Civil & Strange

by Clair Ni Aonghusa

  Beatrice smiles. “That’s the best news I’ve heard today.” She yawns, flexes, and extends her arms and looks out the window. “The days are starting to stretch out. It lifts the spirits.” She’s still yawning as she fills the kettle.

  Being close to someone is a new experience for Ellen. She’s unpracticed, clumsy with the etiquette, a stranger to the habits of intimacy, and of being continually at ease with herself in another’s company.

  When, as frequently happens, Eugene turns up with a bottle of wine and food and proceeds to cook dinner for them, she finds herself at a loss. Sometime after the meal, often on the flimsiest of pretexts — she’ll cite work to be prepared, tests that she should correct — she’ll suggest that he might like to go home.

  “You don’t have to make polite chitchat with me,” he’ll say. “I’ll read the newspaper, watch the telly, or listen to music while you get on with it.”

  “You’ll be bored.”

  “How could I be bored in your company?”

  She’s exasperated by his displays of affection, patting her hand, holding her arm, touching her on her shoulder, kissing her hair, smiling at her if their eyes happen to meet. She can’t shake off this double take of wanting to be wanted but not wanting him near her. She has trained herself to repress gestures and anticipate snubs.

  After the initial physical encounter, she isn’t able to recapture that impetus to give of herself. Indeed, in retrospect she’s amazed that she was so readily available. It’s like a blip on the monitor of her consciousness, a skewed reaction. Now her wretched watchfulness has reasserted itself. She is her own audience and detractor.

  • • •

  “This is a mistake!” she says one night. “I’m sorry.”

  His hand strokes her back. “We’ll have to arrange relaxation classes for you,” he says lightly.

  “It won’t make any difference. I’m not cut out for this,” she laments.

  “Of course you are. There’s fire in you. I’m not going to let conditioning get in the way of what we have.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this. Everything was fine the first time. That was a fluke.”

  “We know it’s there, the kernel of you. You don’t want to let everything go because of stage fright, do you?”

  “Stage fright? Isn’t that what happens before the performance?”

  “You were a natural the first time, but now you’re thinking about it too much.”

  “Stop thinking, is that it?”

  “Start thinking in a different way. Think of bodies — mine, yours — and what they’re designed for, what we can do for each other.”

  She laughs. “If only.”

  He distracts her from her preoccupations, soothes and cajoles her, and her body surprises her by easing out. Each incremental relaxation is hard won and precarious, the eventual union achieved out of a determination on his side and exhaustion on hers.

  “A younger woman wouldn’t be such hard work,” she says another night. “They’re so at ease. They have confidence in themselves.”

  “Confidence can easily tip over into arrogance. It’s not always attractive.”

  “There’s less to cope with.”

  “If people were all straightforward, life would be boring. I like the Ellen I see when she forgets herself. I’d like to see more of her.”

  “It’s amazing what a man and woman can do for — to — each other,” she volunteers after a more successful encounter. “I would never have believed it.”

  “I don’t get this. Unless you and Christy had an extraordinary arrangement, you had sex. Didn’t you relax with him?”

  “Christy just did whatever he wanted, and it wasn’t always very nice.”

  Eugene looks as if he’s been set a riddle without a solution. “Why marry in the first place? If there wasn’t an attraction, I mean.”

  “Sure, what did I know about anything? I married the first man who asked. He said, ‘Marry me,’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ By the time I realized there was nothing between us, it had gone too far to turn back.”

  “It’s never too late to change your mind.”

  “You need courage for that. And Kitty thought he was great. Even the cousins liked him, so I didn’t want to disappoint them.”

  “And you married to please others?”

  “Exactly,” she says in surprise. “I expected nothing and got nothing. You’re the closest anyone has ever been to me. You put yourself out for me.”

  He sits up. “It’s what people do. Like what a mother does for a child, that sort of stuff.”

  “Not my mother. Being a single parent didn’t suit her. I was a burden.”

  “But… the natural bonds of affection?”

  “Kitty isn’t demonstrative,” she says with a smile. “Dad was the one who doted on me and took me places. I could do no wrong in his eyes. I don’t remember a lot of things, but that’s the feeling I have about him. He was the real mother. He’d have liked more children. She didn’t know what to do with a child. I got in the way of her enjoyment of life.”

  “What about the cousins?”

  “I was the apple of Sarah’s eye.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  She finds his solicitude endearing. “Don’t sound so cross,” she soothes. “It’s me. I never know how to react to affection. I’m not sure that everybody is entitled.”

  “You’re not used to it, that’s all. That’s why you’re not at ease.”

  “I’d give anything to change that.”

  He kisses her forehead. “I can give you all the warmth you need. It’s easy for me. I grew up with it. I’m used to it.”

  “Well, lucky you! But I’m not looking for any concessions.”

  “Look for things, Ellen. Want them. It’s your due.” He sounds angry again.

  “I’d hate to turn into a needy type.”

  “If you need me, what’s wrong with that? If I need you, where’s the harm? It’s part of being human.”

  “It’s easier for you.”

  “It should be easy for all of us. It’s just a bloody shame it took so long to happen for you.”

  She laughs but finds it difficult to be reconciled to appetites. Passion is a double-edged sword. She feels everything might be taken away again. If she gives of herself entirely, and if he changes, she could be left alone with those desires.

  It feels as though she’s wrestling with herself. She’s the laggard, withholding, stalling, and keeping a distance between them. She knows that she needs to let go, and it feels like being poised to jump from the Eiffel Tower. She could hurtle past the safety nets.

  But Eugene is resolute. He is a constant presence. He humors her. He’s on a mission.

  One night she watches him as he sleeps and reaches out to touch him, experiments with kissing and stroking his skin. He appears to be in a deep stupor but turns suddenly and draws her to him. His appetite for her fascinates her. It’s so straightforward that she’s disconcerted. Something gives way, and what she withheld previously she now bestows. For the first time in her life she can forget herself thoroughly and behave in an unconstrained fashion. She is bemused, breathless, and surprised at herself.

  It’s early on a Saturday night, and the cars are lined up along the side of the street, parked in irregular patterns. From the pub by the petrol pumps comes the thump thump from whatever band is booked for the night. The takeaway is open for business. Straggly bands of youths, incontinent with drink and desire, linger outside, their shouts and bursts of laughter hanging on the air. The smoke from their cigarettes rises above them like a mist. Occasionally one of the boys shuffles into the off-license to buy a few cans of cider, which are then passed around the group. One boy, slightly younger than the rest, supplies soft drugs to anyone who comes looking.

  Earlier in the day they all attended the funeral of Denis Scope, a brother of one of the youths. Three nights previously he had emerged from a remote mountain pub after closing and challenged Ted O’Driscoll
, a married man in his thirties, to a car race. Only on certain sections of the twisting roads could they attain high speeds, but, when they reached the wide three-mile-long stretch on one of the approach roads into Ballindoon, each car took a side of the road.

  They were traveling at over eighty miles an hour when a van suddenly emerged from a gateway. Seeing Denis’s car hurtling toward him on the wrong side of the road, the driver hastily reversed the van, but Denis had slammed on his brakes and his car went out of control. It crashed into a wall, killing him instantly. Ted’s car spun about and landed upside down in a ditch and — miraculously — he survived, although he is expected to spend a long time in hospital.

  A large crowd has stayed on in Hegarty’s long after the funeral reception, partly because it’s not a working day and partly because the funeral has changed the nature of the day. Denis was twenty years old and well liked.

  In the pub Beatrice meets up with Ellen. They sit together at one of the low tables to the front of the pub. “I won’t stay long,” Ellen says. “I didn’t know the boy, but I thought I’d put in an appearance under the circumstances.”

  Eugene joins them. He brings cutlery for Ellen. Beatrice is struck by the ease with which they talk to each other.

  “I’ll call up soon, Beatrice,” Ellen says, as she and Eugene rise to go. “I’m starting to come to terms with the job. The energy levels are better.”

  Eugene steers Ellen through the door onto the street. Something in the solicitousness of his manner makes Beatrice nostalgic for the — admittedly brief — carefree days of her youth. All that potential, she thinks. She spots Simon’s former girlfriend Angie, smiles and waves at her. Angie gives a little wave back but doesn’t join her.

  She has almost given up on meeting Matt — if he’s missing, it’s a bad sign — when she spots him at the back of the pub on her way out of the ladies. He’s alone, standing by the bar with a pint in his hand. There’s something forbidding about him. He’s frowning and biting his lower lip, glowering almost. To her eyes, he’s still attractive, different — weary, older certainly — but still compelling. Although she’s well aware of his shortcomings, she can never write him off. She expects more of him than he can ever concede.

  She approaches him. “How are you these days, Matt?” she asks.

  He gives her a dark look, gulps his pint, and swills it about in his mouth before swallowing. “How am I?” he says caustically. “Bad, very bad… if you must know.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Ah, sure, everybody’s sorry. I’ve lost count of the number of people who are sorry.”

  “Well, it’s hard to put it another way. I am genuinely concerned. It can’t be easy —”

  “Of course it isn’t — that’s obvious, isn’t it? But it’s difficult in unexpected ways. The big stuff, the removal and funeral, are straightforward. The things that trip you up you imagined would be uncomplicated.” Some of the anger in his voice evaporates and he sounds more normal. “I thought I had a handle on it — turns out I don’t. I didn’t expect all this — reaction.”

  “Frightening, isn’t it, Matt, how little control we have over events?”

  “You never spoke a truer word. Life is a cold-blooded business.”

  His words find an echo in her heart. Julia’s dead and buried. His sons have gone back to their lives. He hasn’t shed tears over Julia and he won’t. His marriage, like many of the time — her own included — offered little by way of comfort or camaraderie, but he’s likely finding that he misses the presence of another person about the house, the companionship — however uncongenial. Julia kept the house clean, cooked meals, did the laundry and shopping. Notwithstanding her many flaws, she was company. He might even miss the passionate presence of their dislike of each other.

  Before Simon came to work and live on the farm, Beatrice endured a few weeks where, on most days, she went without hearing another voice about the place. When Jack died she missed him. She didn’t love him — he was too irascible, stubborn, and self-obsessed for that — but she could tolerate him. In his better moments he loved occasions and excursions and was given to impulses. He could surprise her by presenting her with tokens of approbation: a book she had mentioned or an item of clothing or jewelry she had admired. When she remembers him, she feels exasperation mixed with fondness. If he had lived, would they have reached beyond limited accommodation of each other’s foibles to acceptance and tenderness? Could they have forged a genuine alliance? No point in tossing that one up.

  Older people’s lives are all about absences, she thinks, people missing, people dying, little defeats and losses — Beatrice waiting for a visit from one of her daughters and their families — and from now on, Matt isolated, getting used to his own company, dependent on his sons for attention and visits. She can’t see him asking people up to the house for tea or lifting the phone to ring somebody for a chat, much less joining the card club in the village and heading down to the community hall of a Thursday night. How unremittingly dismal their prospects are, she thinks. There’s little respite or consolation.

  “Funny how things turn out,” he mutters. “If life had gone differently, you and I would have ended up together. That would have been a better bet.”

  She shakes her head. “Don’t. Don’t rake over the past. It doesn’t do any good.”

  “I’m not sure about that. Wouldn’t it be nice to retrace your steps and take the right rather than the wrong turning?”

  “It’s the life you chose, isn’t it?”

  “If there’s one thing I didn’t have in my life, it was choices,” he says with feeling.

  After a while she says, “You had one or two, I think.” All the sorrow of her youth is in her voice.

  He looks startled. His shoulders drop and he reclaims his pint from the counter. The dour expression is back. “That’s very harsh,” he says. “One mistake.”

  She’s sorry she let that sharpness into her voice, but she’s tired of people blaming others for options they themselves selected. Matt’s mother was always against Beatrice, but she wasn’t responsible for their breakup. That he engineered on his own.

  The chatter in the pub resonates in her head. They’re standing close together but there’s an ocean between them. The anger of betrayal burns for a long time. She’s surprised to discover its cindered embers still warm. “I’ll leave you in peace, Matt. I hope you feel better soon. This will pass, remember,” she says abruptly and walks away. Shortly afterward she sees him leave without a word to anyone on his way out.

  As the pub empties, Beatrice finds herself having to talk to Brenda Finnegan. Suddenly she notices some youngsters trying to drag a particularly drunken and hysterical girl out to the street. The young woman is pretty, slight, and small. She thrashes about wildly.

  “That’s the one,” Brenda says, with a knowing look.

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Brenda casts a cantankerous glance at her. “Don’t you know anything? That’s young Sandra Dingle. Denis used to hang about with her. They say she has a bun in the oven.”

  “Somebody could take advantage of her, the state she’s in.”

  Brenda sniggers. “Somebody already has. I mean,” she continues, perhaps anxious not to seem too harsh, “that’s what they’re all saying. It’s well known that she’s loose.”

  Loose. Easy. Game. Those terms have lost currency. They don’t wield the power they used to, Beatrice thinks. Feeling it pointless to comment, she sips her lemonade.

  “You have to think of your baby, Sandra. Come on, now,” one of the girls urges. They manage to drag her outside.

  “The young have no self-respect these days,” Brenda says grimly.

  “There was plenty of that happening in our day too, Brenda, don’t forget. Only then the girl was bundled off into one of those homes to have the baby, or the couple was forced to marry. Now the women often end up going it alone.”

  Brenda puts on her coat and does up
its buttons. “The more I hear from you, Beatrice Furlong, the more I wonder what planet you’re on.”

  Beatrice waits outside the old creamery for the shopping bus into Killdingle. The creamery, where old-time farmers used to drive their ponies and carts, with a “Whoa-there” or a “Gee-up,” is closed. The roof is falling in, and the lock on one of the boarded-up doors has been forced. She’s heard that teenagers use the place for Friday night drinking parties.

  She remembers childhood trips to the creamery with her father, the unloading of the milk churns, the companionable murmur of the men’s small talk, the crude jokes of the creamery manager, and her impatience for the promised treat. She can still see her father’s contemporaries, those long-dead farmers, sitting in the snug of the pub, bottles of porter on the table, plugging the bowls of their pipes with tobacco from their leather pouches. Her father would suck on the stem of his pipe as he pressed a lighted match against the weed, and smoke would drift across to where she sat at the counter, hugging her glass of lemonade.

  The bus appears and she waves it down. The only other person getting on is Sandra Dingle. The little bump on her belly is hardly noticeable. Beatrice smiles at her. “Hello,” she says, but the girl keeps her head down. The driver loads Sandra’s case into the boot of the bus. At times during the journey into town the sun flashes through trees and Beatrice can see the reflection of the girl’s hunched, slumped form in the windowpane.

  That afternoon, Nan plonks down in the seat beside Beatrice. The doors wheeze shut and the bus begins the return journey to the village. “Young Sandra’s gone over to England for an abortion,” she says.

  Beatrice braces herself for an onslaught of speculation. “Couldn’t blame her if she did decide to have an abortion,” she says.

  “God almighty, Beatrice, trust you to take a contrary view.”

  “Have to keep you on your toes, Nan… but I think she’s gone to stay with an aunt until the baby is born.”

  “That’s all a cover story.” Nan lapses into an aggrieved silence but it doesn’t last long. Soon she nudges Beatrice’s elbow and begins to talk.