The Misremembered Man

by Christina McKenna

  He would scrub the floors on his hands and knees, beat the rugs, wash the windows and pound the bed linen in the tin bath at the outdoor pump. All those heavy chores he knew intimately; his identity lay in the dirt others left behind and his salvation lay in cleaning it up.

  At night, lying curled up in the settle bed, the rain hammering on the corrugated roof, he prayed that they wouldn’t come. He’d lie there, praying and hoping and fitfully sleeping, only to find again and again that he’d awake into the nightmare he’d tried to run from. He’d feel a hand over his mouth, the fetid breath in his face and the pressure of a man’s body on top of his.

  Some nights it was Fairley, some nights it was his son, and sometimes the two of them brought strangers into the darkened corner with its dead air, where they drank from the same bottle and laughed with the same mouth.

  He never knew who the others were, only that their sins against him were the same. The only thing he clung to was the relief he felt when it was over. Then he would cry and wait for daylight to render clear the image of Christ’s face—the holy picture above his bed, the only witness to his suffering and their terrible, evil crimes.

  Chapter twenty-four

  The Farmhouse

  Duntybutt

  Tailorstown

  Dear Miss Devine,

  I was truly honnered to receive your reply to my letter and to learn more about yourself. I too think that to be honest is a good way to be going on, because when a body is not then things can become mixed up, so they can?

  So I will be honest with the answers I give here now to your questions. It is a good thing we are at a kind of an age, because maybe we could understand things better that maybe a younger person would not be known about.

  It is also a good job that we do not live so far from each other, because since I’ve only got a bicycle then the distance in meeting you would not be a problem so it wouldn’t. I do have a good friend who gives me a lift places so maybe if the distance was longer then it still wouldn’t be a problem for me if you know what I mean.

  So you are a school teacher. I think this must be a grand job and hard too to have to be doing with the young ones that are going nowadays. But you say you enjoy it and that’s the main thing.

  You asked me what kind of books I like reading and I have to say I like the Cawntry and Western novels partickarly. I have read Riders of The Purple Sage by Zane Gray and The Virginian by Owen Wister most recent and most enjoyed them.

  You also asked what kind of things I like to cook and I can say that I like to bake the buns, especially Rock buns and Jam tarts. The aspect of the culunary process I like most is the cooking of them and seeing them coming out of the oven.

  I like Andy Williams also but I do not know the songs of James Last, but he must be good too because you are a singer of the hymns yourself so you would know about the singing and such like.

  Well this is all I can think of to say to you now Miss Devine. I think we can meet soon if you like. If you write back and tell me the time and place I will be there and the sooner the better I think for none of us is getting no younger and time is going on.

  I eaglerly await your reply.

  Yours sincerely

  James Kevin Barry Michael McCloone

  P.S. Thank you for saying my writing was nice.

  Lydia, at home again in Elmwood, returned the letter to the envelope and smiled to herself. Mr. McCloone did not sound like the sharpest knife in the block, but there was something endearing about the honesty of his reply.

  She had already sent him a short answer—acknowledging the urgency of that final statement, “none of us is getting no younger and time is going on”—and had arranged to meet him in two weeks’ time. Although, if she were being honest, she did not envision him as a suitable candidate for her purposes, she felt that she owed him a meeting at least.

  Her experience with Frank Xavier McPrunty had colored her judgment, from a bright, sunny yellow toward a dull, ominous brown. Meeting a partner in that way was probably not a good idea. But at the same time, she appreciated the folly of judging future encounters in the light of that one huge disappointment. Yes, she would meet Mr. McCloone out of curiosity, if nothing else. And she would commandeer Daphne’s services as chaperone once more.

  The clock on her bedside locker told her that it had just gone 7.15, still too early to get up. She lay back on the pillows, delighting in the comfort and familiarity of her own bed and surroundings. They had returned from their week in Portaluce three days earlier, and Lydia was beginning to feel that another holiday was probably in order—to help her recover from the effects of her most recent one.

  The Ocean Spray was indeed a fine establishment, but despite its opulence and grandeur there was something distinctly clinical about the whole place. One simply did not feel at home there. Perhaps it was Auntie Gladys—in fact, she knew for certain it was Auntie Gladys. Places, of themselves, were rarely at fault, but rather the people who inhabited them.

  Dear Gladys—even though she loved her dearly, Lydia was conscious of the immense chasm that existed between them. There seemed to be no common ground on which they could meet and really get to know one another.

  Gladys inhabited a transient world of high fashion, cocktail parties and gentlemen, while she, Lydia, moved in the more sober world of books and duty and doing the right thing. It was plain to see that, of the two, the older woman was having more fun. She had taken the art of “living a little” to extraordinary heights, and deep down Lydia knew that she wanted to “live a little” like that as well.

  While in the kitchen preparing her mother’s breakfast, she pondered her situation more deeply. What would happen if she suddenly decided to collapse the walls of her tight little world and indeed “live a little?”

  As she slipped an egg into the bubbling saucepan and inverted Lettie McClean’s egg timer, Lydia decided no drastic changes were possible while her mother was still alive. Who would carry out those little humdrum, but necessary, tasks if she, Lydia, were not around? Who would help her to dress, fetch her magazines, tend to her when ill, ferry her to her appointments, answer her queries, listen to endless eulogies about her dear dead father?

  She sat down thoughtfully to butter the toast, aware that this daughter was indeed the indispensable rock which her mother leaned on, and looked to for her very survival and support. But what if the rock were to suddenly roll away and slip into the full torrent of life? What might happen then?

  These questions gnawed at Lydia from time to time. But lately there’d been a change. And she did not know why—perhaps it was the act of placing her ad in the newspaper, her Aunt’s urging, or indeed the fortuneteller’s predictions—but it was only now that she felt able to confront such issues head on and analyze what they meant.

  How did other women like her mother fare, she wondered; those childless ones—childless, or indeed widows, those whose sons and daughters had married early and flown the nest? Those who had no one to tend to them. She speculated that such women had superior reserves of strength. They’d had to learn the harsher lessons of life. Such courage and independence had sprung from circumstances not necessarily of their choosing, but through such experiences they understood that to be bound by another’s needs and wishes was perhaps, in essence, a far more fearful state than being on one’s own.

  Her mother and aunt had lost their parents in a car accident, when Gladys was still a teenager, and this tragic occurrence had forced the orphaned daughters to grow up very quickly. They did what they felt was all they could do at that tragic, vulnerable time: They had married the first men who came along, finding and securing substitutes for their dead protectors in the raw, harsh world they had so suddenly been thrust into.

  Elizabeth had unfortunately met a man who would hold her back from exploring that world and, as a result, such fears of the unknown, such restriction, had been passed on to Lydia. Gladys, on the other hand, had married light-hearted and easygoing Freddie.

 
; Lydia remembered his round, laughing face and his eagerness to play games with her when she was a child. He was so unlike her father: a free, cheerful spirit who encouraged gaiety and enjoyment, scattering great handfuls of it wherever he went.

  How interesting, she mused, that we pick up and repeat the qualities of those closest to us, like walking reflections, whether they be good for us or not. But, thought Lydia, our freedom lies in being aware of this very fact and in shattering those illusions that do not suit us.

  She considered the toast, gone cold now because of her musings, and decided it would do. Her mother only ever nibbled a corner of it anyway.

  She mounted the stairs with the laden tray and went quietly into the bedroom. She could barely make out the shapes of the furniture in the curtained darkness, but no matter. She knew the geography of the room so well that locating the bureau by the window where she normally placed the tray presented no difficulty.

  “Good morning, Mother!” she trilled, throwing open the heavy drapes. “Wakey, wakey.”

  There was no movement or answer from the bed.

  Unusual.

  Lydia frowned, then felt panic rising. She ran over and pulled back the covers.

  “Oh my God, no!”

  The old lady’s face was a deathly green. Lydia gasped.

  “Oh, please, God, please, I’m sorry for all those thoughts I had just now.” She began to weep. “I didn’t mean any of them. Please, God, please don’t let my dear mother…” She could not finish the sentence, dared not say the word, lest its very utterance turn the situation into unconscionable fact.

  She put out a trembling hand to her mother’s throat and felt for a pulse. The skin was warm. She gasped with relief; there was a weak, throbbing beat.

  “Oh, thank God. Thank God.” She replaced the covers and dashed downstairs to the telephone in the hallway.

  The receptionist’s voice was sharp and businesslike. “Good morning. Dr. Lewis’s office.”

  “Oh please! This is Lydia Devine.” She started to cry again.

  “Yes, now calm down. What seems to be the trouble?” There was little sympathy in the woman’s tone.

  “It’s my mother,” Lydia managed to say through her tears. “She’s taken a turn. I think she’s perhaps…” She broke down again.

  “Is she breathing?”

  “Yes, just barely.”

  “Right. Very well. Stay by her side. Continue talking to her. The doctor will be with you right away.” She hung up.

  The dial tone droned in Lydia’s trembling hand. She slumped against the wall and let the receiver fall back into its cradle.

  The delay between the phone call and the arrival of the doctor seemed interminable, as Lydia tried to absorb the shocking reality of what had happened.

  She sat by the bedside, her mother’s hand in her own, and tried to speak through her tears. Elizabeth’s eyes were closed, her breathing was so shallow it seemed as though she were hovering in some kind of otherworldly realm, subject only to its alien rules and laws.

  When the doorbell finally rang, she was so locked inside the darkness of her own grief that she barely registered the sound. The hollow, insistent ringing sent tremors through the house. Finally Lydia recognized it for what it was and the reason for its urgency. She hurried down the stairs. A stranger stood on the step.

  “I’m Dr. O’Connor. I’m covering for Dr. Lewis.” He held out a hand.

  Lydia found herself staring at a tallish, terribly thin man with a lugubrious yet handsome face. It was the kind of face which had no doubt acquired its grimness through having to deal with the sick and infirm; a face used to delivering bad news and sad prognoses, and occasionally an alert to impending death.

  “I’m Lydia,” she said self-consciously. “Lydia Devine. My mother’s upstairs.”

  He exuded a marked air of authority and professionalism, and mounted the stairs with a straight-backed, measured grace.

  “What’s her name?” he asked, bending over the bed.

  “Elizabeth.” Lydia stood on the other side, her hands pressed together, staring down fixedly at her mother. “Will she be all right?”

  He didn’t answer, but instead took a stethoscope from his bag and spent several seconds checking her pulse rate and heart, his eyes shifting between the patient and his wristwatch. He straightened, satisfied, and returned the stethoscope to the bag.

  “How has she been lately?”

  “Tired. We’d just got back from a week’s holiday, and I noticed she was sleeping a lot and eating very little.” The doctor kept his eyes on her as she spoke. Lydia took a handkerchief from her sleeve and mopped a tear, conscious of how awful she must look. It is odd, she thought idly as though another were monitoring her thought processes, that we care about appearances at the most inappropriate of times. “Sometimes she complained about being dizzy.”

  “I see. We’ll have to get her to the hospital right away.” He lifted his bag and made for the door. “I’ll need to ring an ambulance.”

  He dialed the number from memory, said a few brusque words, hung up and turned to her.

  “The ambulance will be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Lydia started to cry again. “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”

  He laid a hand gently on her arm. His sensitive manner was strength-giving, at odds with his severe appearance.

  “Now, nobody’s going to die,” he said softly. “You need to sit down, Mrs. Devine.”

  “Miss,” she corrected him—and immediately wondered if she’d sounded too forward.

  They went into the drawing room. He sat down in the armchair; Lydia chose the sofa.

  “Your mother’s had a stroke. The next forty-eight hours are critical in that respect.”

  “You mean she could die?”

  She searched his face, waiting to hear the worst. He was wearing a crumpled navy-blue suit. She noticed the careless knot in his gray tie, and the creased shirt. No woman to check those things obviously, she thought—and was at once ashamed to be thinking such frivolous thoughts at such a dramatic juncture. She could feel her face growing hot.

  “She could die, but it’s too early to say.” He sat forward. “My mother had something like it several years ago, but she pulled through.”

  Lydia brightened. “So she’s still living?”

  “Sadly, no. She died of a heart attack last year.” Lydia stared at him. She thought he might be in his early forties. “My mother was eighty-two,” he said. “Parents get old; they die. We have to face these things.”

  She thought him very direct and cold. He seemed to be preparing her for the worst. How could he be so dispassionate? A part of her, though, was conceding that such clinical detachment came with being a doctor; one couldn’t become too emotionally involved or one’s work would suffer. She decided nevertheless that she did not like Dr. O’Connor. He must have read something of this in her face; he examined his hands.

  “Oh, I am sorry,” she said. “About your mother.”

  “Thank you,” he smiled, “but such is life.” He turned to look out the window, then at his watch. “They’re here. Ten minutes. Very good!” He stood up as the ambulance pulled into the driveway.

  “Perhaps you should get a coat,” he said. “You can travel in the back.”

  Three hours later Lydia found herself in the hospital waiting room, a large, cheerless place with vinyl plastic seating. A coffee table in the middle of the room was littered with scruffy, out-of-date magazines. A television, high up in one corner, was tuned to the katzenjammer of an ultra-violent children’s cartoon.

  Several people had come and gone in the time Lydia waited there, but she had scarcely been aware of them. She sat with her hands thrust in the pockets of her jacket, staring down at the floor. In her mind her mother was already dead, and she knew in those moments that things would never be the same again.

  She was so glad that they’d had the little holiday with Gladys. How could she have known it would be their las
t? A tear rolled down her cheek and fell onto her blouse. She followed its blurred path, then shut her eyes tight against the prospect of her lonely future. The more she thought of it, the more freely she wept, lost to the reality of the waiting room and the people around her. That was until she felt a small, sticky hand on top of hers. She wiped her tears; a little girl of four or five was gazing at her with wide blue eyes. Lydia smiled and took her small hand in hers.

  “What a lovely girl you are! What’s your name?”

  “Sar…ah.” She pushed back her dark fringe and buried a tiny fist in her right eye, rubbing it fiercely.

  “That’s a lovely name. And where is your mummy, Sarah?”

  “She over there.” The little girl pointed to a young woman sitting on the far side of the room. Lydia returned her smile.

  “You sad,” Sarah said almost accusingly and pulled her hand free. Before Lydia had time to answer, she ran to the coffee table, brought back a tattered copy of National Geographic and plonked it on her lap.

  “Thank you, Sarah.”

  “Miss Devine?” a voice called out.

  Lydia turned in alarm. It was an earnest-looking nurse behind the reception desk.

  “Mr. Bennett will see you now. Second door on the left, down the corridor.”

  Lydia got up, her legs numb from having sat for so long. She bent down to the little girl.

  “Bye, bye Sarah. I’ll read your magazine when I get back.”

  The child stood sucking her finger, looking up at her. Lydia patted her head.

  “Bah, bah,” she heard the little girl cry behind her as she rushed weeping from the room, to face whatever it was the cardiologist was about to tell her.