The Misremembered Man

by Christina McKenna

  Eighty-Six and his partner hefted a heavy gray blanket from the tub and fed it through the mighty jaws of the mangle. They had to use both hands and all their strength to turn the stubborn wheels. Halfway through the labor, the boy felt a sharp tap on his shoulder. He stopped and looked up in alarm, wondering what he had done wrong.

  “Mother Vincent wishes to see you in her room now.” The nun held him with her cold eyes. “Run along, Eighty-Six.” She motioned another boy to continue his work.

  He knocked on the door of the Reverend Mother’s quarters and waited, removing his cap in readiness. He wondered why he was being summoned, and prayed he would not be sent back to the Fairley farm. He was prepared to cry—and beg on his knees if he had to.

  A postulant whom he’d never seen before ushered him in. Mother Vincent turned from the window; wordlessly, she directed him to a chair in front of her desk. This was a rare occurrence: being asked to sit in the presence of a nun. She resumed her seat.

  The room was bare and chilly, but for the table and two chairs, a gray filing cabinet and a coat stand. On the dun-colored wall above the nun was a portrait of Pope Pius xii. To the left of her, a scarf of snow lay against the windowsill outside.

  “Some good news for you, Eighty-Six. I am putting you forward for adoption.” She smiled at him—another rare occurrence.

  “Is my mammy coming, Sister?” His hopes rose sharply.

  “No, she is not coming,” she snapped, causing his hopes to be dashed as quickly as they had risen. “She dumped you and your sister here in a shopping bag like pieces of rubbish, remember. She’s probably dead by now, like your sister.” This was also delivered with a smile. It was not the benign smile of the plaster virgin in the chapel, but one set in stone, hard, cold, dangerous. “So you’d best forget all about her.”

  The boy started to weep.

  “Now stop that at once!” She slammed a hand down on the desktop and he stopped immediately.

  “They are a farming couple. Good, Catholic people.” She consulted a tall register on the desk. “They want a boy who would be good at farm work. And you have proven yourself to be a good, steady worker—but a nuisance at the same time, Eighty-Six.” She looked up from the page, fixing him with an eye of unblinking indictment. “I am right about that, am I not?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “So I think you’ve earned the right to be put forward.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “Less bother for us and more benefit to the people who get you.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  He stared at the muffled, white world beyond the window, and something weighty and substantial settled upon his heart. So many questions hung in the air unanswered. A great wave of sadness broke against him, as he wept and howled inside himself.

  The room was silent. From somewhere came the chiming of a clock felling the seconds. He swallowed hard on his grief.

  “You will come here again at three o’clock tomorrow. The farmer and his wife will speak to five of you individually.”

  The boy looked at Mother Vincent, not knowing how to put the question. She read his thoughts and answered for him.

  “Oh no, you are not the only one. You will all be interviewed, but only one of you will be chosen.”

  “This time tomorrow,” she said. “If you are chosen, this place will be a memory.” She shut the register with an angry slap. “Now, back to work.”

  Chapter twenty-eight

  Jamie had trouble sleeping the night before the meeting with Miss Devine. He lay awake for many restless hours, trying to guess the outcome of this future event, imagining what he would say, what he would do. He still saw Lydia as an icon of female beauty, and hoped he’d be acceptable to a woman of such grace and refinement.

  He was confident that in the past weeks he had done everything in his power to improve himself. He’d lost the weight, kitted himself out in a brand-new outfit, and had succeeded in purchasing his mail-order toupee without too much trouble. So appearance-wise he would be fine; personality-wise, well now, that was another matter entirely.

  When Rose advised him to just be himself, he had trouble deciding what exactly that meant. Who was he anyway? Jamie did not know. He had never been able to probe his essential nature, or see himself as worthy. His cheerless childhood had robbed him of confidence, faith, trust and all those things that allow a man to build a clear, unblemished image of who he is. As a child he’d incurred so much displeasure. As an adult he was determined never to give offense. So he moved through life on bended knees, skirting the puddles, dodging the blows, falling over himself to please. The forty-one-year-old man felt only able to catch and avenge his early suffering through a series of small victories: eating sweet food when he wanted, letting the hearth-fire burn when the sun burned high, leaving the front door open both day and night.

  Winning Lydia, however, would be the ultimate victory. A woman friend would lift the lonely, hopeless refrain of his life into a soaring, thigh-slapping song.

  By one o’clock he had completed the farmyard chores and retired indoors for the “robing ceremony.” At two o’clock Paddy and Rose would collect him, and the trio would set out on the half-hour journey to the Royal Neptune Hotel. First, however, he needed to wash.

  He was reluctant to fill the tin bath by the fire. Too much trouble, and anyway it was only a first meeting and it wasn’t as if he was going to be…to be…He couldn’t actually visualize the sexual connotations that followed on the heels of this thought. His earlier experiences had sanded his ideas down to the bare rudiments of what he believed the male and the female of the species represented. In Jamie’s book men were, for the most part, perverts and predators. Women, on the other hand—those not swathed in black robes and serving their own version of Christ—could be very useful adjuncts to a man’s life, in terms of housework and caring. That was enough for him; whatever happened after that was an amorphous and altogether unreachable thing that he felt unable to picture, let alone dwell on.

  So, without further hesitation, he headed into the bedroom, stripped, and allowed a damp cloth to have a brief flirtation with his more intimate areas. He then sought out Rose’s bag of clean underwear atop the glass case, and pulled on a set of inner garments.

  He eyed the pièce de resistance—his hairpiece—in its box on the tallboy and decided, wisely, that it might be best to tackle the positioning and securing of it before dressing.

  He read the instruction leaflet. With a gathering sense of unease, he realized that in order to accommodate the application process, he’d have to trim his comb-over and shave the crown of his head. Very drastic, Jamie thought. He was very attached to his precious strands and wondered whether he should sacrifice most of the only real hair he had for the sake of the toupee.

  He checked himself in the broken mirror once more, twisted his head this way and that, picked up his Adolfo Microfilament Polyurethane “Tite-grip” Extended Wear toupee, and slapped it on.

  Hmm.

  No doubt about it: from certain angles it looked like a cowpat. But he doused all doubt by reassuring himself that he’d spent a fair bit on it, so it would be a terrible waste to reject it at this stage. And once the adhesive was applied, sure maybe it would look like what he’d been born with.

  He struggled for a good twenty minutes with razor, scissors, lengths of toupee tape, and a tube of industrial-strength bonding wear acrylic-based glue. The last seemed to stick, Holy God, to everything within a two-foot radius, but finally Jamie had his sandy-brown toupee in place. He raised his head to the mirror to admire his artistry.

  “Ah Jezsis!” he exclaimed, eyes wide with shock. He’d inadvertently attached the instruction leaflet to his head as well.

  Part of it stuck out, eave-like, over his forehead, and read, in reversed, bright red letters: “Get Scalp Protector and Sealer Today. It Works Great.”

  Jamie tugged at the leaflet, but soon discovered with an eye-watering acuteness, that he risked scalping himself
, so resistant was the glue. Not even a Ukrainian weightlifter would have been a match for it. He located the scissors again and hacked at it as best he could, a confetti of paper falling onto the dresser as he attempted to trim away the offending leaflet, and not the toupee.

  But finally it was done and he conceded to the mirror that, even if not exactly handsome, he did look presentable—which was just as good, right enough. He thought that perhaps the toupee sat slightly too high on his head, so he used his hand to try and clap it down a bit. It made little difference. He lathered a generous scoop of Brylcreem on, which seemed to tame it for about a minute, before it sprang back up again with a fresh defiance. His head could indeed have been that of a yellowhammer perking up his crest to impress a mate. In effect, and on consideration, the toupee was just that.

  Jamie sighed. Well maybe, he thought, that was because there was still some paper lodged under it, or maybe it was just the shape of his head—and if that was how God had made his head, well there wasn’t a lot a body could do about it because that was the way of it, and the end of it, so it was.

  With his new hair (quite literally) in place, he turned his attention to dressing himself. First came the sunshine-yellow shirt, followed by the suit itself; then he knotted the red paisley tie into place. Finally he slipped on the shiny loafers. Thus attired, Jamie felt a whole lot better. The suit caressed his body in new ways and made him feel important. He could not view his entire self in the broken mirror, but imagined he looked like an insurance salesman or even, at a push, a lawyer.

  With time to spare, he sat down in the armchair to have a smoke. He was beginning to feel nervous. The reality of meeting Miss Devine in a couple of hours’ time suddenly hit him. He was no longer in the tattered armchair, but in the playground, being taunted by the schoolyard bully. What if she doesn’t like you? What if you don’t know what to say to her? What if you make a fool of yourself? Because you’re gonna make a fool of yourself—you know that, don’t you?

  Jamie needed a drink to steel himself, but there wasn’t any in the house. He saw the Valium bottle on the shelf. He hadn’t taken any for a fortnight. He knew he couldn’t take one now because he’d be having a couple of drinks with Miss Devine and it wouldn’t do to fall asleep in front of her. The last time he’d taken a drink on the heels of a Valium was before a particularly nerve-racking stint in the confessional. Just as he was about to confess his few Venials and that all-important big Mortal, he collapsed against the grille, disappearing from Father Brannigan’s view. He came to just as the priest was about to anoint him, believing he’d had a heart attack.

  Jamie was in a right dither now. He lit another smoke—then a thought struck him. I only take the Valium to kill the loneliness and the memories because Mick’s not here. But now that I’m meetin’ Miss Devine I won’t need them anymore. He immediately felt better. Just then he heard the rips and roars of the Minor and peered out to see Rose and Paddy cresting the hill beyond the house.

  Lydia and Daphne entered the plush lobby of the Royal Neptune Hotel and made their way to the lounge. Beside the entrance doors there was a sign in gold lettering. Lydia paused.

  “Oh, I do hope there isn’t a wedding here today.”

  “Doesn’t look like it.” Daphne put on her glasses and read. “‘The Killycock Amateur Artists’ and Glamour Photography Club monthly meeting, lounge at four P.M.’ No, you’re in luck; doesn’t sound like a wedding.”

  “Gosh, that sounds familiar,” Lydia said, thoughtful. “It’s that name: Killycock. I know it from somewhere.”

  Daphne checked her watch. “Well, it’s nearly a quarter past three. D’you want me to sit with you until he comes or—”

  “Not at all, dear. You go off and have your stroll.”

  Daphne embraced her. “Good luck!” she said warmly. “You’ll be fine. Don’t look so worried.”

  Lydia chose a table by the window and settled down to read her copy of The Times. She had little enthusiasm for this encounter and, since her mother’s untimely illness, looked upon it as more of a chore, rather than the social engagement it was supposed to be.

  The lounge was not so busy. The remains of the carvery lunch were being cleared away and she was grateful that the last of the diners were preparing to leave.

  At precisely three-thirty Lydia glanced up from the newspaper and saw a trio—two men and a woman—enter through the double doors. She knew immediately that one of the men was Mr. McCloone because he had a copy of what she assumed was the Mid-Ulster Vindicator lodged tightly under his arm.

  The three stood for a while conversing, and Lydia had a good squint at them without being too noticeable—or so she hoped. But suddenly they all stared down in her direction and she dropped her head back to the newspaper. Her assumption was correct; Mr. McCloone had made his entrance.

  When she glanced back up again, the man with the newspaper was approaching her table. She inhaled deeply. He was wearing a brown suit, a yellow shirt—and his face looked terribly familiar.

  “You, eh, you…wouldn’t be a Miss…a Miss…a Miss Lydeea Devine, would you?”

  She got up. “Yes, indeed. And it’s ‘Lydia.’ You must be Mr. McCloone.”

  “Aye…I mean, yes, that is right. James Kevin Barry Michael McCloone. I am glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Devine.”

  Lydia saw that he was extremely nervous. He held her hand in a sweaty grip, pumping it vigorously as he spoke. When finally he released her, he raised the same hand to his head as if to remove a cap, but instead pulled at his hair. She could not fail to see his look of dismay, as he quickly put the hand behind his back. His face reddened.

  “Glad to meet you too, James,” she said with a broad smile, attempting to put him at his ease. “Shall we sit?”

  The farmer pulled out the chair opposite and installed himself awkwardly, depositing his rolled-up copy of the Mid-Ulster Vindicator. It uncurled itself to reveal the news that Killoran was about to be twinned with the town of Adra on the southern coast of Spain, and that a sizable deputation of local councilors was heading there on a fact-finding mission. The journal was joined on the table by a brown paper bag. Lydia found herself staring at the two items and wondering what to say.

  Jamie averted his face, tugged at his ear and stared out the window. The air around him was throbbing with tension. Lydia at once felt sorry for him, and decided that alcohol might be the solution.

  “Now, James, what would you like to drink?”

  “Oh no, Miss Devine—”

  “‘Lydia,’ please.”

  “Yes, Lydeea please—sorry I mean—no, let me get it…please.”

  But Lydia had already summoned a waiter and, after some little hesitation, the gentleman settled on a double whiskey and the lady decided she’d have a sweet sherry.

  It was while the young waiter was noting down their order that Lydia noticed that the temperature in the lounge seemed to have soared.

  “You haven’t got the heating on, I hope?” she said. “Not in this weather.”

  “No, Miss. The air-condition’s broke, so it is. I think a crow flew into one of the fans. But there’s a man fixing it now.” He tore a sheet from his pad and placed it under the ashtray.

  Lydia returned her attention to Mr. McCloone. She noticed, for the first time, the deep scar that ran from his right eye down his cheek.

  And all at once she recalled the loud guest from the Ocean Spray. She recognized his habit of touching his right ear; the hand that checked his hair. But she thought there was something different about him; his hair was not as she recollected it and his clothes were much better. This man was also a good deal thinner. Perhaps it was a brother.

  “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Jamie lied, as he fiddled with a corner of the newspaper.

  Of course he remembered her; how could he forget their meeting on the promenade?

  He remembered her, all right: right down to the lacy blouse, the
green skirt, the basket she carried on her right arm; but most of all he remembered the generosity of her smile when she spoke to him that day. He had been sauntering toward the beach, eating his candy and weeping for his lost childhood, when this stranger had acknowledged him and brought him back to the present with her smile.

  Oh yes, he remembered Lydia all right. From that day on he’d often thought of the mysterious woman on the footpath. He could not quite believe that he was sitting opposite her now.

  “So, how’s the farming?”

  Jamie was caught off guard by the question, and tried to remember what he’d said in his letter.

  “Not so…not so bad atall. Cutting a bit of hay these days but that’s about the height of it and then there’s…there’s…” He was as jittery as Judas at the Last Supper, hoped the drink would arrive soon. “Then there’s…”

  “The animals?”

  “Aye…I mean yes, the animals, but they’re to be worked with every day.”

  Faced with Miss Lydia Devine at last, he was overcome by shyness, and sat trapped inside his forty-one-year-old self. He did not know how to free himself, what to ask her. Then he recalled that she was a teacher.

  “So, how’s…how’s the school?” he blurted out.

  “I’m on holiday. For the summer.” She wondered how much she should tell this stranger.

  “Aye, so. I mean yes. Right.” Jamie looked about him, confused, and was glad to see the waiter approach with the drinks.

  “But when I’m in school I do like it.” Lydia tried to sound relaxed. “It’s good to get a holiday all the same. We all need time to ourselves.”

  Jamie found a ten-pound note in his wallet, and in his eagerness to pay, allowed it to flutter to the floor. In the time it took him to get down and retrieve it from under the table, Lydia had already paid and the waiter had departed.