A Pagan Place

by Edna O'Brien

  After they thanked the woman for the tea and the oysters you set out again and when you got to where there was a strand and some changing rooms you got out because that was the place you had come to see. Your father rolled up the legs of his trousers and paddled. His shins were very white. Your mother said if he’d brought a cake of soap he could have had a footbath, killed two birds with the one shot. You all laughed. You bought two paper bags of periwinkles and you sat around to eat them, you formed a circle. You were squatting. You had only one pin between the four of you. There was a knack in doing it. You had to lift the little shell off and then unwind the periwinkle very carefully so that it didn’t break. They had the taste of the smell of the sea. They made you thirsty. You asked for lemonade. You all had lemonade including your father. The sun came in fits and starts. The periwinkles were the colour of hen dirt. You thought that but didn’t say so. And you didn’t get sick in the car either and neither did your mother or your Aunt Bride get sick. Your Aunt Bride was very excited and kept looking at all the attractions such as the shells and the rocks and the two changing rooms and kept saying Glory be to the great God, today and tonight if it isn’t a shell, if it isn’t a rock, if it isn’t a changing room, and your mother kept replying in a very restrained voice, hoping that your aunt would take the hint and lower hers. Your aunt had a silver brooch in the V of her neck and inside her dress below the V, she kept her powder puff. Every so often she dabbed her face. The powder smelt nice but the puff was mauve and threadbare, like a tongue.

  Sandwiches were passed around and when she was gathering up your mother asked who hadn’t had an egg because there was an egg sandwich to spare. Your father said he’d rather a mixed grill and your mother said that was all right for people who had money to burn. The driver sat with you, but not in your circle. You all laughed because of the way he wolfed his food. He put a full sandwich at a time into his mouth and nothing was visible only the fawn crust between his parted lips. Your mother pretended you were laughing at something else, something from the past. Your aunt said it was a memorable day and would be memorable for all eternity. She told about pink birds who crashed against the windscreens of cars in Italy and who when dead were served on toast. She had read it in a book.

  Your aunt was a bookworm. That was what the priest called her, she wormed her way into books. She even read when she was driving the pony and trap, let the reins go slack and gave herself up to reading. She read at night and then made cornflour to cheer herself up. She was not a good cook. The cornflour never had the same consistency, sometimes it was lumpy, sometimes it was runny, and when she burnt it she made amends by adding an excess of vanilla essence.

  On the way home from the seaside it was milking time and the car had to slow down again and again because the cows were being brought in. Your father went into a pub for a glass of water and your mother sent you in after him. He asked for an aspirin for his headache. The owner of the pub was famous because he had found a collar of gold in a field one day when he was hunting rabbits. He gave it to a museum. You were let shake hands with him. There were men drinking egg flips. There was egg flip on a man’s beard and all over his lips, like spit only yellower. Your father had a glass of water, as promised.

  You had to pass your own gates to go to your aunt’s. That was the arrangement, you would all go to your aunt’s for tea. Your aunt lived up the mountains and the higher you went the better the view when you looked back. You were driving away from the lake that was named after the King of the Red Eye, a king so generous that he gave his eye away and when he did he bled a lake from the socket. It was not red though but grey like the sky itself.

  Calves and pigs met her at the gate and your aunt fussed over them and pulled their ears and though she didn’t comment you knew that your mother considered it the height of sentimentality. You asked if there were tomatoes for tea.

  Your aunt had grown tomatoes once and they were put to ripen on the window sill and had to be turned round and round, a fraction each day, so that they got uniformly red. But no matter how red they got the greenness showed through and they were tart when you bit them. The home-grown tomatoes were her pride, as was the patchwork quilt and her garden. The quilt was made up of diagonals and joins of colour and most days she had not time to make her bed but drew the quilt over it for appearance sake. She went in for pastel flowers. She liked a garden to look faded, not to look blooming. The things she detested were begonias. When you ran your thumb and forefinger along the stalks of delphiniums the petals fell easily away, like flakes, like snowflakes only blue. Blue was her favourite colour. Her good coat was blue and so was her trousseau when she got married.

  She said it was the wrong season for tomatoes but that there were lots of dainties. Your father said she should not have bothered, that a cup of tea would have done and she said who had been craving for a mixed grill a short time previous to that. He hummed and raised his chair so that the two front legs were above the floor in such a way that a cat or a hand could get trapped under them.

  You sat in the parlour while she laid the table. She wouldn’t let anyone help. Your mother sat on the horsehair sofa and said hairs were persecuting her. It was a cold room and the things were mildewed. There was a photograph of Daniel O’Connell over the fireplace.

  From the kitchen you could hear your aunt singing. She sang The Croppy Boy. You recalled the day that she sang when she was churning and forgot her labours and forgot everything so that the butter was nearing cement. She kept coming in and out, first for the cloth, then for the napkins, then for the teapot. Your mother said it would be better to use the everyday teapot that was already nicely lined with tannin, said it in a whisper after your aunt went out of the room. You were all dying for a cup of tea.

  Your father asked you when Daniel O’Connell was born and what was his greatest achievement. You rattled it off. 1775 and Catholic Emancipation. Your aunt said that was one of her favourite pictures but your mother said she was not stuck on it as it was too pugnacious. Your mother liked pictures of Spanish ladies in tiered dresses and pictures of Christ. When she lifted the heavy curtain to look out at the lake she said she could not stand the sight of water day in and day out. She said it was one thing to go to the seaside but it was quite another to be confronted by such a vista, eternally. She did not say why. Your aunt announced supper. She put on a funny accent.

  It was in the kitchen. The first thing your mother did was warm her shins by the fire. Through her stockings her veins bulged. They were lisle stockings, and she had to be careful of the sparks. Stockings were hard to get and there was no draper friend to her the way Manny Parker’s sister was friend and favoured her by giving extra chocolate.

  There was cold chicken and potato stuffing. The butter was in fancy pats and the glass dish was laid into cold water. It wobbled. Your mother brought her nostrils near to it and then drew back making a face. Your aunt put heaps on each plate. The stuffing was like a sauce and it spewed over the cold meat. There were hot turnips but everything else was cold. Mixum-gatherum your aunt said. She was delighted to see everyone eating. She took extra bits of meat in her hand and put them on your father’s plate. From the steam of the kettle the face powder had gone in crusts all over her cheeks. She felt the material of your father’s new suit and said it was worsted, and good worsted at that.

  The tailor had made it. The tailor had a game leg and when he measured ladies he touched their diddies. He chalked the shape of the suit out before he cut it. Most men went in for blue serge suits but not your father. Your father preferred brown. Ambie said that cripples were more partial to women than ordinary men and that was why the tailor had an urge to touch girls’ diddies. His wife had a brass weighing scales and allowed people to weigh their turkeys, and their suitcases, on it.

  All of a sudden your mother began to laugh. She said that when she was in Coney Island a fortune teller advised her never to marry a good-looking man because in that way she would never run the risk of losing him. She
could not stop laughing. Your father said what got into her. Your aunt said to your mother that wasn’t it so that the first night she got to America hadn’t they put her on Ellis Island. Your mother’s face contorted and she said absolutely. She said she would never forget it. She described her feelings, how she thought she was going to be exiled there for ever. You butted in and said Like Napoleon. You knew that Napoleon was christened the Little Corporal and had a demanding wife called Josephine and had been exiled towards the end of his life. They praised you for knowing that. The way your mother shivered made everyone else shiver. You asked what it was like on Ellis Island. She said terrible. Like the Tower of Babel she said. But the Tower of Babel was somewhere none of you had been to. She said all languages were spoken, divers tongues, mixed in together. She said she was in a bunk with people above her and below her, all talking, all crying. Your father said wasn’t it a pity she didn’t stay there and enumerated the misfortunes that he would have been saved. But he didn’t mean it. Your aunt ladled cream into the glass dishes where she had already stacked mounds of green jelly. Your mother said no cream for her. Like the butter, it had a strong smell. You did not fancy it but you did not say so. Your father congratulated your aunt, said what a spread it was, and she used that moment to tell him how she would always be grateful to him for introducing her to such a good solicitor.

  Your aunt liked your father. Your aunt had loved her husband. She believed in love, unlike your mother, who said it was a form of dope. Your aunt called her dead husband a partner. He was shot by the Tans in another part of the country, in broad daylight. When she got the wire she rushed off in a train to get his body and bring him home but when she got there they had already sent the coffin on another train and she was three days at various railway stations trying to locate him. There were quite a few coffins in those days, what with the shooting, and the ambushes. He was buried in the family grave where the bullocks grazed, the island where you would all be buried, eventually. Your aunt had kept a photo of him in the gold locket which she wore around her neck. You asked her to open it. She opened it with her thumb nail and the two discs of gold split in half. He had a moustache. When she looked at him he seemed to be looking straight back at her and he seemed to be saying something or repeating something that he had said before. That was true love, that was, the way your aunt looked into her dead husband’s face and conversed with him.

  Your mother said did they hear that one about the girl who went to a party and when asked if she wanted any more food, said I have eaten to my satisfaction and if I ate any more I’d go flippety floppety. You helped your aunt to do the dishes. Your mother then said they must take you home because you had school in the morning. Your aunt said it was the end of a perfect day. Your father said Emma would be home soon and your aunt promised to visit. Your mother said it was a promise she hoped would be abided by. Your aunt and your mother kissed and you thought of Mary Magdalene and her sister Martha and how one was a saint and one was a sinner, and then you thought of you and Emma.

  There was a surprise at school. Jewel told you that the teacher was going to the loony-bin. Told you in confidence. Told all the senior girls. Jewel had it from her mother, because the teacher had gone and borrowed a bedjacket.

  Jewel was the teacher’s pet the way you were your mother’s. She said it was not the public place where all the mohawks went, but a paid place with flowers and an artificial lake. Miss Davitt must have shown photos of it. Miss Davitt told the class that she was going to the city to take a postgraduate course but by then everyone knew and there were sniggers. Jewel offered aloud to go to her house and make a fire and Miss Davitt was thrilled and said Home Sweet Home and Bless this House. She had books that she did not want to allow go mouldy from damp.

  She had a new tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush and a facecloth that was like a mitten. She said the toothpaste was probably of Greek origin, like all civilized things. She said what bostoons you all were to know no Latin and no Greek, to settle for a puny alien tongue, to kow-tow to the invader. She squeezed a bit on to her finger and ate it. Everyone laughed. Lena Sheedy said that the chimney sweeper had such white teeth because he cleaned them with soot. Someone else said his teeth looked to be white because his face was black, in contrast. A lot of people sided with that. Then someone said that the black doctor would be out from jail soon. The black doctor extracted teeth and got prosecuted because one man he removed the teeth of died from a haemorrhage.

  The man who died was Mulligan. The local paper had it – Black Doctor jailed for extracting molars from the mouth of Mulligan. You said it aloud for fun and everyone screamed and then all of a sudden Miss Davitt got very cross and started thumping the girls in the front row and hit the desk with the metal edge of a ruler and told everyone to write out a composition entitled A Day in the Life of a Penny. The girl next to you said to you not to dare rise her again because she might get in a fit and froth from the mouth or do anything.

  There wasn’t ink in all the inkwells and when girls reached over to dip their pens you could smell them. They all had different smells and along with that each girl had three lots of smell, skin, hair and clothing. The girls from the town were presentable.

  You were finished early but kept your head down. The poison that had been put out for rats was still there, in corners on crusts of bread. There were different noises, the nibs of pens that divided in two made a scraping sound, and the nibs that were drowned in ink made another sound and the infants ring-ring-o-rosied from the yard.

  They were out there unattended. They might come to any catastrophe, fall into the lavatory-hole or get stung, or eat some weed that was poison, mistaking it for sorrel. The big girls ate sorrel and sucked the stalks of honeysuckle but infants didn’t know one plant from another.

  The sums from the day before were not completely rubbed out, on the blackboard. The girl who had charge of the blackboard was small and could not reach to the top. The board was on the two highest pegs because Miss Davitt was nearly six foot tall. Her stockings would not stay up because she had spindles for legs.

  When you gave her the bundle of copy books she said Pray, what are these? and then she started flinging them in all directions. Some were parted from their covers. Then she pointed to a spot on the grey cloth map and said that was where Bally James Duff was before it went bust and then she doubled over laughing. She said she was already dead. She composed her epitaph. She said Hail life, sweetness and hope and the sooner the better. To thee do we cry poor banished children of Lir, Heaven, Hell and shingles, Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connaught, asses and gennets when the cat is out the mouse can play and the Red Branch Knights doffing their pants in a quiet watered room.

  She stood in front of the fireplace and hitched her dress up to warm the backs of her legs and stayed still like that until lunchtime. There was no fire on. You all got sent home early.

  Your father told you to go down and see if the horse he had backed got a win or a place. He sent you down to ask Lizzie because your own wireless had conked out. Your mother said it was his own fault for not making sure of the wet battery.

  You ran the first part. Your chest piped. You slowed down. The grass was warm. The cropped grass was like a carpet. The high stalks danced and waved. You danced with them. You touched them. That was your way of saying hello. Yellow flowers predominated. Yellow flowers were your favourites, the warm bells and the warm discs. The dandelions were bowed down with seed. You consulted one to know the time. The bits of fluff went in all directions, parachuted, then dropped, adding to that crop. A weed with very thin tendrils got itself entwined in sturdier things. You broke some to make bracelets.

  When you passed your throne you sat because that was for good luck. Every time you passed it you had to sit. Sometimes to avoid it you made a detour. It was a tree stump, a seat of happiness with briars round it. You had a place trampled down for your feet. Elsewhere the briars flourished, were its garland. Birds called to each other in the grass. Some w
ere melodious, some were not. There was whirring, that was grasshoppers. Chickens screeched. You could hear them before you could see them. They were submerged in the high grass.

  They were from an incubator and the mother that she had allotted to them had disdain for them. You ushered them out to where the grass was low so that they could be on their guard against weasels. The singing birds did not bother to fly, they simply walked from one bush to the next. The crows were on their usual peregrinations, cawing and crying. The high grass, the low grass, the crows flying, always the same things.

  The cuckoo was due. No one had heard it yet. Manny Parker was always first with that tiding. You ran to make up for lost time.

  All of a sudden you saw a banana without its skin, on the ground under the outer spread of a tree. You backed away from it. It was slightly rotting. You ran back to tell, kept repeating it before you got there at all, Quick quick, a banana, a banana.

  Bananas were phenomena. Scarcely any consignments came from foreign countries and when they did, people were rabid to get them and only city people got them because of being near the docks. There were young children who had never seen bananas at all, only in photos in a geographic magazine.

  He and she hurried down. No cows had had the opportunity to lick it because they had been moved to another field that day, since there was a man supposed to have come to scythe the ragwort. The field was deserted except for the hosts of flies who drowsed in the cowpats. They were so still they looked to be dead.