The Mask and Other Stories

by Nesta Tuomey

  The sun moved round and beamed mercilessly through the bedroom window, spotlighting squalor. Helen decided if she were to hop to the bed and lie across it, she could use the baby sponge to wipe the wall; from there it would be a moment’s work to flick a nappy at the web. Crawling back she could deal with the yellow goo on the rug. With a bit of luck she might even reach the window. She willed the baby to keep sleeping. There’ll just be time, she thought, before he wakes.

  Across the way Adele had reappeared once more, this time dragging a bin determinedly behind her. Oh dear, Helen thought pityingly, some women never learn. If she goes on like this she’ll do herself a mischief. Then she forgot her in the effort of hopping. Wall, web and rug successfully dealt with, she tackled the window.

  With spit and polish the glass shone. Until with the last burst of afternoon sun another smudge inevitably showed. She went after it like a terrier after a rat, shoving up the window and stretching perilously out. Still the mark eluded her. She hitched up her night-dress and leaned over the sill, gripping the ivy-covered drainpipe for support. In the excitement of reaching her goal Helen transferred all her weight. Almost there! Shaky since the last gale it swung suddenly free of the wall, catapulting her forward.

  Her strangled scream as she arced through the air in a froth of nylon was heard only by the Dobermann - ears pricked forward he sniffed curiously at the falling white blossom. Helen’s last thought was for the baby.

  At night, John still lies awake wondering what went wrong. His mother also feels the need to lay blame. She cannot decide which is worse; an absent daughter-in-law or an unused steriliser. But she is careful to keep such thoughts to herself. Every second night she takes her turn at getting up to feed her grandson. She feels it’s the least she can do. Ah, but what a waste! If her son’s wife had only heeded her advice she might have lived to bottle feed twenty infants. So she maintains.

  But old habits die hard and, alas, some women never learn. Poor Helen, like her mother before her, was no exception.

  St. Magdalen’s

  On the first Sunday of every month, Christmas and Easter Day, her birthday too, unless something unforeseen occurred, Olivia Barrett’s son picked her up and took her to spend the day at his home in Booterstown. It was an outing Olivia looked forward to especially. She liked to say it was because it gave her an opportunity – sadly infrequent these days – of spending time with her grandsons but in reality she was beguiled by the tenderly stuffed loin of pork and cloved apple that her daughter-in-law served up for lunch, or the silverside of beef, moistly pink under its cap of parsley sauce.

  John’s wife was a lovely cook, no dispute about that. Olivia would have happily forfeited five years of what life remained to her for a helping of Fidelma’s apple russe or crème caramel. At St. Magdalen’s where Olivia had resided for almost a year and was tolerably comfortable - she would not admit to more - they served boiled chicken or boiled fish every other day.

  ‘For all the world like sodden cardboard,’ she told them on her monthly visits, adding with a cynical laugh that she wouldn’t put it past the kitchen staff to boil the Christmas turkey. They were capable of anything. Although she made a joke of it Olivia had no intention of ever finding out. Christmas Day she always spent in Booterstown, and a good thing too!

  Sister Lilian was in charge of St. Magdalen’s. ‘She calls me Olivia,’ Mrs. Barrett shyly boasted like a schoolgirl with a crush on the head prefect. She expressed more than a passing fondness for the nun and spoke of leaving her small gifts of fruit cake or fancy biscuits at her office door. In return Sister Lilian favoured Olivia whenever it was in her power to do so. Occasionally there was a death in the house and pickings to be had. Sometimes it was a good tweed skirt or even a silk dress. Olivia’s hems fluctuated like the stock-market but with clothes so pricey she considered it would have been foolish to refuse. Besides which she enjoyed the additional thrill of getting something for nothing. She was not without taste. She owned a black astrakhan fur coat, a good leather handbag. At her throat a cameo broach which had belonged to her mother. In the past the rearing horse and naked rider had been a source of childish speculation as it adorned the ample matriarchal bust.

  In her day Olivia had been a woman to be reckoned with. After her husband’s death she had lived for a time on her own, fostering the illusion of fortitude. Until too many night-time fears eventually dented her spirit and she sold up and went into the Home. Restricted by age and arthritis to the confines of St. Magdalen’s, her only real contact nowadays with the outside world was the monthly visit to her son’s house.

  Equally limited her conversation which had dwindled from a rather lively long play to a mere extended play, with a tendency to repeat unless actively diverted to another track. These days Olivia often became confused, wondering if she were perhaps in a dream, a state of mind and body in which she found herself more and more frequently of late. Sometimes she was catapulted, so to speak, straight into a sequence; sitting in the car on the way to John’s house or else placing her knife and fork neatly together on the plate after lunch, the actual mastication of which she did not remember.

  At other times she found herself regarding her son without recognition. For politeness sake she went along with Fidelma and the children who seemed to know who was who. But Olivia could as easily have believed it was some neighbour who had sat down with them to lunch. She passed it off as some kind of facial amnesia, tentatively acknowledging the relationship, yet unable to qualify it.

  One lunar day she asked her daughter-in-law a question which had bothered her all through lunch. ‘Is John my brother or my son?’ Seeing how it disturbed Fidelma, she let the matter drop. There were times too, when she found herself pondering on whether Pierce had been her husband or her father, but didn’t quite like to say. Instead she tried to work it out for herself and at certain times achieved more success than at others.

  With Easter approaching Olivia felt a certain restlessness and put it down to the season of repentance. But the truth of it was her departure from her son’s house the previous month was still troubling her. It had been a little different from the understood leavetaking when she tried not to make demands, or change things which were beyond her anyway. She had lingered in the hallway arranging her hat, her scarf, the cameo; peering into the mirror in an attempt to extract, even at this late stage, its legend, anything to stave off the inevitable. When the pressure became too much she had retreated into the womb-like interior of the downstairs toilet, hoping to be forgotten. She was aware as through a storm - perhaps merely the cistern - of anxious whisperings without, speculation as to whether Grandma had gone down the S bend. But still she sat on, it was easier somehow.

  ‘Are you all right, Gran?’ The words resounding in the small space set the chain swinging gently past her face. It occurred to her it might be a dream, in which case it was wiser to do nothing. Eventually life itself, she knew, if not circumstance, would release her. And so she continued to sit, not uncomfortably and with a certain feeling of security; false, as it turned out.

  ‘Come along, Mother,’ he shouted, her son. ‘Time to be going,’ easily breaking the child lock, a metal hook and eye, and rescuing her who did not wish to be rescued. When a short while later, with the car drawn up outside, Olivia had stalled again, John had taken her handbag and rifled through it with plundering fingers.

  ‘Reading glasses, bus pass, money?’ he listed. What now, his perplexed frown suggested.

  ‘Let me stay,’ Olivia had heard herself cry. ‘Just for a few days.’ How tired she was of the monotony of St. Magdalen’s, every day the same. Before she could stop herself she had protested like a rebellious schoolchild, ‘I won’t go back. I won’t! I hate that place.’ Lips wobbling, hands plucking at the wisp of chiffon that was threatening to choke her.

  ‘Now you know that isn’t true,’ John had tried to jolly her along. ‘Think how well they look after you. Why, you’re so lucky to be there,’ his expression becoming rap
t at her good fortune, then hardening at her refusal to own it. ‘There’s a waiting list as long as your arm.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she quavered. ‘I don’t care.’ In a last desperate bid for understanding she had appealed to her daughter-in-law, ‘As one mother to another, my dear, won’t you please let me stay?’

  But Fidelma had disowned her. ‘It’s getting late,’ she’d mumbled, all but bundling her mother-in-law into the astrakhan coat. ‘I must bathe the boys,’ stepping away aloofly with a child at either side and leaving John to get the matter in hand – which he did at once. ‘That’s enough of that now, Ma,’ propelling, if not actually frog-marching, her to the car. ‘In you get before you catch your death,’ chuckling to show he meant no harm, or at least not much.

  There had been nothing for it but to sit into the car and allow herself be driven back. John had said little but she had recognised the sullen droop to his lower lip he wore as a small boy when crossed. In the privacy of her iron bed that night Olivia’s humiliation had shed itself on the lumpy pillow. She had tried and failed.

  This Easter morning trying not to show concern at her son’s lateness – it was getting on for twelve and he was usually so punctual – Olivia sat in the front hall dressed for outdoors. Beneath the eye-catching turban she dozed; purple and blue and streaked with gold, she had come by it in the usual grisly way. Rather jollier than her habitual headgear, it struck a frivolous note which was somewhat belied by the severity of her expression, gums gripping the recalcitrant plate.

  Olivia had always had a penchant for hats, prided herself on the fact she was able to carry one off. Someone had once likened her to the Queen Mother, a resemblance she could almost believe on her good days. In the absence of interruption, she slipped deeper into the realm of shade. Having slept fitfully the previous night she had resorted to taking a sleeping tablet. Slow to act, she had rashly taken another, and when her muscles began at last to relax she had got up quickly for fear of oversleeping.

  The doorbell shrilled jerking Olivia upright. She trained her gaze hopefully on the door but it was only another of the old ladies returning from Mass, greenery protruding from between the pages of her missal. With drooping lids Olivia watched her impatiently striking the lift door with her stick. When it failed to respond she vigorously applied the toe of her worn suede. Amongst the elderly inmates this was a common practice and relieved frustration. Mrs. Barrett yawned and ceased to watch. Days, even this one which she believed was the one on which the Lord had arisen, had a habit of merging when least expected. Whole chunks of time simply vanished unaccounted for. It was disconcerting. So too was John’s non-appearance.

  What could be keeping him? Troubled by half-forgotten phrases she was suddenly assailed by a terrible doubt. Could it be Fidelma was punishing her for her foolish rebellion that last visit, begging to be let stay? Never had Olivia regretted anything so much as that ill-judged tantrum. She had played right into the enemy’s camp, she told herself bitterly, aware that her daughter-in-law might use it as an excuse to wriggle out of the monthly commitment, might even put it into John’s mind that his mother was becoming an old nuisance, and visiting too often.

  Perversely, the harder she strained her thoughts in that backward direction in an effort to remember what John had said all those weeks ago, the more confused Olivia became. She shivered, feeling a sudden chill even though the weather was mild, and the heaters going full blast all over the house. The thought of her son’s abandonment at first frightened, then angered her. That one! her mind spluttered in helpless rage. May God forgive her for putting such notions into his head.

  His poor simple head, Olivia hastened to correct herself, knowing her son would never lightly abandon his mother, his poor widowed mother, Pierce’s wife. Pleased by the unusual clarity of her thoughts she felt tempted to pursue this theme. Any analysis of kinship these days fascinated her, she was always searching for the clue, John’s mother.

  ‘What has you all dressed up, Olivia?’ Sister Lilian called out with a smile as she passed down the hall. ‘Today’s not your day to go to John’s house surely. Didn’t you tell me he will be calling next Sunday...Easter Sunday.’

  Taken aback, Olivia mumbled something about intending to take a walk and changing her mind. Crestfallen, she tottered towards the lift. Oh dear, she had got it all wrong, she thought, just like she got so many things wrong these days. He wasn’t coming, he never had been coming. Yet still she hoped.

  On the first floor the lift doors rolled back and, with weary foresight, she clicked it on hold for her return, her own private elevator. .

  In her room she lowered herself painfully onto the narrow iron bed, where she sat for some time encompassed by reminders of her past. Pierce’s white smile commiserated with her from his silver frame. Nearby, John leered dutifully above his Confirmation rosette and once more, on receiving his engineering degree, this time resembling some more mature brother had he possessed one. On the wall, Olivia’s sister, unmarried and unsung, brooded with myopic gaze. In the space beside her, John once more posed, this time on his wedding day - Fidelma’s too, of course, Mrs. Barrett grudgingly conceded - the beginnings of a stomach puffing out the pearl waistcoat, a hint of hair on his upper lip.

  Olivia examined her boy without rancour, even with humility. He’d always been a good son to her, she thought in chastened mood. Despite the confusion she still nurtured the hope he might come and save her from the shame and monotony of the day ahead. She would make a donation to the poor box, she decided. Never found to fail, it was her best insurance against disappointment. If she hurried she would catch the chaplain before he left the building.

  She was about to step into the waiting lift when rude hands seized and jostled her back over the threshold. ‘Now we have her,’ cried Bridey triumphantly. ‘Who do yeh think you are tying up the lift all morning?’ And Sissy circled for the kill, ‘Anyone would think she owned the place, the nerve of her!’

  Olivia stood afraid. ‘How...how dare you!’ she blustered, ‘Sister Lilian will hear of this.’ Hands crossed upon her chest, an early martyr at the stake, her eyes flitted hopelessly from one tormentor to the other.

  Smiles broadening, they closed in.

  Olivia tensed every nerve in an effort not to blunder past. She would not give them that satisfaction, she told herself, they would see that breeding would out, just as Mama had always said. But it did not comfort as it should have done, not in the face of the enemy, so close now she could see the spittle gathering in the cracks, become intimate with the crumbling decay. The cameo wobbled as Bridey picked at it with inquisitive fingers. Mouth agape, she might have trespassed further had not Sissie nudged a warning

  Queenie Monaghan was coming out of her room.

  A legend in St. Magdalen’s, she was of their own background but with money - which they had not - and God on her side. Her relationship with the Almighty, she claimed, was not stagnant but new every day and her wealth – inherited from two husbands before laying them out in the habits of their choice - enabled her to continue living in a style to which she was not unaccustomed.

  Queenie, in blue mink of her own design and custom made Italian boots; her cultivated speech into which she dropped the odd bon mot. Even now she was reverting to type at the sight of injustice. A proper firebrand Queenie.

  ‘Git out of it,’ she was saying, a black suede glove resting delicately on Sissy’s plump and plebeian shoulder. Her voice took on the texture of gravel as she told them to get lost. ‘Go pick on someone your own weight,’ she threatened, ‘or I’ll bend the pair of youse over the banisters.’ She would too!

  Olivia allowed the suede-covered fingers to press her into the lift, and laid a trembling hand on her heart. ‘I’m not the better of it,’ she confessed timorously, then more daringly, ‘It’s time someone put those two in their place.’

  ‘Going down!’ trilled Queenie.

  Olivia rode decorously, casting a half-glance at the other woman, which was a
s much as she could permit herself. Although she was not a person she could normally hope to commune with, she was grateful to Queenie all the same. In companionable silence they descended in an atmosphere impregnated with the sweet scent of sophistication. More used to Lily of the Valley than Chanel No 5, Olivia felt dizzy. She was already affected by the heady aura exuding from the bodies of the mink and wondered how Queenie could support it, all wrapped about and enveloped by them, though it might be different being on the inside, so to speak.

  On the ground floor the seductive fragrance was dissipated by boiled chicken and fast boiling greens. Another clue had Olivia recognised it - for even in St. Magdalen’s the chicken would have been roasted in honour of the Resurrection day. But Mrs. Barrett was momentarily distracted by the sight of Queenie being rapturously embraced by her young relatives, the couple’s little girl holding up an enormous doll for her inspection. Her niece and family; Queenie had no issue of her own

  Down the front steps they swept her, laughing and calling out near seasonal greetings. The door clicked shut after them, loosing Queenie on a world she had never forsaken and about which Olivia could only guess.

  From the sitting-room came the sound of music as she wandered slowly. At the piano sat Mrs. O’Carroll, the doctor’s widow and a regular performer at St. Magdalen’s, her fingers energetically fingering the ivories. She seemed to need little in the way of applause or even acknowledgement, her white head - in which youthful streaks were still evident - bobbing on the thin stalk of her neck, the drop pearls in her earlobes swinging to a rhythm of their own.

  Olivia sat apart from the other ladies grouped in their cliques of three and four. Still attired in her hat and coat, she had an impermanent look about her and might merely have been visiting. Before long, succumbing to that second sleeping pill, her head dropped forward on her chest and she snored gently beneath her turban.