saint and kept pebbles in my shoes as a penance, which is what we called “making an act.”
The sermon was about Grace, and I came out from Mass wondering if I had spurned God’s Grace once too often. For a minute I forgot that Eugene was waiting for me, and as he looked up from his New Statesman and said, “Did you have a nice Mass?” I realized with slight shock that he was waiting for me.
With the sun in my eyes, I said, “When I came out just now and saw you here, I forgot that you were waiting for me, isn’t that funny?”
“No, it isn’t funny,” he said, and I thought with panic, I have insulted him and he’ll be cold with me now for days.
“So, when you’re in there, you become a convent girl again,” he remarked. I thought of myself looking like a crow in black shoes and stockings and a serge gym frock which was never ironed properly, because Mama died before I went away to boarding school and I had to attend to my own uniform.
“I was never really a convent girl,” I said, recalling the sky-blue Holy Picture on which Baba wrote the dirty thing that got us expelled from the convent.
“I don’t know how you can do it,” he said, remarking on my hypocrisy. “How can you live two lives? In there”—he nodded toward the concrete church—”you’re deep in it with crucifixions and hell and bloody thorns. And here am I sitting on a wall, reading about atom bombs, and you say, ‘Who am I?’ For that matter”—he tapped my chin with his index finger—”who are you and what are you doing in my life?” He was laughing all the time, but I still did not like what he said. I hung my head, but he recognized the flashes of unhappiness in my face—the mouth drooping at the corners, the slight pout. He jumped over the wall, plucked a branch from a budding chestnut tree, and presented it to me with a deep bow.
“What unites men and women is not God or the New Statesman,” he said, putting the sticky bud under my nose. Then he kissed my cheek, and we sat in and drove home.
“You won’t brood for the rest of the day, will you, sweetling?” he said as we drove along between the rows of winter hedges. The sun shone, and old women and children—the ones who had been too old or too young to go to Mass—sat outside cottages and waved to us. The children were in their good clothes, and I remember the pink face and white hair of one albino girl who sat on a whitewashed pier, swinging her legs, wearing patent shoes with silver buckles on them. And I thought to myself, I’ll never forget this moment because somehow it is very important to me, even though I don’t know why, and I waved to the little pink girl, and said to Eugene, “No, I won’t brood.” But already I had begun to brood and relive the scene outside the chapel in my mind; and from afar I scented trouble and difficulties, but I could not arm myself against him, as I loved him too much.
“It’s all right for you,” I said helplessly, “you can think things out, but I’m different.”
“We’re all different,” he said as he started to sing, “I wonder who’s hating her now.” It was a song he often sang, and I imagined that it was directed toward Laura. He sang to jolly things up, he said.
