The South

by Colm Toibin

  “They’re a dreadful nuisance,” Tom said. “Year after year they let cattle stray in. I’m going to stop it now.”

  “Surely you’ve frightened them enough,” she said. “I think we should drop it now.”

  “This time they’re going to pay.”

  “They’re very poor. They always have been, and things are so hard now, aren’t they? That cottage has always been full of children.”

  “I’m taking them to court anyway,” he said. His voice came to her across the dimly lit room in a dull thud. Suddenly, she hated his voice.

  “We can’t do that.”

  “Why not? We’re doing it.”

  “They let the cattle stray into the barley. Is that such a problem?”

  “They do it every year. They think we’re easy prey.”

  “They are our neighbours, you know.”

  “They’re our bad neighbours,” he said.

  “The woman was very disturbed. I don’t want to go ahead with the case.”

  “We’re going ahead.”

  “Despite my wishes.”

  “Yes, although I wasn’t aware of them until now.”

  “Now you know how I feel.”

  “I do.” He moved across the room to the table and came back with a newspaper which he opened and began to read.

  She was not asleep when Tom came into their bedroom, she didn’t move, yet when he went down the corridor to the bathroom she got up, closed the door, and turned off the light. When he came back, Tom turned on the light again and Katherine lay motionless. He was sitting on the edge of the bed taking off his shirt, when she sat up.

  “Did you turn off the light?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m tired, the light keeps me awake.” She could hear him taking off his vest and dropping each shoe on to the floor. He pulled his pyjamas out from under the pillow.

  “I want to talk to you again about the Kennys’ court case,” she said. He was crossing the room to turn off the light. “Leave the light on,” she said. She looked up. He was standing in the middle of the room.

  “I thought you were tired.”

  “I want you to call off the court case.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ve always had good relations with our neighbours.”

  “That’s why they burned you out, I suppose,” he said. He stood in the middle of the room as though he might at any moment move to turn off the light.

  “No one from around here did that. The troublemakers came out here from the town,” she said.

  “Nobody knows who did it. It could have been anyone.”

  “That’s all over now. It was years ago. You weren’t here then.”

  “We could do without some of our neighbours,” he said.

  “And they could do without us,” she laughed. He went over to the light.

  “Don’t turn off the light, Tom. I haven’t finished. I want this to stop, do you understand? I’m not sure I’ve made myself clear. And if my father were alive, he would want it stopped also.”

  “It’s your land, is that what you’re trying to say? I have no right to make decisions, is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “You don’t understand this place,” she said.

  “You and your father obviously knew nothing about it either. I’m not sure there’s that much to know, beyond the fact that this is our land, and we don’t want our neighbours trespassing on it.”

  “I don’t think that you’ve ever quite looked at it,” she said.

  “I run this place, and I’ll make decisions that need to be made.”

  “I suggest that you don’t drag our neighbours into the courthouse in Enniscorthy. I think that it would be wrong.”

  “Don’t interfere, Katherine.”

  * * *

  The days grew mild and bright, the last respite before winter. She walked along the lane from the back door to the river; the lane was covered in rotting leaves. The house seemed solid and heavy in the light of an autumn afternoon, angular in the softened air. When she saw Tom walking towards her she was afraid for a moment, but as soon as she understood her fear, she felt a hard and insistent resolve.

  “Have you sorted it out yet?” she asked as soon as they met.

  “Katherine, don’t make it all so difficult.” She turned and walked back with him towards the house.

  “I’m making nothing difficult,” she said. “Have you told them to stop the case?”

  “No, I have not.”

  “I shall, then.”

  “Don’t make too much of this. You have no reason to.”

  That night when he came to bed he brushed against her, and when she turned away he put his arms around her and kissed her neck. She could feel his penis harden against her.

  “Don’t, Tom, don’t,” she said, and moved towards the edge of the bed. He turned from her and said nothing. Soon she knew by his breathing that he had fallen asleep.

  The day of the court case drew near and the woman came again to the house, waiting outside the back door for her. Two days in a row she waited there until it grew dark. Katherine continued to work in her room; she was glad of the escape when she drove into the town to collect Richard from school. She sensed the woman’s hostile presence on her return, knowing that everybody in the house was aware of the woman also, and why she was waiting.

  For once she wanted Richard to be with her in her room; she did not mind his questions—nor his clumsiness. She played a game with him, folding a piece of paper and allowing him to draw one half of a figure while she added the other.

  When he went up to bed she read him a story, but he said he was bored by it. She told him she would buy him a new book. She felt protective towards him, but he seemed uneasy with her. He turned away from her and said he wanted to sleep. She went downstairs. Tom was in his office, going through accounts.

  “That woman came again today,” she said.

  “Yes, I saw her off, told her that if I saw her here again I’d call the Guards.”

  “Have you made a decision?” she asked.

  “The case will be heard on Wednesday. I think we’ll win very heavy damages. All the documents have gone to the solicitors.”

  “If you go ahead with it, I’m leaving.” She looked down at him as he sat in the circle of light from the desk lamp.

  “Don’t make threats,” he said without looking up.

  “Tell me if you change your mind,” she said and went back to the drawing room where she sat by the fire.

  He was gone by the time she woke on Wednesday morning. She found Richard already in the kitchen when she went downstairs, his breakfast finished. He was waiting to be collected for school by a neighbour.

  “Do you know where my husband is?” Katherine asked Mary.

  “He had business in the town. He’s been gone about half an hour.”

  “Did he say when he would be back?”

  “Not until the evening.” Katherine realised that Mary was aware of the court case that day.

  She sat at the kitchen table with Richard until she heard the blast of the horn. Then she went outside with him into the dim morning. She waved as the car drew away. And when she went back into the kitchen, she noticed that Mary was watching her.

  “Could you put the immersion on, I’m going to have a bath,” she said.

  “I think it should be hot enough now,” Mary said.

  Katherine went up to the cold bathroom and, while the bath filled, stripped and examined herself carefully in the full-length mirror they had saved from the old house after the fire. She looked at her breasts and her belly and her neck. She could see no sign that she was thirty-two; it was as though she had been frozen since her marriage, as though her white skin and the curves of her body had held, waiting for something. He, too, her husband, must have looked at himself in the mirror, and he must have thought how much older he looked, and how he was a stranger to this house, and he must have wondered why she married him.

  Oversleeping and the damp a
ir made her tired, and she could not decide what to do. As the morning wore on, she kept on meeting Mary or one of the girls from the kitchen, and she had to stop to consider how to avoid them. She felt imprisoned; if she used the telephone, one of them might listen on the extension. She went to her room at the top of the house and tried to plan how she would leave.

  When she saw an Anglia coming up the drive, she recognised the delivery man from the town. She realised how easy it was going to be. She immediately went down to the kitchen and asked him for a lift into the town. Mary watched her quizzically, almost critically.

  She would not take any clothes. She would leave with nothing except her passport and some money. Downstairs, she found the keys of the office over the door, she knew where the money was kept and she took what was in the drawer without counting it. Large Irish ten pound notes and some English twenty pound notes.

  “I’ll have to make a stop or two on the way in,” the delivery man said as he started the car.

  “That’s fine,” she said.

  “I suppose you’ll be going to the court,” he said. “I suppose you’ll be going in to see the case. It won’t last long now. That’s one open and shut case.”

  “Them Kennys,” he continued, “are awful tinkers, you couldn’t trust any of them. They’d steal the eyes out of your head if you weren’t looking,” he laughed for a moment and repeated it. “That’s what they’d do.”

  He turned right off the main road and drove up a lane. “I won’t be long in here,” he said as he came to a stop. Several sheepdogs came running down from the house, barking loudly as he carried a box of groceries toward the small, whitewashed farmhouse.

  Now she was trapped here. They might pass Tom on the road. She imagined their eyes meeting, Tom indicating to the delivery man to stop and she having to get out as though she were a prisoner, to go back to the house as though nothing had happened.

  She waited. The delivery man came out with a middle-aged woman wearing an apron who stood shading her eyes from the sun while the delivery man came over to the car.

  “She has the tea on the table now,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “The tea is hot now and the table is set,” he said. “And she won’t take no for an answer.” The woman at the door of the farmhouse looked towards them.

  “I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake coming with you, my husband will be waiting for me. Perhaps I should have explained,” Katherine spoke evenly. He still stood beside the car. She said again: “Could you tell the woman that I don’t have time, thank you?”

  The delivery man didn’t say anything until they were near the town. “I’d say it’ll be an open and shut case, ma’am.”

  “Could you leave me near the hotel, perhaps at the bridge, would that be all right?”

  “You’re not going up to the court?” He seemed disappointed. He drove across the bridge and left her at the door of the hotel.

  She waited in the entrance hall of the hotel until she felt that he had gone. She ventured out then into Templesh-cannon and up past the bacon factory towards the railway station. Her mind focussed sharply on the possibilities. She would wait here for the next train to Dublin. She would wait for hours if she had to. Tom would never think of coming here to look for her. She could go south to Rosslare. But she didn’t know if the ferry still ran, or at what time, and she didn’t want to ask in the station. It would be simpler to buy a ticket to Dublin. It was one o’clock; the court would close for lunch, she imagined, and Tom would drive home and find her gone and he might then notice the money missing.

  The sign in the station said there would be a train to Dublin at twenty minutes to three. She checked to see if there were any other notices with the times of ferries to England, but there was nothing. She would have to leave it to chance.

  The sky was darkening over the river. Katherine went into the waiting room and sat there, wishing the next twenty-four hours away. She imagined them already over, as if by magic. She thought back over the previous twenty-four hours, thought about how long they seemed. She looked at her watch. Only five minutes had passed. She walked out and stood on the platform until a porter came with a trolley of parcels from the office.

  She was in time for the train that would take her to the Dun Laoghaire ferry, he told her. She would be in London in the early morning.

  The sea was calm that night, the boat half empty. On the train across England she tried to sleep but she had nowhere to rest her head, and each time she dropped off she woke with a start. She could not wait for the night to be over.

  She rang her mother’s number from a call box at Euston station. The phone was answered immediately, despite the early hour, and the voice was sprightly and alert.

  “In London? Wonderful, do come and see me.”

  “I was hoping to come now.”

  “Come when you please. I’d be delighted to see you,” her mother sounded less than eager. She did not invite her to stay, but rather spoke as though Katherine wanted only to come and have tea with her. In the long nights and in the anxiety of the previous weeks, she had never thought how her mother would receive the news of her arrival.

  She caught a taxi to her mother’s house. She was no longer tired, but she needed a change of clothes and a bath. The streets were clear in the grey morning, the city was still asleep. Her mother came to the door, dressed as though for some great event.

  “Do tell me all about yourself,” she said.

  “You’re going to have to let me stay here.”

  “Have you left him? Oh good, I’m glad you’ve left him.”

  Katherine washed herself and changed her clothes. They sat in a small room overlooking the garden which gathered in what light came from the sun. Her mother returned again and again to the story of the woman coming up the driveway to implore Katherine not to proceed with the court case.

  “What a pity she didn’t come with you!” her mother laughed. “A big Irish cow laying siege to you. I’m so glad you’ve come.”

  In the days that followed Katherine began to laugh too.

  “What exactly did she sound like?” her mother asked, but Katherine’s effort to imitate the woman’s accent was so unreal that her mother laughed even more and wanted her to go on doing it.

  “You escaped from Ireland just in time,” her mother said, going over once more all the details of the journey.

  Katherine made no plans. Each night her mother made a cocktail with vodka and vermouth and told stories about the Blitz, or went out to poker parties, or to the cinema. One night she invited some friends for drinks and poker. They were English women, all of them, in their sixties and seventies, and they drank several cocktails before they settled down to cards.

  “It was the game of poker that got us through the war, my dear,” Katherine’s mother said to her, as they played the first hand. Later, when her mother left the room the ladies talked among themselves until one of them turned to Katherine and smiled. “So you’re the friend from Ireland then,” she said.

  “I suppose I am,” she said. “I haven’t seen my mother for some years.”

  “Your mother? Is your mother here as well?”

  “This is my mother’s house. I’m her daughter.” It suddenly struck her that she had not been introduced to these people as her mother’s daughter, nor had she used the word “mother” in their presence.

  “You’re her daughter? I didn’t know she had any children.”

  “Here she is now. Ask her.”

  As they stood in the kitchen when the guests had gone, Katherine asked her mother why she had told her friends that she had no children.

  “I put all that behind me.”

  “It feels funny being written off like that.”

  “Yes, like walking out of the cinema, leaving it all behind, the big picture.”

  “Don’t make jokes.”

  “Katherine, don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Did I ever exist for you?”

  “I g
ot out of that place, and I put it behind me. It’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it. Your father wouldn’t come. I don’t think you’ve consulted your spouse. Incidentally, he telephoned twice today.”

  “Tom?”

  “He’ll telephone again tomorrow. I told him I had been in touch with you and I would tell you.”

  “Tell him I’ve left,” she said, and turned away.

  BARCELONA:

  A PORTRAIT OF FRANCO

  “We should call this exile’s corner,” Michael Graves said, as the waiter poured more sherry into his glass. “We should put a sign up. Do you know the Irish word for exile?”

  “Please tell me,” she said.

  “Deoraí.”

  “How very interesting.”

  “Maybe so, but do you know what it means?”

  “No.”

  “Deor means a tear and deoraí means one who has known tears.”

  “I see no deep furrows on your cheeks,” she said.

  “That’s because, like you, I’m not really an exile, but an émigré. Delighted to get out. A great country to emigrate from is ours. ‘And after this our exile . . .’” he began to intone.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a prayer. ‘Hail Holy Queen Mother of Mercy, Hail Our Life Our Sweetness and Our Hope, to Thee do we send up our sighs mourning and weeping in this valley of tears . . .’ You say it at the end of the Rosary. Do you know what the Rosary is?”

  “A prayer.”

  “Too true. It’s a prayer.”

  He spoke to her with a mocking ease she had not come across before; he insisted on a familiarity she still found disconcerting. Even now as he talked to her and half jeered her, she could not rule out the possibility that this Michael Graves might go away and leave them alone, and that she would greet his departure with mixed feelings. She had become used to his face, yellow and sunken like an apple left out in the sun. Miguel too had warmed to him. He liked foreigners, he told her once, adding so would she, if she had lived in Barcelona for ten years. She had tried to tell him that there were other foreigners available should he tire of the ones he was with now, but he had missed her point.