Midwinter Break

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘The heel of the bottle.’ She pursed her lips. Not good. He looked towards the bar. The waistcoated barman had served the family and was arranging glasses on a shelf with his back to them. Gerry heaved himself to his feet, went to the bar and asked for a glass of ‘aqua’. He said it twice and the barman asked if he wanted water. Gerry nodded. Automatically the barman put ice in the glass then filled it from the tap. Gerry would have preferred it without ice but because it was free and a favour he said nothing. He came back with the glass rattling. Beneath the level of the table and out of sight of the barman he diluted his whiskey.

  Stella tapped her fingers to Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ until it changed to ABBA’s ‘I Believe in Angels’. Gerry closed the bag tighter round the neck of the bottle.

  ‘What’s wrong with my water?’ said Stella. ‘I’ll not drink all of this.’

  ‘I hate fizzy. Makes it feel like poor man’s champagne. Or bin juice.’ The barman looked at him and Gerry put his hand around the whiskey glass. ‘They play that stuff all over Europe,’ he said. ‘Especially ex-communist places.’

  ‘They’re just catching up,’ said Stella. ‘They missed the good ones the first time around. Those songs are just part of the lining of your brain. That barman has his eye on you.’

  ‘He doesn’t like self-service. Let’s go.’ Gerry drank the glass off then lowered the bag between his knees and uncapped the bottle. He began attempting to pour water into it. Some of the ice cubes clinked off the bottle mouth and clattered into the polybag.

  In an effort to get up Stella leaned on the table and glanced down into the polythene bag.

  ‘The heel of the bottle?’ she said. ‘Since when did the heel of the bottle become the knee?’

  ‘Are you nosying into my bag?’

  ‘Gerry, gimme peace.’

  ‘I was very abstemious in the hotel. You should be proud of me.’

  ‘Why are you doing all this, anyway?’

  ‘Because I don’t like straight whiskey.’ His voice was full of exasperation and he turned away from her to complete his task. ‘The water takes the fuckin’ burn off it.’

  Stella stood, put her bottle of water into her bag and walked out. Given the mood Gerry was in she didn’t want to go to the gate – to be isolated with him or to sit in ranks with other people. Here they could wander away from each other.

  ‘First let’s find a base,’ she said.

  They walked until they came across half a dozen empty seats in a corridor – all black leather and stainless steel – looking out into the night. She walked around the line of chairs to the window side and sat down.

  ‘This is perfect,’ she said.

  The blizzard outside continued slanting across the airport. Stella sat mesmerised watching the relentlessness of it. It was visible mostly in the haloes of lights, the nearer the more defined. Some sodium lights made yellow of it, ordinary ones made it blue-white. Always agitated, streaking and swirling. Away from the light there seemed to be no snow. Scored velvet-black darkness. Except directly outside the window overlooking the apron. Tail fins and bodies and swept-back wings becoming more and more indistinct the further away they were. Then the storm would take a breath, the wind would stall and large flakes would climb back up the dark in the lee of the window. Stella found herself isolating one particular snowflake – a small one – and watching its progress. Lifting, floating, eddying upwards, sinking among the others. Dithering. Then when it went off her radar she would choose another and watch it and will it to survive for as long as possible. Gerry set his shoulder bag on the ground and sat down several feet away from her.

  ‘I love the Hardy poem,’ she said. ‘Every branch big with it, bent every twig with it.’

  ‘You’d have to be hardy to be out there at the minute.’

  ‘But it’s so lovely,’ she said. ‘Snow on snow. Like in the carol.’ She heard the little scissoring noise of Gerry unscrewing the metal cap, followed by the liquid tilt as he drank. He made a noise with his lips – then the scissoring sound again as he screwed the top back on. She had no need to turn and look at him because she could see his reflection in the window straight in front of her. There was a sense of her prying like a detective, watching events through a two-way mirror. She saw through it to the movement of snow outside – the speed of its different layers. Gerry didn’t bother putting the bottle back in the shoulder bag. It was now naked in his hand, out of the duty-free bag.

  ‘I’ve stripped the stockings off her,’ he said.

  ‘You’re dribbling.’ Gerry looked at the puddle at his feet. It was coming from the duty-free bag.

  ‘It’s just melting ice.’

  ‘Careful, Gerry,’ she said, ‘sometimes they bar drunks.’

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘The airlines. They have the power to stop you at the gate.’

  ‘Who’s drunk? I just hate to see waste.’

  ‘Maybe we should go through security now?’ she said. ‘Get it over with?’

  ‘Why do you think I’m sitting here finishing the heel of the bottle?’

  ‘It’s getting bigger.’

  ‘That’s because I put water in it. I’m determined to drink the security man’s share. We’ll go through when they can’t take it off me.’

  ‘You’ll do yourself damage.’

  ‘As if you would care.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  Stella stared at him for a long time.

  ‘What if I took myself off by the hand and left you?’ she said. ‘Would you blame me?’

  Gerry shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘If you could only see yourself. You used to be so kind and considerate. What’s happened to you? You’re nothing but appetite.’

  ‘Waste not, want not.’ He clumsily moved along the seats closer to her. He tried to take her hand in his but she snatched it away and stood.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said.

  ‘This kind of talk . . .’ he said, ‘it scares me.’

  Stella threaded her arm through the handle of her leather bag and walked like a woman late for work. Sometimes Gerry was beyond the beyonds. In the distance she saw the warning light of an airport shuttle cart flashing. It had an alarm which made a noise like a corncrake. This grew in volume as the cart approached, its tyres silent on the flooring. It was driven by a turbaned Sikh in a navy blue uniform. Stella looked at the passengers. Four old folk with walking sticks – two bald men, two women with their white hair freshly done for going away. They seemed shy of the publicity their cart journey was bringing them. We’re not that bad yet, thought Stella, we can still self-propel – get about on our own two pegs. She looked at the signs and followed the one for WC.

  In the Ladies she was amazed to find a cubicle empty. Inside, she slid the bolt across. She spooled out a length of toilet roll from the enormous dispenser, wiped the seat, prepared herself and sat down. Her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands. After a while she began to weep. Her inferior tears spilled onto her cheeks. She did it quietly for fear the women on either side would hear and then come to see if they could help. They couldn’t. How utterly foolish she had been to concoct such a dream. And a dream is definitely what it was. She should have had more sense. At her age. The attempt to repay a spiritual debt had failed. She knew that the only way to improve the world, without patronising anyone, was to improve herself. To be the receptacle for love, yet not to feel herself worthy of it. There was a poem by Raymond Carver called ‘Late Fragment’. He had a problem with drink too. But he beat it in the end before he died. The short poem began with a question – ‘And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?’ A nod of the head, yes. And what was that? ‘To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.’ But Stella wanted not so much to be loved by another person as by something altogether greater. And at the same time to be self-effacing – even when putting on her wee bit of make-up in the morning. She would have hated to give that up,
it was such a small habit. Mere watercolour. Her dream had crumbled. The woman she had seen that morning – the woman in charge, Astrid Hoogendorp – had been straightforward and spoke serviceable English. Everything she’d said had backed up Kathleen’s version of events. There was no religious order now, it seemed. There was a community of women who lived useful and happy independent lives. Except. Except. Except for Stella’s age. She was too old. Not too old to be religious but too old to take part in their organisation. Stella had bitten her lip. She hadn’t said a word about what had happened to her in Belfast. It was all too complicated and this woman did not possess Kathleen’s warmth. Astrid Hoogendorp had looked over her glasses and pulled a face of sympathy. We have rules for good reasons, was what she was saying. Stella had nodded. As for waiting for simple accommodation – not to put too fine a point on it – by that time she could well be dead. Indeed she felt she could have died right there at that moment. All hope had drained from her. Despite the look of sympathy, there was an element of a schoolgirl being given a dressing-down. You’re wasting my time and you’ve worn a hole in the elbow of that cardigan. Besides nowadays, the woman went on, it was a real estate transaction rather than a spiritual one. Supply and demand. Stella flinched a little at the ‘real estate’ phrase. Can there be so many women in a similar position? Widows, the brutalised, women in need of a room of their own, women with leanings to a life of seriousness, women who wished to practise a life of devotion, a move away from the world towards sanctity. She wanted to live the life of her Catholicism. This was where her kindness, if she had any, her generosity, her sense of justice had all come from. And her humility, she must not forget humility. Catholicism was her source of spiritual stem cells. They could turn into anything her spiritual being required. Like coping with difficulties, like a priesthood which had thrown up frequent monsters, right-wing control freaks, sexual deviants. Indeed there was a time when everyone in charge of children in institutions seemed to be a paedophile with a thin collar. And those in charge of the paedophiles had thicker collars and were covering up to help Holy Mother Church save face. Because she thought it a great and good organisation. She had learned it from birth – from her mother and father – her sense of calm resignation, her ability to absorb and to distribute love. She wanted a Church which was rational, kind, loving, ritualistic, Christ centred. One that would eventually involve women. Although she knew there was no hope of that in her lifetime. A Church with no emphasis on sexual prying or interference – anything consensual had to be without sin. A religion which prays, which has satisfying and beautiful rituals – like Easter. A faith which shows concern and benefits others, a religion of values, always on its toes to help, which in a thousand acts a day looks out for others and their needs. Her faith came from her humane heart rather than her head. And now the substance of the things she had hoped for had come to nothing.

  * * *

  To leave Gerry seemed such an impossibility. Things would be as they had always been. How could lives be changed at their age? She’d known many people who’d split up – people she’d believed were perfectly suited to each other. But that was just sloppy thinking – nobody could peer into a relationship – even for a day or two – and come away with the truth. She had even attended – out of loyalty to both partners – a separation party – the now adult children going round offering crisps and peanuts and refilling drinks, everybody chatting nervously. The only people who were comfortable were the couple splitting up – everybody else was in a state of dread, terrified of saying the wrong thing. Until the drink took over.

  Where would she live? Where would Gerry live? How could she tell her son? Although at one time these things seemed insurmountable now, with drinking on this scale, they seemed possible. She might not be able to join an organisation but she could still live on her own. They could sell the tenement flat and buy two bijou flats. Hers would have to have a garden. And Gerry would have to get rid of all those books and CDs. Make his own dinners. Maybe he should look for a flat near a Marks & Spencer. But there she was – doing it again – organising him. Trying to look after him.

  She sniffed and realised she was no longer crying. She might as well use the toilet while she was there. She rumbled off another length of toilet paper and blew her nose. She feared she might dehydrate herself – peeing and weeping at the same time. And the thought started her smiling. Maybe the nose blowing would also have to be taken into account. Another form of leakage. The last time she’d cried was at Christmas night Mass, in the church with Gerry. Any more and she’d have to move on to the reserve tank. Having dry eye syndrome didn’t stop tears but they were of little help – being made of the wrong stuff. Not enough lubrication, said the eye doctor – wrong amounts of water, oil and mucus. Too watery by half.

  When she looked down, there were two round red marks, one on each of her thighs. The marks reminded her of the cheeks of her Raggedy Anne doll. Perfectly round, perfectly red. For a moment she wondered what nature of a disease she had contracted. In a foreign place. It also occurred to her how thin her thighs were. Then she realised what the marks were – elbow prints, where she had leaned as she held her head in the act of weeping.

  It was amazing. Here she was weeping about being too old and she was remembering the things of her childhood. She had a cardboard tube at home with her Junior Certificate in it. The section marked ‘Passed with distinction’ was filled to overflowing with subjects. She was a pensioner, for God’s sake. Why was the stuff of her life compacted like this? Also she had kept a card in a photo album for Baby Gilmore with his weight in pounds and ounces – and a wrist tag to go with it. A single thought could whizz her through sixty years. And yet there were such gaps, periods where no memory surfaced. Where had they flown? She prayed that, like the pigeons in the square, they would not all take off at once. Leaving her empty, doting. Hoping that the handclap of her accumulated years would not scare every thought she ever had into the air. She had seen what had happened to both her mother and grandmother in their dotage. It was part of the reason she kept up her regime of crosswords. The keep-fit brain. These things seemed to be hereditary. What would it be like to avoid all the serious diseases throughout life only to end up staring at the wall, not knowing who you were. To have slalomed all obstacles only to arrive at a white-out. Then a black-out. Then nothing. Sans everything. Gerry was doing it too, not just with wrong words, but with whole conversations. Time and again he’d ask, ‘What are we eating this evening?’ and time and again she would tell him. And still he would forget. He would become absorbed in what he was doing and forget that they were going out to a reception at the City Hall or somewhere. Stella would appear at the study door all glammed up in her best coat and he would look up from his reading like a startled animal caught drinking at a watering hole. With the result that he would appear among fellow architects unshaven and grubbily dressed, the collar of his navy overcoat sprinkled with dandruff. ‘Lucky for you, grey stubble is the current style,’ she would whisper. ‘Although I’m not fond of it myself.’ At such receptions she would never keep an eye on his drinking. He was always responsible enough. Knew that he could not disgrace himself to the point of slurring words or staggering. Indeed, over the years, she had rarely seen him drunk. But he had spent a lifetime of such socialising – so he knew how to do it. Eat as many of the canapés as he could to absorb any alcohol. Drink a glass of water now and again to wash it all down. Go easy on the red wine, unless it was a really good one. She didn’t drink much but she did know a good wine when she encountered it. Although they never served a good red wine at civic bashes. After such a do she hated the navy spit she produced cleaning her teeth before bed. Gerry’d admitted once in his cups that as long as he knew there was a bottle of Jameson at home he was all right. ‘Just if I take the notion.’ He needed that sense of security. When away from home, the Traveller’s Friend had to be in place.

  What was she doing? Sitting on a toilet reviewing her life? The vocation she imagin
ed for herself had begun as no more than a possibility. Something she should investigate. And in the meantime she had taken shortcuts, made assumptions, said prayers, daydreamed only to find her ambition to become a person with a purpose had failed. She was still where she had started out from her home three days ago. Or was it four? With today’s meeting, her plans had evaporated. She would have to find another place to go. Another place of sanctuary. If life with Gerry continued in the same bibulous way. She rumbled some more toilet roll off the spool and blew her nose again. Then flung the paper behind her into the bowl. She sighed and stood, making sure she was decent, checking all around herself. With a wave of her hand she flushed the toilet. The world began to impinge upon her again. The place full of the noise of falling water, doors being banged and bolted, taps running, hand driers roaring.

  When Stella had walked out of sight Gerry put his head back and looked up into the cavernous ceiling. She’d seemed annoyed and that wasn’t like her at all. This was just one more waiting room. But the circumstances were very different. How long ago was it? Michael’s age would provide an answer to that. So forty-two years ago Gerry had spent most of the day and a night in a Belfast waiting room. With his stomach clenched. How many cigarettes did he need to smoke to loosen the tightness? He’d lit another with tremulous hands and crumpled the packet. He walked to the waste bin, dropped it in and went back to his seat. He told the Pink Lady, Mavis, he was going to the hospital shop. She said she would go for him – what was it he wanted? And just as they were talking word came through from the sister in charge that he could visit his wife in Intensive Care in an hour’s time. The visit would have to be very brief – no more than a few minutes. Sister indicated to Mavis that she should show Mr Gilmore where to go when the time came.

  Mavis said she would take him to the shop. He bought twenty Benson & Hedges. His personal Pink Lady remained discreetly outside, pacing the corridor with her hands behind her back. Gerry thought her so attentive and considerate. He stripped the cellophane off the packet and lit a cigarette. His instinct was to smile at the girl serving him but his face wouldn’t do it. The headlines on the papers had nothing to do with him or his life. There were public happenings and there were disasters which were private. He stood staring down at the selection of flowers. Such an array in the height of summer – such a splash of colour. Carnations. Stella was very fond of carnations. There were red ones and white ones. Given the circumstances, he bought a bunch of white ones and had the girl wrap them. There were droplets of water on the counter when the parcelling operation was finished. The wrapping paper was plain, brown. It darkened with the moisture. He paid. The girl handed them over saying that she loved the smell of them. He stared at the flowers, their intricate crenellations, their whiteness. He looked at his watch. The time was going so slowly. He supposed there were many things to do before she got settled into Intensive Care. Since coming into the hospital his knees had begun to shake – not a shiver but an infinitesimal trembling – the frequency of a tuning fork. It depended which leg he put pressure on. A kind of shudder. As if there was an intense cold in him. As if they would suddenly buckle beneath him and he would be taken into hospital without the bother of going. The white of the carnations was not an absence of colour, a colour drained, but an intense colour itself, vivid and pure. Gleaming white – reflecting. He heard what the girl had said and raised the bunch to his face and inhaled the smell. He barely knew what he was doing. Yes, they are lovely, he said – or something like it. They reminded him of buttonholes at his wedding.