Relaxing there in the sun with the cat in her lap, she was able to calmly discuss her move from the previous small nursing home which needed to close due to a shortage of staff to this renovated convent, not far away from the field where her ark last stood. David’s hostel was now crammed with refugees: people fleeing from strife in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Albania and Nigeria who had smuggled themselves onto container trucks bound for Rosslare Harbour to begin the long process of claiming asylum. The hostel was permanently block-booked by the Health Board to hold refuges and, while some locals were apprehensive about this influx of outsiders, David always described how harmonious the hostel was, with remarkable communal meals being cooked by the asylum seekers. How marvellously exciting that hostel sounded, filled with fascinating people ready to share their experiences. The great mixing together of humanity was happening at last, even if too late for Eva, who desperately longed to be back in her Ark, greeting any asylum seekers who wandered down the field to talk to her. But Eva was stuck here in this nursing home, and likely to remain grounded after her misbehaviour again last week.
In recent months, kindly local people would frequently take out Eva for drives to Kilmore Quay, where the ocean spray remind her of childhood in Donegal. But last week when an elderly couple had brought Eva out and then attempted to bring her back to this nursing home, Eva started to rant in their car, demanding to be driven instead to an old farmhouse which a young local artist and her husband were restoring. This young couple made her welcome as always, serving herbal tea on the lawn. The artist was such a dear and so kind and something about their tumbledown, bohemian house made Eva feel, if not actually at home, then at least in a place which held an echo of the sort of free-spirited haven she once tried to create for Francis and Hazel in Glanmire Wood during the war. The problem was that, even after the coldness of dusk settled around her, Eva kept resisting people’s entreaties to return to this nursing home or to enter the farmhouse. She had insisted with sudden irrational fury on remaining out on the lawn in the growing darkness, shocked by her own vehemence because it was not in her character to be a nuisance, still stubbornly ignoring the pleas of those who kept anxiously coming out from the house to check on her. Eventually David was summoned and Eva reluctantly allowed him to drive her back to the nursing home. However she had not wanted to return here, she had wanted to be allowed remain out there on that lawn, shivering under the trees at dusk, because at times this nursing home felt like a prison and only out there in the cold fresh air had she felt sufficiently able to organise her thoughts and try to remember all the faces from her past to whom she felt an overwhelming duty to recall one final time.
That evening on the lawn she had wanted to be allowed to slink off and disappear into the deepest bushes like Johnny had done when he knew that his time had come. Death felt preferable to being here where this terrifying new rage engulfed her. A rage that, in lucid moments, she saw was causing hurt to the friends trying to mind her, but a rage that needed to pour out after being suppressed for years – a rage stoked by the kaleidoscope of faces that kept haunting her dreams. Dreams where she cradled Francis’s dead body again and saw Hazel’s corpse wrapped in a blanket and poor young Alex dying in the African bush and Brendan starved and beaten in a Soviet gulag and Freddie’s face in that Isle of Wight hospital telling her that he would leave Francis out of his will; and the angle at which Francis’s body lay when she found him, as if he had tried to rise and swallow more pills and the blue blotches on his skin; and Hazel wrapped in a blanket in the African night suffocated by exhaust fumes and Hazel as a girl in bed in Glanmire, the white soles of her feet needing to be warmed.
Her thoughts straightened out for a moment to allow her to wonder how many – if any – mourners from Glenageary had ever turned up when Alan’s coffin was lowered to rest beside his parents in the neglected family plot in Mount Jerome; if any distant relation had ever thought to engrave the name of that most gentle of men on the tombstone there and how she cried alone in her caravan on the day of Alan’s funeral, desperately wishing that her legs had possessed enough strength for her to travel to Dublin for that sparsely attended entombment, clutching the sort of glorious spray of Wicklow heather with which Valerie O’Mahony once lit up Golder’s Green Crematorium.
Then her thoughts plummeted back into the maelstrom where she wondered how she could ever have brought herself to pluck the feathers from the innocent birds that Freddie and his guests used to blast to death with their blunderbusses; and how tragic it was that the smaller first nursing home she had been in had closed down when Eva only realised now in retrospect just how happy she had been there; and what she would like to say to those evil, unscrupulous scientists who conducted horrific laboratory experiments on defenceless animals, despite Jesus’s words to them as he entered Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday and preached that Thou Shalt Not Vivisect Thy Fellow Creatures. Jesus was the great outlaw, which was the title of a book about Christ that Mother used to love, which Eva must ask some friend to buy for her – and what happened to all the letters poor Mother wrote to the British Foreign Office seeking news of her lost son; and the thought of poor Art going demented in old age and dying in Moscow and her middle brother and rock, Thomas, dead in South Africa, a proud ANC member in his final decades, and her sister Maud dying in the Molyneux Protestant Nursing Home in Leeson Park in Dublin, having insisted on booking herself in there, strong-willed to the end, bringing with her only the bare minimum of possessions; and Johnny’s body lying undiscovered in some ditch and The Ark cats who seemed to still be alive at times because they crawled about in her mind; and the black tomcat who used to sit utterly still on the piano when Father was composing his never-to-be performed symphony in Donegal; and the warmth of the fur of her pet rabbit pressed against her skin as she watched Father at the piano through the window as a girl; and long before that, right back to her earliest memory of taking her first tentative steps, hardly daring to believe that she could walk, but intoxicated by the scent of daisies pressed against her face as she longed to reach her nurse’s lap and share that moment with its magical smell of freshness; and her nurse’s inviting wide-open arms sitting beside the tennis court in Dunkineely; and the suffering of cows penned in on factory farms like she was trapped here; and Father’s lost symphony that would now surely never be performed; and how gentle Father always was, more like a best friend to her, and how Alex’s smile had always reminded her of Father’s tenderness; and the desolate beauty of St John’s Point in Donegal and the feel of Art’s fingers holding her hand when she tried to climb the One Man’s Pass on Slieve League as a girl; and the smell of Mother’s hand lotion when she would call in to say good-night to Eva and Maud in their beds; and how Francis as a teenage boy stole away the affections of that handsome tutor during the war; and how Hazel whisked away that young American painter from her in Esther O’Mahony’s cottage in Wicklow; and the awful hothouse flowers that Jonathan brought to Frances’s funeral and the beautiful Wicklow heather Valerie O’Mahony placed on his coffin; and Francis’s ashes scattered on the daffodil lawn and Freddie’s ashes scattered by some drinking buddy on a Mayo lake among the bogs where he loved to shoot; and how Eva used to love to sketch while sitting on the ditches amid banks of wild flowers as a girl and the night when she walked the road from Dunkineely to Bruckless to see the moon and stars and a drunk raiding party of British Black and Tans stopped her on a bend, menacingly dismounting from a Crossley tender with rifles cocked until the officer heard her accent and ordered them to let her go unmolested; and the jangle of the horse-drawn cart transporting all of her family and their guests off for picnics lasting from dawn to dusk; and how Francis lay dead with his skin turned blue amid the picnic hampers piled up on that cart; and how this could not be right and her mind was surely slipping because Francis had not even been born back then; and poor Francis crying among the trees as a child after Freddie made him shoot a rabbit in some woodland but where exactly was that wood ag
ain and when and why.
And was the ghost of the poor butler still trapped in the wine cellar in Glanmire House: the man falsely accused by Freddie’s guests of stealing a five pound note simply because he ran across their line of fire to try and protect those poor birds they were intent on slaughtering? The innocent man driven by their lies to take his own life, with poor Hazel lying dead at his feet in that cellar, wrapped up tight in her African woollen blanket and Francis lying beside her, shoulders hunched from trying to rise to swallow more tablets. And no sound in that lonely cellar except the creak of the rope on which the butler’s ghost swung for eternity and no smell there except for the exhaust fumes pouring from Hazel’s car, while from some unlit room upstairs in the ruin of Glanmire House there came the distant crackle of the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ being played over and over by a child on an ancient wind-up gramophone.
Eva knew suddenly that none of this made the slightest sense but it was too much of a strain to try and comprehend the exact nature of this malaise which made her mind meander like this, unable to keep proper track of her thoughts anymore; and why had she not thanked dear Jacquie for the lovely wildflowers she brought into the nursing home yesterday, when she knew how hard all of her friends had worked to find this nursing home and organise the subventions and payments that Eva could no longer keep track of; and why was she putting down the names of those same friends on the long list of suspects that she intended to sue when the telephone operator put her through to her solicitors in Dublin on the black and silver candlestick-style telephone apparatus that Father kept in his study with its heavy nickel-plated brass mouthpiece? Was her lovely friend who regularly visited from the Wexford Freemasons on this list and, if so why, when he had taken the time to read her aloud the lovely letter that Thomas’s children had written from South Africa last week – the day after some of Maud’s children and grandchildren visited from Dublin, so full of kindness and concern; the day when she was able to think absolutely straight; and how one friend laughed last week when she asked him if he could fit an electric lawn-mower engine onto her wheelchair so that she could venture out again by herself into the fields, amid all the wild birds who would surely recognise her after decades of feeding them and flock down around her to perch on her shoulders; and where had she put that long list of people to sue anyway and how had she managed to write all the names down when she could barely hold a pen? And again and again and again the question of why she could not still feel as calm and happy as she had been feeling this afternoon? Why did she feel so agitated and confused tonight when she had been so at peace with the world in that orchard just a few hours ago?
Then it came to her: all this malaise was because of the nursing home cat. That was it. She could remember clearly now how the nurse frightened the cat away from her when putting Eva to bed this evening. All afternoon the cat had happily nestled down in Eva’s lap while she chatted to her visitors and then, after the visitors left, Eva and the cat became fellow conspirators when the nurse wheeled Eva back to this bedroom. The cat never once purred or stirred from underneath the blanket on Eva’s lap, knowing that he was safely concealed there. He would have happily spent all night curled up at her feet in this bedroom where Eva was generally left undisturbed except for when the night cleaners came in and insisted on sweeping away any cobwebs in the corners, despite Eva’s protests to them that she loved the company of all living things, including spiders, because hadn’t Pythagoras proclaimed the kinship of all of life. Eva’s conspiracy with the cat had almost succeeded, with Eva trying to cling onto the bundled up blanket in her arms in which the cat was concealed when the nurse helped her to shift her shrivelled body into this bed. But her hands could no longer grasp hold of things properly and although Eva strained to cling on, she dropped the blanket, causing the cat to leap from its folds in alarm and race out the bedroom door before anyone could catch him.
The nurse had laughed about the incident, joking that Eva had her heart scalded. But was it so awful to want to have a warm and living creature in your bed at night? Her own hands and feet remained icy cold, no matter how many blankets or hot water bottles the nurses gave her. Indeed her hands felt colder now than any corpse she ever touched and had felt like this for weeks. Death was close at hand, but Eva still didn’t know if she was ready. Her remaining books were gone to David for his hostel. She had told her poet friend Donal to take anything he wanted and was amused when he chose only her broken clock embossed with the word ‘NOW’. When Marcus flew over from London to spend a day with her she had asked him to take away her letters and papers. All that remained were these inexplicable outbursts of anger simultaneously keeping her alive and killing her. But even this residue of all the hurt she had carried inside her felt nearly exhausted, which meant she would not need to carry it forward to whatever world she was going to. But where was she going and why would somebody not come and rescue her from this gulag, bringing her out into the fresh air amid the fields? This type of death seemed unfair because she had always anticipated being able to savour the moment of death when life’s great questions would finally be answered. Her grip on life felt so slight that it would have been easy to just close her eyes and embark on this last journey by ceasing to take these laboured breaths. But Eva could not let herself die just yet because of her worries that the night cleaner’s young daughter might wander into her room while she was dying and be forced to witness the death rattle that no child should have to hear.
Eva first noticed this child one afternoon last week when she woke to find Donal seated quietly by her bed. At first she was unsure if he was real but it was one of her serene days. It was while they were talking that she saw the girl several times shyly peering in at them through the open door. Eva knew that Donal only had two young sons and so the girl could not have come here with him. It took Eva several nights to realise that the child must be accompanying one of the cleaners who worked here at night, although – probably because they were anxious not to lose their jobs – every cleaner she questioned denied having smuggled in a child. The girl was not here every evening, only on nights when no babysitter could be found and it was safer for the mother to bring her into work than leave her alone at home. Eva understood the problems of raising a child but she resented the slyness of this cleaner who always waited until she thought Eva was asleep before allowing her daughter to slip into Eva’s room and play imaginary games on the floor, having obviously been warned to stay quiet in case her mother was caught. Eva never made a sound lest she frighten this child who sometimes glanced shyly up at Eva’s bed, but never approached. In fact Eva rather enjoyed having the girl there for company, but would have preferred to have been asked before being forced to play a part in this conspiracy.
Tonight it was proving to be an extra worry in case the child wandered in when Eva felt so weak. This was one more item that she needed to phone her solicitor about, if she was still alive in the morning. But would she be able to remember? Her brain was tired of all this remembering and all the mornings. The way dawn used to occur suddenly out of the darkness in Kenya, like a speeded up film. Kenya where Hazel was buried and Alex had died. Why did she have to upset herself by thinking about Kenya now? Why couldn’t sleep or death claim her and switch off this torrent of thoughts and memories, this constant stream of words rattling around her head? Words that could never add up to the truth because the truth was beyond words; the truth flashed past too quickly for words to describe it: ninety-seven years being constantly relived in nine point seven seconds. What was the point in even trying to think straight anymore when she could hardly hear her own thoughts because of her breathing having become so loud and forced: each breath seeming to last an eternity of seconds. Eva opened her eyes and strained to identify the person who had just entered the room to lean over her bed and check on her. She recognised the patient night nurse whom she liked. Eva expected the nurse to turn away and close the door again, leaving her to this isolation, but instead she sat on the side of the bed to t
ake Eva’s cold hand in hers. Why was she doing this? Then Eva understood why – because the approach of death must be showing on her face like it once showed on Mother’s features all those years ago, and Eva was relieved that someone was here, willing to hold the fort and hold her hand until the rescuers arrived.
Because surely there had to be rescuers, perhaps little people like in The Borrowers, the series of children’s books that Alex once loved. Eva could see Alex in The Ark in her bare feet reading a book and looking up to ask ‘Granny-Mum, should we check on the earwigs’ while the sun shone in through the caravan window onto the window seat where Johnny lay with his tummy upturned. Of course none of this could be real because it was night-time and this kindly nurse was leaning forward, straining to make sense of Eva’s ceaseless low mumbling. Someone needed to keep the talk going because Eva loved to talk and was waiting for someone to rescue her. Surely that someone had to be Francis who once swore to rescue her if she was ever in trouble. Sure enough her door opened and in Francis waltzed, dressed up in Mother’s silk scarves, like on the night he danced for them after Eva rescued him from that boarding school and he had promised to one day rescue her in turn if ever in trouble. Only it couldn’t be Francis because Francis was dead and when Eva managed to focus her gaze she saw that her door was closed: the nurse still here keeping vigil.
Eva was glad of her company because this was the end and she was scared, now that she understood that nobody could come to rescue her. But the bedroom door did open again behind the nurse’s back and at first Eva imagined that all her ghosts were going to crowd in, the ghosts she had kept alive by patiently remembering each one. But instead it was the young girl whom Eva now realised had never been with the cleaners after all but was surely the daughter of this nurse and had probably grown tired and scared of waiting alone out in the corridor while Eva delayed her mother by taking so long to die.
An Ark of Light Page 40
