Nora Webster: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

  Nora did not know how to respond. Nancy was too cheerful, almost silly as she stood in the hall and grinned at her.

  “You know that I do the quiz every year with Phyllis Langdon in the parish halls. It’s sponsored by Guinness. She asks the questions and I keep the scores. She has a great voice, doesn’t need a microphone or anything, and we work well together because I don’t ever make a mistake with the scores.”

  Nora could not think why Nancy was telling her all of this as though it was urgent and fascinating news.

  “Well, the thing is, I can’t do tomorrow night. I have to go to Dublin on the last train today because Bridie my sister is in the Bon Secours for an operation. So I thought I’d get a replacement before I’d tell Phyllis and Betty Farrell said that she heard from someone in Gibney’s you’re a wizard at the numbers so that’s what has me here.”

  Nora looked at her gravely.

  “Now, don’t tell me you can’t do it!” Nancy said.

  “It would be just for one night?” Nora asked.

  “One night,” Nancy said. “And it would be nice for you to get out among people, to mix a bit.”

  “I haven’t been out much at all.”

  “I know that, Nora.”

  By the time Nancy was going, it had been arranged that, unless she heard otherwise, Phyllis Langdon would collect her at seven thirty the following evening. It was only when Nancy was on the front steps that Nora asked her where the quiz was to be held and Nancy told her that it would be in Blackwater.

  “I didn’t know that they were held so far out of town,” Nora said.

  “This year only. It’s an experiment,” Nancy said.

  As Nora stood at the door watching Nancy disappear, she was tempted to follow her and tell her that she had forgotten that she had something else to do, something more pressing than writing down the score at a quiz. She tried to think what that might be, and then decided that it was too late now. As she closed the door, she wished she had asked at the very beginning in which village the quiz would be held. She would have said then that she could not go to Blackwater. It was too near Cush and Ballyconnigar.

  She thought of Blackwater in the summer, when people from Dublin or Wexford were staying in the houses around, and it was normal for women to go with their husbands to Etchingham’s pub there on a Friday or Saturday night and drink Babycham or brandy and soda, and leave the children in the care of a baby-sitter or an older child. Often, if it was July and the night was fine, she and Maurice would walk the two miles from Ballyconnigar together and then get a lift home with someone. Or, when August came, and the nights were darker with heavy dew coming early on to the grass of the lane that led from the ball alley to the cliff, she would drive the old Morris Minor and they could relax more knowing that they could leave whenever they liked. Maurice always took pleasure in the company, especially if there were people from Enniscorthy among them, or locals from Blackwater, and gradually then she would come to like the company too, and enjoy watching Maurice in such good humour.

  She explained to the boys that she was going out. They must promise not to fight with each other, she said, and go to bed at the usual time.

  “Maybe we c-can stay up a bit later?” Donal asked.

  “I’ll let you decide,” Nora said. “But not too late.”

  “Can I decide as well?” Conor asked.

  “You can both decide.”

  At half past seven Nora was watching from the window as Phyllis Langdon drove up in a red Ford Cortina. Nora was wearing a summer dress. She carried a cardigan over her arm in case it grew colder. The boys were in the back room with Fiona, who was also going out.

  “I’m going,” she shouted. “Don’t come out now and make a fuss. I’ll be back when you’re asleep.”

  She had met Phyllis Langdon a number of times over the years. Her husband was a vet, and both of them were from Dublin. She noticed how efficiently Phyllis reversed the car and admired the beautiful rings on her fingers as Phyllis changed gear and they set off towards Blackwater.

  “What’s amazing,” Phyllis said, “is how much they all know about sport and how little they know about anything else. On politics, mind you, they are not too bad, and on geography maybe or even history. But questions about books and music have them all flummoxed. You’d wonder if they went to school at all.”

  “And who makes up the questions?” Nora asked.

  “Oh I do all that. I get advice about the sport. We start with easy questions. And they all have quiz books, but I only take a few questions from books just to make them feel that it’s worth preparing. Last week in Monageer there was a team and they knew nothing. They didn’t seem even embarrassed. If you’d asked them to add two and two, they would have looked as though they were required to explain Einstein.”

  “I suppose they joined for the fun of it.”

  “Ignorance is bliss,” Phyllis said.

  “I’m sure some of them are very nice,” Nora said.

  “Oh, nice as you like, and thick as planks.”

  They turned right at Finchogue and did not speak again until they were on the other side of The Ballagh. Nora could feel Phyllis’s deep seriousness about the task ahead and resolved to make no light remarks about the failure of contestants to answer the questions she had prepared. She saw now why Nancy Brophy had wanted someone who was good at figures to keep the score.

  “By the way,” Phyllis said, “I have a notebook and some good pens for you. We start with two rounds of two-mark questions that a child could answer. It warms things up and then we go on to two rounds of three-mark questions, then four-mark, and then five rounds of six-mark questions that separate the sheep from the goats. In the first rounds of six only the individual contestant can answer, but in the last rounds of six the whole team can answer.”

  “It must take a lot of work, preparing the questions,” Nora said.

  “I like to get a variety, and a good team, like the Oylegate team, will spend weeks preparing, reading up on subjects they might not know much about.”

  “So it’s very educational.”

  “For some and not for others,” Phyllis said severely.

  Phyllis had not mentioned Maurice and did not give any hint whether she knew that this was one of Nora’s first outings since his death. Nora presumed, however, that Phyllis knew everything, having been alerted by Nancy Brophy, and had decided, out of tact, to say nothing. This meant that she, in turn, did not feel she could say that she knew Blackwater, that she had come here on a bicycle through her teenage years, had met Maurice here in the years before they were married and had spent every summer nearby. She would keep all of this to herself and join with Phyllis in taking the quiz seriously, in making sure that she wrote down the correct scores for each team.

  When they arrived, Phyllis said she was surprised that the arrangement was to meet the organisers in Etchingham’s, that she didn’t normally go into pubs, but they would make their way to the hall beside the church as soon as they possibly could. She refused an offer of refreshment for both of them.

  “We’ll need to keep our wits about us,” she said, “so we’d like a jug of water and some ice, and two glasses. And we’ll have the same on the table in the hall.”

  The teams were to be from Blackwater itself and from Kilmuckridge. Nora was busy drawing lines down the centre of the pages of the notebook so she did not see that Tom Darcy from Cush was standing at the bar. Still in his work clothes, he approached their table.

  “Nora, what way are you?” he asked.

  “Tom, I didn’t see you there,” she said. “Are you in for the quiz?”

  “We might stay for the fun,” he said, “but there again, we might not. Sure we know all the answers, Nora.”

  For a moment, Nora was going to introduce Tom to Phyllis, but because of the stiffness she sensed in Phyllis, Nora knew that she did n
ot want to be introduced to a man in his work clothes, with the easy, familiar manner of Tom Darcy.

  “How’s Mrs. Darcy?” Nora asked.

  “As right as rain,” he said. “She’ll be delighted when I tell her I met you. Now, do I know that woman beside you? I’d like to tell the missus who I met when I was out.”

  “Phyllis Langdon, this is Tom Darcy,” Nora said.

  Phyllis nodded, but did not offer her hand to Tom.

  “Oh, Phyllis Langdon,” he said, “the woman that asks the questions. She’s the terror of Monageer.”

  Nora could feel Phyllis beside her recoiling from Tom Darcy, who in turn had no intention of returning to the bar until he had ferreted out as much information as possible to take home with him.

  “I heard they knew nothing in Monageer,” he said.

  It was clear that Tom was addressing himself to Phyllis but she made no reply.

  “I heard they were as ignorant as what you might find on the floor of a pigsty and I’m not talking about straw,” he went on.

  “And how are they all in Cush?” Nora asked.

  “Pulling the devil by the tail, the few that are left,” Tom said. “I’ll tell you one thing now. You are sorely missed. We were just saying that the other day. You were the best of the bathers, you always were.”

  “Excuse me now,” Phyllis interrupted, “but we will have to go up to the hall soon and make sure the contestants know where they are sitting.”

  “Sure that crowd from Kilmuckridge wouldn’t know their elbow from a hole in the wall,” Tom said. “Ask them how to spell GAA. That’ll put manners on them.”

  “Manners?” Phyllis asked pointedly.

  “Will you have a drink, the two of you?”

  “We will not,” Phyllis said.

  Nora watched as Tom walked across to the bar and drew the barman’s attention to herself and Phyllis.

  “Will you have a Babycham, a sherry, or a brandy?” he shouted over.

  Nora shook her head and then turned to Phyllis, who was busy checking through the questions. There was a red mark on each of her cheeks that seemed to have emerged during her encounter with Tom Darcy.

  The barman came over with a Babycham and a brandy and soda.

  “Did we not say that we wanted only water?” Phyllis asked. “And we don’t have time.”

  “The customer is the boss here, ma’am,” the barman said. “And you can bring them up to the hall with you, as long as I get the glasses back.”

  “That’ll crown you now,” Tom Darcy shouted over.

  “Have you known that man for long?” Phyllis asked her.

  “I’ve known him all my life,” she said calmly as she poured the Babycham. “I’m afraid I can’t drink brandy, it has a bad effect on me.”

  She smiled to herself at the thought of brandy. When she had married Maurice, she had never had an alcoholic drink. At first, she had tried sherry but didn’t like it. One night in this very pub someone had offered her a brandy and then, since she and Maurice had fallen into company, she had had three or four more. By the end of the evening she could not stop laughing. Standing at the bar, with his wife sitting on a bar-stool, was Frankie Doyle from Enniscorthy. As she looked over at them, she saw that he and his wife thought she was laughing at them. Frankie was small enough to be a jockey, and he might, she thought, have been sensitive about that. And also, he and his wife were alone with each other, they had not been invited to join the larger group who were from Enniscorthy too. In any case, every time she looked up they were watching her, and every time she caught their eye she started laughing again. Nothing could stop her. Since that night neither of them had ever spoken to her. From then on she knew that she could not drink brandy.

  “You look as though you are in a world of your own,” Phyllis said.

  “I was,” Nora said and smiled.

  “We should go now, and I think it would be a mistake to be seen carrying drinks through the village, even though Guinness is the sponsor. This is the last time I will agree to meet in a pub.”

  She gulped down the brandy and soda.

  The hall, when they arrived, was filling up. Some of the people Nora knew by name, others by sight; and then there were people whom she did not know at all, but their way of standing at the doorway, or close to the wall at the back, or looking around them, had something familiar about it; it was both shy and at ease, both friendly and reserved. It made her feel that she knew them as well as she had ever known anyone here.

  As the teams identified themselves, Phyllis grew more authoritative. She stood up regularly to make sure that the space between their table and the seats where the contestants would sit was being kept clear, and then insisted that no one could loiter close to the contestants during the quiz to prompt them.

  There were three men and one woman on each team. As Phyllis explained the rules, she produced from her bag a stopwatch that she set to sound an alarm after ten seconds. Nora studied the contestants. One of the men she knew from Blackwater was a retired teacher and the woman beside him had been on a committee of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association. The next in line looked to her like a schoolboy, and the last, she supposed, was a farmer. As Phyllis spoke, an atmosphere of solemnity came over the contestants. It was, Nora thought, as though the priest had come out onto the altar or the teacher had arrived in the classroom.

  The first questions were so simple they were almost insulting. Phyllis asked them, however, as though they were challenging and would require much jogging of memory. Her voice was like that of a continuity announcer on the radio, and it had, when she pronounced certain words, an English edge to it. Nora saw how easy it was going to be to keep the score, but noticed also that Phyllis kept a supervisory eye on what she was writing down during the second and third rounds as the scores started to vary.

  As she came to the four-mark questions, a man produced another brandy and soda for Phyllis and another Babycham for her. She had no idea who had bought these drinks, as Tom Darcy had not followed them to the hall.

  By the time the six-mark questions began, the Blackwater team was slightly ahead. In a round of sports questions, there were cheers from the body of the hall when some of them pertained to the GAA. This caused Phyllis to demand silence for the next round, questions about classical music.

  “How many symphonies did Brahms compose?” Phyllis asked.

  Nora watched the man from Kilmuckridge. He bided his time, as though he was trying to remember something he once knew. When Phyllis announced that she was activating the stopwatch, he said, “Twenty-five.”

  Phyllis looked contemptuously around the hall, leaving a silence. Nora looked down at the score sheet.

  “As everyone knows,” Phyllis said, “Brahms wrote four symphonies. Twenty-five indeed!”

  There was a hush at the next question.

  “How many symphonies did Schumann write?”

  It was the turn of the retired schoolteacher from Blackwater.

  “I’ll guess nine,” he said quietly.

  “Wrong,” Phyllis said. “He wrote four.”

  She took them then through Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mahler, Sibelius and Bruckner to stunned silence as each name was called out and each contestant failed to guess the correct number of symphonies. When she listed operas and asked them for the name of the composer, both the retired teacher and the young man from the Blackwater team knew the answers. This put Blackwater ahead by fifteen points as she came to the last rounds, when the contestants could consult with each other. When one of them asked for a toilet break, Phyllis agreed. Another brandy and soda and Babycham arrived on the table.

  When Nora looked over towards the door, she noticed that a few men had gathered there. They were looking at herself and Phyllis with suspicion and resentment. One of them, a young man with sandy hair and a sunburned face, glanced back at his associat
es when he saw that Nora was watching him. As he approached her, he appeared personally aggrieved.

  “She has a quare big grand voice, that one,” he said, nodding towards Phyllis. “I hope she’s not thinking of driving through Kilmuckridge tonight because there are a few lads are sore enough at her, and the voice on her. She thinks she’s someone, I’ll say that for her.”

  Nora looked away and did not reply.

  “I’ll tell you now,” he said to another man, “she’d get a big fright if someone stuck one of her symphonies up her hole. She wouldn’t be asking questions then.”

  Phyllis whispered to Nora that they should proceed with the quiz as soon as they could.

  “Now, everybody,” she shouted, “get ready for the last exciting rounds. Mrs. Webster will give us the score so far.”

  The man continued to hover until Phyllis turned her full attention on him.

  “I’m afraid you are in the way,” she said. “There’s no reason for you to stand so close. Could you go back and sit down?”

  The man hesitated and then gave her a look of pure contempt before he went back to his friends at the doorway.

  One of the Kilmuckridge contestants had obviously prepared for this round of questions, about the prime ministers and presidents of various countries. He was able to give the names of the prime ministers of both Norway and Sweden. It was when the team was asked the name of the prime minister of the Soviet Union, and they agreed first on Brezhnev and then changed to Podgorny, that the problems arose.

  “Which is it?” Phyllis asked.

  They consulted for a while until Phyllis set the stopwatch.

  “It’s Podgorny,” one of them said.

  “I’m afraid you are wrong with both of your answers. The premier of the Soviet Union is Kosygin.”

  “You asked the name of the prime minister,” one of them said.

  “And that is Kosygin.”

  “You just said he is the premier.”

  “And that is the same as prime minister. And my decision is final, I’m afraid. You can argue all you like. Now, the next question.”