The Misremembered Man

by Christina McKenna

  “Men, married or single, only have one thing on their minds, anyway. You mark my words.”

  She whacked the top of the egg with her James Eaton teaspoon, part of a prized silver set given to her as a wedding gift by the Ballinascuddy Ladies Friendship Club and Circle.

  “The only reason I married your father was because he wasn’t much interested in all that bedroom unpleasantness.”

  She scooped out some egg and held it aloft.

  “The only reason we had relations was because—”

  “Yes, I know: to bring me into the world…” Lydia knew the script well and got there before her.

  “Now don’t be bold with your mother!”

  “Really, Mother. I’m forty, hardly a child, and anyway isn’t it time you stopped making me feel guilty for existing?”

  She got up and went to the window, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

  “This egg’s hard! You know I can’t eat anything hard with my digestion.” The air crackled with the static of Elizabeth’s sudden anger. “Dr. Moody says I have to be very careful.”

  “It can’t be hard.” Lydia concentrated on a tiny bunting that had just landed on a garden post. “I gave it the usual four minutes with Lettie McClean’s egg timer.”

  Every heirloom and antique in Mrs. Devine’s home bore the previous owner’s name, a custom which Elizabeth had picked up from her mother and unwittingly passed on to her own daughter. Lydia had been raised among a ghostly crowd of relatives and friends who still lived among a clutter of crockery and bric-a-brac.

  “Ah, Lettie McClean, now there was a woman; so good with her hands.” Elizabeth lapsed into one of her spiels about her old, departed friend, the egg quite forgotten. “Could turn her hand to anything, so she could. Her flaky pastry was the talk of the parish and…”

  The bunting suddenly rose up and circled the garden before swooping back to light on the same post, its russet breast athrob. Lydia marveled at its beauty, quite lost to her mother’s ramblings.

  “…it was the butter, you see. She once told me that her secret was the Kerry Gold. Never any of that nasty lard everyone else used. Her apple tarts won the Harvest Thanksgiving three years running, you know.”

  Without warning, the bird took flight and Lydia took her own cue. She turned, annoyed to see the toast and egg barely touched.

  “Mother, I know all about Lettie McClean’s tarts. I’ve heard about them often enough. Now eat your breakfast before it goes cold. I’ve got to get on.”

  She had almost shouted the final word, but just managed to retain her composure.

  “Don’t want any more breakfast,” Elizabeth said defiantly, pushing the tray away.

  “Really, Mother, you’ve eaten nothing. All that good food going to waste.”

  Elizabeth did her best to dismiss the patronizing reprimand. How times have changed, she thought, and her eyes began to well with tears. The mature woman by the window was no longer the child she had doted on. Lydia had grown free of her grasp, had outgrown the ponytails and ankle socks, the dolls and coloring books, and those bedtime stories that had transported her into sleep. Oh, how her mother wanted those times back again! When she alone was the fairy queen who could open doors and create magic in the little girl’s world. When she had the power to make her daughter believe in dreams.

  She struggled to remain stoical, still conscious of the importance of staying in control, and fumbled in the little tapestry bag for her glasses.

  “You still haven’t told me why you’re all dressed up,” she said, in no time at all back to her old battling self.

  “Mother, it’s the first day of my summer holidays. Did you forget? I dressed up because I felt like it. Because I’m free.” She turned back to the window. “Well, nearly,” she added ruefully.

  “Oh good, then you can take me to the hairdresser’s. I have the Women’s Institute trip on Thursday and I promised Beatrice Bohilly that I’d make the effort, if only for your dear father’s sake.”

  She patted her hair with both hands, as if checking that it was still part of her.

  “He always liked me to look my best,” she continued. “And he probably would not approve of my purple-pansy rinses. But you know sometimes he could be very strict, your father could, especially when it came to a woman’s adornment; lipstick was for the harlots of Rome and jewelry for the traveling classes and—’

  “In that case I expect you’ll be wanting to be up and ready soon. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Lydia hastened to remove the tray, fearful she might get trapped in yet another tangled web of her mother’s reminiscences.

  Chapter three

  After his midday meal, Jamie McCloone dozed contentedly by the fire. At his feet, Shep, the collie, was wrestling with the remains of his master’s lunch: a chicken leg, a charred sausage and a length of bacon rind.

  Suddenly, the dog barked on hearing a familiar sound. Jamie roused himself; a motorcar was struggling up the far side of the hill beyond the house.

  Through the window he saw a welcome sight; the buffcolored Morris Minor was nosing into view. He heard the throaty rasp of an errant gearshift, as the vehicle sputtered and rocked down the incline. Presently it shuddered to a halt by the front gate. Jamie shifted in his chair, and prepared to greet his friend and neighbor Paddy McFadden.

  Paddy’s arrival was accompanied by a series of squeaks and rattles that Jamie had come to know well. First the horn was sounded in warning, then the car door creaked open on its rusted hinges. A short silence ensued while Paddy heaved his arthritic hips from the seat, banged the door shut and secured it to the trunk handle with a length of baler twine. Finally, a few crunches across the graveled yard and there he was in the doorway.

  “Fine class of a day a say, Jamie.”

  Paddy hovered on the threshold before removing his cap. He was a mild-mannered little man, badly put together—legs too short, arms too long, ears too big, as if he were being pulled in both directions by phantom bullies. He smoked fifteen cigarettes a day and drank his whiskey neat. He went through life not wondering much about anything, but he knew for sure that God had a beard and the devil had horns, and that his guardian angel had been flapping alongside him from the day he was born.

  “Not a bad one atall, Paddy,” Jamie said. “Sit yourself down there.”

  “Rose sent a couple a them pancakes.” He placed a brown paper bag on the table and made his way to the other armchair, taking a few short steps.

  “Aye so. Keeping all right, is she?”

  “Oh, the best, Jamie, the best.”

  Paddy hung his cap on the armrest and gazed about him, taking in the slack-strewn floor and dust-furred furniture: incontrovertible evidence of his friend’s failure as a housekeeper. He wondered how Jamie could live in such squalor and shuddered at the thought of what Rose might say if she saw it. His wife’s life seemed to revolve around a rigorous routine of cleaning and tending. Paddy was of the opinion that their twenty-three-year marriage had survived for the most part because early on he’d acquiesced to Rose’s desire for order and tidiness.

  When he looked at Jamie’s home, he thought that if his friend were to find himself a wife, she would need to be a woman who was very fond of housework. He was not to know, however, that there was a very good reason for Jamie’s fondness for disorder. It represented an unspoken rebellion against the enforced cleaning rituals of his childhood. Jamie would never discuss that period of his life with anyone. Not even with his closest friend.

  “She worries about you, so she does.”

  Paddy seemed uneasy. Jamie wondered what was wrong. “Who?” he asked confused. Both men, not having perfected the art of conversation, were apt to leave long silences between comments and queries so that they often forgot what they’d been talking about.

  “Rose is worried about you, Jamie.” Paddy scratched his eyebrow and studied the roaring fire. “Aye, Rose is worried about you, so she is.”

  Jamie did not know how
to respond. “Aye, I s’ppose…” He trailed off.

  Since his uncle’s death, the McFaddens, being good neighbors and friends, had become increasingly concerned about Jamie. There was a woeful silence which he waited for Paddy to break.

  “Y’know, Jamie, she said to give you…she said to give you…” He looked about him, confused. “To give you…Begod, now what was it she said to give you?”

  “To give me a call?”

  “Naw, it wasn’t that.”

  “To give me the pancakes?”

  “No, it wasn’t that either—well she did tell me to give you the pancakes—but there was something else she told me to tell you after she talked about the pancakes.” Paddy shot a look at Jamie’s smoke-stained ceiling, hoping to find illumination there. “What was it now?”

  “Maybe to give me a lift somewhere?”

  Jamie was fast running out of ideas. But finally Paddy’s brain tripped its memory switch.

  “Och, now I remember. She told me to give you a bit of advice.”

  “Lordy me, advice?” Jamie sat back on his chair and wondered where all this might be leading. He thought Rose a very wise woman and was eager to know what message she had for him. “Advice about what?”

  “Aye, well now, that’s the thing…it’s about, about maybe…well it’s what Rose told me to tell you. It’s about…” Paddy was clearly embarrassed. Jamie saw him look about his untidy room.

  “About cleanin’ the place up?”

  “Naw, not about that. Well, what she told me to tell you is that…is that…” He took his cap from the armrest and started to examine it. “Well what she said was that maybe you should start lookin’ to get…to get yourself a…”

  “A car?”

  “Naw, not a car, to get yourself…well, what she said was, that maybe you should…you should get yourself a woman.”

  Jamie winced visibly. It was as if Paddy had dealt him a blow to his private parts. No one had ever broached the subject of a wife. Not even his Uncle Mick as he lay on his deathbed, when he would have had good reason to.

  Paddy coughed noisily with relief. “Aye a woman…that’s what she said…and she said that you wouldn’t be on your own if you got yourself one.”

  Shep raised his chin off the floor and gazed up at Jamie, who was now focusing on the fire, his brow furrowed, as if he were attempting to solve a mathematical puzzle of some complexity.

  Get yourself a woman.

  The utterance hung in the air like a cartoon speech bubble. Paddy, aware of his friend’s discomfort, reached into his back pocket. He took out a packet of John Player’s cigarettes and extracted two, each curved to the contour of his buttock. He straightened one out and handed it to Jamie, who automatically struck a match and lit both cigarettes with an unsteady hand.

  “Och now, nobody would look at the like of me,” he said finally.

  “Well y’know, Rose drew me attention to something…to something…to something that might be a help to you. She sez to me yesterday, she sez: ‘Y’know, Paddy, that’s the very thing Jamie needs.’”

  Paddy hesitated, puffed several times on the cigarette. He was nervous, realizing that he was on the verge of announcing what might prove to be a life-changing idea to his friend. The problem was: how to phrase it.

  “And what was that?” asked Jamie.

  “What was what?”

  “The thing that Rose said would be ‘the thing’ for me?”

  “Aye, well now, that’s the thing, she said…she said that you…she said that you wouldn’t have to go out and find one…in a pub, or whatever, because she said, well, what she said was that you could find a woman in the paper.”

  “Boys o!” was all Jamie could say. He had never heard the like of it before.

  Paddy pressed on. “Y’know there’s them that’s puttin’…that’s puttin’ them advertymints in the paper these days for to, for to get men, Jamie.” He saw his friend’s amazement. “Aye, it’s true. They say only a letter or two does it….” He paused and looked at Jamie’s tea-spattered table. “Which isn’t much to get your tea made…and your house cleaned up, and your, your bits and pieces washed and whatever else…” There was a weighted pause as Paddy searched for the right word that might cover the taboo subject of sexual congress. He gave up, embarrassed. “Aye, and whatever else you’d be lookin’.”

  Jamie was fiddling with the tear in his trousers as he listened, his heart beginning to warm to the idea, His glance swept the room—about all that ever swept it—as he tried to imagine a woman being part of his life. He thought back to a much happier time when Aunt Alice’s fragrant presence had spoken to him in shining windowpanes, spotless floors, and in flowers that bloomed in pots on every sill. Yes, he decided, yes, it could only be a good thing. Rose McFadden often said that a house needed a woman’s touch to make it a home. And she was right.

  He looked across at Paddy sitting in the armchair where his future wife might sit. He thought of his lonely bed where a future wife might lie, and suddenly the scene darkened, and all the old fears reared up to fell him: fear of change, of circumstances, of other people, of women, of intimacy. In short, fear of all that might make his life better.

  “I couldn’t do it,” he blurted out, more to himself than Paddy.

  Paddy flinched. “Couldn’t do what?”

  “God, I couldn’t bring any woman in here.”

  “But you wouldn’t have to bring her here right away,” Paddy persisted, oblivious to the turmoil in his friend’s head. His wife had advised him to be forceful, and he knew if he didn’t carry home a positive response, he’d get an earful. “You could meet her…you could meet her in a hotel…or a, or a pub or whatever first. Rose and me would help you tidy up anyway—that’s if you…that’s if you…if you decided she was right for you and you wanted to show her your home, like.”

  “And what kinda paper did you say these women were in?” Jamie tried to sound casual. He knew he could not confide his true feelings to Paddy.

  “What kinda what?”

  “Paper, Paddy.”

  “Aw, the paper. I believe she said it was the Mid-Ulster…the Mid-Ulster Vindi-something…”

  “Vindicator?”

  “Aye, that’s the one: The Mid-Ulster Vindicator. You’ll get it down in Minnie Sproule’s on a Thursday.”

  A long ash had formed on Jamie’s cigarette as he listened. The smoke issued up from it in a thin column and dissipated toward the ceiling, staining it a little more.

  “I see,” he said, powdering the floor with ash. “Y’know, I might take a wee look at it if I mind.”

  The combined smoke from the cigarettes, hearth and recent cooking had commingled to fill the small space, like a medium’s ectoplasm at a séance. So muggy was it that Paddy had difficulty seeing Jamie’s expression, but he sensed it to be favorable.

  “Aye, no harm in lookin’, Jamie.” Paddy was relieved that he’d got the awkward news delivered and was also pleased that Jamie seemed to be amenable to the idea. He couldn’t wait to report back to Rose. “Naw, no harm in lookin’ atall, atall. And Rose sez…Rose sez, you’re a fine lookin’ fella, Jamie, an’ she sez…she sez it’d be a shame if you’d to spend your whole life lookin’ at the…lookin’ at the…at the…”

  “The fire?” Jamie said, while looking at the fire.

  “Aye, the fire.”

  There was another slack silence. Shep, sensing that the conversation had finished, labored up onto his paws and wandered out the door.

  “Rose is right about that,” Jamie said thoughtfully, from behind his wall of pained repression. The wall from which Paddy had just removed the first brick, leaving a chink through which Rose could reach to help build for Jamie a whole, hitherto unimagined future.

  Chapter four

  “The doctor will see you now, Mr. McCloone.”

  Jamie, head buried in the back pages of the Mid-Ulster Vindicator, failed to hear the summons. For the past few minutes he’d been dissolving the remains of a
cinnamon lozenge, while his eyes roamed the “Lonely Hearts” column in wonder and amazement. So many faceless women demanded his attention; so many pleading ladies waited behind the newsprint to be claimed. He had never come across the like of it before.

  “Mr. McCloone!”

  Jamie jumped, tried to fumble the paper shut, but it fell to the floor in a heap. Florid-faced and flustered, he got down on his knees to retrieve it, aware that Miss Mulligan, the receptionist, was advancing across the floor. He’d barely got the last of the pages in order when he saw her black patent toes and thick ankles come into view. He squinted up and met eyes that glared above a pair of half-moon spectacles.

  “Dr. Brewster Will See You Now.” She amplified each word and bent unnecessarily low toward his left ear as if addressing a child, a senior citizen—or, indeed, an idiot.

  “Right ho, Miss Mulligan, right ho.”

  He rolled the paper into a thick baton and stuck it into his jacket pocket before shuffling into the doctor’s office.

  Dr. Humphrey Brewster, a large man with bluish jowls and the eyes of a Clumber spaniel, did not look up when the door opened, but continued to scribble in his notebook. Jamie sat down in the vacant chair, put his hands on his knees and studied the doctor’s bald crown as he waited.

  He experienced a sensation similar to that which usually gripped him when he waited at the confessional grille, rehearsing his oft-repeated list of sins, a list that rarely varied from one month to the next. It was a feeling of foreboding that would make him want to bolt out of the box as Father Brannigan, bored listening to the same rigmarole and eager to get home to his slippers and supper of boxty and beef stewed in Guinness, called a halt to the penitential mumbling on the other side. Jamie wondered now about all sorts of cancerous warts and tumors, as he considered the sparse scattering of hair on the doctor’s poll, and waited for the “grille” to slide back and the doctor to meet his eye.

  Presently, the dreaded moment arrived; the scratching fountain pen was capped and the glasses removed. Dr. Brewster sat back in his leather swivel chair and laced his fingers across his pullover-ed paunch.