by Edna O'Brien
That night I did not promise to go to England with Baba, but next day she was on about it again, and I said that I maybe would go, although I did not believe that I really would. Making plans to go gave me something to think about, and also, I thought it would prove to him how independent I was. I wrote to him, telling him that I was going away, marking the letter Urgent and Personal.
Meanwhile, Baba made plans for us to leave. She rang her mother and got her to tell my father that I had left Eugene and was going to England with Baba. My father was delighted. In a letter he praised me for being so loyal to my family, and to my religion. He sent me fifty pounds’ reward—collected no doubt from cousin Andy and other rich relations. They wanted me to go home for a few days, but Baba told her mother on the phone that there was no time. Baba had already got the tickets. In the back of my mind was the nice thought that I could get a refund for my ticket or give it to some poor person when Eugene came. I felt that he had to come, because if he didn’t, it made everything between us meaningless.
I wrote to him again and asked him to have a drink with us, to say goodbye. I said nothing about being hysterical because I knew that once he saw me he would love me and want to protect me again. I said to myself that people were like that with me—they forget me easily, but when they see me, they are drawn again and somehow feel protective.
No answer came to that letter, and twice I went into a telephone booth to ring him, but vanity or terror stopped me from trying to get through. Anyhow, I did not want to talk to him on the telephone; I wanted him to come and see me. But really I was afraid to find that he had gone away.
Baba and I were out a lot, saying goodbye, getting new clothes and underwear, having our hair done, drinking with Baba’s friends. Sometimes in a pub it would come to me that he was outside Joanna’s waiting in his sports car, and I would run from my friends and get a taxi home, only to be disappointed again.
The nights were the worst: thinking of him sitting at home in his study listening to music, and moving those ivory chessmen on the checkered board, or skimming the cream off the milk so that he would not die of thrombosis at fifty. The inside of my lips were covered with water blisters, and these aggravated the craving pain to be with him. And I thought of what he had said about young girls being like a stone and I wanted him to know that this was not true.
Four days and four nights went by. On the fifth day we were due to leave. Baba had booked a double cabin and she had the tickets in a little cellophane envelope. I packed and kept up the pretense that I was really going, but I knew that just as I got on the ship, he would be standing there, mournful, and when he tapped my shoulder and said “Kate,” I would turn and go to him. In a letter I had told him the exact time we were sailing and where from, so I knew he’d come.
20
On our last day we bought labels and twine. We sent a barmbrack and twenty cigarettes to Tom Higgins, who was in a mental hospital (we were afraid to visit him), and Joanna had chicken for lunch as a celebration.
After lunch, we packed last-minute things and Joanna kept plaguing us to leave her some clothes and perfume in the ends of bottles. Baba half-filled three perfume bottles with water to keep Joanna happy.
When we had packed we hurried from one neighbor’s house to the next, saying goodbye, and Baba came with me to say goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Burns in the shop where I used to work. Mr. Burns gave me a pound and said it was God who had saved me from that awful man. No one except Baba seemed to realize that I wanted only to go back to Eugene.
“Cheer up, when we’re in London you can write to him; he’s bound to come over and take us out for big dinners,” she said as we walked home, smelling the hawthorn scent that carried in the wind from the bushes in people’s gardens. I wondered if he would come or not. Two or three times I thought of asking Baba to ring up again, but I thought that it might spoil everything and stop him from coming.
At home, in Joanna’s front garden, the peony roses had opened out—into a deep, glistening red. Joanna had watered them and everything was nicely moist. He still hadn’t come. Baba had arranged to meet the Body and Tod Mead in a pub.
A taxi came for us at six, and Gustav helped the driver with the cases. When they were all in, I ran back and stuck a note under the knocker—Gone to pub opposite boat—so that he would know where to find us. I didn’t want Joanna to know I left the note, because she’d say it gave burglars a fine opportunity to break in.
It was a dark pub, decorated inside to look like a ship, and along the mantelpiece were various-sized ships in bottles, and a picture of Robert Emmet on the wall. I made circles with the toe of my shoe in the sawdust and wondered how much longer I could wait without ringing him.
“Come on, Caithleen, cheer up, love,” the Body said, handing me a drink. It was rum and lemon, and I did not like it.
‘If you bowl over any publishers, let me know,” said Tod Mead, who had some vague idea about writing a novel and becoming famous.
“How’s Sally?” I said. Although I’d never met her, I pitied her a lot, ever since Baba was pregnant that time.
“She’s in great form, doing a lot of gardening,” he said, and though I wanted to ask him how she really was, I didn’t. His slight irritableness stopped you from asking him anything that mattered.
“I wonder how they get those ships into bottles,” he said, nodding at a white ship in a long bottle. That was how he evaded things, always changing the subject to something trivial. I would remember him, blue-eyed and secretly bitter, with an old fawn Crombie coat, and a knot in the belt where the buckle should be, setting himself up as an authority on wine and American writers and ships in bottles.
Two students from Trinity College came to bid Baba farewell, and she tried to coax a college scarf from one of them, so that she could show it off in London.
All of a sudden, as I watched her and listened to Tod, I got frantic and stood up. “I’m going to ring him,” I said to Baba.
“All right, ring him, there’s no one stopping you,” she said as she put the striped scarf over her head.
The telephone was in the hall. I had to get a single shilling and some pennies, and then wait for several minutes while the exchange connected me to his number.
Anna answered the telephone.
“No, he’s not here,” she said, yelling into it. You’d know that it was the first or second time in her whole life that she had used one.
Then she faded away, giving me the impression that she had turned to say something to someone.
“Anna, I’m going to England and I just want to say goodbye to him. Ask him to come and say goodbye to me.”
“He’s not here,” she said again. “He’s out the field, honest to God.” She heard me sobbing and she said, “If he comes in I’ll get him to rush in and see you. Where are you? How much longer will you be there?”
I had to shout into the bar to ask the name of the pub, and several people shouted the name to me.
“God, ‘tis well for you going to England,” Anna said. “Love, I’m in trouble, I’m up the pole again, is there any pills you could send me?”
“I’ll try,” I said. “Is he there?”
“He’s not here, there’s no one here, only me and the child. Will you send me the pills, will you?”
“And you’ll send him here, before I leave?”
“If he’s here at all, I’ll tell him!”
“Anna, I wrote to him,” I said.
“I know, there’s a pile of letters here on the hall table that he hasn’t opened.” It was that quality about him which I admired most, that lonely strength which allowed him to postpone a pleasure or a worrying letter for days or weeks.
I asked Anna if the American girl, Mary, had been to the house.
“No one came, only the rat man, ‘tis like a monastery here since you left. He was away for two nights, and since he came back he’s like a monk, brooding. Will you send the pills?” she begged, and then my time was up and I said goodbye and
came away feeling worse than ever. I could see his brown eyes as I had last seen them in the hotel, full of sadness, and full of knowledge that I was not the girl he had imagined me to be. A stone, he’d said. I thought of stones bursting open in the hot sun and other stones washed smooth by a river I knew well.
When we were leaving the pub I left a message that he should follow across to the ship; I still thought that he might come. It was getting late and I imagined him speeding down the mountain in his little car, hurrying to me. Anna had promised to go out and look for him, but he might be anywhere.
The Body knew the superintendent of the ship and managed to get permission for all of them to come on board. He tipped several porters as we all trooped on. Baba held her ticket between her teeth, to show it to the ticket man, as her hands were occupied with flowers and travel bags and a new red raincoat. Walking across the gangway, I thought, I can still go back and wait for him, because he’s coming. But I went ahead, propelled by the Body’s hearty voice and by someone who pushed me from behind with the sharp corner of a suitcase.
Our small cabin was thick with company: Tod, the Body, Joanna, Gustav, and the various bunches of crushed flowers which they had given us. The Body passed a half bottle of Irish whiskey around and urged us to drink up.
“I not get the germs,” said Joanna. She was quite merry from a few sherries, and the Body pushed her hat sideways so that everything about her looked lopsided.
“Jesus meets his afflicted mother,” the Body said to her, reminding me of the night we went to the dress dance and of later when he tripped on her stairs. And for a minute we all felt sad; but the Body shouted, “Baba, Caithleen, your health; your fortune; stay as sweet as you are and don’t let a thing ever change you”—he sang the last bit, and fondled Baba’s bottom and lifted her into the air.
“Jesus,” she said as her head hit the white porcelain lampshade.
A bell rang then and a commanding voice announced that all people aboard who were not traveling should disembark.
“Holy Moses, we’ll have to swim the channel,” the Body said, and Joanna said, “Mein Gott,” and Tod pulled up the back of his coat collar and made the sign of the cross in mockery over us. They scrambled toward the door and left us with the crushed roses and the half bottle of whiskey, which had the damp of their various mouths on its neck.
“He never came,” I said to Baba, and she put her arms around me and we both began to cry.
“I’ll go mad, I’ll go mad,” I sobbed to her.
“Oh, not the loony bin,” she said. “Wait till we go to England, everything is free there”—and then recollecting that we possessed so much money she said, “Our handbags; Jesus, our money,” and she flung coats and cases off the bed and found both handbags under the numerous brown-paper parcels. At the last minute we had found that all our clothes did not fit in our cases, and we had to make various parcels. Baba said we’d need a wheelbarrow to cart the stuff off the boat when we docked at Liverpool.
“We’ll stay awake all night,” she said. “You wouldn’t know who’d come in here and rape us and take our money.”
“I’ll never forget him,” I said to her as I went across to dry my eyes in front of the mirror over the washbasin.
“There’s no one asking you to,” she said. “Anyhow, cheer up, we’ll have a whale of a time in Soho.”
There was another announcement from the ship’s loudspeaker, and I listened, trembling, in case it might be him, but it wasn’t.
“Would you know by looking at me that I had a past?” I asked her. I no longer had to suck my cheeks in to look thin.
She replied to the mirror, “You’d know you hadn’t a decent night’s sleep for about six months, that’s what you’d know,” and then for devilment she pressed the two bells beside the bunks, just to see what would happen. A steward came.
“Just did it for gas,” she said; and he looked around at the chaos of our cabin—clothes on the floor, flowers on the floor, me crying, Baba nursing the whiskey bottle on her lap. He shook his head and backed out.
“If they’re wondering how big a tip they’ll get tomorrow, they’d want to watch out or they’ll get nothing,” Baba said loudly.
“A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love,” I said, light-headed as a result of the whiskey, and finding consolation in the words.
She put her hands to her ears. “No, no, Jesus, are you reciting those mortuary cards again?”
“He always washed his own socks and made metal things to put in them, to keep them from shrinking,” I said, “and he boiled his corduroy pants one day and they shrank, so he had to use them on a scarecrow.”
“I tell you something interesting, I think he was touched and you’re better off away from him.” She tapped her forehead. “He’ll become a monk.”
The ship began to rumble and I swayed a little and she said, “We’re off, come on, let’s wave to them,” and she led me by the hand as we ran up on deck to see the last of Dublin. The Body and the others were still on the quay, waving hands and hats and evening papers, but there was no sign of him.
“The Body is sincere,” I said to Baba, re-echoing Mama’s words.
Baba waved a clean hanky, and we leaned on the rails and felt the ship move and saw the dirty water underneath being churned up.
“Like a hundred lavatories flushing,” Baba said to the foamy water as the seagulls rose up from their various perches along the rails and flew slowly, with us. I could hardly believe that we were moving, that we were leaving Ireland; and through my tears I saw our friends waving us away, and cranes and anchored ships and the long, uninspiring stretch of quay which we rode past. And gradually the City of Dublin started receding in the mauve twilight of a May evening—the city where I first kissed him outside the Customs House; the city where I had two teeth out, and pawned one of Mama’s rings; the city I loved. We were both crying.
“Poor Tom Higgins shut up in the loony bin,” Baba said, as if it were for him she cried; but I thought, She’s crying, too, for that part of herself which she squandered, and for the aloes she took, and for all the bus conductors she flirted with.
We could see Dollymount sands now, where I had been first with Mr. Gentleman and then with him—both times in love. I pictured sand dunes with grass growing out of them and swore never to set foot there again, love or no love. We felt chilly, as we had forgotten to put on our coats, and it got dark fairly soon and lights came up on all sides of the bay.
Down below us the people traveling third class carried their drinks outside, and they leaned on the rails and sang.
“We’d have a lot more gas down there,” Baba said. There were mostly priests and married couples traveling first class.
The gulls flew slowly with us, their screaming unwinding the scream inside me. By degrees, the sky darkened; a mist rose from the sea; the stars lit up.
“I brought pills, in case we puke all over the damn ship,” Baba said, so we went inside and took three pills and hoped that we would be all right.
I missed him then, more than at any other time; it was terrible sitting on that bed, knowing that he had chosen not to come for me.
“If I’m sick, ‘twill spoil everything,” Baba said as she burped, and then put a hand towel over her new dress, for safety’s sake.
“Remind me to feck a few towels,” she said, and I knew that if anyone was to save me from going mad, it would be Baba, with her maddening, chattering voice.
“We’re on our way,” she said, raising her arms exultantly to the ceiling. “We’re on our way, English and American papers, please copy.” And the ship named Hibernia moved steadily forward through the black night, toward the dawn of Liverpool.
21
I work in a delicatessen shop in Bayswater and go to London University at night to study English. Baba works in Soho, but not in a striptease club, as she had hoped. She’s learning to be a receptionist in a big hotel. We share a small bed-sitting room, and my aunt sends a parcel of
butter every other week. Baba says that it makes us look like a right pair of eejits, getting that mopey parcel tied with hairy twine, and I keep telling my aunt that butter is not rationed here, but still she sends it. It’s all she can do to prove her love.
It is hot summer, and I miss the fields and the soft breeze, and I sometimes think of a brown mountain stream with willows and broom pods hanging over it; and I think of the day I went fishing there with him, and he wore big boots and waded upstream. At unguarded moments, in the last Tube, or drying my face by sticking my head out the window (we aren’t allowed in the garden), I ask myself why I ever left him, why I didn’t cling on tight, the way the barnacles cling to the rocks.
He wrote to me after I came here—a very nice letter, saying what a nice girl I was, and what a pity that he hadn’t been younger (in mind) or I hadn’t been older.
I answered that letter and he wrote again, but I haven’t heard from him now for a couple of months and I take it that he has gone back to his wife, or that he’s busy in South America, doing that picture on irrigation.
If I saw him again I would run to kiss him, but even if I don’t see him I have a picture of him in my mind, walking through the woods, saying, in answer to my fear that he might leave me, that the experience of knowing love and of being destined, one day, to remember it, is the common lot of most people.
“We all leave one another. We die, we change—it’s mostly change—we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it’s inescapable …” he said.
It’s quite true. Even Baba notices that I’m changing, and she says if I don’t give up this learning at night, I’ll end up as a right drip, wearing flat shoes and glasses. What Baba doesn’t know is that I’m finding my feet, and when I’m able to talk I imagine that I won’t be so alone, but maybe that too is an improbable dream.