by Colm Toibin
‘I’m not listening.’ He put his fingers in his ears.
Later, they took deckchairs to a spot at the front of the house which still caught the sun. The day was calm, with milky clouds in the sky and a heat which had not been there in the previous few days.
‘This is a beautiful place,’ he said.
‘I suppose it is,’ she said, ‘for an outsider it is maybe. I have only bad memories of it.’
‘Did you ever get on with your mother and your grandmother?’
‘When I was a little girl and had no choice.’
‘When did you all fall out first?’
‘It was years ago.’
‘Over what?’
‘Sometimes I’m not sure I know.’
‘But when did the fighting start?’
‘This doesn’t look much like a guest-house,’ Helen said, ‘but in the old days my grandparents would move into what is now that shed, where there were two rooms. And there are, as you know, three and a half bedrooms upstairs, and two downstairs. A whole family would take over a room; the place was bedlam and they had to be fed morning, noon and night. The summer before I finished school I worked here for a month. My grandmother paid me, my mother and Declan came on Sundays and it was all fine. So I agreed to come and work again the following summer before I went to college. This time, however, my grandfather was dead and my grandmother was different. As soon as I arrived she stopped doing anything herself except bossing me around and not letting me out of her sight. I went into Blackwater one night without setting the table for the morning, and there she was waiting up for me, going on and on about how I had treated her. I know my grandfather had died not long before, but there was no need for it. I couldn’t wait for the summer to be over, and by the time it was over I was exhausted.
‘I loved UCD from the first moment I arrived there. I met Hugh in my first term and we started going out together, and that was great, even though there were problems because Catholic girls from Enniscorthy did not sleep with men from Donegal without a lot of persuasion. Hugh was going to America for the summer after first year with a whole crowd from Donegal, and they had guaranteed work there. He asked me to come with them and I said I would. By this time I was on the pill, you’ll be glad to hear. During the Easter holidays, when I told my mother about America, she instantly became hysterical, and asked me what my grandmother was going to do. “She has a few months to find someone,” I said. “And who would she find?” she asked. “Anyone she’d find would be an awful fool for putting up with her,” I said. And so you can imagine the screaming and shouting and the letters that followed me to Dublin in case I had not properly understood. She didn’t threaten to cut me off, or anything like that, but it was all full of stuff about my father and my grandfather and the two of them – my mother and my grandmother – left alone now and needing the support of those around them, and instead finding themselves insulted and let down by one of the people they loved most. It was all sick. And I gave in. I told Hugh I couldn’t go, and when I arrived here the old witch wouldn’t speak to me. And the place coming down with guests. If I asked her a simple question, she’d ignore me. And for the first month the only food she bought was ham, boiled in the middle of the day with potatoes and cabbage, in a sweltering July, and cold with a half a tomato and a few leaves of lettuce at six o’clock. The guests – some of them were the lowest forms of life – used to groan when I appeared with the food.
‘Granny and I began to leave lists on the kitchen table, as a way of letting each other know that we had run out of eggs or toilet paper. One day, when there was about a week to go, she left a bar of chocolate on my pillow. That was the signal that the cold war was coming to an end. By the time I was going back she was addressing some civil words to me. And the worst part was that I went back the following year as well.
‘A few days after I arrived back in UCD at the end of the first summer, I was walking down the stairs of the canteen, and I saw Hugh sitting there with a group. He glanced away and pretended he didn’t see me. I thought at least he would wave and wander over to meet me and we’d have coffee together, even though I’d only had a single postcard from him all summer. All his crowd had been to America, they had money now and confidence, you’d notice them on the campus. This little mouse, on the other hand, ran scared of her grandmother, had no new clothes, was back in Loreto Hall, run by nuns, had lost her boyfriend and wouldn’t meet him again for three or four years, but got used to nodding to him discreetly on the way into the library. He was always on his way somewhere. I became very interested in my studies.’
‘And did you say’, Paul asked, ‘that you came back here the following year?’
‘I knew it would be the last time, because the year after that I was sitting my finals in the autumn, but it didn’t make it any easier or any better. That year, of course, she was talking to me, and if she annoyed me in any way I spoke to her in that same clear, reasonable way I use with teachers now, and she found that almost impossible to deal with.’
‘Yes, it must have been very frightening,’ Paul said. They both laughed.
‘I missed my chance. I would love to have had those two summers in America and I learned nothing here except this awful bitterness against the two of them, my granny and my mother. And that meant that I was ready for them the next time.’
‘What was the next time?’ Paul asked.
‘I did my Dip. hours in Synge Street, and the Brothers offered me a job and I accepted it. I had also done a course in English as a Foreign Language, and I found work for the summer teaching Spanish students. I told my mother and my grandmother this news way in advance – not the full-time job story, but the summer teaching story. This meant I was in Dublin, I had money, I worked in the mornings, I had a dingy room that I loved at the top of a building in Baggot Street, with a view right down to the Pigeonhouse. I have good memories of that summer, the freedom of it. The area has changed a lot, but up to a certain time in the evening you could go into the Pembroke or Doheny & Nesbitt’s or Toner’s and nobody would bother you. But I knew my mother and my grandmother thought I was coming home to teach, and I wasn’t, but I hadn’t told them I wasn’t.
‘Earlier in the year, my mother had told me that she would ask about vacancies in the schools in Wexford or anywhere around, including Enniscorthy. I remember that I was really careful to say nothing. I didn’t want to have the argument then. I never told them about the job in Synge Street. Then in July I had a letter from her to say that there was good news, it was all arranged and Mother Teresa would be delighted to have me from September. I would need to go for a formal interview, but it wouldn’t be a problem.’
‘Can you give jobs out like that?’ Paul asked.
‘You can do what you like when you run a religious school. So I wrote back and told her I had a job, thank you. And then the next day the two of them arrived up to Dublin; they were waiting in the car outside my door in Baggot Street, white-faced both of them, when I arrived home after work. There I was, sauntering along Baggot Street on a beautiful summer’s day, only to find these two madwomen sitting in the car taking up valuable parking space. They wouldn’t come in; they marched me to the Shelbourne Hotel, and I noticed on the way there that they had both dressed up for the occasion. They sat me down and, as they would put it, tried to talk some sense into me. Two summers of drudgery had me ready for them. It was all Mother Teresa this and Mother Teresa that. “I have a job,” I said. “I don’t need a job.” “You’ve been in Dublin long enough now,” my grandmother said. “You have your qualifications and you’ll come home now like your father and your mother did. God knows your mother wants to put her feet up for a while.” I realised that the plan was that I would skivvy for my mother the way I had done for my granny, perhaps even commute between them. They had brought notepaper and envelopes with them, and they wanted me to write a letter to Synge Street saying that I would not be accepting their job and to Mother Teresa saying that I would be available for inter
view at her convenience.
‘I told them I was writing nothing. They were fussing with the tea things as though they were Lady Muck and ordering more sandwiches. “You’d be much better among your own people,” my granny said. “Everyone is to stop bossing me around,” I told them. “No one’s bossing you around,” my mother said. “We’re both very busy and we’ve both come up all the way to try and talk some sense to you.” You should have heard them both, and all they wanted, of course, was to be driven here and driven there, and have messages collected and dinners cooked. And where was Declan during all of this? He was on his first summer holidays after his first year doing Pharmacy in college and what was he doing? Was he washing out the floor of his grandmother’s so-called guest-house? No, he was working as a ticket seller in a cinema in Leicester Square in London, and he was, as he will tell you himself, having the time of his life.’
‘I know all about it,’ Paul said.
‘The two of them said that they weren’t going to let me throw away a good chance like this. I listened for a while more and then I took my handbag and my cardigan and I went to the ladies’ and then I walked out of the hotel into the street. I bought an English newspaper and I went over to Sinnott’s in South King Street and I sat in the snug drinking a Club orange and reading my paper. And I suppose at some stage they went home. And that was the end of that.’
‘And when did you see them next?’ Paul asked.
‘I haven’t really seen them since,’ Helen said.
‘But you must have.’
‘I saw them the following Christmas because Declan called to my flat and implored me to come down with him, which I did. The reception was very frosty. I nearly spat when they tried to stop him doing half the washing-up with me. And I came down again the Christmas after that. And I got used to not seeing them, and I found that not seeing them made me much happier, and I became interested in my own happiness.
‘I didn’t tell them I was getting married and I didn’t tell them when the boys were born. Hugh’s family love weddings, and they couldn’t believe there wasn’t going to be a big wedding, but we got married quietly in a registry office in Dublin and then there was a big party in Donegal.’
‘Why didn’t you want them at your wedding?’ Paul asked.
‘I would have hated their two faces looking at me. That’s all. I told Declan and he told them. And I told Declan when I was pregnant and I suppose he told them that too. But my mother has never met Hugh or the boys.’
‘And how long have you been married?’
‘Seven years.’
‘I knew it was a long time. It’s a long time not to see people you’re close to. But did something not happen last summer?’ Paul asked.
‘Declan organised a big reconciliation last summer,’ Helen said. ‘I came down here for a night with Hugh and the boys, and my mother was to drive out from Wexford, but she never turned up. My granny was full of apologies for her. And then I think they all gave her such a hard time that she rang me and we met in town one Saturday in Brown Thomas, if you don’t mind, and she bought me the most expensive coat in the shop. And she bought presents for the boys as well and they wrote her thank-you letters. And the plan was that we were all going to drive down here again later this summer for a repeat of last summer, except this time she would turn up.’
‘Do you mean that this has been going on for ten years and all because of this row in the Shelbourne?’ Paul asked.
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ Helen said stiffly.
‘Has it ever occurred to you that they wanted you home because they loved you?’
‘No, it has not. That is not why they wanted me home.’
‘Has it ever occurred to you that your mother would have been worried about you going to America with people she didn’t know?’
‘Whose side are you on?’ Helen asked.
‘I don’t understand the reason you didn’t want them at your wedding and the reason you didn’t see them for so long. What you’ve told me isn’t reason enough.’
‘I was angry with them for the reasons I told you.’
They heard a car in the lane. When Helen looked at her watch she saw that it was almost five o’clock. Larry and her grandmother smiled and waved as they drove into the yard in front of the house, but Paul continued talking.
‘They just tried to get you a job,’ he said. ‘If you’d said that you didn’t see them much for a year, I’d have understood, or two years. But a whole ten years and you didn’t let your children meet your mother and your grandmother! Wow, there must be something between the three of you, something . . .’
Paul stopped as Larry stood in front of them. The old lady was taking a bag from the car.
‘I don’t know what he’s saying,’ Larry said, ‘but he has that funny, pompous, know-all look on his face. I saw it as soon as I drove around, and if I were you, Helen, I’d get away while I could. I’ll distract him and you just run. People have been known to go crazy just listening to him. Look at the self-righteous set of his chin. God! Aren’t you lucky we came along!’
‘One of the reasons I left Ireland’, Paul said and stood up, ‘was to get away from this sniping and sneering and cheap stupidity.’
He went over to the car and helped Mrs Devereux into the house with her shopping.
‘Sorry,’ Larry said. ‘I didn’t know why it needed to be said. It just needed to be said.’
‘Where were you?’ Helen asked.
‘We went for a trip to Wexford, looked at bathrooms and ended up like all good married couples in the supermarket. Incidentally, what was he saying to you?’
‘He was talking about reasons.’
‘Yeah, he’s good on reasons. Has your mother gone to Wexford?’
‘She’s gone with Declan somewhere. We thought you might have gone together in convoy.’
‘No, they were here when we left.’
Helen drank a strong cup of coffee in the kitchen as the others wandered about. She noticed Paul looking at her, and she wanted, now more than any other time in the previous few days, to be away from his interrogation, and to be away altogether from this house. She was uneasy with what had happened between them; Paul had told her the truth about himself and she had been evasive. There was something now that she needed to put words on, something she needed to hear herself saying. She made herself another cup of coffee and when Paul left the room she followed him. She could feel her heart thumping. She stopped him at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said. She motioned him to follow her into the back bedroom. When they were in the room she closed the door. She sat on the bed and he stood close to the window.
‘You asked me about my mother and my grandmother and I told you things, but there are other things I left out that are harder to understand, and maybe I should try. I feel bad because you were so honest and open with me.’
‘I knew there was something else,’ Paul said. ‘I hope I didn’t offend you by saying so.’
‘No, you didn’t offend me.’ She drank her coffee and began to talk.
‘About seven or eight years ago I worked as a career guidance and home liaison officer in a new comprehensive school on the west side of Dublin. There was a girl in the school, a student, who used to cut herself. She was about fifteen. She’d cut parts of her body that no one could see. A friend of hers came and told me, and then I met her and asked her, and eventually, after a lot of tears and denials, she told me it was true. I had to get involved in her case, even though I had no experience. So I spoke to her parents, but it was no use. There was a strange atmosphere in the house when I went to visit. It was all new to me, I was a nice middle-class girl, and there was silence and fear mixed with poverty and a sort of contempt for people like me. And the girl herself was a mystery. She was so bright in class, the teachers said, and so poised and intelligent in the sessions which I had with her.
‘The only thing she would not do was talk about what she was doing to herself. I found her a p
sychiatrist who was in the public health system because I felt that other help was needed if she was to be all right. I thought maybe if we talked to her and made her realise that she must stop before it all went too far, she might be better. I know that sounds stupid. I was learning then and I listened a lot to the psychiatrist, who was a man in his fifties with a beard who was always in his stockinged feet. He told me that it would take time to help the girl, that we were dealing with something fundamental, something that could not be easily dislodged.
‘I took the girl to and from the sessions, and I spoke to her about what was happening, and I spoke to the psychiatrist. And it all made me think about myself, why I felt no need to make up with my mother or my grandmother, that I had put away parts of myself that were damaged and left them rotting. When my father died, half my world collapsed, but I did not know this had happened. It was as though half my face had been blown away and I kept talking and smiling, thinking that it had not happened, or that it would grow back. When my father died I was left alone by my mother and grandmother. I know that they had their own problems and maybe they could not have helped, maybe even the damage was already done, but I got no comfort or consolation from them. And these two women are the parts of myself that I have buried, that is who they are for me, both of them, and that is why I still want them away from me.’
Helen’s voice was hard and low. Her hand was shaking.
‘My mother taught me never to trust anyone’s love because she was always on the verge of withdrawing her own. I associated love with loss, that’s what I did. And the only way that I could live with Hugh and bring up my children was to keep my mother and my grandmother away from me.
‘I knew that it was wrong, I knew that I could not go on for ever like this, but I did not have the courage to confront them or even see them. And now that we’re all here, you watch them: they are pulling me back in. So what’s going on between me and them is not about how I spent my summer holidays when I was a student or where I got a job.