Woman of the House

by Taylor, Alice

  What on earth is Jack doing? she wondered, but next to Dada Jack was the man she knew best, so she felt sure that whatever he was doing must be right.

  “Up you go, girlie,” he said, lifting her on to the wall that divided the calves. She heard them snuffling in the house behind her.

  Then she saw Jack’s outline move across the house and heard something being dragged and a clink of glass against stone. He came back with a bottle, and when he wiped the cobwebs off it with the sleeve of his coat, its contents glinted in the moonlight. He uncorked it carefully and poured a precise amount into the steaming mug and followed it with a pour of sugar from a crumpled brown bag.

  “Now, girlie, drink that very slowly,” he instructed, and Nora felt that she was being allowed into a secret department in Jack’s life that would never have been opened to her but for the terrible thing that had happened. Slowly she raised the warm mug to her lips with Jack’s eyes fastened on her face. She took a sip and spluttered.

  “Jack,” she protested, “I never tasted anything like it!”

  “That you didn’t, girlie,” he said, “but desperate situations need desperate remedies, and if anyone told me last night that I would be giving you the cure tonight, I would have thought that they were off their head. But then today was enough to send us all off our heads.”

  “Is that what it’s called?” she asked. “The cure?”

  “That’s right,” Jack told her; “it will warm you and heal you and make you feel better.”

  She had to agree with Jack because as she continued to sip she began to heat up slowly. A warm thaw started at her big toes and seeped up her legs and the stiffness eased out of them, and by the time it had reached the lump at the side of her head, she did not feel so frozen.

  “Jack,” she declared, “that’s a magic cure: why don’t you give it to everybody?”

  “Listen, Nora,” Jack said urgently, “this is best kept between ourselves.”

  “But doesn’t Nana Lehane know?” Nora said.

  “Your Nana is a rare woman,” Jack told her; “other people might not be as understanding.” Nora felt that her mother might be included in the other people.

  “Jack, would it help Peter?” she asked.

  “Don’t think so,” Jack said slowly. “Peter is hurt and angry; the cure would be no good there, only maybe make things worse, but you are battered and frozen with shock. The cure gets the blood flowing again.”

  Nora wondered was there any end to Jack’s knowledge and decided to ask him the awful question.

  “Is Dada up in the parlour the way Nana Nellie was when she died?”

  “That’s where he is, Nora,” he said; “that’s where the corpse is.”

  “I’d be afraid to see him.”

  “But you want to, too “he said.

  “Would you come with me?” she asked.

  “What about your mother?”

  “I’d rather you,” she said. Jack looked the same as he always had but Mom looked like a different person.

  “We’ll see,” he said doubtfully.

  “Promise, Jack, promise,” she demanded, standing in front of him and tugging the sleeve of his coat.

  “Right, right,” he agreed hurriedly.

  “We’ll go around to the front door and up into the parlour without going into the kitchen,” she said, taking him by the hand. “There are a lot of the people in the kitchen and I don’t want to go in there. Are there many in the parlour?”

  “Not many.”

  As they walked around the corner of the house a dark form slunk out from under the hedge and jumped up on them.

  “Jesus Christ!” Jack gasped.

  “Jack, it’s only Bran,” Nora told him, bending down and wrapping her arms around the sheepdog. “My poor, poor Bran,” she crooned as she kissed and cuddled the dog who had loved Dada too.

  “Do you think that he knows?” she asked Jack.

  “Hard to tell,” he said. “Animals have a sixth sense about these things.”

  “When I feed him soon will you give him some of the cure?” she asked.

  “We’ll do that,” he said, “but keep it under your hat.”

  They arrived at the front door and Nora felt fear tightening in her stomach. Would she be afraid of Dada? Would he look like Dada? Jack edged open the front door and they went into the small front porch. Two men were sitting on their haunches chatting quietly. She recognised Con Nolan from down the road and young Davy Shine from back by the cross. They were Dada’s friends. Davy Shine was crying. Nora and Jack stepped by them into the parlour.

  The table was gone from the centre of the room and the big iron bed that had been Nana Nellie’s was back; it stood in a pool of yellow candlelight leaving the rest of the room in shadow. Everything was white except the brass bed knobs and the shining brass candlesticks and the black rosary beads in Dada’s hands.

  Nana Nellie had brought him the rosary beads from Knock a long time ago, and when it had broken after a few years he had fixed it with a bit of brown thread. She could see the bit of brown thread that he had cut too long. Her eyes travelled from the rosary beads up along the white bed spread. Why had Dada that strange brown thing on him? His face looked grey but it was Dada’s face with his eyes closed and a white cloth across his forehead. She stood looking at him while she held Jack’s hand firmly.

  You are not really in there, Dada, she thought, you’re gone away. She gave Jack’s hand a jerk and they moved towards the door.

  A figure rose out of one of the chairs at the foot of the bed. Tall, thin and angular with foxy hair, it was Miss Buckley, her teacher. Nora did not like her: she slapped with a hard black stick and never listened, and Nora was sure that she liked the white worm and let her torment her.

  “Nora,” she said, “I’m sorry about your Daddy.”

  Nora looked at her and thought, why would you be sorry about Dada? Dada was kind and fond of everyone, but you’re not like that.

  “Dada was very fond of me,” Nora told her.

  “I’m sure he was,” Miss Buckley agreed.

  “But you’re not fond of me,” Nora told her quietly. Jack moved her quickly toward the door.

  “Nora, girlie,” he told her when they reached the sanctuary of the porch, “you could have burned your boats behind you in there.”

  “I didn’t mean to say it,” she said; “it just came out.”

  “Well, never mind,” Jack said philosophically, “maybe it was time that someone told the old bat the truth.”

  “Don’t you like her either?” Nora asked with interest.

  “Never had much to do with her,” Jack said, “but it takes a lot of bad temper to give someone a big bold face like hers.”

  The men were still in the porch. Con Nolan knelt down and put his arms around Nora.

  “Rosie said to tell you that she is sad for you,” he told her. Nora could not imagine her best friend, bouncing happy Rosie, being sad. Davy Shine was no longer crying but looking bleakly into space.

  “Jack, I’m awful sleepy,” Nora said suddenly.

  “That’s to be expected. Come on in to your Nana,” he told her, opening the kitchen door.

  “What about Bran?” she asked.

  “Let Bran to me,” Davy Shine said, coming to life, “and you get your Nana to put you to bed.”

  That night she dreamt of Dada and Paddy and Bran, and then she was falling, falling into darkness with no one to hold her. She woke up screaming but Nana was there with her arms around her.

  “Easy, Nora, easy, you’re all right,” Nana comforted.

  She was afraid to go to sleep after that, but in spite of herself she drifted off.

  When she awoke in the morning the terror of the previous day jumped into her mind. But, could it be possible that it had never happened? That it was all a bad dream? But she knew that it had and that nothing could take it away.

  The day dragged on in a haze of people calling and crying and making fresh pots of tea and it go
ing cold and throwing it away and starting again and changing the candles around Dada. Mom sat unmoving, talking to nobody; Aunty Kate moved around the house, a grey shadow. For the first time Nora thought that Nana looked old and frail. She wondered where was Uncle Mark. Mom always said that Uncle Mark was never where he should be. Betty Nolan, Rosie’s mother, from down the road and Sarah Jones, who lived near Jack, looked after everybody, giving some women strong tea and others weak tea and encouraging some men to take a drink and trying to hold it back from those who did not know when they had had enough. Nora knew that Sarah Jones had laid out Nana Nellie when she died and wondered if she had done that to Dada. It must have been hard on Sarah Jones to do those two things, because she had been Nana Nellie’s best friend and she had often heard her tell Dada that she had brought him into the world. All that day Jack was the one to whom they all turned to for help. How was Jack so calm and brave, Nora wondered.

  Then late in the evening the house packed up with people so there was hardly room to stand and Nana Lehane gave out the rosary and Peter and Mom and herself knelt beside the bed. She knew that Peter didn’t feel comfortable so near the bed and Mom looked as if she did not know where she was, but Nana looked calm and tired. Then all the people poured out of the parlour and there was only Mom, Peter, Nana, Aunty Kate and Jack left in the parlour. Then Mr Browne, who buried people, brought in the coffin. It looked huge.

  “I’ll leave you for a few minutes,” he said.

  When he left the room you could hear a pin drop as they all looked at Dada, and then Jack made a move. He bent over the bed and put his hand on top of Dada’s.

  “Goodbye, lad,” he said, “you were a good one.” He went to the window and stood looking out with his back to the room.

  Jack, please don’t cry, Nora begged silently. Please, please, don’t cry. I can’t bear it if you cry.

  Everyone else was crying, Aunty Kate in loud sobs, and Mom had suddenly come alive and was thrown on the bed moaning; Nana had her arms around Peter and they were crying together. Nora went over to the window and slipped her hand into Jack’s.

  “Jack,” she whispered, “I’m here.”

  “That you are, girlie,” he said, and when he looked down at her his eyes were bright with unshed tears, but he dashed them away with the sleeve of his coat and shook his shoulders and said, “Better gather ourselves together,” and then he was her Jack again.

  “Best say the goodbyes,” he said, gently turning back into the room.

  Nora, like Jack, put her hand on her father’s and was shocked that it was so cold and rigid. She went over to the window and turned her back on the room because she did not want to watch the others, and then Peter stood beside her sobbing, and gradually they all gathered around the window and Mr Browne and his helper came in and quietly transferred Dada into the coffin.

  Nana had their coats piled high on a chair beside the door. Nora was surprised when she handed her a black coat that she had never seen before. She put it on, wondering where it had come from, and was surprised that it fitted perfectly. She followed the others out of the parlour. Outside the door four men stood with the coffin on their shoulders. Jack, Con Nolan and Davy Shine. She stretched her neck around to see the other man. It was Uncle Mark. There was no mistaking the long black hair, the same as Mom’s when she let it down. The hard knot in her tummy eased a little just to see him. They shouldered the coffin slowly through the silent people and eased it gently into the hearse.

  Horse and traps were tied up around the yard but there was also a big black car beside the hearse and Nora found herself steered in its direction by Nana. Peter and Jack fitted easily in the front with the driver and Mom and Nana and herself in the back. The seats were brown like chestnuts and had small wrinkles that sighed when you sat on them. It smelled like her new leather school sack, and if Dada had been with them it would have been great fun to bounce up and down on the seat. But there was no bouncing up and down, and she watched out over Jack’s shoulder as the low black hearse went slowly up the boreen. She looked out the back window and saw that Dr Twomey’s car was behind them and knew that Aunty Kate and Uncle Mark would be with him.

  In the church it was all prayers and holy water and shaking hands, and she was glad when they came home. She opened the parlour door and peeped up. There was no trace of the bed or the candles, the table was back in the middle of the room and laid for tea and the fire was lighting in the grate.

  “The neighbours are very good,” Nana, who had come in behind her, said gratefully.

  “Some of them,” Jack confirmed as he put turf on the fire.

  Everything about the funeral the following day was black. Fr Brady was dressed in black and so were Mom and Nana, Aunty Kate and herself. Peter had a black diamond cloth stitched on the sleeve of his jacket. Nora was surprised when Jack did not have one.

  “Jack, why don’t you have a black diamond like Peter?” she whispered to him in the church before the mass.

  “I’m not family,” he told her.

  “But you are!” she insisted.

  “Not blood related,” he said, “and there are people here today who would say that I should be down by the back door like I am every other Sunday, and the Lord knows but I’d feel more at home back there.”

  “But it would be worse up here without you.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” he told her.

  The mass droned on, and her headache got worse, and she looked at the shiny brown coffin and tried to imagine Dada inside in it. Bits of the sermon came from the altar – “great husband and father, good worker … helpful neighbour”. She wished that he would just shut up and say “the best man in the world”, because that was the truth. She walked down the aisle with Mom and Peter, all the people standing. She supposed that Mom and Nana and Aunty Kate and even Peter, because he was tall, could see their sad faces but she could only see their hands and she was glad.

  The graveyard was worse than the chapel because it was cold and wet and the rain danced off the shiny coffin making it more shiny. Big blobs of raindrops shone like small glass marbles on the varnished wood. It was horrible when the coffin thudded down into the deep hole, and she could hear the water slushing beneath it, and then the earth thumped down on top of it and she thought: Dada, the real you is not down there. But if he was not, where was he because he was gone? All the talk about heaven was all right, but where was it and was he there?

  “Jack,” she said, tugging his hand, “where is Dada really?”

  “That’s the big question,” Jack told her.

  When they came back home the grown-ups had tea and talked, and cried between the talking and the tea. She wandered out into the calf house and found Bran asleep in the straw. When he heard her he opened one eye and wagged his tail as if to say come and sit here with me. She sat down beside him and put an arm around him.

  “Bran,” she asked him, “will we be crying for ever after Dada?”

  Chapter Five

  IT WAS MONDAY morning and she was going back to school. Nora had never thought that she would look forward to going to school, but home was so strange that she wanted to be where things might be the same as they had been before the accident. Everybody called it “the accident” or “the terrible accident”, and it was easier to say that than to say “the day Dada died”. But no matter what they called it Nora felt that home was a different place since then.

  Mom and Peter and herself were like strangers to each other because they were all changed. Mom was gone silent. Instead of being busy and keeping things moving as she always had, she sat looking into space, with no interest in what went on around her. It frightened Nora to see her like that. Peter was grumpy and sullen and Nora knew that he cried in bed at night. One night when she woke up terrified after dreaming that she was back on the road behind the trap, she had crept along to his room. Just as she put her hand on the knob of the door she heard him sobbing. Something had stopped her from turning the knob. She tip-toed slowly by
her mother’s door and listened, but there was no sound though she was almost sure that her mother was not asleep. She had heard Mom tell Nana the day before Nana went home that she was awake all night. Nora wished that Nana had not gone home, but after a few weeks Nana was not feeling well and had wanted to get back to her own house and to Uncle Mark.

  Sometimes Uncle Mark did not come out of the house for long periods because he was working out tunes on his fiddle or painting pictures. Nora knew that people thought he was odd but when she looked at his pictures she felt that he had magic inside in him. She wanted go home with Nana to be with her and Uncle Mark, but Nana had told her gently, “Your mother needs you.”

  “But Mom is gone all queer,” Nora complained.

  “Give her a chance, child,” Nana told her. “It’s early days yet.”

  Later she had heard Nana tell Mom to make some effort for the children, but Mom did not seem to be listening.

  It was Jack who had decided that they should go back to school.

  Peter objected sullenly. “I’m not going to school,” he said; “I’m going to stay here and run this place like my father did.”

  “Peter,” Jack said firmly, “you’ll be finished in the Glen this summer and then will be time enough to make decisions.”

  “I should be running Mossgrove, not you,” Peter said mutinously.

  “That’s Conway talk,” Jack told him sharply, and Nora knew that he had hit home when Peter’s face went red.

  “Listen, Peter,” Jack said kindly, “this is a quiet time of year, and if you milk the cows with me morning and evening we’ll manage until it gets busy, and then you’ll have holidays and we’ll take it from there.”

  “All right,” Peter agreed reluctantly, but Nora felt sure that he was secretly relieved to be going back to school.

  They arranged that Jack would call Peter when he came down from his cottage early in the morning, and then, when the two of them had the most of the cows milked that Peter would come in to call Nora and she would get the breakfast for the three of them while Jack and Peter finished off the milking. Nora felt strange that they were making all these arrangements as if Mom were dead as well, but when she voiced her thoughts Peter said bitterly, “She might as well be.”