Civil & Strange

by Clair Ni Aonghusa

  “A cabinet maker. Fitted Ellen’s kitchen for her,” offers Eugene.

  “Let there be no panic,” soothes Ellen. “We’re not getting married or anything.”

  “Well, you can’t, can you? You’d be breaking the law!”

  “Nothing to worry about, Kitty,” Ellen says.

  “Well, I don’t know about that. You never even told your mother,” she accuses. “That’s very hurtful.”

  “I was going to,” Ellen lies. “This just fast-forwarded it.”

  “He’s very good-looking,” Kitty says, sounding slightly winded. “Have you been in touch with Christy? Does Christy know about me? Poor Christy.”

  “I’ll contact him, if you like.”

  “You’ll never go back to him now, now that you’ve taken up with another man.”

  “Eugene has ears, Kitty. He can speak. Talk to him!”

  “Of course I’ll talk to you, Eugene. It’ll be a pleasure. How could I not?” Kitty says, switching on the charm.

  “You were always a man’s woman,” Ellen says tartly.

  Kitty smiles. “You always say that as if it’s some sort of insult. And it’s true, a handsome man always gets my attention. It’d be unnatural otherwise.”

  “Enough of this guff,” Matt says. “What’s the story, Kitty? What have they said? There’s no risk, is there?”

  “There’s a risk with everything, Matt. Even I know that,” Kitty says crossly.

  “The medics give you a big spiel about risk factors nowadays, Kitty, worst-case scenarios, remote possibilities, the works,” Eugene volunteers. “They have to. It’s all to do with insurance. But it’s nothing to worry about. I know that because my father had a bypass the year before last.”

  “A heart bypass?”

  “A triple one actually. It took him a while to recover his fitness.”

  “And how is he now?”

  “He’s grand. He made a good recovery and he gets a lot out of life.”

  “You’re healthy and you’re fit, Kitty,” Ellen says.

  “All the same, I can’t believe my heart has let me down. It makes me feel so delicate.”

  She looks quite put out when Matt says, “Nothing delicate about you, Kitty. You’ll see us all out.”

  Eugene and Ellen have seen Matt off in a taxi bound for the nearby university campus. Matt was keen to see Stephen’s office and joked that, if he got lost on his way to the Department of Archaeology, he would dig himself out of trouble.

  They are eating lunch in a pub near the hospital. Ellen sips a glass of white wine. The two of them have ordered salmon. Eugene is drinking water. He’s in a quiet, preoccupied mood. “I’ve no problem with you staying with your mum after they discharge her,” he says in answer to what Ellen has told him. “It’s obvious why she’d want that. As for her coming to stay with you later, that’s all in order.” He leans in close. “Don’t worry about this tendency to feel sorry for herself. You heard the doctors. She’ll be flying soon.”

  Ellen bites her lip. She can feel a pressure down one side of her neck like a knotted muscle or a protuberant vein. “She was on again about moving in with her after you left last night. She thinks she has the whip hand now.”

  “Don’t give this thing legs. Let’s be reasonable. She’s had a bit of a fright. Can’t argue with that,” he says, scrupulously fair. “From what you say, she’s been hamming it up a bit. Obviously, she missed a vocation as an actress.”

  “Like Louise, you mean? I used to teach that story.”

  “Louise? What’s that?”

  “It was a text on the English course, a Somerset Maugham story. It’s about a woman who has a heart condition and who’s supposed to be delicate, except when she’s having a really good time. She outlives two husbands who are worn out caring for her, and tries to thwart her daughter’s chance of happiness by insisting that the girl’s forthcoming wedding will finish her off.”

  “How does it end?”

  “The narrator accuses Louise of being selfish and manipulative, much healthier than she lets on, says she’s sabotaging her daughter’s happiness, and shames her into letting the marriage go ahead. On the morning of the wedding Louise has a heart attack and dies.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “No.” Ellen grins. “Trick is not to get married.”

  “Thing is to decide in advance what you’re going to do. There probably will come a time when Kitty will land in on you.”

  Ellen can visualize that scenario — her mother arriving with a small suitcase, a short visit extending into an interminable stay, a welter of spats and disagreements, an intractable impasse with a high misery quotient, and Kitty’s unshakable resolve. Ellen shudders. “I’ll go insane if I have to live with her!” she declares. “It always ends with her trying to undermine me. We don’t like each other all that much.”

  He gives her hand a reassuring squeeze. “There’s really no point in worrying, no sense in getting all worked up. That’s not going to happen today or tomorrow.”

  “You said yourself that she’s liable to move in.”

  He smoothes the furrow on her brow. “Stop fretting. Look, she’s basking in all this attention just now, loves being at the center of everything, but I can never see her settling for a quiet life. She’s too lively. There’s still plenty of go in her. She’ll get bored. She’ll want to be out and about. Once she gets over this fright, and stops being careful of herself, she’ll get itchy feet and be off on one of her jaunts.” He pulls her to him in a quick hug. “Then it’ll be just you and me… and the occasional visit from her highness.”

  Ellen looks skeptical. “So you think it’ll be all right?”

  “Of course it will. Don’t worry. There’s no need to look so woebegone. Anyway,” he adds with a conspiratorial smile, “if anyone can make her watch her step, I can. She won’t want to fall out with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m her golden-haired boy!”

  “Yeah!” In general, his relaxed attitude to life is a great antidote to Ellen’s anxieties, but today his flippancy grates on her nerves. She frowns.

  “What?” he prompts.

  “It’s all right for you,” she says crossly. “Whatever happens, you’ll get away lightly. There’s still another dilemma. My school in Dublin isn’t expecting me back, but my chances of getting the teaching job in Killdingle are pretty slim. I’m worried about how I’ll earn an income.”

  “You don’t have to teach, do you? Stuff that job. Come on, think laterally. How about doing something else?”

  “All I’ve ever done since I was twenty-three is teaching. Slap open a book, roar at them, entertain them, confuse them, and keep the show on the road. It’s all I’m fit for.”

  “What about VEC schools, adult education places?”

  “Mostly part-time, and I’ve never worked for a VEC.”

  “Why don’t you do the rounds with your CV?”

  “I put together a new one for the job interview. It felt like I was making myself up.”

  “Why not let your house out for rent and move in with me?” he says impishly.

  “Stop joking!”

  “I’m not joking. I’m serious,” he says, as if offended.

  “Live with you?”

  “Short-term, for starters. It would give you an income. Your place is in great nick. Why not?”

  “You really mean it?” She frowns. “I don’t know how that would work.”

  “Come on. I’m sick and tired of all this coming and going between houses. One week your place, the next week mine. I can’t settle. The arrangement doesn’t really work.”

  “You want to have an easy life, don’t you?” she accuses. “That’s what this is all about. But can you imagine what moving in with you would do to my reputation? It’d be flittered!”

  “You haven’t any reputation to defend, Ellen. And that’s good, not bad! Of course, it will make some people uncomfortable. In the old days they’d have tried to ru
n you out of the place. But they can’t do that now. They don’t have any leverage over you. There’s no momentum behind them.”

  She looks at him. “Are you serious about this?”

  “Yes.”

  A waitress picks up their empty plates and asks if they want to see the dessert menu. Eugene waves her away and asks for the bill.

  “Why?” asks Ellen.

  “Why not? You can’t deny that it makes sense. Anyway, it’s been on the cards for ages. It’s just a question of formalizing our situation.”

  Ellen is confused. What is their situation? She knows they have an understanding but she has no idea of what it means. “Excuse me,” she says hastily, and makes for the ladies. She finds herself in one of those mirrored rooms with seats at counters, toilets in a farther room. She doesn’t really take in much at first. She’s trying to work out why she is so discomfited by Eugene’s suggestion. What has upset her? Did he assume too much? Was he too cocksure? Is it something else? She knows that many people are pretty blasé about moving in with each other. It can be a decision that ranks in importance with something as trivial as deciding which color to paint their walls. She stares at her reflection, multiple images of her bouncing off the mirrored walls.

  Suddenly, she’s aware that she’s not on her own. Two women in late middle age are sitting in easy chairs in a corner of the room. They stare at her. It doesn’t take long to figure out that they are sozzled. Their lipsticked mouths hang slackly, their eyes are glazed like marbles, and their blond, high hairstyles tilt like windblown haystacks. They have collapsed into the seats, and it looks as if they will never be able to stand up again. They watch Ellen dully for some time before picking up their conversation. It’s obvious that they had been talking about the breakup of one of their marriages. There’s something a little disconcerting about them discussing their business directly in front of her, but they pay her no attention.

  She thinks about what Eugene said. Somehow, she imagined that they would drift along indefinitely. She escapes into the farther room and locks herself into a cubicle.

  “We’re going through the contents of the house, item by item,” she hears one of the women say. “Thirty years married and we’re fighting over effects. I never imagined I’d be getting worked up over an ornament, Cecily! I mean, what is wrong with me?”

  “It’s the associations, Maria. Everything has associations.”

  “To hell with associations!”

  “Let’s drink to that.”

  “I’ll drink to disassociations!” the bereft woman says, and Ellen hears the wooden legs of the chairs scrape against the floor tiles as the women struggle to their feet, and a thud as the exit door swings shut behind them.

  So many breakups and so much heartbreak, Ellen thinks. She has shaken off her own unsuccessful relationship and established a new life. She likes having her own place and the feeling of independence it gives her. Sarah’s house has always been special for her. After all the work that went into doing it up, she doesn’t want to abandon it. It’s far too soon to be moving in with Eugene. She’s not ready to invest in him yet. That’s the truth. She sinks her head into her hands.

  When she rejoins him in the bar, he looks uncharacteristically nervous. “Well?” he asks.

  Until she speaks, she’s not sure how she’s going to phrase what she has to say. “I’m not quite ready to move in with you, Eugene. Maybe it’s a residue from my marriage, but I’m afraid it might feel claustrophobic. I like the arrangement we have at the moment. Also, the way things are with my mother, I don’t feel up to making a decision like this.” She can’t bring herself to look at him, so the silence that follows unnerves her.

  “You’re saying no. Don’t you want us to be together?” he says eventually. She has to look up to see the expression on his face.

  “This is going to sound dreadful, but it’s me — it’s all to do with me — I can’t just jump in like that. I have this fear of everything souring. I’d be so apprehensive.”

  “You expect things to go wrong?”

  She can’t make out if he’s puzzled or annoyed. “It’s not rational. It’s not based on my experience of you. It’s like a —”

  “Phobia?”

  “Nooo. More like a doubt, a reservation.”

  He smiles tiredly, as if humoring her. “Hesitation?”

  “Deliberation.”

  “That’s fine, your prerogative,” he says briskly. “Look, I have to go. Matt’s expecting me to pick him up in ten minutes. We want to get out of the city before the Friday afternoon rush.”

  She walks him to his jeep. “Is this the end of us?” she asks.

  His expression is hard to read. “I don’t know. Is it? You’re the one who backed off.”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he says, sitting into the driver’s seat and sticking the key into the ignition, “when we have time to talk, why don’t you explain it to me? Fair enough?” He slams the door shut.

  She knows that this is him being angry. How he’ll react when he’s had time to think about this, she has no idea.

  “Okay.” She watches him drive out of the car park. Before the jeep leaves the footpath, he gives a brief wave. She could weep. She crosses the road to the hospital entrance on the other side.

  Eighteen

  DESPITE HER RESOLVE to avoid Terry’s, Ellen finds herself in the shop one July afternoon. It’s a Wednesday, James O’Flaherty’s shop is shut, and she and Kitty are out of tea bags. She grabs bread and a packet of tea bags and makes for the checkout.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while, Ellen.”

  “I haven’t been in,” Ellen says shortly.

  “Matt told me about your mother. That must have given you a turn,” Terry says with something of her former friendliness. “I hear she’s staying with you. How is she?”

  “She’s well.”

  “I’d say it’ll be some time before you’ll be able to relax about her.”

  Terry’s return to friendliness is irritating. “Mum had an angioplasty. It wasn’t a serious blockage. Anything else you need to know?”

  Terry lowers her gaze as she drops the change into Ellen’s palm. “Is something wrong, Ellen?” she asks quietly.

  Ellen tries to shake off her hostility. “Why should anything be wrong?” she asks coldly.

  Terry looks flustered. “I have a fair idea of what’s eating you, and you’re right. Look, I know my tongue runs away with me at times, but I think a lot of you for helping Matt to get back on the straight and narrow, and you’ve been good to your mother.”

  Ellen sighs. “So you’re prepared to let me off the hook on other things? Is that it? You’ll be putting me up for canonization next.”

  “It’s all too easy to rush to judgment, Ellen. Let’s make a new start. Give your mother my regards and tell her I was asking after her,” Terry calls out.

  Ellen is on the point of saying that Kitty has no idea who Terry is when she notices Terry’s expression. The woman is making an effort. She looks contrite.

  Will they be reconciled? Is that what Ellen wants? Instinctively, she’d opt for humiliation — Terry, Nan, Brenda, Mrs. Hussey, the lot of them, biting the tough crust of penance, clothes rent through, ropes around their necks, being paraded through the streets. She’d like to out them for their machinations, hypocrisy, and bad-mouthing of her. It wouldn’t solve anything, but it would be balm to her fractured soul. All the same, she is weary of conflict. No point in torturing Terry. They’re never going to be close. There’ll always be an element of disappointment and disapproval in their relationship, she about Terry’s reactionary views, Terry about how Ellen conducts her life. People let each other down.

  Ellen rises to a smile. “I’ll tell her that. She’ll be chuffed.”

  “See you, Ellen.”

  The teaching job has gone to someone else. Ellen keeps the news from her mother when the phone call comes through. Muriel, fitter and trimmer loo
king than Ellen remembers, arrives and whisks Kitty off for a few days in Kinsale, and Ellen is enjoying a respite.

  Eddie calls to the house to commiserate with her. “The chairman of the board of management rang when I was staying with Mum,” she says. “And the letter arrived.”

  “I told them not to bother you much after all that business with your mother, but they have to go through the motions,” he says as they sit sipping whiskey and looking out over the garden from the vantage point of her conservatory. “Your replacement’s a young pip-squeak, four years out of college, with qualifications to beat the band, of course — a list of degrees in this and diplomas in that — but no sense of authority about him. He looks about fifteen at best. Limp handshake, limp personality,” he says. “I’ve no doubt but that he’s a diligent type. He’ll spend hours preparing classes, and I’ll have the privilege of breaking him in, stepping in to prevent mayhem, detaining the little misbehaving bastards after school, threatening them with God knows what retribution if they continue to make the poor sod’s life a misery. Seven years, they say, isn’t it, that it takes to make a teacher? The first year a write-off, after that wait until each class he’s made mistakes with has left the system. That is, firstly, if he turns up in September and, secondly, lasts the pace. His nervous system mightn’t be up to it.”

  “You’re being wonderfully indiscreet, Eddie. Or are you saying all this to make me feel better?”

  “You know I’m not because you know the score. We’ll have to revamp the timetable to keep him away from exam classes, and load other people. That won’t win me any popularity contests. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps he’ll surprise me, but he’s very wet behind the ears. Bits of subbing work here and there, no continuous work. Only four people applied for the job — including you — and one of those didn’t turn up for the interview.”

  “It’s all right, Eddie. You’ve massaged my ego nicely. I’m not heartbroken. I might have been but, oddly enough, my mother’s illness brought everything into relief. It doesn’t seem important.”

  “Ah, but I’ll miss you about the corridors and in the staff room, Ellen. And the way you might look at me.”