The day was full of stories.
They took up exactly where they had left off the last time they met. Even the ranking of brothers and sisters remained intact, looking up to each other, looking down on each other, interrupting each other, getting the better of each other.
I sometimes got a bit lost in the multiple strands of their stories. I admired how easily they could talk without any great agonising over the words. It didn’t seem to matter where a story began. They jumped in effortlessly. The order in which the details emerged was jumbled, funny things coexisting happily alongside serious news, no great message attached. Facts were often ridiculed and defended at the same time. The plot could be diverted many times, looping away into different zones, urgent things were pushed forward for priority.
Helen’s mother jumped in and told everyone about their father in the town of Borris not being able to reverse the car, he could only drive forward. This had nothing to do with the story being told about a man in one of the apartments in London who had a collection of art from all over the world, he kept a death mask from Madagascar in his living room.
The main story was never the main story. It was the revisions that counted. The contradictions. Things unfinished, to be picked up later.
I ordered more drinks.
Helen took the knife out of the mayonnaise jar and put it on my plate.
They gave ridiculous tips to the barman. They struck up conversations with people at the bar. The entire pub became part of the family, even the lawyers in suits with their fresh salmon sandwiches at the small round tables were included in the celebration. A poet sitting by the door with a book on Argentina. The doorman from the Gaiety Theatre with his newspaper laid on the bar counter, wearing a pair of glasses that were crooked on his nose, one arm over the ear missing. A tall man standing at the bar with sunken pockets in his jacket.
At that moment, I realised that all my worries disappeared. The shakiness of our future became trivial. None of that mattered. This reunion had the effect of writing off my debts. My obligations were annulled by a warm feeling that allowed me to laugh off what I owed the world. This was my turn to celebrate. Helen was breastfeeding. Her mother was teaching Rosie and Essie how to fold paper serviettes.
One of the uncles asked me a question. It was the uncle back from France, Uncle Martin. He had heard I was writing a book and wanted to know what it was about.
Everyone stopped to listen.
I was put on the spot.
Helen’s mother was eagerly waiting. Her head was tilted at the same angle as Helen’s. The bible aunt was tilted in the other direction. Everyone in the entire bar held their breath, even the barman seemed to have stopped, his elbow placed on the marble counter, no bell ringing.
Helen smiled encouragement.
Out of hand, I had nothing to tell them. Everything I wanted to say had to be written down first and examined forensically, all the permutations, all the misunderstandings had to be eliminated before it could be given out. My mind was so displaced, I could only reach for the first word that came up.
Prague.
Their eyes were on my mouth.
Prague?
Prague, I said again, but I had no words to continue.
My thoughts were suddenly caught up in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Gauleiter of Prague. I had no wish to talk about him. I had no intention of writing about him. He was preventing me from speaking, placing himself into the forefront, standing in his black uniform blocking my way. Nothing else came to mind but the morning of his assassination, his open-topped car driving through the streets of Prague. His killing was followed by a brutal reprisal in which the inhabitants in the town of Lidice were put to death. I felt the day of the assassination coming back again and again, followed by the day of the reprisal massacre. They would kill him many times over in books and movies. The town where all the people were murdered was erased from the map.
Let him eat, Helen said.
I was off the hook. They finally resumed talking. I picked up my sandwich. I brought it to my mouth, but I had no bite. They quickly moved on to other stories. Uncle Damian began describing their father standing in the living room one day with the Garda sergeant, one of the boys had broken into the Vicar’s house and turned on all the taps, flooding the place. Their father looked down at his own son aged six and asked – do you smoke? I was laughing, I wanted their story to be mine.
By the time they got back to the house it was dark. I was home ahead of them, preparing dinner, high with excitement. Helen was driving, her mother had the baby in the back seat, her uncle from London in the passenger seat, the rest came by taxi. I ran out to carry the baby in asleep in the carrier basket. I ran out again to take in the suitcases, brought them upstairs into the box room, then I looked out the window.
The car doors were open. The headlights were left on, they had music playing, it was the Vienna Waltz.
I watched them standing around by the car, laughing, her uncle holding onto the bonnet to steady himself, the others walking down the drive arm in arm. The music lifted the whole street. It was in the hedges, in the pink tamarisk, in the rosemary bush, the garden was Brazil at night. Helen dropped her bag. She bent down to start picking things up but was pulled away by the elbow. I saw her dancing with her uncle from France, her mother was dancing with the uncle from Birmingham, the headlights of the car shining across the concrete dance floor, their shadows enlarged along the walls up to roof level, the children had a partner each.
Greta brought my mother up to the party, but they didn’t stay. She had a short conversation with Uncle Jerome. He offered her a small glass of whiskey, but she was not very well. She stayed only long enough for me to get a photograph of her with Helen’s mother. Two mothers together on the couch with the new baby boy, his eyes were open, my mother’s word for sweet was the same as the word Helen’s mother had, no difference between the languages, they loved babies equally.
There was an altercation at the hall door at one point when the aunt with the keys arrived. Helen’s mother was about to embrace her sister, but she was given a slap across the face instead. Her gold-rimmed glasses flew across the hallway. She stood holding her cheek – what was that for? The aunt with the keys said – for buggering off to Canada and leaving us all here to rot. Minutes later they were clutching each other in tears, on the sofa together, sisters reunited, inseparable, laughing, I handed Helen’s mother back her glasses.
The dinner table was crowded. Rosie and Essie sat on the piano stool together. We found enough chairs, including two foldable white garden chairs, for them all to sit on. We began with celery soup, Uncle Damian said it was the most extraordinary soup he had ever tasted in his life, no soup like it had ever been served to man or woman before. Followed by roast chicken and stuffing, roast potatoes and cauliflower with a cheese sauce. Again, they praised the food – no restaurant in the whole of London, or Paris, anywhere in the western world, could match our menu.
Uncle Jerome said – this is the meal I want on the day of my execution.
I had made a side dish from an Indian recipe, a tomato-based sauce with chick peas and hard-boiled eggs, it was my mother’s favourite, but she was not able to stay for the dinner. Everyone tasted a bit of the Indian dish, but it seemed out of place, a little incongruous along with the roast chicken and roast potatoes, it was full of turmeric, it made their lips green, their napkins had yellow smiles. Afterwards, we had apple crumble, they asked me how on earth I could make something so delicious, it had to be more than apples I put in, some secret ingredient, cloves, raw cane sugar, a touch of lime?
Uncle Damian started the singing early.
Holding Helen’s mother by the hands, he stared into her eyes and sang a Nat King Cole song.
Unremarkable, that’s what you are.
It amazed me how they could happily keep insulting each other around the ta
ble without anyone getting offended. They found the worst things to say, as though the most extreme abuse was really a way of showing the most extreme affection. Helen’s mother was laughing her heart out while Uncle Damian continued singing to her with a serious gaze – that’s why darling, it’s incredible, that you could be so unremarkable, so unexceptional, so average …
… and so unforgettably mediocre, too.
Only then did Helen’s mother finally pull her hands away and slap her younger brother across the head.
All through the meal, I kept refilling glasses. Clearing away dishes, going around to see if there was anything needed, some salt to pour over a wine stain. I brought out the bottle of whiskey, new glasses, a small jug of water. For a while they discussed political developments in Northern Ireland, then things began to degenerate a little. Uncle Jerome was asked what life would have been like if he was born without a nose, he ignored them. The bible aunt was asked what life would be like without an arse, she ignored them. One of them broke in and said – I thank the Lord every morning that I have an arse.
Helen’s mother brought them all to order again. She made them focus and give her an answer – now listen to me for a minute, who wants an Irish coffee? They went back to talking and cutting across each other, voices all speaking at once, silent moments in one corner, singing a couple of lines at the other end, a burst of laughter, Helen’s mother was asked if she cared for a lozenge – no, thank you.
I stood with a plate in each hand listening. The aunt with keys took the plates from me and put them back down on the table. What was this obsession with clearing up and moving on? She pulled me away and forced me to sit on the sofa with her, something she was going to tell me. She would not let go of my arm. She whispered, pulling me into a conspiracy. Helen went upstairs with the baby. Her mother went to bed. Her uncles were staying in my mother’s house, it was not far to go. When everybody was gone, I sat looking around the room, the empty bottles, the glasses, the ashtrays, everything still in place. The smell of roast chicken all around the house. I memorised the order in which they sat at the table, the sequence of stories and songs and interjecting remarks, I left it until morning to clear up, recounting the entire night to myself in reverse, each plate, each napkin, each fork.
The walls were covered with photographs of houses. The desks were at various angles, a large poster of the company name with a childlike drawing of a house and a family moving in. There was a poster for mortgage companies. A large portrait of the estate agents together in a group, smiling. I spoke to the man who had sold us the house. He had a bowl with hard-boiled sweets on his desk. I told him I didn’t want the sign going up outside. It was important to me that Helen’s mother did not hear of our decision to sell. It was also important because the bank manager who had given us the business loan lived nearby, a little further along the same street, in a newly built row of detached houses. I didn’t want him seeing the sign up – for sale – it might activate urgent proceedings. Our solicitor was delicately negotiating a settlement schedule.
That same evening, a couple came to the door. First, I was afraid they might be looking for money, I told them I had visitors. I stepped out into the porch and closed the door on the latch behind me, so they could not be heard inside. They apologised for disturbing us so late, but they had heard we might be selling the house, they wanted to get in ahead of anyone else.
Helen’s mother was in the front room with her two sisters. The fire was on. They had gin and tonics. The uncles had already gone back, so it was a quiet evening of recovery. Helen looked like a schoolgirl again, wearing her black velvet jeans, a loose blue shirt open at the neck, easy for her to manage breastfeeding. Martina was there. She had come with a gift, a silver spoon and pusher. Rosie and Essie were standing over the carrier basket, José was on the floor with his soldiers.
Martina was singing a lullaby for the baby when the doorbell rang. The couple at the door heard the song and smiled. It was in the ghost language, the voice carried a remote part of the Dingle Peninsula up to the city, something about our house felt in that moment to belong to a childhood country brought back from past. It filled the hallway and spilled out onto the porch with a memory of homes and families going back in time, a kind of ancient rocking in the words that created a calmness in me, in the couple at the door, it made the transactional purpose of their visit disappear. We remained suspended in this childhood on the doorstep until the song was finished and we heard clapping from the front room.
They said there was no need for them to view the property. They offered me the full asking price. On the bonnet of the car, they made out a cheque for the deposit, subject to a surveyor’s report. They handed over the cheque as though they were paying for listening to the song, they wanted to live in the house where the words would remain in the walls, in the space underneath the floors. I was disappointed because I wanted to invite them in to look around the house. Talk them through some of the things that had been done, the wiring, the plumbing, the wall knocked down between two rooms, the steel reinforcement, the underfloor speaker wires running into the kitchen, so much I had to tell them, but I couldn’t bring them inside.
I folded the cheque and put it away in the Mennonite cookbook. I put the book back on the shelf in the kitchen and started clearing the counter. I began drying glasses, lightly rotating the clean towel inside, holding them up to the light to review the shine, then stacking them upside down into the shelves. I returned some items taken out earlier for dinner into the cupboard. I found half a packet of oatmeal in the press which I poured into the porridge tin, exactly enough to fill it up, that allowed me to throw out the paper bag. I stood for a while in the hallway looking up the stairs. I heard their voices in the front room, a burst of laughter, Helen was talking, but I didn’t catch what she was saying. I had my hand on the newel. I saw the street light coming through the window on the landing, the shapes of trees thrown across the walls, like arms waving. I was thinking of a couple of things that still needed to be finished off, like the gutters at the back of the house, they were cast-iron, they were in danger of falling off some night in a storm, the clamps holding them were rusted to nothing, I was hoping to replace them with new PVC gutters.
Everyone was still seated in the same positions in the front room. Rosie and Essie had an aunt each for themselves, tiny faces peeking out under large wings. José was in middle of the room, he had a bunch of keys to play with. Helen looked up when I came back in, I could see how happy she was that her mother was able to stay a bit longer. I glanced around to make sure everyone had a drink. I put another briquette on the fire. The sudden sale, the snap disposal of the home from underneath us was a piece of information I carried inside myself along with so many other things that were impossible to say.
Helen’s mother was talking about Canada. How heavy the rain can be in the summer, how unexpected, how much you begin to trust the weather. She said she was caught in a shower one day, not prepared for it, not like you would be in Ireland, she didn’t bring an umbrella, it was not something she ever carried with her. She had just come from the hairdresser’s on the square. Her car was miles away outside the Nova Scotia bank. After a hot and humid morning, the rain came from nowhere, she said. She was getting soaked, right through her clothes, her blouse was sticking to her shoulders, she had the handbag held over her head. She found cover in a doorway.
Directly in front of her, the headlights of a car began flashing through the rain, the car horn was blaring. She told herself not to respond, she was taking whatever shelter she could get with her back pinned flat up against a door. She could hardly see two feet clear in the rain, her glasses were blurred, the water was running into her eyes.
She said she heard a familiar voice.
Mary, look at you.
It was Nessa, her former friend.
Helen’s mother turned away. Pretended not to hear. With expert defiance, she placed her chin on her s
houlder and let on she was waiting for somebody to pick her up – when I think of who I am. She ignored the flashing headlights and the blaring car horn, it was a show of inspired mockery. The woman who had once been her closest companion in the world was now taking enormous delight at her misfortune, caught in a Canadian drowning, her hair only just done up, flattened like a field of blonde barley.
Nessa stepped out of the car. She was now getting soaked as well, blinded with the rain in her face, standing by the open car door and the seat getting wet, screaming at this point – Mary will you get in, for God’s sake.
That was it. Helen’s mother walked over and got into the car with Nessa. They sat for a moment without speaking a word, staring at the rain, you could not hear a thing it was so loud on the roof. The windows were steamed up like a bathroom. Two Irish women drenched to the skin, to the skull. The water was dripping from their ears, water going down their necks, water in their shoes. They shook themselves. They sneezed. They elbowed each other. Best of friends again.
The letter arrived from the Canadian embassy turning down our application. The decision had been struck on medical grounds. It was my illness that let us down. They had contacted our GP to let him know my chest X-ray showed up something. The interview at the embassy had gone very well, I thought, we had spoken to a tall man at the immigration department. He had been very positive. Helen had told him about her family living in Canada. He went through the details, occupation, she put down journalist, I put down musicologist, three children, no financial resources, none of that was any problem, he let us know that Canada was open to ready-made families.
The rejection was put down to a serious pulmonary condition. My lungs full of sand. My teeth made of glass. The shadow on my voice. I was admitted to hospital that same day. The same hospital where the baby was born, we called him Donal, after Helen’s father.
Dublin Palms Page 21
