The Empty Family (v5)

by Colm Toibin

  It was after midnight when they came back to her grandmother’s house, which was, once more, quiet. She was glad everyone had gone to bed. Since they were tired, they were going to go straight to her room until Ferran said that he wanted to get some cold water to take upstairs. When she turned on the light in the kitchen she gasped when she saw the fridge. Someone had wound a rusty chain around it and locked it so that it could be opened a chink but not any more than that. Once Ferran had examined the lock, they stood back in amazement.

  ‘No sandwiches tonight,’ he said. ‘And no cold water either. Who did this?’

  ‘My mother,’ Carme said.

  She moved towards the door of the fridge and kicked it, thus knocking the fridge itself against the wall. Ferran kicked the door too, putting a dent in the front of it. The hum from the fridge grew louder as though it were in pain, and then it settled down to making a calmer noise. As they stood in the kitchen, Carme knew that the whole house must be awake now and she put her fingers to her lips and motioned to Ferran to follow her quietly up the stairs to her room. When he went to the bathroom, she could hear him urinating into the bowl and then washing his hands. She knew that the rest of the house could probably hear him too.

  In the morning, as she crossed the room to go to the bathroom, she found a note under the door. It was from Nuria. ‘We’re all leaving now,’ it said. ‘The keys are on the table in the kitchen for you to lock up when you’re going. Can you leave them under the big stone, the usual place? I’m really sorry about the fridge. It has nothing to do with me. And Papa is really angry about it as well. Mama is categorically refusing to hand over the key so we can open it for you. This was no way to welcome you home. Call me soon. Love, Nuria.’

  It was the word ‘categorically’ that caused Carme to begin laughing, and by the time Ferran got out of bed to read the note, she was almost hysterical on the floor.

  Later, once they had had coffee in a small café in a village, she drove him to collect his things and then to the airport to catch a flight to Barcelona. She wrote down his phone number and promised she would be in touch soon and then she left him there and drove back to her grandmother’s house.

  She was tired. She sat on one of the plastic chairs beside the swimming pool, which her family had covered before they left. She thought for a second that she would like something cold to drink and something light to eat and found she had forgotten that the fridge remained locked. She went in and looked at it again and wished she had a camera so she could take a photograph of it.

  She wondered what to do now in this old empty house. She worried that if she took a nap she would wake in the middle of the night and not be able to sleep again; she resolved to stay awake for as long as she could. Upstairs, she changed into her bathing costume and put a light dress over it. She put on sandals and found a bag into which she placed her purse and a towel and the keys of the house. Years before, she could have been on the beach in a few minutes, she thought, but now that the path was blocked she would have to walk around by the bungalows.

  The beach was almost empty and all the sand on it was tossed by people who had spent the day lying out under the sun or running down to the water’s edge. In the old days when she came here, she thought, the place had been deserted at this time in June. The sand, as she remembered it, had always been smooth, unruffled. Now it was clear that there had been tourists here all day, and there were still tourists sitting at the outside tables in the bars and restaurants that overlooked the beach. She left her bag down on the sand and took off her dress and walked towards the shore. The water had that lovely feel of the end of the day; the soft waves had been rolling in and out under the full heat of the sun, even the sand below the waves felt warm on her feet. She swam out, with a skill that had never left her, breathing deeply and turning on her back once she was out of her depth so she could stare up at the sky. Then she floated, being nudged in by the pull of the waves; she faced the cove that had once been a place of great empty beauty and now had been filled by crowds. She saw the tourists sitting at the tables under garishly coloured umbrellas drinking beer and listening to some song by Julio Iglesias coming too loud from the speakers outside one of the bars.

  When she had dried herself she found an empty table outside a bar and then noticed a small shop wedged between the bar and a restaurant that sold postcards and camera film and beach balls and children’s toys. She went over when she saw a rack of foreign newspapers outside the shop; she checked the English papers, which, she found, were two days old. She bought a Guardian and went back to her table and ordered a beer and some calamares.

  Soon, she thought, she would go to Barcelona and she would look up some of her friends from university, the ones who were still in politics, who were getting ready to take power in the new Spain. One of them, she was sure, would have a father, or an uncle, who was a lawyer. She thought of an office with high windows in one of the cross-streets of the Eixample, in Calle Mallorca, or on Gran Via; she imagined an elderly man at his desk looking carefully at her grandmother’s will and offering her good advice in correct, old-fashioned Catalan about how she should handle them all – her father, her mother, her sister Nuria. And the property she had inherited from her grandmother, and the shares.

  All around her now were foreign voices, people calling to one another in English and German and Dutch. The first thing she would do, she thought, was find a contractor to knock down the new wall that cut her grandmother’s house off from easy access to this beach. She would consult no one about that. She would begin the search in the morning when she had paid the antiques dealer for her grandmother’s furniture. In the meantime, she would read in the newspaper about England, where she had been for eight years, and then she would have a good night’s sleep, alone, in peace. As she raised the glass of cold beer to her lips, she felt a contentment that she had never expected to feel, an ease she had not believed would ever come her way.

  The Colour of Shadows

  Nancy Brophy, one of the neighbours in Enniscorthy, phoned Paul in Dublin to say that his aunt Josie, his father’s sister, had been found that morning on the floor, having fallen out of bed in the house where she lived alone; they thought that she had been lying there most of the night. An ambulance had come, Nancy said, and taken Josie to Wexford hospital.

  When Paul contacted the hospital, the nurse in charge of the ward said that his aunt was stable. He explained that he was busy at work and wondered if he might postpone his visit until the weekend, and the nurse told him that his aunt was in no immediate danger and it would be fine if he came on Saturday. He left a number, in case they needed to reach him. Later, he was phoned by a social worker, who said that she did not think his aunt could return to living alone; nor could she stay in the hospital indefinitely. She gave him a list of residences for the elderly in the Enniscorthy area; she refused to recommend one over another.

  When Paul phoned Nancy Brophy on the Friday of that week, she seemed unsurprised that the social worker wanted his aunt in a nursing home.

  ‘She won’t go easily, that’s all I have to say.’

  ‘Has anyone mentioned it to her before?’ Paul asked.

  ‘We all have, but she likes her independence.’

  ‘Is there anywhere local that is good?’ Paul asked.

  ‘Noeleen Redmond and her husband have a place near Clohamon, and some people say that it’s lovely. Noeleen was a friend of your mother’s.’

  Paul almost replied that he did not believe his aunt would want help from someone who had been a friend of his mother’s.

  ‘Is there nobody else I could ask?’

  Nancy hesitated before she replied.

  ‘That’s all long ago, Paul. It’s all long ago.’

  ‘I know it is,’ he said, ‘and I’m grateful for your help, Nancy, so maybe I’ll call Noeleen Redmond now.’

  ‘That would be the best, Paul.’

  He arranged, having phoned Noeleen Redmond and explained the situation, to come
and visit the residence for senior citizens once he had seen his aunt. And then he drove the two-hour journey from Dublin down to the hospital.

  ‘She won’t eat,’ the nurse said to him as they both stood looking at his aunt, who was asleep.

  ‘She eats well at home,’ Paul said.

  ‘She spat out her toast this morning.’

  ‘That’s very unlike her.’

  The nurse looked at him and shrugged.

  ‘There’s nothing actually wrong with her. We did X-rays and everything.’

  ‘She probably doesn’t like being in hospital.’

  ‘Well, she’s lucky someone found her.’

  He sat with her. After almost an hour, she turned and saw him.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said.

  ‘You’re all right.’

  ‘I hate those nurses.’

  ‘They’re awful,’ he said.

  ‘I hate those nurses,’ she repeated. It was clear to him that her hearing, which had improved after she had had the wax cleaned out of her ears, had now worsened again. ‘But they’d better not hear us or they’ll starve me altogether.’

  ‘You were fast asleep when I came.’

  ‘You were good to come down, but don’t say too much, now – they’re all listening.’

  She tried to sit up.

  ‘Tell them I want a private room.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Tell them I want a private room in my own house.’

  Once he’d made sure that she was not too agitated, he drove to Enniscorthy, passed through the town, and turned off the Dublin road to Bunclody. It was a crisp early winter day, and he was surprised, as he always was when he visited Enniscorthy, by the volume of traffic and the new roundabouts and the tiny scale of things that, when he was growing up, had seemed to him like monuments. This was what he still called home, he thought, but if his aunt were to go into a residence, then he might best begin thinking of his own house in Rathmines, in Dublin, as the only home he had.

  He turned left, away from the Slaney, as he had been told to do, and then right again, and drove along a narrow road until he came to the nursing home, which had a large sign outside. Already he could see, from the gardens and the layout, that the place was well kept, with a clear view of woodland and the soft light over the river.

  Noeleen Redmond was waiting for him on the porch. She made him tea and said that she had a place free and he could move Josie in whenever he liked. When she told him the price per week, he thought for a moment that she meant per month. She spoke then about the cost of things, the amount of regulation there was, and how hard it was to keep staff. He tried to work out in his head how much Josie’s pension was, wondering also how much money she had saved, and thinking then about what her house was worth.

  ‘She was very good to you, wasn’t she? And now she’s lucky to have you.’

  Noeleen smiled at him warmly.

  ‘She won’t feel lucky leaving her own house,’ he said.

  ‘She’ll be treated very well, and she’ll be well fed and warm here.’

  ‘I might tell her that it’s just for a while.’

  ‘That might be best, all right.’

  It was almost dark a few days later when Paul arrived at the nursing home and waited in the hallway for the ambulance from Wexford to arrive. Once he saw it turning into the driveway he went into the office and alerted Noeleen; they stood at the front door as Josie was taken from the ambulance and put into a wheelchair.

  ‘You go in and they’ll make you a cup of tea,’ Noeleen said to him. ‘We’ll come and find you when we have her comfortable.’

  As he made his way to the dining room, he passed a large room with chairs all around the walls and figures sitting in them, none of them speaking or reading, some of them asleep or staring at a television that was blaring in the corner. He stood and looked at them, but then felt as if he were intruding on something strangely private and he moved on.

  Directly outside the door to the dining room, there was a woman sitting in an armchair. He felt for a moment that he recognized her, knew her from childhood, but she was so old now and frail that it was hard to think who she was, or had been. Her gaze as he passed her was defiant, almost challenging. Whoever she was, he thought, she knew how to be difficult.

  As he sat in the darkened dining room and drank his tea, he asked himself how long it would be before Josie would demand to be released from here. He wondered if there was another solution, if there was someone who could spend nights with her and call in to check on her throughout the day, and he thought that he would ask Nancy Brophy when he next came down. There were a lot of new people in the town, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Nigerians, and maybe there would be some woman whom he could pay to look after his aunt in her own house.

  When Noeleen came to find him, she suggested that he merely tiptoe into the bedroom where his aunt was but not disturb her.

  ‘We’ll find out what she likes,’ Noeleen said, ‘and we’ll feed her. She needs to put on weight. And she’ll be asleep in no time. She’s not sure where she is.’

  When Paul drove down from Dublin the following Saturday, he found his aunt in the large room with all the others. She was asleep, her head slumped. One of the nurses on duty carried in a chair for him, and he sat down in front of Josie and waited for her to wake up. Although there was a low sound coming from the television, there was a hush in the room, of which he became acutely conscious as he sat there.

  When he looked behind him, he found that five or six old ladies were watching him, some suspiciously, others in a way that was too dulled to be menacing but was nonetheless unfriendly. It occurred to him that he could go and check Josie’s house, light a fire in the living room, maybe, and return later. But he resisted this impulse; he knew that it was really an urge to flee from this place and not have to deal with whatever his aunt had to say.

  She smiled when she woke and saw him, and nodded her head.

  ‘They said you’d be down,’ she said. ‘You’re great to come down.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Did you bring the car?’

  ‘I drove down.’

  She did not seem to hear him.

  ‘Is the car outside?’

  ‘I drove down.’ He raised his voice.

  ‘We’ll go so,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d come. They all said you’d come. Do I have a bag or anything, or a case?’

  ‘It’s very cold outside,’ he said.

  She looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a freezing day.’

  ‘I’d say that.’ She smiled.

  ‘You’re very warm in here.’

  ‘Will you get me my coat?’ She made to stand up.

  Later, when she had been calmed by one of the nurses, he left her, promising to return the next day and saying nothing when she asked him if she would be leaving then, if he was coming back in the car then, to take her to her own house. He was aware as he turned and carried his chair back to where it had been that the roomful of inmates had heard every word that had passed between him and his aunt.

  Noeleen was waiting for him in the hallway. As he sat in the dining room with her, she suggested that he get a set of forms from his aunt’s bank and her solicitor that would give him power of attorney, or at least the power to deal with her financial affairs.

  The house had a smell of damp and old cooking. He was amazed at how small everything was, not only the rooms themselves but the objects in them – the armchairs and the television in the corner of the front room, the dining room table and chairs in the back room. Somehow, the place had shrunk in Josie’s absence. He remembered spending each Christmas here in recent years and loving the coal fires lighting in both rooms, the Christmas tree, the warmth of the place as he helped her wrap presents for neighbours and friends and later watched the television with her or gave her a hand in the kitchen.

  When he went upstairs and looked at his old bedroom, he noticed how w
orn the carpet was and how the colour on the wallpaper had faded. He must, he thought, have noticed this before, but now the room seemed shabby and strange, almost unfamiliar, and not the room he had slept in every night throughout his childhood, with the small desk in the corner where he did his homework.

  Suddenly, he realized that he was dreading the night ahead in this house; he did not think he would sleep. When he went to look for sheets to put on his bed, he found a musty smell in the hot press. He turned away and walked down the stairs and made up his mind that he would search for Josie’s papers and bank statements and then he would go.

  He made a call to the Riverside Hotel, and when they told him they had rooms free he said he would be there in an hour. Josie would hate the waste of money, and the thought that he might not want to spend the night in her house, but the idea of having to make up a bed for himself and try to sleep in his old room made him shiver. That’s all over now, he thought. He suppressed any urge to feel sorry for himself for losing it.

  As he rummaged through papers on the shelf near the chair where Josie usually sat in the front room, a knock came at the door. He knew that it would be Nancy Brophy, who would have seen the light on. He invited her into the front room and told her that Josie was unhappy and wanted to come home.

  ‘It’s the same for all of them,’ she said. ‘But they get used to it, or maybe they just stop complaining. But it’s a good place, although it isn’t cheap.’