As You Were

by Elaine Feeney

  ‘And that it was Dick’s guitar, after he’d had the heart attack, he’d given it away. But this is a lie, you see, Ann told me that she believed McPartland never played a Martin guitar, these kind of things held great importance to her, and I never forgot a word she said to me. I remember it all, verb . . . verbal . . .’

  ‘Verbatim?’ Margaret Rose said.

  ‘Yes, that,’ Jane said. ‘Ah, Ann had notions, she was off to America to find jazz. Jazz! Did you ever hear the like?’ she said, smiling. ‘But that was Ann.’

  ‘Where’d she learn ta play?’ Margaret Rose asked.

  ‘Ah, well, the guitar playing had come from the Hegartys’ side, really, her father was a great musician, in the trad sense . . . they were session musicians.’

  Yeah. I knew, hard, strumming tight, feet tapping, keeping the hands close into the body, like Irish dancers, a restrained madness, attempting to express the unsayable.

  Then Jane started at Margaret Rose. ‘Did Tom come up the fields yet? Would you like a cup of tea? Here, I’ll make it for you. This isn’t my bedroom, dear, is it? No matter how much searching I do, I cannot, cannot for the life of me, find the kitchen here.’

  ‘No . . . it’s not, it’s not your bedroom. You’re in Hospital, Jane. On the Ward . . .’ I said.

  Margaret Rose shook her head, looked at me, and put a finger to her mouth. Perhaps it was better if we were quiet.

  ‘Ah, yes, I’m on the Ward, amn’t I? That’s correct. Thank you.’

  ‘Ya are, love, ya were talking about Ann,’ Margaret Rose said back, quietly, her voice tired.

  ‘Ah, yes, Ann. I was so sick the night Ann Hegarty was leaving. I’d a bad fever and it hadn’t broken. I’d cried myself into it. Then I’d screamed and stuck my head into a pillow. They didn’t know what was wrong with me and of course I couldn’t tell them.’

  ‘No, ya certainly cud’na,’ Margaret Rose said, sucking a chocolate and nodding.

  ‘She had an American wake and just . . . left . . .’ Jane said, pulling furiously at the star diamantés on the bra. ‘Ann was delighted, mind you, she was so giddy, spinning this way and that, telling me, planning it all.’ She threw a diamanté bead and hit the window, startling a gull. ‘She was jumping up and down as she was leaving me to go over to the wake house, where they’d a party for all the young locals off to America. I couldn’t go with her. I didn’t want to anyway. I would have made a show of myself. She wouldn’t stand still to even say goodbye to me. But she was such a foolish dreamer and I knew, truthfully, she wouldn’t last a minute. That’s what everyone said. And I hate to admit, I agreed with them and, sadly, they were right.’

  Margaret Rose sighed.

  ‘Maybe I should have stayed with her, minded her, but she wanted to go alone. She never asked me. Never spoke about it. I would have gone. God, but it hurt

  me . . .’ Jane stopped abruptly, perhaps weighing up if it were appropriate to finally betray herself in front of us. Strangers. She looked at us both inquisitively, ascertaining threat levels.

  ‘I knows ya would, Jane,’ Margaret Rose offered, softly.

  ‘You see, I told her I knew all about boats. I’d have swum the Atlantic Ocean just to be with her. We could have hidden over there and pretended to be sisters,’ she said. ‘And besides, the daft bitch said she was going to put her feet out at the end of the boat and tickle her toes off the Atlantic, stupid girl, she didn’t seem to care about me, or that I wanted her to stay. I even had to tell her that large boats that take you to America didn’t work like this. Imagine. Imagine that she was going off to America and she didn’t know how a boat worked?’ She laughed, fearfully. ‘And that was it. We didn’t laugh again . . . well, not together at the very least.’

  ‘Did you ever see her again?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Jane said, exasperated with her audience. ‘She arrived back a year to the month, on a different day. She arrived back on a Sunday. A Sunday is never a good day to arrive anywhere. I was finishing up my schooling and moving to Dublin for teacher training. Are you OK, love?’ she said, eyeing me. ‘Would you like a sandwich, you’re so awfully pale now?’

  I shook my head.

  She offered to make one for Margaret Rose.

  ‘No, no, I’m OK, but when is a good day ta arrive, Jane?’ Margaret Rose urged.

  ‘Arrive where?’

  ‘Ann, arrive off the boat?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ann!’ I said.

  ‘Ann, Ann’s here? Oh, my, what a lovely surprise. Well, let her in then. Christ, are we going to leave her abroad in the cold all day? I haven’t seen her in the longest time,’ Jane cried out, opening her eyes wide and fixed on the window, as though her friend would walk through.

  Margaret Rose groaned.

  ‘No, tell me about the Sunday, Ann Sunday. When Ann came back Sunday. She’s not here, Jane, remember?’

  ‘Ah, ah, yes, poor Ann. Oh, yes, a Friday, a Friday is a great day for a new beginning, because if it doesn’t work out, you can start again on Monday. Clean sheet.’

  ‘Slate,’ I said.

  We laughed.

  ‘That awful man was the Bishop of Galway with his cigars and champagne.’

  Lucid.

  ‘Browne?’

  ‘Yes, him . . .’ Jane said, cowering.

  ‘He was a bastard,’ Margaret Rose said.

  ‘Oh, yes, most correct, a terrible man. He liked to be called My Lord, you see? Yes, a bastard. And we were not doing so well,’ Jane said, sharply. ‘None of us . . . Women.’ She took a long breath. ‘Ann was in trouble . . . and . . . just like that she handed herself over.’

  It was the early fifties and the world was all a secret affair, after the wars, turn of the decade after the terrible war. Bishop Browne was at the helm here for Virtue and Money and General of Misogyny, for with a complicit family and a complicit society, and God plonked at the centre of everything, schools, kitchens, doctors’ clinics, garages, shops, marts, sacred heart on every kitchen wall, red light, mea-all-culpa, we could once and for all solve the problem of fallen women, hoorish women, pretty women, pregnant women, poor women, women, girls, we could put an end to the shame they were bringing, for the bother with the fucking outside of marriage; no property rights; no rights to their children; rarely rape sanctions (or mentions); no drinking in bars; no drinking out of pint glasses; no pill; no property; no money; no married job in the civil service; no sitting on a jury; no free health care; no church after birthing a baby without a churching; breaking of pelvises; sterilisations without consent – list is not exhaustive.

  Who made the world? God made the world. Oh my God, I thank you for loving me, I am sorry for all my sins. It has been one week since my last confession. Oh my God, I am sorry if I have offended thee. Oh my God, I am bleeding. Oh dear Jesus, I have not bled. Oh dear and gentle Jesus. Save me. I am your sinner. I am sorry for greatly offending thee. Save me. Glory be. Blessed be the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  But these women would be dealt with, and the sins of their flesh would be discussed in his drawing room with champagne bubbles and Cuban leaf smoke, and in many other drawing rooms, and good or bad sex, no matter, there was a hefty life sentence, incarceration of the body of the woman, of her mind, and of the baby, the Holy Trinity, things good in threes/things bad in threes, and they’d soften our women coughs for us, forever in penal servitude. There was an appropriate way of solving pregnant women in Ireland. Apparently. As they decided on the fate of young women and their children, with their robes and their God and their cocks and their cigars and champagne, and sure, wasn’t it only good for us? And weren’t we only lucky? For their own good, and the good of the child. A bastard. For the good of everyone, for it was contagious, hoorish behaviour, like galloping consumption, and men were poisoned with a spell of passion by these young women, girls, by their hair and their eyes and the way they might wash a cup or iron your shirt and all the fleshy bits of the body women have, poisoning them all, and the awful
way they might look at you, to damn you, or talk to you, or walk along beside you. Everyone must help solve it for the good of us all. And if it wasn’t a good solution, locking them up in hellholes, which turns out it wasn’t, it was a fucking criminal travesty, then, now, hush, God would be good to the incarcerated women and their sold or dead children. And if God wasn’t good, which he didn’t seem to be, not turning up for work in these places, then we all must be good and virtuous, and nice, and act appropriately, and maybe best not to talk about it at all, for what is talk but weak, and cheap. Now, now. And not bring shame, no more shame, for until, praise be, God might come back for us. And see how secretive and virtuous we all are, and oh, how many cannot recollect. And oh. Wasn’t it only the way, only the way of us? And wasn’t it what we all deserved?

  They say Ann Hegarty didn’t stay long in Clifden after returning from America. A motor car was called for and she was brought back into Galway, past the stone bridge at Oughterard, thatched cottages, and red doors. Half doors. They stopped at the Angler’s Rest Hotel, where her stubbly chauffeur, who had been quiet the entire journey from Clifden with the pregnant girl in the back seat, took her in to the bar of the hotel for some Guinness, and after he settled her into the snug, the lady of the house brought a large glass jug of Guinness with two tulip glasses, and he poured. She was given a half-pint, for he insisted iron was good for the baby as he stroked her thigh and sure he could do no more damage, he whispered. And he bought another large jug for himself, before they left, in broad daylight. Ann was sickened from the Guinness pooling and churning in her belly, so she sat, faint, on the white garden seat outside the front of the hotel, and two young boys came over, offering her a basket of fish they had just caught; five silver bodies lay on some straw in the wicker, fat and blue around the centre, dead and resting in the afternoon sun. Five fresh jelly eyes, bulging and shiny, staring back at the young woman.

  They went on to Tuam and her chauffeur drove on through the town and stopped his motor car out on the Athenry road, a little way past the railway bridge, where the trains brought sugar beet up and down the line, and told her she was on her own. If she wasn’t up for anything then why should he shame his car and drive her to the gate of the Home, and abandoning her on the side of the road, he gave her scant directions to find her way back the route he’d just driven out, and up and into the right.

  It was dusk when Ann made her way to the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home.

  Good Help.

  Good Help to Those in Need.

  Bon Secours.

  And it is said that sometime after the birth of a little boy, with beautiful skin, Patrick James Hegarty, Ann was eventually flung in through the doors of the Magdalene Laundry at Forster Street in the city, driven by the same chauffeur, and although rumour has it that she protested, she’d serve out her time for the sin of sex, for no one would pay or could pay the one hundred pounds bounty or release fee, demanded by the Church for her keep while in confinement, one hundred pounds to release her back to a life of hanging her head down, or leaving for England if she could raise the fare and never return. But how could an incarcerated woman raise such a fare?

  A life of incarceration for Ann as Bishop Browne and his army of virtuous brought down any good man or woman who sought better health care for women. And wasn’t it only what was best? For what were women only donkeys? And what was a donkey only a working ass? And what was an ass but a fool? And what to do with a fool but stick her in the corner and point fun at her, make her your slave and what was the child of an ass but an ass fool, and a chattel to sell or starve? And what of it? We should all forget it now. Bastards. Malthus indeed. And isn’t incarceration only your own fault? And how we are all so convinced by each machine that replaces the last that all lost ambition is to do with the self. The self. Regulation. Impulse. Self. Live. Your. Best. Life. Everything. Is. Possible. Fight your illness. Come now. H’up off your knees. Christ.

  ‘It was a Martin, the guitar . . .’ Jane said, eventually. ‘She’d gotten in harm’s way beyond in America. And the nuns weren’t really used to the backwards way of this now.’

  I agreed.

  Usually girls stayed out in America. Ann should have stayed. For better or worse, girls stayed out abroad, for if it maimed them, it could mind them. And they were never heard from after. But Ann Hegarty gave herself back to the Irish prison.

  Patrick was eventually given out to a family member. Which was the strangest thing of all. It was also said, the Hegartys were lucky the laundry took in Ann, for the girl wasn’t raped by her brother or interfered with by a priest. The father was an American. And for all intents and purposes the sex could have been decent. American sex, where you could fuck and come without a criminal investigation.

  ‘She came back with her beautiful head down. In repentance. You should never hang your head in shame,’ Jane said. ‘I just can’t, for my whole life, understand why she came back. Never . . . NeverNever. I’ll never ever understand why . . . wasn’t like her at all, at all . . .’ Jane began lifting her shoulders up and down again as she swatted at something in front of her face and grimaced. ‘I was so troubled to hear everyone saying how ashamed she looked, I didn’t get to talk to her properly, for once she gave herself back to Clifden, she was chaperoned, always chaperoned, until they got her into the Home and then . . . chauffeured on.’

  ‘Did ya try?’ Margaret Rose asked. ‘Did ya try ta tell her how ya felt? Did ya still love her?’

  Jane looked hurt, stung. ‘Of course I did,’ she spat. ‘I still love her, and you can’t just stop loving like that, like it’s a tap.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Margaret Rose said, ‘I didn’a mean ta upset ya. It’s just so . . . sad.’

  ‘It is sad. And what else is sad is that neighbours went around as if this was a good thing, as though this made them feel better. What did it matter to them, to any of them? Their tea would still be in the same place, their boots laced, their boats with nets, nothing Ann did would bother them, upset the running order of their life, and yet we were so much of everyone’s else’s business. It was all they spoke of for some time. But it wasn’t like Ann –’ Jane was crying now and I was crying too – ‘to give in. Ah, here now, keep your chin up,’ she said to me, watching me dry my eye corners with a tissue, ‘especially with your lovely skin. Did you get any tea? I’ll ready some for you now if you so wish?’

  I was thumbing the cracker. I waved it weakly at her. ‘I’m OK,’ I said. Jane blew her nose in her bed sheets.

  ‘I wrote to her, but never heard a thing. I went to Dublin, tried very hard to forget her.’

  ‘Really?’ Margaret Rose asked as she pulled at some tissues from their elaborate box.

  ‘Don’t “really” me. Don’t you think I feel guilty? D’you think I just got on with my life? What do you take me for? She was my . . .’ She stopped and Margaret Rose reached forward, dropping sweet papers on the ground, got out of bed and climbed in beside the old woman. Margaret Rose held her and began passing her tissues. ‘I forgot about her on purpose,’ Jane said, sobbing into Margaret Rose’s chest. ‘Imagine forgetting about someone you love on purpose? But that’s who I am. And look at you, with the royal name, what do we make of that?’ She laughed weakly and looked at me. ‘And mymy, aren’t you beautiful too?’

  The bra was gone fully astray now and hung around her waist like a make-up belt.

  ‘Ann’s aunt, Maura, well, I suppose she raised him as a bitch would a pup, and he has no idea. I don’t think I should ever mention it?’

  ‘No,’ we both said, loudly.

  There wasn’t a peep out of Shane and his student nurses had come in, surprised and unsure what to do with us all, attempted to cover Jane, who resisted, and then left again in a hurry.

  ‘Two weeks after Patrick arrived in Clifden –’ Jane clasped her hands and her eyes shut down tight as Margaret Rose rubbed her shoulders – ‘Ann hung herself –’ she paused – ‘inside the laundry.’

  Margaret ble
ssed herself three times.

  ‘Oh, Jane, I’m so terribly sorry.’

  ‘And right where all the other girls could see her,’ Jane continued, ‘with a thin yellow apron string, and it started cutting her wiry neck. I have this terrible dream that her head falls off completely and rolls to my feet.’ And she spun around to Margaret Rose and started screaming, ‘Fuck them, you know, FUCK THEM FUCK THEM FUCK THEM.’

  Ann Hegarty never took the trip again home to Clifden, to see her son creeping down low in a woollen duffel coat with big peg buttons, searching for a shell at Dog’s Bay, and Hegs would remain a man boy, because that’s the way sometimes, when you are constantly searching the past.

  ‘They think she’s buried out Headford way near some castle ruins, but who knows? I don’t trust a word they say, in the next breath they’ll say that she’s not dead at

  all . . .’ Jane said.

  ‘Or that the records burned down in a fire. That’s always what they’ll say. Or the nuns are too old now ta be upset. But what ’bout all the families too? They were in on it,’ Margaret Rose said.

  ‘Fire starters. Every convent in the country seemed to have one,’ I said. ‘Sure, there’s hundreds buried everywhere, thrown into bogs and over walls, some say they’re in that awful tank in Tuam, sure, what do you even say?’

  ‘Jesus. That gives me nightmares. Ta think that was going on when I was young. Is that really a septic tank?’ Margaret Rose asked me, blessing herself again.

  ‘It would appear to be,’ I said, quietly and unsure.