A Fanatic Heart

by Edna O'Brien

  Each morning the oldest brother, William, filled the buggy with provisions in order to go up the country to buy and to sell. He used to coax me to go with him by telling me about the strange people he met. In one house three members of the family were mad and bayed like dogs, and the fourth, sane member had to throw buckets of water on them to calm them down. There was the house, or rather the hovel, where the hunchback, Della, lived, and she constantly invited him in for tea in the hope that he would propose to her. Each time when he refused, Della stamped her foot and said that the invitation wasn’t meant anyhow. There was a mother and daughter who never stirred out of bed and who called to him to come upstairs, where he would find them in bed, wearing fancy bed jackets, with rouge and lipstick on them, consulting fashion catalogues.

  “Do you ever score?” I heard his cousin Tom ask him one morning, and William put his finger to his lips and smiled as if there were sagas he could tell. But I would not be dragged to these places, because for one thing I had no interest in fields or hay sheds or lakes, and for another I wanted to remain in Michael’s orbit and be ready at any moment should he summon me, or just bump into me and give me a sudden thrilling squeeze. He worked in the mill, which was a short distance across the garden. Sometimes I would convey him out there, and if the birds were gorging on the currant bushes, as they usually were, he would flap his hands and make a great to-do as he frightened them away.

  “Be seeing you later, alligator,” he always said, and lifted his cap once or twice to show that he was a gentleman. I then had to go back and help Peggy to wash the dishes, polish the range, and scrub the kitchen and the back kitchen. Later we made the beds. Making his bed was exciting but untoward. Peggy would flare up as she entered the room, then she would whip the bedclothes off and grumpily shake them out the window. In the yard below the geese cackled when she shook these bedclothes, and the gander hissed and raised his orange beak to defend his tribe.

  “I can’t wait to get to England,” Peggy would say, and her version of life there seemed to envisage a world that did not include geese or the necessity to make beds. The room itself was like all the bedrooms, high-ceilinged, covered with garish carpet and unmatching furniture. There was the dark mahogany wardrobe with a long mirror that looked muddied over and gave back a very poor reflection of the self. There was the double bed with wooden headboard, and there was a cane chair beside the bed on which he flung clothes. His shoes, so big and so important, were laid inside the curb of the tiled fireplace, tan shoes well shone and with shoe trees in them, his fawn coat on a hanger, swaying a little in the dark space of the wardrobe. There were, too, his various ties, the red-tasseled box in which were thrown the several love letters, his scapulars, his missal, and then, most nakedly of all, his pajamas in a heap at the end of the very tossed bed, causing Peggy to be incensed and to ask aloud if he played hurley in his sleep or what. Along the mantelpiece was the row of cups that he had won at hurley and beside them a framed photograph of his mother as a very young girl, with lips pouted, like a rosebud. I would touch the cups and beg of Peggy to tell me when and where each one had been awarded. They were tarnished, and I resolved that one day I would get silver dip and put such a shine on them that when he entered his room that night he would be greeted by the gleam of silver and would wonder who had done it and maybe would even find out.

  Once the beds were done, I would then concoct an excuse to go over to the mill. Up to the moment I had yielded I would intend not to go, but then all of a sudden some frenzied need would take hold of me, and though despising myself for such weakness, I succumbed. Crossing the garden, humming some stupid ditty, I would already picture him, his face and jacket dusted over with white grain, his whole being smelling of it, his skin powdered and pale, a feature which made him look older but made his eyes shine like deep pools. I would hear the rush of the little river and see segments of it being splashed and tumbled in the spokes of the big wooden mossy mill wheel, and I would go in trying to appear casual.

  “Any news?” he would say, and invariably he asked if the English folk had been to the shop yet. An Englishman and his son had come to the district to shoot and fish, and their accents were a source of mirth to us, as was their amazement about nature. They were most surprised by the fact that they had caught a rabbit, and brought it over to show it to people as if it were a trophy.

  One day, however, I found him in a rage, and saw that he was hitting the wooden desk and calling Jock, the boy who helped him, the greatest idiot under the sun. Michael had addressed the bills to his customers and had put Esquire after each one, when Jock had come along and put Mr. before each name, and now thirty or forty envelopes would have to be readdressed. Despite his fury he had put his arm around me as usual and said what a pity that I couldn’t work in the mill, so’s he’d send Jock to a reformatory, where he belonged. I was basking in being so close to him when a beautiful older girl sauntered in, on the very flimsy excuse that she was looking for her father. This was Eileen, with blond hair, blue eyes, and great long black lashes, which she knowingly flaunted by repeated fluttering. She worked in Dublin but was home for a few days, and as she came down between the sacks, it was prodigal to see their interest in each other quicken. She walked with a sway and said that her father was supposed to have come with bags of corn for grinding but where on earth had he vanished to? Seeing his arm around me, she pretended to be very haughty and said, “Sorry,” then turned on her heel and walked away. She wore a red jacket, a pleated skirt, and wedge-heeled canvas sandals with straps that laced up over her calves.

  “What’s the big hurry?” he called out to her.

  “Have to see a man about a dog,” she said, and she turned and smirked. He said that he had not known she was at home and might he ask how long would the parish have the pleasure of her exotic company.

  “Until I get the wanderlust,” she said, and announced that she might go to a hotel at the seaside for a weekend, as she heard they had singsongs.

  “God, you must be rolling in it,” he said.

  “Correct,” she said, and put out her arm to reveal the bone bangles that she wore.

  “I suppose we’re the country Mohawks,” he said.

  “You certainly don’t know how to pamper a gal,” she said, and implied that men in Dublin knew what it was all about. The peals of laughter that she let out were at once sweet and audacious.

  “Do you live on the north side?” he said.

  “Gosh, no, the south side,” she said, and added that if one lived on the north side, one would be roused by the bawling of cattle two mornings a week as they were driven to the cattle market and herded into pens. “The north side is far too countrified,” she said.

  “So you’re sitting pretty on the south side,” he said with a sting. By now he had deserted me and was facing her, taking such stock of her as if every detail of her person intrigued him. Though they were saying caustic things, they were playful and reveled in each other’s banter.

  “Who’s the little kid?” she said, looking back at me, and upon being told, she said that she knew my sister, had seen her at dances, and that my sister was full of herself.

  “What are you up to tonight?” he asked.

  “Fast work,” she said, and he biffed her, and then they linked and went outside to confer. Standing next to Jock, who was scratching the Mr. off each envelope, I felt foolish, felt outcast just like him. They stood in the doorway close together, and fired with curiosity, I hurried toward them and slipped out without even being noticed. There was a lorry parked to one side and I stood on the running board in order to spy on them. It was awful. His arm was around her waist and she was looking up at him, saying, “What do you think you’re doing.” He said he could do as he pleased, break her ribs if he felt like it.

  “Just try, just you try,” she said, and with both hands he appeared to mash her ribs as he circled her waist. A few flies droned around the lorry, as there were milk tanks on the back, and there was a smell of sour mi
lk and metal. The driver’s seat was tom and bits of spiral spring stuck out of it. I wondered whose lorry it was. Not having looked for a few minutes, I now allowed myself another glance at the bewitched pair. He was standing a little behind her; her pleated skirt was raised so that it came unevenly above her knees, and I could see the top of her legs, the lace of her slip, and her mounting excitement as she stood on tiptoe to accommodate herself to what he was doing. Also, she let out suggestive sounds and was laughing and wriggling until suddenly she became very matter-of-fact, pulled her skirt down, and said what did he think he was up to. Then she ran off, but he caught her and they had a little tug of war. He let go of her on the understanding that they would meet that night, and they made an appointment in the grounds of what had once been a demesne but was now gone to ruin.

  By the time they met, and possibly just as he was resting their two bicycles, interlocking them against a tree, or spreading his overcoat on the grass, I was kneeling down to say the Rosary with his mother, whose voice throbbed with devotion. She had decided that night to offer up the Rosary for her dead son and her dead husband. The kitchen flagstones felt hard and grimy; it was as if grit was being ground into our knees as we recited endless Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and Glory Bes. I was thinking of the lovers with a curiosity that bordered on frenzy. I could picture the meeting place, the smell of grass, cows wheezing, their two faces almost featureless in the dark, and by not being able to see, their power of touch so overwhelmingly whetted that their hands reached out, and suddenly they clove together and dared to say each other’s Christian name with a hectic urgency. I was thinking this while at the same time mouthing the prayers and hearing the mumbling of the men in the bar outside. I even knew the men who were there, and saw one old man to whom I had an aversion, because the porter froth made gold foam on his gray mustache. Mrs. Flynn was profligate that night with prayers and insisted that we do the Three Mysteries—the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious. It was after ten o’clock when we stood up, and we were both doubled over from the hours of kneeling.

  She asked if as a reward I would like a “saussie,” and she popped two sausages into the pan that was always lying on the side of the stove in case any of her sons became hungry. In no time the fat was hissing and she was prodding the sausages with a fork and telling them to hurry up, as there were two famished customers. Afterward she gave me little biscuits with colored icing and said that I could come for every holiday and stay for the entire length. Saying it, I think she believed that I would never grow up. I slept with her, and all that I recall of the bedroom is that it was damp, that the flowered wallpaper had become runny and disfigured, and that the feathers in the pillows used to dig into one’s flesh. That night, perhaps exalted from so much praying, she did not insist that we go to sleep at once but allowed us to chat. Naturally I brought the subject around to her sons.

  “Which of them do you prefer?” I asked.

  “They’re all the same in my eyes,” she said in a very practical voice.

  “But isn’t Michael a great hurler?” I said, hoping that we could discuss him, hoping she would tell me what he was like as a baby, and as a little boy, what mischief he had done, and maybe even discuss his present behavior, especially his gallivanting.

  She said that a gypsy came into the shop one day long ago and predicted that Michael would have a checkered life, and that she prayed hourly that he would never take it into his head to go to England.

  “He won’t,” I said, without any justification.

  “Please God not,” she said, and added that Michael was a softie with everybody. Little did she know that at that moment he was engaged in a tryst that would make her writhe.

  “I think he is your favorite,” I said.

  “What a little imp you are,” she said, and announced that we must go to sleep at once. But I knew that I wouldn’t. I knew that I would stay awake until I heard him come up the stairs and go into his room, and that having heard him, I would experience some remote satisfaction, thinking, or rather hoping, that he had tired of Eileen and was now ours again. It was very late when he got back and my mood was dismal because of his whistling. A mad notion took hold of me to go and ask him if he wanted sausages, but mercifully I resisted.

  I wondered which of the two girls he would smile at next day at Mass. As it happened, Eileen and his girl friend Moira were in the same seat, but not next to one another. Eileen was all in black, with a black mantilla that shrouded her face. I thought she looked ashamed, but I may have imagined it. Moira had a cardigan knitted in the blackberry stitch and a matching beret that was clapped on the side of her head and secured with a pearled hat pin. During the long sermon she kept turning around, probably to see where Michael was. He stood in the back of the church with the men, and like them skedaddled at the Last Gospel. The two girls came down the aisle very quietly and exchanged a word on the porch. Then Moira went on home with her parents, and Eileen cycled home alone.

  At lunchtime Michael was very attentive to me, kept giving me more gravy and more roast potatoes, kept telling me to eat up. It was my last day, as I was leaving very early in the morning on the mail car. Perhaps he was nice to me for that reason, or else it was a silent bribe not to betray his secret. I had already accrued a gift of ten shillings and rosary beads from his mother; in the back of the crucifix was a little cavity containing a special relic.

  As we were eating, their cousin Tom rushed into the kitchen and announced that he was taking me to the pictures that night. The brothers let out some hoots, whereupon he said that for two weeks I had helped in the kitchen, helped in the shop, and had had no diversion at all. To my dismay their mother applauded the idea and said what a shame that one of her sons hadn’t shown such thought. I disliked Tom; he had a smile that was faintly indecent, and whenever a girl went by, he made licking sounds and gurgles. He had glaring red hair, pale skin with freckles, and often he wore his socks up over his trouser legs to emphasize his calves. His hands were the most revolting, being very white, and his fingers were like long white slugs. Despite the fact that I withered at being invited, he said that he would pick me up at six and that we would have a whale of a time. The cinema was three or four miles away and we were to cycle. I dreaded cycling, as even in the daylight I had a tendency to wobble.

  The Angelus was striking as he arrived in a green tweed suit with matching cap. He was unable to conceal his pleasure, and at once I saw his salaciousness from the way he touched the saddle of my bicycle and said oughtn’t I to have a little cover on it, as it wasn’t soft enough. “You demon,” Michael said to him as we set off. The cycling was most unnerving; I bumped into him several times and found myself veering to the ditch whenever a car passed us. He said that had he known of my precariousness he would have put a cushion on the crossbar and conveyed me himself. I could not bear his voice and I could not bear his unctuousness, and what I disliked most of all was the way he kept saying my name, making it clear that he was attracted to me.

  When we got to the cinema he linked me up the steps and led me into the foyer. It was a very luxurious place with a wide stairs, and the streams of light from the big chandelier made rainbow prisms on the red carpet. The stair handle had just been polished and it smelt of Brasso. Inside, he settled us into two seats in the second to last row, and once it became dark, he grasped my hand and began to squeeze it. I pretended not to know what was going on. His next ruse was to tickle the palm of my hand slowly with his fingers. A woman had told me that if tickled on the palm of the hand, or behind the knees, one could become wanton and lose control. On the screen Lola Montez was engaged in the most strenuous and alarming scuffles as she tried to escape a villain. Her predicament was not unlike my own. Having attacked the palm of one hand, he then set out on the other, and finding me unwilling, if not to say recalcitrant, he told me to uncross my legs, but I wouldn’t. I sealed them together and wound one foot around the other ankle so that I was like something stitched together. I strove to ignore him, and ann
oyed by this he leaned over and licked my ear and so revolted me that I let out a cry, causing people to turn around in amazement. Naturally he drew away, and when the man behind him thumped his shoulder, he muttend some abject apology about his sister (that was me) being very highly strung.

  When we left the cinema he was livid. He said why do such a thing, why egg him on with ringlets and smiles and then make a holy show of him. I said sorry. What with the dark and the long cycle home, I realized that I was at his mercy. I feigned great interest in the plot of the film and began to question him about it, but he saw through this ruse and suddenly swerved his bicycle in front of mine and said, “Halt, halt.” I knew what it presaged. He took both bicycles, slung them aside, and then embraced me and said what a little tease I was, and then backed me toward a gateway. The gate rattled and shook under the impact of our joined bodies and from inside the field a cow let out a very lugubrious moan.

  “I’m not going in there,” I said.

  “Not half,” he said.

  He said he had paid three and sixpence per seat and had had enough codology and wasn’t taking any more. I summoned all the temerity I could and said how the priest would kill me and also Mrs. Flynn would kill me.

  “They needn’t know,” he said.

  “They would, they would,” I said.

  He was not going to be fobbed off with excuses.

  “Have a heart!” he said as he began to kiss me, and inquire what color underclothes I wore.

  “I love Michael, I love Michael,” I said vehemently. Foolishly, I thought jealousy might quell his intentions.

  “Hasn’t he got Moira?” he said, and went on to outline how Michael was at that very moment in the loft above the mill, dose to Moira, a rendezvous they kept most Sunday nights.