Civil & Strange

by Clair Ni Aonghusa

  She’s grateful to him for being so low-key. “It was like living under siege. Well, you know that yourself. Simon was great. He stocked up on feed for all the animals and found places to keep the calves when we weren’t allowed to sell them on. I’d have been lost without him.”

  “The vigilance here seems to have paid off. We got off very lightly compared to Britain.”

  “One case of infection. Still, it was tough on everybody.”

  “I’ll grant you it was hard. So, you’re happy with yer man?”

  “He’s a godsend, but he’s only biding his time with me.” She realizes that everything is going to lead back to John, but she can’t help herself. “I look at Simon and I think of poor John, and how a farm was foisted on him when it was the last thing he wanted. Then I see what Simon does and what he’s capable of. He’s a natural, only he’ll never be able to afford his own place. It’s a crying shame.”

  “This business with Dan must bring it all back again.”

  “That it does. It’s always on my mind… John urging me to go away and stay with Paula that week. And I nearly didn’t go… but he was in great form. And all the time… all the time, he… he planned to…”

  He squeezes her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I didn’t mean it to tail back to…”

  “Sure, it’s grand, Matt. My biggest trial since his death has been those two leeches” — she nods to a corner of the room — “attaching themselves to me.”

  He grins. “You mean your very good friends Nan and Brenda?”

  “Don’t talk to me. It’s been hard trying to fend them off, and I haven’t always got the better of them.”

  “Nan’s the real problem. Brenda wouldn’t be so bad — she has some humanity — but she’s easily led. Odds on that they’ll find poor Stella Tuohy more interesting now.”

  “That would be a relief, but I wouldn’t wish it on her.”

  He lowers his voice. “I was full sure that your Andy would turn up at John’s funeral. I didn’t say anything at the time but…”

  “He’s not in touch with anyone, Matt. I used to hope… but… I’ve more or less given up. I don’t know where he’s working. None of us even has an address.”

  “Ah, eaten bread is soon forgotten.”

  Her voice is subdued. “A friend of one of the girls met him a few months ago on a plane trip in the U.S.… so he’s… you know… still alive. It’s been nine years, Matt, nine years.”

  He edges her into an alcove and they sit on low bar stools. He faces into the wall and angles his body to act as a shield so that he’s looking at her but keeping the world at bay. Her plate of food lies untouched on the circular table between them.

  “It’s cruel, isn’t it, the way things can turn out?” he says quietly.

  “You’re telling me,” she says, almost on a sob. She realizes that he’s signaling somebody but she can’t work out what he’s up to until Lily suddenly appears with another glass of wine. “That’s the business,” she says gratefully to Lily.

  “Whatever you need, girl.”

  “And you mean to say that there’s been no communication whatsoever from Andy?” Matt muses. “I wouldn’t have believed it. The fight was with Jack, wasn’t it?”

  “It was with all of us in the end. He fell out with his father but he blamed us all.”

  A shadow falls across them, and Beatrice looks up to find Julia peering down. “Hadn’t we better be going?” she says coldly to Matt. She acknowledges Beatrice with a barely perceptible nod.

  “In a moment,” he says. “In a moment.”

  As Matt leaves, his place is taken by Lily, who has delegated table duties to one of her minions. “Eat up,” she urges Beatrice. “No slacking on the food front. You need to keep up your strength.”

  The commercial activity in the village is divided between Fitzgibbon’s well-stocked mini-supermarket, O’Flaherty’s news agent and general grocery with post office, Hickey’s butcher, O’Hara’s hardware store, Mitchell’s takeaway and sit-in, Rafter’s chemist (closed on Wednesday afternoons), Kennedy’s car-repair garage with petrol pumps, Fennell’s dilapidated three-storey guesthouse, and five pubs.

  When Ellen visited this place as a child, many of the houses were derelict and had fallen into ruin. The breaks between buildings contained overgrown sites, lush with weeds and coarse grass. Now most of the ramshackle houses have been renovated or knocked down and rebuilt, sometimes in the old style of narrow, single-fronted terraced houses, more times on a grander scale — tall, wide, double-fronted residences with imposing hall doors and side entrances. Bit by bit most of the overgrown plots have been bought up, tidied, and built on, cosmetic implants that enhance the previously gap-toothed streetscape.

  The principal village streets form the shape of a crude Y, with off-shoot lanes and side streets, and an old-fashioned square of three-and four-storey houses set in its groin. The meandering river intersects each stretch of street. Ellen’s house is in the tail, a little up from the commercial center. When she exits from her little side street she faces the Catholic church, the girls’ primary school, and a sloping green space. Where the river undercuts the left arm of the letter, at another end of the village, there was once a thriving Protestant church that fell into disrepair and ruin when its congregation dwindled to nothing. Astride the river is the Protestant graveyard, full of elaborate tombs from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a few plain graves, hollowed and sunken, outlining the shape of long rotten coffins, as if corpses might at any moment suddenly sit up and take a turn about the grounds.

  After Ellen’s arrival in August, the staff in Terry Fitzgibbon’s shop take the best part of a month to progress from “helloing” her to exchanging comments on the weather to inquiring about the progress of renovations to the house to, eventually, calling her by name. Terry introduces Ellen to her husband, the elusive Bart, co-owner of the shop. “He wouldn’t know you,” Terry laughs. “He’s a blow-in.”

  “We’ll be up one day to see how the work’s progressing,” Terry says. “I always liked Sarah’s house. It was a shame to have it idle for so long.”

  The next time Ellen goes in for the paper and bread, Terry says, “I took a peek in the windows of your place last night. I like the extension and conservatory. You’ll have a great view.”

  Ellen bows to the inevitable. “Would you like a guided tour?”

  “Yes, please.” Terry and the girls seem to take Ellen to their hearts. They volunteer tendrils of gossip when handing back change. She learns that the post-office job is up for tender, that somebody or other — she rarely knows who — has died, that such-and-such a person is ill, or rumored to be ill, and that a pub a mile outside the village is up for sale. She always knows if a car accident has taken place on a main or by-road. Unfortunately, Terry presumes her to be cognizant of the history of whatever person or event is being discussed, as if, fully formed like Venus, she arrived in the village with complete knowledge. If she says, “I’m not certain I know them,” Terry is sure to comment, “You do. You’ve just forgotten. Ask your uncle.”

  “Careful of what you let slip around here,” Matt warns on one of his visits to the rented house he calls “Ellen’s pen.” “Play it civil and strange.”

  “Play it what?”

  “Be polite, but be extremely wary, and keep them at arm’s length.”

  “That’s a new one on me. But why do I have to be so careful?”

  “How can I put it? Don’t be too eager to give out information. Your every word will be scrutinized. You have to be careful the way you phrase things because what you say is likely to be misinterpreted. You’ll be quoted as saying things you never said. I’m serious,” he says grimly. “There’s a core of hardened gossips ready to pounce on any unwitting newcomer. It’s only sport to them, and they’re all stirred up by your arrival.”

  “I can’t understand how they’re so interested in me and my doings.”

  “It’s recreational, happen
s in all small communities. They know now that you’re not here on a fleeting visit. That opens up tracts for conjecture.” He draws on his cigarette. “Not being a complete outsider will give you a bit of status, but it also means you’ll be subject to harsher scrutiny than a blow-in.”

  “There’s none of this in the city. Nobody gives a damn.”

  “It’s known here as neighborliness.”

  “I’ve been asked when the renovations are due to finish, whether I’m putting in central heating, if I’m damp-proofing the place, what the kitchen extension is for, how I intend to use the conservatory, whether the house needs a new roof, and where I’m thinking of buying my kitchen.”

  “See? Be wary of them. And what about your job? Have you ditched it?”

  “Oh gosh, no. I took a year to get sorted out. I’m on the lookout for a subbing position.”

  “You can’t get away from bread-and-butter issues. That’s a cross we all have to bear. But, Ellen, you’re a demon for staying in. You’re too young for that. I don’t see you out and about. I expected to come across you in one of the licensed establishments.”

  “The pubs?” She sighs. “To tell you the God’s honest truth, it feels peculiar to walk into one on my own. Poked my nose into a place one Saturday night and it was full of noise, smoke, and teenagers.”

  “That’d be Murphy’s, haunt of the young pups. Call into Hegarty’s tomorrow night and I’ll stand you a pint.”

  Nothing easier, she thinks. However, without his presence, she knows that her confidence would ebb away quickly.

  He drains his cup, rounds up the last crumbs of cake with his index finger, presses them into a lump on the plate, brings them to his mouth, and swallows them. “That’s good for a shop cake,” he says. He stretches and stands up. “Better head up to the house for supper. Why haven’t we seen you in a while? I’m partial to a bit of company, and the house is way too quiet with the boys grown up and gone.”

  Unmentioned is Julia’s obvious lack of welcome the time Ellen turned up uninvited at the farm. Her silences or monosyllabic answers were eloquent. She wasn’t overtly rude and never said anything that could be pinned down. There was never a moment of crisis as such. She offered Ellen tea, but she was a very preoccupied hostess, constantly slipping away to complete this or that chore and leaving Ellen, as Matt would put it, in “glorious isolation.”

  Two weeks have passed since that occasion and, when they meet in a shop or on the street, Julia has taken to saying, “You must call up.” Ellen smiles noncommittally, but when, one Saturday night, Julia rings and crossly issues an invitation to the following day’s dinner, Ellen accepts, if only to please Matt.

  “Come in. Sit down,” Julia says at the door. As per usual, everything about her smile is calculated. The lips measure their grip on the expanse of the mouth. The performance is obedient to the teeth and confines itself to the area of the jaw.

  Matt is an enigmatic presence at the table, hunched in on himself and particularly subdued and deferential. He doesn’t make eye contact with Ellen. Julia bustles about the kitchen, lifting lids on pots and pans. Her manner toward her guest is formal and forced, as if humoring a tedious dignitary. She gives the impression of fighting her own inclinations. She and Matt must have had a disagreement before Ellen’s arrival, and Ellen will never know if her invitation arose out of a battle of wills won by Matt, or if they compromised with a tradeoff.

  “How are the renovations going? Are you managing the hardship?” Julia asks as they start into a meal of tough roast beef, over-cooked vegetables, and underdone Yorkshire pudding. Matt passes the gravy boat to Ellen, and she pours some of the lumpy liquid on the meat and potatoes.

  “My needs are few. I’m living out of packets and tins at the moment.”

  Matt laughs. “That’ll be no hardship to you. No cooking!”

  “You can stop those digs. I’ve already told you how improved I am in that regard. I had to when I married,” retorts Ellen crossly. For an instant she’s scared they’ll ask about her marriage, but mercifully nothing is said.

  “And are you really determined to live here?” Julia asks, breaking the silence into which they have lapsed after the main course.

  “Oh, yes. I intend to make a go of it.”

  “Well, that’s quite extraordinary,” declares Julia, springing to her feet and removing the plates.

  “What’s extraordinary about it? People are moving out of the cities every day,” Matt says brusquely.

  “Nothing,” Julia answers impassively as she sets dishes of apple tart and ice cream in front of them. “It’s just such a turnabout from the way things used to be. The drift was always toward the cities.”

  “It’s a new world,” Ellen says wanly. She forces herself to swallow mouthfuls of dessert. She’s had about as much as she can take. “I’d better make a move,” she says a little later, pushing her empty dish away.

  “Have tea or coffee before you go,” Matt says, and Julia gets up to put on the kettle.

  After the meal Julia takes her on a tour of the back garden. It’s a conventional space with lawn, bedded shrubs, and a path, with a gate leading into a walled vegetable and fruit garden. The vegetable garden is well tended, and the apple and pear trees have been stripped of fruit. “We supply all our potatoes, vegetables, and salads from here,” says Julia.

  “Do you grow onions?” Ellen asks, remembering sacks full of onions tumbled and laid out to dry in Sarah’s garden.

  “Onions, scallions, cucumber, tomatoes, lettuces, the lot.”

  “And you work it all on your own?”

  “He prepares the beds and I do the rest.” Matt is referred to as “he” or “your uncle” and never by name. “That’s where we store the apples,” Julia says, pointing at a shed. “The pears have to be eaten when they’re ripe, but I’ve boxes and boxes of apples wrapped in newspaper.”

  “It’s all pretty impressive.” Julia doesn’t answer. Ellen senses her withdrawal from the conversation. Perhaps she finds her husband’s niece boring, or maybe she feels that her duty is done. She has given her ration of talk and attention. It has been metered, invoiced, and paid for.

  It’s a miracle of sorts that they produced children, but of course that was Hanora’s influence, his mother choreographing events, orchestrating the tune Julia played during brief truces that Matt, never a natural combatant, mistook for peace offerings. Much as the bull obliges the cows, while there was need of him, Matt had played his part in producing the heir and spare.

  He often imagined that he would leave Julia once the boys had grown up. He’d picture various ways of breaking the news to her. Even more pleasurable would be to disappear from her life without warning.

  His mother used to tell an old story about the man who did a runner the day of his marriage. The wedding party had been walking toward the bride’s house when the man hopped over the ditch. Nobody took much notice. There were no toilets in those days and people often did their business in fields. When he failed to turn up at the bride’s house, they sent two men down to search for him. He was never seen again in the locality. Years later somebody claimed to have run into him in New York. The woman kept her married name and called herself his wife till the day she died. Matt liked that story, although he knew there was precious little chance of him ever escaping to New York. If he ever got away, London would be as far as he’d reach. In the recesses of his heart, he knows this is a pipe dream. He didn’t want to be a farmer in the first place but now he’ll never be anything else.

  This weekend Stephen is down. They’re clearing the table and stacking the plates in the sink after a late dinner. Julia pours a kettle of hot water over the dishes. She has inveigled Stephen into doing the drying up. “Your father has got very fond of the gargle,” she says suddenly. Matt has taken to driving down to Hegarty’s each night and looks forward to these outings. This is her first comment on this new practice.

  Stephen flashes his father a quizzical look. “That’s right, s
on,” Matt says. “I’ve turned into an old soak, incapable after a few pints, staggering home drunk every night. Sad, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a dangerous business when somebody suddenly develops an interest in drink. God knows what the repercussions will be.”

  Trust her to try to make mischief between them. He senses Stephen’s unease. It’s obvious that he doesn’t want to be drawn into his parents’ squabble. “Don’t worry, son. Two pints each night aren’t going to kill me.”

  “But what if it turns into a habit? What if he starts to drink more?”

  “That’s nonsense, Julia. I’ve always been a very regular sort of fellow, moderate in my habits, and I don’t see any need to change that. The company in the bar helps me relax after a day’s work.”

  “You never needed to until now.”

  “Look at it this way, Stephen. I’ve no interest in those television soaps your mother likes to watch. The winter nights can be very long. I don’t want to take up golf or card playing. There’s little on the box to interest me. I enjoy a quiet chat and a drink in the snug. Then I come home and have a little read.”

  “Alcohol has ruined many a life,” she says.

  “Don’t concern yourself about it, Julia. I’ll go down to the pub for a couple of hours every night, and that’s all there is to it. Do you want a lift, Stephen, or do you fancy taking your own car?”

  Stephen smiles. “Hang on while I finish here. I told some of the guys I might meet up with them tonight.”

  “Give us a shout when you’re ready.”

  Stephen’s just thirty, but Julia treats him like an eighteen-year-old. Matt guesses that she will put pressure on Stephen to stay in the house. She’ll suggest that it’s too late to go to the village or complain about being left on her own.

  Stephen comes down to Matt’s office. He looks tense. “She’s annoyed I’m heading out tonight,” he says glumly. “She’s going on about hardly ever seeing me.”