The Pull of the Stars

by Emma Donoghue

  That jogged my memory—tomorrow was a holy day, so I supposed I should attend the vigil mass. But I didn’t have it in me; I was dead on my feet.

  That flip phrase made me wince. My aching awareness of every muscle was so entirely unlike the blankness of death. I should be glad to have sore feet and a back that grumbled and fingers that stung at the tips.

  Finally a passenger tram stopped; it was full but I pressed onto it with the others. People glared at us for crowding them further and some squirmed away in case we were contagious.

  On the top deck I stood holding on to the balcony rail. The same small notice had been pasted to the floor every two feet, I saw: SPIT SPREADS DEATH. One of them was already marked, derisively, with a spatter of smoky brown.

  Strangers’ bodies weighed against mine. I pictured trams grinding along their lines across Dublin like blood through veins. We all live in an unwalled city, that was it. I saw lines scored across the map of Ireland; carved all over the globe. Train tracks, roads, shipping channels, a web of human traffic that connected all nations into one great suffering body.

  A light in a druggist’s window below us illuminated a handwritten apology: Have Run Out of Carbolic. Passing shopfronts and houses, I glimpsed hollowed-out turnips with penny candles that wavered with flame. I was happy that the old beat of festivity still sounded. On Halloween when Tim and I were small, we had barmbrack, the moist fruit bread, toasted at the fire and buttered till the raisins shone. I always hoped to get the lucky ring in my slice, but I never did. My stomach growled now. How long it had been since that bowl of stew this afternoon.

  I wondered what Bridie got to eat with the boarders at the motherhouse.

  The tram rattled on, past a dark maze of streets where many of my patients lived—rickety stairways, toppling walls, filthy courts, red brick browned by coal smoke; smashed fanlights over doors were eyes put out. A Negro man sat slumped against a wall.

  No, a white man, metamorphosed. Red to brown to blue to black. This poor fellow was at the end of that terrible rainbow. Had anyone run to a telephone exchange to ring for an ambulance? But the tram trundled past before I could make a note of the street.

  Nothing I could do now. I tried to put him out of my mind.

  Alighting at my stop, I caught a whiff from a communal kitchen for the needy. Corned beef, cabbage? Rather nasty, but it made me even hungrier for my supper.

  John Brown’s baby has a pimple on his arse, a drunk sang.

  John Brown’s baby has a pimple on his arse,

  John Brown’s baby has a pimple on his arse,

  And the poor child can’t sit down.

  In the alley I found my cycle locked safely. I drew up the sides of my skirt in preparation, knotting the tapes for safety.

  Light blinded me. A high-pitched call: All right there?

  Two of the Women’s Patrol shone their beams all the way to the back wall. To ensure my protection or, put another way, to check if I was reeling drunk or up to no good with a soldier.

  I snapped, Perfectly all right.

  Very well, carry on.

  I wheeled my cycle up the alley, towards the street.

  A bell sounded in the factory ahead. Munitionettes began spilling out, calling to each other, their fingers dyed so yellow I could see it by streetlight; were these women from Ita Noonan’s Canary Crew? One of them coughed whoopingly, laughed, coughed again as I pedaled past.

  At the top of my lane, boys skittered by in motley gear—a bright scarf around a forehead, a checkered tie worn over the nose, men’s jackets on backwards, the smallest boy wearing the paper face of a ghost. I only wished they had shoes on their knobbly feet. It surprised me that they’d been let out to go house to house at such a time; I’d have thought all doors would be shut. I tried to remember what it was the old ones used to sprinkle on us children at Halloween in the part of the country where Tim and I had grown up.

  A tall boy blared at me. His bugle was dented, scarred with solder, plating all worn away at the mouthpiece. Was his father a returned veteran, perhaps? Or a dead one, of course, his bugle sent home in his place. Or perhaps I was being sentimental, and the boy had won it off another in a bet.

  The younger lads clashed saucepan lids. Apples and nuts, missus!

  The miniature ghost cried, Go on, would you ever have an old apple or a nut for the party?

  He sounded drunk to me. (Quite plausible, since many people believed alcohol could keep the flu at bay.) I dug into my purse for a halfpenny even though he’d called me missus instead of miss.

  He blew me a phantom kiss over his shoulder.

  Clearly to a child I looked well past thirty. I thought of Delia Garrett calling me spinster. Nursing was like being under a spell: you went in very young and came out older than any span of years could make you.

  I asked myself whether I minded about tomorrow’s birthday. The real question was whether I was going to regret it if I never got married. But how could I possibly know for sure until it was too late? Which wasn’t reason enough to do it, to throw myself headlong at every half-viable prospect the way some women did. Regret seemed all too likely either way.

  When I let myself into the narrow terraced house, it smelled cold. Candle stubs burnt in jam jars.

  My brother was scratching his magpie’s glossy head at the table.

  I thought of the old rhyme for counting magpies. One for sorrow, two for joy.

  Evening, Tim.

  He nodded.

  Odd how one took conversation for granted. A ribbon held taut between two people—until it was cut.

  I mentioned too perkily: Rather a red-letter day. Sister Finnigan was needed up in Maternity, so yours truly found herself promoted to acting ward sister.

  Tim’s eyebrows jogged up and down.

  I had an awful habit of making up for my brother’s lack of chatter by doubling my own. I put my bag down and peeled off my coat and cape. The trick was not to ask questions, or only safe ones to which I could guess the answers. How’s your bird?

  (I didn’t know if he’d given it a name in his head.)

  Tim didn’t meet my eyes very often, but he could manage a half smile.

  In the summer he’d found the enormous creature in the alley, grounded by a banjaxed leg. He’d bought it a rusty rabbit hutch to roost in and kept the door tied open with a piece of string so it could come and go as it pleased. Its sheeny green tail was always knocking things over. The magpie also did its business wherever it liked, and whenever I complained it was a menace, Tim pretended not to hear.

  I’d been looking forward to something hot tonight, but clearly the gas was off. What about the water? I tried the tap—only a dribble. Damn and blast it!

  It was a luxury to let myself curse off shift. To shed the guise of Nurse Power and be Julia.

  Tim had a saucepan still hot on the Primus stove; he lit the kerosene flame to bring the water back to the boil for tea. I pushed aside the notebook that was always on the kitchen table for writing notes. Mine were frequent and chatty; Tim’s rare and sparse. (Whatever was locking his throat had the same grip on his writing hand.)

  I remarked into the silence, Awfully busy today. I lost one patient, from convulsions.

  Tim shook his head in sympathy. He tugged at the touchwood charm on its chain around his neck as if wishing protection for me.

  The week he’d joined up I’d given him the creepy charm half in jest—an imp with a swollen head of oak and an attenuated brass body. Some soldiers called it a fumsup because of the two thumbs perpetually turned up, for luck, on the tiny arms that went up and down. The only features left on Tim’s touchwood were two staring eyes; I supposed the rest of its face had been rubbed away by his fretful thumb. I thought of Honor White with her holy beads doubled around her wrist; it wasn’t just servicemen who clung to amulets.

  I added, But it could have gone very much worse, really.

  I’d have liked to tell Tim about the odd redhead who’d helped me today. But an uneduc
ated girl with cracked shoes, raised in a home, lodging at a convent—Bridie might sound as if she were the opening line of a joke. I couldn’t seem to find words for her.

  Tim took saucepan lids off two plates and set them down at our places.

  He’d waited all this long dark evening to eat tepid food with his big sister. But he didn’t care for gush, so all I said was Oh, Tim, you’ve outdone yourself. Runner beans!

  Another faint smile.

  Before the war my brother had been rather more quick-witted and chipper than I. Like Bridie, actually—a real spark to him.

  So you must have been at the allotment today.

  (We had only an eighth of an acre, but Tim worked wonders.)

  Potatoes were as scarce as gold nuggets. Tonight’s ones were perfect dimpled globes, the size of acorns. Barely boiled, skin still crisp to the teeth.

  I had a qualm. It’s wasteful not to leave them in the ground till they’re bigger, though, isn’t it?

  My brother shrugged grandly.

  There were onions too, of course; we had them coming out our ears. (The government would approve.) The lettuce was holed with a few slug bites but tasted ever so alive.

  And look at this, celery! They’ve started selling it as a nerve cure, would you believe?

  I thought that might amuse Tim. But his face stayed blank. Maybe the notion of shattered nerves hit too close to the bone.

  At the military hospital, they’d called it war neurosis. It could take a bewildering variety of forms, and even civilians got it; there was that Englishwoman who’d lost her mind in an air raid and decapitated her child.

  They’d dosed Tim with chloral to prevent the nightmares, or at least to make him forget the details when he woke up groggy; it gave him a perpetually queasy stomach. Massages to soothe, walks to invigorate, hypnosis to get my brother’s mind back on track; lessons in brush-making, carpentry, boot repair to make him useful.

  Tim had been discharged after a few months since he was fairly able compared to so many others. The psychologist had admitted he could do nothing for the speechlessness, and they needed the bed. The prescription was rest, nourishment, and congenial occupation.

  I’d weaned Tim very gradually off the sedative. These days he was less jumpy, though he still couldn’t stand crowds. Rather more able to eat, especially if I ate with him. I just had to trust that quiet and pottering about—gardening, shopping, cooking, cleaning, tending his magpie—would mend him in time.

  Anything come in the post this morning?

  My brother shook his head and made a gesture with his hands.

  I didn’t follow.

  Pointing into the hall, he shook his head again, almost crossly.

  Never mind, Tim.

  He was scraping back his chair and tugging out the table’s shallow drawer, the one that always stuck.

  It doesn’t matter, really.

  I couldn’t bear it when Tim had to grab the notebook to make himself understood to me, the nearest thing to a mammy he’d ever had; it made me feel we were thousands of miles apart.

  He slid his jagged handwriting over so I could read: Temporary suspension.

  Of the post? Oh, of delivery, I see. I suppose they’ve too many off sick at the sorting office. I added ruefully, At the hospital we’d never be allowed a suspension of service, not even for a day. Ours are the gates that can’t close.

  I wondered how long it would take me to remember not to ask Tim whether any post had come that day. How many weeks before I stopped missing it? This was how civilization might grind to a halt, one rusted-up cog at a time.

  I remarked: I ran into some lads dressed up and going around the houses. I’ve been wracking my brains—what was it the old ones used to sprinkle on us at Halloween to ward off the spells of the little people?

  Tim held up the little glass cruet.

  Salt! That was it.

  I took it from him, reminiscent. I shook a little into my hand and half solemnly touched a pinch to my forehead and another to Tim’s.

  He flinched at my touch, but bore it.

  I was so glad Tim had had the flu already—the week before me, and just as mildly. Otherwise I’d be watching him every morning, every night. I’d feared losing my brother for years on end, and then he’d been returned to me, changed utterly; I couldn’t endure the idea of having what was left taken now.

  The jam-jar candles were guttering in their puddles. Tim rolled a meagre, meticulous cigarette.

  Can I’ve one?

  He slid it over and started another for himself.

  We took our time smoking them. I thought of the lore veterans brought back from the front with their fags: Never be the third to light up from a single match. Was that simply good sense, because of the likelihood of the flare catching a sniper’s eye in the dark if it shone out for more than a second? Or was the rule really about preserving the magic circle of friendship, two chums hunkered over a brief flame?

  I remembered the photograph that hung a little askew over Tim’s bureau upstairs, him and his pal Liam with arms slung around each other’s neck; laughing boys showing off their battalion’s smart kit the day they’d first put it on. His uniform with its solitary pip on the shoulder hung in the wardrobe now. His character certificate in the back of a drawer, a printed form with his specifics filled in by hand:

  The ex-soldier named above has served with the Colours for two years, three hundred and forty-seven days, and his character during this period has been good.

  My brother stubbed out his cigarette and went into the pantry.

  His shillelagh was leaning against the wall, stains on its thick knob. Tim used the club to cudgel the occasional rat that ventured into our pantry; he’d had no mercy on them ever since the trenches.

  He came back with a barmbrack, dark brown and glossy.

  Where did you get hold of this?

  My question was rhetorical, mock outraged. No doubt it was from the old one up the lane, known for her apple pies.

  Shall I be mother?

  I cut into the brack’s still faintly warm middle. I set out thick slices on Tim’s plate and on mine, the dried fruits pebbling the pale bread. So fresh it didn’t need toasting or buttering. Bet I get the coin, for riches.

  Tim nodded seriously, as if taking my wager.

  I bit into it. White wheat flour, not eked out with anything. The tang of fresh tea plumping up each sultana. I mumbled, That’s only gorgeous.

  I wondered what it had cost. Still, Tim took care we never ran short before the end of the week.

  My brother’s eyes were on the kitchen wall, or something past it. What could he not help but see?

  I bit into a hard lump. Oh!

  I unwrapped its waxed paper. (Reminded, for a split second, of parcelling up the stillborn Garrett.) It was the ring, its gold paint rubbing off already.

  I boasted, very blasé: Married within the year, so.

  Tim gave me a slow clap.

  You haven’t found a charm in your slice yet?

  He shook his head and nibbled on. As if it were a duty, that was how he ate now, with a hint of dread, as if the food might turn to ashes in his mouth.

  There was a time I’d have been thrilled by winning the tin ring, would’ve half believed its promise, even.

  Enjoy your brack, I told myself.

  The second time I bit into a minute packet, I nearly swallowed it. Another charm!

  Even before I got the paper off I could tell by the shape. The thimble. I put it on my little finger and held it up, forcing a grin. What do you make of that, then, Tim? Bride and spinster in the one year, according to the brack. Just goes to show it’s all a pack of nonsense.

  Thinking that maybe we were indeed the sport of the stars. With their invisible silks, they tugged us this way and that.

  One candle was drowning now. Tim snuffed it between finger and thumb, blew, snuffed it again to be sure.

  I was suddenly so overcome with tiredness, my head swam.

  Go
od night, Tim.

  I left my brother in the kitchen with the other candle, stroking his bird. I didn’t know when he slept these days. He was always up later than me, and earlier. Did he still have nightmares? If he got no sleep at all, surely he’d have collapsed by now. So if he kept getting up every morning, I supposed that was a good sign and should be enough for me.

  I went up in the dark, bewildered with drowsiness.

  Morbidly I dwelled on what might have happened if Bridie Sweeney hadn’t been sent to my aid today, arriving out of nowhere, like a visitation. At some point, would I have thrown down my apron and howled that this job was beyond my powers? More likely, would I have failed to save Delia Garrett from the red tide?

  I stumbled on the loose runner and almost fell, had to brace myself against the seam of the wallpaper.

  Enough, Julia, I told myself. Time for bed.

  III

  Blue

  I SLEPT AND DREAMT that life was beauty. Stuck in my head, a tag from an old song. I slept and dreamt that life was beauty. And then I woke—

  Then I woke—

  The jangling alarm clock had roused me from sleep. I slapped down its knob and chivvied myself: Up you get.

  My legs paid no attention. Those strings that connected handler to puppet seemed cut, or at least tangled.

  I tried persuasion, telling myself that Tim would have the tea wetted for us already.

  I tried castigation. Mary O’Rahilly, Honor White, Delia Garrett—they all needed me. As Sister Finnigan had drilled into us: Patient first, hospital next, self last.

  The song was still bothering me. I slept and dreamt that life was beauty. Then I woke up and—

  I was thinking about Bridie with the fuzzy bronze halo. I’d never thought to ask last night whether she meant to come back again. It could be that her first day had scared her off hospitals for life.