What Are You Like

by Anne Enright

  I have all the words I want, but they are in the wrong part of the room. I have a new ribbon under my collar, I have a suitcase with a rope to tie it by. I am in hell now and it is full of words. You write the people and the peonies are penises and everything is like, like and everything is because.

  I live in Katie’s house. I live on my own. I run down to the shops and I keep running until I hit the sea and I keep running until I am in the middle of the sea and I keep running until I am on dry land again and I keep running until I hit the sea.

  I live in Berts’ eyes.

  I see my children that I cannot see. I see my mother clutching her old bones that hurt her and taking them apart and putting them back on the other way around. I am in hell. My mother is swinging by Valty’s rope, he is making nooses in Dagenham, Leeds, London Town. He is swinging and leaving, swinging and leaving, Valty is in a madhouse in London Town, in a white jacket, first born, the bullocks not fed, the dirty things he says. I live in his house. He has a wife. His children talk like this – Nyar nar nar nar darn’tya nyar. Valty is clever, I am clever in my own way, he is an orthopaedic surgeon. He breaks bones, for a living. He stitches them up.

  Here is Berts. Hello, Berts. Berts has a zip in his skin from his belly-button down. He pisses little babies out of his tip. He unpeels his banana right back and there is a child asleep – oh – do not wake the child, curled up in Berts, curled up in Berts’ penis, the white child so soft and waxy, curved in sleep.

  I am not dead. I am in hell. And I blame the feet that walk over me.

  Mama Dada Valty Ambrose Katie Brendan John Berts Berts Berts

  I blame the feet that walk over me.

  8

  The Gap

  BERTS SPENT THE day by the window.

  Evelyn brought some clothes in for him, and he put them on over his pyjamas. Laura came back from the shops with cigarettes, without being asked. The pile of butts grew on the floorboards, and from time to time there was tea.

  At three o’clock, the taxi pulled up and he saw his daughter getting out, twice. He saw his daughter pay the driver while his daughter put her hand to her throat and looked at the house. He saw his daughter walk up the path while his daughter shut the gate. He saw his daughter smile at his daughter, who was also smiling. He saw his daughter look his way, while his daughter looked his way, and he saw one of them nod hello.

  And the place he had put his wife disappeared. The place where she had stayed for twenty-five years, speaking to him sometimes, or sometimes smiling, sometimes looking at him with a malice that would never end – a sexual malice that he turned to in his sleep – that place just vanished. She was dead. For years he had swindled himself with memories and with forgetting. For years he had allowed a gap in his head where she could live undisturbed, and now it was not even she who was disturbed, but nothing at all. It was not even she who fled, as the gap closed, but no one at all.

  He turned to the room; the wallpaper hanging off in strips, the carpet gone.

  The day the diagnosis came through, she took out the hoover and did the whole house. He could see her, over by the mantelpiece. She was wearing a blue blouse, with a collar that collapsed in gentle folds from her neck. And there was something about the lightness of the cloth, the gentleness with which it fell, that made him imagine her sweating, just there, between her collar-bone and her breasts, as she worked from room to room. The hoover was reluctant, the furniture confused it. And it broke Berts’ heart to see the way she wrestled with it – all that suction. And the bag – full of dirt. Pulling it all in, sucking the carpet into place, stroking the floor; hoovering between life and death, between the sofa and the wall.

  How long had he lived here, in the dead self of his wife?

  I have been living in a grave, he thought, I have been living nowhere at all.

  The doorbell rang. And the hoover of his wife turned around and sucked itself up. The house of his wife turned itself inside out for him. The house of his wife flipped over in space; with the wallpaper showing on the outside and the furniture drifting into the garden, and the lampshades floating off the roof; vomiting Berts out on to the road.

  Like, Like

  ‘ONE,’ SAID ROSE, and held it up for the shop assistant to see.

  ‘One,’ said the shop assistant, and looked at her.

  The thing that amazed them both afterwards was the time it all took. They saw each other and then they turned away.

  Rose started trying on the suit, and thought about the woman in the corner, who looked just like her. The Irish version. It was true, she thought, she did not exist. She was just a slip of the pen that had gone on to live an entire life. Rose Cotter, Marie Delahunty. Everything she had done – the hard choices, the willed compassion, her difficult, educated heart – all a joke. No wonder they had given her away. They had another one, just the same.

  Maria looked at the woman who was trying on the black linen suit (it would crease, but perhaps she could make it crease with style) and thought – it is the girl in the photograph. Or rather, the girl in her mind. It is the girl in the white jeans, the girl in the little black dress. It is the one who does not have to care.

  Anything was possible, even then. But when Rose took off her sweater, Maria saw two veins running down the inside of her elbow, where one should have been.

  Rose put on the jacket.

  ‘That really suits you.’

  ‘Do you think?’

  They each took two steps. Who was it raised her hand first? Perhaps it was Rose. Who was it laughed? When they turned to the mirror there were four of them. Which was when Sinead, the manager, came in and said,

  ‘Tracey! Mairead! Come here! Jesus Christ.’

  Berts turned from the window to face his two daughters, worried for his heart. He did not want to be forgiven.

  But they sat on the sofa and seemed to ignore him. An equal flush of red spread from under their collars, blotching each neck.

  The girl on the left looked over at him as a stranger might, slyly out of the corner of her eye. Berts felt the unfairness of it and shifted in his chair. He did not know this person. He might know her, but he did not know the person she was. He said,

  ‘So, “Rose”, is it?’ and the two girls looked towards him, as one.

  And so they sat in the ripped-out sitting room. Evelyn tried to make tea, but kept forgetting when the kettle was boiled. She could not stop looking. She could not even hear what they were saying. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue and Berts was astonished, again, by women. How they have no choice.

  They finally got their tea, and drank it from china cups with a pattern of irises on the side. Berts sat in one armchair, Evelyn sat in the other. Laura sat on the edge of the fireplace and hugged her knees. The twins sat on the sofa, turning into each other, now and then, and then back out to the room. The fact that there were two of them made it somehow easy. They could be happy and sad at the same time. When one smiled the other let her eyes drift around the room.

  Rose spoke carefully, telling them about her life. She was shy as she sipped her tea, but every time she looked at Maria, she shook her head and laughed. Or they grazed one another by accident and looked, shocked, at their hands.

  Even their voices were the same pitch. You would think Maria’s was lower, you would think that Rose was lighter and more crisp, but no, they hit the same note precisely when Evelyn said, ‘This is amazing,’ and they both chimed,

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  Everyone paused.

  Evelyn gathered herself together then and spoke for Berts. She apologised for him, and he did not like her tone. She told the story of their mother’s death, while he sat with his pyjamas sticking out of the ends of his trousers, saying,

  ‘Right,’ from time to time. ‘Right.’

  ‘I’d like to visit her grave,’ said Rose. It was a very blunt thing to say. It made her look English again, and strange. Berts was conscious of what he had lost. He would have to earn her back if he could, but
he didn’t know how. He turned to the window and said,

  ‘Your mother. Your mother loved that tree.’

  ‘Did she plant it?’

  ‘No, but she always liked it.’

  There was nothing about the tree to remark upon, but they looked out at it anyway.

  Evelyn said quietly, ‘We should tell the others.’

  ‘What others?’

  ‘Your sisters. Joan.’

  ‘Joan knows,’ he said.

  Maria looked at him then. ‘Auntie Joan?’

  ‘What about the rest of them?’ said Evelyn, and Berts said, ‘Ah, for God’s sake, there’s no need to tell the whole world.’

  ‘Right,’ said Maria. ‘Terrific, Da. Thanks.’ Soon after that, the twins left.

  These are the things they discovered about themselves.

  They both had a best friend at school called Emily.

  They both hated potatoes and, no matter how little they were given, always pushed their portion to the side of the plate.

  They both liked Euthymol toothpaste, Mozart, the colour blue.

  They wre both afraid of falling.

  They liked patterns, but only on other people, and neither of them could wear a skirt above the knee.

  They both had two veins on the inside of their left elbow, where one should have been.

  They had both, in their different ways, been kissed by the same boy.

  There were also the things that they did not discover.

  They both enjoyed putting in the bin bag the bag it came in.

  They both held their shoulders high when they were in an airplane, as if this might help keep it off the ground. Neither of them liked taking photographs.

  They both liked the smell of a man as much as the look of him.

  They dreamt the same dream of being lost in a crowd.

  Some of these became apparent to them over the years. Some did not. They also discovered some intriguing differences.

  Maria had better ankles, but Rose was slightly longer in the thigh.

  Rose had the poorer eyesight. Maria slept around.

  Rose had a dodgy elbow, Maria’s wrist was not to be discussed.

  Maria looked older. Though as the years went by, she seemed to halt a little, as though she were waiting for Rose to catch up.

  And they were the astonishment of everyone who met them. Rose brought Maria to Leatherhead. Her mother looked almost cheated, for a moment, and then she smiled. Her father looked from one face to the other, he looked back again. His hand dabbed back from his side. He said the most unexpected thing. He said,

  ‘Well, my dears, God is good.’

  Which made Maria uncomfortable. She did not know this man. She discovered a strange loyalty to Berts as he went on to say,

  ‘I can die happy, now.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly, Daddy,’ said Rose. And Maria said,

  ‘I’m sure you would have died happy anyway, Dr Cotter.’

  He smiled at them both, but particularly at Rose. He looked at one girl who was not his daughter, and at another girl who was not his daughter, and thought that life was a cruel bonus. He had no difficulty in telling between them, alike as they were. And he was interested to discover that he loved them both equally, though he preferred his own.

  Acknowledgements

  Many people showed me kindness and hospitality during the writing of this book. Thanks to Colm Tóibín, to Michael Loughlin and Veronica Rapalino in Barcelona; Mary and Bernard Loughlin at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig; Dr Edward King and the committee of the Heinrich Böll House, Achill; Anaig Renault of the Institut Culturelle de Bretagne, Erwan, and all at the Film Festival in Douarnenez.

  Also available from Vintage

  ANNE ENRIGHT

  The Portable Virgin

  ‘Elegant, scrupulously poised, always intelligent and, not least, original’

  Angela Carter

  ‘Introduces a new voice in Irish fiction . . . a quirky, subversive, original wit and imaginative linguistic fluency which must be interpreted as the consolidation of a new literary maturity’

  Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

  ‘In sentence after sentence as cool and clear-headed as the moment a migraine lifts, these pained, precise, disquieting stories restore to us the strangeness of the lives we follow beneath the surface of the lives we lead. The Portable Virgin is a remarkable début’

  Aidan Mathews

  ‘A great new Irish talent which we’re bound to enjoy again. I can’t wait’

  Irish Independent

  Also available from Vintage

  ANNE ENRIGHT

  The Wig My Father Wore

  ‘Mesmerising’

  Independent on Sunday

  When Stephen arrives on Grace’s doorstep and asks for a cup of tea. Grace’s life is transfigured, Stephen is an angel. A former bridge builder, he committed suicide one cold night in 1934, but now, nostalgically, he spends his nights hanging by the neck in Grace’s shower to help himself think. Madly in love, Grace’s life spirals out of control. Moving between her tacky TV show ‘Love Quiz’, her benign, bewigged and apparently mad father, and Stephen, Grace takes the pacific path from cynicism to innocence with surprising results.

  ‘A weird and wonderful treatise on communication . . . Enright beams out a vibrant and complex picture of religion, sex, love and redemption united in a celestial blue, televisual glow of wit and linguistic sedition’

  Guardian

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  Epub ISBN: 9781409020943

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Vintage 2001

  8 10 9 7

  Copyright © Anne Enright 2000

  Anne Enright has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Jonathan Cape

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  ISBN 9780099284345