by Edna O'Brien
Gradually, the house came to look deserted; the paintwork peeled on the outside window frames, and the gutters leaked. A statue that stood on the landing upstairs got knocked down and remained in broken pieces behind the lace curtain. The curtain itself was gray and fraying. Some days the can of milk left by Tina No-Nose would be taken in; other times it stayed, for the dogs and the flies. She swears he came to the door once and invited her inside, and he hadn’t a stitch on. She ran down the street yelling, and telling of the incident, but people thought she was having one of her fits and disregarded it.
I was waiting very early one morning for a lift on a creamery car to take me to some cousins. There was not a soul about Suddenly Jack called from the upstairs window, said, “Missy, missy.”
I could not tell if he knew me, but I suppose to him I was a young girl, just waiting there, a little on the plump side, but ripe and ready for entanglement. Indeed, the visit I was taking was primarily to see a young man whom I did not know but whose looks—black hair and very dark sallow skin—had lured me. Soon indeed I was startled, because a tennis ball fell at my feet. It was grazed and somewhat greenish. I looked to the doorway and saw that Jack was beckoning me urgently. I went across, thinking he might want the priest or the doctor, and already I was afraid. That fear that makes the whole body quake, like a wind conductor. He was quite drunk and his eyes were vacant. He asked if I was yet clicking, and I said “No,” a rapid puritanical no.
“Can’t you come in?” he said.
“I’m in a hurry,” I said, and took a few steps backward.
“I have nice wine,” he said.
“I took the pledge,” I said, and he sniggered at that.
“C’mon, can’t you?” he said, and he grasped my arm.
It was summer and I was wearing a flowery dress that I was most proud of. It had elasticized sleeves and he let his finger go under the elastic, then let it snap, then repeated it. I said that I was waiting for a lift on the creamery car, and he said the driver was notorious and that I would not be safe in the lorry with him. That did not cheer me one bit.
“He’s a prime boy,” he said, and his face came very close to mine. His chin was full of gray bristling old-age stubble. A beard would have been better. The thought that I might have to kiss him made me inwardly curdle.
“I’ll give you half a crown,” he said.
“For what?” I rashly asked.
“Just lift your dress,” he said, and a small trickle of spittle flowed from the corner of his lip. His nose and lips were full of cold sores. I thought of saints being boiled in oil, of other saints enduring all sorts of beatings and lacerations, and I would have swapped any of these punishments for the ordeal that I felt was imminent.
“Just a sensation,” he said, and he was dragging me in despite my hefty screams. I was stronger than he, but it was not put to the test, because at that moment, and without yet seeing it, we could hear the sound of the lorry. The tankards on the back always made a terrible din. I ran to the driver in a gasp and asked him to take me in. It was high and he had to haul me up. He said had I seen a ghost or what, but I said no, that I was anemic. I dared not tell him lest the same fegary occurred to him, and in truth I was quivering. It struck me as odd and not uncomical that I was yet going forty miles to meet a man and risk the very proceedings that I was dreading with any other. I told the driver nothing but dreary stories so that his hand would not come onto my knee. The dress was short and I kept pulling it down, down, down so that he did not see flesh. I discussed my mother’s corns, my father’s lumbago, and a workman who had shingles. Once he stopped the lorry and asked me did I want to get out and that was an awful moment, but I braved it and said I wasn’t well. “Flag day,” he said, and I nodded, giving him the impression that I had my period and was undesirable and untouchable.
Jack died in December, alone in the downstairs room, with only dust and shadows to succor him. The niece found him beside the dead ashes, in the armchair with his clothes on. Nearby on the table was an unfinished game of patience, and of course, the rum bottles were all around. She found a letter he had scrawled, requesting that his body be cremated. But the parish priest and the locals said that the man was mad and not aware of what he was saying, so they ignored his wishes and buried him alongside Hilda.
I still believe he killed her, just as I believe it was clear what he wanted from me that dewy morning, but not being certain of these things, I told no one; yet as the years go by, the certainty of them plagues me. Indeed, it has become a ghost, and the trouble with ghosts is that no one but oneself knows how zealously they stalk the everyday air.
Christmas Roses
Mis Hawkins had teen it all. At least she told people that she had seen it all. She told her few friends about her cabaret life, when she had toured all Europe and was the toast of the richest man in Baghdad. According to her she had had lovers of all nationalities, endless proposals of marriage, champagne in every known vessel, not forgetting the slipper. Yet Miss Hawkins had always had a soft spot for gardening and in Beirut she had planted roses, hers becoming the first English rose garden in that far-off spicy land. She told how she watered them at dawn as she returned accompanied, or unaccompanied, from one of her sallies.
But time passes, and when Miss Hawkins was fifty-five she was no longer in gold-meshed suits dashing from one capital to the next. She taught private dancing to supplement her income and eventually she worked in a municipal garden. As time went by, the gardening was more dear to ha than ever ha cabaret had been. How she fretted ova it, over the health of the soil, over the flowers and the plants, over the overall design and what the residents thought of it Ha success with it became more and more engrossing. She introduced things that had not been there before, and ha greatest pride was that the silly old black railing was now smothered with sweet-smelling honeysuckle and other climbing things. She kept busy in all the four seasons, busy and bright In the autumn she not only raked all the leaves but got down on ha knees and picked every stray fallen leaf out of the flower beds, where they tended to lodge under rosebushes. She burned them then. Indeed, there was not a day throughout all of autumn when there was not a bonfire in Miss Hawkins’s municipal garden. And not a month without some blooms. At Christmas was she not proud of her Christmas roses and the Mexican firebush with berries as bright as the decoration on a woman’s hat?
In her spare time she visited other municipal gardens and found to her satisfaction that hers was far better, for brighter, more daring, while also well-kempt and cheerful. Her pruning was better, her beds were tidier, her peat was darker, her shrubs sturdier, and the very branches of her rosebushes were red with a sort of inner energy. Of course, the short winter days drove Miss Hawkins into her flat and there she became churlish. She did have her little dog, Clara, but understandably Clara, too, preferred the outdoors. How they barked at each other and squabbled, one blaming the other for being bad-tempered, for baring teeth. The dog was white, with a little crown of orange at the top of her head, and Miss Hawkins favored orange, too, when she tinted her hair. Her hair was long and she dried it by laying it along the length of an ironing board and pressing it with a warm iron.
The flat was a nest of souvenirs, souvenirs from her dancing days—a gauze fan, several pairs of ballet shoes, gloves, photographs, a magnifying glass, programs. All these items were arranged carefully along the bureau and were reflected in the long minor which Miss Hawkins had acquired so that she could continue to do her exercising. Miss Hawkins danced every night for thirty minutes. That was before she had her Ovaltine. Her figure was still trim, and on the odd occasion when Miss Hawkins got into her black costume and her stiff-necked white blouse, rouged her cheeks, pointed her insteps, and donned her black patent court shoes, she knew that she could pass for forty.
She dressed up when going to see the town councillor about the budget and plans for the garden, and she dressed in her lamé when one of her ex-dancing pupils invited her to a cocktail party. She dres
sed up no more than three times a year. But Miss Hawkins herself said that she did not need outings. She was quite content to go into her room at nightfall, heat up the previous day’s dinner, or else poach eggs, get into bed, cuddle her little dog, look at television, and drop off to sleep. She retired early so that she could be in her garden while the rest of London was surfacing. Her boast was that she was often up starting her day while the stars were still in the heavens and that she moved about like a spirit so as not to disturb neighbors.
It was on such a morning and at such an unearthly hour that Miss Hawkins got a terrible shock concerning her garden. She looked through her window and saw a blue tent, a triangle of utter impertinence, in her terrain. She stormed out, vowing to her little dog and to herself that within minutes it would be a thing of the past In fact, she found herself closing and reclosing her right fist as if squashing an egg. She was livid.
As she came up to it Miss Hawkins was expecting to find a truant schoolchild. But not at all. There was a grown boy of twenty or perhaps twenty-one on a mattress, asleep. Miss Hawkins was fuming. She noticed at once that he had soft brown hair, white angelic skin, and thick sensual lips. To make matters worse, he was asleep, and as she wakened him, he threw his hands up and remonstrated like a child. Then he blinked, and as soon as he got his bearings, he smiled at her. Miss Hawkins had to tell him that he was breaking the law. He was the soul of obligingness. He said, “Oh, sorry,” and explained how he had come from Kenya, how he had arrived late at night, had not been able to find a hostel, had walked around London, and eventually had climbed in over her railing. Miss Hawkins was unable to say the furious things that she had intended to say; indeed, his good manners had made her almost speechless. He asked her what time it was. She could see that he wanted a conversation, but she realized that it was out of keeping with her original mission, and so she turned away.
Miss Hawkins was beneath a tree putting some crocus bulbs in when the young visitor left. She knew it by the clang of the gate. She had left the gate on its latch so that he could go out without having to be conducted by her. As she patted the earth around the little crocuses she thought, What a pity that there couldn’t be laws for some and not for others! His smile, his enthusiasm, and his good manners had stirred her. And after all, what harm was he doing? Yet, thought Miss Hawkins, bylaws are bylaws, and she hit the ground with her little trowel.
As with most winter days there were scarcely any visitors to the square and the time dragged. There were the few residents who brought their dogs in, there was the lady who knitted, and there were the lunchtime stragglers who had keys, although Miss Hawkins knew that they were not residents in the square. Interlopers. All in all, she was dispirited. She even reverted to a bit of debating. What harm had he been doing? Why had she sent him away? Why had she not discussed Africa and the game preserves and the wilds? Oh, how Miss Hawkins wished she had known those legendary spaces.
That evening, as she crossed the road to her house, she stood under the lamplight and looked up the street to where there was the red neon glow from the public house. She had a very definite and foolish longing to be going into the lounge bar with a young escort and demurring as to whether to have a gin-and-tonic or a gin-and-pink. Presently she found that she had slapped herself. The rule was never to go into public houses, since it was vulgar, and never to drink, since it was the road that led to ruin. She ran on home. Her little dog, Clara, and she had an argument, bared their teeth at each other, turned away from each other, and flounced off. The upshot was that Miss Hawkins nicked her thumb with the jagged metal of a tin she was opening, and in a moment of uncustomary self-pity rang one of her dancing pupils and launched into a tirade about hawkers, circulars, and the appalling state of the country. This was unusual for Miss Hawkins, as she had vowed never to submit to self-pity and as she had pinned to her very wall a philosophy that she had meant to adhere to. She read it, but it seemed pretty irrelevant:
I will know who I am
I will keep my mouth shut
I will learn from everything
I will train every day.
She would have ripped it off, except that the effort was too much. Yet as she was able to say next day, the darkest hours are before the dawn.
As she stepped out of her house in her warm trouser suit, with the brown muffler around her neck, she found herself raising her hand in an airy, almost coquettish hello. There he was. He was actually waiting for her by the garden gate, and he was as solemn as a fledgling altar boy. He said that he had come to apologize, that after twenty-four hours in England he was a little more cognizant of rules and regulations, and that he had come to ask her to forgive him. She said certainly. She said he could come in if he wished, and when she walked toward the toolshed, he followed and helped her out with the implements. Miss Hawkins instructed him what to do: he was to dig a patch into which she would put her summer blooms. She told him the Latin names of all these flowers, their appearance, and their characteristics. He was amazed at the way she could rattle off all these items while digging or pruning or even overseeing what he was doing. And so it went on. He would work for an hour or so and then tootle off, and once when it was very cold and they had to fetch watering cans of warm water to thaw out a certain flower bed, she weakened and offered him a coffee. The result was that he arrived the next day with biscuits. He said that he had been given a present of two tickets for the theater and was she by the merest tiniest chance free and would she be so kind as to come with him. Miss Hawkins hesitated, but of course her heart had yielded. She frowned and said could he not ask someone younger, someone in his own age group, to which he said no. Dash it, she thought, theater was theater and her very first calling, and without doubt she would go. The play was Othello. Oh, how she loved it, understood it, and was above it all! The jealous Moor, the telltale handkerchief, confessions, counterconfessions, the poor sweet wretched Desdemona. Miss Hawkins raised her hands, sighed for a moment, and said, “The poor dear girl caught in a jealous paradox.”
As an escort he was utter perfection. When she arrived breathlessly in the foyer, he was there, beaming. He admired how she looked, he helped remove her shawl, he had already bought a box of chocolate truffles and was discreetly steering her to the bar to have a drink. It was while she was in the bar savoring the glass of gin-and-it that Miss Hawkins conceded what a beauty he was. She called his name and said what a pretty name it was, what an awfully pretty name. His hands caught her attention. Hands, lovely shining nails, a gleam of health on them, and his face framed by the stiff white old-fashioned collar, held in place with a gold stud. His hair was like a girl’s. He radiated happiness. Miss Hawkins pinched herself three times in order not to give in to any sentiment. Yet all through the play—riveted though she was—she would glance from the side of her eye at his lovely, untroubled, and perfect profile. In fact, the socket of that eye hurt, so frequently and so lengthily did Miss Hawkins gaze. Miss Hawkins took issue with the costumes and said it should be period and who wanted to see those drab everyday brown things. She also thought poorly of Iago’s enunciation. She almost made a scene, so positive was she in her criticism. But of course the play itself was divine, simply divine. At the supper afterward they discussed jealousy, and Miss Hawkins was able to assure him that she no longer suffered from that ghastly complaint. He did. He was a positive pickle of jealousy. “Teach me not to be,” he said. He almost touched her when she drew back alarmed, and offended, apparently, by the indiscretion. He retrieved things by offering to pick up her plastic lighter and light her cigarette. Miss Hawkins was enjoying herself. She ate a lot, smoked a lot, drank a lot, but at no time did she lose her composure. In fact, she was mirth personified, and after he had dropped her at her front door, she sauntered down the steps to her basement, then waved her beaded purse at him and said, as English workmen say, “Mind how you go.”
But indoors Miss Hawkins dropped her mask. She waltzed about her room, using her shawl as partner, did ooh-la-las and oh-l
ay-lays such as she had not done since she hit the boards at twenty.
“Sweet boy, utterly sweet, utterly well bred,” Miss Hawkins assured herself and Clara, who was peeved from neglect but eventually had to succumb to this carnival and had to dance and lap in accordance with Miss Hawkins’s ribald humor. God knows what time they retired.
Naturally things took a turn for the better. She and he now had a topic to discuss and it was theater. It, too, was his ambition; he had come to England to study theater. So, in between pruning or digging or manuring, Miss Hawkins was giving her sage opinion of things, or endeavoring to improve his projection by making him say certain key sentences. She even made him sing. She begged him to concentrate on his alto notes and to do it comfortably and in utter freedom. Miss Hawkins made “no no no” sounds when he slipped into tenor or, as she put it, sank totally into his chest. He was told to pull his voice up again. “Up up up, from the chest,” Miss Hawkins would say, conducting him with her thin wrist and dangling hand, and it is true that the lunchtime strollers in the garden came to the conclusion that Miss Hawkins had lost her head. “No, thank you very much” was her unvoiced reply to those snooping people, these spinsters, these divorcées, et cetera. She had not lost her head or any other part of her anatomy, either, and what is more, she was not going to. The only concession she made to him was that she rouged her cheeks, since she herself admitted that her skin was a trifle yellow. All that sunshine in Baghdad long ago and the hepatitis that she had had. As time went by, she did a bit of mending for him, put leather patches on his sleeves, and tried unsuccessfully to interest him in a macrobiotic diet. About this he teased her, and as he dug up a worm or came across a snail in its slow dewy mysterious course, he would ask Miss Hawkins if that was a yin or a yang item, and she would do one of her little involuntary shrugs, toss her gray hair, and say, “D’you mind!” He seemed to like that and would provoke her into situations where she would have to do these little haughty tosses and ask, “D’you mind!”