The Nightside of the Country

by Meaghan Delahunt

  The Man from HR lets his guard down for a second: Do you really think that?

  I do, you are adamant. Of course I do. That’s exactly what I think. This has repercussions for everyone. Those he abused and those he encouraged…no-one comes out of this unscathed. You pause for effect. It’s much bigger than you think.

  The Man from HR takes a deep breath, then comes back fighting. He is back on track. He moves the conversation away from the subject of X and back to you and the damage you’ve done to the good name of The Institution.

  What you’ve written is actionable. His tone is harsh. We will not hesitate, but…he cajoles again, You could help us so much if you’d only give us an idea, a ball-park figure of how many we’re talking about…you would help so many other women…

  Let’s face it, you interrupt. You’re not concerned with the women. You’re only concerned with The Institution. You’re only concerned with reputation. And The Institution did not provide a safe space. For women students or teachers…

  He feigns hurt: I’m offended that you could even say that…

  Why are you ringing me then?

  Ugh! I thought I was dealing with a reasonable person… [we’re back to that, you think] and I’m not at all concerned with reputation, but I’m concerned with my department, you’ve hurt my people…

  I had no intention to hurt anyone, you say.

  Aha, he says, as if he’s forced a great admission. I’m very glad to hear it.

  So, you sigh, exhausted, looking up at your partner, who’s been sitting on the stairs all this time, silently giving you support. What is it you want from me?

  We want you to retract the statements.

  Which statements? You think he wants you to pull the whole thing.

  He outlines exactly which statements. It amounts to a third of the essay.

  You pause. The essay now makes little sense. Is that it?

  Yes, he says grudgingly. That’s it.

  Your partner passes you another note: Get it in writing.

  I’ll need that in writing, you say.

  Fine, he says. Then threatens once more: But if this isn’t done quickly, and word gets out, if other media get hold of it…we will see you in court…

  I’ll do my best, you say.

  Then the line goes dead. The Man from HR hangs up.

  He does not say goodbye. He does not thank you for your co-operation. He does not thank you for being a reasonable person. You are shaking at the end of the call, and very upset. Your partner hugs you. You are tearful.

  It was a fucking interrogation, you tell him. The Institution shovelling their way out…

  He tries to tell you that you did well, that you held your own, that it will all be OK.

  But you sit there in shock. Jesus, The Man from HR threatened to take you to court. Tried to shift the blame for X on to you. Made you out to be the problem. He wanted your sources. He wanted you to tell him everything. Told you that you were making it worse for women. And now, to save yourself, you have to eviscerate your own work.

  So. This is what happens when a woman steps forward. There’s always at least one man to block her path, and a driver will always have an accomplice. Who will be his accomplice? You press yourself back against the wall and adopt the brace position.

  ✳

  6

  It’s the morning after the exchange with The Man from HR. You wake up late, dark under the eyes, a weight on your chest; still reeling from the threat of legal action. You decide to reach out for support. To alert former colleagues. And so, on Tuesday 5 December 2017 at 11.42am you send a short email to The Professor hoping for solidarity:

  Yesterday, I was threatened with litigation and made to delete a third of the essay. I now understand the full meaning of Institutional Force.

  Ten minutes later, The Professor responds:

  No surprise there. What the hell did you expect? This was bound to happen. Of course it was. There was never anything in writing, never a formal complaint. It was nothing but hearsay. You brought this on yourself…you’ve made this more difficult for everyone concerned…

  Five minutes pass. You look at the clock. You write to The Professor:

  Interesting. How easy it is to blame the woman. In this case, me.

  Nine minutes later, The Professor strikes back:

  Of course I blame you. The piece was foolhardy and irresponsible. But no, that’s not the story here. Play the victim card if you must – but this has nothing to do with you being a woman. As my wife and daughters and anyone who knows me will attest – I support women 100 per cent. Sometimes we just fuck up when we’re too involved, too passionate and angry. And you fucked up, big time.

  The tenor of this email comes as a shock. The Professor is angry. He is angry with you! And so you quickly rake through all the text and email exchanges with The Professor over the weeks preceding the essay. A pattern emerges: a man in my position, etc…you can understand how important it is for me to get this right, etc…if women and men can’t trust each other, etc…men like me have to be particularly careful etc…etc…etc… The anxieties over status and reputation now seem neon-lit. How could you’ve missed it all? His anxieties over what you or any other woman might say about what happened and how this would reflect on The Institution, but more importantly, on himself. Strange and sad and so predictable: how a story about women and harassment, becomes in his mind, actually all about him.

  On Tuesday 5th December at 12:31pm you write back to The Professor:

  This is not about you.

  Three minutes later, The Professor responds:

  Well now. You made it sound like it was. My mistake.

  But you know that The Professor believes that you are the one who has made the mistake. Once again, it is all your fault. You read and re-read this response. You realise that The Professor has actually gone further than The Man from HR. You carefully parse what The Professor has said. Instead of accusing you of old-school hysteria he charges you with passion and anger which, in turn, has caused you to fuck up. None of this blaming of you by The Professor has anything at all to do with you being a woman. Of course not. And, naturally, you’ll have a hard time finding anyone who knows [him] to support the claim [that he is actually blaming you in a misogynist fashion].

  This is gaslighting. The term refers to situations in which someone projects blame for their actions onto you; makes you feel it is your fault; makes you feel as if something unjust or untenable is all your doing. Abusers, narcissists and dictators are renowned for using such techniques. To this rollcall we can now add The Man from HR and The Professor.

  If the Muse ever deserts him, you say to yourself, The Professor could easily get a job in HR. He could become a 21st century Eliot. Instead of versing in-between the ledgers he could verse in-between defence of The Institution. His latest student wife could be on hand to watch over him, thus ensuring that the distance always remains constant between the man who writes and the man who suffers .

  This is the last exchange you have with The Professor and it’s the last you ever plan to have with him. You now realise that The Professor is not one to have your back. In fact, he never was. Of all the people you have spoken to on this matter – former students and staff – he is the one most concerned with himself. To be honest, you never could completely trust The Professor and the culture he represents. In the wake of the allegations against X, in this Time of the Felled Men, little has changed at The Institution. You know this. The Professor knows this. The Man from HR knows this. They just don’t want anyone else to know.

  Unfortunately, all of this has exacted a toll. The fact that you’re feeling threatened is, apparently, all your fault. By the afternoon of Tuesday 5 December you realise that The Man from HR and The Professor have actually spent the whole weekend salvaging the good name of The Institution and intending to throw you under a bus. X’s predatory behaviour does not register. This whole sequence of events: The Fall of W, the triggering of your own past; the ess
ays, the threat of litigation from HR and now this blaming by The Professor prove to be too much for you.

  You now understand that your so-called mistake was to write anything at all.

  As Rebecca Solnit notes: Every woman who appears wrestles with forces that would have her disappear.

  You start to feel this truth deep in your bones, a deep ache as if you have a virus. You feel shaky, tearful, you cannot stop. Your nervous system is under assault. You do indeed get the flu and then lose your voice completely. All the feelings stirred since The Fall of W, since The Time of the Felled Men began, now cohere. All your passion and anger tips over into some kind of collapse. You spiral into self-doubt: you’ve brought it all on yourself. The two short essays that you’ve written: it is all your fault. As The Man from HR said, and as The Professor implied: You’ve made it worse for women. You’ve made it all worse.

  You lie in bed, feeling sore in all the places from decades before. The grip at the throat; the headaches. The nightmares start up. Again, you lie there thinking that perhaps you should’ve just done what all these men wanted in the first place. You should’ve just shut the fuck up. You’ve been too open, too idealistic. From now on you need to protect yourself more: from now on, there is only one sensible course of action. To step back. To shut up. To go quiet. This is obviously what you must do. But almost as soon as this thought scythes through, it passes, and in the midst of this very dark night a new thought takes hold: it’s too late to turn back, there’s no point to your silence, you must keep going.

  You realise there’s nothing for it but to write your way out.

  Already, in the small hours, even before it has begun, you practise saying what will have to be said. You address W and X, The Man from HR and The Professor and all the men they represent; a phalanx of men down the years: in large letters, you write across two whole pages:

  Fuck you. Get your boot off my neck.

  ✳

  7

  In the aftermath of writing about X, you’re wired and drained, simultaneously. You suddenly feel very, very tired, as if you could sleep for a thousand years. The pressure to escape builds and builds. This Time of the Felled Men is taking its time; perhaps all change is like this; perhaps everyone feels exhausted in this moment. You need to recuperate; to gather the shards of yourself. You need to go away and write something else, because the old words, the old ways, are no longer enough.

  You confide in a fellow writer about what’s happened to you these past months. She knows about The Institution and The Man from HR. Now you tell her about The Professor. She goes quiet. The Professor is a good friend of hers. He is also her publisher. When she next contacts you, she does not offer comfort, she makes no reference to what you’ve told her about her friend and publisher, The Professor. Instead, she asks, Why did you feel the need to write about all this?

  You take heart where you can find it. You curl up inside this quote from Ursula Le Guin:

  In our society, women have lived and have been despised for living…the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers’ tales about it, we haven’t got there yet. We’re never going to get there by imitating [him]. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country.

  In order to get through this particular night, you need a shelter. You need a bolthole. A retreat, you think: there’s that island and the guesthouse owned by nuns. A retreat. The word itself soothes. Perhaps there? All that has happened these past months, your mind starts to wend a dark course. If you stay put here, in the everyday, that dark course will claim you. You could find yourself drowned in the dark. You close your eyes. And then it comes. In your mind’s eye, there’s a woman carrying a stick; two stones in her pocket; she is both fugitive and pilgrim. You know this woman, but you don’t know her well. She has an arrow-sling of words over her shoulder. You watch as she stands and takes aim; her shadow lengthens. You watch as the arrow quivers in the bow.

  ✳

  II

  8

  When you first get a clear sight of the woman, she’s a passenger on the boat, like you, and there is something about her, something familiar. You watch her adjust her sunglasses and sigh and look out at the grey sea. You’re drawn to her. There’s also something about her hair – something not quite right – you think she might be wearing a wig, but you can’t be sure. You’re wearing identical sunglasses, you note, although the day is not bright. In fact, the day clouds over, the haar descends; it feels colder the closer you get to the shore.

  On this island in the guesthouse – The House of the Holy Trinity – you see the woman again. You smile at each other and nod. You take off your sunglasses but she keeps hers on. You wonder at this. And then there’s the question of the hair. Is the woman ill? Is there some problem? Is she in disguise? All these questions. Already, you’re involved in her story. Already there’s a story you step into. You stand in the guesthouse hallway, one foot on the bench beneath the crucifix and the framed picture of the Sacred Heart, pulling on your boots, preparing to walk over the wet machair. As you straighten up, you look into the hall mirror. But it’s actually not a mirror. It is this woman, right in front of you. Her sunglasses in her hand. There’s something about her eyes, her face, the shape of her mouth. You put out a hand to steady yourself. She also extends a hand.

  Tell me the story of a complicated woman, she says.

  You think you’ve misheard. You take a step back. Sorry? Has she just said what you think she’s said?

  A complicated woman, she repeats, smiling, her hand still extended.

  We’re all complicated, you counter, also smiling, shaking her hand.

  But a woman. She insists.

  You shrug, a little uncomfortable, gaze out the open door to the sea, searching for a response.

  You are a writer, aren’t you?

  Well… You wonder how she knows this.

  Well, then, she says, smiling, as if it’s all decided.

  And this is how it begins.

  ✳

  9

  On the first night you both stay up late in the dining room of the guesthouse, the House of the Holy Trinity, a retreat on this island where the Saint once landed. You don’t like whisky but she does, and so you join her with a glass of wine.

  You know each other only by your initials.

  I’m B, she says.

  M, you smile.

  Is this how it’s going to be? you ask. From now on?

  Yes, she says. Initials only. She pauses to take a sip of her Laphroaig. Then leans back, eyes shut. Ahhh, she sighs. That’s good.

  You think she sounds Irish, not Scottish, but you can’t be certain. You can’t be certain of anything at this moment. She may have inserted an extra vowel into whiskey, you’d need to see her write it down, but, then again…your mind runs off to another green country; riffs on the spelling. You drag yourself back. It’s too strong for me, you say, pointing to her whisky or perhaps whiskey glass. But this, now… taking a sip of your wine you ease back into the armchair, as if you were a man in a boardroom. This is good, you say. You feel at home with this woman. You feel comfortable, happy, as if you’ve known her a long time.

  To us, she says, looking at you direct as she clinks glasses. Sláinte.

  Sláinte, you respond, meeting her gaze.

  And now, tell me – she leans in – what exactly brings ye here? To such a thin place?

  A thin place?

  That’s what we say, she shrugs. Where I’m from.

  And where is that? you ask. Once again, you try to locate her.

  I’ve lived here and there, she says, a little evasive. But I was born in the Old Country. Let’s leave it at that. She smooths her hair with one hand, her hair which may or may not be her own. You try not to stare as she does this. Her accent slips between Irish, Sco
ts and something else. And at the minute, she says, I’m here. But gettin back to the thin place…she pauses for emphasis. It’s the veil between worlds, she says. To demonstrate, she holds up her thumb and middle finger and rubs them together. Nothin much in between. You can feel it. All holy places are like that…

  Oh, you say, unsure. You mean thin…as in…something you can pass through? You think you’ve got the gist now, so you warm to it and continue: Like between what’s real and what’s not?

  Well…she shrugs, and you sense she’s not quite satisfied with this. She puts down her drink. Here’s the thing, she pauses. It’s all real. She slides you a look. It’s all one story, is the fact-of-the-matter. And not to forget that time bends in a thin place…

  I think I’ve got it, you say, conscious that it could be the wine talking. Here, well, everyone can feel… It’s special… so quiet, you hold up your glass in appreciation, gesture out the picture window, down to the rocky shore. There’s no cars, no noise…apart from the birds and the waves and the pilgrims with their sticks…

  She nods, her eyes drawn to the window. But we both know it’s more than that. With you bein a writer and all…

  Ha, you give a short laugh. You’ve not been able to write for months. You think I’m a writer?

  Of course you are. That notebook, that pen.

  Are you still a writer? Then you remember – on the crossing over, you’d taken out the notebook, opened a page, got out the pen, like you always do, actions as natural as breathing. It was a new notebook for a new journey, a new start…

  But, you protest. Lots of people have notebooks, pens…