What it meant to her they could only guess when she returned. Whenever she remained too long in the house the shadow came on her again. Kate bade them take no notice.
She seemed to be very drawn towards Kate. Her walks often took her to the post office, and there she sat for hours with the two sisters, frequently sharing their meals, and listening to Kate’s tales of old times in the parish, about her parents and her brother Tom, but most frequently about Michael’s youth.
Kate was tall and bony with a long nose, long protruding chin and wire spectacles. Her teeth, like her sister’s, were all rotten. She was the sort country people describe as having a great heart, a masterful woman, always busy, noisy and good-humoured. Tom, who was very proud of her, told how she had gone off for a major operation carrying a basket of eggs to sell so that she wouldn’t have her journey for nothing. Her sister Joan was a nun-like creature who had spent some time in an asylum. She had a wonderfully soft, round, gentle face with traces of a girlish complexion, a voice that seldom rose above a whisper and the most lovely eyes; but when the cloud came on her she was perverse and obstinate. On the wall of the living-room, cluttered thick with pictures, was a framed sampler in ungainly lettering, ‘Eleanor Joan Shea, March 1881.’ She was nominally postmistress but it was Kate who did the work.
As much as Michael’s wife took to them, they took to her. Joan would have wept her eyes out for a homeless dog, but Kate’s sympathy was marked by a certain shrewdness.
‘You had small luck in your marriage,’ she said once.
‘How?’ The young woman looked at her blankly.
‘For all you’re only married a year you had your share of trouble. No honeymoon, then the sickness and now the separation.’
‘You’re right. It’s nothing but separations.’
‘Ye had only seven months together?’
‘Only seven.’
‘Ah, God help you, I never saw a lonelier creature than you were the night you came. But that’s how we grow.’
‘Is it, I wonder?’
‘ ’Tis, ’tis. Don’t I know it?’
‘That’s what Father Coveney says,’ wailed Joan, ‘but I could never understand it myself. All the good people having all the misfortunes that don’t deserve them, and the bad ones getting off.’
‘You’ll be happier for it in the latter end, and you’ve a good boy in Michael.… Musha, listen to me talking about Michael again. One’d think I was his mother.’
‘You might be.’
‘How so?’
‘He has a lot of your ways.’
‘Ah, now, I always said it! Didn’t I, Joan? And why wouldn’t he? When his mother leathered him ’twas up to me he came for comfort.’
‘He often said it – you made a man of him.’
‘I did,’ said Kate proudly. ‘I did so. Musha, he was a wild boy and there was no one to understand him when he was wild. His mother – not judging her – was born heavy with the weight of sense.’
Kate rarely lost the chance of a jeer at Maire.
‘You’re getting to like us, I think?’ she said at last.
‘I am,’ admitted the girl. ‘When I came first I was afraid.’
‘You won’t be so glad to get back to the States.’
‘I wish I never saw the States again.’
‘Och, aye!’
‘It’s true.’
‘Ah, well. Two years more and ye’ll be back together. And what’s a couple of years to one of your age?’
‘More than you think.’
‘True, true, years are only as you feel them.’
‘And I’ll never come back here again.’
‘Ach, bad cess to you, you’re giving into it again! And now, listen to me. ’Tis a thing I often said to Tom Shea, why wouldn’t ye come back? What’s stopping ye? Never mind that ould fool telling you Michael wouldn’t get a job! Why wouldn’t he? And only Tom was such a gligin he’d never have left the boy go away.’
To Tom’s disgust the weather cleared without heavy rain, though there was little sun, and that wandering, bursting out here and there on the hills or in mirror-like patches on the water and then fading into the same grey sultry light. Now, early and late, Michael’s wife was out, sitting on the rocks or striding off to the village. She became a familiar figure on the roads in her blue dress with her ashplant. At first she stood far off, watching the men at the nets or sitting at the crossroads; as time went on she drew nearer, and one day a fisherman hailed her and spoke to her.
After that she went everywhere, into their houses, on to the quay and out in the boats when they went fishing. Maire Shea didn’t like it, but all the men had known Michael as a boy and had tales of him and his knowledge of boats and fishing, and after a few days it was as though she too had grown up with them. It may be also that she gathered something from those hours on the water, in silent coves on grey days when the wind shook out a shoal of lights, or in the bay when the thunderous light moved swiftly, starting sudden hares of brightness from every hollow, blue from the hills, violet from the rocks, primrose from the fields, and here and there a mysterious milky glow that might be rock or field or tree. It may be these things deepened her knowledge so that she no longer felt a stranger when she walked in the morning along the strand, listening to the tide expand the great nets of weed with a crisp, gentle, pervasive sound like rain, or from her window saw the moon plunge its silver drill into the water.
But there was a decided change in her appearance and in her manner. She had filled out, her face had tanned and the gloomy, distraught air had left it.
‘There,’ said Tom, ‘didn’t I tell ye we’d make a new woman of her? Would anyone know her for the girl she was the night she came? Would they? I declare to me God, the time she opened the door and walked down the stairs I thought her own were calling.’
Kate and Joan, too, were pleased. They liked her for her own sake and Michael’s sake, but they had come to love her for the sake of her youth and freshness. Only Maire held her peace. Nothing had ever quite bridged the gap between the two women; in every word and glance of hers there was an implicit question. It was some time before she succeeded in infecting Tom. But one day he came for comfort to Kate. He was downcast, and his shrewd brown eyes had a troubled look.
‘Kate,’ he said, going to the heart of things as his way was, ‘ ’tis about Michael’s wife.’
‘Och, aye! What about her?’ asked Kate, pulling a wry face. ‘ ’Tisn’t complaining you are?’
‘No, but tell me what you think of her.’
‘What I think?’
‘ ’Tis Maire.’
‘Well?’
‘She’s uneasy.’
‘Uneasy about what, aru?’
‘She thinks the girl have something on her mind.’
‘Tom Shea, I tell you now as I told you many a time before your wife is a suspicious woman.’
‘Wisha, wisha, can’t you forget all that? I never seen such a tribe for spite. We know ye never got on. But now, Kate, you can’t deny she’s a clever woman.’
‘And what do the clever woman think?’
‘She thinks the pair of them had a row; that’s what she thinks now plain and straight, and I won’t put a tooth in it.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Well now, it might be some little thing a few words would put right.’
‘And I’m to say the few words?’
‘Now Kate, ’twas my suggestion, my suggestion entirely. The way ’tis with Moll, she’d say too much or say too little.’
‘She would,’ agreed Kate with grim amusement. Maire Shea had the reputation for doing both.
Next day she reported that the idea was absurd. He had to be content, for Kate too was no fool. But the question in Maire’s manner never ceased to be a drag on him, and for this he did not know whether to blame her or the girl. Three weeks had passed and he began to find it intolerable. As usual he came to Kate.
‘The worst of it is,’ he said gloomily, ‘
she’s making me as bad as herself. You know the sort I am. If I like a man, I don’t want to be picking at what he says like an ould hen, asking “What did he mean by this?” or “What’s he trying to get out of me now?” And ’tisn’t that Moll says anything, but she have me so bothered I can hardly talk to the girl. Bad luck to it, I can’t even sleep.… And last night – ’
‘What happened last night?’
He looked at her gloomily from under his brows.
‘Are you making fun of me again?’
‘I am not. What happened last night?’
‘I heard her talking in her sleep.’
‘Michael’s wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what harm if she do in itself?’
‘No harm at all!’ howled Tom in a sudden rage, stamping up and down the kitchen and shaking his arms. ‘No harm in the bloody world, but, Chrisht, woman, I tell you it upsot me.’
Kate looked at him over her wire spectacles with scorn and pity.
‘Me mother’s hood cloak that wasn’t worn since the day she died, I must get it out for you. You’ll never be a proper ould woman without it.’
‘Moll,’ said Tom that night as they were going to bed, ‘you’re dreaming.’
‘How so?’
‘About Michael’s wife.’
‘Maybe I am,’ she admitted grudgingly, yet surprising him by any admission at all.
‘You are,’ he said to clinch it.
‘I had my reasons. But this while past she’s different. Likely Kate said something to her.’
‘She did.’
‘That explains it so,’ said Maire complacently.
Two nights later he was wakened suddenly. It happened now that he did waken like that at any strange noise. He heard Michael’s wife again speaking in her sleep. She spoke in a low tone that dwindled drowsily away into long silences. With these intervals the voice went on and on, very low, sometimes expressing – or so it seemed to him – a great joy, sometimes as it were pleading. But the impression it left most upon him was one of intimacy and tenderness. Next morning she came down late, her eyes red. That same day a letter came from Donegal. When she had read it she announced in a halting way that her aunt was expecting her.
‘You won’t be sorry to go,’ said Maire, searching her with her eyes.
‘I will,’ replied the girl simply.
‘If a letter comes for you!’
‘ ’Tisn’t likely. Any letters there are will be at home. I never expected to stay so long.’
Maire gave her another long look. For the first time the girl gave it back, and for a moment they looked into one another’s eyes, mother and wife.
‘At first,’ said Maire, turning her gaze to the fire, ‘I didn’t trust you. I’m a straight woman and I’ll tell you that. I didn’t trust you.’
‘And now?’
‘Right or wrong, whatever anyone may say, I think my son chose well for himself.’
‘I hope you’ll always think it,’ replied the girl in the same serious tone. She looked at Maire, but the older woman’s air repelled sentiment. Then she rose and went to the door. She stood there for a long time. The day was black and heavy, and at intervals a squall swept its shining net over the surface of the water.
And now the positions of Tom and his wife were reversed as frequently happens with two such extremes of temperament. Before dusk rain began to fall in torrents. He went out late to the post office and sat between his two sisters, arguing.
‘There’s a woman all out,’ he said bitterly. ‘She upsets me and then sits down on me troubles. What’s on the girl’s mind? There’s something queer about her, something I can’t make out. I’ve a good mind to send word to Michael.’
‘And what would you say?’ asked Kate. ‘Disturbing him without cause! Can’t you be sensible!’
‘I can’t be sensible,’ he replied angrily. ‘She’s here in my charge and if anything happened her – ’
‘Nothing will happen her.’
‘But if it did?’
‘She’s all right. She got back her health that none of us thought she would. Besides, she’s going away.’
‘That’s what’s worrying me,’ he confessed. ‘She’ll leave me with the trouble on me, and I haven’t the words to walk back and have it out with her.’
He returned late through the driving rain. The women had gone to bed. He turned in but could not sleep. The wind rose gradually from the squalls that shook the house and set the window-panes rattling.
All at once he caught it again, the damned talking. He lay perfectly still in order not to wake Maire. Long intervals of silence and then the voice again. In a sudden agony of fear he determined to get up and ask what was on her mind. Anything was better than the fear that was beginning to take hold of him. He lifted himself in the bed, hoping to crawl out over Maire’s feet without waking her. She stirred, and he crouched there listening to the wind and the voice above his head, waiting till his wife should settle out again. And then, suddenly in a moment when wind and sea seemed to have died down to a murmur, the voice above him rose in three anguished mounting breaths that ended in a suppressed scream. ‘Michael! Michael! Michael!’
With a groan he sank back and covered his eyes with his hands. He felt another hand coldly touching his forehead and his heart. For one wild, bewildering moment it was as though Michael had really entered the room above his head, had passed in his living body across all those hundreds of miles of waves and storm and blackness; as though all the inexpressible longing of his young wife had incarnated him beside her. He made the sign of the cross as if against some evil power. And after that there was silence but for the thunder of the rising storm.
Next morning he would have avoided her eyes, but there was something about her that made him look and look in spite of himself. A nervous exaltation had crystallized in her, making her seem ethereal, remote and lovely. Because of the rain that still continued to pour Maire would have had her remain, but she insisted.
She went out in heavy boots and raincoat to say good-bye to Kate and Joan. Joan wept. ‘Two years,’ said Kate in her hearty way, ‘ ’twill be no time passing, no time at all.’ When she left it was as if a light had gone out in the childless house.
Maire’s good-bye was sober but generous too.
‘I know Michael is in good hands,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ replied the girl with a radiant smile, ‘he is.’
And they drove off through the rain. The sea on which she looked back was blinded by it, all but a leaden strip beside the rocks. She crouched over her black trunk with averted head. Tom, an old potato bag over his shoulders, drove into it, head down. The fear had not left him. He looked down at her once or twice, but her face was hidden in the collar of her raincoat.
They left the seemingly endless, wind-swept upland road and plunged down among the trees that creaked and roared above their heads, spilling great handfuls of water into the cart. His fear became a terror.
When he stood before the carriage door he looked at her appealingly. He could not frame the question he looked; it was a folly he felt must pass from him unspoken; so he asked it only with his eyes, and with her eyes she answered him – a look of ecstatic fulfilment.
The whistle went. She leaned out of the carriage window as the train lurched forward, but he was no longer looking. He raised his hands to his eyes and swayed to and fro, moaning softly to himself. For a long time he remained like that, a ridiculous figure with the old potato bag and the little pool of water that gradually gathered on the platform about his feet.
A Bachelor’s Story
Every old bachelor has a love story in him if only you can get at it. This is usually not very easy because a bachelor is a man who does not lightly trust his neighbour, and by the time you can identify him as what he is, the cause of it all has been elevated into a morality, almost a divinity, something the old bachelor himself is afraid to look at for fear it might turn out to be stuffed. And woe betide you if h
e does confide in you, and you, by word or look, suggest that you do think it is stuffed, for that is how my own friendship with Archie Boland ended.
Archie was a senior Civil Servant, a big man with a broad red face and hot blue eyes and a crust of worldliness and bad temper overlaying a nature that had a lot of sweetness and fun in it. He was a man who affected to believe the worst of everyone, but he saw that I appreciated his true character, and suppressed his bad temper most of the time, except when I trespassed on his taboos, religious and political. For years the two of us walked home together. We both loved walking, and we both liked to drop in at a certain pub by the canal bridge where they kept good draught stout. Whenever we encountered some woman we knew, Archie was very polite and even effusive in an old-fashioned way, raising his hat with a great sweeping gesture and bowing low over the hand he held as if he were about to kiss it, which I swear he would have done on the least encouragement. But afterwards he would look at me under his eyebrows with a knowing smile and tell me things about their home life which the ladies would have been very distressed to hear, and this, in turn, would give place to a sly look that implied that I was drawing my own conclusions from what he said, which I wasn’t, not usually.
‘I know what you think, Delaney,’ he said one evening, carefully putting down the two pints and lowering himself heavily into his seat. ‘You think I’m a bad case of sour grapes.’
‘I wasn’t thinking anything at all,’ I said.
‘Well, maybe you mightn’t be too far wrong at that,’ he conceded, more to his own view of me than to anything else. ‘But it’s not only that, Delaney. There are other things involved. You see, when I was your age I had an experience that upset me a lot. It upset me so much that I felt I could never go through the same sort of thing again. Maybe I was too idealistic.’
I never heard a bachelor yet who didn’t take a modest pride in his own idealism. And there in the far corner of that pub by the canal bank on a rainy autumn evening, Archie took the plunge and told me the story of the experience that had turned him against women, and I put my foot in it and turned him against me as well. Ah, well, I was younger then!
My Oedipus Complex Page 32
