Edna O'Brien

by In the Forest (epub)

  ‘It’s not like you to have a third pint’ he says and she knows that that is his way of being friendly.

  She thinks she will sit a while longer, then drive out to the lake road and Sven will be under a tree sheltering from the summer rain and she will stop and he will get in. At first he will be quite formal, talking with a kind of evangelism of some new theory of his and in time taking her hand, holding it, and then they will park the car and go in their little lost road, the trees all in bud, catkins like feathered tapers, the blossom in mazed and snowy whiteness, thralling in the moonlight, bridal trees in the brief ravishment of springtime.

  But he was not there and she wept at her rashness, her false pride and her grandiloquent speech about being alone. Alone alone alone, the word galled her, like the hungry cry of some cormorant, far out at sea.

  Joy Ride

  Cissy’s new car is outside her front door, a chocolate coloured ornament, the sheer metal a mirror in which passers-by can glance at themselves. Cissy doubles as sacristan and hackney driver, is run off her feet and has gone in to grab a cup of coffee before taking a French man to the airport. From the windscreen an ivory virgin dangles down, a relic to protect her, and her rosary beads are in the glove box along with a bag of peppermints and a map.

  O’Kane, sporting a new growth of moustache, jaunts down the tow path and stops to admire it, reaches in and as he turns the key the engine comes to life and he thrills to it. Within seconds he is tearing down the street and sees her in the rear mirror, a grey haired harridan, flapping like a turkey. Dogs and children scatter before him and two older men on a street bench stand up and gape after him. He drives towards the next town but bypasses it and goes on up towards the mountain, over the bumpy roads where he can give her a good ride. Ursula he named her, after that cow in the jail. She is full of juice. She bounces and rocks and sways and swags as if there is no ground, as if he is flying it. Wild horses and wild ponies appear in speckled splashes, leaping and whirling into the air, the needle jigging, the engine racing and a high that he hasn’t had in over two years. Yelling with excitement he talks to himself -‘Ride her cowboy . . . yonder yonder.’

  It is evening before he makes his way over the rim of the mountain and down a rough ravine to the edge of the wood that is his favourite, the wood where he hid as a kid, before the scumbags got him and with a squealing and sprawling suddenness the car comes to a stop and he knows why it is that he has come here. He gets out. ‘Welcome home son . . . you did us proud . . . didn’t let the bastards get to you.’ It is the wood talking to him, the trees thicker now, the trees where he hid and where his mother came and found him, the spot where he kept old cushions, the mass of cover dark even in daylight. He searches in his pocket for a rag and finding none he tears a strip from the tail of his shirt, unscrews the nozzle and dunks the cloth in it, then lays it on the front seat, about to witness his first glorious spectacular. No sooner had he struck the match than the seat caught, like it had been waiting for it, the flames breaking free and spreading, sheets of flame, flags of flame, orange, crimson, roaring and crackling. The tyres starting to burst, their bursts like priests farting, the windows beginning to crack, beads of glass falling onto the ground, flame flitting across his face and he sucking big scoops of air, flouting his importance, Davey and Lazlo and fuckers all cheering him on.

  He decides to make a party of it, ask people up. He puts his arm out to catch a burning lady, an Ursula, a cunt. He’s high, he’s the devil’s favourite son and they will never lock him up again or beat the shit out of him and into him. He’s a man. He has grown to manhood in spite of the bastards and bastardesses. Better than eating, better than drinking, better than dope or screwing or anything. He hasn’t screwed a woman yet. All he knows of women is from the juicy pictures in the magazines, passed from cell to cell, girls with their backs in suspender belts, one leg hoisted to show the pleat of their arses, or frontwise slung back over a table to show the pleat of their cunts, their throats waiting to be slit.

  Soon he is smoochy and he wants to kiss a woman and get kissed. He debates about a name. He’ll call her Veronica, no he won’t, he’ll call her Trish. He wants to hear a woman say, ‘I like your moustache.’ He feels her feeling the hard blunt hairs, up there in the dark, in the painted flame and him feeling her back, up there on the edge of the empty forgotten woods.

  When the fire had died down completely he sat trying to figure out where he would go next.

  Cissy’s friends have foregathered to sympathise and to wait with her for the guard to come. They sit around the kitchen table lamenting that beautiful car that she had saved for, her chocolate ornament, her child, her joy.

  ‘I even called it Cadbury,’ she says and again she weeps, wondering aloud where it is and when it will be returned to her and in what state it will be.

  ‘It’ll be found . . . they always find them,’ one says.

  ‘He’s evil, I know he’s evil,’ Agnes says, Agnes whose mother asked her to pop in on her way home to see if Cissy was all right.

  At the mention of that word they shudder.

  ‘I’ll tell you something I didn’t even tell my own mother,’ Agnes says and in a hushed voice describes how she and a group of girls were practising Camougie one evening in the sports field and O’Kane stood there watching them and his eyes met hers and the queer look from him sent shivers down her spine.

  ‘Shivers,’ Oona said darkly, because they were all women and they knew what Agnes meant.

  ‘Weren’t you lucky you weren’t in the car ... or where would you be now Cissy?’

  ‘Tied up somewhere.’

  ‘Your throat slit . . .’

  ‘I heard that he can make himself invisible . . . you can go up into your bedroom and find him there and not even know how he got in.’

  ‘Oh Immaculate Heart of Mary.’

  ‘If the guards did their job we’d be safe and Cadbury would be outside the door.’

  ‘It’s not the guards’ fault . . . it’s the government’s . . . cuts cuts cuts everywhere.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ Oona says, ‘why don’t we get down on our knees and pray . . . pray for two things, that Cadbury will be brought back safe and that Michen O’Kane will be sent back to one of them institutions.’

  Hoodlums

  O’Kane is alone in an empty chapel, white walls, the red flame of the lamp, a bare altar, by the holy water font a poster of Jesus in white with a gold halo around him.

  He had gone in hoping to find some Holy Mary on her knees, to get a bit of money. He hasn’t eaten for two days and his feet and his socks are soaking wet. Empty. Fucking empty. Nothing for it but to raid the box where the money for the candles is put. He finds a screwdriver round the back, in a shed, where they kept tools and a lawnmower and begins to prise the metal mouth open, bit by bit, tongues of twisted brass curling out like an opened cunt. He keeps hacking at it until the hole is big enough to put his hand in. He rummages. The metal teeth snarl at him and he snarls back. Fucking nothing. Two coins, one of them foreign. He goes pitch and toss with them on the tiles of the floor when in walks a kid, a kid not unlike himself, younger and with rosy cheeks.

  ‘Howdie, Gunner,’ the kid says.

  ‘Who’re you?’

  ‘Not telling.’

  ‘Little gick . . . got a fag?’

  ‘They’re all shit scared of you . . . they’re locking their doors since you hit town.’

  ‘Why aren’t you shit scared of me?’

  "Cause I’m a hobo like you ... I can hot-wire a car ... I haven’t done hold ups yet but I’m planning . . . Did you know that Jesus is also called Emmanuel?’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘It’s written on the poster - Dear Jesus alone in every tabernacle . . . poor Jesus’

  ‘Could you get me chips or a bun.’

  ‘I’m skint . . . but tell you what, there’s a cure for hunger . . . the priest read it out on Sunday’ and picking up a leaflet he hopscotches to the altar and
reads in a manly voice - ‘Elijah went into the wilderness, a day’s journey and sitting under a fir’s bush wished he were dead. Lord, he said, I have had enough, I am no better than my ancestors, take my life. Then he lay down and went to sleep. But an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around and there at his head were scones baked on hot stones and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. But the angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, "Get up and eat or the journey will be too long for you. ” So he got up and ate and drank and strengthened by that food he walked for forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.’

  ‘Would you come to the woods with me,’ O’Kane asks.

  ‘Which woods?’

  ‘Any woods. We can track game and shoot and have barbecues . . . I’ll get a guitar.’

  ‘Ah now . . . me mammy would die if I wasn't home for me tea’ and at that he has run into the sacristy whistling and out the door, then off under the yew trees, over a stile towards home.

  O’Kane went out wet, sullen and lonesome. He crossed fields and back yards shouting and kicking dogs that accosted him.

  It was a shop called The Wren owned by the newcomers, the blow ins as they were called. In the doorway there were sacks of potatoes and vegetables caked in thick brown muck. He stood outside and looked in at the plates of scones and small pots of jam and honey. There were women in there, talking and laughing, with their backs to him. One of them went behind the counter as soon as he came in and looked at him, suspicious. He was holding the single coin in his hand.

  ‘How much is a scone?’

  ‘Thirty pence,’ she said, then shook her head because he had only five. Her eyes were mean looking and her hair was scraped back in a bun.

  ‘Go on Maggie . . . give him the scone,’ a second woman said and rooted in her shoulder bag for the money. She was tall, hair all the way down her back, red hair, the ribs of it standing out, like there was electricity in it and when she turned her eyes were gold spots, like the beam of his torch in the wood at night.

  As he is given the bun he bows to her and blurts it out - ‘Elijah fasted for forty days and forty nights until he reached the mountain of God.’

  Maggie comes from behind the counter and holds the door open for him, then pulling the bolt angrily turns to Eily, ‘He’s off his trolley . . . you shouldn’t encourage freaks like that.’

  ‘Mother Margaret,’ Eily says, allowing a wisp of cigarette smoke to float in her direction.

  Playtime

  She was in a cream, rackety little motor car with a child in the back seat. O’Kane thought it was someone else’s child that she was dropping off because she looked too young to be a mother. Her hair was all hidden under a black beret and she was smoking and laughing. He tailed her in a stolen car, but kept a sensible distance.

  She turned around a lot to talk to the child and on a bend nearly crashed into a haulage lorry. Suddenly she shot up a side road to where there was the new school. He put on his sunglasses and a knitted cap and he followed on foot. The school was a huddle of single storey wooden houses, some old and shook looking, some very new. There were trees and flowerbeds and ornamental rocks. There was a sandpit with buckets and spades for the kids. In the windows there were paintings and mobiles; stars, dinosaurs and fishes. He could hear singing.

  Just by the vegetable garden a young fellow was emptying horse manure from a trailer and dumping it onto a pile.

  ‘Howya,’ he said as he passed him.

  ‘Shovelling shit,’ the fella said and laughed.

  He followed her to the very end building and then went around to the back to have a view through a side window. They were infants and they were all in little wooden armchairs around a table, like they were grown ups eating their breakfast. When she went in they jumped up and ran to her. The child she was carrying thumped her at being put down and then lay on the floor kicking.

  From a cupboard she took out things that were not school things at all, mats and bits of coloured rope and sun umbrellas. Then she took off her shoes and started clowning and they clowned with her. She walked a tightrope holding the umbrella and when she fell they cheered and started clambering over her. Then they took turns walking the tightrope and they fell.

  Eamonn, the fellow shovelling shit was standing beside him laughing as well. ‘It’s a new kind of school . . . no curriculum, no beatings, no punishment.’

  ‘You want a hand shovelling that shit?’ he asked and picked up a spare shovel and the two of them worked and whistled.

  ‘Don’t put the fork through it when you lift it ... it stirs up the gas . . . gives out a rotten aul smell,’ Eamonn says.

  ‘I’ll split your skull,’ he says aiming the shovel at him.

  ‘Sorry sorry.’

  ‘Are you local?’

  ‘I’m not . . .I work with a man that owns the equestrian centre ... I muck out . . .’

  ‘Spend your life shovelling shit.’

  ‘Nearly. He’s going to bring me to the horse show in Dublin in August . . . Jesus don’t put the fork through it . . . sorry sorry.’

  ‘What do they do with this shit?’

  ‘It’s great for rhubarb . . . they make a rhubarb bed . . . ’

  A tall grey-haired woman came as they were talking, carrying a tiny mug of coffee. She was surprised to find that there were two workmen, but at once said she was glad of the extra help, as many hands make light work. She went on to praise the manure and the generosity of the man who gave it to them for free. She said that it did wonders for the rhubarb bed, the fruit trees and the little birches that were growing apace. She liked all trees but the rowan tree was her favourite because of the bright red berries. Suddenly she became very girlish and put a strand of hair behind her ear and told them -‘When I was a little girl in the Forest, my mother told me that the rowan-berries were poison, but they are not . . . they are bitter but they are not poison . . . you will get a wonderful dinner with Ronnbarsgele, perhaps you have had it sometimes with game or venison . . . no?’

  ‘Game or venison,’ O’Kane said when she left, and they sniggered and shared the mug of coffee. The rim of it was white with white dribbles leaking onto the earth-brown glaze. They had a few slugs each.

  When he looked again the young, red-haired woman was wearing an apron over her jeans and carrying a skillet on which there were little loaves of bread.

  ‘Hi Eamonn,’ she said as she passed them. The children followed in a drove, behind her, their faces painted every colour and streaks of paint in their hair.

  ‘They love you Missus,’ Eamonn says.

  ‘They love anyone that lets them play and make bread.’

  She carried the tray of loaves to a clay oven that was built on bricks and shaped like an igloo. She used a toasting fork to open the slide door and a big blaze of fire leapt out and lit her face and it was all ruddy like she was blushing.

  ‘What’s her name,’ O’Kane asked.

  ‘Catherine I think.’

  ‘You think.’

  ‘Maybe I’m mixing her up ... bewitching isn’t she?’ ‘What the fuck would you know about bewitching.’ Soon the smell of warm dough drifted across to them and the children flopped around and the woman talked to them in a husky singing voice. She knew all their names.

  It was a week before he followed her and when he saw where she lived he went wild. It was his house, his lair that summer before he went to England. He had slept upstairs in the attic room, he knew the foxes that came around there in the mornings, mothers and fathers and cubs, foxes that drank from the trough where he washed himself. He’d put the wind up the man that owned it. Left death threats. He loved sleeping there. Left an old mattress and things, an axe; souvenirs of his mother, her hairbrush and a pink bed jacket. His hidey hole. The owner, a shopkeeper from Limerick, got afraid to come, complained to a neighbour about being burgled, his tinned food eaten and his stocks of paraffin oil used up. Now she was in it,
her and the child. A sadness came over him, then rage, and he thought of hurling stones through the windows but a voice said, ‘All you’ve got to do is make friends with her, son.’ It was a good voice and his heart leapt to it and he felt something like hope, he felt he was coming home for her.

  Watching

  From then on he watched her. He watched her eat her breakfast, watched her bathe, watched her bring out a mug of coffee to Declan Tierney, up on the roof, and whistle him down. She had a powerful whistle for a woman and a powerful laugh. She flirted. She carried furniture and bags of groceries and she carried the child back and forth to the car, the two of them always gassing - ‘Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go.’ In his daydream there was no child, there was only him and her.

  He got to know her exact movements, the days when she taught in the school, the places she shopped in, the pubs she drank in, and the day at the Post Office she queued to get her child’s allowance. He was about ten behind her in the queue and the people on either side of him kept nudging and edging away from him.

  ‘Hello Michen . . . you’re back,’ a bitch said.

  ‘Piss off,’ he told her.

  Eily turned and laughed and then on her way out admired his jumper. It was a green jumper with berries on it that he’d stolen from a caravan. With his dole money he would buy her a present. When his turn came a cow behind the counter told him he wasn’t eligible for twenty-eight days, being as he was only recently returned.

  ‘Eligible, what the fuck is eligible,’ he roared it as he went out.

  In a window across the street, there were knitted things, shawls the colour of heather and belts with tassels on them. He went in, looked around and picked up a flat grey stone with a sickle carved in it.