Nora Webster: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

  “And then it gets worse,” Fiona said.

  “And has anyone discussed this with him?” Nora asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Margaret said, and then noticed her irritation. “I mean, he was going to talk to you about it,” she went on.

  “I am not sure that a boarding-school would suit him. He’s older than his years in some ways and younger than his years in others.”

  “Well, being with others his own age might be good for him,” Margaret said.

  None of this conversation could be happening, Nora thought, without Donal’s direct involvement. He spoke to Margaret a great deal when he went to her house to develop photographs; he also spoke to Fiona. They asked him questions about himself that she never did, but, somehow, she felt that she was closer to him and that he depended on her in ways that no one understood. He had a habit of watching and taking things in that none of the others had, and Nora felt that he had absorbed her own feelings just by being in the house with her. He was fifteen now; in two years he would be going to Dublin to university. Maybe he needed to leave home sooner, to experience other things and be released from having to worry about her, but she did not think so. He liked the freedom she gave him, being treated as an adult in the house. His own interests were deep and private, she knew, and would not adapt easily to an imposed routine and a lack of autonomy and solitude.

  The following day, when she spoke to him about it, she realised that it was something he wanted. He wanted a speech therapist; the idea of a camera club was also attractive. She tried to make him imagine what sleeping in a dormitory would be like, or obeying a large number of petty rules and regulations. But since he resisted her efforts to make him think negatively about boarding-school, she knew to be careful. She did not want him or any of the others to believe that she depended on him, or wanted two more years of him and Conor together in the room beside hers. If she did not try to prevent something that he wanted, then he might decide more easily not to go. On Monday, she found a phone number for Felicity Barry and called her from the phone-box on the Back Road, but there was no reply. She wondered if she should write to her and ask her if she would be willing to see Donal privately. She should have done this long before now.

  Gradually, Nora watched the question of Donal and boarding-school move out of her grasp. She would like to have known how it had actually started, who had mentioned it first. She did not say that she was against it, but she realised that Margaret was aware of her opposition and had grown silent on the subject, leaving it to Jim to say that he had met Father Doyle, the president of the college, at a meeting of the GAA and asked him if there would be a place for Donal in St. Peter’s College. Father Doyle said that he would be delighted to have any son of Maurice Webster’s in the school. Nora found out later that Donal knew about the encounter with Father Doyle before she did.

  When, once more, they went to Curracloe and stayed in a caravan, they were visited on their last evening by Jim and Margaret. Nora watched Donal lingering in the caravan, listening to the conversation. It was late July now and, if he was going to boarding-school in early September, it would have to be arranged soon. As they talked, and the light of evening faded, Nora understood that it had already been decided. She had never openly confronted Margaret but felt like doing so now, felt like asking Jim to take Donal and Conor to the Winning Post for ice cream, and when they were gone telling Margaret that she was not to interfere in her children’s lives. Margaret would, however, be able to claim innocence with full conviction and also claim that she was offering to pay for Donal’s schooling, as she had paid for Aine’s, only because it might be for the best. Nora would be put in a position of not wanting Donal to have a better education, and not being gracious in the face of Margaret’s generosity.

  Before Jim and Margaret left, it was agreed that Jim would write formally to Father Doyle. They made it sound as though it was not clear what his response would be, which Nora knew was not true. The school would accept Donal; Father Doyle had already told Jim. And Donal would leave home and go to boarding-school. Nora wondered if there was anything she could have done to stop it, or if there was anything she could do now.

  In the morning, when they had packed up and were ready to leave, she asked Donal to come for a walk with her. As they approached the strand, using the boardwalk which was almost covered over with sand, she could see how uncomfortable Donal was, knowing that they were going to have to discuss something serious.

  “Are you sure you want to go to St. Peter’s?” she asked him when they were on the strand.

  “I s-suppose s-so,” he said.

  “It’s a big move,” she replied.

  They walked along by the shore.

  “I hate the C-christian B-brothers,” he said.

  “Do you?”

  “I w-wish I d-didn’t have to g-go to any school.”

  “It’s just two more years. Have you spoken to Aine about UCD?”

  He nodded.

  “You’d be free to study whatever you liked there.”

  “I want to s-study photography.”

  “That wouldn’t be a problem. There must be very good places.”

  They walked further in silence. Donal began to pick up small stones from the shoreline and throw them into the water.

  “Is there a particular problem in the Brothers’?” she eventually asked.

  He shrugged.

  “It’s all a p-problem.”

  “Would boarding-school be better?”

  She could hear his breathing now and could see that he was upset.

  “Would St. Peter’s be better?”

  “D-daddy didn’t t-teach there.”

  He looked at her, and the look suggested a rawness that she had never seen in him before.

  “Has it been bad?”

  “The rooms are all the rooms he taught in. I sit in the classroom he came into every day.”

  His tone was direct and hard; he did not stammer. She held him as he began to cry.

  “And they all l-look at me and f-feel sorry for me. And I c-can’t s-study. And I c-can’t do anything. And I hate them all.”

  She put her arm around him until it seemed to make him uncomfortable, and slowly, they made their way back towards the caravan.

  As she and Fiona and Conor accompanied Donal to St. Peter’s at the beginning of September, Nora saw immediately how lonely and isolated he was going to be. All of the boys came here for five years; Donal would be here for the last two. The entrance hall was filled with boys and their parents; the sense Nora got was of the boys coming home, or at least arriving somewhere familiar. A few priests she saw moved around busily. Only Donal seemed at a loss, and Nora had to find a priest and explain that he was new and a boarder arriving for fourth year and did not know where his dormitory was or where to put his things.

  “If you tell him to stand there by that table, I will deal with him in one second,” the priest said. He disappeared before she could ask him if she should wait with Donal, or if she should leave him alone with his suitcase and a bag, and drive home. She was also unsure what the system for visiting was and wished that she had checked this before now so that she could reassure Donal that she would see him soon. In the end, as she noticed other parents leaving, she told Donal that she and Fiona and Conor should follow them and that seemed to make him less uneasy as he stood there. She knew not to embrace him or say anything that would make him sad.

  “I’ll find out about visiting times,” she said, “and I’ll write and let you know, and you write if you need anything.”

  He nodded and looked away from her and Fiona and Conor as if he barely knew them.

  In the week after her rejection by the choirmaster in Wexford, she called on Laurie O’Keefe and gave her a detailed account of what had transpired. When Laurie suggested they resume singing lessons, Nora said she would prefer to wait for a while.
The night after she left Donal at St. Peter’s she decided, however, to call on Laurie just to talk, Laurie’s house being the only place where her mind might be captured and held by something other than the thought of Donal alone and friendless, his stammer becoming apparent to teachers and fellow students, thus making him even more isolated than he had been when he was at home, where at least he could walk out of the room or take his camera to his aunt’s house and spend time in the darkroom making prints.

  Laurie took her downstairs to the music room.

  “I dealt with Frank Redmond,” she said. Her tone was stern and dramatic, as though she were a prime minister declaring war. “I don’t think we’ll be hearing from him again.”

  “What did you do?” Nora asked.

  “I arranged for Billy to drive me to Wexford,” she said. “When we found Frank Redmond’s house, I made Billy stay in the car. Mr. Redmond lives in a bungalow on the outskirts of the town. His poor wife answered the door and said he was out in the garden. So I told her that he was to come in from the garden now this minute, that I didn’t have all day. When he approached, I asked him directly if he had insulted one of my students. Oh, he hemmed and hawed and made me follow him into the sitting-room. It was filled with photographs of all of his children graduating. Six or seven of them, all with their scrolls. I asked him again if he had insulted one of my students. Oh, he began a long explanation of how busy they were that day and what pressure they were under. So I asked him a third time: ‘Did you insult one of my students?’ And he said he was sorry if what he said had been construed like that. So I said to him that he could construe what I was going to say to him any way he liked. Here he was, I said, in his bungalow, all painted white on the outside, with a tiled roof like something in Mexico. Even the windows were the wrong shape. And not a book in the house, and awful ornaments on the mantelpiece. He was, I told him, ignorance personified, and he was in a position to judge nothing, least of all anything beautiful. In France, I said, there is a word for someone like him. And then I walked out. Billy said he never saw me in such a rage.”

  “Oh, dear,” Nora said.

  “Now, the winter is going to be hard. I can feel it. I always know if the winter is going to be hard, so we should make plans. I would like you to learn a French song. I thought maybe something by Fauré. And then maybe I should pay some attention to your friend Phyllis. She has a nice voice and it was well trained, maybe too well trained, but she is—”

  “She is very kind,” Nora interrupted.

  “Well, you have seen that side of her. There’s a Mahler song I was thinking about too, I’ll play it for you if I can find it now. It could work for soprano and mezzo. It’s from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and I have it somewhere. It might be under Geraint Evans, he’s the baritone, and Phyllis could sing his lines and then you come in as the mezzo. It’s a sort of military song, but it’s all about loss. You know, I think Mahler saw what was coming, the First War and then the Second War. You can hear it in his music sometimes, the mayhem, the evil, and then the terrible loss. Yes, he felt the loss.”

  When the first notes began, Nora knew that she had heard the song before. And, when the voice came in, she felt herself once more with Dr. Radford and his wife; she could almost taste the gin-and-tonic and almost smell the mixture of polished wood and smoke from the fire. The song this time, however, seemed different. The music was softer, the melody more plaintive and beautiful. But it was a melody she did not think that she could easily learn to sing; and she wondered if she should say to Laurie that perhaps Frank Redmond had a point when he made clear that he did not want his favourite songs destroyed by people who could not sing them.

  “Now, I will give Phyllis a ring,” Laurie said when the song had ended, “but perhaps you might alert her. And if you could intimate gently that she should not talk out of turn. It’s one of her habits.”

  Nora smiled.

  “I’m sure that she will be delighted to hear from you.”

  “And what we’ll do is work towards having a small concert here when the spring comes. A few of my other students will perform for an invited audience. We’ll ask Dr. Radford and his wife and maybe a few people from Wexford if I’m talking to them by that time.”

  “Oh, Dr. Radford?” Nora asked.

  “Don’t worry. I know you had a dreadful evening with them. They really mean well. They wanted to make a good impression on you because I had spoken about you. They said that you were very cold to them at the Gramophone Society after that, and you handed back a record you had borrowed and you told them that you hadn’t listened to it. But let’s invite them to our little concert, and I’ll keep them under control.”

  On Friday of the following week, when she was leaving work, William Gibney Junior was waiting for her with a note.

  “You know we have a new policy of not putting personal calls through to anyone,” he said. “But they insisted that this is urgent and so I took a message.”

  He handed her a piece of paper with Father Doyle’s name on it and a Wexford town telephone number. She knew instantly that there must be something wrong with Donal. She thought of going back to her office and phoning from there, but she did not want Elizabeth listening to the conversation, so she walked swiftly to the phone-box in the post office, where she would have some privacy.

  She got through immediately to Father Doyle.

  “I don’t want to worry you too much,” he said, “but Father Larkin, who’s Donal’s English teacher, thought I should call you. Donal isn’t settling in well at all, you see, and I know he has been trying to get in touch with you. I think Father Larkin phoned you but he was told that you were busy.”

  “Is Donal . . . ?”

  “Well, he’s in bed now for a few days, and he hasn’t been eating and he hasn’t been able to go into the classroom. We’ve seen this before. I mean, he might just settle down.”

  “Should I come to visit?”

  “Father Larkin thought you should.”

  “When?”

  “Well, we thought tomorrow at the normal time for visits. And you can take him downtown. It might reassure him.”

  “Father, I’m very grateful to you and to Father Larkin for letting me know.”

  “Well, we’ll see how he is tomorrow, Mrs. Webster, and we’ll say a prayer on our side. It’s often just a matter of time. We all went through it at one stage or another.”

  “Thank you again, Father. I’ll be there tomorrow at two.”

  She put the phone down.

  Nora decided to say nothing to Fiona or Conor, or indeed Margaret. The next day, when she drove to Wexford, she found Donal waiting in the front hall of the school. He was wearing his school uniform, with its black blazer. He seemed taller and thinner and paler, but also more adult.

  “I th-think you n-need p-permission to go out,” he said.

  “It’s fine,” she said, trying to sound as casual as she could. “I got permission from Father Doyle yesterday.”

  They drove towards the town centre in silence. She could feel that he was close to tears. She did not know whether it was better for him to cry or not to cry. Someone would know that, she thought, but she did not. As they walked along the Main Street, all she could think of was how easy it would be for Donal if he had not come to St. Peter’s. On Saturday, he could get up at whatever time he chose and have whatever he liked for breakfast. If he wanted, he could ignore her and Fiona and Conor. He could read the newspaper, and then make his way to Margaret’s house with his camera and his rolls of film. He could come home whenever he liked. The house was his; everyone was used to his silences, his wry comments, his stammer. And now he would never have all that freedom again, except for holidays. It was as though he had joined the army. What he did at every moment of the day was decided by a set of rules. She wondered if all he had lost, all the casual and easy freedom that he would not regain, was going through his
mind too, as well as hers. But she was only imagining it; he must be feeling it as real.

  They went into White’s coffee-shop but still they did not speak and he said he did not want anything here. As she sipped a coffee, she had no idea what to do. If she tried to talk as though it was an ordinary day, then that would somehow be an affront to what he was feeling. If she softened her voice and was sympathetic, she eventually would have to deposit him back in the school regardless. Saying nothing was simpler, at least for the moment.

  When she asked him if he wanted anything, he shook his head, but he followed her to the fruit shop on the Main Street and agreed that he could do with some oranges and apples and, once she had paid for them, he said he needed some concentrated orange juice and some extra toothpaste. It was still only three o’clock. She was tempted to suggest to him that they drive back up to the school and get whatever clothes and books he had there and explain nothing to anyone, just drive home with him and never mention St. Peter’s again.

  When she asked him if he was hungry, he nodded.

  “I c-can’t eat the food,” he said. As they walked towards the Talbot Hotel, she determined that she would not offer him a soft way out, that having him return home now, going back to the school he had left, would be a defeat and it could not be seen in any other way. Even offering him a time-limit, another week, or month, or until Christmas, would leave too much open. They would have a plate of sandwiches in the lounge of the Talbot Hotel, and he could keep the silence going if he wanted to, but her aim now was to get him back to St. Peter’s before five o’clock. Maybe in the future, if things did not improve, she would consider taking him home with her, but she needed to give him no idea that this was a possibility. He would be more likely to get used to his new circumstances if he felt that there was no chance of an easy alternative. She was almost angry with him for not speaking, for not telling her about the new routines, or what he disliked most.

  As they waited for the food, she thought to break the silence, but stopped herself. When the sandwiches came, they ate them without speaking. Donal barely nodded when she asked him if he wanted more. She could see that he was suffering, that his life at home had been destroyed and he could not have it back, but there was an element of rudeness, even aggression, in what he was doing now. Perhaps he was doing his best not to cry or call on her to help him by taking him home. Perhaps he knew that there was nothing she could say in reply to the list of complaints he could make, or any account of how he felt.