The Green Road: A Novel

by Anne Enright

  Lifting her head to howl.

  Back in Aughavanna she unpacked and sorted the stuff that would go over to Ardeevin for the Christmas dinner and she repacked that. Then she went to Rory’s room, where the child was sleeping off a hangover. Constance took off her shoes and climbed on to the bed behind him.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ he said.

  ‘Your own fault,’ said his mother, as she spooned into him, with the duvet between them and the wall at her back.

  ‘Ah, Ma,’ he said and flapped a big hand over his shoulder to find a bit of her, which happened to be the top of her head. But Rory was always easy to hold; easy to carry and easy to kiss, and there, in the smell of last night’s beer and his rude good health, fretful, lumpy Constance McGrath fell asleep.

  In the evening she brought Shauna over to Ardeevin with the ingredients for the stuffing and they put it all together right there at the table in the big kitchen. Dan knew exactly what to do with the experimental bag of chestnuts. They chopped and diced, the three of them, while the others were at the pub, and they put the vegetables under water for the next day while Rosaleen supervised happily from the chair by the range. Dan talked about Tim Burton with Shauna and they discussed the veins on Madonna’s arms. He asked a couple of excruciating questions about pop music, she asked about an artist called Cindy Sherman, and this just knocked Dan for six. He kissed the child before they left, he piled her hair on the top of her head, saying, ‘Look at you!’ and Constance would have loved to stay longer, to be that thing, a grown-up child in her parents’ house, but she had presents to wrap back in Aughavanna and she did not get to bed, as it turned out, until after two.

  There was no dishwasher in Ardeevin so the next day Constance was at the sink non-stop, finding crockery, dipping through soaking pans and greasy dishes to prise out a bowl for the carrots, another side plate, a serving spoon. Hanna was too miserable to help and Emmet did not see the need for it – it was like he had a different set of eyes. So it was her and Dan, mostly, but Dan did not do dishes, Dan did food. And her mother did not like the scarf, of course she didn’t. How could Constance have ever expected her to?

  There was no pleasing her.

  Rosaleen spent the early part of the day quietly enough. She walked into town for Mass and stopped for a cup of tea with the two elderly sisters who lived over the Medical Hall, because Bart and his wife were in Florida for the duration. She came back with the cooking in full swing, and she spent some time organising the table and making it beautiful, with pine cones sprayed silver and white baubles, which she scattered in an artful way around two pewter candlesticks: white candles, white cloth, a sprinkling of glitter, a squirt of artificial snow. She went out to the garden for greenery and a fading, freakish rose that bloomed against her sunniest wall. And this yellow rose she set on a corner of the mantelpiece, where it dropped petals as the day went on and the dinner was not yet served because – and you couldn’t blame him – Dan did not get the bird on till nine. So Constance was grabbing the crisps out of Shauna’s hand, saying, ‘Wait’, and then out of Emmet’s hands, while Hanna leaned against the range, sipping sherry intended for the gravy, and nothing was on time.

  And just as she had the gravy reducing in the pan, Rosaleen called them in to the front room. She was like a child, Constance thought, she waited until things were Completely Impossible, and then she went Beyond.

  Rosaleen had the wrapped scarf in her hand. She held the parcel up and wiggled it from side to side.

  ‘Wait, Mammy,’ said Constance, wiping her hands on her apron.

  ‘A scarf!’ said Rosaleen.

  But when the paper was off and the beautiful thing out in the light, Constance knew who had won this time around. The scarf was even better here in the living room than it had been in the shop and Rosaleen was almost put out, it looked so well in the winter light. She set it across her shoulders and picked at the fabric.

  ‘Oh this is far too good for me.’

  Rosaleen hated being upstaged by her own clothes. It was a rule. Vulgarity she called it, but the scarf was not vulgar, it was entirely discreet.

  ‘It’s lovely on you,’ Constance said.

  They had all drifted in to watch: Constance, Dan, Emmet, Hanna. With Dessie at the back of the room, looking at all the Madigans.

  ‘Pink,’ said Rosaleen, taking it off and setting it against the dark green and glitter of the Christmas tree. ‘Very fresh. Though Lord knows, I’m probably a bit old for pink.’

  No one answered, so she said it again.

  ‘Long time since I wore pink.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it pink,’ said Constance. ‘Maybe lavender.’

  ‘Lilac,’ said Hanna.

  ‘Lilac shawl,’ said Emmet. ‘You know that’s actually Sanskrit.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Dan, because there was no getting around Emmet when he had a fact, you just had to let him slap it out there, and admire.

  ‘Yes. Both words. “Lilac” and “shawl”.’

  ‘Thanks, Emmet,’ said Hanna.

  Rosaleen bunched up the ‘lilac shawl’, annoyed by Emmet, or annoyed by the thing itself. She chucked it into the easy chair by the fireplace, and was cross with herself then, because her children were all looking at her.

  ‘Oh I am tired of myself now,’ she said.

  And because it was Christmas, she started to cry.

  ‘Oh, Mammy,’ said Constance.

  ‘My own children,’ she said, as though they had ganged up against her in some terrible way.

  ‘Your own children what?’ said Emmet.

  ‘My own children!’ she said. Furious now. ‘My own flesh and blood!’

  And Hanna, who had done nothing all day except mope, said, ‘Mama, Mama. Come on.’ Leading her gently to the sofa. ‘Would you like a little sherry?’

  ‘No I would not like a little sherry,’ said Rosaleen. ‘Tell them, Desmond. Tell them what I want.’

  Dessie was standing well back from them all.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said.

  ‘Orange shampoo,’ said Emmet. ‘That’s another one.’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ said his siblings, almost as one: Hanna inserting, ‘the fuck’ in there so ending a little late and off the beat.

  ‘Tell them,’ said Rosaleen, looking to Dessie, as though to her only protector, and Dessie (the fool, thought Constance) said, ‘Well.’

  ‘I’m putting the house on the market,’ said Rosaleen. ‘Dessie has it all arranged.’

  There was nothing for Dessie to do now, except concur.

  ‘Your mother thinks it’s a good time – and it is a good time, it is a really good time – to realise this . . . asset.’

  He waved his hand vaguely, as though talking about the wallpaper, or the carpet, a gathered handful of air.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Hanna.

  ‘She wants to get the money moving. Am I right? To divide it up a little. Now, rather than later.’

  ‘Well none of you has any money,’ said Rosaleen, perched on the edge of the sofa. She smoothed the cloth of her skirt over her knees and picked at a piece of fluff.

  ‘I don’t know whose fault that is. I mean, apart from mine. I don’t know what I did to deserve that.’

  And there it was. Her children were going to object. They wanted to say that they had money or that they did not need money, but their failure gaped back at them, and they just stood there, looking at it. It was true. They had no money. And yet, and yet. They each struggled to remember this, they had enough. Whatever they wanted, it wasn’t this.

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Emmet.

  ‘It’s too much for me,’ said Rosaleen, her voice beginning to tremble. And this was also true: the house was too big for one person.

  ‘So that is the way, I suppose,’ Dessie said. ‘That’s where things are tending.’

  ‘I am moving in with Constance,’ Rosaleen said. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  Dessie stopped then, as though this last was news to him too.

  And
Constance said, ‘Jesus, the dinner.’

  The Brussels sprouts were burning. The smell of it had been getting worse for some time.

  ‘The sprouts,’ she said.

  ‘Oh please don’t fuss,’ said Rosaleen as Constance squawked and ran out the door.

  ‘Please stop.’ She lifted her voice. ‘No one likes them anyway.’

  There was a silence in the hall. After a moment Constance came back in to the room.

  ‘You like them,’ she said to Rosaleen. The smell by now was quite intense.

  ‘Oh I just. I don’t know. Maybe I do.’

  As they went in, at Dan’s behest, to the dining room, where the smoked salmon and asparagus was set, they could hear Constance in the garden beating the saucepan on the ground outside, and a noise out of her like a heifer stuck on a barbed wire fence. She was weeping.

  Dessie said, ‘Maybe a little bungalow, Rosaleen. Maybe that’s what you are looking for.’

  He pulled his mother-in-law’s chair out for her, and she sat down.

  ‘Oh Desmond,’ she said, picking up her napkin. ‘And the price of them going up by the day. As you tell me, yourself.’

  Donal was in Australia, which left two young McGraths, Rory and Shauna, to sit at the little fold-out table, and though they were the size of adults, they stuck like children to their mobile phones.

  ‘Put them away,’ Dessie said, as he passed, but they ignored him, and the Madigans sat in the tiny, demented sound of their electronic games. Hanna picked up the fork and set it down again. Constance did not come in.

  They sat and looked at the food in front of them. It was half past two on Christmas Day, the weather outside was clear and fine; no traffic on the road, no wind to curl under the eaves or annoy the windows. The house was silent and large about them. There was no one to say grace – their father was dead.

  It was Dan’s job now. Dan the spoilt priest. He looked around him, then down at the table. He took a breath.

  ‘Buon appetito,’ he said.

  Which gave the siblings a small jab of pleasure. They applied themselves to the asparagus, which was wrapped in smoked salmon with a lemon dressing. It was very good.

  ‘This is very good,’ said Emmet.

  ‘Really simple,’ said Dan.

  Outside, Constance had stopped weeping.

  ‘How’s school?’ said Hanna.

  ‘Good,’ said Shauna from the little table.

  ‘Any word from Donal?’

  ‘Surfing, sure. Byron Bay. There’s a whole gang of them there from Lahinch.’

  When the starter was done, Dan cleared and went into the kitchen where Constance was filling the Christmas plates. He brought them in two at a time; ham, turkey, three types of stuffing, all the trimmings. Then Constance herself came in – red-faced, sweating, the silk of her blouse flecked with grease.

  ‘Ta-dahh!’ said Dan.

  There was a little round of applause for Constance and she sat into her accustomed place, and there they all were, girls facing the window, boys facing the room: Constance-and-Hanna, Emmet-and-Dan. Their mother sat at the foot of the table, Dessie at the head, and for a moment they pretended that nothing had happened, that this room would always be the same, and always theirs.

  It was older, now, of course. The damp had crawled higher through the bamboo patterned wallpaper, leaving its tea coloured watermark, and the edge in the north-east corner was spotted with black and curled up from the skirting board. The Madigan children saw it with wiser eyes. The chandelier – so wonderful, long ago – was a cheap enough thing. The brown carpet was the best you could do in 1973.

  The people inside the room were older, too. All of them so child-like still, despite the absurd grey hairs and the sagging skin in which their familiar eyes were set.

  They worked the gravy and the sauces, passed stuffing, the salt, the water jug and the wine. They looked at the plates heaped with food and marvelled aloud at it, each of them silently shouting that she could not take it away from them, whatever it was – their childhood, soaked into the walls of this house.

  And of course it could be sold. That was also true. The house was hers and she could sell it, if she liked.

  ‘The turkey is great,’ said Rory from the little table and Constance was proud of him; Rory, the peacemaker, working hard.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dan.

  ‘Very moist,’ said Dessie.

  Dan tried not to laugh at the word.

  ‘You think?’

  He looked up at stubby Dessie McGrath, there at the top of the table. He remembered a brief encounter with the alcoholic brother, Ferdy McGrath, when they were both still boys, playing by the river Inagh. But he never got near Dessie. Not even close. His brother-in-law was not so much straight as sorted. Dessie McGrath was a weapon.

  ‘Yes it is,’ said Dan. ‘Surprisingly moist.’

  Dessie did not blink.

  ‘Hard to get right, at a guess,’ he said and went back to his plate, shovelling the stuff into himself, while the Madigan children chewed and chewed, and could not swallow.

  The truth was that the house they were sitting in was worth a ridiculous amount, and the people sitting in it were worth very little. Four children on the brink of middle age: the Madigans had no traction in the world, no substance. They had no money. Dan, especially, had no money, and he could could not think why this was, or who might be to blame. But he recognised, in the silence, the power Rosaleen had over her children, none of whom had grown up to match her.

  ‘I don’t know how I’ll eat all this.’ She was a bit like a child, herself. ‘My goodness.’

  She forgot to tell us about money, he thought, and we forgot to make any, because the Madigans were above all that. The stuck-up Madigans, the Madigans beyond the bridge. Rosaleen thought money would fly to us, because we deserved it. She thought we would spend our lives giving it away.

  Which is what Emmet had done, pretty much. Poured his life out, like water into the African sands. He felt it keenly – they all did – the lack of anything to show for it all. Twenty years saving a world that remained unsaved. If you thought about it, he was as much a fantasist as his mad mother.

  The yellow rose gave up a clump of pale petals and they sighed as they hit the mantelpiece.

  Hanna said, ‘You know, Mammy, it’s our house too.’

  Rosaleen looked at her. She said, ‘Beautiful. Beautiful Hanna Madigan.’

  Each of them came back from the privacy of their own thoughts then, ready for the fight. The air cleared.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Hanna.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Rosaleen. ‘Just that you are. So pretty.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hanna.

  ‘You have a heart shaped face, I always thought. An old-fashioned face. You were born to play Viola.’

  ‘Yeah well,’ said Hanna.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Hanna.

  ‘Well you are an actress,’ Constance said, trying to keep the inverted commas out of her voice.

  ‘Yes I am an actress,’ said Hanna. ‘Yes that is what I am.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Rosaleen, in a soothing tone.

  ‘I just don’t,’ said Hanna. Her hand was flat and she brought the edge of it down on the tabletop. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Work?’ said Emmet.

  ‘Darling, you have a baby to look after,’ said Rosaleen.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Dan.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ said Hanna, losing it.

  ‘Can you please leave her alone?’ Dan said, but Hanna was already building to a shout.

  ‘I Just Don’t Want To Play Viola.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can say that,’ said her mother, sadly.

  ‘I’m not sure anyone’s asked,’ said Emmet. ‘In all fairness’.

  ‘I have no interest in playing Viola,’ said Hanna in a very deliberate voice. ‘I am interested in process. That’s what I do. New stuff. Viola is not where I am at, all right? It’s not what I�
��m for. Anyway, nobody ever puts on Twelfth Night.’

  ‘What a pity,’ said her mother. ‘I’d love to see you do it. Before I get too old.’

  ‘Rosaleen, darling,’ said Dan. ‘Please stop.’

  ‘Stop what?’ said Rosaleen, but by some miracle she distracted herself into an old story about the night war was declared, when she was ten years old and Anew McMaster was playing Othello, naked to the waist and his beautiful voice, you could feel it on your skin, it was a force. Her father saying they were in for it now – because of the war, you know – and she had no idea what he meant. She thought it was something to do with the events on stage.

  ‘What about your mother?’ Constance said quietly and Rosaleen sighed.

  ‘Oh, Mama.’

  ‘Was she there, too?’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ said Rosaleen.

  ‘I mean, you know what I mean. What was she like?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Was she nice?’

  ‘Well of course she was nice.’

  ‘What kind of nice?’ Hanna joined in, now. ‘What style of a woman was she?’

  ‘My mother?’ said Rosaleen. ‘Oh she was lovely. She was always beautifully turned out. She had to go to Limerick specially, or up to Dublin once a year, for a fitting. Always wore a hat. She had three of them on the go; a summer hat, a winter felt, and, you know, a thing for the races, or a wedding if there was a wedding. A dress hat, that is what I mean.’