by Anne Enright
‘Don’t do it!’ shouts Frank and the LoveWagon raises her glass.
‘You’re clever. You’re in touch. You are the country at large.’
‘You don’t know the fuck who I am,’ says Jo, swatting him away. ‘The nearest I ever came to being the country at large was getting raped by a rich bastard. Him and the tax man. A barrister. Now there’s a thing. He’d never heard of consent. Forget it. I like my job.’
Jo is limping through the silence that has fallen for the LoveWagon’s speech. When she looks up twelve different monologues break out at once.
‘I like my job,’ she says as Marcus says ‘You like your job’ as I say ‘Anyone want the rest of this pecan pie?’ as Frank says ‘The golden table’ as the LoveWagon says ‘One hundred and fifty. Hey! What more can I say?’ and sits back down. And from the other end of the table comes Gary’s voice singing, ‘My young love said to me “My mother won’t mind. And my father won’t slight you, for your lack of kind”’ and we all relax. Now Jo can be our own again because when it comes to singing she has the voice of an angel.
The songs were as follows
Frank (badly): I am stretched on your grave.
Marcus (bravura): Raglan Road.
Everyone: Carrickfergus.
The LoveWagon: not asked.
Damien (on spoons): New York, New York.
Me (tortured recitative): The Old Triangle.
Jo (in a voice of sweet despair): When Other Lips (by special request): Drink to me only with thine eyes.
By which time everyone was pretty well on and we sat in the rising tide of friendship like milk was slowly filling the room while we sat up to our oxters in it, not knowing if the gathering clots were inside us or outside but only knowing that they were to hand. Feeling them and teasing them out, while our eyes sentimentally left one object for another, as if they all made too much sense.
The milk was up to the lip—its meniscus dragging out of the wooden edge, pulling at the island the table has made in this embarrassing, waist-high sea. Frank talked about the Golden Circle of Someplace where the Marquis and the Marquise, the Monseigneur and his niece, the General and his suave subaltern, made adroit puns and political manoeuvres and bet their estates on keeping a straight face while men and women, under the table, unnamed and all hungry, earned a shilling by eating their way, delicately, respectfully, wittily, through the assembled guests—ate moreover with their unwashed fingers and their sharp little syphilitic teeth.
This is what Frank had to tell us as the milk rose, swamped the table top and formed a cool clear lake of perfect flatness, that sucked around the saucers and lifted them all at once and all together until someone moved and sent a ripple through the milk and the saucers floated away from us one by one or circled on the spot according to unknown currents, while small milk mermen with mouths like guppies and fins like wings, grazed their way politely through the wet sweet sea lettuce of our pubic hair.
* *
‘You’re giving me hallucinations,’ I said to Stephen.
‘Don’t look at me,’ he said. So I turned my face to the wall and I slept like a baby.
Channel Surfing
I MADE THE trip out to my parents’ house and noticed that it was spring. They seem to have a monopoly on the weather. Everything was clean, with a little sharp shadow. The house was full of the ghosts of doilies, coasters and antimacassars that my mother threw out long ago. My father had been dressed in the kind of clothes that people go sailing in and you could tell that his underwear smelled of Comfort, or of Bounce. You might as well be clean, says my mother. I do not agree. Some people just have it, like a gift. Which is why my mother loves the spring, when people are seen for what they really are; when I look like something in the room is faintly rotting, when my mother looks freshly re-upholstered. It is because she has stopped growing I think, because it wasn’t always this way. She was as bad as me when we were young. She was a slave to her washing machine and it didn’t thank her for it.
My father was watching the TV like he was wired into the wrong channel. That is not the only mystery. The damage to his brain has freed up plenty. He looks around the room like it was the inside of his own head, like the electrics have escaped from the wall and are worming through the wallpaper.
‘How are you Da?’
‘Fine, fine.’
‘Anything good on the telly?’
‘There were some flowers on it, but they’ve gone.’ My mother gives herself a little mental slap on the wrist and disappears out of the room. She comes in with a shallow bowl of snowdrops and puts them on top of the television set.
‘How’s that now?’
‘Fine, fine.’
‘Snowdrops.’
‘Yes.’
‘I just took them out for a drop of water.’
‘Waterdrops.’
‘Snowdrops.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a mirage!’ he said suddenly. ‘It’s a mirage!’ He was delighted.
‘Mirage,’ said my mother, ‘mirage mirage mirage mirage. No love, it’s an oasis. They’re in an oasis.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No!’
‘I give up,’ she said.
‘What’s a mirage?’ I said.
‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to the screen.
‘You can say that again,’ I said.
‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to the screen.
‘Don’t tease him,’ said my mother.
‘How is he?’ I said.
‘I’m here,’ said my father.
‘Exactly,’ said my mother. ‘He, i.e. your father, is much improved thank you. And how’s work?’
‘Same as ever.’
‘Nothing strange or startling?’
‘Same as ever. Panic city.’
‘Oh for God’s sake talk to me.’
‘Talk. Right.’
‘I’m here all day with your father.’
‘OK. OK. Just the usual. A few weeks ago one of our dates absconds, disappears and we miss the flight to Crete, so we had to send her to Killarney instead.’
‘Could you not get a later flight?’
‘We could get a later flight but we couldn’t get a later crew. Film crew.’
‘And the station full of them.’
‘One each Ma. Maybe we could. I don’t know. It was Saturday. There was no-one in except us. I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Right. So it was Killarney. Except we’d already said on the show that we were going to Crete with a thing on sun-drenched beaches and the lot. So we had to cut all that out and I had to beg emergency dubbing and find Damien, haul him in, mucho pissed off …’
‘Dubbing?’ says my mother. ‘Never mind.’
‘You put it on horses,’ said my father, ‘like a bet.’
‘Never mind,’ said my mother. ‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘So he came in to “Dubbing” …’
‘You put it on saddles!’ said my mother. ‘You put it on saddles love. On leather.’
‘That’s not the kind of dubbing I mean.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake! Do you think I don’t know that? Living with your father it’s like 2 down and 6 across. You could be patient, but you’re not. Not even on the phone.’
‘There’s the phone,’ said my father pointing to the television set.
‘Shush now and let me talk to your daughter.’
The phone started to ring.
‘Funny that,’ said my mother, and went out to answer it.
I looked over at my father who was talking silently to himself. He stopped and glared at the television. There was a strain on the side of his face that still moved. I was suddenly terrified that he might be taking a shit. ‘Ma!’ I said ‘Ma!’ There was the sound of her laughter in the hall. I moved over to the television as fast as I could and started flicking buttons, to take his mind off it.
Some women in saris were smashing coconuts in a Seventi
es documentary, shot on film. ‘In the final analysis,’ said a voice-over, ‘the coconut represents the Ego.’ I flicked. ‘Pull yourself together, Marlene,’ said an Australian. ‘The situation is not as grave as it looks,’ said a politician. ‘Pursuit of Love is thirteen to two at the off.’ ‘I told you so,’ said a Plasticene snail. ‘Yes!’ said my father. ‘YES! YES! YES!’
‘What did you do to him?’ said my mother coming in the door.
‘I don’t know. I think he might want to go to the toilet.’
‘He doesn’t say “yes” when he wants to go to the toilet. He says “canal”.’
‘What?’
‘Well how do I know? It could be sewers it could be intestines it could be “can I?” it could be anal for all I know. He says it, and you don’t know that he says it, because you’re not here because you don’t care. And when you do finally saunter in, all you can do is upset him.’
‘I only changed the channel.’
‘It could be “channel”,’ said my mother. ‘And don’t touch that television. It only gets him excited.’
She sat down. ‘I’m glad you’re here. You know I am. Go on with your story and don’t mind me.’
‘There’s no story.’
‘You had to go to dubbing.’
‘Thirteen to two,’ said my father, being helpful.
‘Shush,’ said my mother.
‘Well we are in “dubbing”, which is where the sound is mixed and you can add things in if you want to like extra applause.’
‘Don’t patronise your parents,’ said my father. We looked at him.
‘Go on,’ says my mother.
‘Go on what,’ I said. ‘Go on nothing. We just spent two hours cutting out the word “Crete” and trying to stick “Killarney” in instead, but of course it wouldn’t fit because “Killarney” is three syllables long and “Crete” is only one syllable long. So we tried saying it very very fast, then we tried saying it very, very fast, then we tried saying “Kerry” instead and it ended up sounding like “Kree” which is neither Crete nor Kerry and there was nothing we could do, so we all went home.’
‘Well that was all right,’ said my mother. ‘I didn’t even notice.’
‘Well great. So where did you think they were going?’
‘I just thought there was some place called Kree I hadn’t heard of, I suppose. I didn’t really think about it all to tell you the truth so don’t annoy me now. It’s all happened and past.’
‘Well the airline is up in arms because I took out their free little ad, because we weren’t flying them to Killarney, now were we? So now we’re in breach of our contract and it looks like we’ll be bringing them to Balbloodybriggan for the rest of the run.’
‘Any chance of a holiday?’
‘They don’t sponsor personal holidays mother.’
‘I meant any chance of you getting a break from all this, Grainne.’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. They haven’t told me yet.’
‘Was that the show’, said my mother, ‘with that young girl in the orange tights and the custard.’
‘You’ve got the colour turned up too high. Yes.’
‘Did you not know she was pregnant? I mean could you not tell?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose you don’t see enough of it,’ she said, ‘these days. A bit of a nerve really, coming on a dating show in that condition, don’t you think?’
‘Mother …’
‘Anyway. So that was Stephen on the phone. He says he won’t be there when you get back, he has to fly.’
‘Stephen?’
‘Sorry, did you want to talk to him?’
‘How did he get this number?’
‘Well you forgot it long ago.’
‘Sorry. Of course.’
‘Of course nothing. I gave it to him last week.’
‘Shit, Ma! Double fuck and damn.’
My mother laughed.
‘Regular chats now, is it?’ I said.
‘He does the horses for me.’
‘What horses?’ I said. ‘You don’t do horses.’
‘Well today, for example, Pursuit of Love. A pound on the nose and first past the post.’
‘Thirteen to two,’ said my father helpfully.
‘You know,’ she said. ‘I get a funny feeling about your father sometimes.’
‘There’s the phone!’ said my father, and pointed at the television. The Angelus came on, with its picture of the Angel Gabriel and its electronic bell.
My mother dipped her head.
‘Bong!’ said the bell.
‘Yes!’ said my father.
‘Bong!’ said the bell.
‘Yes! said my father.
‘Bong!’ said the bell.
‘YES!’ said my father. And the wig fairly jumped off his head.
Yellow Eyes
I COME HOME from my parents and feel bilocated. My own house, not theirs. My own front door, that makes me wonder whether I am arriving or leaving somewhere behind; the key in the door, it’s only me, the saddle of wood to step over. Mrs O’Dwyer’s lino is still in the hall, though her ghost went into the skip, along with the armchair she died in with its stain of death, not on the seat, but on the back, where you least expect it.
The evening refuses to fade. The ache in the lengthening days is unbearable, making them feel dilated and unreal. My house was not made for so much light, it doesn’t know what to do with it.
‘It’s only me,’ I say again. There is no response. Stephen is not here. I miss him.
I have a spinster ritual that the house loves, so that going from room to room is like reciting the alphabet of my life. In the kitchen I start a pasta sauce and chop an onion and, like every time I chop an onion I think about the school-friend who showed me the right way to chop an onion, a remarkable thing for a young girl to know. I think about how she could never fix her luck, how people died on her, how disaster turned to good fortune and back the other way. Now everything she does is her own, while I stay lucky and out in the cold.
So I chop down from stalk to root and lay each half flat on the board, then cross-hatch each hemisphere as fine as you like, first down, then across. Each cut multiplies through the onion as I work back along the arc, like slicing time on a clock. And around noon, sometimes at eleven, sometimes at ten o’clock the half an onion falls apart. How many pieces of onion do you get? Hundreds—for sixteen slices of the knife—and luck does not come into it.
I put the olives in and try to remember the first time I tasted an olive. When the pasta is on to boil, I go to the bathroom and see my mother Hoovering the stairs. She pulls the Hoover up behind her, probes higher with the nozzle, then kneels on the next step. She moves like a caterpillar. She never kneels on a dirty step.
In the bathroom, I do my teeth. I tap the brush on the side of the sink and it is the sound of a man on the way to my bed. A good man, no less, though my body remembers him in its own way. So between the two taps on Mrs O’Dwyer’s cracked enamel, with its stained overflow slot and its lost plug, I recall lying on the bed or sitting on the bed or standing at the window with my clothes on or off or in between (but always in bare feet) waiting for the door to open, waiting for him to see how I had arranged the first emotion and left the next up to him. Tap Tap.
I take my dinner into the front room and look at the wallpaper. Over the last month or so, the paper has started to come away from the wall. It is covered in big fat bubbles, like something surfacing in slow motion. When I first moved in I painted everything magnolia, because I said you can’t make decisions just like that—a house has to grow on you. So it heard me, and did.
On the telly, Oprah is talking to women who gave birth to babies they didn’t expect, who thought they had indigestion until a little bald head popped out.
‘In a shopping mall?’ said Oprah. ‘Girl!’
‘In a shopping mall,’ said the woman. ‘I was wearing a pair of shorts, and she just …’
‘She didn
’t care,’ said Oprah. ‘That little baby didn’t care what you had on!’
‘That’s right,’ said the woman. ‘She didn’t even wait for me to get them off, came right down anyway and out one leg.’
The audience shrieked. Fat. I thought. Too fat for shorts. Too fat to know what was going on in there.
‘I’ll bet they stared,’ said Oprah.
‘I dunno what they did,’ she said. ‘I was too busy staring myself.’
In the corner of the room, on the outside wall, a seam of wallpaper has buckled and come adrift, seductively, like a button undone, or a scab waiting to be picked. I pull at it in an experimental kind of way. Once you are started it’s hard to stop. The paper is thicker than I imagined. Under the magnolia is Mrs O’Dwyer’s wet dream of orange cartwheels—some designer dreaming of Tibet, ending up in Chiswick. Now I find that the cartwheels are only an excuse, because under that is what might have been a nostalgic chintz, but is in fact the very odour and idiom of murdered wives, of misery, the axe in the head and a corpse bricked into the wall.
Mrs O’Dwyer buried her husband long before she died herself with no-one left to claim her. ‘A house needs children,’ said my mother. She wanted to say that only a baby understands a carpet, that walls need to be written on, to keep them in their place. She wanted to say that there is no luck in it, but she is a modern woman and kept her mouth shut. Even so, her reproductive glee and Oprah’s egging on follow me about the room so I strip the walls of the tatty, acid chintz and find the newspaper that was used for lining underneath. There are layers of the stuff, glued so hard and dry together you wonder what they were trying to keep out.
A sheet of the Sporting Life from 1939, yielded like puff pastry a scrap of newspaper advertising The Theatre Royal:
* * *
A Marvellous Spectacular Christmas stage presentation.
FEATURING:
MARCELLA SHORTALL, Well-Known Impersonator,
BOBBY MCDONAGH (age 10),
Ireland’s leading Juvenile in Popular Songs,
THE SEVEN CASTILIANS in an Old Spanish Garden.
MR. CECIL O’SHAUGHNESSY, Eminent Baritone.
On the Screen
MARY ASTOR and RICHARD CORTEZ in
