‘Not wife, God forbid. I am a maiden woman. I am his sister-in-law. But, we are close-knit.’
Why do I say God forbid, when in truth ... No matter. She is only looking for information, she is writing it down now on a card, sister-in-law ...
‘And his true wife, where is she?’
What does that mean, true wife?
‘She is dead, Nurse, she is no more.’
‘And what was her name?’
‘Maud, it was.’
‘And your own?’
‘It is Annie Dunne.’
‘And his nearest relative would be then?’
‘His son, Tim, but he is in Spain. Then there is his son Trevor, but he is in England. He has brothers, but some of them are dead, and he has a ... he does not go home to Cork where he comes from, I don’t know why ...’
‘Oh, well,’ she says, brightly, quite fed up with such complications. ‘Well, so, you must do as next of kin, if we had to, you know, operate, or the like.’
‘I think I would do.’
‘Well, sure his eyes are open. He is not unconscious. Go in and have a gander, Annie.’
‘Thank you, I will.’
And off goes her small person, her scrunched-up buttocks heaving about in the uniform as she disappears into the ancient shadows of the corridor. It was in the last room, behind the last door, that my father lay. In that time there was a ward close by with the madwomen of the district strapped to the beds, and when my father cried out in the nights with mournful horrors, he would set off the great long rows of grandmothers and mothers and aunts, wailing and caterwauling. It was a terrible, accusing sound, the sound of our refuse, as one might say, and our failure of love. His solo sorrow, their dark choir of pain. Now such unwanted women are in the new mental asylum in Carlow, still in their rows, but the beds and walls are new. God keep Sarah and me from such drastic fates.
I peep into Matt’s quarters. It is a shock to see him. His face is blotchy and streaked. They have not washed the mud off him, which may well be the mere mud attaching in a usual, daily fashion to Mick Cullen, who is after all, a digger of drains. Which is why Sarah Cullen always says, no relation.
I think it is that even the sunlight here is old, comes from another time through the exhausted windows. It lies anyhow at the foot of Matt’s bed. He looks like a saint of old, some hardy creature washed up there, a worn-out boxer or the like, perhaps a victorious boxer half destroyed by his own victory. Well, he looks resplendent enough. His eyes are indeed open, but he holds his head still, he sees me there but does not move that head. Even from the door I can see the swollen neck. It is angry and red. But a blackthorn is a bad thorn, as anyone knows, when it sticks in a person’s hand it lends a severe ache long after it is pulled out.
How do I know it was a blackthorn? Well I know it. He was eating his bread and cheese.
I approach his bed, contrite and smiling. He tries to give a small nod of greeting, but immediately his eyes scrunch up with pain.
‘Don’t move yourself, Matt,’ I say, ‘don’t trouble yourself. I am sorry to see you like this. The nurse says you will quickly mend.’
But of course he cannot reply. There is an unworthy feeling in me now, a kind of petty triumph. I could do him harm now. I could dispatch him from life in this weakened state. Of course I do not want to, he is too dear to me, to the children, to the memory of Maud. But and, I could. That is the point.
But I cast that thought from my mind. I must not think thoughts in that manner. And why ever do I think such thoughts? I am already responsible, though I hope innocently, for his present predicament.
It will have been my butter he brought for his sandwich, the wrap of butter I gave him in friendship, with the thorn off a blackthorn tree in it, to keep it fresh.
Did I tell him there would be a thorn in the butter? I do not think so, and him in truth a city man, and so not expecting such an item.
God forgive me, he may think I was trying to murder him, if ever he finds out.
Into my mind, I know not why, swims the picture of Cupid with his bow. But the thorn of a blackthorn bush is a poor dart for such a purpose.
Maybe I meant to kill him. Maybe there is a darkness in me, that meant to do him harm, without me even knowing. I shiver in this possibility of evil, I shiver. The more I think it, the more true I feel it. Guilt grips me, guilt grips me, and then suddenly I laugh, laugh at myself and my terrible notions. I have no wish to kill Matt. And he will not know about butter and thorns. It will remain a mystery, it will, mercifully.
Oh, I am laughing like a hag at his bedside. His eyes open wider, questioning maybe. But I have no answers to his questions, no grist for his mill, for the mills of the world grind everything exceedingly small and rough. No verse for his chapter, no path for his woods.
They put me that night into my father’s old room. It is a strange coincidence. No other room can take me, and otherwise I would be sitting on a hard chair in the corridor. I tell myself it will be no worse than spending a night at Lathaleer, that a living person must not fear the dead, especially if the dead was close and precious to her heart.
And I sleep a clear and restful night. I wonder at the accident that has brought me there. For what purpose? Such peace, such rest. No dreams, no frighting thoughts. It is very strange. Though I fear the room greatly as I enter, they have painted the old yellow walls with a fresh, buttery colour, there are a few coals burning in the once famished grate, and the iron bed that was his raft of dreams is gone, replaced by a spanking new thing of shining chrome. The sheets, which in his day were speckled by mildews and filth, are Belfast quality and well starched. The atmosphere of the room has been allayed, removed. It is just a place, a new place. His ghost is gone.
And yet in another way I feel his ghost, benign and loving, fatherly and kind. I have lain on the bed and looked at the ceiling that he looked at, in the watches of his last days. And there is no terror. I think it is that he has wrapped me round all that night. His released soul watches over me, his ageing daughter. In that place where I thought I witnessed only horror, perhaps I was in some manner mistaken. Maybe it was not horror I was looking at, all those years ago, twenty-five years and more, a man stripped of all uniforms and honours, duties and family, even kings and country. Maybe the horror was only in me, as I gazed on my fallen father. For his ghost, if ghost it is that lets me sleep, sleep finer than for many a year, is benign and calm.
Maybe now I think it was not horror after all that I was looking at, in those fled days, but courage.
I wake in the morning, feeling clear, clearer than for many a year. The day itself is clear, fresh and bright. The old building in its dress of stones is already warm, taking its general temperature from the summer, like the sea. All is silence, dustlessness and neatness. The little nurse is back on duty, prim and peachy. Matt’s throat has subsided in the small hours, giving him respite. The look of worry has gone from the nurse, the look of pain has gone from Matt.
‘We will let him home by evening time tomorrow,’ says the little nurse. It is an aftermath. Peaceful birdsong on the battlefield.
I want to tell Matt about Billy Kerr, but I do not think his condition allows it. I know he would be scandalized by such intentions. He is a highly moral man. He would go and take Billy Kerr by the scruff of the neck, and ... But then they are friends, so perhaps I should not be so sure. I am sure and certain of very little, truth to tell. I want to recruit Matt to my cause, but suddenly there is doubt in me that he would readily enlist. He is recently married for the second time himself, a thing some Catholic widowers will not do, though he has chosen in his Anna a woman the same age as himself. There he is a-bed, the twice-married man. But where are his wives now? Who has cared for him? Ah, yes.
‘I will get Billy Kerr to fetch you tomorrow, if you like,’ I say, lamely enough.
‘That will be grand,’ he says.
That day I spend idle in the gardens of the hospital, now and then returning in to check o
n Matt. Then I sense in myself that secret clock that says, this is long enough to leave Sarah with the children. They will have worn her out.
Matt, with rasping voice, thanks me for my night vigil. Little does he know how deep I slept, how watchless I was. And so I shake his hand, and thumb a lift for Kelsha.
In the old days, a passing cart could not easily decline to give your bum a perch. Cars sail by without a nod or wave, strangers from Carlow town maybe, from Dublin, Wicklow. There is a dejection in such matters, but I do not feel it. I am buoyant, almost, I am thinking, graceful, or at least, full of a kind of grace, bestowed upon me. High clouds rage in the upper sky, they rage with sunlight pouring down through them in yellow torrents. There may be a change in the weather coming. I know what I look like to the passing cars, an old countrywoman without trap or newfangled vehicle to her name, but I do not care. I know my worth. Yes, my father was chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, B Division, with responsibility for the Castle herself. But those days are gone, that world is no more, it did not even have a requiem. My cousin is the Bishop of Nara, but, God help those wild Africans, he does not care even for me, and would not help me in my hour of need. So let it be, as things are. I am a simple woman that shares a berth with Sarah Cullen. I work from dawn till dusk for my food and lodging. Soon I may again be homeless, hearthless, adrift. Perhaps I will be like an old woman of the roads, in the upshot, damp and wandering, with the real stars for a coverlet. Perhaps that will be my battle, what God ordains. I do not know. I am a solitary nothing, and on this morning of the world, by a ditch at the edge of Baltinglass, waiting for a friendly car, I am wonderfully happy.
I reach the farm by nightfall. The children I imagine are long a-bed. That bucket I notice is still where it was, out of place, upturned. The yard is all shadows, secretive, hiding itself in bundles and fardels of darkness. It is strange to be out so late, to come in from the countryside like a traveller, to a place so known, so loved.
Sarah is hungry for the news. I tell her all, without restraint.
‘That is very good, Annie,’ she says. ‘You have done well. And look at you, with that shining countenance. You don’t look a day over twenty.’
She is very relieved, and laughing now at her own wit.
‘Not a day,’ she says, firmly, as if I might disagree. But I am so tired now I am almost sleeping in the chair.
‘Come on,’ she says, ‘and get yourself to bed. A night in an unfamiliar room is exhausting to the spirit.’
‘I knew the room,’ I say.
‘Oh?’
‘No, it is the worry, and the walking has tired me out. I am happy enough to be tired. I will sleep tonight.’
‘It is a comfort certainly, the land of dreams.’
‘It is, Sarah, it is.’
Again I sleep the sleep of the blessed.
Chapter Fifteen
But the next day there is something nagging at the back of my mind. It is washday, so we suffer the deluge of linen and water, we scrape, we scrub, we wring, we wrestle, our arms are reddened by the waters and the soaps, scoured by the bleach. There is a beautiful drying wind blowing, we are eager to get the sheets and shifts on the drying-bushes as early as we can. By mid-afternoon we have all accomplished. Our range of bushes looks like a fleet under full sail, with little quiet cracks in the playful breezes. But that unknown something is on the tip of my tongue. The calendar in the corner of the kitchen, that Mrs Nicodemus gives us at Christmastide, says the fifth of July, but that rings no bell. I am beginning to be tormented by it.
The little girl and boy keep asking me to play with them. I am run ragged by their requests. Sometimes the adult soul cannot put itself to childish things. So for the most part of the day they are wandering about the yard. They play some game they have invented with pebbles, then they sit by the forgotten stones and tell each other elaborate stories. I notice that they are giving me now and then strange little looks, almost glowering looks. I do not understand them this day.
Sarah and myself are in the kitchen, sucking gratefully on cups of tea. I am already looking forward to bed, if I am always to sleep in this new manner, as fresh as a babe. What a weariness there is, what a drain of blood from the limbs.
‘I am so pleased Matt weathered his difficulty,’ says Sarah, suddenly, just I suppose because the thought rose in her head, made a ring of water there like the nose of a trout.
‘Matt!’ I say. ‘Oh, blessed Matt. All day I have been ... I said I would get Billy Kerr to go down for him. Oh, mercy ...’
I rouse myself. This is a foolish lapse. I do not even know if Billy Kerr will be down at the Dunnes, and Matt, I am sure, will be waiting as patient as a dog for him, and as trusting as a dog in my power of arrangements. I am vexed with myself, and fussed.
‘I will go down and tell him,’ I say.
‘Oh, Annie, after all the work we’ve been put to,’ says Sarah.
‘I must, I must.’
When I go out again, the change in the weather that yesterday seemed to predict has taken hold of the sky and the trees. The little boy is over at that upturned bucket. He has a hand under the rim and is looking in. When he sees me looking, he drops the bucket guiltily, and stands up straight, and looks at me with a startled face. I turn my head back in the door.
‘You had better take the washing in, Sarah,’ I say. ‘There seems to be a bit of rain brewing.’
‘All right, Annie. Sure they’ll be bone-dry anyhow.’
‘They will not, but, what can you do?’
The little boy has skithered away into the barn. I go over to the zinc bucket and lift it myself. Cowled with darkness inside stands Red Dandy, looking very woebegone for herself. Her little head rocks from side to side, her eyes seem to be spinning in their reddened sockets. She looks like a man that has been drinking for three days, or should I say, a ballet dancer, what with her rumpled tutu. I lift the bucket off completely.
‘What ails you, Red Dandy?’ I say. ‘Has that child done something to you?’
Then I do remember seeing the bucket in this position yesterday. How long has this poor hen been penned within? One day, two days? Without food, without light. Now she tries to walk across the yard to where the cock is strutting indifferently. He doesn’t care what horrors befall his wives. She keeps falling down and getting up, and pecks at the ground in a way that suggests her wits are addled. Hunger and darkness have undone her quite.
Now I am not only fussed, but I am fixed by an unaccustomed rage. I am fierce to go and find the boy and accuse him, but first I must find him. Red Dandy is - could I call her my dowry, part of my dowry, that I brought to Sarah when I came so I would not come with nothing? The little boy must understand what he has done. Oh, another little voice says, calm yourself, Annie, calm and ease, calm and ease, but I do not heed it.
The little boy is cowering in the barn. I have never seen him cower before. It is as sure a proof of guilt as I could ask for. God forgive me, but I pull him to me by the arm, and give his backside a firm slap. I slap it again, and then once more. He wriggles in my grasp, but the second time he does not move at all, he stands quite still, and my hand hits his backside without resistance. He stares at me with his brown eyes. I have never hit him before in my life. Suddenly it is like a dream, a nightmare. I am so horrified at myself that my anger redoubles and kindles and flares. I am thinking, but he deserves it. He has been ugly and filthy with his sister! Licking, licking, and kneeling! I am afraid now I will kill him, so I step back and raise myself above him impressively.
‘Why did you do that, you horrible little boy? Why did you do that?’
‘I didn’t!‘ he says.
Now his sister appears from nowhere, the nowhere that children spend so much of their day in, forgotten by the grown-ups and unseen.
‘Don’t hit that boy!’ she says.
‘You be quiet now, girl, or you’ll get the same. He has put the bucket on Red Dandy and she is mad in the head now from that ordeal.
How could you torture a creature so? You are evil and cruel! You are doing things with your sister that no one in the world could understand! You are disgusting!’
Even in my rage I am thinking, what are you saying, what are you saying?
‘I am not! I did not! I did not put the bucket on Red Dandy! I found him under the bucket!’
‘You did not find him under the bucket! You put her there!’
‘I did not! I thought he lived there!’
‘First the fire engine, and now the hen!’
‘You put my new fire engine in the filthy muck, Auntie Anne. I hate you, I hate you!’
‘So, you hate me!’ And I grab his arm again. ‘So, you hate me!’ Hot scalding tears pour down my face, his face is dry and red. ‘So you talk about oranges in secret and you hate me! It is horrible, all horrible. It is not like children and childhood! Where is your innocence, oh, where is your innocence?’ The little girl is pulling on my polka-dot apron.
‘Stop,’ she says, ‘stop! You’re like Daddy, you’re like Daddy Stop, stop!’
‘Daddy will eat you!’ cries the boy.
‘You put the bucket on Red Dandy, didn’t you, because I put the fire engine in the dunghill! Oh, and I thought you had been generous about it, but you were easy and going about happy-seeming, because you had taken your revenge! You had done something bad, bad! Isn’t that it? Isn’t that it? I will beat you! I will beat you till you tell me!’
But the little girl takes action then, she kicks me on the shins with all her strength. It is astonishingly sore. I drop the little boy’s arm. He races away along the lane between the barn and the horse byre.
‘I have no time to deal with this now,’ I shout after him. ‘And your poor grandfather in the hospital!’
So I flounce myself out of the yard and down the track. For as long as I can I try to preserve my anger, because behind the anger there is something much worse than it - the knowledge of what I have done. The children are in my care, and I have let the exhaustion of the work, of Matt, of the whole summer of Billy Kerr’s intrigues, loose me from my habitual nature, and become for those moments a mere savage heart. Even under the wall of O‘Toole’s farm, I am deep in remorse. Oh, I will make it up to them now when I return. I will go into Mrs Nicodemus and buy some mighty sweets. I will, I will. God allow them to forgive me.