‘She had a ... it looked like a panic attack in the ambulance and then, since we arrived at the hospital and they got her a bed, she’s been asleep.’
‘It’s probably the best thing for her,’ said Martha.
‘Maybe,’ said Katherine with no conviction. Tara didn’t believe in sleep. ‘You’d be amazed at how much work you can get done when you don’t waste time sleeping,’ she sometimes said.
Last orders at the bar. She was nearly there. Martha concentrated on the second hand of the kitchen clock. The insistence of it. And the sound. Had it always made that sound? In the orange glow thrown by the streetlamp outside, she watched the hand inch around the face, saw the almost imperceptible shake of the smaller hand as each minute passed.
In the dark, the dense silence seemed to move around her, like a predator. Sounds leaked from the apartments above and below. A toilet flushing, a door closing, a stair creaking. She was glad she didn’t have a lodger anymore. She’d needed one after she lost her job as a reporter in RTÉ, to help bail out the waters of negative equity with which the apartment was flooded.
When Kate had left six months ago, to move in with her Australian boyfriend, Martha hadn’t had to replace her, as the freelance work began to pick up.
She braced herself, then reached her arm down her body to scratch an itch at the side of her knee and the pain rushed at her like a train and she told herself to stop being such a bloody baby and that did the trick for a while. She knew she should go to the freezer. Get a bag of frozen peas. Hold them against her face. She should wrap a bandage around her ribs. She didn’t have a bandage and the freezer was in the kitchen and she didn’t feel like moving. She should probably take a painkiller. Roll a cigarette. Eat something.
She did none of that. Instead, she lay on the couch in the dark and thought about the article she was supposed to have filed that afternoon. She hadn’t been late with a piece since she’d begun freelancing nearly a year ago. It had taken a long time to regain even a fraction of the credibility she had squandered.
She found it difficult to attach any importance to this. Or to anything. The windows in the apartment were closed and the air in the room seemed heavy and stale and it made her think of a crypt or a grave and she felt alone.
Her phone rang. Martha’s body jerked at the sudden noise, and she clamped her hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out. She picked up the phone, glanced at the screen. It was her mother. She let it go to voicemail.
It’s your mother.
Her messages always began like that, as if she somehow doubted that Martha would recognise her voice.
I’m ringing to see how you are?
A pause there. Martha waited.
And to remind you about the memorial service in Sunshine House on Friday.
Martha had forgotten.
I’m sure you hadn’t forgotten but ...
She trailed off. Martha waited. Her mother hadn’t mentioned Amelia by name yet which meant she hadn’t finished the message.
I know your sister will appreciate having us all there so ...
Her mother always spoke about Amelia as if she were still alive. As if she hadn’t died thirty years ago.
So anyway, yes, I’ll ... I’m sure I’ll see you on Saturday then? At the service. It’s at eleven o’clock. Sharp. So ... do try not to be late, won’t you?
Martha deleted the message, closed her eyes. She couldn’t blame her mother. She had missed many memorial services. The ones she had attended, she had arrived late. Or drunk. Or both.
She put a reminder into her phone. Just in case. Then set about persuading herself to do something. Get undressed. Brush her teeth. Go to bed.
In the end, she fell asleep on the couch and dreamed about a dog she once had long ago when she was a girl and the vet told her it was for the best and her mother said she had to be brave like her sister Amelia and the needle was long and pointed and her brothers were running round and round the surgery and the noise they made was sharp and vicious, like the screech of a train against tracks. When she woke, the noise was still there, as if it had leaked from her dream into the morning.
It was the doorbell ringing.
Four
Tobias knew he was in hospital. It was the smell. That hospital smell of disinfectant and dried-up dinners and withering flowers in stagnant water.
‘Can Mr Hartmann hear me?’ Rosa’s use of the auxiliary verb, coupled with the correct positioning of the personal pronoun – which had proved a difficult lesson for her to learn – pleased Tobias. He wondered if he were smiling. He hardly thought so. According to the young man on his right – Tobias feared he had been fobbed off with one of those junior affairs, barely out of the trenches – he was in a coma.
‘No,’ the young man declared in that emphatic way that young men have. The fact that his declaration was incorrect made no impression whatever on his authoritative tone.
Tobias wondered if this was how it was going to end. In a hospital. In a coma. He presumed so. He was curious to know how long it would take.
Rosa’s voice again. He strained towards it from wherever he was – he wasn’t sure. Somewhere inside himself. Buried deep. Curiously, it was not unpleasant.
‘Can I stay with him for the while?’
For a while.
A while.
Tobias had tried many times to impress upon her the difference between the direct and indirect article.
Some things were harder to learn than others, he supposed.
‘Well, I suppose so, although there’s not much point,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ve made him as comfortable as we can.’
‘When will he awaken?’
Awaken. A lovely word, Tobias thought. Something quaint about it. Less abrasive than wake up. He felt the air in the room stir as the doctor sighed. A long, tired sigh. Perhaps he was nearing the end of his shift. There was no telling what time it was. The concept of time seemed quaint also. It had no place here, in the place where Tobias was now.
‘He lost a lot of blood. We’ve given him a transfusion but, well, at his age ... there’s no way to know when he’ll come to. Or if he will. You could ask one of the nurses to ring you, should there be any news. Are you his granddaughter?’
A rustling sound. Rosa, he presumed. Shaking her head. ‘I need to speak to him. My son ... I know he didn’t shoot him. I know. Mr Hartmann can tell the police what happened when he wakes up. Can’t he?’
Tobias remembered the first night he’d spoken to her. She had mentioned her son then too. He dipped his line into the bank of his memory, fished around for a name.
Roman.
Yes. Roman.
He remembered thinking how fierce a mother’s love could be. His own mother had loved him and his brothers like that. And baby Greta. With that same brand of ferocity. Like a storm; his mother, the eye in the centre.
Something must have happened. Why else would he be here? But he wasn’t here. Not really. He was someplace else.
At first, he had thought he was at the nursing home. Rosa was a cleaner there. When he’d arrived at the home, almost a year ago now, he hadn’t spoken to her. Why would he?
All he knew about her was her nationality. She was Polish. A reminder of some of the things he struggled to forget.
But despite the strict structure of his days, Rosa had somehow breached his barrier. She was not someone who would barge in unannounced and uninvited. It was he who had issued the invitation in the end as he went about his business in his usual way, adapted to the slow monotony of the nursing home. She who had accepted his invitation in her quiet, careful way.
It must be eight months ago now.
Usually, after dinner, he repaired to his room, prepared for bed, read one of his history books. He liked ancient history – the Mycenaeans, for instance. Modern history didn’t seem historical enough, Tobias felt.
That night, he had wheeled himself in the direction of the library instead. He hated the chair but it was true to say he was m
ore adept at manoeuvring himself about than he had been. He could have gotten a battery-operated one but he’d refused, the last shred of independence being perhaps the most difficult one to relinquish.
Afterwards, when Tobias questioned the small but uncommon revision of his nightly routine, he arrived at no satisfactory answer.
The corridors were dimly lit. They smelled of gravy. Irish people poured gravy over everything, it seemed to Tobias. The purchase of the rubber against the linoleum produced a creaking sound that echoed in his wake.
A nurse nodded and smiled at him as she passed him on the corridor. ‘Getting a book, Mr Hartmann?’
There was something ghostly about her. Perhaps it was her white uniform, her gliding, noiseless gait.
Tobias nodded. He didn’t believe in ghosts. He was convinced that when he died – tonight or next week or next month or, God forbid, not till next year – that would be an end to it and he was glad about that.
The library was lit only by the moon, not quite full, glancing against the windows. Tobias didn’t switch on any of the harsh fluorescent lights, didn’t want to disturb the clarity of the silence the darkness afforded.
He thought the room empty and wheeled himself around the shelves, the wheels hissing now against the carpet tiles.
And then he heard another sound. A crackly, tinny noise, like somebody on the other end of a bad telephone line. It was coming from behind the shelf of audio books. He moved towards it even though it was none of his business. Perhaps it was just for something to do.
There was a bank of tables behind the shelf, each housing a computer. Tobias didn’t have much truck with computers. He trusted the scratch of a pen across paper.
At one table, Rosa.
He knew her name was Rosa; perhaps he had heard the other staff addressing her thus.
She didn’t see him. She wore headphones and her face was lit by the blue glare of the computer screen. She mouthed words, deepening a crease above her nose in her effort.
Her grace seemed effortless, something she was unaware of. It was in the length of her neck and the fineness of her collar bones, outlined against the navy bib the cleaners wore. For a brief moment, Tobias thought about drawing her. Sometimes that happened. He forgot about his hand. His useless hand.
His next instinct was to leave quietly, return to his room. To his routine.
‘Do you want me to turn the lights on, Mr Hartmann?’ When Tobias twisted his head around, the bones in his neck crackled like kindling. Freda, one of the care assistants, was a silhouette at the door. In his peripheral vision, he saw Rosa, her head snatched towards him, her hands on the earphones, lowering them. She looked startled, her grey eyes wide in her small face, and he was sorry then that he had disturbed her.
‘No,’ Tobias told Freda, straightening insofar as he could, given the limitations the chair imposed.
Freda took a step towards him, her movements slow and careful like he was a feral animal she’d discovered in her garden. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘If you like, I could—’
‘I said I’m fine.’ He knew the nursing staff thought him caustic. Perhaps he was. But they never stopped with their enquiries: what he ate, how he felt, what activity he might like to pursue, why he didn’t want to take part in the activities they arranged, if he needed help shaving or showering or even moving his bowels, for goodness’ sake.
When Freda finally took her leave, Tobias remained motionless for a moment before turning back towards Rosa.
‘I sorry,’ she began, ‘I should not be here.’ Her voice was a whisper, her body rigid.
Tobias held up his good hand, shook his head. ‘It is none of my concern, where you should or should not be.’
‘I finish at working and now I learn the English.’ She nodded towards the computer screen.
‘It doesn’t appear that you are doing a good job, young lady. You are missing some key words.’
She nodded. ‘Is true. I not do good job.’
Tobias said nothing. He had already said enough.
‘Me and Roman here for two years and half. I need improve English and get more good job.’
‘Who is Roman?’ He didn’t know why he’d asked the question. He didn’t care who Roman was. Why would he?
‘He is my boy. He has fourteen years.’ Rosa’s smile took him by surprise. It was wide and clear. When she smiled, he could see the youth in her face.
‘Shouldn’t you be getting home to your boy? Your son, I mean?’ he asked.
‘He staying with friend house tonight.’ She stumbled along the sentence. Tobias shook his head.
‘He is staying at a friend’s house tonight,’ he said, slowly and deliberately. ‘It’s the present participle so you need to conjugate the verb “to be”. And be careful with your prepositions. You don’t stay with an inanimate object, for example a house. You stay at. And then, you need the apostrophe “s” after friend to denote possession. The house of a friend. A friend’s house. Do you understand?’
‘Your English be good,’ she said.
‘Is good. My English is good,’ Tobias said. He detected in his tone an irritation and he paused, took a breath. ‘I have lived in Ireland for over sixty years. My English has no right to be anything other than excellent.’
‘I understand,’ she said. Tobias had his doubts.
‘You have a lot of work to do,’ he said, and that should have been an end to it. He was sure that his intention – after delivering the sage insight into her workload – was to place his working hand on the wheel of the chair, turn himself around, leave. Perhaps it was the way she nodded when he said that. Something stoic about the nod. Resolute. Or how she turned back to the screen, despite the fact that she was clearly learning nothing of value from the machine.
‘Do you know how to conjugate verbs in the present tense?’ he said.
Rosa looked at him and there was a question on her face and he answered it by telling her to switch off the computer, fetch him a notebook from the art supplies cupboard in the corner. He slid a fountain pen from the breast pocket of his shirt. When Rosa moved, she made barely any sound. As if she were intent on negotiating the world without drawing attention to herself. A slip of a thing. When she smiled, he would have estimated that she was in her early twenties if it hadn’t been for the boy. She must be closer to thirty. Perhaps even older than that. When one had lived this long, youth became an impossibility. Something difficult to fathom.
When she returned, he opened the notebook she had given him and wrote, in his neat, square handwriting, the words To Be at the top of the page, underlined once.
‘We’ll start with the present,’ he said. Rosa nodded. He noted that her comprehension was competent. He felt this might help. Rosa sat beside him, studied the page as he wrote:
I am
You are
He/She is
We are
You (plural) are
They are
‘You see?’ he said, tapping his pen along the list.
‘I see,’ said Rosa. She smiled again and now he saw the gap between her front teeth and it reminded him of his brother, Bruno, and he remembered his mother insisting it was a sign of a good singing voice and the high sweetness of Bruno’s voice when he sang ‘Hänschen Klein’. His mother had clapped every time he sang it, said Bruno sounded like an angel.
He pointed to the first line of the conjugated verb. ‘Put this in a sentence,’ he said.
‘I am,’ Rosa began, her finger travelling below the words.
Tobias nodded. ‘Finish the sentence. You are what?’
‘I am Polish.’
‘What else?’
‘I am mother.’
‘I am a mother,’ Tobias corrected.
‘I am a mother,’ repeated Rosa, her face serious with concentration.
‘Go on.’
‘I am a cleaner.’
‘Anything else?’
She shook her he
ad. Tobias pointed to the second line. You are. Tapped it with his pen.
‘You are teaching to me the English.’ She seemed as surprised by the notion as he was.
‘You are teaching me English, see? That’s what’s called a pronoun. We’ll get to those in due course.’
‘You are teaching me English,’ Rosa repeated. There was a question in her voice as she studied Tobias’s face. He answered by snapping the notebook shut, sliding it towards her. ‘You need to learn this. It’s one of the most important verbs in the English language. Tomorrow I shall leave a list of words on the bureau in my room. You must put them into sentences. If you don’t know what they mean, look them up. I shall see you here next Thursday, same time.’
He left the library that first night without saying goodbye. He felt the weight of her stare as he moved towards the door. Probably wondering what his intentions were. If he had ulterior motives. A woman like Rosa must often come across people with ulterior motives, Tobias felt.
What was he up to? The whole thing happened so suddenly, without warning, he hadn’t had time to come up with an explanation.
It was not in his plan, teaching English to a cleaner. An immigrant. Someone from Poland.
Not that he had a plan.
He had not had a plan in a long time.
You are teaching me English. That’s what Rosa had said.
That was what he was doing.
And that’s what he had done for the past eight months. Eight months of Thursday nights, teaching Rosa at the back of the library, where they couldn’t be seen. It wasn’t a secret as such. But Tobias understood that the management and staff would not look favourably on Rosa’s lessons. They might consider it special treatment. Rosa getting singled out. There was a pecking order in the place, of course. The cleaners and kitchen assistants were at the bottom of the heap, and their meagre salaries reinforced that status. The managing director of the place drove this year’s Lexus and Rosa – whose dry, red hands were a testament to hard work – walked to her job in the rain. That was the way of the world, Tobias knew, but the injustice of it niggled at him more and more as he became acquainted – despite himself – with Rosa.
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