Malarky

by Anakana Schofield

  —How, she said of her husband, then how does he start? Where does he begin?

  The Red-Nailed Twit lifts her right hand and indicates her left nipple.

  But missing the cue, the cue to plead for forgiveness, excuse herself to the toilet, to allow Our Woman a dignified exit, Red the Twit carried on.

  But . . . that didn’t bother me, it was his other business. At this she passed a hand around the back of herself, maybe heading lower than her kidneys, Our Woman is not entirely sure.

  The licking!

  She sucked air in, an astonished respiration, and gave a cherry-giggled smile. I’ve never met one of those before! A licker! Another cherry glint in her eyes. I thought he was doggy at first,’til it started. At first I was shocked, but I grew used to it. And here. She indicates her armpit. He was always hosing me here.

  Our Woman has sunk into perplexity. She tries to visualize her husband at the back of this woman conducting himself in this manner. Our Woman examined the new exhibit before her, the crinoline armpit.

  She was practical, Our Woman.

  —Sorry, exactly what was he putting in your armpit?

  His thing, she giggled. His dirty thing, of course.

  Our Woman tried to calculate how it might fit: oblong, side or straight.

  At first I thought he was going for me mouth . . . and I am fussy about me mouth.

  Red ceased, praise the Roman soldiers she ceased. Realized from Our Woman’s face that shock had been absorbed. Our Woman had begun her lift from the table, but the twit entreated her,

  What I done with him was wrong – very wrong. But I want you to know it was all me, all me, not your husband. Except the first time. It was him the first time, of course it was him the first time, but every time since it was me, me, me. I want you to know the Lord has taken me in and I am working hard for him and I am atoning. I volunteer. I do the flowers and the hoovering. I wash the tea towels and I want you to do me a favour.

  Our Woman offered only silence.

  Would you please forgive your husband? I want you to. He doesn’t deserve it. It was all me.

  Mere seconds and there was a rustle. The table cloth dragged suddenly away from Our Woman. Instinctively she lifted her hand as it pulled, to let it go, and thus the table cloth and the Red Twit flopped back, chair sideways over and to the floor. The attention of the room turned to the table because the pot of tea was all over Our Woman’s lap, but the focus was on the Red-Nailed Twit, she had passed out. The eejit was out cold.

  Quick they were to water and ambulance. She was around by the time the ambulance men arrived and answering their questions. Yes lightheaded. No hadn’t eaten. Fasting. 72 hours approx. A religious fast. No, no not Ramadan. Jesus. Our Lord. She’s a Christian.

  Was Our Woman, nearby mopping her legs and skirt, a relative? No, no, Our Woman shook. Would you drive this woman home? She cannot be alone and we’ve to get out and handle an angina attack out Foxford way.

  Trapped. Our Woman would, of course she would. God bless you Mrs, the ambulance man said putting his hand to the small of her back. You’re very good. You’re very good.

  —I’m not a Christian, she told him.

  Red lived in a Ballina housing estate with a faux French misspelled name. Very difficult to find. Our Woman cannot believe the cruelty: trapped in a car with a woman who has crumbled her, delivered this crushing news. Our Woman took advantage of the chance to quiz her. Where did she work? An old folks home, with a funny name, mostly nuns. Was she married? No, she could never find anyone willing to marry her. How did she meet Himself? She’d rather not say.

  Things were silent.

  Will she come in for tea? Red asked.

  Our Woman will not. Audacious, she thought, beyond audacious. Over the hills and far away nerve damage. As bold as life on Mars. As Red the Twit left, Our Woman hailed her back. How am I to believe what you’ve told me?

  Listen take it easy on yerself, just forgive him.

  —But if I am to forgive him, how will I know he did it?

  There are items of mine in your house. He took one thing each time we met.

  Red the Twit’s eyes said underwear. The international language.

  On the drive home from Ballina, with few street lamps to facilitate her, Our Woman considered crashing the car into a wall. There was a lovely black spot of a bridge, sharp and marked with the white crucifixes and moulded flowers of the other thirty taken non-deliberately in this spot. To be found mangled in a car, head to the wall or dashboard, might be easier than excavating the mind of the man who waited beyond at her kitchen table.

  It was another way for the girls in her gang and their husbands. Our Woman observed their lives tied up and in with their husbands in small, significant ways that hers lacked during those days of her marriage. A husband might look out for his wife or display inquiry about his wife or the one that touched her most was how they could offer to relieve a burden. They might lift a box for you. That would be useful. She was sure she had witnessed this, but couldn’t cite a clear example, with a name and set of knees attached. It must be enough that it happens.

  Today with Himself gone out to the fields, she wipes the inside of a cup with a tea towel, the insulting slur of a tannin streak refusing to budge at the behest of her knuckles, while she tries again to retrieve such moments. Mostly she sees couples bickering in the upstairs cafe or between the clothing rails of Dunnes Stores. The groaning guts of those men spilling over the belts of their trousers, while handles of paper bags shackle them at the wrists. The most tenderness she can find is in teenagers, a young woman with her hand vulgarly slipped into the back pocket of a young fella. There’s aggression even in the way they kiss each other so flagrantly, like they’re trying to suck the other’s gums out, like an old horse chasing a lost scrap of ginger nut biscuit down the palm of your hand and up your sleeve.

  So she cannot name them, but she’s seen these exchanges, she’s certain. That such things take place will have to do.

  And behold, here he is now, Himself, my husband, in from the field to the kitchen, pulls his chair to the table for our evening sequence. I commence my bit, quick lay of the plate afore him, and back to hover and hope. There are a series of tiny motions I await, biteen actions that if totaled indicate he’s here. Daily I must ascertain this. That steam might rise from the food, register its heat, and thus celebrate my labour in making it. That he’ll pull his cup toward him, a gesture of inclusion. Best, when he engages all things on the table. If he’ll lift the salt, the pepper, swoosh it over the food, stamp it down and immediately up with his fork, before the dip of the chin to let the scooping begin. Oh I can watch this sequence, day beyond day, for it’s only in these sole actions I know he’s here with me. And I have learnt what prevails when these actions are interrupted, I’ve met what this leads to, that day in the bar of that Bed and Breakfast, when your one, Red the Twit, approached me. All this examination, all this watching, unsettles him.

  —Sit down. What’s wrong with you standing there?

  But I am waiting, hoping for a reach, not a ride like the young ones – talking between bites of a burger at Supermacs, say. My objective is ever to avoid sitting, or passing things into his palm. Instead I must hold back to register a reach, which I’ll see because the hairs on his arm become momentarily visible beneath the sleeve of his worn cardigan. Only then can I, will I, could I, would I, sit.

  That day though there’s no stretch: eek it a second, wait now, mebbe, but no, he’s not going for the cup. He looks at me, waiting for a response. He indicates the chair opposite him. His hand willing me to sit, but that’s the very hand that must circulate around the table moving objects like a game of domestic draughts. And if I sit, those objects will be passed and passing robs me of the sequence.

  —I’ve already had mine.

  The truth is, I’m filling up on the reliable aspects of my daily life that my husband, no matter what else he does, will come home to me from the fields for his dinner,
he expects to find me here, and I rely on this expectation and these days I study it. I study it because I know there were days I missed it and I have to mull over those days. I am learning how to pay attention.

  Offensive: the offensive is to have him move the objects around the table the way I like them moved. An undertaking is what I want.

  I lift the salt and hand it towards him. To tempt the undertaking: Do you need a bit of salt mebbe? Resistance. No words. Just a wave of the auld hand and a slight shake up around the eyebrows that say go way woman. They’re dismissing the salt. No, no salt.

  And onto our second reliable sequence, he’ll dribble out a report of what did or did not take place beyond: who had cows to be moved or the trouble he was havin’ with a hose, what small repair was out of the question essential, or neither of us could carry on for a stampede of cattle would be in on top of the two of us. His voice scampers up with emphasis and insistence, like he’s instructing sailors on a boat about to sink. I can’t let it go any longer, the fence is down, the cows will be in the road, the dogs will get in at the sheep with it all down and what use will they be then? and then he mounts to the the daily conclusion yes He must head out again. Sure it’s never ending, so it is.

  —It’s never ending, I repeat for him.

  —I don’t think people have a clue how hard farmers work.

  —They. Do. Not. Three separate words I give him. Why was he telling me this? Disturbing. As if I’m not here. He’s here, I’m not. He’s out in the fields, I’m not here in the house. I’m gone from his daily activities. Am I gone?

  Every dinner concludes with him heading out again. It was one of those nights that he headed out to the fields that I lost him, so I carry on down to the gate to be certain he is where he said he’d be.

  Today, though, at the table, he’s still not speaking.

  Our Woman was worried. There hadn’t been enough movement. Too little mass, she needed objects on the table, if there was to be any hope of him shuffling them around.

  If he doesn’t want the salt, I must interest him in something else on the table. There’s to be movement on this table this evening or so help me God I’ll be forced to examine the reasons why. And I know when I start examining I’ll discover all the things I hate to hear. He had his hands up and down another and his mind was away. All day I’ve been looking at that table and visualizing the objects with the exactitude of a cricket fan before I placed them where they sit now on the tablecloth. It was deliberate, tactical, within arms length, at eye-catching corners. Why, why isn’t he taking them? He must be at something again. He must be up to his tricks. Back up Red the Twit.

  Over to the fridge – I’ve never liked the handle of it, too thin and chipped – where I remove two bottles of sauce, return, plonk them on the table, uncap the one. Will he have a drop of sauce on his potatoes?

  I’ve employed too much economy in my force, overwhelmed the table, for he knocks the vinegar over, curses as it sneaks into a puddle – bottles must be placed uncapped you see, ensuring the path of least resistance. There’s the worry he’ll rise soon when he must be seated, for if he’s up, the sequence of talk will be broke and so I strike some of the objects. Milk, milk for the tea, milk in a jug, he’d be comforted by the jug. The blue stripy jug. He’d pick it up. Surely to God he’ll pick up the jug.

  No.

  Not today.

  Today he’s utterly indifferent. Rejects the milk and cracks his fork on the plate, displacing knife to tablecloth. I maneuver it off. He lifts the bottle and begins reading it. Might do, will it do, it isn’t primary movement, it’s accidental, secondary, but it’s something.

  —Isn’t this queer stuff? I’ve never understood the point of it at all.

  —Will you have bread? How about a bit of bread? I have to get off the questions, they’re upsetting my sequence. A slide, breadbin open, slice to table before he can refuse. Plated and I’m happy. He accepts it, tugs the plate a touch, he’s going for the knife. Glory, glory be.

  —Give it here to me ’til I wipe it with a warm cloth, it’ll slice the butter easier.

  Unity between knife and butter; I didn’t want him to refuse either. Deflect him to the jam.

  It’s on the round table for the table is round, our only table is round, why have we a round table when a square one could accommodate more variety of bottles, but distant it is, that jar by the wall.

  —Jam?

  The jam, hand to jar, unlidded as swift, assumed a sudden position by his elbow before he could answer. Jam, I think, take it, take the fecker.

  —Yes, yes um.

  Absentmindedly, he’s on the jam, upon the bread and folds it into his mouth and chomps and – yes! – the arms and hands push the jars and bottles about.

  —I’ll come with you, I say.

  It’s over to me.

  The third squeeze of our sequence where I have the possibility to deliver news about what someone said today in the kitchen, either a visitor, or heard on Radio Mid West, but I foul up. Instead of introducing snippets from the locality, which would keep him at the table and aide the precious movements I’ve waited all day on, I move straight to being useful. These moments – moments I’m only assured of once a day, for lunch is rarely taken at the table, either on the lap or down the field – have been given the shove.

  —You could stand at the gate; but you wouldn’t want to get your feet cold, Himself offers.

  He’s obsessed with the temperature of my feet. Sometimes in bed he’ll ask are they cold, and if I say they are, away he’ll go, down to the bathroom and pull a towel to put over them. He never inquires of the rest of me, only the feet, the feet. When I die, he’ll keep my feet on a bookshelf or at the top of the cupboard.

  There will be no standing at the gate, not at all. I’ll be down lifting and moving and shifting and he knows it. If he’s honest, it’s poorly built for farming he is, and it’s me who’s the sturdier of the two of us. I could grab the mallet from him and bang a stake before he’d have the words to ask.

  I’ve heard him remark to other fellas that on his oath she’s stronger than him or any two fellas. He once confided his fear to me that he’d get injured, become useless, and I’d be done with him.

  Today I hear the words of a guilty man, a guilty-thinking man, who within his carryon has never warmed nor warned to the realization that I am capable of the same tricks as him.

  You worry too much about Jimmy, he tells me. Sometimes I catch him examining the back or side of my head, no doubt he’s wondering whether my thoughts might enter the same register as his. But I’ve no need to examine the side of his head, it’s all available to me on the table, each day in the manner he does or does not pull the cup, lift or lower the bottles, and the way he eats his dinner. I can tell everything about him from such simple movements. And the fool never grasps it.

  12 hours, her eyes streamed uncontrollable, she sniffed into the dim light, the rain, the knock at the door – those eyes continued to stream, resisted it all, her tears did not desist at interruption nor embarrassment. Real tears, solid silver ones.

  She stared at the sink, yellow glare on the porcelain. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been there, but when she moved to the window it had turned dark. He had not come home. What a profound waste of sniffling.

  Appetite gone. She could not imagine food. In her head, she tried to see a plate of potatoes and a piece of chicken, but nothing. She tried to swallow a cracker but it scraped the back of her throat and she had to spit it out.

  How long could this last? Hours, hours and hours with no desire to eat, and her legs fizzy from the lack of food and her body showing every kind of sign, yet again her head would not let her eat. She would never feel hungry again. Her appetite amputated out of her brain.

  Soup, sips of soup and that was it. Watery, dreadful, powdered, tomato from a clumpy packet was all she could swallow. Yet she must make his dinner.

  She gave herself 3 days. Then it, all this, must end.

&nb
sp; She lay and thought. She thought and lay. And thought some more and this was what she thought about. She thought about the fact she did not know what she was supposed to do. She’d not been trained for this. She thought about the fact she lay in a bed while her husband had lain in another bed. She thought that she could lay with the thought her life had come to this, yet this was exactly what she’d imagined it might be during those years of waiting. Her very worst picture, that, of people who live together rolling along, rolling through the century and no matter how they try or don’t try, wake up decades later to the realization they’d been quietly making each other miserable. And she was surprised at how unsurprised she was.

  She was miserable, but quietly accepting. She was miserable, quiet, but accepting.

  Should she wail and call out? Should she go in and fight for a droopy-eyed man? A man no woman in her right mind should want. Yet there was always a woman to run to: How was that? And now what was expected of her? She understood what was required to clean her house, to clothe her children; she did not understand the version of life that had presented itself yesterday in the B&B. She didn’t recognize the hat, nor face, nor fingers on it. She hadn’t been trained for this. She’d been trained for marriage and funeral and baptism and weeding and shifting and turning, but not wondering. This wondering was new for her. The wondering of why she didn’t understand how to wonder. She did wonder but she was not officially certain how to do the wondering. Should she wonder passively, quietly, while stuffing a chicken in the quiet enclaves of herself? Or should she wonder loudly, spewing and cajoling him for information and revelation and try to trap his fingers in a door until he’d tell her all of it? All of it was what she wanted, in all its awful sordidness, and to be awful it would need to be sordid, but she knew he’d never give her anything but the hint of it and this was what sickened her.