The Ikon Maker

by Desmond Hogan

  And when the crunch came they were lovers.

  The flat they’d been staying in was vaguely run by pacifists. Another great cause to their very young and tender minds.

  But finally it didn’t work; the protest marches, the letters to embassies, the drugs – ’, Michael hesitated on this word, ‘it was all too ready-made. Their relationship disintegrated. Diarmaid left with me for York.’

  Susan couldn’t help feeling she was getting very matter-of-fact treatment; like a report on the stock exchange on television. But she listened. It was all new to her and she listened, picking out the bits of Diarmaid’s life, unsurprised at Michael’s frankness, but wondering. Wondering at where it was all leading to – this openness.

  They walked about York. Susan saw an old lady with cherries in her bonnet; a yacht sail under a bridge. All calm it pushed forward. And she was totally overtaken by these things.

  She was wearing white shoes now, big ones. Her dress blue, hair blown and her features were tanned. Altogether it was enough to make young men look at her.

  She’d smile, passing them, Michael giving almost a jealous stare.

  This was her moment – she recognized it – it had come.

  Life could pass by now – calmly. Like the yacht. It was over. She’d reached something. At fifty-three she was lovely. Lovely enough to attract attention in a street in York, to invite the inquisitiveness of a young man like Michael.

  What would Mrs Conlon think now? And all the Mrs Conlons?

  She’d changed so much. This she thought on looking into a shop window one day. It was an antique-shop window, old furniture inside. But maybe it was that she hadn’t changed, but that she’d become herself again. And she thought of a night after the war when she visited the men’s social club in Ballinasloe with George. Inside were billiard tables; people playing, old photographs, brown almost. While her husband played snooker she watched the trees outside. They were so green.

  She concentrated on them, images of war returning, and she felt renewal. The trees were leafy, full of green. Next week she’d heard they were going to be cut down.

  She felt like going and stopping it, but there was nothing to be done.

  They were cut down and as the fair came to Ballinasloe only old stumps were left.

  Her bewilderment returned to her now as she stared at her image. More than bewilderment. Fright.

  But she was calm now. She knew the years had peeled away like wallpaper, that here she was as a girl in Galway; totally responsive.

  There wasn’t a further path to travel. She remembered walking with Diarmaid in spring and felt now the presence of autumn, the year pivoting. She’d never been more herself than now. It was over, her truth.

  She turned about and seemed to gaze into the eyes of a young girl, arms touched by freckles, in Galway, 1939.

  9

  Michael enjoyed her meals; rainbow trout, buttered potatoes. The trout came from Scotland.

  ‘I imagine Ireland to be very like Scotland,’ Michael said over the rainbow trout.

  ‘I don’t know. I’d say it’s softer somehow.’

  ‘My parents used go to Scotland all the time when I was young. To a cottage near a lake. There I’d read Charles Dickens –.’ He searched Susan’s face to know if she knew of Charles Dickens. ‘– It was very pleasant. Other times I’d go down to the lake and find the land covered with dead eels and I’d run back in terror. My father and mother were just about to break up at the time and one day, naked, I saw my father beat my mother. Later when I was twelve or fourteen I had dreams of dead eels and my father beating my mother, naked, and my whole head would reel with dead eels which were somehow my father’s private parts.’

  Susan had a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Then – suddenly – she ceased, realizing it wasn’t altogether funny.

  ‘I think Diarmaid was a bit like that, too. He used have awful nightmares once.’

  ‘But the worst,’ Michael said, ‘is that school. He hated it. I don’t think he’ll ever recover from it. The boy hanging himself and all that, it’s awful.’

  Her pangs of torment returned, bewilderment at her decision to put Diarmaid in the school as a boarder. Maybe Derek O’Mahony wouldn’t have killed himself otherwise.

  Maybe he would.

  ‘But the surest thing to remember,’ Michael said, ‘is that all adolescents suffer terribly. I suffered terribly. So did Diarmaid. And so did you though you mightn’t realize it. Or at least Diarmaid is suffering for you now. You’re part of his existence. He’s living out a part of you.’

  Her blood raced; she felt the warmth of winter cardigans about her. No more subtle understanding had ever been put to her, the quest of Diarmaid was one from far back in her life, a point of suffering begun, reaching out to her son. She loved him, she needed him, she wanted him the way she needed the smart of an old anxiety, pain in the morning of girlhood when she watched sheep and thought of menstruation.

  They made coffee in a silver pot.

  With her back to Michael and with more certainty then she’d ever accomplished before she asked, ‘Were you and Diarmaid lovers?’

  Shock silenced the room. She turned about and he was shaking,

  ‘No,’ he said.

  She waited, poured out coffee and quietly said – as though addressing the tablecloth. ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘It is.’

  Michael had the look of a stone-age man, withdrawn, wild.

  ‘I loved Diarmaid. I didn’t mean to begin what we began. But it was mutual. Once before in his life someone tried to seduce him. Derek at school. He’d refused point-blank. Later the kid killed himself. The connection lasted.

  Diarmaid slept with me many times. Maybe apologizing in a sense to Derek. But one night – both of us drunk on whiskey, he became hysterical and started screaming, “You queer, you. You queer, you. I don’t want anything to do with you any more,” and when I tried to appease him he started pulling at me and saying he was going home.

  “Diarmaid,” I said, “Go home. You’d never last a day there. You’re messed-up, and crazy. Make up your mind for once about what you want to do. Go home, stay, go back to Alice, but shut up.”

  He wept. We made love.

  He woke in my arms. Like a young cripple.

  Later that day we had a row. He threw jam at me. It smattered the wall, my face. I got him, hit him. He walked out’ – Michael was laughing – ‘saying he was going back to London to marry Alice.’

  She could have cried, Susan could, but instead she felt only tenderness and a debased sort of forgiveness for Michael. She took him in her arms.

  It was like taking Jesus. He was so quiet and slow. His weeping ceased. She felt trouble leaving the trouble and in the dark – far away – she could almost hear a corncrake in the summer fields.

  10

  ‘Eleanor.’ She walked in, stampeded in. Around her arms she’d wrapped chiffon. She looked crazy. Like a lady Susan remembered used go to the Presbyterian church in Ballinasloe, all sorts of shawls about her.

  ‘Michael, I love you. Passionately.’

  Michael stood there – bewildered.

  ‘Take me, love. We’ll go away. I know an ideal place. Les Saintes Maries de la Mer, gipsy capital of Europe.

  Come on. We’ll never get the chance again. Michael, Michael.’

  Just then Susan’s presence at a doorway was noticed.

  ‘H-hello.’

  ‘Eleanor this is Mrs O’Hallrahan, Diarmaid’s mother. The mother of one of the boys in Endsleigh Gardens.’

  ‘How do you do?’

  ‘Hello.’

  Silence. Eleanor took in the sight of a lady, middle-aged with a tan on her face and a countenance that was soft, almost pretty. Obviously she was wondering at what her presence meant.

  ‘I came here looking for my son.’

  ‘Your son? Here in York?’

  ‘Yes, Eleanor. Diarmaid stayed here with me.’

 
Eleanor looked in bewilderment from one to the other.

  ‘Oh.’ She removed a piece of chiffon and said, ‘I’m going to sit down. Darling, would you make me tea?’

  Then looking at Susan, ‘Are you Irish?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The ‘Irish’ was rolled. Like the Irish Sea.

  ‘I come from County Galway.’

  ‘The west?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How wonderful.’

  At that conversation ceased between them. Michael brought tea. He’d also heated buns.

  They ate them with butter.

  ‘Did you know,’ Eleanor said, ‘that Michael and I are getting married?’

  ‘No.’

  Susan sounded doubtful.

  ‘Well we are. In the church in Horsham. Near where I live. It’s a lovely church. Every Saturday the organ plays and couples march out. As a little girl I so wanted to get married there. Now my wish has come true. Isn’t that divine?’

  Her fingers clasped. Susan wasn’t sure if the girl was mocking. She looked from Eleanor to Michael.

  ‘Congratulations.’

  Michael squirmed. Defeated. The look on his face said, ‘O.K. I’ll have to get married because Eleanor wants to get married.’ That was the look. That was the way.

  Susan withdrew, slept, a stranger in the house. In the morning she met Eleanor in a white nightdress emerging from Michael’s room.

  ‘Good morning.’ She washed her teeth gaily. ‘It’s a beautiful day. Let’s go shopping.’

  Apparently she’d taken a fancy to Susan. It was like an indulgence to her, having the older woman in the house.

  ‘O.K.’

  They went with baskets. Eleanor picked up a bunch of lupins.

  Dazzlingly she smiled.

  ‘We’ll bring these home. They’ll make the house look lovely.’

  11

  ‘My father owns a lovely bungalow near Horsham. You must visit it some time. Roses all over the place. When I was small I had a minnow pond.

  It was wonderful.’ Eleanor was rhapsodizing, over lunch. Wine held in her hand. ‘Remember that time we were in Paris, love, and we saw an old man paint dogs on the pavement before the police got him.’ She was jumping from one thing to another, anxiously.

  ‘I met a young man in Horsham this time who wanted to marry me. I refused. That’s why I’m here. Refusals bring other decsions.’

  She looked at Susan. ‘Don’t you agree?’

  Michael was fingering a wine bottle.

  ‘He owns a golf course.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man who wanted to marry me.’

  ‘Darling.’ A piquant cry from Eleanor.

  They went to a fair together.

  More and more it seemed they were becoming more hospitable towards one another, more suited, though Susan’s purpose was now totally submerged. She’d almost forgotten why she’d come. They’d forgotten why she’d come. But they were kind people and welcomed her just because she was a person, a warm person at that, and cooked good bread.

  Aeroplanes turned, children ate toffee apples and candy floss. The river flowed by and ladies who’d just won teddy bears floated excitedly about. A child cried somewhere. Eleanor turned and found a baby, a weeping little blonde baby.

  The young woman raised the child. ‘How lovely you are. Where’s your mummy?’

  The child’s weeping subdued.

  Its face began to glow, savagely, all reds, all water.

  A very grumpy lady seized the child.

  ‘I’d love to have a baby,’ Eleanor said.

  Turning to Susan she said, ‘You’re lucky. You have a son.’

  Just then – simultaneously – they both noticed Michael. He was watching – unawares – a youth with blond hair and a chest passionately curved inwards.

  Eleanor looked away, brown arms beneath a white cardigan which hung loose on her shoulders.

  ‘Yes I’d love to have a child.’

  12

  They walked home. Eleanor’s eyes were on the street ahead. She was silent – looking bewildered, yet trying not to show it. They passed shops of freshly baked scones, they passed drifts of people, young and old. Michael was quiet, too, unaware of problems. His forehead was somehow etched in sun. Little paths of sun on it; it made him look both attractive and old at once – strange, that was the word for it. Strange.

  She contemplated him, Susan did. And wondered what would become of him. He was so shy, so nervous, so ill-at-ease in the world. Where would he settle? Surely Eleanor wasn’t a suitable companion for him, lecturing in economics, a suitable profession. They got home. Eleanor made lunch automatically.

  Later Susan walked into the kitchen and found her crying.

  13

  ‘Why are you crying?’ It was later, another occasion. Susan could hear their voices in the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t know why. I don’t know why. I just don’t know where I’m going.’

  ‘We’re getting married, aren’t we?’

  ‘No, no – it wouldn’t work. We’re not.’

  There was a stunned silence.

  Susan crept quietly out – past a cat – into the night.

  A star hung remotely. She walked through the streets to the cathedral where posters advertised a concert. She went to it. People looked at her, well nigh sophisticated people. She looked sophisticated herself. Not the woman of a few months ago; newer, more free.

  In fact she wondered was it not that day when she was driven to the station in Ballinasloe to meet Diarmaid that she’d changed. That day he had turned up, gold and green in the bogland.

  What was she thinking of that day? Oh yes. Talking like a madwoman about the North. Thinking of Bernadette Devlin. That day she’d changed.

  She took a seat next to a gentleman with white hair.

  He smiled at her.

  She sat back. The young people were American. They were dressed in white. The organ began; voices reeled, songs emerging, all old ones, little understood by her.

  They sang ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ beautifully. She was thrilled. It was so good. Why hadn’t she been to a concert like this before in her life? No one knew. Not even herself; her life was a quiet one. Now for the first time in years she felt alive.

  A young man sang – as though a vindication of her thoughts – ‘There is a balm in Gilead.’

  The words formed – beautifully.

  Full of desire. The dead stirred. George spoke to her.

  He came close, like a piece of the century, the forties, the fifties, was gone.

  David Kelly, her friend from Galway, addressed her. She looked at the stained glass and remembered a time she’d gone to Mass in Galway with him at the church on the Claddagh.

  ‘I have love, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house and the glory which lies therein.’

  Words came back from that particular Mass, Durham hills as she sped to his funeral, golds, green.

  Then as never before she saw Diarmaid, hair streaked like melted butter, face half a girl’s, looking downwards. ‘Diarmaid.’ The sensation was so physical she felt for a moment that he was dead, too.

  Frightened by the thought she searched her mind for escape, but it scared her. Was there something wrong with him? What was the matter?

  Her journey to England had not been in vain. This was it. She had to search him out. He was in danger.

  This she knew. He was somewhere going wrong. She must find him.

  Through the streets – walking back – an old man passed her, raised his hat. Night had indeed fallen. Outside a chipper a girl glared into a neon-stab of light on the opposite side. A man passed.

  He said ‘Goodnight.’ She answered politely and wondered if it would be possible, finding Diarmaid. But inside a cry arose. Firmly.

  She needed to see him now.

  She felt for his safety; she needed to know he was all right.

  14

  ‘Would you like a cheese sandwich?’

  �
�Yes.’

  Eleanor looked at her and prepared a sandwich.

  The older woman looked wan, tired, worn-out.

  ‘Have you been for a walk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘The cathedral.’

  ‘How nice.’

  ‘There was a concert on.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘They sang many negro spirituals and a song called “There is a balm in Gilead”.’

  ‘I know that. I heard it in Chartres Cathedral once. I’d actually run away from home. With a boy. The gardener’s assistant. He was about twenty-three. He looked just about eighteen. We went to Calais and hitched to Paris. He got fed up there and went home. Anyway he had a girlfriend at home. I went on. Beating off Moroccans and at seventeen I ended up in Chartres Cathedral for a concert. It was wonderful. A soloist sang that song and I was so moved I cried and went home.’

  Silence; it was a sort of listening silence, everything awake. A dog barked outside.

  Susan was quiet, ever so quiet.

  ‘Do you like music?’ Eleanor asked eventually.

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  ‘I’ll put on a song or two.’

  She put on Simon and Garfunkel.

  Part of Diarmaid’s repertoire, Susan thought. The two women listened – frightened. It was as though they were listening to the sound of their lives, Eleanor to her loss of Michael, Susan to her loss of Diarmaid. Eventually Eleanor said – very quietly – ‘Michael went off tonight with a young boy. Somewhere they’ll make love. He’s not a pervert, Michael isn’t; he just loves life too much.

  Many people who love life a lot are homosexuals. It’s not something to worry about. I love him more. But I’ll have to leave him.’

  ‘Don’t you know that people can be both homosexual and also – be in love with women?’ Susan said. In a way she was quoting an Irish women’s magazine; in another way, unbeknownst, she was quoting private experience.

  ‘True. But he’s not in love with me.’

  They went to bed.

  Later a door opened, Michael coming in. His footsteps sounded drunken, dazed. He put on a light and played the same L.P. that Susan and Eleanor had been listening to.