The Whore-Mother

by Shaun Herron

  “It’s the best time I ever had, Mary,” he said, his mouth full of nipple.

  “Me too,” she said.

  “I could put up w’this for bloody years.”

  A bell as loud as Big Ben boomed in her breast under his teeth. In her mind, carefully she undid the hook from its cork. He was ready. “What’d you like this time?” she said, and the soreness of excess seemed a small price to pay for a man of your own, legal and churched, instead of years of any oul bugger you could get, up the back of the Black Mountain. She waited for her right moment.

  Two o’clock in the morning. He’d have to go in a minute. He’d had a month’s worth in half a day and half a night. That’d hold him till he came back. Jasus, she was great. He squeezed her breasts and kissed her. “Jasus, Mary girl, that’s the best fuckin you and me ever had.”

  “Great. You could put up with it for years, could you, Pat?” “Bloody years.”

  “Pat?”

  “No more time now. Anyway, I’m sore. Are you?”

  “Aye. It wasn’t that.”

  “What?”

  She stilled her nerves and said, “Pat, I’m pregnant.”

  The street lamp outside their window seemed to dip. His kneading fingers were still on her breast. The knee pressed against her groin lifted. The silence was turbulent. She could feel the hook go home in his tender underlip, and she shuddered.

  “Pat?”

  “You said you were a barren woman.”

  “The doctor said I was.”

  “Did he, by Jasus.” Hands and lips and legs away. He was out of bed. “He did, did he, by Christ?”

  “Honest t’God, Pat.” Hooked. In the wrong place. In the lip. Bleedin like a butchered boar. Mad ragin like a bull. “Pat.”

  “Fuck you,” he said, attacking his clothes. The rage in him grated in his mouth, burned his eyes, closed his throat. “You ony wanted your fuckin hooks in me, didn’t ye?”

  “No, Pat, no. He couldn’t make me pregnant and I believed the doctor. As sure as God, Pat.” It was done. It was undone. Hopelessness knelt on her chest. What was the use? She’d picked the wrong time. If there was a right time. But he said he could stand fuckin her for bloody years. How was she t’know?

  “Y’know what y’are?” He was leaning over her, the light on, his face almost purple with the fury in him, “You’re a fuckin hoore, that’s what y’are.”

  “Don’t you say that!” Up on her knees like a wrestler balanced to spring, her own rage erupting, she yelled at him, “Don’t you call me a hoore!” What was there to lose? It was lost already. All he wanted was a private hoore-house with no other customers and no charge. All she wanted was a man of her own, with legal rights. It hit her again. She was thirty—five years older than Powers—and she just wanted to do it right, in bed, with one man, not up Divis or the Black Mountain, with every horny oul man with a cock on him, pokin away at her. Slowly she got off the bed. “I’m sorry, Pat. I just loved you, that’s all.” She felt ill. She half-meant what she said. She half-hoped. . . .

  “You loved my fuckin cock,” he yelled. The bedroom ruptured in screaming abuse, like a back street in Belfast.

  On either side of it, awakened sleepers knocked on the walls and shouted. The manager came from his bed and screamed through the door. Mary Connors sank back into defeated silence. Powers roared his obscenities at her and she sat naked on the bed, only half-hearing, thinking of what would come to pass. The child. The street. The mothers to their daughters: “Don’t go near that wee hoore, d’you hear me now?” The fathers to their sons, “Keep away from that one, I’m tellin you.” The fathers to Mary: “How’re you doin, Mary? How’d you like a wee walk up Divis?”

  He was ready to go. “Pat,” she said, standing naked in the middle of the room. “Pat, what’m I gonta do?”

  “Put your hooks in some wee boy that doesn’t know you.”

  “I’ve no money. I gave you all my spare money.”

  He rummaged in his pocket and threw fifty new pence on the bed. “You gave me twenty pound for the best fuckin y’ever got. There’s your change.” Then he rummaged in his mind for another humiliation to throw at her. None came. He opened the door.

  “Pat,” she said, “are you just gonta walk out and leave me here without a penny t’my name?”

  “I just gave you fifty,” he said, and opened the door.

  “Y’made a hoore outa me, Pat.”

  “Y’were born a hoore.” He closed the door.

  She stood where she was, numb and desolate. The bill for the room, and the food, and the bus back to Belfast; she had none of them. The front door of the hotel slammed shut and the bedroom door opened as if it had been waiting to hear the front door slam.

  The manager was standing there in his pajamas. She was aware of him in a distant way that drowned under her desolation.

  “Did he bate you, missus?” the manager said.

  She shrugged and said, “No,” and shook her head without looking at him.

  “He was callin you dirty names.” His eyes chewed deliciously on every inch of her.

  She turned and got into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Aye.”

  “Did he catch you with a man? The things he was sayin.”

  She became fully conscious of him slowly, and looked at him carefully. “He took all the money. I can’t pay you.”

  “Oh?” He shook his head mournfully and looked sorrowful. “Poor wee soul.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “You look like a very nice woman. Did he catch you w’somebody?”

  Her mind picked at him shrewdly and her eyes glanced quickly at his pajama trousers. Oh aye. Too bloody right. “Aye,” she said, “with a bit of a wee boy. Once. I ony did it the once.”

  “Aye.” He was patting the covers, just out of range. He’ll get there, she thought. “And how’m I gonta get home?”

  “Never worry about the bill,” he said. “Don’t go to sleep and we’ll have a wee crack. I’ll just run down and lock the front door.” Aye, do that. He might come back and catch me payin for my breakfast.

  “Where’s he goin?” he asked when he came back. He closed the door and turned the key and walked very upright to the bed. Fat belly in a bit.

  “Over the Border.”

  “Where d’you live?”

  “Belfast. I haven’t got my fare home. Could you give me the loan of it? I’ll pay you back.”

  “Sure. Sure. In the mornin.”

  “Could you get it now?”

  “Now?”

  “Aye. And what’s the bill for the room and meals?”

  He worked it out in his head. “Make it a round figure. Four pound.”

  “Write out a receipt when you’re out there and I’ll pay you for that too.” She pushed the bedclothes down with one leg and spread the ransom for his inspection.

  “Holy Christ,” he said. “Y’ony done it once w’one wee boy?”

  “Aye.”

  “Y’never done it w’anybody else but your husband?”

  “No.” What was he scared of? Syphilis? “He was ony fourteen—a wee schoolboy.”

  “What made you do it w’him?”

  He liked the details. “He was cryin for it. Poor wee crature, he wanted it that bad. So . . . I let him. My man come in.”

  “Christ. I’ll ony be a wee minute.” He ran.

  She was spread as she had been when he came back, locked the door, laid her fare and her receipt on the dressing table, and dropped his pajamas on the floor. “You’re a nice wee woman,” he said, and scrambled onto the bed.

  She lay, passive. Almighty bloody God! A poor wee man with a danglin belly and a soft cock, haughin away at her for four pound and her fare to Belfast. It was started already. She cried.

  He panted, “Is somethin wrong, dear?”

  “No.” She lay in his sweat and thought of Danny O’Connell. Danny slept hither and yon with a gun in his bed, but his wife and the seven wains were always in the same wee house they’d lived in since he
married her. Mrs. O’Connell’d be dyin of grief and murder and chokin for revenge. I’m sorry, Pat. I just loved you, that’s all. Her mind hopped from thing to thing. She was half-winded with the breath bursting out of her and the wee fat manager bouncing on her belly. We love our Protestant neighbors, Mrs. Machin yelled for the reporters, and they cheered her and went howling down the streets, screaming obscenities and hurling stones at the soldiers, luxuriating in the Irish ecstasy of hate. I just loved you, that’s all. Instant transitions. Venomous transitions. Absolute transitions. Mrs. O’Connell’s the first stop when I get to the Falls, she decided. “Pat Powers it was that killed your Danny, Mrs. O’Connell,” she’d say to her. “Tell your fellas he’s over the Border, huntin young Johnny McManus.” There’d be a list, all right. Pat Powers would be on it, all right.

  “Are you near done?” she said to the half-blown little laborer on her stomach.

  “Soon,” he croaked breathlessly, and with desperate fury and for his own pride’s sake, tried to bring the matter to an issue.

  When at last the issue was accomplished, Mary Connors heaved him off, stepped out of the bed, and unlocked the door. “All right. You’re paid,” she said. “Away on.” She’d scored a point.

  “Is that all?” he said, “for four pound ten?” He went sourly through the door, carrying his pajamas. “You’re not worth four pound ten,” he said, looking deeply aggrieved. He turned back and stabbed a short finger at her. “And another thing—it doesn’t cover your breakfast.” He’d scored a point.

  She lay in the sweat-wet bed and cried, and composed her little speech for Mrs. Danny O’Connell. Powers’d find out who else was Irish, by God. He’d find out all right, by God. She’d score a few points, she would. By God, she would. That was Irish too.

  TEN

  Mc MANUS came to his senses and heard kitchen sounds. He was a child in his own bed, curled securely in a safe and familiar place, enclosed in safe and familiar sounds. The bedclothes were deep and warm and reassuring.“Mammy,” he said. To himself, not to be heard. That was comforting too. His mother was close. He would call. He could hear. She would hear. She always heard.

  He opened his eyes and was not in a safe and familiar place. He did not know where he was and was afraid.

  He had been dreaming? Terrifying dreams; or were they real and had they found him and beaten him unconscious? He was sore, everywhere. There was a woman with pink jellyfish eyes that grew and shrank.

  She was standing in the bedroom doorway, drying her hands on a towel. Wearing steel-rimmed eyeglasses that glittered. Or the eyes behind them glittered. It was hard to breathe and impossible to call out.

  “There, child,” the woman said, “don’t fret. You’ve been sick.” She came down the room slowly the way she would come catching a cat. Don’t run, her sly movement said, I’ll not hurt you.

  She sat on the edge of the bed near the foot. “I’m Mrs. Burke,” she said.“This is my house. You fell in over my half-door—a very sick child.”

  Child? Yes, he thought vaguely, I’m a child.

  The woman’s voice was gentle, but she didn’t smile. That face didn’t do much smiling. “I was just going to wash you,” she said, as if she always washed him. “You’ve sweated something terrible.”

  She was big. No, not really big; tall, as tall as he was himself. His mind absorbed her in fragments, not in general. A bun at the back, brown hair, a little gray, mere traces of gray; a grayish dress, square like a flour sack with holes cut for the neck and arms. Strong arms, big hands. The face was narrow, plain, full of force. And tired. There were dark circles under the eyes. They reached well below the glasses.

  “I’ll get the things,” she said, and left him to wonder what things.

  Strong legs. Big feet. She came back carrying the things; an enamel basin, steaming, towels over her shoulder; and pulled up a chair with a big foot and put everything on it.

  “Now.” He couldn’t move when she reached with a big hand and slowly drew back the bedclothes. “You’ll feel the air,” she said.

  He felt the air, all over his body. Not cold; fresh. He was naked.

  She washed him from head to feet, the way his mother did when he was very young, and sick. She soaped a face cloth and went over him slowly, very gently. Then she dried him the same way, in all the same places. She turned him over, washed the other side, and dried him, and said, “Don’t want bedsores, do we?” and rubbed cold fluid on his back and buttocks and it stung a little, freshly, then glowed on his skin. Then she turned him on his front again. His fears had gone. She was gentle, kind, motherly. She wouldn’t harm him. She covered him and took the things away.

  When she came back she said, “Want me to talk to you?”

  “Yes.”

  She pulled a chair to the edge of the bed, drew his arm from under the covers, and held his hand in both of hers. “You collapsed at the door three days ago. Do you remember anything of the past three days?”

  “Only your glasses.”

  “That’s interesting,” she said like a kindergarten teacher. That’s what she was like—a schoolteacher. Like old Moll McCullough who used to hide the cane when the Inspector came, and Paddy Gallagher who made his own fiddles knew where she kept it, and brought it out where the Inspector could see it. Moll whaled him with it afterwards, when the Inspector left.

  “What made you smile?” the woman said.

  “Moll McCullough.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Schoolteacher.”

  “Did I remind you of her?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. I was a schoolteacher once. We’ve been pouring penicillin into you,” she said. “You’ve had pneumonia. You’ll be fine now.”

  If she’d known Moll McCullough she wouldn’t have thought it was good, and if she thought it was good why didn’t she smile? Only her voice smiled. Or her voice sang at him, as if he were an infant.

  “I’m going to give you a little clear soup. I’ll fix your pillows. The doctor said only a little clear soup. We’ll do as he says. He’s a very good doctor.” More infant tones.

  She sat close to him, on the edge of the bed, pulled him up to her with one strong arm and with the other raised his pillows, patted them, and then put both arms about him and cradled him. “My poor child,” she said, and held his face against her; against her breast. He could feel her nipple through the dress, against his mouth. His mother did that when he was sick, and he’d wondered years later whether she’d been wishing him back to infancy. But this woman pressed his face so hard against her breast that he coughed for want of breath. “Poor child,” she said, and lowered him down on his pillows. I hope she does that again, he thought; she gave him a safe feeling. An odd thought occurred to him. She can do that to me, he thought, she’s known me for three days. I’ve never really seen her before.

  She brought the soup and fed him, wiped the spills from his chin and chest. “Take your pills,” she said. “They’ll keep you sleepy and you’ll be fine in no time.” She lowered his pillows, covered his shoulders. “I’ll leave you now. Sleep some more, child. You’ll mend quick.”

  He woke and slept and woke and it was like climbing a terraced hill on a crisp day. He felt better every time he turned to look about him. From soup to scrambled eggs. A week, maybe two weeks, waking and sleeping, taking pills and being washed. Two more days, in fact. On the third day time became measurable again, but by then he was enveloped in timeless kindness.

  It was today, while the washing was going on, that he lay in pleasant acceptance, his eyes on the bun on the back of her neck and remembered what Pat McGladdery said one day in school about Miss Martin, who had hair like that. “She’s got very sexy hair—that’s pillow hair, Johnny boy.” It had fixed an erotic image in his mind and women in his fastasies had long hair that flowed on pillows. Mrs. Burke was washing his upper thighs when his penis rose.

  His embarrassment colored him. “Don’t fret, child,” she said, and moved her fa
ce cloth a little higher as if everything was normal. “God made you whole. Thank Him.” Her voice was flat.

  He sneaked a glance at her face. It was as severe as ever and as cold as the face of a spinster vigilante beating the village bushes for sin.

  But she didn’t wash him again. “You can take a bath tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll help you in and out in case you slip, but you’re coming on fine.” She put him in warm pajamas when the washing was done, and piled pillows behind him. “The doctor’s coming,” she said. “You were sleeping when he came yesterday. He just took your pulse. Sit up and we’ll talk.” She helped him, then was busy about the room, tidying the tidy.

  “Tell the doctor you’re fine,” she said, lifting and laying about the room, and not looking at him. “Would you like to go to a hospital?”

  “No. No.” It was too urgent. “No,” he said calmly. They could get at him easily in a hospital. “If you can stand me,” he said.

  “All right, child. You’ll stay. You need a mother.”

  Did that explain her? She came suddenly and sat on the bed. “Before he comes, we need to have a frank talk.”

  She was in a hurry. It harshened her voice and her look. “You raved a lot,” she said. “There’s two paperback books in your pack. You’re John McManus. Your name’s in them.”

  “Yes.” Her urgency frightened him.

  “Was Maureen your sweetheart?”

  She knew it all, one way and another. What in God’s name had he been saying? Raving. Hopelessly, he decided he’d told her too much to lie. “My sister.”

  “A man by the name of Powers? He killed her?”

  “I think so.”

  “You said a lot of names—this man Powers, McCann, Clune, McCandless. Everybody knows who they are. They must be the only television stars the law can’t find. Were you a Provo too?”