by Edna O'Brien
Mabel had been gone for ten years, and the only communications in between had been her monthly letter and some photographs. The photos were very dim and they were always with other girls, smirking, so that one didn’t see what she was like in repose. Also, she always wore a hat, so that her features were disguised. Mabel worked as a lady’s companion, and her letters told of this lady, her wrath, the sunflowers in her garden, and the beauty of her German piano, which was made of cherrywood.
“I expect she’ll stay for the summer,” her mother said, and I thought that a bit optimistic. Who would want to stay three or four months in our godforsaken townland? Nothing happened except the land was plowed, the crops were put down, there was a harvest, a threshing, then geese were sent to feast on the stubble, and soon the land was bare again. None of the women wore cosmetics, and in the local chemist shop the jars of cold cream and vanishing cream used to go dry because of no demand. Of course, we read about fashions in a magazine and we knew, my sisters and I knew, that ladies wore tweed costumes the color of mulberries, and that they sometimes had silk handkerchiefs steeped in perfume which they wore underneath their bodices for effect. Not for a second did I drink Mabel would stay long, but had I said anything, her mother would have sent me home. We carried a trestle bed up, put the clean sheets on and the blankets, and then hung a ribbon of adhesive paper for the flies to stick to. The place still smelled musty, but her mother said that was to be expected and that if Mabel was ashamed of her origins, she had another guess coming.
We went downstairs to get on with the baking. Her mother cracked the six fresh eggs into the bowl and beat them to a frothlike consistency. Then she got out the halves of orange peel and lemon peel, and in the valleys were crusts of sugar that were like ice. I longed for a piece. I was put sieving the flour and I did it so energetically that the flour swirled in the air, making the atmosphere snow-white. At that moment her husband came in and demanded his dinner. She said couldn’t he see she was making a cake. She referred him to the little meat safe that was attached to a tree outside in the garden, whereupon he growled and wielded his ash plant. It seems there was nothing in the meat safe, only buttermilk.
“Don’t addle me,” she said.
“Is it grass you would have me eat?” he said, and I saw that he was in imminent danger of picking up the whisked eggs and pitching them out in the yard, where we would never be able to retrieve them because hens, ducks, and pigs paddled in the muck out there.
“Can’t you give me a chance,” she said, but seeing that he was about to explode, she stooped, avoiding a possible blow, and then from under a dish she hauled out an ox tongue that she had boiled that morning. It was of course meant for Mabel, but she realized that she had better be expedient. As she cut the tongue he watched, barely containing his rage. As I saw her put the knife to it, I thought, Poor oxen had not much of a life either living or dead. She cut it thinly, as she was trying to economize. In the silence we heard a mouse as it got caught in the trap that we had just put down in Mabel’s room. Its screech was both sudden and beseeching. Her husband picked up a slice of the tongue with his hand, being too impatient to wait for it to be handed on the plate. I too wanted to taste it, but not by itself. I would have loved it with a piece of pickle, so that the taste was not like oxen but like something artificial, something out of a jar. He ate by the fire, munching loudly, asking me for another cut of bread, and quick. He drank his tea from an enamel mug, and I could hear it going glug-glug down his gullet. He had never addressed a civil word to me in his life.
The baked cake was the most beautiful sight. It was dark gold in color, it had risen beautifully, and there were small cracks on the top into which she secretly poured a drop of whiskey to give it, as she said, an aroma. I asked if she was going to ice it, but she seemed to resent that question. For some absurd reason I began to wonder who Mabel would marry, because of course she was not yet married and she must not be left on the shelf, as that was a most mortifying role.
“You can go home now,” her mother said to me.
I looked at her. If looks can talk, then these should have. My look was an invocation. It was saying, “Let me come for Mabel’s arrival.” I lingered, thinking that she would say it, but she didn’t I praised the cake! I was lavish in my praise of it, of the clean windows, the floor polish, the three mice caught and consigned to the fire, of everything. It was all in vain. She did not invite me.
The next day was agony. Would I be let go? It was still not broached and I tried a thousand ruses and just as many imprecations. I would pick up the clock that was lying face down, and if I had guessed the time to within minutes, then I would surely go. A butterfly had got caught between the two panes of opened window and I thought, If it finds its way out unaided, then I shall go. In there it struggled and beat its wings, it kept going around in circles to no purpose, yet miraculously shot up and sailed out into the air, a vision of soft, fluttering orange-brown. Not to go would be torture. But worse than that would be if my sisters were let go and I was told to mind the house. It sometimes happened. Why mind a house that was solid and vaster than oneself? Extreme diligence took possession of me and such a spurt of tidiness that my mother said it was to our house Mabel should be arriving. If only that were so!
After the tea, when I had washed up the dishes, I could no longer contain myself and I began to snivel. My mother pretended not to notice. She was changing her clothes in the kitchen. She often changed there and held the good clothes in front of the fire to air them. The rooms upstairs were damp, the wardrobes were damp, and when you put on your good clothes you could feel the damp seeping into your bones. She was brusque. She said why ringlets and why one’s best cardigan. I cried more. She said to put it out of one’s head and announced that none of the children was going, as the McCann kitchen was far too small for hordes. She said to cut out the sobs and do one’s homework instead. While my father shaved I went under the table to pray. It was evident he was in a bad mood because of the way he scraped the stubble off his chin. He said that not even a day like this could be enjoyed. He said why did he have to fodder cattle and my mother said because there was no one else to do it.
After they had gone, my sisters and I decided to make pancakes. As it happened, my older sister nearly set fire to the house because of the amount of paraffin she threw onto the stove. I shall never forget it. It was like the last day, with flames rising out of the stove, panels of orange flame going up the walls, and my other sister and I screaming at her to quench it, quench it. The first thing to hand was a can of milk, which we threw on it in terror. Luckily we conquered it, and all that remained was a smell of paraffin and a terrible smell of burned milk. The pancake project was abandoned and we spent the next hour trying to air the place and clean the stove. Docility had certainly taken hold of us by the time my mother and father returned. It was dark and we could hear the hasp of the gate and then the dogs bounding toward the door and then the latch lifting. My mother was first. She always came first so as to be able to put on the kettle for him and so as to get on with her tasks. First thing we noticed was the parcel under her arm. It was in tissue paper and it had been opened at one end. My sister grabbed it as my mother wrinkled up her nose and said was there something burning. We denied that and harried her to tell, tell. Mabel had come, was tired from her journey, spoke in a funny accent, and said that in Australia wattles meant mimosa trees and not mere sticks or stones.
By then my father had arrived and said that he was a better-looking man than Mabel himself and then did an impersonation of her accent. It was like no accent I had ever heard. My father said that the only interesting thing about her was that she backed horses and had been to race meetings in Sydney. My mother said that she had been marooned out on some sheep station and had met very few people, only the shearers and the lady she worked for. My mother pronounced on her as being haggard and with a skin tough and wizened from the heat. The present turned out to be pale-blue silk pajamas. I could see my mothe
r’s reaction—immense disappointment that was bordering on disgust. She had hoped for a dress or a blouse, she had certainly hoped for a wearable. For another thing, pajamas were shameful, sinful. Men wore pajamas, women wore nightgowns. Shame and disgrace. My mother folded them up quickly so as not to let my father see them, in case it gave him ideas. She bundled them into a cupboard and it was plain to see that she was nettled. She would have even liked a remnant so as to be able to make dresses for us. It seemed that the homecoming was something of an anticlimax and that even Mabel’s father couldn’t understand a word that she had said. It seems that the men who had come to vet her agreed that she wasn’t worth tuppence and the women were most disappointed by her attire. They had expected her to be wearing high-heeled court shoes, preferably suede, and it seems she was wearing leather shoes that were almost, but not quite, fiat To make matters worse, they were tan and her stockings were tan and her skin was slightly tan, and along with all that, she was in a bright-red suit. My mother said she looked like a scarecrow and was very loud.
Next day it rained. So fiercely that hailstones beat against the window frames, pelting them like bullets. The sky was ink-black, and even when a cloud broke, the silver inside was dark and oppressive, presaging a storm. I was sent around the house to close the windows and put cloths on the sills in case the rain soaked through. I saw a figure coming up the avenue and thought it might be a begging woman with a coat over her head. When we heard the knocking on the back door, my mother opened it sharply, poised as she was for hostilities.
“Mabel,” my mother said, surprised, and I ran to see her. She was a small woman with black bobbed hair, a very long nose, and eyes which were like raisins and darting. She wore rubber overshoes, which she began to remove, and as she held on to the side of the sink, I stood in front of her. She asked me was I me and said that the last time she had seen me I was screaming my head off in a hammock, in the garden. Somehow she expected me to be pleased by this news, or at least to be amused.
What struck me most about her was her abruptness. In no time she was complaining about those two old fogies, her mother and father, and telling us that she was not going to sit by a fire with them all day long and discuss rheumatism. Also, she complained about the house, said it wasn’t big enough.
My mother calmed her with tea and cake, and my father asked her what kind of horses they bred in Australia. He wagered a bet that they were not as thoroughbred as the Irish horses. To that my mother gave a grunt, since our horses brought us nothing but disappointment and debt. When pressed for other news, Mabel said that she had seen a thing or two, her eyes had been opened, but she would not say in what way. She hinted at having undergone some terrible shock and I thought that possibly she had been jilted. She described a tea they drank out of glasses, sitting on the veranda at sundown. My mother said it was a wonder the hot tea didn’t crack the glasses. Mabel said she should never have come home and that when she woke up that morning and heard the rain on the skylight she had yearned to go back. Yet in no time she was contradicting herself and said it was all “outback” in Australia and who wanted to live in an outback. My father said he’d make a match for her, and gradually she cheered up as she sat at the side of the stove and from time to time popped one or the other foot in the lower oven for warmth. Her stockings were lisle and a very unfortunate color, rather like the color of the stirabout that we gave to the hens and the chickens. She had an accent at certain moments, but she lost it whenever she talked about her own people. She said their house was nothing but a cabin, a thatched cabin. When she said indiscreet things, she laughed and persisted until she got someone to join in.
“Mabel, you’re a scream,” my mother said, while also pretending to be shocked at the indiscretions.
Very reluctantly my father had gone out to fodder, and Mabel was drinking blackberry wine from a beautiful stemmed glass. When she held the glass up, colors danced on her cheek and then ran down her throat, just as the wine was running down inside. Presently her face got flushed and her eyes teary, and she confessed that she had thought of Ireland night and day for the ten years, had saved to come home, and now realized that she had made a frightful mistake. She sniffled and then took out a spotted handkerchief.
“Faraway hills look green,” my mother said, and the two of them sighed as if a wealth of meaning had been exchanged. My mother proposed a few visits they could make on Sundays, and buoyed up by the wine and these promises, Mabel said that she had a second present for my mother but that in the commotion the previous evening she had been unable to find it. She said it must be somewhere in the bottom of her trunk. It was to be a brush and comb set, with matching bone tray. We never saw it.
It took several months before Mabel paid me any attention. She had favored my sisters because they were older and because they had ideas about how to set hair, how to paint toenails, and how to use an emery board or a nail buffer. It was either of them she took on her Sunday excursion, and it was either of them she summoned on the way home from school so as to sit with her in the garden and chat. It proved to be a scorching summer and Mabel had put two deck chairs in their front garden and had planted lupins. She never let anyone pass without hollering, as she was avid for company. In the autumn my sisters went away to school, and suddenly Mabel was in need of a walking companion. My mother had long since ceased to go with her, because Mabel was mad for gallivanting and had worn out her welcome in every house up the town, and in many houses up the country.
One Sunday she chose me. It was the very same as if she had just arrived home, because to me she was still a mysterious stranger. We were calling on a family who lived in the White House. It had been given that name because the money for it had come from relatives in America. It was a yellow, two-story, pebble-dash house set in its own grounds with a heart-shaped lawn in front. At the edge of the lawn there was a flower bed in which there had been dark-red tulips, and at the far end was a little house with an electricity plant. They were the only people in the neighborhood to have electricity, and that plus the tulips, plus the candlework bedspreads, plus the legacies from America, made theirs the most enticing house in the county. As we went up their drive, my white canvas shoes adhered to the tarmac, which was fresh and melting. The house with its lace-edged fawn blinds was quiet and suggested luxury and harmony. Needless to say, they had cross dogs, and at the first sound of a yelp Mabel lagged behind, while telling me to stand my ground and not give off an adrenaline smell. A boy who was clipping the privet hedge saved us by calling the dogs and holding them by their tawny manes. They snarled like lions.
Since we were not expected, a certain coolness ensued. The mistress of the house was lying down, her husband was in bed sick, and the little serving girl, Annie, didn’t ask us to cross the threshold. All of a sudden the dummies appeared. They were brother and sister, and though I had often heard of them, and even seen them at Mass devoutly fingering their rosary beads, I had no idea that they would be so effusive. They descended on us. They mauled us. They strove with tongue and lips and every other feature to talk to us, to communicate. The movements of their hands were fluent and wizard. They pulled us into the kitchen, where the female dummy put me up on a chair so she could look at the pleats in my coat, and then the buttons. She herself was dressed in a terrible hempen dress that was almost to her ankles. Her brother was in an ill-fitting coarse suit. They were in-laws of the mistress of the house and it was rumored that she did not like them. She was trying to say something urgent when the mistress, who had risen from her nap, came in and greeted us somewhat reservedly. Soon we were seated around the kitchen table, and while Mabel and the mistress discussed who had been at Mass, and who had taken Holy Communion, and who had new style, the dummies were pestering me and trying to get me to go outside. They would puff their cheeks out in an encouragement to make me puff mine.
Mabel and the mistress of the house began to talk about her husband. They moved closer together. They were like two people conspiring. A terrible
word was said. I heard it. It was the word hemorrhage. He was hemorrhaging. Only women did that. I began to go dizzy with dread. I gripped the chair by its sides, then put one hand on the table for further security and began to hum. My face must have been burning, because soon the dummies realized there was something wrong, and thinking only one thing, they pulled me toward a door and down a passage to a lavatory. It was a cold spot and there was a canister of scouring powder left on a ledge, as if Annie had been cleaning and had gone off in a hurry or a sulk. They kept knocking on the door and when I came out inspected me carefully to see that my coat was pulled down. The lady dummy, whose pet name was Babs, drew me into the kitchen, and as we stood in front of the fire, she did a little caper. She had a tea cloth in one hand and held it out as if she were keeping a bull at bay. She was told by the mistress of the house to put it down or she would be sent to the dairy. Her twin brother affected the most terrible huff by letting out moans that were nearly animal, and moving his eyes hither and thither and at such a speed I thought they would drop out He, too, was threatened with a sojourn in the dairy. At length so chastised were they that they each took a chair and sat with their backs to us and refused when asked to turn around.