by Edna O'Brien
“Why is it to let?” I said. “Are you leaving?” We were dead formal, like house agent and client.
“Yes,” he said, “I don’t fancy it. It’s too bourgeois for me!” Bourgeois. There were orange boxes as chairs, for God’s sake, and a floor mat over the bed.
“It’s for a friend, a girl, who’s left her husband,” I said, in case he thought I wanted it for a love nest.
“It’s not for you,” he said, smiling. He had this fab smile.
“Not me. I live with my husband.”
“Will he expect you home?”
“Sure.”
“In that case,” he said, “let’s be practical. We can’t tonight, so why waste time and make him suspicious. When can I come?”
Talk about alacrity. I fixed it that he come to tea the next day, and then I had a quick look around to see if Brady would find the place habitable. There wasn’t a cup or a saucer, or any evidence of eating.
Just before I left he put the light out. “Open your mouth,” he said, and gave me this kiss. I went down the rickety stairs singing “Careless Love” to my heart’s content.
I got home in about ten minutes and walked straight into tally-hoo. Old Eugene was there acting like a madman. You know, talking about the law and civil rights and stuff. At four in the morning. It seems he was pounding on the door when Frank got there.
“Sit down,” I said, “and have a cup of tea.” He’s a great one for tea. I was most friendly.
“Is my wife here, is my child here?” he said. My, my, my.
“They couldn’t be,” said I. “We were out to supper and we’ve just got in. Is there something wrong?” I sobered pretty smartly. Frank was walking around like a shop walker, saying he was an honest man and would let no loose woman hide in his house.
“I warn you,” Eugene said. “If she’s here, you’re culpable by law for abducting my child.” The gripes. A raving encyclopedia of the law, he was. I thought, If this is how true love ends, I’m glad I’ve never had the experience. He listed all her faults, you know, really intimate details that you wouldn’t want known.
“By Christ,” said Frank, “if she is here I’ll have plenty to say to her, upsetting my night’s sleep like this.”
“She isn’t here,” I said. I had to be casual. The pair of them were stamping around all the time and I had visions of her creeping in, in a nightgown, saying, “Did somebody call?”
“Look,” said I, coming the old honor, “if she gets in touch with me I give you my oath that I’ll ring you.” I’m amazing when I want to be. He made me repeat it, then left me a four-page letter for her, enumerating all her faults to her, and departed saying he’d use force if necessary. I saw him out, and boy, did I chain that door after him.
Of course, I had to tell Frank, I just had to. He nearly ripped the roof off. He tore up the stairs, with me after him, calling her name the way you’d call cows. She came out peppering.
“You get out of here,” Frank said. She pleaded to be left until morning. It was really debasing to see her pleading. He said no. He said he didn’t want to end up in the divorce courts, thank you very much, and that he had his reputation to think of. I’d have injured him if capital murder wasn’t operating in this country and pig-faced ministers weren’t screaming daily to bring back the birch. She looked as if she might die. I told him to go to bed and that she’d be gone before he got up. She and I spent the rest of the night figuring out where she’d go. I told her a bit—not too much—about the drummer’s place and she began thanking me and slopping over me, and I hate it when people thank you beforehand, because then it means you’ve got to help. Anyhow, I rang hotels, but none of them would have her. They were all full up. I suppose they thought she was a jail bird. So I had to try friends. Imagine ringing people at that hour of night and saying, “I was just thinking of you. I just thought I’d ring up for a chat,” because of course I couldn’t decently ask at once. They all said why didn’t I have her? She was crying and supplicating and saying, “Why did it have to happen to me?” Exactly my sentiments, too. Because to tell you the truth, I wasn’t having all that much fun ringing people up in the middle of the night. Two lots banged the phone down on me.
“What was Eugene like, how did he look?” she kept saying. I said he looked shaken, naturally.
I said, “You know what old Scott Fitzgerald said about the three-o’clock-in-the-morning state.” Giving her back one of her own tags. She’s full of tags. Things that Scott said in bars, and wise saws that Ernest Hemingway gave out to whalers. As if she were their best friend and had breakfast with them on their ranches every morning.
Finally in the early morning I had to resort to blackmail. There’s a crow who lives on our road and I let her keep her wheelbarrow in our treble garage, so I rang her. She wasn’t one bit forthcoming. She hummed and hawed, and I gave her the tune about a friend in need is a friend indeed, so she said, “Well, maybe for a week or two.” She wouldn’t hear of having the child, because her dog bit kids.
“We’ll have to put the kid in a kennel,” said I, real sarcastic, and I fixed it that Kate would move in by eight in the morning and take her chances with the dog.
When I put the telephone down I knew what was coming. Remorse! As if I hadn’t enough for one day. She pitied Eugene, she said. He was a misfit. He loved his child. She couldn’t be responsible if he went mad. For whom the bell tolls. I mean, I don’t have to go over the rigmarole. You’ve heard it millions of times before.
The upshot is, her on the telephone to him, bursting over with apology and saying she shouldn’t have done it. I thought after all that trouble I’d gone to, to get that room. She was so goddamn servile I could have killed her. Telling him that he should have met a good woman, but that there was no such thing. Letting the sex down with a bang. The happy conclusion reached was that she’d bring Cash home and take the room herself, to brood over her faults for a few weeks.
“And we’re still friends,” she kept saying. You could just imagine her saying that to a hangman.
We dressed the kid about seven and took him home. He was dead disappointed. He thought he was out for a month at least. We told him his mother had to go to hospital. The things kids are told! When we let him out and he trotted up his own path, she looked after him and said, “Poor Cash, he doesn’t know what’s ahead of him,” and that was the only time that I really made a fool of myself and cried. I mean, he looked so harmless in the thick blue gabardine raincoat she had on him. And he turned around and grinned at us as if we were coming back in a few minutes.
“Parents,” she said.
Parents, I thought, the whole ridiculous mess beginning all over again. Hers and mine and all the blame we heaped on them, and we no better ourselves. Parents not fit to be kids. Talk of tears, we bawled and bawled, and the driver had to go around the square twice before she was ready to go into her new lodgings. I couldn’t go with her, it was too hurtful.
“How will I get through the day?” she asked.
“Have a sleep,” I said. You know, like, “Have fun.”
“I can’t.”
I knew ‘twas unbearable for her, but what could I do? What can anyone do for anyone else? I gave her Sweet Dreams pills and a few crisp fivers. These were the only times I found marriage at all pleasing—when I was handing out his money. Then, to liven her up, I said if she was going to do herself in, to be sure and make a will and leave me her diaries.
“I won’t forget you, Baba,” she said, dead serious, dead dopey. I cannot stand serious people.
7
Later in the day I set to preparing for Harvey. I got the bedroom organized, removed our sleeping attire and Durack’s toothbrush. It looks prehistoric, gray hairs soft and bushy and worn right down to the butt. Hell buy a helicopter but not a toothbrush. I then carted some of the more disastrous antiques to the shed. At four o’clock the old “Home Sweet Home” doorbell chimed. God grant it’s not Kate or a manure man, I thought. Once I was so bored I took p
ity on a manure man and bought stuff. Town manure stinks like nothing else you’ve ever dreamed of—what they add to it!
“All right, Mrs. Cooney, I’ll get it,” I said, real cool. That’s our charwoman. She was halfway up the stairs, but I beat her to the door and greeted him with a plastic smile. You won’t believe it but he was standing there with a big drum and drumsticks and everything. It was very flashy, with red stones around the rim.
“It’s not a concert,” I said. I didn’t know what to say, really.
“I thought you’d like to hear me play,” he said. Thought! He had a hell of a cheek bringing all that gear, not knowing whether he’d get in or not, or whether he’d have to sneak out the pantry window in an emergency.
“Charming,” I said, bringing him into the room. I had a real hostess face on, and gold tights. He was in brown himself. Shirt, jacket, trousers—everything brown. I thought only someone really full of himself could wear such a boring color and get away with it.
“You match the tobacco tones of the room,” I said, sarcastic.
“So?” he said, smiling. It was a grin really, a grin that said, “I can twist you around my little finger.”
Not me, baby, I thought as I watched him take a swig of the brandy I’d given him—we have all our grog bottled specially with our name on it.
Then he beckoned me to come over near him and I leaped across and he put his lips to mine and gave me brandy from his mouth. I nearly passed out with the thrill. I don’t want to get all eejity about nature and stuff, but it was just like the way birds chew the food and then feed it in the mouths of their young. He could twist me around some barbed wire if he wanted to.
“Now sit down,” he said, “and talk to me.” I went and sat on our studio couch with its patent floating comfort suspensions. “Our playground,” I said, smiling. I thought he’d come and sit next to me but he didn’t. He put a cushion on the floor, crossed his legs, and sat like a mystic. He was looking around the room, sizing it up.
“What’s that crazy thing?” he said. It was an antique miniature coach that we carted one Sunday from Windsor.
“An antique—Queen Anne,” said I. I thought of the consignment of stuff out in the shed and what he’d make of that. But I was damned if I was going to get insulted in my own house. “Being a garret man,” said I, “you wouldn’t probably know much about it.”
“I like simple wooden furniture,” said he.
“Gracious living,” said I, thinking of the orange boxes. We were really hitting it off.
“I’d love some more brandy,” I said then, meaning from the mouth. He got up and filled me a boring glass, and put it on the bamboo table in front of me. Durack read somewhere that bamboo was in, that Cecil Beaton had a bamboo whatnot in his studio, so he sent to Ireland to his poor old mother and got her to rake up all the bamboo in the place. Junk!
“Where are you from?” I said. I couldn’t think of one witty thing.
“A nomad,” he said. Anyone else saying that would look a right fool, but not him. That was the thing about him. He wouldn’t look a fool ever, no matter what he did. He had it all figured. He had the world by the short hairs, too. He knew what to say, but mostly it was a question of what not to say. No one would catch him out. There are people like that, quite a lot.
He said he’d lived all over, in Australia and Mexico and places, and that he had Apache Indian blood. I thought, How the hell can you be so white if you have Indian blood, but that’s not the sort of thing you can say. Indian blood is all the rage now.
“We’ll have some tea,” I said, and rang the bell, although I hated to, but Cooney was so moody that if I didn’t let her have a look in she mightn’t show up for days. At least I warned her not to say the bit about “keep your faith in God and your bowels open.” She says that to total strangers, like it was a recitation.
“Did you call me, madam?” she said, hopping in, in a clean apron, with the hat on. It’s an atrocious hat with veiling but she thinks it does wonders for her. The “madam” nearly killed me; she calls me by my Christian name, for God’s sake, when we’re alone. He started to smile, and of course that gave her leeway to come in.
“Lovely drum,” she said. He said he was glad she liked it and would she like to hear him play?
“Oh, goody,” she says, and sinks onto the couch with her stupid feet up in the air. Her legs are that short. He played some very earthy stuff, I mean ‘twas loud and like the noise savages make with bones. We were a good audience. She was clapping like a maniac; I mean, clapping in the middle and places where she shouldn’t. He was all intense and didn’t pay attention to me once. That maddened me. I’d peeled off most of my underclothes and was freezing.
“Give us lavender blue,” Cooney said when he looked like stopping.
“I think we’ll have tea, Mrs. Cooney,” I said. She’d switched off. Strap. She has this hearing aid. She can hear better than anyone, but she got it for nothing on the health scheme. She’s the sort would have her own teeth taken out just to avail herself of the free ones. I gave her a nudge in the ribs.
“Very nice of you, madam,” she said, and leaned over to the bamboo table and took a fistful of fags from the silver cigarette box. She put them all in her apron pockets except for the one she lit.
“Put a beggar on horseback and he’ll ride to hell,” I said. She just ignored me and went on looking at his drumming. You’d think he was making love to that drum, the way he brought it to life. He had his legs around it. She was clapping and humming. Finally I had to go make the tea myself. The tray was set for three but I removed one cup and saucer. When I came back into the room she noticed this straightaway. She jumped up in a huff and shook hands with him and said he was a gentleman. She shot out of the room and came back almost at once with her coat on, saying in a toff’s voice, “Mrs. Durack, I want a personal word with you at once.”
“I’m not at all pleased with you,” she said to me out in the hall. “Discriminating like that, as if I were black or something.”
“He’s Albanian himself,” I said, just to confuse her.
“Jumped-up Irish scum,” she said to me. A hell of a neck. She smelled like a brewery.
“I think you’ve had too much to drink,” said I. I knew that would kill her, because although she tipples all day she never admits to drinking.
“No class! Letting me wash your knicks,” she said. I hoped to God he wasn’t listening. It was all I needed to look alluring in his eyes. I opened the door and pushed her out.
“I know where I’m not wanted,” she said.
“It takes you a hell of a long time to register it,” I said. She put her head through the letter box then, and began yelling and cursing and ringing the “Home Sweet Home” bell. I came back into the room to find him halfway through the cucumber sandwiches and pouring himself another cup of tea.
“Are you all right?” I said, just to let him know that I could see he was eating rapidly.
“Did the drumming excite you?” he said when I sat down.
“Oh, very much.” I was excited before ever he came.
“How?”
“Oh, you know how.”
“Where?”
“In my wooden leg.” Sweet Jesus, where did he think!
“Breasts or loins?” he said.
“Both.” I know roughly where your loins are, but I’d hate to have to point them out on a diagram.
“Good,” he said. He ripped into the cake and then a cigar from our box. Jokes—he had the least sense of humor of anyone I ever met, and boy, I know some dull people. He dropped his previous cigarette butt into the great big china jardiniere we have. It fizzled in there because there was water in the bottom since the last real flower display.
“Your husband’s fetish,” he said, sort of sarcastic. True enough, it did look like a great community chamber pot, but who was he to talk about fetishes.
We were getting nowhere.
“Come and sit near me,” I said.
“I prefer to look at you from here,” he said. “The human face is not made for closeups. There is only one time when it’s bearable, that is”—he stopped as if he was going to say something revolutionary, for God’s sake—”on a pillow.”
“Plenty of pillows in the linen cupboard,” I said, to be funny. I made a fool of myself twenty times per minute.
Then he stood up, took hold of one of the drumsticks, and came over and started drumming me, mainly on the bosoms. Playful as hell. I don’t know if you go in for that sort of thing, but there’s no fun in it. Merciful God. I just felt I was being pummeled.
“Turn around,” he said. I got a few on the bottom.
A thought struck me about my bruises. Frank often examines me, to see what the butler saw. I could see him inquiring about this mysterious mark and me saying, “Waxed floor did it—I slipped,” and him saying, “What waxed floor? We have fitted carpets,” and me saying, “I took up a carpet to do it; house-proud little me, I even waxed the floor underneath.” A cock-and-bull story if ever I heard one.
Ouch, he went on drumming, and boy, did it hurt.
“I’ve studied the art of lovemaking since I was fourteen,” he said. He said he had his muscles under such control that he could make love to twenty-five women in an evening. He pointed to a little line of hair on his chin and said that it was put to use in lovemaking, too.
“My hipbones, every part of me is brought to bear,” he said. Talk about the secrets of the Orient. I was raring to get upstairs.
Well, for the record, we got up there about two hours later, by which time you could have carried me on a stretcher I was so exhausted. ‘Twas a ritual. I had to be drummed all over, then spin on my toes and play the damn drum with my fingers while he played it with his, and then kiss at a certain ordained moment, and not even got any pleasure out of it. ‘Twas like drill at school. I had to act as if there were nothing happening. Not that there was that much going on.