Antarctica

by Claire Keegan

  ‘They’re coming on the ninth off the evening ferry, Miss Elizabeth,’ he says. ‘They’re coming as far as Enniscorthy on the bus. You’ll have to send a car.’ He puts the card on the dresser and slides the kettle over on the hot plate to make himself some tea. ‘Not a bad day.’

  Betty nods. She has only four days to get the house ready. They could have given her more notice. It seems strange, their not bringing the car, Stanley’s big company car that he always takes such pride in.

  The next morning she throws out her father’s old vests she’s used as dusters, carries the empty stout bottles up the wood and dumps them under the bushes. She takes out rugs and beats them with more vigour than is necessary, raises a flurry of dust. She hides old bedspreads at the back of the wardrobe, turns the mattresses and puts the good sheets on the beds. She always keeps good bed-linen in case she’ll get sick and she wouldn’t want the doctor or the priest saying her sheets are patched. She takes all the cracked and chipped plates off the dresser and arranges the good willow-pattern dinner set on the shelves. She orders bags of flour and sugar and wheaten meal from the grocer, gets down on her knees and polishes the floor until it shines.

  *

  They arrive in the avenue on a hot Friday evening. Betty takes off her apron when the taxi beeps the horn and rushes out into the avenue to greet them.

  ‘Oh Betty!’ Louisa says, as if she’s surprised to see her there.

  She embraces Louisa, who looks as young as ever in her white summer two-piece, her hair hanging in gold waves down her back. Her bare arms are brown with the sun.

  Her son, Edward, has grown tall and lanky, a hidden young man who prefers to stay indoors; he extends a cold palm, which Betty shakes. There is little feeling in his handshake. The girl, Ruth, skips down to the old tennis court without so much as a word of hello.

  ‘Come back here and kiss your Aunt Betty!’ Louisa screams.

  ‘Where’s Stanley?’

  ‘Oh he’s busy, had to work, you know,’ Louisa says. ‘He may follow on later.’

  ‘Well, you’re looking great, as usual.’

  Louisa’s prominent white teeth are too plentiful for her smile. She accepts but does not return the compliment. The taxi-man is taking suitcases off the roof-rack. There is an awful lot of luggage. They’ve brought a black Labrador and books and pillows and wellingtons, a flute, raincoats, a chessboard and woolly jumpers.

  ‘We brought cheese,’ Louisa says, and hands Betty a slab of pungent Cheddar.

  ‘How thoughtful,’ Betty says, and sniffs it.

  Louisa stands at the front gates and gazes out towards Mount Leinster with its ever-lighted mast, and the lush deciduous forest in the valley.

  ‘Oh, Betty,’ she says, ‘it’s so lovely to be home.’

  ‘Come on in.’

  Betty has the table set; two kettles stand boiling on the Aga, their spouts expelling pouty little breaths of steam. A pool of evening sunlight falls through the barred window over the cold roast chickens and potato salad.

  ‘Poor Coventry was put in a cage for the entire journey,’ Louisa says, referring to the dog. He has slumped down in front of the dresser and Betty has to slide him across the lino to get the cupboard doors open.

  ‘Any beetroot, Aunt Elizabeth?’ Edward asks.

  Betty has taken great care washing the lettuce but now finds herself hoping an earwig won’t crawl out of the salad bowl. Her eyesight isn’t what it used to be. She scalds the teapot and cuts a loaf of brown bread into thin, dainty slices.

  ‘I need the toilet!’ Ruth announces.

  ‘Take your elbows off the table,’ Louisa instructs, and removes a hair from the butter dish.

  There is too much pepper in the salad dressing and the rhubarb tart could have used more sugar, but all that’s left is a few potato skins, chicken bones, greasy dishes.

  When evening falls, Louisa says she’d like to sleep with Betty.

  ‘It’ll be like old times,’ she says. ‘You can brush my hair.’

  She has developed an English accent, which Betty doesn’t care for. Betty does not want Louisa in her bed. She likes being sprawled out on her double mattress, waking and sleeping when she feels like it, but she can’t say no. She puts Edward in her father’s room and Ruth in the other and helps Louisa drag her luggage up the stairs.

  Louisa pours two measures of duty-free vodka into glasses and talks about the improvements she has made to the house in England Betty has never seen. She describes the satin floor-length curtains in the living room, which cost £25 a yard, the velvet headboards, the dishwasher that sterilises the dishes and the tumble dryer that means she doesn’t have to race out to the line every time a drop of rain falls.

  ‘No wonder Stanley’s working,’ Betty says, and sips the vodka. She doesn’t care for the taste; it reminds her of the holy water she drank as a child, thinking it would cure her stomach aches.

  ‘Don’t you miss Daddy?’ Louisa says suddenly. ‘He always had such a warm welcome for us.’

  Betty gives her a straight look, feels the ache in her arms after the four days’ work.

  ‘Oh. I don’t mean you –’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Betty says. ‘No, I don’t really miss him. He was so contrary towards the end. Going out to the fields and talking about death. But then, you brought out the sweeter side of him.’

  Her father used to hold Louisa in a tight embrace when she arrived home, then stood back to look at her. He used to tell Betty to keep fig rolls in the house because she had a taste for figs. Nothing was ever too good for Louisa.

  Now she unpacks her clothes, holding them up for Betty to admire. There’s a linen dress with pink butterflies swooping towards the tail, a glittery scarf, a burgundy lace slip, a cashmere jacket, leather peep-toe shoes. She takes the cap off a bottle of American perfume and holds it out for Betty to sniff, but she does not spray a sample on her wrist. Louisa’s clothes have the luxurious feel of money. The hems are deep, the linings satin, her shoes have leather insoles. She takes a covetous pride in her belongings, but then Louisa has always been the fashionable one.

  Before she went to England Louisa got a job housekeeping for a rich woman in Killiney. Once, Betty took the train to Dublin to spend a day with her. When Louisa saw her at Heuston station with her country suit and her brown handbag, she whipped the handbag from her hands, fast as greased lightning, and said, ‘Where do you think you’re going with that old thing?’ and pushed it down in her shopping bag.

  Now she sits at the dressing table, singing an old Latin hymn while Betty brushes her hair. Betty listens to her girlish voice and, catching a glimpse of their reflection in the mirror, realises that nobody would ever suspect they were sisters. Louisa with her gold hair and emerald earrings, looking so much younger than her years: Betty with her brown hair and her man’s hands and the age showing so plainly on her face.

  ‘Chalk and cheese’ was the phrase their mother used.

  *

  Edward wants a poached egg for breakfast. He sits at the head of the table and waits for it to be put in front of him. Betty stands at the Aga stirring porridge while Louisa, still in her nightdress, looks into the cupboards, inspecting their contents, seeing what there is to eat.

  ‘I’m starving!’ Ruth says. She’s plump for a girl of her age.

  None of them do anything simply or quietly; they don’t mind taking up space, asking for more of this or that. On those rare occasions when Betty goes into anyone’s house, she is thankful for what she gets and washes the dishes afterwards; but the Porters act like they own the place.

  Louisa makes cheese on toast for Ruth but eats little herself. She just pushes her eggs around her plate with a fork and sips her tea.

  ‘You’re miles away,’ Betty says.

  ‘Just thinking.’

  Betty does not press her: Louisa has always been secretive. When she was beaten in school, she never said one word at home. Being falsely blamed for laughing or talking out of turn, Loui
sa would blankly kneel down in front of the picture of Saint Anthony and confess and take undue punishment without ever a mention. Once, after the headmaster hit Betty, her nose would not stop bleeding and he sent her out to the stream to wash her face, but she ran home across the fields and told her mother, who walked her back up to the school, into the classroom, and told the headmaster that if he laid so much as another finger on her girls, he’d get a worse death than Billy the Buttermaker (who had been savagely murdered down south a few days back). Louisa had jeered her about that, but Betty was unashamed. She would rather tell the truth and face the consequences than get down on her knees before a picture of a saint and confess to things she did not do.

  On Sunday morning, Louisa balances their father’s old shaving mirror on the crucifix in Betty’s window and plucks her eyebrows into perfect semi-circles. Betty milks the cow and digs potatoes and gets ready for mass.

  A great fuss is made over Louisa in the chapel. Neighbours come up to her in the graveyard and shake her hand, and say she’s looking wonderful.

  ‘Aren’t you looking great?’

  ‘You haven’t aged one bit.’

  ‘Sure weren’t you always the apple of everybody’s eye?’

  ‘Doesn’t she look great, Betty?’

  When they go into the grocer’s for messages, Joe Costello, the bachelor who owns the quarry and rents out Betty’s land, corners Louisa between the tinned goods and the cold meats counter and asks is she still fond of the cinema? He’s a great big man with a pinstripe suit and a black, pencil moustache. They used to cycle to the pictures together before Louisa went off to England. Edward is setting mousetraps in the hardware shelves and Ruth’s ice-cream cone is dripping down the front of her dress, but Louisa takes no notice.

  ‘Where’s the hubby?’ Joe Costello is asking Louisa.

  ‘Oh, he had to work.’

  ‘Ah yes, I know the feeling. The work never ends.’

  When they get home, Betty ties her apron round her waist and puts the dinner on. She likes Sundays, listening to the curate read the gospel, meeting the neighbours, listening to the spit of the roast while she reads the paper, tending the garden in the afternoon and taking a walk around the wood. She always tries to keep it a day of rest, keep it holy.

  ‘Don’t you ever get lonely up here on your own?’ Louisa asks.

  ‘No.’ It had never occurred to her to be lonely.

  Louisa paces the kitchen floor until dinner time, then takes off down the avenue to visit the neighbours’ houses. Betty stays at home and works out a menu for the week. Louisa hasn’t given her a penny towards their keep, hasn’t bought so much as a loaf. Betty’s budget is tight enough without feeding three extra people, but she assumes it’s something Louisa will put right when it comes into her mind. Louisa has always been forgetful about the essentials.

  Monday is washing day. The Porters don’t believe in wearing the same clothes twice, and since Ruth wets the bed, she needs clean sheets every day. Betty wonders at the child – she’s almost nine years old – but says nothing to Louisa, sensing it would be a sore point. The clothes-line hanging between the lime trees is laden, but a strong wind throws the laundry into a horizontal flapping state that Betty finds pleasurable. Some of the clothes are delicate and Betty must wash them by hand. As she dips her hands down into the sinkful of soapy water, she begins to wonder when Stanley will arrive. He would take them off to the seaside and skim pebbles across the waves and keep the children occupied. Go fishing for pike in the Slaney, shoot rabbits.

  Betty rises earlier to have more time to herself. The summer mornings feel healthy and cool. She sits with her head leant against the warmth of the cow’s side and watches milk dancing in the bucket. She feeds the geese and pulls carrots and parsnips from the vegetable patch. Mount Leinster looks gratifyingly unchanged in the blue distance; swallows are building under the eaves of the granite stables. This is the life she wants to lead, the good life.

  She is pouring warm milk through a piece of muslin when Joe Costello blocks the daylight in the doorway.

  ‘Morning, Betty.’ He tips his hat respectfully.

  ‘Good morning, Joe!’ She’s surprised to see him, he so seldom drops in, except when a bullock goes missing or to pay the rent on the land.

  ‘Sit down, won’t you?’

  He sits in at the table, all arms and legs. ‘Nice spell of weather we’re having.’

  ‘Couldn’t ask for nicer.’

  She makes tea and sits talking to Joe at the table. He’s a decent sort of man, Betty thinks, the way he takes his hat off and uses the spoon for the jam instead of pushing his knife down into the pot. Table manners say so much. They talk about cattle and the quarry and then Edward appears, pokes his nose into the implements on the sink.

  ‘Isn’t the milk here pasteurised, Aunt Betty?’

  Betty laughs with Joe Costello over the good of it, but when Louisa comes down Joe loses all interest in Betty. Louisa isn’t wearing her nightdress. Her hair is brushed and she’s in her linen butterfly dress, her mouth shiny with Vaseline.

  ‘Ah, Joe!’ she says, as if she didn’t know he was there.

  ‘Morning, Louisa.’ He stands up, as if she’s the Queen.

  Betty takes it all in, how Louisa flirts: the pout of her lips, the tilt of her hip, the way she lifts and relaxes her bare shoulder. It is a fine art. She leaves them there talking in the kitchen and strides out to the garden for parsley. Ruth is standing under the tree, eating her plums.

  ‘Get away from those plums!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Ruth says. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a knot.’

  ‘They’re for jam.’

  It is an old story. The men flocking round Louisa, sniffing her out, always asking her to dance in the old days.

  Louisa and Betty had gone to house-dances together when they were young. Betty remembers a fine summer’s night, sitting on a wooden bench in Davis’s, just a mile up the road. She was sitting there feeling the grain of the wood under her fingers. The scent of lilacs from the ditch came through the open window. She remembers the happiness of that moment being broken when Louisa leaned over. She can still, to this day, remember her exact words:

  ‘I’ll give you a piece of advice. You should try not to smile. You look terrible when you smile.’

  Betty didn’t smile for years afterwards without remembering this remark. She never had Louisa’s white smile. She’d suffered from bronchitis as a child and had to take cough medicine, which ruined her teeth. So many things, all coming back. Betty feels her blood racing when she has such memories. But that is all in the past. She can think for herself now. She has earned that right. Her father is dead. She can see things as they are, not through his eyes, nor Louisa’s.

  When she comes back into the kitchen with sprigs of parsley, Joe Costello is pouring tea into her best china cup for Louisa.

  ‘Say when.’

  ‘When,’ Louisa says. She is sitting with her back to the harsh morning light, the sun intensifying the gold of her hair.

  *

  Betty cooks a leg of lamb the following Sunday. When a trickle of blood runs out on the serving plate while she is carving, she doesn’t care. Nor does she care that the carrots are rubbery and overcooked, but nobody makes any mention of the meal, not one word. She’s in no mood to cater for individual tastes. Earlier she had gone down into the parlour and caught Ruth jumping on the armchair. What’s more, there are dog hairs all over the house. Everywhere she looks, dog hairs.

  Edward hangs around, silently entering the rooms in which she’s working and startles her. He cannot entertain himself.

  ‘There’s nothing to do,’ he complains. ‘We’re stranded.’

  ‘You can clean out the hen house if you like,’ Betty says. ‘The sprong’s in the barn.’

  But somehow this does not appeal to Edward. He’s not a fellow who believes in earning his appetite. Ruth sings and skips around the garden. Betty feels sorry for her sometimes: Louisa pays h
er little or no attention and she needs some at her age. So when Betty is finished washing the blood-stained dishes, she reads her Hansel and Gretel.

  ‘Why would the father desert his own children?’ Ruth asks.

  Betty cannot think of an answer.

  Betty makes jam, takes the step-ladder outside, reaches up into the boughs and plucks every single plum off the tree. They are her plums. She washes and stones them, covers the fruit with sugar in the preserving pan and shows Ruth and Edward how to wash the jam jars. They haven’t a clue about domestic work. Edward squirts a cupful of Fairy Liquid into the sink and they have to start again.

  ‘Who does the washing up at home?’ Betty asks. ‘Oh, that’s right: you have a dishwasher, I forgot.’

  ‘A dishwasher? No we don’t, Aunt Betty,’ Ruth says.

  They make the jam and Betty lines up the pots like ammunition in the pantry. She’s wondering how long it will last, when Louisa walks into the kitchen after her day out visiting. Her expression is flushed and radiant like someone who’s been swimming in deep salt waters.

  ‘Any post?’ she says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Just an ESB bill.’

  ‘Oh.’

  July has passed without a word from Stanley.

  *

  In August the weather turns stormy. Rain keeps the Porters indoors, traps them in the rooms. Wet leaves cling to the window panes, black rainwater runs down between the drills in the vegetable patch. Louisa stays in bed reading romantic novels and eating cake, walks around in her nightdress till well past noon. She washes her hair with rainwater and makes Rice Krispie buns for the children. Edward plays the flute in the parlour. Betty has never heard anything like it; it’s as if somebody has trapped a wild bird or a small reptile in a cage and its despairing little voice is crying out to be freed. Ruth cuts pictures of models and perfume out of magazines with Betty’s good dressmaking scissors and pastes them in her scrapbook.