by Edna O'Brien
“He forgot the soda,” I said to Eugene as I stared at the yellow paper doilies under the cracked glass of the table. As I was not used to whiskey, it tasted awful without soda.
A drunk man came up just then and raised his cap and asked Eugene to sing.
“I can’t sing,” Eugene said, and the drunk man then asked if I would sing.
“We don’t sing,” Eugene said, and the drunk man hummed a few bars of “The Old Bog Road” and held his cap out, so that we could put money in it. I did not know what to do; I just felt the blood rising in my neck as I prayed that he would go away and leave us alone. Then suddenly he flicked my wool beret off, and it fell onto the table and overturned my drink.
“Come on,” Eugene said, standing up. We went out quickly, and I heard people laugh, and the drunk calling, “Pagans, pagans.”
“I’m sorry,” I said when we got outside, “it was my fault; I didn’t realize that it would be like that.”
“Stone Age people,” he said; but he wasn’t angry with me, he linked me. Walking home, I said, “ ‘Twill be different tomorrow, I’ll have cheered up again.”
“It’s funny,” he said, “the difference between fantasy and reality. When I met you those first few times in Dublin by accident, I thought to myself, Now there is a simple girl, gay as a bird, delighted when you pass her a second cake, busy all day and tired when she lies down at night. A simple, uncomplicated girl.” He spoke mournfully, as if he were speaking of someone who had died.
“I’ll be like that again,” I said. But he shook his head sadly and I knew that he was thinking: It was all an illusion, it was the clear whites of your eyes, and your soft voice, and the chiffon scarf around your throat, which gave me the wrong impression. I’m sure he thought something like that, even though he may have put it in different words.
Simon the poet lost no time. Laura’s first telegram came on Thursday. Eugene was out when it was delivered, and I opened it because he told me to always open telegrams. It said:
WELL EVERYBODY DESERVES A LITTLE FUN. ENJOY YOURSELF. LAURA
I ran to look for him. Anna said that he had gone for a ramble and that maybe I’d find him on the mountain, helping Denis to bring the sheep down. The sheep were brought down to the fields near the house weeks before lambing time. I ran out of the house and through the woods to the wasteland which led to the mountain. I heard sheep long before I saw him.
“Is that you, Kate?” he called out as I hurried along a narrow track, and saw two figures, Denis’s and his, herding the sheep. Denis had a lantern.
“That’s me,” I said in an angry voice, and when I was within a few yards of him, I told him about the telegram. Denis moved away, calling the dog and pretending not to hear me.
“So that’s why you’re gasping and blowing,” he said, and grinned. I handed him the telegram, which I had crumpled, in my state of outrage.
“I think it’s awful,” I said. “The post office, everyone, has read it.” Young gorse pricked my ankles and my stocking caught in a briar, but I didn’t care.
“It’s just a joke,” he said. “You have no sense of humor. We’ll have to give you one.”
“Humor!” There was a narrow path between the thickets of gorse, but I kept wandering off it.
“There, there, there.” He linked me, but I refused his arm. In the dusk the clumsy bodies of the sheep appeared to be tumbling down the hillside recklessly.
During dinner he read. Always during a coolness he read; he could read for days to avoid a scene.
Laura’s letter came on Saturday. Her name was on the back of the pink envelope; his name, in fact—Mrs. Laura Gaillard. He did not show it to me, but in the afternoon, when he went out, I rooted among his papers and found it. I read:
Eugene my dear,
I haven’t written for months. We’re both fine and the weather is just marvelous. Well, of course Simon (he is an old woman) has written and told me everything, including some trivial little incident about wrong cups. I always said you had a feudal attitude to women! And since then, I’ve had your sweet letter in which you say, “I have met a girl; she is Irish and romantic and illogical” and I say, What is she doing with dat man of mine! Honestly I was bowled over. Don’t fall off the chair or anything but you know we still have a sneaking attraction for one another which defies all the laws of gravity. Sometimes at night when I am in a perfectly empty room (Elly asleep in her bed) and I think, Gee-whiz, he’s a wonderful man and he’s funny and has talent and he loves me, I guess it is love. I have all your letters including the very first you wrote me after the night we met at Snope’s party and it’s signed “Heug.” You remember how we used to play with each other’s name? Heug for you, and Alura for me. Your letters are in my G file, and when I read them I realize how wise and subtle you are and how you once loved me. I’d let you see them, but you must promise to send them back.
The weather is fine—have I ever told you that the climate here is the most beautiful in the world? At night there is a sea mist (do you remember when we all swam naked that time down in Killarney, and you caught a chill?).
Elly is fine and I hate to tell you hut she doesn’t miss you. We play together for hours and have fun, and I envy her the lovely, secure childhood she is having. But she will know you, I’m sure, when you come.
At this point the paper began to tremble in my hand, and I read on feverishly.
When is this film scheduled for and are you going to South America first, or here first? Let me know by return, I want to have everything nice for you. I have painted the walls a powder blue and the ceiling dove gray. You’ll adore it. I’m having an exhibition later on and I’ve just finished a darling picture which I think is it. It expresses everything I have to say about life, the soul, neuroses, love, and death …
Elly sleeps on her right side with her hand under her cheek, and she is a doll.
Love and kisses,
Laura
P.S. The thing that worries me is that Mom and Ricki and Jason and everyone think we were made for one another.
He did not have to ask what I had been doing when he came in. The letter was in my hand and my lips trembled.
“Oh no,” he said, putting his hands to his eyes. “I’m so stupid, to leave a thing like that under your nose.”
“It’s terrible,” I said wildly.
“You shouldn’t have meddled in my affairs.” He took off his cap and scratched his head in irritation.
“It’s my affair.”
“It has nothing to do with you,” he said calmly. “I didn’t intend you to read that letter and you had no right to do so.”
I threw the letter down on the desk. “I’m glad I did. I now know what I’ve let myself in for. You going off to America to see her, and not even to tell me.” If I had to bring all the bitterness and hatred of the world into my heart, I was going to make him take me; that’s how I felt about it in that state of raw and ugly temper.
“So you know it all,” he said. “Well, that’s more than anybody else knows. Every time I look at you, you’re crying about something. If it’s not her”—he nodded toward the letter on the desk—”it’s your father, and if it’s not him, it’s something else.”
“Deceiving me,” I said. It was all I could say.
“I beg your pardon,” he said in a very cold and controlled voice, “am I to understand that my past life has deceived you?”
“No, not that,” I tried to explain, “but the way you do things, you’re so independent and you don’t tell me anything.”
“My God!” he sighed, and put his cap on. His angry eyes turned away. “So you want ownership, too, signed and sealed? One hour in bed shall be paid for by a life sentence?”
I lost my nerve and could not look at him. “It’s just such a shock,” I said in an appeasing voice now, because I had vowed to be good, and anyhow, I wanted him to take me with him.
“Will you take me with you?” I said, but he did not answer, so I said it again and tou
ched his hand. He took his hand away to remove his cap, and threw it on the desk. It overturned an open bottle of ink, and in a flash I saw it flow onto the maroon carpet and heard him swear and grind his teeth.
“Will you take me with you?” I said, in a last effort to extort a promise from him.
“Oh, for Chrissake,” he said, going over to soak up the ink with a sheet of blotting paper, “go away and postpone your scene until later on.” It was as if he had flung me out of the room; I walked out quickly, went upstairs, and began to pack my clothes into a canvas travel bag—one of his.
I had not very many clothes, but still the bag was stuffed to capacity, and the zipper would not close. The straps of a slip and a brassiere stuck out, and my three pairs of shoes were on top. I had no money.
“Can I have a pound for my bus fare?” I said as I came downstairs and tapped lightly on the study door, which was ajar. He was on his knees, washing the ink stain out of the carpet.
“A pound for your bus fare?” He looked up and saw that I had my coat on, and then his eyes fell on the stuffed travel bag.
“I’ll send you back your bag,” I said, knowing that he was going to comment on it. “It’s the best thing—to go away,” I said, trying not to break down until I had left.
From the green cash box he took five pounds and handed them to me.
“One will do,” I said, touched by this last-minute generosity.
“You’ll want your bus fare back again, won’t you?” he said, giving some sort of smile. Then he looked at the bag (the indecency of it, with underwear straps sticking out), and he said, “You’ll give the wrong impression, you know, leaving in a disheveled state.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as he put his lips to mine to kiss me goodbye. I don’t know why I said “I’m sorry,” it’s just that he had this marvelous faculty for being right and I always felt sorry, no matter whose fault it was.
“I’ll drive you to the bus,” he said; but of course by then he had kissed me and I was crying and we both knew that I would not leave at all. We put the bag down and we sat on the couch, while he told me in a concerned voice that I would have to grow up and learn to control my emotions. Discipline and control were the virtues he most lauded. These and frugality. In fact, the things I was most lacking in.
“We’ll have a cup of tea. Did I ever tell you my daily motto?” he said, after he had talked to me about being patient.
I shook my head.
“When about to cement fourth wife under kitchen floor—pause, and make tea.”
I wondered if he had told Laura that, after sitting on a chair and lecturing to her calmly about self-perfection and mind control and things like that. So often she crept into my thoughts, coming between me and what he said.
We made tea and ate fancy biscuits, and then went for a walk and saw the first snowdrop of the year. I felt very happy and elevated by all that he had said to me—I was going to be different—large and placid and strong.
That night, when he loved me and sank into me, I thought to myself, It is only with our bodies that we ever really forgive one another; the mind pretends to forgive, but it harbors and reremembers in moments of blackness. And even in loving him, I remembered our difficulties, the separated, different worlds that each came from; he controlled, full of bile and intolerance, knowing everyone, knowing everything—me swayed or frightened by every wind, light-headed, mad in one eye (as he said), bred in (as he said again) “Stone Age ignorance and religious savagery.” I prayed to St. Jude, patron of hopeless cases.
18
Everything was all right for four or five weeks. He wrote to Laura about a divorce; I wrote to my aunt and said, to cheer her up, that I would be married very soon.
Buds like so many points of hope tipped the brown and black twigs—green buds, black buds, and silver-white buds that looked as if they should sing as they burst upon us, waiting. Lambs were born at all hours of day and night, and two lambs whose mothers died were brought in the house and made pets of by Anna. They were a nuisance.
Baba came one weekday morning (Sunday was her usual day for coming) just as I was picking daffodils down the avenue. I had conveyed Eugene up to the top of the road to open the various gates for him. He went to a cattle fair to buy calves, as we had extra milk now. There were a lot of daffodils in bloom on the grass verge at either side of the graveled avenue, and on the way back I gathered an armful to pass the time. Their roots were wet as if spittle had been smeared on them and they smelled slightly unpleasant, as daffodils do. Then I heard a car, looked through the trees, and seeing that it was a strange car, I ran back to the house to hide. I thought it might be my father, but in fact it was Baba.
“Baba, Baba!” I unlocked the door and ran to her. She wore a white mackintosh and a red beret.
“This is marvelous,” I said, kissing her. I wished, though, that she hadn’t found me without my makeup.
Her eyes were large and excited, the way they get when she has something important to tell. In the hall the two pet lambs ran up, making baa noises and pretending that they were frightened of her.
“Baa, baa,” she said, chasing them, “it’s like a bloody zoo!” Then she whispered, “I want to talk to you, it’s urgent. Where’s Chekhov?”
“He’s out,” I said, and we went into the study and I closed the door—Anna expected to be included in all conversations with visitors. I poured us some port into tumblers; the tumblers were dusty, but I did not want to go away and rinse them. Baba appeared to be very nervous.
“Are you cold?” I asked her. The ashes from the previous night’s fire were still warm and the walls warm to the touch.
“Brace yourself,” she said, touching my glass with hers, “I have bad news.” My heart started to thump because I thought it was a message from my father.
“I’m in trouble,” she said.
“What kind?” said I, hopelessly.
“Jesus, there’s only one kind.”
“Oh no,” I said, drawing back from her as if she had just insulted me. “How could you?”
“Listen to who’s talking,” she said. “What the hell are you doing?”
“But you can’t,” I said, in a panic. “You’re not even living with anyone.”
“Can’t! It’s the simplest bloody thing, I mean it’s simpler than owning two coats or getting asked to a party.”
“Oh, Baba,” I said, holding her hand.
“Give me a fag,” she said abruptly. She hated pity and that slop of holding her hand.
While I rooted on Eugene’s desk, she filled out two more drinks. “Don’t,” I said, “he’ll miss it.”
“What? You’re not in a bloody monastery.” And then she put the tipped cigarette in her mouth wrongways. We sat down and tried to decide what she should do.
“Whose is it?” I asked, but she wouldn’t tell. She said that he was a married man and he worried in case his wife might get to hear of it. I felt certain that it must be Tod Mead. She said that the man had taken it very casually and said goodbye to her on the upstairs of a bus the day before. “See you around” were his parting words to her.
“I can go to England or I can come here,” she said. The “come here” made me speechless for a moment. I foresaw a situation where she’d be in our bed and ordering me to get up and cook breakfast. And I did not want a baby in the house. I dreaded babies.
“Can’t you do something?” I said.
“Do something!” she shouted. “It’s morbid. I’ve done every bloody thing, took glauber’s salt, and dug the garden, and I did so much waxing in that dump that Joanna got rid of the charwoman on the strength of it …”
I almost said, “It’s an ill wind …” as I thought of Joanna’s half-blind joy at finding Baba on her knees waxing. But Baba was too worried for me to say anything; her teeth chattered, and I sat there consoling her until Eugene came.
“It’s morbid,” she kept saying, “everything’s morbid. Someone filled me up with gin in a basement in Bagg
ot Street. ‘Baba, you’re a noble woman,’ he said, standing there in his he-man’s string vest, and I hadn’t the heart to tell him that I’d rather go home. That’s me,” she murmured, “the loser in the end.”
I advised that she go to England. She had received three hundred pounds from an insurance policy when she was twenty-one and her parents should be made to give it to her.
But when Eugene heard about it he said that if nothing fortuitous happened, Baba might have to come to us.
“We’ll have a harem,” he said, joking her, and she cheered up enormously and began to give me impertinence. I wasn’t a bit sorry for her, as she sat there in a brown kimono dress with her legs painted tan and her ankles crossed.
“Do you still shave?” she said to me.
“I never shaved. How dare you!”
“Who are you tellin’?”—and she peered closely at my chin. Once in an emergency, when we had no tweezers, she had bitten two short black hairs off my chin with her sharp teeth.
We had lunch, and though she had complained earlier of morning sickness, she ate like a horse. Then Eugene said that as it was a historic day, he would take photos of us, so we brushed our hair and went out to the lady’s garden with him, and waited for the sun to reappear. Baba stood on a stone to be as tall as me.
“This place would give me the creeps,” she said, looking around the cluttered garden, with one shrub thrusting its way between two others, dew still on the grass, and the young rose leaves opening, wine-color. Only the daffodils were in bloom.
“Cheese,” Baba said as he took the picture, and I still have that picture and look at it in a puzzled way, because I had no idea when he took it that my life would undergo such a sudden twist.
Driving Baba to catch the evening bus back for Dublin, Eugene assured her that she could come to us if the worst came to the worst and she was at her wits end.
“We’ll help you,” I said, trying to have a share in his kindness.
“Yes,” she said to me, “you were always good at bringing oranges to sick people in hospital.”