Apparently they claimed they found her in Beirut’s bed. She refuted it.
—A lot of nonsense, she said. I wouldn’t get out of the bed and leave my slippers behind. I am careful about my feet. Ask my husband when he comes, he’ll tell you how cold my feet get that I couldn’t let them escape out of socks and slippers. I never went near him and I don’t hear a complaint out of him. Go on and ask him!
Beirut said she never came near him.
They could do nothing about it.
She was surprised when Beirut’s visitor came. A squat woman, wearing a headscarf, who waves her hands plenty and keeps up a long stream of rabid speculating that bounces wall to wall around the ward. She calls him Martin John1 and Our Woman decides it’s not a good name for him.
—Oh Martin John, whatever you do don’t talk to them, don’t get familiar, you’re always getting yourself on friendly terms with the wrong types.
She’s glancing, his visitor is darting glances across. But Our Woman just smiles and thinks of hills and bakeries and gold-sprayed shoes on the end of sun-tanned feet.
—They’ve a great colour to them, Beirut calls out ignoring the stream out of his visitor, the women in Beirut because they’re not stuck indoors the whole day the way we are.
—Nurse, nurse, nurse. His visitor shrieks. She crosses herself and shrieks again. He’s off agin. Nurse could you stop him before he does any more damage to himself. Can you give him something to stop it? He’s off agin on Bayroot. The Lord save us from it. I don’t want him goin’ on about the wimmin agin.
She’s a headscarf tied around her, that’s slipping, and has now sunk to the bottom of her hair. Patches of her hair are thinned and gone. No wonder, Our Woman thinks, no wonder he’s gone mad for the women of Beirut, sure look at the state of her. When the visitor finally leaves, Our Woman watches the back of her legs, which are encased into dark, dignified stockings, that don’t disguise the angry, bulging veins of her left leg and the drag of that foot. There’s something very angry about that foot, Our Woman thinks.
He’s very quiet for a while, but the sniffing shows he’s upset.
—She doesn’t like it when I talk about Beirut. It’s why they’ve put me in here. But I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it. Are ya a-mother yerself? She doesn’t understand. I’d a beautiful time in Beirut, but I am not to talk about it anymore. Would you do that?
—I wouldn’t. I would not. My own son was in Afghanistan and if he came back I would stay up for days to hear his stories.
—Is that right? Tell me, tell me everything you know about Afghanistan. Tell me all of it.
—I don’t know much, Our Woman says. I don’t know anything at all. She breaks off.
—Would he write your son?
—Not really, her voice begins to trail. It’s very hard. Sure I’ve nothing to go on.
Spain, in the next bed, is angry.
—Youse are too lowd. Youse are too fookin lowd.
Spain turns over and pulls his sheet up to his ears.
Our Woman’s learnt not to interrupt, just to let Beirut carry on. For if she interrupts he’s back to the beginning again, back to the golden shoes and the headscarves. She hopes he’ll say something about the vegetables in Beirut or whether they take hoovering seriously.
The only question she asks is does he know anything about Afghanistan?
—I do, he says. The bread is very good there. A flat bread it is. There’s a lot of tribal problems. If she’s planning a holiday he recommends Beirut.
—Does he know there’s a war on there?
—No, I hadn’t heard that. It musta started since I am in this place.
—No it’s been several years, she says. Since the planes in America. It started after the planes.
—That was a terrible business, he says before raising the perplexing question with her of whether it rains in Beirut. Would you think it rains there? Would ya?
—Arra it must.
—You’re right, you’re absolutely right. It did rain when I was there, but it’s not a rain you’d be disappointed in, the way you would an English or an Irish rain. It’s not a rain that would get ya down.
My hip is stiff and painful now. I might never get up from here. This could be it. Over and out. It helps to think about Beirut. I’ll go back over it again to keep the cold from creeping in on me.
Beirut consistently has only the one visitor – a woman – she learns is his mother. The mother keeps her head close to his ear and whispers instructions at him from the moment she arrives to the moment she leaves. He turns away from her on his side and she must bend over him to be heard. Sometimes he lets a bellow out of him and the nurses come running and his mother pleads that they might give him something to send him back to himself. Send him back to me, his mother pleads. He’s on about Beirut agin. On the days the Mother visits, he sleeps a great deal and it’s very inconvenient for Our Woman who longs for him to tell her of the dogs and daylight of Beirut.
They’re moving Beirut and Our Woman’s distressed. They’re moving him she is certain because they do not want her to have the information that he is here to give her. They are moving Beirut to punish her. The way Jimmy was took to punish her. Or was it she gave Jimmy away. Whatever it was it was done to punish her. When they come to take her vitals, she doesn’t look at the nurse. Every time they check her, they seem to be extracting information about Beirut. Seep by seep by seep. I won’t look at them anymore, she decides, and they’ll get nothing from me. When Bina arrives they say Our Woman’s outta sorts today. Bina winks at her. You’re doing great, she says.
I only wanted a chat with him and he wouldn’t answer. If I went over there at all it was to check he was still breathing. At night the nurses do crossword puzzles. They wouldn’t notice if you died sure.
Now she’d found Beirut, she was happy to stay. She pleaded that they keep her. I am a danger, she said. I don’ know if I am coming or going.
Dispatched home and the girls said it was great to have her back and she looked mighty and a bit of sleep and she’d be grand.
—I want to go back, she said again and again. All the way home.
Bina winked at her. Keep it up, she smiled. Its exactly what they want to hear.
I only chat with him. Do you hear me? Beirut I only wanted a chat with you. Just a chat. They made an awful fuss about me and Beirut. It was on account of his mother. They’re always moaning about cuts and patients on trolleys. I’ll tell them how to fix the healthcare system: leave the likes of me and Beirut to ourselves, never mind your meddling. Leave us on a trolley side by side and let us alone.
It was hard to tell was it me or was it Beirut made them nervous? Each time Beirut’s mother visited, his situation got worse. It could take me hours to get sense outta him and that’s why I shouted at her. Don’t let them tell you otherwise, for they will, oh God they will. They have it all typed out. It’s inside an envelope. That’s what my husband said. Beirut’s mother could prosecute me for abuse, he said. I told him go way outta that. I said it was rubbish. He didn’t fool me. I saved his life, I thought. You know it, I know it and Beirut knows it.
—You can’t prosecute someone for having a chat, I erupted.
—Oh you can, you most certainly can, my husband said. It was then I knew he was madder than I and I should give up the hospital bed and let him into it.
Yet when I got outta there I knew I must behave and not alarm my husband the way I had this recent spell. I could sorta see him bewildered by meself and Beirut. It was then I understood Beirut would always be found and I was right, see, here, now, if I’d made it to the Blue House, obviously I woulda found him and not just him, Jimmy besides.
Jimmy knew it, it was why he told me take my own good time to tell of his dying. He knew well I’d be busy looking after Beirut ’til then.
It’s beautiful when it all makes sense, so it is. Occasionally it makes sense, just for a moment.
My husband did not want me to tell the d
octors what I had done that upset me so. He said the stress of my son going to the army was the cause. He said I’d been talking a lot about horses but there was no harm done from it. He wanted to pin it all on Jimmy leaving to the army, when wasn’t it he and I who caused him, even forced him to go.
I just ignored Himself and told the hospital all of it so they’d keep me there opposite Beirut. I told them every scrap of it. I told them exactly what I wanted to do with Halim and how I intended to do it. I told them how Halim refused. I told them how I still found a way to go on and do it. I told them I’d do it all again in the morning. They wrote it down. They wrote it down like I was only listing the ingredients on a Kit Kat. Then after me telling them all that, it didn’t make them one bit bothered about me in the way I wanted them to be bothered. It provoked the opposite. The worse I behaved the happier they were to send me home. Beirut was impeccable and he got to stay.
They’re all the same they tell you they want to hear something, then you tell them, their ears fall off and they prostrate themselves onto the floor pleading with you to stop.
Since then I learnt to ask three times if people want to know things. Then I ask a fourth time and warn them of the implications. Then I tell them. I spare them no single detail, no single moment and they grow pale despite their protestations they want to hear. So if I did anything, it was that I simply told Beirut’s mother that her every visit was driving him demented and it might be better for the pair of them if she ceased and desisted. I do not remember telling her it might be better for the two of them if she took and died. Neither do I remember offering to shoot her. Though I believe this has been typed up and recorded as coming from my mouth and is inside the envelope.
I could not tell if she did not like it. I was desperate to consult Beirut on two things I needed to know: had he seen any soldiers, any American uniforms in Beirut, might he have seen Jimmy somehow and I wanted his opinion on horses and tried to get it. But his mother pulled the curtain around his bed and if I heard rightly she commenced beating him around the head and I saved his life.
—She’s killing him nurse, that witch is in there killing him, she is battering him dead. Shortly after that Beirut was moved again and my wanderings began.
I agree I shrieked. I did shriek alright. You’re disturbing the patients and when you disturb the others you go to isolation. But you know they didn’t take me. They took Beirut. Then the talk changed to sending me home.
A degree of wandering would be essential if I was to find my way to the things I wanted to find. Jimmy. Beirut. The wandering began at Beirut. In those wards that are nothing to boast of, so who wouldn’t be wandering in them?
Bread, bread, bread. Beirut, Beirut, Beirut. I told you not to come out here. My hip is grown so stiff I might never move from here again.
Episode 17
Arra what about? How long have I lain here? What am I thinking? Has my brain gone on holiday to France? The phone, why the phone of course. The Áine mobile.
To call would be to startle, to text would convey less alarm. But who? Who can be trusted not to serve her up to them in Ballinasloe. There’s only Bina. And Bina, who believes everyone is listening to her, has no mobile, but there’s her son. There’s the son of Bina, the way there’s the son of God. Except he’s not Bina’s son, he’s her neighbour’s son because Bina said the thought of having children gave her the shivers and she’d never give into the shivers and anyway the fella beside her, the son of her neighbour, him who she never names, is like a son to her.
We’ve an understanding, he and I, is all she’ll say. The speculation is she buys him drink for his trouble. Bina has taken the pledge. He’s drinking for the two of us, is all she’ll say. Our Woman texts the son of Bina with her left hand, very difficult in the light and circumstances, grateful for a man held hostage to his thirst.
Stuck in the Get Bina to come up wud ya Hurry now. Good man.
7 mins until she has a reply.
Who are the fuc are ya?
Jus get Bina wud ya. In trubl. Urgent. D ya hear?
It’s another ten minutes or more. The phone rings and she can hear Bina confused about what to push on the phone and the young fella sayin’ push nuttin jus’ speak. Inhales, exhales, glory be to God and she’ll be up and by Christ she’ll bring nobody, only this lad here for we’ll never hear the end of it and sure we’d never see you agin. It’ll be Ballinasloe if this gets out. Put your face down in the mud and don’t let your eyes catch the light, Bina says. The phone goes dead.
I could not blame my husband the first time he incarcerated me for I was indeed behaving strange. I was up to hijinks with Halim and mebbe it was that sent me tumbling. Himself knew it, I knew it, but he was clever, he tried to get me into that hospital without them knowing it. Except I went ahead and told them.
—My husband saw a young man pulling at himself on my doormat and that is why I am here.
He told them I told him that my son was dead, only he wasn’t dead.
I recall the day my husband came home to find me flying up and down the kitchen. It was a pity. If he’d been out looking for the trailer he never woulda come across me. If it hadn’t been raining. But in retrospect he delivered me up to Beirut, the greatest thing any fella did for me.
I can trace my first swing to official misbehavior in the days that followed Halim’s issuing of the ‘you’re a dirty old woman’ words. I could huff and sigh oh sure I don’t know what came over me, but I know exactly what came over me, the exhalation of mounting frustration at the peculiar carry on of the two males, who were plodding around the circumference of my weekly life – and for that matter in both cases, with differing levels of enthusiasm, my aging cervix.
The thing people don’t realize about patchwork women like me is how given to exasperation we are. On the surface, we fuss over the cleanliness of a work surface, or kitchen counter top, we notice the scum around the bath, we may, the most desperate amongst us, brasso the door handles each week, but do not for a millisecond misbelieve that as we are doing this undulating task we are not awash with rage and salty sentiment the likes of which would sting the eyes out of the most coarse rumped pig. So this week as I moved through my cleaning I, as usual, lifted the dustpan and brush, noticed the line of grime to the side of the range, wondered how the mounting empire of crumbs and hair and guck held a weekly, uninterrupted meeting between the grooves of Ireland’s best cleaned floor lino, and as I tackled this minor point of kitchen cleaning philosophy I was lifted and found myself swung to the far end of my kitchen in a gondola like sweep that I could not explain it’s deliverance, but deliver it did for my hands were banging the back of the broom on the light switch: it had actually flung me the length of the room. I was also smashing the knuckles on my hand. I put a stop to it, by flinging open the kitchen press and smacking off the hot water and heat. A freezing environment would do more for mental clarity. I threw the brush hard at the window, it cracked, it certainly cracked. I took off one of my socks, draped it on the door handle, took off the other of my socks placed it on the mat, removed my vest and underwear left them in the middle of the kitchen table. I went to bed, naked, except for my woollen skirt.
In bed, still naked, except for the skirt, now itching my thighs, I was forced to roll it up to become a thick, bulgy belt. In bed, I considered what had caused this tremendous swing. Was I angry? Indeed I was not. Was it the words dirty old woman had caused it? Indeed it was. In bed, I had the thrilling feeling that I was now so old and beyond them, they’d never, none of them, no young buck like Halim, no old relic like my husband, neither catch me, nor understand me. In bed, I shouted aloud I am not a bit afraid of the lot of ye. In bed, I yelped to myself (like you’d yelp if you put your hand on something hot, you’re so sure in that yelp, the bloody thing, that bloody thing I touched was hot!) I wouldn’t give the rattle of the pan and brush to please any of you. May you all sink into a pan and get heated. Go on boil over. Smear yourselves all over my cooker! I’ll never be c
aught! I was thrilled. It was a psychological hill and me so far ahead of the pack, the only small trouble was in this bed, at that itchy naked moment, I was headed for a ravine.
Clunk! I hit the tree. I considered the words. Dirty. Old. Woman.
Dirty. Gave little time nor trouble.
Old. Gave grave, wise, wondering, reduced, reducing, stumbling, up, and crinkling and neck and expectation. But all parts still working.
Woman. Gave pointless fact like saying a spanner is round have you noticed?
I had this chat with myself and the roof very loudly, megawatt volume, and it was ever such a comfort. Then the kitchen door handle turned, I increased the volume, you’ll never catch me I screamed the way a child puts his legs out and flies on a bike down a hill, hands far from his brakes. That was me, screaming and reveling, thrilled, when in walked my husband. I heard him plod his way through the kitchen, without removing his boots.
—Take off your boots, I shouted. No fecking dirty shoes on my carpet!
He appeared at the end of my bed faster than I had calculated he might and I was only just at the word shoes when he interrupted. The divil he is with the interrupting.
—For the love of God woman what are ye at?
I began to exhale a long line of gurgling sounds at him, or so he said. I do not recall them. I could guarantee I was swearing at him. But no, doctor, he later said, not swearing she’d not swear, she is not the type like you know. When pressed he would not tell the doctor the precise words I used, saying only it would flush him red to do so.
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