by Colm Toibin
‘I’m not. I’m finished with school.’
Suddenly, he had become brave.
‘Well, you needn’t think you are working here. This is my business and I’m not having you.’
‘You can’t run it without me,’ he said.
‘Watch me, watch me,’ she said.
IN THE END Gerard apologized to the school and over the next few months an uneasy peace reigned, interrupted only by his Christmas report, almost worse than the previous year.
‘Aren’t you lucky to have him?’ Birdseye said when he called. ‘He’ll make a great fist of the business. It’s in the blood. I remember his grandmother here, she was a real businesswoman. And you’ll be able to put your feet up, take holidays and everything.’
She imagined herself trapped, an old woman fussing in the shop where she was not wanted. Or stuck in a bungalow out the country, a little car on the tarmac drive, with nothing to do all day as Gerard, married now and with responsibilities, egged on by his wife, explained to her that he would need the business made over to him if he were going to stay there. She thought that the smell of cooking oil would follow her into the grave.
All over the town it had happened, businesses being passed on from generation to generation, the sons, as soon as they went to school, fully sure of their inheritance. They learned to stand behind a counter with no nervousness or timidity, to open their shop in the morning with ease and pride. In their late teens, they settled into the rhythms of middle age.
She noticed that Gerard had dropped most of his school-friends and this seemed to have made him more cheerful, almost hearty. What he loved more than anything was meeting one of the other shop-owners from the town and stopping to talk with them, making jokes, exchanging banter, or discussing a new development or a piece of news. She knew that the personality he displayed was brittle and invented. It would slowly harden; over a number of years he would grow into himself.
She watched him. From her bedroom window in a late spring afternoon she found herself taking him in as he moved from the shop, where he had dropped his school-bag, across the square, smiling at everyone. He was open and friendly, at home here. She noticed Dan Gifford coming out of his electrical shop; she observed Gerard spotting him too, and making a beeline over to him. As the two of them started to talk and laugh, she saw Gerard putting his hands in his pocket and sticking out his belly. The expression on his face was knowing and comfortable, mildly amused.
As she began to dress herself and prepare for the evening’s work, she knew that this next battle would be the hardest, but she had no doubt about her own determination. Within a month or two, she would have a For Sale sign placed on her property in the Monument Square. She was ready, she thought, for a new beginning.
ONE SATURDAY, before things became busy in the chip shop, she told the three children that she was selling and they were moving to Dublin. She tried not to be too precise about when they would sell, or when they might go to Dublin, but she made sure to say that they would all have to go to new schools, which, she hoped, might make them understand that this was real. The girls asked various questions about where they would live and what they would do. She tried to be very direct with them so they would believe that she had everything worked out. Gerard’s face grew red, but he did not speak. Later, when he came to help out in the shop, he behaved as though nothing unusual had happened.
The girls made jokes about the move, and asked further questions over the weeks that followed. They found out about schools and even wrote to one girls’ school and received a brochure in the post. Gerard did not mention it, and grew grimly silent if the subject were raised in his presence. Nancy realized that he had told no one because he had no one to tell as he was no longer very friendly with any of his schoolmates and he was not close enough to any of the businessmen in the town to whom he looked up so much.
She saw Frank Wadding a few times and left him in charge of getting the right auctioneer to come to value the house. She was glad that the visit happened while Gerard was at school, but she knew also that it might have been better had she confronted Gerard with the auctioneer taking measurements of the rooms in the house. That evening, as they were eating, she found that she could not tell them that the auctioneer had been. It would be a way of torturing Gerard, she thought, who was still behaving as though the plans to move from the town to Dublin did not exist.
One Saturday a few weeks later, she knew as soon as he came into the house that someone had told him that she was definitely selling the business. He seemed on the verge of tears, he hardly ate anything. All his swagger was missing. He left the table early. When she was alone in the kitchen, the girls having gone to their bedroom, he came to the door and hovered just inside the room.
‘I won’t be able to work in the shop tonight,’ he said in a low voice.
‘That’s fine, Gerard.’ She turned and smiled at him. ‘There’ll be the two girls and myself, so it’ll be enough.’
He had never before missed a night when he had arranged to work.
‘They’re all talking about us selling,’ he said.
‘Is that right?’
‘I thought you were joking, just talking about selling up as a way of making us study harder, especially me,’ he said. ‘Making me feel that the business wouldn’t be here for me to fall into. I didn’t think you were serious.’
‘Who is talking about us selling?’ she asked.
‘I met a whole load of fellows, they were after being in the pub. “Your old lady is selling up,” one of them, that fellow Fonsey Nolan kept roaring. “You’ll be paying for chips yourself from now on.” ‘
‘Don’t mind him,’ she said.
‘Why would we go to Dublin? Why are we moving?’ he asked.
‘I think it’s a better place to live where you won’t get accosted like that by a group of eejits,’ she said. ‘And there are more opportunities there, for all of us.’
‘Not for me,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing there for me. I thought you were joking.’
‘You didn’t really,’ she said. ‘You’re just saying that.’
‘What are we going to do there?’ he asked.
‘You are going to get a good Leaving Cert, and so are the girls, and all three of you are going to go to university and I am going to get a job.’
‘I haven’t the slightest intention of going to university,’ he said.
‘It will be a great chance for you,’ she said.
‘Did you not hear what I said?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t the smallest intention of going to university. I hate studying. So what about that?’
‘We’ll see,’ she said.
‘We won’t see,’ he replied.
‘You can’t work here all your life,’ she said. ‘It’s not a business for anyone your age. You have to go to other places, see the world a bit.’
‘And have nothing to come back to?’
‘When you’re older you’ll be grateful for this,’ she said.
‘Well, I can tell you now that I will never be grateful. I can guarantee you that now. Grateful that I’m going to belong nowhere, have nowhere, have nothing? That’s a good one, all right!’
He was still close to tears.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘it isn’t yours to sell. It was left to us.’
‘Oh, it’s mine all right,’ she said.
‘My father …’ he began.
‘Don’t start that,’ she said. ‘Don’t start that, Gerard.’
‘If Daddy knew what you were doing.’
‘I said, don’t start.’
‘God, he’ll be looking down on us now!’ he said.
‘I have to go and work,’ she said.
‘God, if Daddy saw you now!’ he said.
She walked by him and found the two girls who worked in the chip shop already there, the first oil of the evening almost hot. She told them she would be back in a while and walked out into the square.
At first she did not know where she wa
s going. Most of the shops were closing, and the traffic was slow. She found herself moving from window to window of every shop, at first examining what was for sale as a way to distract herself, but then, more than anything, noticing her own reflection in the windows, different each time, depending on whether the shop window was lit or dark. She looked at herself as though a stranger, someone gazing back at her, neither sympathetic nor glad to see her, almost hostile. That look calmed her down, but she still carried on from window to window, the clothes shop, the butcher’s, the newsagent’s, all the familiar places, her face, familiar too, growing softer, more relaxed in each reflection. She would walk around the town, she thought, as if she might never get the chance again. And on Monday she would have the sign put up saying that the business was for sale. She was safe, she thought. She could go home now and begin the night’s work. It would, she imagined, be a busy night, especially later. She would need all her energy.
Famous Blue Raincoat
LISA NOTICED THAT one of the boxes of old records in the corner of the garage had been moved to the side, leaving a square of light-coloured cement. She asked Ted if he had touched the records but he shrugged and said that he had forgotten the boxes were even there.
‘They’re no use anyway,’ he said. ‘The needle on the player is blunt and I don’t think it can be replaced.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
When Luke came home from school she thought of asking him if he knew about the box, but he was difficult sometimes if he felt that he were being criticized or accused of something, so she did not mention it. She put the box back where it had been and then was busy for days in the dark room developing old negatives for the new scanner which had been set up for her in the spare room. Soon, she thought, this liquid and this old process would be obsolete, this dark and concentrated space would no longer be her domain, and she would have to live in brightness. She hoped to postpone that day for as long as she could.
She worked now for the Employers’ Union when they needed press conferences and functions photographed, but she was best known for her work from the folk boom and the early days of Dublin rock; her photographs of Geldof as a wild young star and, later, of Bono as a raw and beautiful teenager still appeared regularly in magazines all over the world.
DAYS LATER, she noticed that some records had been taken from the box and left to the side. It was then that Ted told her that Luke and a friend had begun to burn CDs so perhaps they had taken some old records for their project. She smiled to herself at the parallel currents in the house, records being put on CD, negatives on disc. The idea would horrify Luke since he did nothing at anyone else’s prompting and followed no one’s example, least of all that of his mother who, at more than fifty years old, must seem, she thought, like an old woman to him. Later, when she remembered the records, she went into the garage and examined the old boxes, flicking through the records which Luke had put aside, wondering for a second why he had removed so few, leaving old classics untouched. She stood up, however, when she realized what was missing from the boxes and from the pile he had put aside, what he must have been looking for. She shuddered and turned away.
When Luke had gone to bed, she told Ted that she had found the three albums in his room, the ones he had taken from the box, with her photograph and that of her sister on the first and the whole band, all four of them, on the other two. The years when she toured and sang with the band and made the three albums were seldom mentioned between them, so that even she herself had come to half-believe that she had only taken photographs during that time. It was easy, she knew, even in Dublin, to become someone else, to move to the suburbs and see no one from her life as a singer, except in a bus queue or at the airport or at a parent—teacher meeting, and it was easy to wave and smile and pretend that too much time had passed for any of the intimacies or friendships of the old days to matter or mean anything.
Ted viewed the world with tolerance and mildness. He disliked trouble as others might dislike a bad smell or a sharp pain. She knew that he would smile and nod were she to tell him that she did not want to hear her own voice or that of her sister, nor to hear the band again, if she could help it. And therefore they would have to find a way to explain to Luke that he could burn whatever songs he pleased from the boxes of LPs, except songs from the band of which his mother had been a member.
‘When you explain it to him,’ Ted said, ‘maybe you’ll explain it to me too.’
‘You understand it perfectly,’ she said.
‘We can’t just tell him to put the records back,’ he replied.
WHEN ON Saturday morning Luke came to her to look for money, she spent a long time searching for her bag and fumbling with her purse. She thought of giving him more than usual as a way of making him listen to her without becoming upset, but she realized that would be a mistake. She asked him if he had listened to the albums.
‘They’re amazing,’ he said. ‘I can fit them on two CDs.’
His expression, when he spoke, was bright and innocent.
‘Ian Redmond’s dad has one of them, so I’ve heard that loads of times, but I’ve never heard the others.’
‘You never mentioned that to me,’ she said.
‘Dad said you were embarrassed about them, but there’s no reason to be, although the sound on the first one is pretty poxy. You know you weren’t bad.’
‘It’s nice of you to say so.’
‘I mean it. You weren’t Janis Joplin or anything, but it was original. I mean, for the time.’
‘Thanks, Luke.’
‘I don’t know why you stopped,’ he said.
‘To have you, Luke,’ she replied.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I checked the dates. You stopped long before you had me.’
She faced him for a second, holding his gaze, which had become, as he spoke, more masculine and confident. She handed him a twenty-euro note.
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’ll have the CDs ready next weekend when Ian’s dad lets us use his burner.’
‘I don’t think I want to hear them, Luke.’
‘You weren’t that bad. I promise. You should hear some of the other stuff Ian’s dad plays, like the Irish Rovers and the Wolfe Tones.’
He smiled at her and took his coat and left the house, shouting a last farewell as he shut the door.
THE BAND HAD one great season, and there was no recording of that, she thought; there might be photographs which could show how young and happy they were, and some memories of people who had been in the audience. The band, one reviewer had commented in the year when they arrived on the English scene, were better than Pent-angle, as good as Steeleye Span and on the way to outreaching Fairport Convention. This came to be a mantra for them, something which made them laugh. Dinners, roadies and English towns all came to be graded in similar terms. They had played support for all of these groups, and Lisa remembered with fondness the time when one of their roadies had been her boyfriend. Slowly, however, they had begun to top the bill and the album they could have made at the end of that first touring season would have been their best, she thought, could have made their name. If someone had recorded them live in the spring and summer of 1973, she thought, the record would have embarrassed no one.
They began in Dublin as two sisters singing, Julie with the deep voice and deep feeling, Lisa with a thinner, reedier voice, depending always on her sister’s guidance despite a larger range and flexibility, a more sparkling musical intelligence. It was strange how different they were, how Julie held herself apart, hating the flirting and easy association; she became skilled at disappearing to her room once the real energy of the night filled the rest of them with longing.
Julie was hard-headed about money; later, when the band was formed, she planned the tours and worked out the costs; she was ambitious; she held grudges. Lisa, just two years younger, took everything lightly. She did not suffer much from period pains or the monthly tensions which were capable of reducing Julie to real depress
ion and irritability, even sudden changes in the timbre of her voice.
It was Julie who went in search of the two male singers, dragging her sister to clubs and pubs where music was played, watching the young musicians as an expert on bloodstock would watch a horse race. Julie did not know what she was looking for, but not glamour, she explained, no pretty boys allowed, no white polo necks, or guys smelling of Brut, and no smilers either, she added.
‘I don’t mind even if they’re smelly,’ she said. ‘We’ll deal easily with that.’
Phil, the first new member of the band, was obvious. He was from a family of musicians; at twenty-one, he seemed to know an infinite number of songs and variations of songs. His voice was not great, but his guitar-playing was agile and original. He had, they realized, a way of changing a song, moving a tempo, varying a chord, and he could work with their voices as an arranger, and he knew more about systems of recording than anyone else they had met. But it was his shoes that decided Julie. It was clear that he had owned them, and no other pair, for years, but he had never, it appeared, bothered to polish them.
Shane, the second new member, who would complete the band, was unlikely. He was Northern. His accent, Julie said, was repulsive. He hated folk music, he said, but loved jazz and blues. He only hung around the folk venues, he said, because he liked drinking. His voice was high, he could sing in Irish, he played the mandolin and the bouzouki, although he claimed to despise both of them. He made no effort to charm the sisters, although he wanted the job, and that was almost enough for Julie. She insisted that it was his greasy hair and scruffy clothes which helped make up her mind. At their first rehearsal Shane informed the other three that he was in the band to combat their tendency to sing like Peter, Paul and Mary.
They began to work in an upstairs room off Molesworth Street. The two new members liked each other, but they talked only music, trying out introductions, choosing songs, fixing beats and tempos as though Julie and Lisa were not there, and then slowly setting things up for the sisters so that everything in the end led to their voices. All four of them drank afterwards in Kehoe’s or the Lincoln, but never for long. The boys always had somewhere else to go. In those early months as they prepared for their first concert and first recording, they did not become friends.
