Night

by Edna O'Brien

  *

  A feather. It has been irking me for some time, but I have managed to wrench it from the ticking. It is fawn in colour. The feather of whom, of what. I twirl it and it responds. I blow on it, and it responds. Nice when something responds.

  If I squint in a certain way I can make the wallpaper sag, so that it is swinging back and forth, with the sway of a cradle. Then I open my eyes and I see it, stark. Very intrusive. The curtains match it but they have a chintz finish. Both have for design flocks of long-tailed birds. The tails of these numerous birds trail away and are inclined to be curly and some tails loop into other tails provocatively. The owners must have had a craze for nature, or else for the shoot, shooting game. It is not a balming sight. Sometimes these birds appear to be pecking away at the paper and likewise at the chintz. Gobbling it up. Pecking instead of singing or chirping or letting out their age-old mating calls. I think the reason I haven’t slept is Nick. Never occurred to me that he’d come back, that I’d got under his skin. When he came this place was in utter darkness, not a light, not even a nightlight, not even a taper. I had gone for a longer walk than usual, feeling a bit venturesome for no reason at all. I was very keen to see a sunset or a bonfire or something like that. Disastrous. First I went to a housing estate. Terrible pebbledash houses. No frames around the windows. Windows that opened straight out on to the world like gashes. I could see into every house. That shook me. Dolls and dogs and more dolls and more dogs and perambulators and children. Too many children. Napkins drying. A bit of geranium in a yoghurt carton. That grieved me. Next thing I came upon a shepherd whose crook was aluminium and only three feet long. I hankered for the time when shepherds’ crooks were six feet long. Baa. Baa. Not that I’ve ever nabbed a sheep by the hind legs to shear him or demaggot him or do anything else with him, all twaddle, all my eye. His wife was envisaging a holiday. She was cutting out coupons to help towards a holiday, to the moors the year after next. Also they breed trout. Then they trap them and dispatch them to France where they are a delicacy of the French cuisine. It all adds up, the coupons, the pebbledash estate, the packets of cereal with cardboard clocks on them, the dolls in the window, their legs splayed, the dolls as grotesque as the children. Went as far as Mortlake to a cemetery. Then I lay on a hillside, pleurisy-making for sure, and saw the dark coming on, and the very odd thing about the oncoming dark was that it was as if my own eyes were failing me. Everything began to go blur. There was nothing thrilling in the way of a new moon or a full moon or even a curlew curlewing. There was nothing at all only the dark coming down, like a cloth at the extremities of the world, grey, dun, and the near things visible though not discernible and the hub of the traffic somewhere beyond. As soon as the ground felt damp to the touch, I rose to wend my way. It took me a long time what with going astray and all that. Murder entered my mind, or beheading, or a rosy crucifixion. I had to cross a common and there wasn’t a soul except myself and a runner in a track suit, threshing through the ferns. All this walking, there must be some purpose to it, I said to myself, coming in at the gate that creaked. I dare say all gates creak unless they get treated to linseed oil from time to time.

  There it was waiting for me, half in, half out of the letterbox. I rushed into the hall, and then, as always with portents, I hesitated before unsealing it. “In votre absence Nick came.” I dropped, I almost snivelled. Missed a nice cuddle. We would have been shy at first, but maybe we would have come out of our shells and started kissing in the dark, and feeling as in an undergrowth, then reclining, our persons buoyed up on beautiful blue plush, no missus of his to disquiet us, him telling me little things and I retaliating, and everything between us verdant and radiant with promise. We might have danced an old-time waltz. Nothing in the world to equal it for harmony, for concinnity as they say. I would have made him a little snack. Damnation to it.

  Paramours are not battering on any door, there’s no form at the casement saying “I’m waiting for you love”. I can’t cavil. I’ve had my share, even a lumberman from Scandia with a very radical thrust. A motley crew, all shades, dimensions, breeds, ilks, national characteristics, inflammatingness, and penetratingness. Some randy, many conventional, one decrepit. An old man. He couldn’t bear the ticking of my bedside clock. I could smell death and extreme unction off him. Why did I concur? An act of clemency, one of my very few. He was a Benjaminite. I couldn’t do that now. Farcical. Rather a cowhorn, or a thornbush through the arse. Harrowing that was called in Coose, that impact of thornbush on obstinate land. That was before machinery. That was before.

  Machines have played their part in my life too. Machines and people. Perfidious. People cling on to me like sloths. How they weigh, how they prey upon me. I am prepared to vouchsafe that they are attached to my scalp by means of brooches, so tenacious are they. I am amazed at the number of people that can be affixed to a normal-sized scalp. I take size nine in a hat. Sometimes they surpass themselves, get rowdy, boisterous, take to swinging back and forth like children or bantams, upon a fender or a swing gate at eventide. I was ever one for eventide. I have so many maudlin memories of it, the soft feel of wallflowers, or is it heliotrope, showers of rain, smoke curling up, the dogs famished, mavourneen, the pig badgers and the dog badgers out, warring, evening auguring towards night, and such a momentum of tears, and for what, and for whom – Lil, Boss, Dr Flaggler, Tutsie.

  *

  Nick was of the red-haired fraternity, and growing a beard. We danced, divinely. The floor was sheer. I would like to think that our bloodstreams danced, bounced, bounded together. I would like to think our sensibilities met. Is that possible? Melted into one another. Suddenly his wife was there, prancing about like an old lioness. She was a dab hand at it, prancing. She nudged him with her shoulder, then bumpsie daisy with one of her flanks, then ousting me out of place she tried levering herself on to him. There was a touch of a dancer or a stripper about her. A bit of a trouper. She started to undress. He commenced on my necklaces, started untugging. The lights were lowered but the music put up. We were no longer dancers, we were performers, three, at each other, at. She bayed like a hyena. He flicked her in the air and unerringly she came down. Well trained, a trapeze artist, a wife. Conceited slaves. Come to think of it she was not like an old lioness, she had more in common with a washing board, bleached, scoured, dry. He moved us towards their tossed bed. He mimed to her what to do. She went to a medicine cabinet. She had to coax it open with her nail as the key was missing and there was no little latch or handle for her benefit. She scooped some cream out of a blue tin. It was white and over-runny, and I was able to recall the exact price of it, and knew that a hundred lids of that commodity could secure a plastic tulip for some town housewife with a yen for the forest. She was no forest woman, more your allotment ilk. Comes, half comes, quarter comes, struggles at comes, they are much the same thing. We battled and wrestled and slept and wakened and adhered and writhed, throughout the night. His snores had a trace of mucus in them.

  “Hark”, he said, “the house awakens.” I heard of all things a baby cry, such an ordinary, no, such an extraordinary thing. It seems to me that babies along with cows are passing from our lives altogether. Soon they will be after-images, cords, threads, suspenders, emanations, suspenders to former times. I slipped away. Quite united they looked, he half awake, she feigning sleep or maybe it only seemed to be a feign because of the way her lids trembled, maybe dreaming she was, roguish dreams. Travelling home in my dishevelled state I met nuns and milkmen. It was a Sunday. The nuns were muttering their prayers and the milkmen doing their rounds. Long white notes protruded from empty milk bottles. Probably they were for alternative orders – double cream for the jellies, brown eggs for Grandma, a cancellation maybe. I was not in any hurry. I was dressed in lamé of all things and the air was to my liking, drizzly.

  I wouldn’t mind living it all over again. I met them in the pub where there was a sort of improvised ball. Phil the Fluter stuff. It was New Year’s Eve, and just at midnigh
t people jumped up and started to dance and to rout other people out of their chairs. The hard topers spit in their drinks to put their bespoke on them. I’d gone there alone for a decko. Amazing enticements – speed, lights, food, chicks, disc jockeys and table telephones. It was like the eve of Waterloo all of a sudden, that so-called spiffing night when Belgium’s capital gathered her beauty and her chivalry. There we were, linking, moving en masse to the gallery, one faction going up the steps, and another bursting out into the street and little side groups weaving their way between tables, weaving and waving, concertina music, baritone voices, the mirrors frosted, the dun pillars skewered with masks, the whole place alive with singing and gaudiness, people catching sight of themselves and making weird faces and blowing kisses. There was no resident band but the regulars had brought their own instruments – spoons, combs, penny whistles. There were plenty of Coose spalpeens in that mêlée but I shunned them, it was Nick I tagged on to. “Tap o’ the mornin’ to you,” he said.

  “To hell or to Connaught,” I said, using the war cry of Oliver Cromwell.

  “Don’t go away,” he said, touching my buttoned bodice. Something nice about him, a softie. I could picture him with a slane, cutting turf and chewing his quid of tobacco, with maybe a pipe, a hubbly bubbly or a cherrywood to gnash on. I suppose osmosis was our first actual endeavour, the sucking came later when we rammed through into the garden of life, and the gnashing succeeding on puberty. I spent the night with him and his spouse, we scrambled upstairs after closing time. They were managers there, which meant we had free nuts, free booze and the companionship of their guard dog, an Alsatian, a eunuch, named Boris.

  “Come here you git and fetch this fucking coal,” she said.

  As master of the house he insisted on making a fire to ring out the old and ring in the new. Lucky he didn’t burn her smalls.

  “Slag,” he said, as she hefted the coal across the floor; and he asked the Fates how long were they married. A lifetime he said.

  “Still, we had a good time last night, didn’t we?” she said, bold as brass. Not lacking in gumption. Men like women to do their warring for them. The canny Scythians choose to use their mares in warre service rather than their stone horses. She proceeded to dish up a late dinner, a mutton hash, without deference to me. The upshot was he gave me his, she gave him hers, while she ate directly from the casserole. To her I was more or less invisible, simply not there. That was prior to our debauch. But as things warmed up and he filled my glass until it foamed over, she took cognisance of me, she admired my hairstyle, but said to make no mistake about it, that she came first, that she was number one, that she was Mrs Finney. He told her for fuck’s sake to belt up.

  “I might let you have him,” she said, “I don’t particularly want him, except for his balls now and then.” She asked where I got my clothes, my couture. She said she would have considered modelling except that she was into the breeding racket, big deal, ha ha ha. It seems they had four children, none of whom I saw and only one of whom I heard. A mewl.

  Nick’s wife has another ruse, another bit of henpecking, she insists Nick carry a wad of notes in case they are suddenly discharged from their posts as managers, in case they must flee, and then, because he is in possession of such exorbitant sums, it stands to reason, he can’t have a stroll alone, he has to be escorted by her or by the tiddleywinks. I wouldn’t like to tread on her corns again.

  But in the morning she was loath to let him see me out. She told me to get my own fucking taxi and hitch up with my own man. She doesn’t know that I like guerrillas, men on the move, stonemasons like Moriarty, and a volunteer called McKann. I only know McKann by hearsay but I often think he’s the one, the destiny for me. I saw photos of him, very still and mild, like a crock of milk, and yet he burns with a fierce indignation like a burning bush. I might meet him in the woods, in Arcadia.

  *

  I am reaching for the pushbell. Imagine that for an amenity. There is even a fireplace here and fireirons and a basket grate. It is a boudoir. There is a love seat. Just before rain the soot falls. The gales are in fits and starts, a sum of all the gales from all the chimneys in the world, Coose, Alaska, the unpeopled climes. The soot makes a scurrying sound like mice marching. Sometimes in half sleep I imagine that it is mice and that they have got into a boot or my suède shoe and are lying there in ambush. In the mornings I gather up the soot on a piece of cardboard. No rain tonight but a storm brewing. Marvellous feeling, as if everything in nature is going to erupt. I might end up in China or Tasmania. Without even looking I can tell what it is like outside in the garden, very grave though blowy, the big dark trees towering, the magnificent sweep of the lawns, everything pointing towards the stars and everything rooted but by no means reconciled. Now if it were a summer’s night I might don a shawl and have a stroll out there and when summer comes I shall and will. I pity those at sea. It’s nice to be here, installed, snug. I would ring this cursed pushbell except that I cannot bear the denouement. It is not going to be answered, no flunkey is going to rush up here with smelling salts or camomile tea, and say “Yes, ma’am,” or “No, ma’am”. It is white, cold and sphere-shaped and I expect that it has a little battery inside it. I touch it and suddenly it is ringing me and my fingers are pins and needles and the electricity is getting to my palm. I drop it and repair to the far side of the bed. It is now on a pillow abandoned. This side of the bed is freezing and unfriendly.

  The thing I hanker after is custard, great soft glaubs of it in the mouth, not too sweet, but certainly with a dash of vanilla. A harmless mush, feeble under the impact of mastication, perfect at sliding down. No chewing, no wrestle. Into the kitchen. I rummage. There are seven varieties of soup and these have ingredients that are positively epicurean – oyster, crab, game, goose, tomato, celeriac, and turtle. There is a substance called glutamate added, which casts aspersions on the whole thing. I do not know this glutamate, I am not familiar with its properties, it could give bouquet but then again it could vanquish the game, the goose, the oyster, the turtle, the celeriac and so on. Poor bread has gone mouldy, it is furred and swollen. I bought it three days ago. It had cellophane around it that I ripped off on the way home and bit into it, warm, and fresh as it was, straight from the bakery. Now it’s black, with inlays of green. The fur has the glisten of sea salt, looks as if it might bristle but it can’t, it is only bread, forgotten bread. I have not the will to bite into it or maul into it so I say goodbye by closing the enamel lid with a fierce thud. Next to the soups there are spices but all have lost their pungency because of the damp. They rigged the thermostat to make it as cool as possible. I invariably walk around in a blanket except when some beau is coming, then I get into my finery, my voile or my chiffon. They would be appalled now to come into their own kitchen, things higgledy-piggledy, delf unwashed, tea leaves in a saucepan, and the carrier bags with the retailers’ names on them, scattered round. We have weevils. It is easy to tell by the way the crumbs, the crumbs of water biscuit, are scattered. Some crumbs are white, but most are a scorched brown because it is high-baked biscuits I asked for in the shop. The man in the shop squeezed my hand when giving me the change, called me Dusty. “You made my day,” he said. Probably says it to everyone. More power to his elbow. I don’t patronise the supermarkets, I prefer the shops where I can talk to the assistants and get their histories.

  I often think that the heart I am possessed of is a little chicken’s heart, a little pullet’s, maybe a White Wyandotte’s or a crossbreed, maybe that is why Lil coddled me, because I reminded her of her favourite thing, her prize poultry. Thread the needle, thread the needle. Lil was champion at knots and quipus, had brought it to a fine art, the crafty old Druids knot, perfected as the Coose snaim.

  The earliest milk she gave me was from a bottle, later a vessel. The cows were my friends, even though we had no rapport. We shat in the same places, that is to say the hills and the dales, the lambent meadows of Coose, in random places, under trees and not under tr
ees, we were not very fastidious. The circumference of theirs larger, richer, and more grandiose than mine, a man-sized shoe could sink into theirs and still be outdone, out-distanced that is. Cows concern me. The world’s hide, the world’s blameless udder. I would have stayed near to them in the ark, mingled their breaths with mine. I still champion them and it is not because of my watchstrap either, or my pampooties, or my morning milk that laces my morning tea. But I have a feeling that they are disappearing from our lives altogether. I shall miss them, I shall pine. That is one of my propensities. I would have been great in the heyday of the Greek times, propped up between temples, tearing hair out and invoking the many and opposing Fates. Soon their lowing, their hides, their teats, their udders, their saunter, their curling tails, their matted tails, the dry and undry scour on their rumps, their dipping umbilical cords, soon all these will be after-images, spectres of things that we once saw at morningtide, or at eveningtide, or when on our annual vacations. Another thing, these successions of cows that I once knew still bawl in my head, as indeed do the swine and the cockerels and the kid goats and the fenny fowl and the ducks and the geese and the swans and the herons and the cranes and the coots and the didappers and the waterhens and the teals and the curs and the drakes and the sheldrakes and the peckled fowls and the flocking sheep, all, all the sirenic and the not-so-sirenic sounds that they let out at the instant of their near deaths. Not that I am a habitué of the abattoirs. On the contrary, I go to gardens, to the hothouse at Kew, for aftermaths of Coose.

  *