Nora Webster: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

  As murmurs came from all around, Phyllis raised her voice.

  “I will have no more interruptions,” she said.

  Nora concentrated on the score sheet and was afraid to look up. By the end of the round, since the Blackwater team had failed to answer some of the questions, there were only three points between the teams. It was clear to Nora, and she presumed to many in the hall, that if the Soviet Union answer had been allowed, then Kilmuckridge would be ahead. In the last round, which focussed on famous battles, each team managed to answer every question correctly. By the time the quiz ended, Nora had the score sheet totted up. Blackwater had won by three points. Phyllis got to her feet and demanded silence again and read out the result in an imperious voice. Before she had even time to sit down, a man emerged from the crowd and moved towards her. He was wearing a cap and a check jacket.

  “Where are you from?” he asked Phyllis aggressively.

  “What has it to do with you?” she replied.

  “You’re not even from Enniscorthy,” he said. “You’re a blow-in. And you’ve no right to push your weight around down here.”

  “Maybe it’s time you went home,” Phyllis said.

  “At least I know where my home is.”

  “You robbed us,” another man shouted. “That’s all there is to it.”

  Just then, Tom Darcy emerged from the crowd.

  “Myself and a friend of mine from just outside Kilmuckridge would like to invite you two ladies for a drink in Etchingham’s to thank you for your hard work.”

  “We should go with him,” Nora said to Phyllis, and was relieved when she agreed.

  “Are you Maurice Webster’s wife?” the man with Tom Darcy asked when they arrived in the bar.

  For a second, she was unsure if the man knew that Maurice was dead.

  “I knew him well,” the man added.

  Nora looked across to find that Phyllis, with a full glass of brandy and soda in her hand, was talking animatedly to Tom Darcy.

  “You knew him years ago?” she asked.

  “It was when he came down with his brother and a few others. We went out fishing. Is that brother still in the land of the living?”

  “He is,” Nora said.

  “And there was a delicate one that died?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And did Margaret, the sister, ever marry?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “She was a nice woman, liked by everybody.”

  He sipped his drink and looked at Nora.

  “I was sorry to hear about Maurice anyway. Lord, we were all very sorry to hear that down here.”

  “Thank you for saying that.”

  “You’d never know what way life goes. Some of it makes no sense at all.”

  They stood at the counter in silence.

  “Would you like a better drink than that?” the man asked her eventually.

  Nora looked at her Babycham and hesitated.

  “I hear it’s awful stuff,” the man said. “A vodka and a white lemonade would be better for you. That’s what my missus and the daughter drink nowadays when they go out.”

  He ordered her a vodka and white lemonade and poured it for her when it came. She saw that the group of men who had been standing close to the door of the hall were here now and ordering drinks; the bar was filling up after the quiz and there was a brightness in the atmosphere. Something unusual had occurred which had lifted the evening, given people something to talk about. In their liveliness, the men in the bar looked more like a group coming from a hurling or a football match.

  Phyllis stayed talking to Tom Darcy, who would have plenty to tell his wife about when he went home. Soon, they were joined by a number of other men who spoke to Phyllis as though they knew her. Phyllis joined in the discussion and she nodded at remarks made and looked from one man to another. Because her husband was a vet, Nora thought, then she must be used to the company of farmers and knew when to drop her imperious tone. Or maybe it was the brandy.

  None of the men would allow Phyllis or Nora to buy a round of drinks, and each time they bought a round for themselves they included a brandy and soda for Phyllis and a vodka and white lemonade for Nora.

  When Nora saw Phyllis signalling towards the door, she spotted Tim Hegarty and his wife, Philomena, coming in. Tim was a teacher whom Maurice had been to school with. She knew that he and his wife roamed the countryside at the weekend in search of company but she could not think what they were doing in Blackwater. They had two of their children with them. Nora could tell by the expression on Phyllis’s face that she disapproved of them.

  Tim was famous for his good looks and his singing voice. His wife sang with him when she was not too drunk, and, once, at a concert in the Mercy convent, where Nora had been, the entire family of parents and six or seven children played the von Trapp family in The Sound of Music. Everyone said that they could have been professional musicians if only Tim and Philomena could stop drinking.

  There was a call for silence from the bar. She could see Tim Hegarty standing alone with his eyes closed. His hair was oiled and he wore a thin bow-tie and a striped white-and-red jacket. He looked like an American film star. Still without opening his eyes, he put his head back and sang in a soft voice but loud enough so that he could be heard all around:

  “Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you. You’re so like the lady with the mystic smile.”

  At first Nora thought that someone might have sung that song at her wedding; she tried to think back who it might have been. And then she thought no, it was later than that, it was a time when she was not the focus of attention. It was after Fiona was born, and her happiness might have come from how well Fiona was, how she was learning to walk or beginning to talk. Then as Tim sang the second verse it dawned on her precisely when it was. She and Maurice had left Fiona with her mother for the day and maybe the night as well so they could go to the wedding of Maurice’s cousin Aidan to Tilly O’Neill. The reception was in the Talbot Hotel in Wexford, and Pierce Brophy, Nancy’s son, the one who went to England later and made all the money, was the best man. Pierce stood up and sang that song which must, she thought, have been a hit that year, and everyone was amazed that he knew the words. He sang it slowly, just as Tim was singing it now, and even though it was not the sort of song that Maurice liked, Nora loved it, she loved how slow and sad it was, and how clever the words were when they rhymed. More than anything else, she loved that she had Maurice beside her, she loved how they were out together at a wedding wearing new clothes and that everyone in the party knew that she was married to him.

  When the song ended, the crowd in the bar cheered Tim. Only Phyllis seemed less than impressed and looked at Nora, raising her eyes to the ceiling. Nora noticed that she had a full glass of brandy and soda in her hand and saw that someone had also left her another vodka and white lemonade. She could hear Philomena Hegarty tuning her guitar at the far end of the room.

  In all this noise and confusion, she felt a sharp longing now to be anywhere but here. Even though she often dreaded the night falling when she was in her own house, at least she was alone and could control what she did. The silence and the solitude were a strange relief; she wondered if things were getting better at home without her noticing. Since she was a girl, she had never been alone in a crowd like this. Maurice would always decide when to leave or how long to stay, but they would have a way of consulting each other. It was something she never thought about; indeed, she was often irritated by the way in which Maurice’s mood could change, how anxious he would be to go home one minute, and then how eager he could become, how easily involved with company the next minute, while she waited patiently for the night to be over.

  So this was what being alone was like, she thought. It was not the solitude she had been going through, nor the moments when she felt his death like a shock to her system
, as though she had been in a car accident, it was this wandering in a sea of people with the anchor lifted, and all of it oddly pointless and confusing. Then there was another hush in the bar, the guitar began a tentative melody, and Tim Hegarty started to sing “Love Me Tender.” In the way he gave in to the melancholy in the song, the yearning, she felt that he was mocking her, looking into her face and laughing, but soon the song itself took over, he softened and strengthened his voice as the melody dictated and also let the guitar do its work, leaving gaps so that its sound could be fully heard. She joined in the cheers and the applause when it had finished, and she listened with everyone else, surprised, when the Hegartys seemed to ignore the applause and moved into a much faster song. Tim Hegarty imitated the American accent of Elvis Presley:

  “A very old friend came by today

  ’Cause he was telling everyone in town

  About the love that he just found

  And Marie’s the name of his latest flame.”

  There were roars of approval and whistles from the crowd as Philomena strummed louder on the guitar and Tim sang. Nora put her head back and closed her eyes, enjoying the luxury in the tone of the song, the urgent sound of it, and she remembered the summer that song came out, or maybe the summer after when it arrived in Cush, and at night someone would bring out a record player to a table in front of the Treacys’ bus, which had been moored and cemented down to make a summer house. They would use a long lead from one of the houses around that had electricity.

  She remembered coming back along the lane from the Kavanagh’s house from her nightly walk with Maurice and finding all the children standing around in the twilight as the teenagers danced to Elvis. She could see some boys there, shy, and Fiona maybe dancing and Patricia Treacy and Eddie Breen and some of the Murphys and Carrolls and Mangans. That was not even ten years ago, it might have been six or seven years ago, and if anyone had told her that she would be standing here now listening to this song and all the things that had happened between then and now, she would not have believed them.

  Tom Darcy approached her when the song was over. He was holding Phyllis, whose face was flushed, by the hand.

  “He says you can sing,” Phyllis said.

  “Of course she can sing. That’s when we met her first and she was staying at the Gallaghers’ and there used to be parties.”

  “I haven’t sung since then,” she said.

  “Oh, come on,” Phyllis said. “What songs do you know?”

  “My mother was a singer,” Nora said as though she were talking to people who had known her mother.

  “Nora is a great singer,” Tom Darcy said. “Or she was then.”

  “What do you know?” Phyllis asked again.

  Nora thought for a moment.

  “Brahms’s Lullaby, I think I know that.”

  “In German?”

  “I used to know it in German, but I know it in English.”

  Phyllis put her drink on the counter of the bar.

  “Now, we have to do this properly. I’ll write out the last verse in German and we can both sing that. I’ll sing the first in German, you sing the first in English and we’ll sing the last verse in German and then in English together.”

  Phyllis, she could see, was excited.

  “Could we not make it more simple?” she asked. “I haven’t sung for years. I haven’t sung since just after we were married.”

  “Give me a sheet of paper and I’ll write out the German words. They’re really easy.”

  From the opposite corner of the pub, a man was singing “Boolavogue” in a shaky voice. Phyllis was now writing furiously in a clear hand, and making Nora watch her as she wrote each word, humming the tune as she went along, while taking sips of the brandy.

  By the time the man had finished singing all the verses of “Boolavogue,” Nora noticed a restlessness in the bar. The singing had offered colour and excitement and now people wanted to go back to drinking quietly and chatting to each other. There was also, she knew, a distrust of showiness down here, a feeling that anyone who would expose themselves by singing out loud in public should be mocked maybe, or gently laughed at later.

  But Phyllis was determined. She had the verse written out in German and was ready to move to the centre of the bar where she and Nora could be seen. Nora knew that there were people in the bar who would recognise her and would wonder why she was singing in a pub when Maurice was not even a year dead.

  Tom clapped his hands and called for silence and then, as Phyllis and Nora watched him, expecting to be introduced, he shrugged and made his way quickly back to where he had been, leaving them alone with everyone watching them.

  When Phyllis in a loud voice announced that she and Mrs. Webster were going to sing a duet, there was laughter. This caused Phyllis to put her shoulders back and appear even more combative than during the quiz. Nora was glad that Phyllis was going to start alone, as she had no idea how to pitch her voice. As Phyllis began in a quivering German, it was clear to Nora that her voice had been trained either too much or too little. She could see the unforgiving faces around them. Any display made them uncomfortable, even a new car or a new combine harvester, or the first pair of slacks on a woman. But bad singing, high-pitched bad singing in a foreign language, would never be forgotten. It would be a cause of comment for years to come. If Phyllis had not made her mark on Blackwater during the quiz then she was certainly doing so now.

  Nora concentrated as hard as she could. She was aware that there were people in the pub who knew the melody, or at least had heard it, and therefore she thought that she should make it sound like an ordinary song when she took over from Phyllis for the verse in English. She thought that she should bring her voice down, not allow any high-soprano sounds to emerge but still sing loud enough to be heard.

  When the company saw that Phyllis was going to hand over to her, as though this was some sort of rehearsed party piece, she could see that some of the older men were unsettled and embarrassed. This was not what they had come out for this evening. But a group in the corner, which included a number of women, seemed to think it was hilarious.

  “Lullaby and good night,” she began, surprised herself at how loud her voice was. She looked over at the group in the corner; they were nudging each other and laughing at her. She tried as she went on to soften her voice, to make the melody as close to a real lullaby as she could, a song she might sing to a child. She knew that if she did not get this group on her side by the end of this verse, then they would not be able to control themselves when she and Phyllis sang together in German. As she came to the last line, she kept her eyes on them and them only, but two or three of them were still laughing.

  For the next verse she let Phyllis lead and tried to follow her, at first singing with her and then trying gently to move below her, but she gave this up when they hit one disastrous note together, both of them out of tune. As Phyllis looked at her almost in fear, she let Phyllis sing the last line on her own, not daring even to glance over at the corner, keeping her eyes on the floor, praying that this would be over soon.

  She knew the last verse in English best; when she heard that Phyllis was slowing down, letting her voice quieten, she felt more confident, she moved closer and tried for the last two lines to let her voice merge with Phyllis’s, keeping under still, but letting her voice loosen and become louder as Phyllis’s did. She did not dare look in the direction of the corner, but saw that those in front of her were listening carefully as the song came to an end.

  The applause came more from a sense of relief than from any pleasure and she vowed never to do this again as long as she lived. She glared at the group in the corner, one of whom was now doing an imitation of a soprano voice gone wildly out of tune, to the delight of all the others.

  As the bar got ready to close and last orders were called, Phyllis insisted on buying a drink for Tom Darcy and a number
of his friends, and for Nora. Tom tried to stop her from paying, going so far as to take the money from her hand, but in the end she prevailed. Nora watched as she gulped down the glass of brandy and soda that she had on the counter while waiting for another one to be served. She wondered if it would be safe for her to drive home. She could see from Phyllis that it would not take much for her to sing another song, and she thought she might make herself most useful in the next few minutes by doing everything she could to prevent that.

  In the car, when they had finally said good night to everyone, Nora realised that Phyllis was so drunk that she was almost fully sober. She concentrated hard as she reversed the car and seemed to be driving competently until Nora noticed that she had not turned the headlights on. Once alerted, she appeared unable to remember where the switch for the headlights was. Eventually, she remembered, and Nora thought that if she could hold Phyllis’s attention in conversation all the way back to the town, then Phyllis might be more likely to concentrate also on the road ahead and not allow her mind wander or let herself fall asleep.

  By the time they reached the crossroads at Castle Ellis, Phyllis had said a number of times how much she liked Tom Darcy and what a gentleman he was, and how much she liked Etchingham’s pub and how after the quiz in Monageer she and Nancy were offered no hospitality. She thought that Dick, her husband, might, once the quiz season was finished, come down to Etchingham’s on a Saturday night and said how nice it would be if Nora would come with them. When she was saying this for the third time, Nora realised that she was going to drive across the main Gorey-to-Wexford road without looking to see if anything was coming. She wondered what she could say to make Phyllis concentrate more on the road, if there was a single topic that might force her to slow down and drive with caution.

  When they were safely on the narrow road that led from Castle Ellis through The Ballagh to Finchogue, Nora began Brahms’s Lullaby again. She let her own voice go even deeper so that when Phyllis joined in they were doing harmony, but she was leading. They sang the two verses in English.