Nora Webster: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

  In the car, she looked severely at Donal who was pointing his camera at the windscreen.

  “Donal, put the camera back in its case. I am trying to drive, and the last thing I need is you pointing the camera at things.”

  “I c-can sit in the b-back.”

  “Stay where you are and don’t annoy me,” she said.

  As soon as she put the key in the front door of the house she could smell stale alcohol. She looked into the front room but there was no sign of any disturbance. In the back room she had to turn on the light, as the curtains were still drawn. Clearly, there had been a party. No matter what she did now, she would be playing a role. She imagined that Fiona was upstairs in bed, possibly still asleep. Nora could wake her in indignation and force her to get up so that they could discuss who had been in the house the previous night and until what time. Or she could begin to clean up the mess herself now, all the more to shame Fiona when she finally appeared. As she inspected the room further, she locked eyes with the awestruck Donal. There was an ashtray full to the brim beside an empty bottle of vodka. She drew the curtains back and opened the window, hearing as she did a noise coming from the room above, the room Fiona and Aine slept in. Quickly, she made a decision to go, to pretend that she had never seen this.

  “Fiona will clear all this up,” she said, “so you should find a chair and turn on the television before those men are on some other planet. I’m leaving money for food, but you can go down to your aunt Margaret’s for your tea today, and your auntie Una will be looking in too.”

  “And what about F-fiona?” he asked.

  “You can tell her what happened at the hotel and explain why you need a television. And tell her I have gone back to Curracloe and if anyone wants me they know where to find me.”

  “But how will we g-get in t-touch?”

  “I don’t know. Ask your spacemen to help send a message.”

  They heard another noise from the room above. Fiona was now out of bed.

  “What will I say to F-fiona about this?”

  He pointed to the mess in the room.

  “Tell her that this house had better . . . No, just tell her to make sure there’s enough food, and don’t get in her way.”

  Donal looked at her puzzled. And then he nodded and smiled. As they heard a door opening upstairs, Nora put a finger to her lips and handed him a key to the house.

  “Are you sure you want to stay here?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  She moved towards him and tossed his hair affectionately as he recoiled from her, smiling.

  “If you change your mind . . .”

  “I w-won’t,” he whispered as she crept silently out, closing the front door behind her without making a sound.

  In the days that followed in the caravan all three of them were quiet. Conor began to go to the tennis court and made friends with two boys from Wexford town who were staying in one of the thatched houses near Culliton’s Gap. In the evenings Nora walked over to collect him. In the mornings the air in the caravan was stifling and hot. As soon as she woke, Nora went out to the shower in the caravan park and then walked down to the strand. Some mornings, the haze was dense and, even though she could hear the rush of waves like muted thunder, she could not actually see the water until she was very close to the shore.

  In the last few days of the holiday she began to feel guilty about Donal on his own away from them. She went into the village and stood by the phone in the kiosk and thought of phoning Margaret. She put coins in the slot and had half dialled Margaret’s number when she realised that she did not want to hear Margaret wondering if she had been wise to leave Donal on his own. She put the receiver back and pressed button B to retrieve her coins and used them again to phone Una at work. She briskly asked her if she would bring Donal down to the caravan for the last weekend. When she noticed Una’s coldness, she pretended that she was running out of coins and had just enough to hear Una say that she would drive Donal to Curracloe on Saturday.

  When Una brought Donal, Nora saw that he would need to start shaving and tried to remember if there was a shaving brush and shaving cream and men’s razors somewhere. But then she thought that if she had not thrown them out, she should do so soon with all of Maurice’s clothes which were still in the wardrobe. As soon as they got home, she thought, she should buy Donal brand-new equipment to shave.

  She was not surprised when Aine announced that she would be going back to the town with Una. Her exam results would come soon and, if the results were good enough, she would be preparing to go to Dublin to university. She had barely spoken in the past few days and was more involved in her books than ever, going to the strand at a different time to Nora and swimming alone when things were quieter, at six or seven in the evening. Often, she set up her beach chair in a shady spot at the side of the caravan and paid no attention to anyone.

  Nora smiled to herself as Una spoke of how sensible and quiet Fiona was and how lucky that Nora could trust her alone in the house. She expressed surprise at Nora’s leaving Donal to be cared for by his sister and said that his stammer had seemed worse than ever; she wondered how he would manage with it.

  On the last morning, Nora packed some things in the car and left the boys sleeping. As she walked to the strand she felt the wind that had woken her in the night. The haze had all gone. Clouds moved across the sky, blocking the sun, and then the sun would appear again, its heat faint. She swam out, braving the cold morning sea, discovering that the sandbank, which had been there all the days when the waves were high, had now gone, dissolved by force of the tides. She found a depth that pleased her and began to swim an overarm stroke that gave her speed and then made her tired. When her arms were too sore to do any more, she turned on her back and floated, keeping her eyes closed and trying to leave her mind empty. The swimming several times a day had made her strong. She would come back later before they had finally to give up the keys of the caravan. Conor would come too, she thought, for a last swim, and they would let Donal do whatever he wanted, stay in the caravan if he liked and point his camera at the wall.

  Fiona never mentioned the party she had held in the house and Nora did not allude to it either. She had had enough trouble with her own mother, she thought, without making unnecessary trouble with her daughters. When Aine’s Leaving Cert results came, they could not have been better and this meant that Aine would be going to University College Dublin. Nora enjoyed it when people whom she met on the street congratulated her. She was tempted to say that the success of her two daughters had very little to do with her, but she thought that people might misunderstand.

  In the week of her return to work, they were busy at Gibney’s, since some of the office staff were dealing with the farmers and charting the moisture in the wheat and working out the value of each consignment. Nora stayed on a couple of afternoons to make sure that everything on her side was up-to-date and in order. In the evenings, when it was still bright, she drove to Curracloe for a swim, offering a lift to anyone who would come with her. Conor was in the tennis club and did not want to go to the beach, and Aine and Donal were too wrapped up in the riots going on in Belfast and Derry and did not want to miss the news. Only Fiona came with her. She had been learning about her salary, a cheque coming in on the tenth and twenty-fourth of every month, that would be higher than Nora’s income from Gibney’s and her pensions combined. Nora had to be careful not to give any hint that she found this strange; she presumed that she and Fiona would, at some stage, discuss how much money Fiona would contribute to the household expenses.

  On the second day as they were driving home, Fiona said, “I was going to ask you for another loan of money. I’ll pay you back as soon as I get paid.”

  “Are you short of money?” Nora asked her.

  “I wanted to go to London for a week before the summer is over and I start working. A lot of the girls from the trai
ning college went this year again and I’d have somewhere to stay.”

  “London? Just on holiday?”

  “Yes.”

  Nora was about to say that she would like to go to London too, never having been there, but she stopped herself.

  “How much would you need?”

  “I was thinking about a hundred pounds. I’d pay you back from my pay cheques. The girls all say that the clothes shops and the stalls are even cheaper and better this year. And I’m going to need clothes to go to work in and then, well, I’ll be going out a lot at the weekends. I need clothes.”

  Nora wondered if this implied some criticism of how Fiona had been provided for up to now, but she said nothing and concentrated on her driving. She thought of a number of things to say, including that she had to get up every morning and go to work to pay for Fiona’s upkeep and she had to watch every penny that she spent. The idea that she would get the money back as Fiona received her pay cheques did not interest her. It was the idea of money being spent foolishly, money being spent at all.

  She intended to talk to Fiona about the money over the weekend, but she could not think what to say. On Saturday morning, as she lay in bed, she concluded that it would be best to refuse if Fiona broached the subject again, but as the day went on her resolve softened. All she wanted, she thought, was not to have to discuss it again, or think about Fiona on a shopping spree in London. Somehow, the idea of having to talk about it, or listen to any arguments about it, made a strange anger rise in her.

  That afternoon the weather was cold with a sky that threatened rain. As she sat at the front window reading the newspaper, she noticed Donal approaching the house carrying a large box. She had trained herself not to ask any of the children too many questions. If she came home with a parcel of any kind when she was growing up, her mother would need to know what was in the parcel, or if a letter came for her, her mother would need to know who it was from and what news it contained. Nora had found this constantly irritating, and tried with her own children not to intrude.

  Later, when she looked into the back room, she saw Aine and Donal on their knees with a pile of photographs on the floor beside the box she had seen Donal carrying.

  “These are photographs Donal took of the riots in Derry and the burnings in Belfast,” Aine said.

  Donal was so involved in studying his own work that he did not even look up.

  “But how did he take them?” Nora asked.

  “From the television,” Aine said.

  The photographs were very large. She looked at them for a second and then knelt down closer. It was difficult to work out what was happening in them, although she could see traces of fire and figures running. They were blurred, almost smudged.

  “This is where I superimposed,” Donal said, as though he was talking to himself. She noticed that he had not stammered, and was so grateful for this that she decided to be very careful not to criticise.

  “You should put the dates on the back of each one,” Aine said, “even if there are two different dates.”

  “I’ll get some stickers in Godfrey’s,” he said.

  Nora tiptoed out of the room to the kitchen. She wondered if Margaret or Jim had seen these photographs and had thought about the cost of the paper and all the time that Donal spent in the darkroom they had made for him.

  That evening they watched the nine-o’clock news. Even Conor sat still and seemed sombre as the news showed film from Derry and Belfast. Nora had not watched any news coverage during the week. Now, people in Belfast were running down streets, escaping from burning houses, it was like something she had seen years ago on newsreel from the war or after the war in the Astor Cinema. But this was happening now and it was happening close by.

  “Do you think it will start happening down here?” Fiona asked.

  “What?” Nora asked.

  “The violence, the riots.”

  “I hope not,” she said.

  “What are those people who have left their houses going to do?” Fiona asked.

  “They’re going to come over the border,” Aine said.

  Donal had his camera out and was pointing it at the television.

  Nora invited Jim and Margaret and Una and Seamus to tea the following Sunday to celebrate Fiona’s finishing her training and Aine’s results. The extended family sat down for tea at six, the leaves of the table having been pulled out as though it was Christmas. Seamus sat beside Conor and engaged him in conversation, discussing the rules of soccer. Nora noticed that he hardly spoke to anyone else and concluded that Seamus must be nervous. The girls had made salads and there was cold meat and chutney, and fresh brown bread that she had baked herself. Una was the first to raise the subject of what was happening in the North.

  “I think it’s terrible,” she said. “Those poor people burned out of their own houses.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement and there was silence.

  “I think our government is as responsible as the British government,” Aine said. “I mean, we let it happen.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Jim said.

  “We did nothing all the years,” Aine said.

  “It must have been very hard to know what to do,” Margaret said.

  “I think that we gave the Protestants signal after signal that they could do what they liked,” Aine said. “I mean, there is every type of discrimination, including gerrymandering.”

  “What’s gerrymandering?” Conor asked.

  “It’s a way of drawing electoral boundaries so some people’s votes don’t matter as others,” Aine said.

  Conor looked puzzled.

  “I remember that Dr. Devlin was from Cookstown,” Una said, “and he told me that a Catholic couldn’t get a proper job there. Even if you were a doctor. That’s why he came south.”

  “They still can’t get jobs,” Aine said. “I think it’s time our government made a stand.”

  “What could we do?” Una asked.

  “What’s our army for?” Aine asked. “Who would stop them marching into Derry? It’s just a few miles over the border.”

  “Ah, now,” Seamus interjected.

  “I don’t think that would be wise,” Jim said.

  “What has wise got to do with it when people are living in fear of their lives?” Aine asked.

  “Oh, I think we down here should be very cautious about what we do,” Margaret said.

  “While people are being killed?” Aine asked.

  “It’s a bad business all right,” Jim said.

  “Well, it’s funny, isn’t it?” Aine asked. “The Irish Army can go to the Congo and to Cyprus, but it can’t go into Derry to help our own people.”

  Nora tried to catch Aine’s eye and indicate that they might best drop the subject, but Aine would not look at her. She had her eyes fixed on her uncle Jim.

  “Well, I don’t know how it will all end,” Una said.

  “Ah, it’ll end soon enough,” Seamus said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t be sure about that,” Margaret said. “It’s really dreadful. Jim and myself watched it on the news last night. It was hard to believe that it was happening in our own country.”

  Aine seemed about to say something and then stopped. There was silence at the table for a few minutes.

  “Fiona is going to London,” Conor said and, looking around, sought approval for his remark.

  “Conor!” Fiona said.

  Jim and Margaret and Una and Seamus looked at Fiona. It was clear from her response that what Conor had said was true.

  “London,” Margaret said softly. “Are you, Fiona?”

  “I was thinking of going again this year for just a few days before I start teaching,” she said, “and this little creep must have been listening to one of my conversations.”

  “There’ll be plenty of Protestan
ts in London,” Conor said. “They’ll burn you out and make you run down the street.”

  “They’re not r-real P-protestants in London,” Donal said.

  “London is very nice,” Margaret said. “And where will you stay, Fiona? You know, I have it written down somewhere the name of the place where we stayed. It’s a hotel where Irish people are very welcome, a small hotel. Or maybe you will stay in the same place as last year.”

  “A lot of girls from the training college went there for the summer to work in hotels and they have a flat,” Fiona said.

  “It would be lovely for a few days,” Una said.

  Fiona had won whatever battle they had been fighting about the money. Somehow or other, as the discussion went on about London and places to stay and the need to look after yourself there, Fiona’s going to London became a definite plan, and it was agreed on by Jim and Margaret and Una and Seamus that she deserved the trip after all her studying and that she would be glad she had made it once she started teaching.

  At the end of the evening, Jim had an envelope with notes in it for Fiona and for Aine, and he gave ten shillings each to the boys. Later, as they cleaned up, Nora told Fiona that she would get the money out of the bank on her way home from work the next day and she would drive her to Rosslare if that was how she was going to travel.