Average Sunday Afternoon
by Pat Jourdan
Copyright 2012 Pat Jourdan
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording
or any information storage or retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Pat Jourdan is hereby identified as the author
of this work in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
Cover photograph The Jes, Sea Road, 2004, by Pat Jourdan
Acknowledgements
“Average Sunday Afternoon” was first published in Gentle Reader.
“Miss Havisham Reconstructed” was published in West 47 Magazine and online at Virtual Writer, Co .Longford.
“The End of Father” was a prize-winner in Quality Women’s Fiction.
“Two Days in May” was published in the Dunlavin Festival Magazine.
Also by Pat Jourdan
Poetry
The Bedsit Girl - Magpie Press
The Bedsit - Motet 2002
Turpentine - Motet 2004
Anthology 1 - Ainnir Publishing 2004
Liverpool Poets - erbacce-press 2008
The Cast-Iron Shore - erbacce-press 2008
Citizeness - Motet 2011
Short Stories
Average Sunday Afternoon- Poetry Monthly
Taking the Field -Linen Hall Belfast
Rainy Pavements -Diggory Press
Novel
Finding Out -YouWriteOn
Table of Contents
Average Sunday Afternoon
Darling
Fallen Image
Miss Havisham Reconstructed
Off the Land
Revenge
Tell Me About Yourself
The End of Father
The Man Who Went Further Away
Two Days in May
Average Sunday Afternoon
Going to Sunday Benediction in summer meant having to root through the sideboard drawers to find the summer crochet gloves. They were a light blue silk and looked quite interesting once on, although they felt scratchy and made it difficult to pick up anything. But as the only thing needed was the prayer-book with the white plastic-covered prayer book saved for these afternoons, and some money, it was not a real difficulty.
Even on hot days the light blue coat was the only one to wear, remembering all the time that a photo of the very same coat had been in a copy of Vogue from the shiploads that Uncle Brendan brought home from the liners once they had docked at the Pier Head. By the time Helen had turned the corner of Maryland Street, she had become Princess Elizabeth herself, going to some service, clutching the same prayer-book, though it would be the Protestant version. There was a photo in her mother’s scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about the Royal family with this same picture, with Princess Margaret just behind, a blur.
Past the corner by the presbytery she met Miss Lamb. True to her name, in this sunlight she wore a brown Persian lamb coat, all tight frizzy little curls, like her own hair. Behind the gold-rimmed round spectacles little blue eyes darted from one side to the other. She stopped Helen immediately, clasping her arm and began this rapid looking, first into one of Helen’s eyes, then the other as if searching for a secret.
“You’re a good girl to be going to Benediction on a nice day like this. There’s many wouldn’t bother.”
Helen would not tell Miss Lamb that there was not much else available at home except reading the Complete Works of Charles Dickens, and even that would have to be done in a clandestine fashion as they were in the massive bookcase in Aunty Cath’s part of the house and considered out of bounds. But Helen had got into the way of sidling in there when Aunty Cath went off to Widnes every Sunday afternoon. Surely at some time she had asked, or Cath had said she could if she was interested? Whatever the reason, Miss Lamb was not to be told any of this, for the family’s sake. Everyone must think that they all had so many things to do, such an exciting weekend, that to go to 3 o’clock benediction was a great sacrifice.
Miss Lamb gripped her arm even tighter.
“You’re different. You’ve got the second sight, you have indeed. You know more than you realise.” And off she went, the frizzy coat gleaming here and there in the sunlight. Dried leaves blew along Blackburne Place.
Hardly anyone was in church. Usually the congregation was a score of children with some parents but today it was only half a dozen. The ceremony was threadbare and not enough of them knew how to sing the TantumErgo – the organist was on holiday so there was no extra music in the background to cover the gaps. But the monstrance was as magnificent as ever, its gold lines dashing outwards from the central tiny white host. The Sanctus bell tinkled again and again. It was amazing that so much drama and tension could come from such a silly sound. Tring. Tring-a-ling. It rattled merrily.
The little group meandered out of St Philip’s. As Helen was going down the aisle, under the choir gallery, the priest stopped her.
“Just a minute, now, Helen, I would like a word with you, one moment.” He looked at her seriously. “There’s a couple arrived for a baptism with no sponsors for their baby, and so I’ve asked Mr Mulhearn (a sort of gardener- handyman who loitered round the church on some unofficial basis) to be the godfather and perhaps you yourself would act as godmother.” She wanted to answer
“But I’m only 13.” Maybe the posh blue coat made her look older. It was still a bit too long.
Father Gardiner walked with her towards the little baptistery with its glittering mosaic-encrusted font. Two rather shabby people, with greasy hair and dark grey coats stood looking awkward by the font. The mother held a baby wrapped tightly in a shawl, the baby far too small to see, all that showed was the white silk shawl, its long shining fringe dripping downwards like a frozen waterfall.
Father Gardiner gave Mr Mulhearn and herself cards to read out the responses and they both made lifelong promises on behalf of the boy, Thomas Charles Brady. The Bradys said thank you to Helen and Mr Mulhearn, who disappeared as usual with Father Gardiner into the sacristy. They had come here to do the proper thing, even if the church was all bound up with its rules and regulations. The Bradys had just about enough money to pay for the baptism, and Helen was surprised when Mr Brady gave her a shilling as they walked out of the church together. He slipped it to her with hardly a word, just a nod and a “Thanks, Miss.”
The little family walked off towards the Rialto, the long silver-white fringe of the shawl bright against the dark buildings. Apart from a couple of mewlings when the water had been poured over his forehead, Thomas Charles Brady had hardly uttered a sound. Humble, that’s what they look like, Helen thought as she watched them go up Catherine Street.
But they might be happy. And now she had someone new to pray for, for the rest of her life, even if they never met again; she was spiritually responsible for, no, even spiritually related to him. That was what the priest meant in reading out the wedding banns “any impediment, whether of consanguinity, affinity or spiritual relationship.” She could never marry nor let her children marry these Bradys – they were already spiritually related. There were these secret networks, unseen by outsiders, but spinning further every day like a spider’s next web. And there they were, already only half an inch high in the distance as she turned the corner.
There was a welcome line of trees in Blackburne Place in front of the terrace where the presbytery hid in the shadows. These houses had huge columns either side of their doors, of black stone; even the trees were darkest green. With her blue crochet glov
es back on Helen strolled along. Getting on for four o’clock. Homework would fit in nicely before tea at half -past five. Her mother would still be in bed.
It was unclear whether the afternoon rest was something that was necessary anyway or whether it was the result of having to make Sunday dinner and all the performance that went with it, but most Sunday afternoons mother retired alone for several hours until she could hear the clatter of teacups on saucers as Helen started to set the table for tea. Father would be either in the pub or rearranging his stamp collection.
As Helen reached the end of Blackbourne Terrace the mad girl appeared, dashing up to her and clutching her arm. This was the second person this afternoon, and at almost the same spot on the pavement. The mad girl had long, bright red hair; it was wiry, like a pan-scrubber and if ironed out straight would have been well over a yard long.
“I’ve just seen Our Lady,” she said, without any preliminaries. “She was standing at the top of our stairs.” Helen, who less than an hour ago had been walking along this street being Princess Elizabeth herself, took this in her stride.
“That’s nice. Did she say anything to you?”
“No, she didn’t, that was the trouble. I was just going to ask her a favour when our dog barked, and she sort of faded away. Just like that.” She stopped and clutched harder. “Do you think she’ll come back? Do you?”
As most of their prayers were directed at Our Lady, and as of all the collection of holy beings, she did crop up here and there to all strange kinds of people, it would not be surprising that she could appear on a landing in a Liverpool terrace house. The only snag was that Our Lady usually appeared to people who were comparatively sane, and usually to religious professionals, those who went on to become saints themselves.
The mad girl was known to be mad and however good she may have been it seemed hardly likely that Our Lady would go quite so far just yet. And yet their faith said that such an occurrence was more than possible.
“I think you might be better off praying to Our Lady at the side altar back there” Helen suggested, pointing to the stark black silhouette of St Philip Neri’s against the sun. “Then if Our Lady does appear again there’ll be no dogs to disturb her and it will all sort of be in the right place.” At least then the girl would have witnesses either one way or the other – witnesses of her madness or witnesses of Our Lady standing in mid-air. The mad girl’s face broke into a smile and she clapped her hands, releasing Helen’s arm at last.
“That’s great. Me Mam would never understand. I pointed the spot out to her, but she says it’s nothing special. I’m really glad I told it all to you. Goodbye then, for now” and she swirled round and went off into the church right away.
What have I done now, Helen thought on the way back home past the Blind School. They’ll have to drag her out of church at nine o’clock when they lock the doors at night, she’ll be spending all day in there. Her mother will kill me if she finds out.
By teatime that day, unknown to her parents, Helen had become godmother to Thomas Charles Brady and part of a conspiracy with the mad girl. She hunted out the placemats and napkins from the sideboard drawer, smoothing the tablecloth across the dining-table. They would have tea early and homework could wait until later, when they came home after the evening benediction at 6.30p.m.
Darling
The cottage was isolated; I had become bored looking at passing traffic. Each time there was the promise of excitement (someone might have come to visit), but cars merely went past to somewhere else. Turning to the bookcase I flicked through nineteenth century classics. They brought back adolescent suffering – “The Mill on the Floss,” “Kim,” “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
On August Bank Holiday there would be a couple arriving to stay, their number was by the phone. The owners had asked me to look after the cottage for summer, to guard the paintings and antique furniture and look after the cats. By now the bookcase was the only interesting item left and even that had waned. The television had somehow worn itself out; I could not absorb its multi-coloured confetti evening after evening. The two cats prowled around – Picasso, who was clever, sharp, and streaked past me up to hide in the bedroom, and Minnie, fatter and calmer, who stayed out all night, strolling in at dawn.
“You’ll find they bring in dead shrews and mice and lay them out for you on the bathmat. We come down to the toilet in the morning and find half-dead mice on the bathroom floor,” the wife said proudly. By making sure the bathroom door was shut I could put a stop to this – any dead animals could be left in the kitchen. That was bad enough, surely. The owners drove off to the airport with everything settled neatly.
The new couple arrived sedately enough. I made them a cup of tea while they unpacked an amazing amount of clothes and whatnot, traipsing upstairs to the beautiful main bedroom, with its view of fields and a deserted church, marooned in cornfields. The woman produced an apron and yellow gloves for doing the washing up. This rather conflicted with what Jim had said when he had phoned to announce their coming, “It’s a special long weekend holiday for Irene, you know, a special treat.”
“Ready, dwalling!,” she called from upstairs. That was how she pronounced it. Dwalling, always dwalling. They sat and chatted to the only neighbour who ever called in, attracted by the new car. More tea all round. The sun slowly travelled across the window. The cats were out, hunting or sunbathing, or both. At 7p.m. he and she both shot up, like a jack-in-the-box, exclaiming “Oh! Time! We are going off to eat!” Irene gathered her coat, they shooed the neighbour out of the front door and Jim dashed out to the car, “A lovely little restaurant we know. Bye!”
In an instant I was left in an empty house with four cups and saucers and the remains of digestive biscuits looking up at me reproachfully. I felt lonely as I took them out to the kitchen. “Wuthering Heights” helped to pass the evening. Someone had not flushed the toilet.
The next morning I was woken at 7a.m.by loud classical music booming along the passageway and an alarm clock that took ages to stop, like a burglar alarm. I lay in bed swearing. Wild strategies of fetching the radio upstairs and switching it on full blast tomorrow at 6.30a.m., tuned to some foreign pop station or all-news network ,went through my head. But I could not sink that low. Of course, he must be used to rising early for work. Training. But now he would be just laying in bed for the extra unused time. He eventually went downstairs and had a bath while she cooked a gigantic breakfast. Bacon fumes rose upstairs, and now there were loud TV sounds. I tried to stay out of the way until 9a.m.
Perhaps a bath would restore some serenity. I collected my towel and soap. The bath was grimy, festooned with fresh scum, pubic hairs and broken-off bits of toenail. Wanting to scream and run out of the house, I forced myself to clean it out completely and run the fresh water. About noon they came back from a drive to the far-off village and she made a salad. Shreds of greenery littered every kitchen surface, strange vegetables got chopchopchopped by Irene. Jim sat and read the paper. His manner was so Victorian paterfamilias that the words “cleaning the bath” dried on my lips.
“All right, dwalling?” she called from the kitchen, as though he could not manage to read a newspaper without help. “Another five minutes, dwalling?” she semi-pleaded, chopping up onions and tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and whatever. Bits fell to the floor, ignored by the cats. There was no-where else for me to go, except to sit up in the bedroom, as I was obviously not included in the salad, nor was there any space at all at the table for me to sit. “Do you think it’s quite ripe enough, darling?” She held out a melon.
“Hmph.” He was not forthcoming, and read throughout the meal. I could see them through the window as I went off to the greenhouse to get some button tomatoes. The cats both appeared from a bank of marguerites. Shrews lived inside the greenhouse. By now I felt totally cornered and in the way. Someone had again not flushed the toilet.
That evening they went out again, as expected.
On Wednesday they le
ft. I stayed in bed reading for as long as possible, then disappeared off the mile or so up to the village shop for cereal and milk. They had gone by the time I came back.
A large pizza box blocked the fridge door. I opened it – there was a slice, as thin as a finger, left inside. Eating it with one hand, I threw the empty box into the bin with the other, to save time and space. A bashed-in quarter box of tea stood on the draining board and there was the remains of a pint of milk. The phone rang. Irene
“I just thought to give you a ring and tell you that we’ve left you some food. There’s a pizza box in the fridge, and some milk, and some tea and bread we had left over.” I had missed the bread. Sure enough. Four loose slices, lying in the bottom of the bread-bin.
“How kind of you, that’s really nice. Something to look forward to.”
“Oh good,” she answered, flattered, mollified, “It’s just a little something. We did enjoy our stay. Jim is such a darling to give me a holiday.”
I went off to the bathroom. The bath was full of pubic hairs again, the toilet needed its contribution flushing away and even the sink was full, as darling had decided to trim his beard in a last-minute celebration.
****
“I stole him from another woman, you know,” she had said proudly, while scouring out a pan that had been used for boiling potatoes, “Yes, we had to leave the district and he had to change his job.”
Scarlet women are not even scarlet any more. She had iron grey hair and it was self-cut – you just cut round from one ear to the other, and as long as it vaguely meets round the other side, it’s a haircut. Bare white legs and flat brown sandals; a faded cotton dress, unbuyable even in jumble sales. It would have to be made specially by a dressmaker from a treasured pattern, or got from the back of a 1950s wardrobe, her mother’s.
“He’s made so many sacrifices for me. I worship him.” So that meant, most definitely, no criticism of his bathroom habits. She was recruiting me to be a handmaiden too; soon we would both be strewing the front path with rosepetals and plumping up sofa cushions for him.