The Woodcutter and his Family

by Frank McGuinness

  Will I ever forget the night she proved that to me beyond all reasonable doubt? We were in a nice restaurant, myself, himself, Archie, her and a long string of Protestant misery from County Dublin who claimed he had travelled to Paris devoted only to serving the great writer. I had my grievous doubts about the same boy’s intentions, and while some maintained the opposite, it is my contention he saw she would grow crazy about him and would do Christ knows what for the sake of a quick court, so he led her up the garden path and all the way to Renvyle to keep in with the supreme artist who was her father. Her devotion to this chancer, it was pitiful to watch, and maybe I was not the most attentive of mothers and made sure matters ceased, but how could I diminish her attentions towards him when he was clearly the apple of her eye and every other organ she possessed and the only unalloyed joy she might ever have known?

  He got a bit of a revelation about her that night. We all did, I suppose. It was a swanky enough place, but we were holding our heads high, watching carefully what we were drinking, and then the waiter came for the order. Didn’t I make the mistake of letting the young princess precede her mother, she could decide first what food she might deign to eat. He asked her to repeat the dish requested, and she did. Magpie.

  She wanted to start with a feed of magpies. Since the men had buried themselves in their menus, I was the one felt obliged to point out this would not be possible. The French are an ingenious people – certainly more than the Irish – at what they consider edible in flesh, fish and fowl, but not even they could make magpies a delicacy to consume.

  She begged to differ. Why? her father asked. I ate them as a child, she recalled. Where? her brother wanted to know. In my mother’s bed – she fed me the whole bird, beak, feathers, she told him, she made me eat it all. I wouldn’t let her away with this, pointing out to her that to the best of my knowledge neither my good self nor any belonging to me would have the slightest notion how to cook a magpie. You baked them, she contradicted me. What? I challenged her, how in hell did I bake them? In a pie, she explained, and it cost sixpence. I follow her, her father said suddenly. Then you do more than I do, I let him know, what is she talking about? That’s when the Protestant skeleton shook his bony mouth and broke his customary silence.

  Sing a song of sixpence,

  A pocketful of rye,

  Four and twenty blackbirds

  Baked in a pie.

  When the pie was opened,

  The birds began to sing.

  Wasn’t that a dainty dish

  To set before the king?

  She clapped her hands like a child, as did her father, delighted for some reason or other. The waiter was standing looking at us as if we were cracked. He just wanted us to make up our minds. You will eat fish, I insisted, as I will, and less of this carry on. I was glaring in the direction of her father, I was ready to kill him for encouraging her in this silly carry on. She was having none of it. She insisted she would eat nothing if she could not dine on magpie, and she wanted it here and now. The waiter, to my shock, played along. He said he would check in the kitchen, did so and came back to announce there was a great shortage in Paris of that particular bird. Might he recommend quail?

  The scream emitting from her mouth shocked us all. I thought Archie was going to weep with embarrassment, poor fellow. I decided it best not to dignify her rudeness with any censure whatsoever, but made it clear when I rose from my chair I had no intention of allowing this bitch dictate that we were to spend an evening doubled over with shame. She had another think coming if such public outrage could unsettle me. I saw my drunk father pull his drawers down and, like an animal, dirty the streets of Galway, his cock waving in the pink wind. Did she think I would do a runner from this carry on with my tail between my legs, disgraced by her? The next thing I saw was her grabbing a jug of water. She then poured it over her lap, drenching it, the blue of her dress blackening.

  I let her father make the apology. Archie accompanied me to the door, fetching my coat, politely not hearing my guts rattle with the hunger, for not a bite of food could be eaten in this establishment after what we’d witnessed tonight. I doubt now if himself will be able to turn his back on what would soon be necessary to be done and no mistake. I took no pleasure in leaving him to handle this mess, but my point is it is largely of his making. And it’s from his side this bad blood has flowed to her brain.

  You can imagine how that would have gone down if I’d dared breathe a word along those lines. The same drunken father I’ve more than once mentioned, he would surely be hurled in my face. But his weakness was drink, pure and simple. And such simple associations cannot be made about my daughter. My daughter – it’s odd how hard I find it to say that statement. Why should that be the case? There was no one about me to ask, and it was hardly the kind of thing I could put in a letter home to my own mother. Who might get their Galway claws on it and read the secret? But she would have said something to take the weight of my dislike for my girl from my shoulders. Was it dislike anyway? Were it so, it might have weakened. Melted with the years. But it didn’t. Not in the slightest way. So I doubt if it could be put down to that. No, if I am to be forced into admitting what I believed lay at the root of what distanced us, I’d say fear.

  How did I fear her? I can’t describe it, because I never would admit that, though the world knows she gave me reason enough. One Christmas I tried to buy her affection. For her present she got the most expensive doll ever made, beautiful, moving eyes, tender lips, a blush like a cream rose on her cheek, her dress cut from crimson silk, and her tiny feet fitted in little boots of softest leather. Could you guess what she did to it? She sliced every stitch off its back, dismantled every limb, cut the shoes to bits.

  It now might seem like a warning, but what way did I react to the sight of this massacre?

  I burst out laughing. Not the wisest move, I admit, but I’m the kind who would see something comical in destruction, as if the child didn’t give a tinker’s curse what she did, and what would be made of it. Gratitude was out the window. She would not so much bite the hand that gave as draw blood from it. And me, I was with her on that score. Still, I should have curbed that side of myself and taken this business under control. I didn’t.

  Or maybe he should have, her father.

  I’ve said he spoilt her, but that’s not half the story. If you want proof, look how he treated Archie. The poor son barely got a notice there, from that quarter. It’s why I always and ever took his side. Nobody else would. The great artist found fault with me on account of this, of course. He’d say, Women, what is it about you as a sex? You’d knife each other as soon as stand together – same with my sisters in Dublin. Either so docile they’d faint rather than bid you good morning, or they got stuck into each other, battling morning, noon or night, never knowing agreement.

  I beg your pardon, I differed, such a state was never the story with me and my sisters. We were together through thick and thin. None could divide us. And that stretched to the whole clan of us. No one could stand in our way. We were unbreakable–

  And you still think you are, he shot back at me, that’s what has us as we are, you not willing to admit our daughter will be grand, if we give her time. How much time does her highness require, I asked, that she’ll deign to have a civil or indeed sane conversation with her own people? You and her, you gang up against me constantly. Against Archie as well.

  He tried to laugh me out of this, but I would not be swayed and I held my ground. He was intent on provoking me this time, for he would not let up, insisting again I devote to her the attention she’s been craving since I was the unfortunate woman who gave birth to her, and her very cries then split my head open. So I went further than I’d ever dared before, and I said to him, Dick, I can hardly be held responsible for the way she’s infected, that’s all your doing.

  There might have been a time I’d regret not holding my tongue rather than using the word infected, but to be honest this was now long past. I knew the cons
ternation it might cause, but there’s occasions it’s best to do more than bite the bullet but catch it instead and make a four-course dinner out of it. He bided his time before he came back and asked would I kindly have the consideration to enlighten him what I meant by infected? I would not be so foolish as to give him the straight answer he was dying for me to deliver, so I pinned all the troubles between myself and her down to the way she addressed me. She’s been reading you far too much, I suggested, I can make neither head nor tail of what the pair of you are on about, but it’s turned her head entirely and don’t you deny it.

  He said indeed he would not deny it at all, but at least there was one in the house who understood him. Well, bully for the pair of you, I congratulated him, may you both be happy together, licking stamps for a living and sending begging letters to anyone fool enough to listen to your flotsam and jetsam. All our life we’ve been living on handouts.

  I knew it, he knew I knew it, but I’d never thrown it so fiercely in his face before, and I was not sure how he’d take it.

  Like a whirling dervish, that’s how. Have I ever seen him that angry? I suppose I have, but you forget the bad times. That’s why I now forget what it was he called me, but you can be sure it was not pleasant, nor did I refrain from giving as good as I got. It was when she coughed I noticed the cause of this warfare was standing listening to all, the door ajar, hearing the words, saying nothing. What’s keeping you there? I called, come in and give us the benefit of your wisdom. After all, aren’t we discussing what in Jesus to do with you?

  That’s when she told us not to worry about herself – she was going to get married. Let me guess, I humoured her for the time being, is the lucky groom by any chance Protestant – from a sound clerical family in County Dublin, frequenters of Trinity College, given to a mournful look, with a bad habit of sucking his teeth, and worshipping your father for his lonely genius? I hate to break this to you but in my opinion he’d be better off wedding your Papa, it has more chance of happiness. Take it from your old fool of a mother, as soon as the same laddy smells church bells chiming, he’ll be flying out your door as fast as his Foxrock feet carry him. What have you to offer the likes of him and his, who, let me assure you, put more stock on a sizeable dowry than we can muster? Be under no illusions there, my lady.

  I never suffer from any illusions, she informed me, bolder than brass and butter. You are the one who is under the illusion I could be your daughter, but I reject all your claims to my birth and status. I was reared by wolves in the black forests of Germany, it is where my lover and I must return, and there we shall die, each at the other’s hand, a pact we make to sanctify our love and sacrifice for each other, which no one can desecrate by putting a stop to it.

  Did you ever bear witness to such gobdaw mutterings? Amn’t I right to have said no one could make head nor tail of what she was struggling to say, if there was struggle in it? I was determined to ask no questions nor heed a blind bit more of her wandering, when didn’t she confront me, asking, was it you, Mama, gave Papa his disease?

  That went beyond the beyond. That deserved a slap on the cunt. Don’t think I’d hesitate. It was done to me, and I’d done it to her before, but on that occasion she, Beatrice, raised Cain to such an extent I thought her father was going to leave me – he wouldn’t do that – and her brother went into such a paroxysm of crying you’d think it had been him that was hit. Nothing ever emerged after to elaborate on what I’d done, but I can say pretty much for certain that it was from the date of that slap, she never trusted me, nor I her. A child knows its mother, and she did me.

  It was a pity things were as harsh as they were, for in some way I think I still expected her to at least have a fondness for me, even if not to love me. It’s fair to say that was denied, and indeed so profoundly, I had to be on my permanent guard she might raise a hammer or hatchet and finish my head off as a smashed nest of bone and blood. In her ire I’d put nothing past her.

  Why is she so angry? her father would ponder, what has set her in such a rage? Who can tell? I’d say, giving damn all away.

  But he guessed. He always could. And I think it might have killed him. Might be killing him as we sit here, watching him die. She ruined our lives, my daughter. I cannot forgive her. We nearly did not make it across the Swiss border, him delaying till she was settled in a sanatorium he’d approve. I agreed we should be sure it was suitable. Christ, I’m not that black-hearted to leave her suffering from ill treatment or wandering round the French countryside in her shift and bare feet. I wouldn’t do that to her. Would she, in her right mind, do it to me?

  Yes, she would, probably, but still there’s times I think of her and weep – not as sorely as her father, but I do genuinely weep for her. I’d look at her and wonder, who will want her in the end? What will become of her? I was thinking that, and maybe only that, on the day when we travelled to London to take the plunge at long last, our infants now well grown up, at a registry office in what’s called Kensington. Himself mocked me, of course, saying I’d finally let the old sow Ireland devour me, I’d be a good married woman in the eyes of the law, if not in God’s. I let him have his pleasure, for it was little enough to have the ring on my finger and the papers signed that might save myself, my son and above all my deranged daughter, growing more stricken by the day, from the workhouse.

  There was money dribbling in from the books, and as I said to you, there had always been someone happy to stick their hand in their pocket and bail us out, but what if Himself were no more? What then? Eaten bread is soon forgotten, as our neighbour on Nun’s Island, Mrs Madden, used say should be pinned to the chest of everyone tempted to do a good deed. She spoke the truth, I’m sure, but that’s a rough lesson. Aren’t they all – rough?

  The rough with the smooth, they say, and the smoothest thing I’d ever felt was a man’s pecker – again, a term from Mrs Madden, that she whispered once into my eager ear, and so I call it to myself from that day on.

  He thought me the most wonderful of women when I kissed his, not that it hadn’t been touched, roughly, smoothly, many times before, but this was the one he’d been waiting to hold him completely and never let go if it were humanly possible. It was love, I suppose, and at first sight you could call it, which sounds as good as it might get for any woman or man, but, like everything else, it comes at a cost, and mine was he’d never trust me to do as much as glimpse any other man, or he’d maintain I was trying to give him the blessing I’d bestowed that June day on himself. Did he have justification? Was it all one big act on his part to tie me down and do as he pleased?

  If I gave him cause to suspect me, I’m of the conviction I only did so because that was his delight. And if it pleased him to picture me up to no good with other men, then I’d say with a mind like his, an imagination that could buy and sell me, you and the whole of Carraroe, it wasn’t myself he dreamt rolling in their manly arms but himself, letting me do the dirty work he hadn’t the cock for, much as he hungered for his own kind.

  I never broke that bit of revelation to him before now, as he lies in his stupor, getting ready to face Satan, and between us and all harm, I hope it is Satan, for he will show him more sympathy than the Christ he has spent his adult years insulting. If I ever had doubts about the good Lord’s existence, they’re now becoming more certain, for a bolt of lightning has not hit me, streaming from the bed where himself is lying, meeting his end in Zurich. Could he foresee that end as he trooped the streets of Dublin as a boy, eyeing them, every alley, every brick, every broken window?

  How could he? Should I ask him, hoping from somewhere in his soul I’ll draw out an answer? Listen to him. Is that the river Liffey, or his blood flowing to a halt in his veins? The size of him, shrunken, yet I could trace every wailing woman he followed through every corpsehouse she ever haunted, bringing in her teeming cup the wine that will not quench the thirst of death and all its allies. He lies there, God forgive me, like a man debased, because he will not in his hour of agony call
me by my name that I might, through his strength, summon powers that were powers that are powers that will forever be powers to save him from the fires where I fear he’s going.

  Priests – fuck them, you see they think they have us trapped at the end, but damn them instead, such virgins do not realise we who have known the body take flight in bed, one lust grown into the other, we are given what is denied to them – the sturdy wings of Archangels Michael and Gabriel to shelter us from their sermons and allow us to love and to sin and to be saved by sinning.

  Who has told me this? He did, on the night we first touched. Little did that smart show-off understand that, when it came to getting your tongue around the right corners, I was so well ahead of him in that game. He needed to write it down, these screeds of our salvation, but me, sure all I had to do was breathe and it poured from me like water strong as drink. You see that’s how I pulled off the miracle, miracle after miracle – I believed every word he told me, so I had the power to turn his lies, most beautiful lies, to truth.

  And was he grateful? I think he was. Did he thank me? Do you know what – isn’t he stretched here before me? So I’ll ask him. Are you grateful? Do you thank me?