by Edna O'Brien
The mistress said they needed a good smacking.
After an age the mistress offered us a tour of the house. When she opened the drawing-room door, what one first saw was the sun streaming in through the long panes of glass and bouncing on the polished furniture. She muttered something about having forgotten to draw the blinds. Pictures of cows and ripening corn hung on either side of the marble mantelpiece, and in the tiled fireplace there was an arrangement of artificial flowers—tea roses, yellow, apricot, and gold. Not only that, but the flowers in a round thick rug matched. To look at it you felt certain that no one had stepped on that rug, that it was pristine like a wall hanging. Its pile and its softness made one long to kneel or bask in it. Mabel of course commented on the various things, on the curtains, for instance, which were sumptuous; on the pelmet that matched; on the long plaited cord by which the curtains could be folded or parted. Pulling it, I had a fancy that I was opening the curtains of a theater and that presently through the window would come a troupe of performers. The mistress of the house was pleased at our excitement and as a reward she took something from the china cabinet and let me hold it. It was a miniature cabin made of blackthorn wood. It had a tiny door that opened the merest chink.
Next we saw the breakfast room and then the dining room, which by contrast was dark and somber, save for the gleam of the silver salver on the sideboard. Next we saw the bathroom, with its green bath, matching basin, and candlewick bath mat. But we were not brought up the last flight of stairs, which led to the bedrooms, lest our footsteps waken her husband and make him want to get up. He was craving to get up and go out in the fields. Up there, the darkness was extreme because of a stained-glass window. The hallway seemed a bit sepulchral and quite different from the downstairs room. I could hear the crows cawing ceaselessly, and it occurred to me that before long there would be a death in the house, as I believe it occurred to them, because they looked at one another and shook their heads in silent commiseration.
The kitchen clock chimed five and still we sat in hope of something to eat. Mabel rubbed her stomach to indicate that she was hungry, while the mistress put on her apron and said that soon it would be milking time and time to feed calves and do a million things. Halfheartedly she offered us a cup of tea. There was nothing festive about it, it was just a cup of tea off a tray, four scones, and a slab of strong-smelling yellow country butter. It was not fashioned into little burr balls as I had expected. Mabel kicked me under the table, knowing my disappointment. There was no cake and no cold meat. Mabel judged people’s hospitality by whether they gave her cold meat or not.
On the way home she lamented that there was not a bit of lamb, no chicken, no beetroot or freshly made potato salad with scallions.
It was a warm evening and the ripe corn in the fields was a sight to behold. Here and there it had lodged, but for the most part it was high and victorious, ready for the thresher. She said, “I wonder what they’re doing in Australia now,” and ventured to say that they missed her. She asked did I like those flowers my mother fashioned by putting twirls of silver and gold paper over the ears of corn. When I said no, she hurrahed. It meant that she and I were now friends, allies. Of course, I knew that I had betrayed my mother and would pay for it either by being punished or by having bouts of remorse. She took out her flapjack to apply some powder. It was a tiny gold flapjack and the powder puff was in shreds.
Mabel made a face at herself and then asked if I had a boy yet. The word “boy,” like the word “hemorrhage,” threatened to make me faint. She said soon I would have a boy and to be careful not to let him lay a finger on me, because it was a well-known fact that one could get a craze for it and end up ruined, imprisoned in the Magdalen Laundry, until you had a baby. She might have launched into more graphic tales but a car came around the corner and she jumped up and waved so as to summon a lift.
In the town we called on a woman to whom Mabel had given a crocheted tea cozy, and our reward was two long glasses of lemonade and a plate of currant-topped biscuits. Mabel was prodigal with her promises. She volunteered to crochet a bedcover and asked the woman if there were any favorite colors, or more important, if there were any colors she could not abide. She burped as we walked down the hill and over the bridge toward home. It was getting dark and the birds were busy with both song and chatter. Every bird in every tree had something to say. As we passed the houses we could hear people banging buckets and dishes, and by the light of a lantern we saw one woman feeding calves at her doorstep. As each calf finished its quota, its head was pulled out to give the next calf a chance. Those whose heads were outside the bucket kept butting and kicking and were in no way satisfied. We knew the woman but we did not linger, as Mabel whispered that it would be dull old blather about new milk and sucking calves. Mabel did not like the country and had no interest in tillage, sunsets, or landscape. She objected to pools of water in the roadside, pools of water in the meadows, the corncrake in the evening, and the cocks crowing at dawn. As we walked along she took my hand and said that henceforth I was to be her walking companion. It was a thrill to feel her gloved hand awkwardly pressing on mine. Untold adventures lay ahead.
Sometimes on our travels we met with a shut door or we were not asked to cross the threshold. But these rebuffs meant nothing to her and she merely designated the people as being ignorant and countrified. As luck would have it, our third Sunday we struck on a most welcoming house. It was a remote house, first along a tarred road, then a dirt road, and then across a stream. Our hosts were two young girls who were home from England, and great was their pleasure in receiving company. They were home for a month but were already aching to go back. The older one, Betty, was a nurse, and Moira, her sister, was a buyer in a shop and consequently they dressed like fashion plates. We went every Sunday, knowing that they would he waiting for us and that they had got their father and mother out of the house visiting cousins. It was such a thrill as we got to the stream and took off our shoes and stockings, then let out raucous sounds about the temperature of the water, but really to alert them. It was clean silvery water with stones beneath, some round and smooth, some pointed. They would hear us and run down the slope to welcome us, while also asking in exaggerated accents if the water was like ice. To hear our names called was the zenith of welcome.
We would be brought through the kitchen into the parlor, while they told Nora, their young sister, to put the kettle on and to be smart about it. The parlor was dark, with red embossed wallpaper, and we all sat very upright on hard horsehair sofas. It so happened that I had begun to do impersonations of the dummies, and immediately they requested them. As a reward I was given a slice of coconut cake that they had brought back from England and that was kept in a tin with a harlequin figure on the lid. It was a bit dry but much more exotic than their homemade cake. Mabel would let her tongue roll over her top and bottom teeth, then ask was there any meat left, whereupon Moira would lift a plate that exactly adhered to another plate and reveal that she had kept Mabel a lunch.
“You sport, you,” Mabel said. Her accent would suddenly sound Australian.
“Don’t mention it,” Moira would say airily.
Our visits sustained them. With us they could discuss fashion and fit on their finery, then later do the Lambeth Walk in the big flagged kitchen. Doing this led to howls of laughter. Always, one of us got the step wrong and the whole thing had to be recommenced. Even their sheepdog thought it was hilarious and moved about in a clumsy way to the strains of the music from the crackling wind-up gramophone. We alternated at being ladies or gents, and we had conversations that ladies and gents have.
“Do you come here often?” or “Next dance, please,” or “Care for a mineral?” was what our partners said. Afterward we lounged in the chairs breathless, and then we set out for a walk, or, as they called it, “a ramble.” It was on one of these rambles that we met Matt. An auspicious meeting it proved to be. He had the reputation of being a queer fellow, a recluse. He had gone to Canada, made so
me money, and had come back to marry his childhood sweetheart, but was jilted on the eve of the wedding. Some said that the marriage was broken off because the two families couldn’t agree about land, others said she thought his manners too gruff; at any rate, she fled to England. Matt was a tall man with a thin face, a wart, and longish hair. He looked educated, as if he spent time poring over books and almanacs. It seems he had newfangled ideas about planting trees, whereas most of the farmers just felled them for firewood. There was something original about him. It may have been his gravity or his silence. He could go into a public house and drink a pint of porter without passing a word to anyone, even the publican. He never visited any of his neighbors and had his Christmas dinner at home, with his brother, who was supposed to be a bit missing in the head. Matt met us down by the river. He had a stick in his hand and his hat was pushed back on his head. He must have been driving cattle, because he was perspiring a bit, but he still looked dignified. Moira had picked some sorrel and was eating it, saying it was like lemon juice and very good for one’s skin. He stood apart from us, but at the same time he was taking stock. At least that’s what one read from his smile. There was mockery in his smile, but there was also scrutiny. Betty and Moira knew him, knew his moods, and pretended not to notice that he was there.
“Wouldn’t you all fancy sugar plums?” he said to no one in particular. Mabel was the first to respond.
“Are they ripe?” she asked.
“They’re ripe,” he said, but in such an insolent way we were not sure if he was telling the truth or just tantalizing us.
“I much prefer damsons,” Moira said.
“Damsons are too tart,” Mabel said; “damsons are only fit for jam.”
“Please yourselves,” he said, and sauntered off, letting a whistle escape from his lips. Mabel called out, were we invited or not.
“As you wish,” he said, and nodding to each other, we followed. I thought we were like cows ambling across a field, not quite a herd, and not herded but all heading in the same direction and feeling aimless. It was a beautiful autumn evening, with the sun a vivid orb and in the sky around it rivers of red and pink and washed gold. His was a two-story stone house and the front door was closed. It looked very dead and secretive. There was a hand pump in the yard, and as he passed it, he worked the handle a few times to replenish the trough underneath. We could hear the calves lowing, and suddenly the cock started to crow as if disapproving. Hens ran in all directions and there were two small bonhams wallowing in some mud. It was anything but cheerful. He did not invite us in.
In contrast, the orchard was a great tangle of trees and fruit bushes all smothered in convolvulus and the grass needed to be scythed. The apples looked so tempting, blood-red and polished, while the plums were like dusky globes ready to drop off. He put one to his lips. It was the first time that anything approaching pleasure touched his countenance.
“Help yourselves,” he said, and I thought, Perhaps he is a generous man, perhaps he is kind inside and only needs four or five girls giggling and gorging to draw him out. Mabel was intrepid as she picked three plums and debated which to sample first. The two girls, having been to England, were much more polite and did not rhapsodize over the taste and did not drip juice onto their chins. Mabel declared that there would be no stopping her now, that she would come Sunday after Sunday while the fruits lasted. He picked up a lid of a tin can that had been lying in the grass, lined it with a few wide leaves, and handed it to me, with the instruction that we were to bring some home. It was obvious that he took great pleasure in the fact that we were so excited.
“No one ever eats them … they just rot,” he said.
“That’s a shame,” Mabel said, and she winked at him, and he winked back. It is an odd thing how a face can suddenly alter. It was not that she appeared beautiful, but she had a kind of luster and her glances were knowing and piquant.
“We’ll raid you every autumn,” she said, and I thought of life as being charmed, a series of autumns just like then, the sun going down, the beautiful globes of fruit like lamps, waiting to be plucked, our happiness undimmed. In my hand I felt the softness of a plum, yet knew the hardness of the stone deep within it, and I knew that my optimism was unwise.
“How long are you home for?” he asked Moira.
“Long enough,” she said, and shrugged. Her reply both shocked and dazzled me. I thought, What a wonderful way to talk to a man, to be at once polite and distant, to be scornful without being downright rude, to parry. Then he broached the subject of the carnival. The carnival was to take place at the end of the month. Mabel asked if he’d take her for a ride on the swing-boats or the bumper cars, and he smiled at each one of us and said he hoped he would have the pleasure.
“We’ll be gone back,” Betty said.
“You ought to stay for the carnival,” Mabel said, but I knew that she did not mean it and was looking forward to a time when she would see Matt without the competition of two younger, comelier girls. God knows what fancies were stirred in her then. Perhaps she thought—a bachelor, a two-story house, a man she could cook for, prosperity, a wedding. She clung to his coat sleeve by way of thanking him, but he did not like that. He left abruptly and said to help ourselves to the black plums as well. On our way home the others made fun of him, made fun of his wart and the unmatching buttons on his coat.
“And what about his anatomy?” Mabel said, and we all burst out laughing, though we did not know why.
He appeared the last night of the carnival, danced with the two elderly Protestant girls, excelled himself at the rifle range, and won a jug, which he gave to Mabel. She had been trailing around after him the whole evening and asked him up for the Ladies’ Choice. No one knows for sure if they went behind the tent, but they were missing for a while, and the following day Mabel was trembling with excitement. She told everyone that Matt “had what it takes.” She had a home perm, which did not suit her, and also she wrote to the woolen mills to ask if they had remnants sufficient to make two-pieces or three-pieces, and in anticipation she reserved the dressmaker. The money for these fripperies came from the few remaining bonds that she cashed. Her mother did not know. Her father did not know. I thought how courageous in a way was her recklessness. She was younger, giddier, and in good spirits with everybody. One morning she met me on my way to school. There was a light frost and the plumes of grass looked like ostrich feathers. Feeling my bare hands, she said that she would knit me gloves before the winter. I wondered why she was so affectionate. Then came the command. I was to get away early from school and I was to tell the teacher that we were expecting visitors, hence I had to help my mother with sausage rolls and dainties. I dreaded telling a lie, but she had a hold over me because of my impersonation of the dummies. She told me where to meet her and what time. There was a downpour after lunch, and when I came upon her she was cursing the rain, cursing the fates, and putting her hands up to protect her frizzled hair. Her hair hung in wet absurd ringlets over her forehead and made her look like a crabbed doll.
“What the hell kept you,” she said, and started to walk. Before long I learned that I was to take a letter to Matt. She conveyed me some of the way and then crouched against a wall to wait. There was a roaring wind, and she looked pathetic as she huddled there in suspense.
“Take the shortcut through the woods,” she said. It was an old wood and dark as an underworld. In the wind the branches swayed and even the boughs seemed to waver. Every time a bird chirped or every time a branch snapped, I thought it was some monster come to tackle me. I talked out loud to keep things at bay, I shouted, I ran, and at moments doubted if I would ever get there. The thought of her huddled beneath a wall in her good coat, reeking of perfume, drove me on. The perfume was called Californian Poppy and it had a smell of carnations. I could barely distinguish the path through the wood so obscure was it, and briars barred the way. My heart gave a leap of joy when I saw the three chimney pots and realized that I was almost there. The house seemed e
ven lonelier than on the first day. Everything—the hall door, the stone itself, the window frames—everything was green and sodden from rain. It looked a picture of desolation, a house with no other houses to buffet or befriend it and no woman to hang curtains or put pots of geraniums on the sill. It would have been ghostly except for the fowl and the snorting of the pigs. I reckoned they would kill the pigs for Christmas. Matt was not at home. His brother gaped through the window, then drew the bolt back and peered out and said without being asked, “He’s gone to Gort and won’t be back.” I feared now some worse incident, so I thrust the note into his hand, bolted down the yard, did not wait to close the iron gate, and hurried into the woods, which by comparison were safe.
Mabel was livid. She called me every name under the sun. An eejit, a fool, a dunce, an imbecile. She wanted me to go back for the letter, but I said the brother would have read it by now and going back would only show that we were culpable.
“You little poltroon,” she said, and I thought she would brain me with the point of a stick which she brandished and prodded in the air. The rain had stopped, but the drops came in sudden bursts from the trees, and each time she ducked to protect her hair. Our walk home was wretched. Not a word passed between us. The only thing I heard was an occasional smack as she clacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth to verify her rage. We parted company as we got to the town, and she said that was the last time we would be seen walking together. I did not plead with her, knowing that it was in vain. Poor Mabel. It was pitiful to think of how she had dressed up and had worn uncomfortable court shoes under her galoshes and had been lavish with the perfume, all to no avail. But I could not tell her I pitied her, as she would have exploded. I don’t know what she did then, whether she went back to search for him or went into the chapel to give outlet to her grief. She might even have called on her friend the lady publican for a few glasses of port. All I know is that she stopped speaking to me, and when we met on the road she would give a toss of her head and look in the opposite direction. Sundays reverted to being long dull days when one waited fruitlessly for a caller.