by Colm Toibin
Suddenly, she thought of something.
“I will come down every Saturday,” she said, “and even if we can’t go downtown you can come and sit in the car or I can come into the parlour. And I’ll bring supplies for the week, whatever you need. And there’s also visiting on Sundays, and I know that Margaret will come and make sure you’re all right. So that’s Saturday and Sunday. And I think there are a few days when you might be able to come home for the afternoon. And if you just take it week by week you won’t know it until it’s the Christmas holidays, and then you can go down to the darkroom in Margaret’s every day.”
He looked at her seriously and nodded. For a few seconds he seemed to be thinking about what she had said. Then he nodded again. It struck her that he had been waiting to see what she would do, and he had now registered that she had not come down to tell him that he could come home with her if he wanted. Everything that she said implied that he was staying at St. Peter’s. He glanced at her sharply, as if to make sure that she was not going to offer him release, that she was not about to say that these promised visits were merely one option, and there were other options that they might consider. She tried to seem sympathetic but also to make clear that she had nothing more to add, that he would have to return to St. Peter’s and make the best of it.
She went to the bathroom and when she came back she noticed a subtle change in him. He seemed less blank, less dark in his mood.
“Do you know what I would like?” she asked. “I would like a letter from you sometime during the week, or even a photograph you have printed. And if there’s anything I can do to improve things, let me know. And if anything gets better, I would like to know too, so I won’t worry as much. Do you think you could do that?”
Her speaking about herself, her own needs, her own worry, made him appear even more alert. It occurred to her that he had thought more closely about her over the previous few years than she had about him. She wondered if that could be true. She knew that how she felt affected him, and now, for the first time, how he felt seemed more urgent, more worthy of attention than any of her feelings. All she could do was to let him know and make him believe that she would do everything she promised to do.
When they were sitting in the car, she spoke again.
“Every Saturday without fail,” she said. “And write and let me know what food you want us to bring. Or anything else you need.”
He nodded and then looked away. She saw that he was going to cry and thought it might be easier for him if she said nothing more, just started the car and drove towards St. Peter’s. If he needed her to stop along the way, then she would. They did not have to be back until five o’clock, so they still had fifteen minutes. But he did not speak again until she had parked the car in front of the school.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
By the time Conor asked her if he could have a camera for Christmas, she knew he had been looking at Donal’s photography magazines. He seemed to understand when she explained to him that it was essential that he leave them back exactly as he found them. She had noticed him changing now that Donal was no longer in the house. He went to bed before she told him to, or got coal from the shed for the fire before he was asked. When Margaret and Jim came to the house, he would sit in the back room for a while and listen to the conversation, although he would never go to their house on his own as Donal did. Instead, he would often go to Una’s house, where she would make him banana sandwiches.
Even though his school report had him ahead of everybody else, he was not satisfied. Some evenings, he would ask Fiona to take him through his Irish grammar, Fiona remarking to Nora afterwards that she only had to tell him something once and then he remembered. Because he listened to everything and forgot nothing, Nora had to be careful what she said in front of him. He always worried. If the car did not start immediately, he became concerned that they would need a new car. When they went to collect Aine from the train, Conor would walk up and down the platform worried that the train would not come, or that Aine might have missed it. He knew what time Aine had her lectures and what she thought about different professors, just as he found out everything he could from Fiona about where she went with Paul Whitney. So, too, he knew all about the Gibneys and the people who worked there, especially Mick Sinnott, who had come up to him at a hurling match and asked him if he was young Webster and told him that his mother was a great woman. Conor took more interest in the family, Nora joked, than she did, and knew more about everyone than they did themselves.
On her visits to St. Peter’s, Nora did not mention to Donal how much better he seemed to be. He told her more about his activities in the school and the different teachers and priests than he had ever told her about the Christian Brothers and the teachers there. She was so relieved that he had settled down in the school that she did not mind when she discovered that he told Margaret even more than he ever told her. She worked out a system of nodding in recognition when Margaret mentioned some detail of Donal’s life that she did not know. She wondered if Donal did this deliberately or if he was merely responding, when Margaret visited him regularly on Sundays, to her keener questioning about every single aspect of his life and every opinion that he had.
She knew she could not manage things between Donal and Conor when Donal came home for the Christmas holidays. Donal could not stop Conor wanting a camera, although he could undermine him by refusing to share any of his knowledge or by ignoring his brother. Conor had more need for approval from others than did Donal, who often seemed oblivious to everyone except himself. And now, if Donal decided not to encourage him, Conor would make every effort to get Donal to change his mind. She smiled to herself one Saturday as she and Conor visited Donal in St. Peter’s.
“Donal, I’m thinking of getting a camera for Christmas,” Conor said.
“What sort of c-camera?”
Donal was in the front passenger seat and looked behind at his brother.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll sell you mine. I was th-thinking of r-replacing it.”
“Is there something wrong with yours?”
“No, it’s g-good,” Donal said. “B-but I w-wanted a b-better one.”
She wondered if she should interrupt and either tell Donal that Conor wanted a brand-new camera, or tell Conor that what Donal had meant to say was that, since he was finding out more and more about photography, then he would need a different camera, but the one he was using now would be perfect for someone starting.
“How much?” Conor asked.
“I’ll s-sell it to you for t-two p-pounds.”
“What do you think, Mammy?” Conor asked.
“I think what he really means is that he will sell it to you for one pound ten, but if anything goes wrong with it in the first year, he’ll give you the money back.”
“Nothing will g-go wrong with it,” Donal said.
“Will you show me how to make prints if I buy the camera?” Conor asked.
“I’ll show you how to d-develop p-pictures in Auntie Margaret’s d-darkroom. I’ve learned a whole lot of new things d-down here.”
“When will you show me?” Conor asked.
“When I am home for C-christmas,” Donal said.
Conor, she knew, would go over every word of this conversation in his mind for days.
When the Christmas holidays came, Fiona went to Dublin to stay with Aine in her bedsit in Raglan Road. Donal took Conor down to Margaret’s house every day. This meant that, as she prepared the house for Christmas, Nora was alone most of the time. She could listen to records without having to worry about any of the others. She kept the recording of the Archduke Trio as something special; she did not listen to it every day. But if she was annoyed by anyone at work, she would think about this music and promise herself that she would play it as soon as she came in the door. She would listen to it carefully, never using it, as she did with other record
s, as background music while she was working in the kitchen.
What she had told no one, because it was too strange, was how much this music had come to stand for. It was her dream-life, a life she might have had if she had been born elsewhere. She allowed herself to live for a time each day in a pure fantasy in which she could have learned the cello as a child and then been photographed as this young woman was, eager and talented and in full possession of her world, with men beside her who depended on her to come in with her deeper, darker sound. It almost made her wince in embarrassment when she thought of her own mornings in Gibney’s working with figures and dockets and invoices, and her own morning walk across the town, and her own return home each day, and how meagre were the things she looked forward to, and how far these were from a recording studio, a concert platform, a name that was known, how far from the spirited authority of this young woman’s playing. She wondered if she was alone in having nothing in between the dullness of her own days and the sheer brilliance of this imagined life.
It was agreed that she would not take any more singing lessons until early January. Thus in the time leading to Christmas, Nora had nothing new to worry about and Christmas itself was easier than it had been in any of the other festive seasons since Maurice died. Her relationship with Jim and Margaret was warm and casual; she even enjoyed the visits that Una and Seamus made, and almost looked forward to seeing Catherine and Mark and their family in Una’s house on St. Stephen’s Day. The idea came into her mind that this might have been what Maurice dreaded most when he was dying, that there would come a time when he would not be missed, that they would all manage without him. He would be the one left out. But she forced herself to believe that he would want them to be happy, or feel a semblance of happiness, and that there was no other way for them to live. Still, she wondered if she should try to mention his name at the table while they were having their Christmas dinner, but then she thought it would make them too sad, or sound too forced.
On a Sunday night at the end of January, with Aine back at university and Donal returned, without any obvious difficulty, to school, Nora was ironing clothes upstairs in her bedroom, when Conor shouted up to her to come down and look at the news.
“But what is it?” she asked.
“Just come down and look,” he replied.
“They shot a whole lot of Catholics,” he said when she came downstairs.
“Who?”
“The British.”
Soon, Fiona came in and the three of them sat together watching the reports from Derry.
“I hope Aine is all right,” Fiona said.
“What do you mean?” Nora asked. “She wasn’t planning on going to Derry, or anything?”
“No, but she’ll be upset by this.”
The British Army had shot into the crowd at a peaceful demonstration in Derry and had killed more than a dozen people. When the television news finished they turned on the radio; they heard tape of people screaming and then the sound of shots and then there were interviews with witnesses and with politicians. Nora watched Conor weighing up each word, and saw that Fiona, too, was listening closely to everything that was said.
She found it strange that as she walked to work the following morning only one man stopped her and said how terrible it was what had happened in Derry. Thomas Gibney seemed even more vigilant about the time, and who might be late. When Elizabeth came in, she barely mentioned it, and only when Elizabeth went for morning coffee with her mother did Nora feel free to wander out into the larger office, where a few people huddled around a newspaper spread out on a desk. When Mick Sinnott joined them, he said, “That’s it, then. No more waiting around, the whole lot of us should just go over the border. Take the place back.”
“You’d look well,” one of the girls said. “They’d shoot you too.”
“We’d all be well armed,” he said. “And we wouldn’t be anywhere we could be easily found.”
“You couldn’t even shoot a dead rabbit stuck in a gap,” another of the girls said.
In Slaney Street on her way home Nora saw two women she knew. They stopped when they saw her approach.
“Oh,” one of them said, “the mother of one of the boys shot was on the radio and she said he was only seventeen and he was shot in the back.”
“All we can do is pray for them,” the other woman said.
“It was very shocking,” Nora said. “Very shocking.”
“And after all the burnings they have been through,” one woman replied.
“There’s evil in those soldiers,” the other said. “Evil. You can see it in them.”
Some days later there was a national day of mourning, with everything closed. Nora and Fiona stayed at home and watched television with Conor. The coverage of the funerals was slow. Conor sat with them at first in case there was going to be more shooting. But the coffins and the church and the commentary did not interest him. Eventually, he drifted into the other room while Nora and Fiona watched quietly.
“We should really get a phone,” Fiona said. “I tried to call Aine from the phone-box on the Back Road but I just got someone in the flat below.”
“It would be nice to have a phone,” Nora said.
“I’d say Aine went on the march in Dublin,” Fiona said.
“I hope she went with people she knows,” Nora said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean. I just thank God we’re living down here, miles from it all.”
“We are all Irish,” Fiona said.
“I know. I feel very sorry for those poor people.”
Later, Conor came back to watch with Nora and Fiona and Conor as the television showed a crowd gathered around the British Embassy in Dublin.
“I think they’re going to burn it,” Fiona said.
“Are there people in it?” Conor asked.
“I’m sure it’s well guarded,” Nora said.
Almost as soon as she spoke, she could see a figure breaking down the door of the Embassy and then others following. Conor became excited.
“Is this happening now?” he asked.
“I think so,” Fiona said.
“Are more people going to get shot?”
“No one has guns,” Fiona said. “Or at least I don’t think they have.”
The commentary on the television was sketchy and confused. At times the camera wobbled and the view was broken by hands or heads in the foreground.
“Where is it?” Conor asked.
“It’s Merrion Square,” Nora said. “We had our honeymoon in the Mont Clare Hotel, just on the corner of it.”
“Did you?” Fiona asked.
“That was where you went at the time,” Nora said.
“Well, you’re lucky you’re not on your honeymoon now,” Conor said.
The following evening Jim and Margaret came to visit and Nora could see that Jim was excited by the fact that the crowd on the march in Dublin had gone on to burn down the British Embassy. When the news came on, they watched the charred remains of the building in silence.
“Every malcontent had a great night out,” Jim said. “They wouldn’t build anything even if you gave them lessons, but they’d be good at burning down.”
“It was very shocking all right,” Nora said.
“What were they meant to do?” Fiona asked. “Walk by the Embassy and thank them?”
“Dublin was a very dangerous place to be last night,” Margaret said.
“It was a fine night for the Special Branch,” Jim said. “They got a good look at a lot of people, I’d say. They’ll bide their time, but I imagine there will be some arrests.”
“Well, I think the protestors were right to burn the Embassy down,” Fiona said.
“I suppose it’s one way of letting the British know how Irish people feel,” Nora said. “One boy was onl
y seventeen.”
“Isn’t that awful?” Margaret said.
“I think the government will know how to deal with this, and we should leave it to them now,” Jim said.
“How will they deal with it?” Fiona asked.
“We’ll use all our ambassadors, and they may take it to the UN. But burning the British Embassy won’t help our cause. It will make us look like a crowd of baloobas.”
“Well, I think the protestors made our position very clear,” Fiona said.
“If I was the mother of one of those boys shot, I would get a gun,” Nora said. “I would have a gun in the house.”
They were silent when Jack Lynch came on the television and was interviewed. The Irish prime minister said he had spoken by telephone to his British counterpart, Edward Heath. When he was finished, Jim was the first to speak.
“He is careful,” he said. “I’d say he put a lot of thought into what he said, and got plenty of advice.”
“I’d say he gave that Edward Heath a good talking-to,” Margaret said. “He’s a very sour-looking man, that Heath.”
“Well, I hope he didn’t let us down,” Nora said. “If the British Army shot my son, I’d like someone a bit tougher in charge down here.”
“I think there’s going to be a lot of trouble,” Fiona said. “And I don’t think Lynch is any help.”
“Well, please God now, none of the trouble will come down here,” Margaret said.
On Friday, Fiona finally spoke to the girl in the bedsit below Aine’s, who said that she did not think Aine had been home for the previous few days. Fiona asked her to put a note on Aine’s door telling her to phone her aunt Una. She did not want to worry Margaret and Jim, so she did not add their names to the message. Fiona told Nora, and went down to Una’s house to let her know that Aine might ring. While she was there, she made a few calls to people in Dublin whom Aine knew. When she could not reach them, she left messages asking them to phone Una’s. Nora waited for her to return with news of Aine, and when she did not arrive, asked Conor to come with her to Una’s.
