by Nesta Tuomey
What had Richie done? I got up from the stair and edged nearer. Fortunately emotion caused Mrs. Dillon to raise her voice and understanding in part came to me.
‘Twelve hundred pound,’ she was saying, ‘dat I was keeping for me ould age. All me savings took on me. From under the mattress.’ Her voice swelled with outraged sensibility, ‘And he off back to dat fancy wummin of his.’ She almost spat the words, ‘Dat English wummin.’
All the while a low, sympathetic ahing came from father. There was the sound of chair legs squeaking on lino and I hopped hastily back to the front step. ‘I’m sorry for your trouble, ma’am,’ I heard him say formally, ‘if there’s anything I can do...’
An opportune time to make my reappearance. I pushed past the beaded ropes, they snaked coolly at either side of my neck and fell behind.
‘I bin tinking,’ said Mrs. Dillon, ‘Wid the way tings are mebbe I’d be better off letting the house up yonder go. It has me heart scalded. I’m losing money on it since the day I bought it.’ Her voice was choked, ‘I’m not ebble anymore for the hassle. You can tell your missus.’
I looked across at her. Was she crying for the loss of her house or her son? It was impossible to tell. ‘Nine hundred pounds,’ said father firmly. I gaped in surprise. Mother’s last bid had been a thousand.
Mrs. Dillon fussed with her placebo, holding it against her cheek as though suffering neuralgia, tearing at it fretfully with her teeth, her colour coming and going. I glanced at father, fearing another of her turns but he seemed unperturbed. ‘Nine hundred,’ he said, ‘in view of what needs doing.’ He placed his hat carefully on his head.
Mrs. Dillon gasped and sighed. ‘You dhrive a hard bargain, Misther O’Meara,’ she said at last. But she agreed.
We walked away from the landlady’s house in silence. One thing puzzled me and I longed to ask my father but he would know that I had been listening at the door. What was a fancy woman? I resolved to ask my sister when I got home. Instead I said. ‘What ails Mrs. Dillon? Is it serious?’ My father did not reply at once. He said: ‘I shouldn’t think so. Just a touch of the umbilicals, I imagine.’
Not a word I was familiar with but obviously it had something to do with biliousness. When I thought of all those plates of fried food I wasn’t surprised. I stole a glance at father and saw that he was smiling; a wide toothy kind of grin as though he had just heard a joke and couldn’t stop seeing the humour of it. In a huckster shop a street from home, in rare good humour, he bought me two pennyworth of aniseed balls and a slab of Cleeve’s toffee.
Mother was leaning on the gate. ‘I suppose,’ she said in a hard voice, ‘she’s keeping it for her grandchildren.’
Father preceded her into the house and carefully hung up his hat and coat. ‘We’ve agreed on a price,’ he said. ‘Go on!’ said mother, amazed. She looked at me for confirmation. ‘How much?’
‘Nine hundred!’ Father could not hide his satisfaction. Her face was disbelieving and incredulous by turn, then a look of grudging respect crept over it.
That night there were pancakes for tea. Dad’s favourite. Normally mother complained they took up too much time but that night she made a double batch and what’s more, she sang as she made them.
Having got her house you would have thought mother would have been entirely happy but this was far from the truth. Somehow she seemed incapable of enjoying what for so long she had laboured. ‘It’s twenty years too late,’ she mourned. ‘The good is gone out of it.’
And, indeed, it was true. Having got at last what she desired she no longer valued it. Before, regardless of cost, she had been tireless in her efforts to improve the house, now that it was her own she grudged any money spent on it.
Father died during my last year at college. By that time the rest of the family were scattered, living abroad, married and rearing families of their own. I was the only one at home. When I tried to leave mother used the house as bargaining power.
‘It’ll be yours when I’m gone. I only ever wanted it for you all. So you’d have some place nice to bring your friends.’ I agreed to stay. For a while I thought, just long enough for her to get over Dad. But soon even my presence wasn’t enough.
‘If only I had you all around me again,’ she sighed. ‘I often think the best years were when you were little.’
‘But you have your house.’
‘It’s not the same without your father.’
She was never to be found in it. For some reason she could not bear to stay on her own. Nights when I was late she went next door and lay on a neighbour’s sofa. It was difficult to understand. When she became too feeble to look after herself the house was sold and she went to live in an old ladies’ home.
‘Home!’ she said scornfully, when I went to see her. ‘It’s not my idea of home.’ Then her eyes grew distant and she seemed to be contemplating something far away and delightful. ‘You know, I could have had a lovely house years ago. Did I ever tell you? For only two thousand pounds... Ah, but I missed my chance.’ And the glow faded from her face and she sat in silence until it was time for me to go.
Old Habits
Some women are born nurturers, some become infected with the bug later on. Helen caught it early from her mother, who had always made other people’s comfort her particular concern, smothering even strangers with her mother love. Environment has much to do with shaping character and Helen’s childhood was the perfect breeding ground for the perfect wife and mother she was fated to be.
The Brennan household was in a permanent state of chassis. Their small terraced house on Peale Street overflowed into a wooden lean-to structure at the back where in the summer months the older members played poker into the small hours. There was always someone going off to England to get work or returning unexpectedly in need of a bed. There were nine of them, after all. Helen’s brother Tom was old enough to be her father. Helen, and her sisters nearest in age, slept three to a bed. When it was needed for some returning brethren, they were moved to a mattress in the front room. She would awake to find herself being lifted from one place to another. Her mother was soft and disorganised. Mealtimes ran into each other. The dining-table was never cleared, someone always snacking late or early. The hot press, in an alcove beside the fireplace, was overrun by silverfish. Yellowing newspaper lined the shelves. You would need half a day to find what you searched for. Mrs. Brennan, in slippers and a worn wrapper, clawed helplessly through a jumble of underpants and bloomers, odd socks and bleached towels.
Helen pined to put some order in her life. She longed for some place where she could safely leave her hair ribbons and know they would still be there when she returned.
‘What’s it like being one of a big family?’ her schoolfriends asked. Some thought it must be fun, others that she was spoiled rotten. Helen’s wide smile convinced them but really she nurtured a sneaking wish to be an only child. The Brennans, en masse, with their highly developed sense of family – one for all and all for one – were overwhelming. None of them ever had an inkling of her disloyalty. Playing with her dolls, she planned to have only two children herself when she got married. A boy and a girl. She would mix their feeds in nice clean bottles, she told herself, and keep them at the right temperature in a fridge. The Brennans had never risen to a fridge. They kept the Sunday joint, and a pound of pork sausages for the morning fry-up, in a cold meat safe, hanging on the wall outside the kitchen door. Her mother had breastfed all nine of them and had no need of bottles. So she often told them, not boastfully, simply stating a fact. When Helen heard this the first time she was only six and unready for such confidences, but her mother’s words sank in. She saw her like a great milk churn with an endless supply of froth and believed all mothers hoarded similar riches beneath their blouses. Helen had no desire to be a human milk churn, nor did she ever see herself in the role of nursing mother. In her teens breasts were strictly erotic, man’s delight and maiden’s folly; a nightly compromise of tussle and touch. She was seventeen before s
he discovered that these years most married women opted to bottle-feed, her mother was the exception. By then Mrs. Brennan had passed on, worn out with nurturing.
Helen met and fell in love with John, an only child. She was drawn to him as much by his orderly habits as his lack of family, delighted in the way he regularly flossed his teeth, kept his books in their dust jackets and did not dog-ear the pages. If he had a fault it was his obsession for neatness. Helen considered him perfect. His mother pleased her too. She did not wear slippers in the street or appear at the door in an apron. She had not breastfed John nor was she guilt-ridden. She favoured a bottle over nature, claiming it played her no tricks. But then she was a woman who liked to know beforehand the extent of her larder. She made it plain that she considered breastfeeding an indulgence; time more usefully employed polishing bath enamel or washing paintwork. Her habit of banging down erect toilet seats whenever she came across them was disconcerting but not any real obstacle. With her Helen established an instant rapport. A brand new supermom dedicated to neatness and order. She had been given a second chance.
On the birth of their first child, John’s mother presented them with a new sterilising unit (as she did upon each subsequent birth) and greatly looked forward to its use. Inspired by her mother-in-law’s shining example Helen mixed formula, ironed nappies in symmetrical piles and earnestly polished and disinfected her way through marriage, proving herself, in every respect, an exemplary disciple. It was only on the birth of her third child that she reverted to type and truly became again her mother’s daughter. Sitting with other soon-to-be-moms-again, viewing a film on natural childbirth, it seemed to Helen that she had produced two babies but never actually been present at the birth of either. She knew none of the joys, only the discomforts, of this cry-along screen birth. The nurturing germ, all this time incubating, took firm hold at last. Wiping moist eyes, Helen pledged herself to natural methods. From now on things would be different, she vowed. She intended feeding this one herself.
When she told John he was nonplussed. He had seen himself as the principle nourisher of her breasts, moreover he feared for his mother’s disappointment. ‘But she has bought us another steriliser,’ he fretted, as if this was a valid argument. ‘What shall we tell her?’
‘Man is not made for the Sabbath,’ Helen quoted loftily. But she wondered at herself. After years of imitating her mother-in-law she felt ill-equipped to put up resistance now. Still, she had seen the light. There was no going back.
The paintwork grimed, the brasses dulled as Helen concentrated on bonding with her squalling, red-faced newcomer. Supergran’s own face was as long as Good Friday as she sat and watched them, prepared at the first sign of rejection to produce bottles and teats like rabbits from a hat. But there was no real danger. Breast is best and Helen’s fussy infant knew it better than anyone.
‘Which side?’ John sent the children to enquire, deftly turning the lamb chops.
‘Second,’ Helen cooed, and sent them toddling back.
Everything had been the forerunner of this moment. She fed on demand, took pleasure in her new child’s snuffling sighs of bliss, felt humbled by his utter dependence on her. We two against the world, she thought, all wrapped up in a cocoon of their own commitment. She had never been more fulfilled. Until the gravy trailing like russet snail tracks across the cupboard fronts and John’s carping reminders finger-painted in dust, cracked her new maternal carapace.
Seeking approval she began in sneaking fashion to catch up, an ear tuned to that first waking whimper. She assured herself she would merely give the fridge a quick wipe over before settling down with a glass of milk and soothing thoughts. But before long she was donning surgical gloves and lifting out mouldy cheese sprouting enough penicillin to revitalise the mouse kingdom. What started as a lick and a promise became a full-scale defrosting. Above stairs the whimpers turned to shrieks before she remembered there was a baby in the house.
Soon the air reverberated with his misery. Nothing would satisfy his demands. Feeding time became a wailing wall of woe. The reservoir was running dry.
Supergran’s triumph was pitiless.
‘Bring back the bottle!’ she advocated with a ruthlessness only rivalled by those lobbying for the return of the death penalty. Constant reminders of an unused steriliser had warped her spirit. Waste, she could never abide. John’s mother went on sounding her opinion, her disapproval might have daunted Helen bur she was too torn between her maternal and domestic conscience to pay much heed. Too intent on wanting it all, both the newfound nurturing and the satisfaction that comes of an orderly home. Guiltily, she pursued her course. The habits of a lifetime are hard to break.
Hell-bent on her own destruction, it seemed nothing but an act of God could save her. Even the dire example of her house-proud, next-door neighbour failed to move her. Adele, mother of four, in the prime of her health until her accident, was seen out every morning of the week scrubbing her front step, even before she left Gran up her breakfast and drove the kids to school. When not playing nurse or driver she helped out in Oxfam mornings, spent her afternoons like a yo-yo between house and garden, pushing children on the swing. A likely candidate for housewife of the year award or the madhouse, she slipped one day on her own sudsy step and broke her wrist. From her window Helen often observed her neighbour pulling mounds of washing to the line in a shopping trolley and admired the ingenious way she had hooked a coat hanger over her cast to carry socks, slung a baby’s plastic bib full of pegs about her neck. From all accounts Adele was competently coping with the cooking in a similar imaginative way, deftly chopping onions left-handed while wearing rubber swimming goggles to protect her eyes. It seemed she was willing to go to any lengths rather than disappoint her family. A saint or a lunatic?
Helen could not bring herself to criticise, all set to follow her example.
On how small a thing hangs fate. A dirty window or a muddy doorstep. On looking back, Helen distinctly remembered the jammy smear on the front window. Thin and curving like a crescent sun, it was there the day she returned from the nursing home. She would have dealt with it on the spot only she had more pressing concerns just then. Besides, windows like lovers, she had found, have two sides to them; what looks good on the outside does not always reflect the inner state. As soon as she began, the sun would slyly emerge, throwing into relief a myriad of digital prints. Wisely, she deferred window-washing to another day.
Bob-a-job week commenced. At the door stood two eager gnomes, kerchiefs knotted, faces pink and shiny with endeavour. No job too great or small. Helen pondered on a variety of tasks. The smeary glass weighed heavily. Could they, would they? They nodded. Alas, the smear eluded them, always just beyond their reach.
‘Never mind,’ she cried gaily, ‘I’ll tackle it myself.’ For once all was serene above stairs. An unwatched baby never wakes. Armed with bucket and sponge, bursting with housewifely zeal, she resolved to put the sparkle back in their lives. After weeks of curtailed activity she was carried away quite literally. Stepping off the ladder, she walked in space and came to earth in a cucumber frame.
Trodding blood into casualty she looked back and wondered at the wounded animal in her wake. The nurse prepared the needle, catgut at the ready.
‘I’m breastfeeding,’ Helen admitted tenderly. ‘Will it affect baby?’
‘Only you,’ came the blunt answer.
In every disadvantage is the seed of a greater advantage. With this Helen consoled herself when, home once more, she sat with elevated foot, passing her days in idleness. For with enforced rest her milk increased, the howling abated. Once more Supergran’s face was leached of hope. Like Niobe she sat and brooded over an empty sterilising unit while Helen’s children rampaged, their artistry rivalling only Picasso’s for pure inventiveness. To the jammy crescent was added noughts and crosses, bewhiskered cats, stick men and women. Upstairs, between changing mat and pillow, Helen was mercifully protected from the worst of the chaos.
‘Do
n’t let it worry you,’ John smiled, fisting undarned socks without much hope before her myopic gaze. Daunted he left her his heels to embroider and went off to work, came home and repeated the mantra with less conviction.
His only contribution to the domestic effort - spearing with a toasting fork congealing globules of bacon and pork with all the skill of a Zulu warrior before dislodging them into an overflowing bin. A neat trick, it gave him momentary pleasure.
Despite Helen’s impassive front she perversely yearned to catch up, her fingers itching to slosh and scrub when all she could do was sit and darn. She sighed and tried to look at ease. What price a contented baby!
On graduating from bed to chair her horizons widened to include a cobweb stretched between wardrobe and picture-rail. As she watched, the larder was constantly replenished, fresh produce lured there daily by an assiduous assassin. Funny, Helen thought, even here the nurturer toils unceasingly. As she divided her own time between suckling her offspring and staring myopically into space she was reminded of her mother collapsed apologetically on the living-room couch, surrounded by nappies and baby cream. For the first time she felt their affinity; she might have left Peale Street but clearly Peale Street had not left her.
She sighed and contemplated the encroaching disorder, a maze of peanut butter on the carpet, a relief map of chocolate on the walls, coffee stains on the bedside locker. The past loomed ever closer. With a sense of failure, her frustration increased. What was a jammy smear or two compared to this?
Below stairs Supergran reigned supreme. Helen’s children traitorously forget her, or worse, came to regale her with Gran’s marvels. Across the street Adele was still in plaster. Helen had her chair moved to the window so that she could more easily observe her neighbour. She saw that the woman was as active as ever and had added an alert-looking Dobermann pinscher to her menage. He bounded about her as she manoeuvred the lawn mower out of the garage. Helen had never seen a one-armed woman mowing grass and did not think, until then, it could be done. She was sorry when Adele finished up and went inside. It had helped pass the time.
