Bone and Blood

by Margo Gorman

  My favourite thing is to go to Karstadt with Delia. The store is mighty and we go up to the café at the top for coffee and cake – Kaffee und Kuchen. Tell Mammy and Daddy everything is fine here.

  Yours,

  Biddy

  *

  26th August 1939

  Dear Mary,

  I miss you. I have no-one to talk to here. I haven’t posted my last letter so maybe I will send them together. If you get this letter, tell them all at home I’m grand. There is nothing to tell you. All they talk about is whether there will be a war. Delia listens to everything on the radio. There is a new programme in English – Germany calling. He’s Irish but calls himself Lord Haw-Haw. Sounds more English.

  Write back.

  Yours Biddy

  *

  2nd September 1939

  Dear Mary,

  I still don’t understand enough German to follow the news. Delia listened again to that stupid Lord Haw-Haw but I can’t stand the sound of his voice. Do you listen listen to him in Ireland too?. I imagine you going over toMickie’s house, as he’s the only one with a radio. They call him Joyce but he doesn’t sound Irish. He sounds like his name, Lord Haw-Haw, a donkey who took elocution lessons. I only want to hear that the war will be over soon. Most days I am too fed up to write letters.

  Yours Biddy.

  *

  September 1939

  Dear Mary

  No letters this week. Britain declared war on Germany yesterday. Delia says Ireland is neutral and Dieter works at the hospital so there is no reason for us to be afraid. I’ve seen the uniform hanging in the wardrobe but I have never seen him wear it. Mammy wrote saying that she got a fright when the telegram arrived. I wrote back telling her that I’m fine and everything is calm here and that it’s safer for me to stay here than to travel to Ireland. I’ve made the decision to stay no matter what.

  You’ll have to visit after the war.

  Yours Biddy

  *

  New Year 1940

  Dear Mary,

  My first New Year in Germany was a bit of a let-down. Delia spent the evening complaining because Dieter has to work more and more. They don’t go out very much anymore. Dieter says he doesn’t like to go to the film theatre any more. I don’t mind because now Delia takes me. I love to go to Palasttheater am Zoo and enter another world away from this stupid war. I don’t mind that I don’t really understand it all because it is all in German of course.

  Dieter wants Delia to go to stay with his parents in Bavaria. He says Berlin is sure to be a target for bombing. Delia wants to stay with him. I am tired of listening to them arguing and I’m glad it’s in German so I pretend not to understand. Delia says that if she leaves then she will take me with her or find a way to get me home. She needs me at the moment so there is no question of me leaving. I get up early with the children and one of us goes to the bakery for bread. Now there are queues and everything takes longer. When they have their nap in the afternoon after school I queue again for bread and anything else I can get. I don’t mind it anyway. I like to be among people.

  There’s a lot of snow and I had to stamp hard to get enough feeling into my feet to take a step. The snow makes everything look special again. I like to walk around the streets and look at the people – even the trucks of soldiers. When I get on the tram or stand in the queue at the bakers. I dream of the day the war will end. I could spend all day admiring the tall elegant buildings around me. I love the way the tram goes around the little garden area in the centre. I see myself getting off at Karstadt and having Kaffee und Kuchen on the terrace there. I pray for the day that everything is normal again.

  I found out that Backpulver will do instead of baking soda to bake a scone of bread. Buttermilk is easy to get. Now I often bake soda bread for Delia. I’m not sure if I am doing the right thing. To-day she said the smell made her homesick. I talked about the hardship of living on the farm just to make sure that she didn’t get too romantic about going back to Leitrim. Dieter doesn’t like scone bread so I still have to queue for bread. Sometimes his favourite Roggenbrot is gone and I have to decide quickly which other to get. We hardly ever have bread rolls for breakfast now. I wonder if Delia is more homesick now it is too late to go back to Ireland until the war is over.

  Hope all is well with you.

  Yours Biddy

  Aisling heard the aunt in the bathroom and jumped guiltily. She shoved the pages in the drawer where the laptop had been. How come the letters are from Biddy to this Mary? Did Mary send them back or did Biddy never post them? Biddy certainly made living in Berlin sound a lot better than Leitrim. No wonder she was afraid that she’d be sent back home. Aisling couldn’t imagine being stuck in that little house in Leitrim for any length of time. Her Granny had told her about going to the well for water and about the bathroom in the barn.

  She heard Yola calling her, ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’. She must have been at the bakery. At least the aunt could still have her Coffee and Cake. The aunt insisted Yola sit with them for coffee and cake but you could see neither of them was comfortable.

  ‘Do you like Berlin?’ Aisling asked Yola to cover up the awkwardness.

  ‘Yes. I do like it,’ Yola looked delighted with herself. ‘Do you like the Pflaumenkuchen?’

  ‘Yes but our plum cake is different. Do you have family still in Poland?’

  ‘Yes. My mother lives there. My brother too.’

  ‘Do you miss Poland?’

  ‘Not Poland. My mother yes but not Poland. I like live in Berlin. My son has work here.’

  There was a silence then and Aisling accepted another helping of cake to help fill it. She had barely cleared her plate before Yola was clearing the table. The aunt made no effort to make conversation.

  ‘Do you ever miss living in Leitrim?’ Aisling threw the question into a silence and felt her blush rise from the image of the young Biddy leaving Leitrim for Berlin coming through the letters.The aunt didn’t seem to notice anything odd.

  ‘I went back a few times. Not many. The last time was before my mother died in 1987.’

  ‘She lived in the old house until she died, didn’t she?’ Death again. Tactless she could hear her father saying, talk house not people; ‘We go down there for weekends, quite a lot. Dad made a few changes.’

  ‘Yes, Peggy told me Diarmuid has renovated the old house.’

  It made Gran sound younger somehow to be called by her pet name – though Aisling knew she hated it. Probably because it sounded country and old-fashioned though Gran’s line was that Peggy wasn’t the name she had been given at Baptism. Did Brigitte know that Granny hated to be called Peggy?

  Babbling to fill the silence. ‘He didn’t really change the house that much. Not enough for Gran anyway. She came down with us for a weekend once and wouldn’t come back. Daddy wanted to restore the house rather than modernise it except for a new bathroom and the kitchen in the extension at the back. He took off all the layers of lino and the wood underneath that was beginning to rot and found the old flagstones underneath. He took down all the boards off the ceiling and you can see the old beams in the kitchen now. The big range in the kitchen, with an oven and plates for cooking on, is still there. Mum won’t use it for cooking though. She uses a camping stove and Dad has to do most of the cooking when we’re there. He bakes soda bread in it when we go there for weekends. But we haven’t been back since… ’

  ‘Since… ?’ Brigitte’s eyes stared black at her. ‘Since your brother died?’

  Aisling winced. I’m not the only one who can be tactless here. Sometimes she wanted to rewind it like a video but she knew that no matter what the story would be the same. That was the way it was.

  Brigitte spoke into their separate silence, ‘They say it takes a year to get over the death of someone close – I don’t believe it. Some deaths you never get over even if it is not someone close.’ She paused and abruptly changed tack. ‘You don’t mean to tell me Diarmuid bakes soda bread?’

  ‘
Oh not real bread. He found some ready-mix soda bread where you just have to add water. He says it is just as good as what your mother used to bake and far better than anything you get in the shop.’

  Aisling wondered now if they would ever go back to those rituals. Her father would get up early to feed the range that was still hot from the night before. She could hear him below raking out the ashes. She pretended to hate those trips to the country but breakfast always tasted better there. She liked her father’s ritual. He took a cup of tea in bed to her mother after he fed the range, and then he would go downstairs again and have a shower in the new bathroom and marvel at how there was always hot water from the range at the kitchen sink. If she closed her eyes now she could taste the smell of turf, bacon and brown soda bread baked the night before and rolled in a tea towel. He would have a late night whiskey while it was baking and chat about his childhood. Aisling liked to mock him – especially the bit about the first time he got a ten-shilling note and everything he bought with it, ‘At least his soda bread looked like the real thing,’ Aisling added.

  Brigitte’s voice took on a new energy and edge, ‘Well I can believe bread from a packet would taste better than anything from that shop. When I went there, I thought maybe with that Celtic tiger now, it would be possible to find some decent bread in Leitrim but the main thing they sell is packaging. Inside there is damp soda bread or sliced pan. For fresh bread, it’s those imitation French sticks – and croissants. But they have no idea of fresh bread to start the day. The Germans could teach them a thing or two. And the Irish idea of a cake is something with so much sugar and food colouring, it’s just as well there’s no fruit near it.’

  ‘Sliced pan – that’s the sliced white loaf isn’t it? Gran makes me laugh about that. Sliced white loaf was a treat when she was young.’

  ‘And so it was. White bread was almost a delicacy when we were growing up. We even preferred white soda bread to brown because it was Sunday bread. When I went back, I couldn’t eat any of it. I lived on oatcakes. I had been away too long maybe. Soda bread reminded me too much of hunger.’

  ‘So how many of you lived in the old house?’ Aisling heard their names reeled off by her Gran often enough but she had usually switched off her brain by that stage and never remembered them. Luckily Gran would repeat it all again as a preliminary to some bit of news or story of the past.

  ‘John-Joe, Liam, James, Mick and Peggy of course.’

  ‘So there was six of you and your parents in that little house.’

  ‘And it wasn’t a small house compared to some – or a large family for that matter. We had three bedrooms upstairs. Peggy and myself shared the smallest room – the one on the right at the head of the stairs. And of course there was my grandmother in the good room downstairs.’

  ‘I always sleep in the little room upstairs. Maybe I even slept in the same bed as you. My father found some old iron beds in one of the sheds. He had them done up and put back with new mattresses. My mother was disgusted: she said he could have got some brand new pine beds for half the price he paid for getting the old beds restored.’

  ‘I hope he didn’t put the springs on it again. I don’t know whether it was the mattress or the springs but we always ended up in the dip in the centre fighting for blankets or the blanket with sleeves as Peggy used to say.’

  ‘Blanket with sleeves?’

  ‘Yes an old coat of my grandfather’s – the wool in it was thicker than any blanket and warmer.’

  Aisling grinned at the picture of Granny curled up in bed under an old coat. It was a long way from the image that she created of a quaint old farmhouse, good wholesome food, and a maid. The bathroom in the barn was always the bit that intrigued Aisling after the first time she stayed there. When they went there first, before they had the extension with the proper bathroom built on, the bathroom was a toilet and hand basin with a makeshift shower that either scalded you or doused you in cold water. You had to go out the back door to get to it. She hated using it. Once she asked her father what happened to the bathroom in the barn because she saw no sign of it. Wouldn’t it have been easier to modernise it than to build on a toilet to the house, she asked.

  Her father laughed, ‘Bathroom! What bathroom?’

  ‘Granny said something about the bathroom in the barn.’

  ‘That’s my mother for you. If there is anybody who could make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, it’s her. You may think that stepping out into the flush toilet that’s two steps from the back door is hard going for you. Do you know what toilet your Granny used all the time that she lived here?’

  Aisling shook her head, puzzled.

  ‘There was a bit of wood with a big hole in it in the barn above. The shit fell down through the hole into a pit below which they came to empty once a month. To be fair there might have been a pitcher full of water and a basin up there too. The big aluminium bath that was used for washing sheets and for Saturday night bath was kept there too. I love my mother sometimes – at least she’s not one of these whingeing old people that spend half their time crying about the poverty of their youth and the other half complaining about the lack of religion now that people are better off. Bathroom indeed!’ He laughed again, ‘They were still using that earth closet when I visited here first but my mother made sure I didn’t have to use it. She carried a potty with her the whole way from Dublin on the bus. I know that story because of the jokes of Uncle Liam. It might even have been the potty that persuaded my grandfather to finally part with the money for the toilet and hand basin and the shower that never worked properly.’

  ‘Is it true that you didn’t have running water or a bathroom when you were little?’ Aisling asked Brigitte.

  ‘Indeed it is and we weren’t the only ones – in the country anyway. When I came to Berlin, I couldn’t believe the bathroom in the apartment. Believe me it was as good as anything you’d see to-day. It wasn’t just the running water, the flush toilet, and the big bath. It was beautifully tiled too – so easy to clean and a long way from peeing into a bucket and then having to empty it or dragging yourself off to the barn for the obligatory Number 2. In Berlin the whole apartment was so modern – with electric lamps everywhere – inside and out. But more than anything else it was the life of the city that I loved. I hated the farm. The only time I ever missed it was when I came back to Berlin after my mother died. Then I missed the view out over the lake and the hills beyond. You know I never remember remarking on that view when I was young. The first time I even noticed it was when I went back for my father’s funeral. I did appreciate it when I went back there for a week to look after my mother. A week that turned into nine weeks. Then I liked the peace and quiet too. I missed that when I came back here again.’

  Brigitte was silent again. There were no words for the view over the lake from the front of the house. The sensation of light filled her whole being. Every night during those weeks, she stepped out into the night air; air that smelt and felt like a tangible presence, taking the loneliness out of being alone. She learnt to love the shades of moonlight on the fields and answering light on the lake –usually silver or grey but sometimes passionate red, swooping stories back across the fields. Stories of placid water turned to a stream of blood when neighbour turned on neighbour. Stories of the skirt of a married woman lifted for love and exiled forever; leaving the children confused and motherless. When she spoke her tone was matter-of-fact, ‘I loved to stand at the front door and look across the lake – especially on good summer evenings with the swallows out.’

  ‘Yeah – it’s a good view all right. But would you think of going back there to live?’

  Brigitte laughed, ‘Not now – what would I do there now?’

  Aisling felt relieved somehow. The cottage as they called it now was all right maybe for a weekend but imagine being stuck in the country living like that with maybe the odd trip to Manorhamilton. You’d have to be off your head. The very thought of it made her restless to get out again and see a bit of
Berlin.

  ‘I’m going out now for a bit of air. I thought I’d go and look at this famous Berlin wall. I saw a bit of it when we went to the States a couple of years ago.

  Brigitte laughed, ‘So we sent if off round the world, did we? Here it’s well hidden in memorials and museums. There’s one bit they turned into a big art gallery – the East-side Art Gallery. Wall paintings near Warschauer Strasse. I’ve never been. Or some crosses by the Spree. Youngsters sitting in the steps in the sun. They have no idea of what it was like. Even Katharina agrees with me on that. I’d rather go to any graveyard if I want to remember the dead. Better to go to Bernauer Strasse. They built a small museum and a new church too. The old Church was on the wall. I remember the day they blew it up. Now there is a new one there.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, maybe I’ll go there.’

  ‘You can walk, if you want. It’s not far and there’s plenty of information and photos too according to Katharina.’

  ‘I’m not much of a one for museums but I’ll pop in.’

  The aunt was right. Armed with her directions, Aisling was there in no time. The place wasn’t a bit like a museum. It helped make some sense of the bit of the wall that you could see from the viewpoint on top. When she went down again, she played a while in the documentation centre on their computers to get some pictures of what had happened there over the years. It was weird to think of going through cellars to get from one side to the next. The bit she liked best was the old newsreels with people jumping from windows. She couldn’t help laughing at the guy trying to help a woman who looked a bit like the aunt – he had his hand up her skirt – then she fell. It wasn’t clear what happened to her even though there were people waiting with blankets and things for people to jump onto. She was surprised to learn the wall went up around the same time as the Beatles– her father was already a student at UCD, growing his hair long. Embarassed now to remember that she thought the Berlin Wall went up right after the war. Glad her father wasn’t with her to mock her lack of knowledge of history. Looking at the pictures of a young guy – about the age her father was at the time – swimming across the river and being shot.