I am here, she thought, and not here. If I go away with James it will be a memory to save. She cast a distancing glance at a Goldflake ad and beneath it at an old man in a macintosh intent on his pint. Presumably he was relishing the mild gregariousness of this dim little pub. He had budged his chin maybe a centimetre when she and Michael came in, achieving a limited nod which neither invited conviviality nor quite precluded it.
She raised her second drink: ‘Here’s happiness,’ she said.
‘I’m not drinking to that.’ Michael looked ready to commit some form of violence.
‘Oh?’
The old man in the mac had his ear cocked; pleasantly alerted to drama, he bent his head as though concentrating on the foam of his pint then, unable perhaps to contain his elation, blew lightly into it. Bubbles broke, making rainbow reflections as petrol puddles used to do, she remembered, on the dark tar of country roads. Didn’t cars leak petrol any more or had she not looked at the ground since growing up? Nostalgia for the acute, hallucinative boredom of childhood tingled through her, then englobed the present moment and Michael’s fierce-browed rage. I am high, she thought, it’s not just whiskey, it’s choice, refractions, possibilities. No matter how I choose, I shan’t go on having this excitement. Choice, she thought, the moment of change: this way or that, both held in the hand briefly, briefly. I’ll never have it again. Cormac will but I won’t. The whiskey was glowing in her chest.
‘Who said people were meant to be happy?’ Michael was demanding. ‘How happy? For how long? And how often? It’s a bloody American fantasy. Start again and again. Break things up. Marriages. Friendships. Like bloody kids, and then if you’re still not happy go on breaking. It’s asinine,’ he concluded. His lower lip clamped wetly on to his glass. It reminded Grainne of a squashed pink snail.
‘You’re right there,’ said the man in the mac. ‘True for you.’
‘They keep looking for the initial thrill,’ said Michael. ‘Repeated over and over. Life isn’t like that.’
‘Sure they’re like babbies,’ the man agreed. ‘Ants in their pants. Running hither and yon. Thinking faraway hills are greener. God help us.’ He tittered, drank and wiped foam fastidiously from his upper lip. ‘No respect for age, of course.’
‘How could they have?’
‘Wisdom,’ said the old man sadly. ‘I recall …’
But Michael was in no mood for recollections. ‘Will you have one on me?’ he asked the old man, cutting him off.
‘Well thank you, thank you very much.’
‘Have a short one?’
‘No, no, very kind, thanks all the same, but Guinness is easier on the aul gut.’ He patted his paunch with affection, as though stroking an animal coiled in his lap. ‘A pint,’ he said, ‘will do very nicely.’
Michael ordered it. ‘Happiness,’ he stated, ‘is a dangerous notion. It’s like rights. People will murder you for their “rights”.’
‘Well, we’re seeing a bit of that. Aye.’ The recipient of the pint knew his duty.
‘Now, if you put the two together and talk about the “right to happiness” …’
Grainne put down her whiskey glass and left the pub.
Judith was being harangued from the television. Men with sincere eyes asked her to take the margarine test and see could she honestly tell butter from Green Ribbon Marge. It was a ridiculous ad to have in a country where people were brought up on mistrust and butter. A new chap had been around asking her things. Cormac, he said his name was.
‘Where’s she then?’ she’d asked. ‘The Principal Girl?’
‘She’ll be back,’ he said. He wanted to know what she’d said on the cassette. ‘Anything about Sparky Driscoll?’ he asked. ‘How he was murdered?’
‘Shovelled into the coffin,’ she remembered.
‘Who told you?’
‘Kathleen.’
Then a fellow who said he was Owen’s and Kathleen’s son put his big face so close to hers that he was smothering her with his breath. Man’s breath. Strong. All tobacco and drink and gamey food. It made her cough. ‘Did my father have anything to do with it?’ he asked.
She began to cry and he went away.
But now her memory was all in a state. Men on television were saying things that they couldn’t be saying. They were holding up packets of margarine and squeezing them so that blood dripped from the corners of the packets. One of the men started to unfold the paper and shake it out and she saw that it was a man’s shirt.
‘Sparky Driscoll’s shirt,’ said the margarine man, smiling. ‘Exhibit number one.’
He smiled at Judith. ‘You ought to make a clean breast of things,’ he told her. ‘You’ll be dead shortly. How can you make an act of perfect contrition if you’re busy brushing your memories under the carpet? Pretending you don’t know,’ said the man and held up a small, shrunken head the size of a potato. He held it by the hair and it was unclear at first that it wasn’t just a dark, root-like thing, but as it began to dilate and expand, you saw that it was a head.
Judith jiggled the TV dial and a picture came on of two children with their pet sheepdog. She went back to the first channel just to make sure that she hadn’t imagined what she’d seen and there it was again, only now the head was as big as the margarine man’s own head and the face on it was Sparky Driscoll’s. He opened his lips to speak and Judith screamed and turned off the set.
Back in came the two stalwarts.
‘What’s up? Is it coming back to you?’ asked the one who had said he was Owen’s son. ‘Can you remember what you told that American?’
‘Devereux House,’ said the boy. ‘Does that ring a bell? Is that where they were going to take you? Why?’
‘Television,’ shrieked Judith.
‘What?’
‘Don’t turn it on,’ she shrieked.
‘I think maybe we should get a doctor,’ said the boy. ‘My mother left a number. Are you OK, Aunt Judith? She looks queer to me.’
And it was as if he’d put the evil eye on her, for her heart was racing and she had a pain in her chest. A stretch of sea-green satin slid into the front of her vision. There was a gold scroll curving round it like a child’s drawing of a wave. Memory, she thought with delight, and had an urge to slide into it and lay her head on the satin. It was the headrest of a sofa, she saw now. Clear, lucid memories beckoned and why should she resist them? Only she’d tell nothing to this pair. The danger with sliding into the past was that you could let things out. Babble. Tell. And there they’d be with their tape-recorders. Tricksters, shysters and offenders against the second commandment: bearers of false witness. Someone had made off with her cassette-recorder.
‘Allegations,’ she said. ‘False.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Owen’s voice. ‘Plucky wee thing, isn’t she? Give her a shot of brandy here. It’s all for the best.’
‘Brandy,’ she said.
‘Will I get some?’ asked the boy.
‘No,’ said the man. ‘That might finish her altogether.’
‘Drink up,’ said Owen. But he must have been imaginary for, when she opened her mouth, there was nothing there. ‘That bugger had it coming if ever man did,’ said he. ‘We’ll get the lads to have this over the border by morning.’
‘She’s thirsty,’ said the boy. ‘Here’s some water, Aunt Judith. I’m calling a doctor,’ he said. ‘I’d say she was having a fit.’
The water was real enough, so she drank some.
‘Did he attack her or what?’ Owen asked.
‘I wasn’t there,’ said Timmy.
‘Feel her pulse then. Did you say she had a heart condition?’
‘Call the doctor so. He can give her a sedative.’
*
Judith and her sister had made up their quarrel. Kathleen’s face was swollen. She said she was sorry she had compared Judith to Owen. It was a terrible thing to say.
‘He’s inhuman,’ she told her sister. ‘I honestly think he’s a menace to the country.�
�
‘The menace is Sparky Driscoll,’ Judith told her, but had little hope of making her sister see sense. Owen was a figure from whom weak, little egotistic people shrank back. His purposefulness would corrode their puny reasoning like acid and they feared to have the shabbiness of their calculations laid bare. ‘Sparky’s temptation,’ she told her sister, so as not to have it on her conscience that she hadn’t tried to make her face up to this. She saw now that her sister was far gone towards concupiscence. Sparky was a spoiler and a giver of bad advice. In Kathleen he had found soil only too receptive to his twaddle about self-assertion and how she should emigrate to America where, to hear him, every sort of wonder existed and people made their own destiny, each thinking only of himself. In his young day, the Da had fallen for the same tinselly bait. Mindless as the red setter, the prancing Sparky could destroy her sister.
‘I love him,’ said Kathleen. ‘I’m in love for the first time.’
‘Oh shut up. Don’t be a fool.’
‘What’s foolish about it?’ Kathleen asked. ‘Even if he doesn’t love me, it has already brought me more happiness than I’ve known in years. It’s as if I’d come out from a bad spell. We’ve been living in a kind of hysteria, Judith, and now it’s not necessary any more. I wish I could make you see that. I’d like to rescue you before Owen sucks you into his madness. He’s very powerful Owen is. Persuasive. Especially with women. I let him get me in thrall. I believed everything he said and now it’s going to happen to you. When I say “physical” I don’t mean he has to touch you. Quite the opposite really. It’s like a power all dense inside him and you think it’s reason but it’s not. It works on crowds too. I’ve seen him sway them, even though the words he was using weren’t anything special.’
‘Kathleen, you’re talking tripe.’
‘I’m not. I’m not. If only you’d listen to me …’
‘The one who has a spell is Sparky. He’s polluted your mind,’ shouted Judith. ‘I honestly think you ought to go to confession and get some priest’s advice.’
‘Judith – what’s that? Sh.’
‘What?’
‘It’s Sparky.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Out in the yard. I recognize his step.’ Kathleen ran to the door. ‘I can’t let him see me like this. Tell him I’m out. Ask him to call round tomorrow.’
She withdrew her puffed, tear-swollen face and fled up the stairs. The sound of her footsteps had just reached the room above Judith’s head when Sparky appeared at the outer door. He was all dressed up in a celluloid wing collar and ulster cape. He’d come, he said, to say goodbye. He was leaving tonight. Change of plan. Was Kathleen in? No? Where was she? Would she be back soon?
‘She’s gone to Dublin,’ said Judith, ‘to see Owen. She won’t be back until tomorrow. Seamus is away too,’ she added with satisfaction. ‘Nobody’s here but me.’
He looked, she had to admit, a touch cast down.
‘I’ll say goodbye for you,’ she said.
‘Tell them I’ll write,’ said Sparky. It was out of his hands, he explained. People back in the States had summoned him to return. They were curious about the rumours of splits and divisions here. They wanted him to come back and explain things.
‘So now you’ll be giving advice,’ said Judith. ‘Which side are you going to back?’ She wished Owen were here.
‘Well there’s really only the government side, isn’t there?’
‘What about the Republicans? De Valera wants a fight.’
‘That’s not clear. Anyway the army doesn’t take orders from him.’
‘Did you see where he said in the papers that there are rights which a minority may justly uphold, even by arms, against a majority?’ Owen had quoted the lines so often, she had them off by heart. ‘What do you think of that?’ she asked anxiously. The least she could do for Owen would be to find out accurately what Sparky’s frame of mind was.
He laughed. ‘Don’t bother your head, Judith, with all that. It may never happen. I hope it doesn’t for the sake of all the good friends I’ve made here. I’d like to think of you enjoying your own country in peace.’
‘And dishonour?’
Another laugh. ‘Don’t let’s fight on my last day. Mm?’
‘Listen,’ Sparky was saying, ‘may I ask a favour?’ He wanted her to walk over to Devereux House with him. He had intended asking Kathleen. He wanted to take some photographs as mementoes. Would Judith come? ‘I want to show them back home as examples of the pretty colleens I’ve met.’
‘And one is as good as another, I suppose? We’re interchangeable?’
It occurred to her, though, that she had better get him out of the house. Kathleen might change her mind if he stayed too long. She could imagine her this minute throwing cold water on her face and wondering whether it was recovered enough to be seen.
‘All right then,’ she decided, and hustled him out the door.
There was a knot of men waiting for the village shop to open. Driscoll shook hands with them all. He seemed to have endless friends, she noted. His friendship meant nothing. Yes, he said. Off tonight. He’d take the boat from Queenstown in the morning. One or two of the men had been in America in their youth. They laughed toothlessly, telling him to say hello to the Statue of Liberty for them. Some mentioned the fighting that had started to break out here and there, but deviously, unsure how the American might feel and unready to show what they felt themselves.
‘The Lord save us, isn’t it a shame? Yes. The lads turning on each other.’
They’d say no more, not letting on which lads they were for. Maybe they didn’t know? The government had only just emerged from clandestinity and keeping a tight lip was traditional. The country never knew what went on in the Dáil which, until recently, had met on the run. The Dáil never knew what the Cabinet decided and the Cabinet, said Sparky, who had been looking into this, had, during de Valera’s presidency which had only just ended, been ruled autocratically by him.
‘It’ll take them a while to learn the ways of democracy,’ said he.
Meanwhile they had reached the great golden gates of the estate. Driscoll took a photograph of Judith posed in front of them to show their size. This time they looked less splendid, for there was no sun glinting on them and in fact a storm seemed to be coming. The queer calm which precedes storms held the landscape congealed like moss specimens under glass.
‘Is it true,’ she asked, as they walked towards the house, ‘that you offered to sponsor Kathleen to go to America?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘She did.’
‘I told her not to.’
‘Oh. Why?’
She looked at him curiously, straight in the eye as she never did look, and had been taught in the convent never to look, at men. He looked straight back and she felt a series of small shocks ripple through her. She didn’t like Sparky Driscoll’s interfering ways, his pushiness or his opinions, but this sensation was a binding, thrilling one. Remembering what Kathleen had said about Owen having a power all dense in himself which reached out and touched people, she suddenly saw what her sister had meant. Like sunbeams on your face, though less visible, a warmth reached out from Sparky Driscoll, a calming, exhilarating feeling which made you feel good. She was still looking at him, gauging the sensation, wondering whether the two men sensed the magnetism in each other and if that was why they had taken against each other, as powerful males did in wild herds.
‘Why do you look so accusingly at me?’ Sparky asked, surprising her, as she had forgotten that she had been accusing him. ‘I didn’t want Kathleen to tell you because you are much stronger than she is and you could make things hard for her.’ They had reached the house. ‘Seems all closed up,’ said Sparky, breaking off to peer about. They were at a side entrance. ‘Pity. I wanted to take some snapshots of that famous ballroom where people went for a snatch of happiness. Look,’ he said. ‘There’s an open window. Are you game to go in by it? Timmy’s no
t here.’
He had pulled the bell-pull uselessly, so this must be true.
Judith followed him into what turned out to be the gun room with the python-skin frieze. Both its doors were locked, however, and it did not look as though they were fated to reach the ballroom. Rain was starting, so they might as well wait for Timmy to turn up or, at least, for the shower to pass. Judith let herself flop on to a green silk divan while Sparky rattled uselessly at door knobs.
‘Not a hope. We’ll have to wait here.’
*
Grainne was excited. Her voice was buoyant, almost out of control. The flash of revolving glass doors punctuated what she said. Chop, chop, went the curved glass, turning like the hands of a clock. Time, she thought, choice. Am I really leaving? A woman came in with a dripping umbrella and the mercurial drip, drip was also like the motion of some instrument for measuring time.
Am I attractive, she wondered, or old and ridiculous: a raddled bit of mutton dressed as lamb? Going off for what used to be called a dirty weekend did raise such doubts.
‘Tell me,’ James must have said, ‘about this place we’re going to?’ He had meant that she should give him addresses and phone-numbers to leave at the desk. He was talking to the clerk now, carefully ensuring that if Larry or someone rang they could get in touch. At first she had misunderstood him and launched into the story of the Devereux Estate. Looking back while he looked forward – was that significant? It had been over breakfast which they’d had together in the hotel restaurant: appearing as scandalous or married, as though they’d already started their weekend, though in fact she had come straight from home. Eight a.m. Michael would wake up and not find her. Never mind. There was no graceful way to run out on your husband. When she passed the corner of the Green, a woman was already selling white heather sprigs for luck. Struggle: if I believe in my luck then I needn’t buy more. But if I don’t, she’ll resent me. I can’t afford to draw any more resentment.
‘Here,’ she had given the woman fifty pence and taken the heather which, being bought, could be no use. You can’t buy luck.
No Country for Young Men Page 36