The Closet of Savage Mementos

by Nuala Ní Chonchúir

  I am bone-weary and I fall into a half-sleep. My nights are disturbed not just by the baby but by my brain which click-clacks along like an overloaded train, rarely giving me a rest. I dream of babies who won’t feed from me; babies who can talk; I dream that I am heavily pregnant but my stomach is malleable like bread dough. In this dream I am walking with the pram but when I bend over to fix Nessa’s blanket she is not there; I let go of the handle in shock and the pram speeds away from me, of its own volition, and I cannot move. I dream that I am on Shore Street in Kinlochbrack, looking out on the loch; there is a child with me but I can’t see his face. I know that he is Malachy. Something shifts and I dream that Cormac comes back from the graveyard and yanks Nessa from my arms – suddenly she is back with me! Cormac grabbing her makes the baby yelp and me scream.

  Then Cormac is standing over me, returned for real. I fight my way to wakefulness and go to speak, but Malachy sits continuously on my tongue today and I have to bite him back before he falls out in front of Cormac. The ‘M’ of his name starts but I bury it in time and say, ‘You’re back.’

  I shift Nessa’s head; her mouth is thrown open like a yawning kitten’s, wide and pink.

  ‘Why don’t you take her up to bed, get some sleep?’

  ‘I won’t be able to nod off tonight if I do that.’

  ‘You’re not sleeping anyway.’

  ‘Maybe I could get some pills to help me?’

  ‘I don’t think you can take anything like that when you’re breastfeeding.’

  ‘No, probably not.’

  ‘My poor tired dormouse.’

  Dormouse was what he used to call me when I was able to sleep anywhere: in the car, on a bus, at the cinema. ‘You could nap on a mantelpiece,’ Cormac would say. Now I listen to the dawn chorus each morning and keep an almost satisfied account of the fact that I know the choir of birds starts up earlier every day.

  Cormac leaves for work and I haul myself from bed and change the baby’s nappy on the chest of drawers by the window. The pout between her legs is so tiny and perfect; I wipe her and think that I wouldn’t know what to do with a baby boy. How do you wipe clean all that they have?

  I have been obsessing about paedophiles – the radio news is full of them – and it frightens me to think of Nessa being abducted, like that little girl who was on holiday in Portugal and has never been found. I try hard to bundle these thoughts under better ones but they resurface, especially at night, and I weep into my pillow for fear of what could happen. I pull on Nessa’s babygro and tell her she is the best girl.

  ‘Aren’t you my girl? My best girl? You are. You are. You’re my only one.’

  In the kitchen the fridge whirrs; its pitch gets higher and higher until it sounds like it will take off and burst through the ceiling and then the roof, like some mad rocket. The noise of it makes me want to scream and I leave my breakfast uneaten so that I can get away from it. I pull on boots, put a coat over my nightdress and bundle Nessa into her pram. The park is a couple of miles away but I crave to be there in the vast quietness and green. I push the pram past the terrace where my piano teacher lived; she probably still lives there – the house’s name is unchanged on the fanlight, ‘Saint Jude’. The patron saint of hopeless cases. I was hopeless at learning piano so that was a fit, I think. I pass the playground where a fat red-haired girl is slumped on a swing. I want to call out to her, ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ but she looks so abject that I can’t bring myself to speak. She swings desultorily and stares ahead. I pass the Used Cars for Cash garage with its tired bunting and defeated salesman, perched in the window like a dummy, staring out at the world.

  The park’s high wall makes a secret place of it. I go through the gate and feel calmer at the sight of all the grass that slopes away from me on both sides of the pathway. I hope a deer might come sniffing out from among the trees, like happened last time. It was a young deer with a red tag in one ear, separated from the herd – a maverick or loner. I watched for ages as it nosed about the ground, unconcerned by anything. No deer appears and I walk on.

  There is a man sitting on my bench. I can usually time it so there is hardly anyone in the park but today there is a man on my bench. He looks forlorn, but I am irritated with him for taking my spot. I idle past, hoping he will move, but he sits on. I stop and lift my head to listen to the shush-hush of the horse chestnuts, newly in leaf. A pigeon leaps from a branch and bustles onto a lower one.

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’ a voice says. I look over at the man. ‘I don’t bite.’

  He must know this is my bench; his invitation is a way to apologise to me. My chest swells. I wheel the pram over, put the brake on and sit. The floral end of my nightdress sticks out the bottom of my coat. All around the man’s feet are pistachio shells, they are like fawn-coloured beetles, scurrying about. I look away, to the fresh leaves on the trees, their thick trunks.

  ‘And how are you this fine morning?’ the man says.

  I stare at him. Why does he keep speaking to me? I ruffle the end of my nightie with my feet. ‘I’m OK,’ I say, stiffly.

  ‘Isn’t it grand to get a bit of fresh air?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘The park is a great amenity. For the kids. For us all.’ He smiles. ‘Hah?’

  ‘Yes, it’s lovely.’

  He toes the pistachio shells with his shoe. ‘Isn’t it great to be young? It’s well for you.’

  I smile tightly. ‘Mmm,’ I say. Is forty young, I wonder? It doesn’t feel like it to me.

  ‘Can I look in at your babby?’ He is already rising from the bench.

  ‘No, no, no.’ I leap up, kick off the brake and grab the pram’s handle. ‘No. Keep away from her.’ I shove the pram along the path, away from him.

  ‘You fucking bitch,’ he shouts after me. ‘Bitch!’

  I try to calm the histrionics that rise in my neck; I glance behind and he is on his feet, staring after me but he doesn’t move to follow me. I push the pram quickly towards the gate and exit gratefully onto Chapelizod Road. I fumble for my handbag under the pram’s apron but it is not there. I go to a phone box, thinking I can reverse the charges to Cormac at work and he will come and get us. But the receiver has been cut from the cord. The phone box stinks of piss, which makes me feel like throwing up, which in turn makes me light-headed. I stumble out, hang on to the pram and lurch forward.

  I head for Verity’s. Sometimes I rehearse things to talk about when I am on my way to her house, to get on her right side and ease my way into her mood, but not today. I can barely get up the road and my mind is loaded down enough without trying to prepare myself for my mother. Verity looks bothered when she answers the door, she hates anyone to call unexpectedly, but something about me makes her soften.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she says, waving her hands and hurrying me into the hall as if she is afraid someone else might steal in through the door behind me. I bounce the pram over the threshold. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Nothing happened.’ Tears drop onto my coat and I see them as if they are coming from someone else’s eyes. ‘Oh, Mam.’

  She leaves the pram in the sitting room, helps me out of my coat and guides me up the stairs, where she puts me into her bed; I can smell her on the pillow.

  ‘Try to sleep now.’

  She leaves and I hear her slow clop on the stairs, then the ting that means she has lifted the receiver of the telephone in the hall. I listen to her murmur into the phone. I look at the wooden slats that make-up the ceiling; their deep honey colour is mesmerising and they lift a little of the darkness. None of the rooms are quite right in this house and they never have been. Curtains are sloppily hung; light fittings are crude and ancient, liable to electrocute you if you don’t know each switch’s knack. There is too much furniture: a dining table lives on the landing, saddled with five or six tablecloths and
a pile of books; there is a wardrobe in the bathroom, skulking like an unwelcome guest behind the door.

  My childhood home sits in the bowl of a valley; the slopes and the old, old sycamores and oaks cause long shadows, but there is another thing too – something created by Verity and Anthony, a dim oppression that hung over us always as a family. We weren’t ordinary like our neighbours and, while I craved that as a child, I disdained it too. Verity and Anthony fought endlessly and with passion, then they would stay in bed for a day, making up, and Robin and I were allowed in to their room to witness how happy they were. See, their wrapped-together bodies beamed, no more screaming! No more slapping! No more dish-smashing! All is well. And, yes, it was a relief that the house was quiet, but things remained dark and we tiptoed around, trying to find ways to be good. Anthony took what little light there was with him when he left and we had to guide our mother from then on.

  After a while Verity comes into the room again and snuggles Nessa into the bed beside me. The baby is still sleeping, her lips making sucking motions, then falling open to reveal the curl of her tongue, like a conch shell behind her gums. Nessa is the best thing that has ever happened to me, I think. I slip my finger into her fat little fist.

  Verity sits on the bed. ‘Babies are real work. They turn your life upside down and it’s a high-wire act just getting through the day.’

  ‘I’m tired, Mam. Exhausted, that’s all. My head is fuddled.’

  ‘That’s to be expected. But is it anything more than that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Motherhood is immutable, Lillis. It’s there and it’s there and it’s there. Nothing changes that. But you can get help.’

  ‘Why are you saying that?’

  ‘You seem distracted. Distraught even. Cormac says you’re pacing the house at night. And you went out in your nightdress today, Lillis.’

  ‘When were you talking to Cormac?’

  ‘I rang him a while ago.’

  ‘At work? Even I’m not allowed to ring him at work.’ I throw off the quilt and she tells me to lie down. ‘Rest, sweetheart. Feed Nessa now, then I’ll take her and you get some sleep.’

  ‘I don’t want to sleep. I have things to get on with.’

  ‘I’m telling you to rest and that’s that.’ Verity pulls the quilt up to my neck and mock strangles me with it. ‘Feed your daughter then go asleep!’

  She leaves again and I look at the framed embroidery of a peacock that sits over the mantelpiece. My Granny King had stitched the peacock – the most glamorous of birds – and managed to make it so disgustingly gloomy that it depresses me to even look at it. Verity barely mentions her mother and when she does it is with stiff words. Granny King – who died when I was very young – was, according to Verity, ‘chilly’.

  I picture my granny, an ancient version of me, of my mother, head bent low over embroidery silks, placing stitch after drab stitch into the sombre cloth, fashioning the peacock, like someone decorating a shroud.

  When I told Verity I was pregnant with the baby I later miscarried, she was in a bad way. Her house was a shambles and she was acting maudlin and hopeless, letting herself and all around her fall into decay. Robin rang to ask me to try to sort it out.

  ‘I can’t face it anymore,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe she’ll just drink herself to death; do us all a favour,’ I said.

  I knelt on her floor, a filthy cloth between my rubber-gloved fingers, scrubbing at unnameable stains. Verity was perched on the sofa, watching my attempts to right the mess.

  ‘You missed a bit,’ she said, and cackled.

  ‘The drinking has to stop,’ I said, ‘for once and for all.’

  ‘How dare you preach at me. What are you – perfect?’ Verity leaned over and poked my shoulder with one finger. Her eyes were crackle-glazed.

  ‘I never said I was perfect; this has nothing to do with me. You’re killing yourself and you know it.’ The bleach smell was making my stomach toss back on itself; I covered my mouth and nose with one hand. ‘Things go wrong when you drink, you know that.’

  ‘For your information, I haven’t had a drink since Friday.’ She pinched her mouth into an ‘o’, let her hands fall into her lap and stared at me. ‘I woke up in a pool of piss on Friday morning, if you must know, and it shook me.’ She looked at her hands. ‘Even I saw that I’d gone backwards by about five years. That I’m regressing even as I age.’ She smiled. ‘The unfortunate thing is, sweetheart, my sorrows have learnt to swim – as someone once said – so drowning them isn’t going to work anymore. Believe me, if I could knock their babbling heads under a vat of wine or vodka, I would.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve come to that conclusion. You’re a nicer person without drink.’

  Verity sniffed. ‘There’s something hard inside you, Lillis Yourell. Something cold and hard.’ As always she was resisting. Resisting the idea of a sober life; resisting the notion of herself as a decent person. ‘I hate getting old,’ she said. ‘Such a gradual disillusioning; all the young desires end up looking silly and hopeless. It’s sad but true.’

  I got up from the floor and sat on the sofa beside her. My head was dizzy-heavy and I felt tired; I took off the rubber gloves and held my mother’s hand. I wanted to do something to help her – my eternal desire. I thought I could cheer her up with my news.

  ‘Mam, I want to tell you something.’ I looked at her. ‘I think I might be pregnant. In fact, I know I am.’

  She smiled – a wicked curve of the lips – but her eyes remained fish-dead. ‘Well, bully for you.’ She snorted and snatched her hand away. ‘You needn’t think I’m going to mind it.’

  She never apologised to me for her reaction to that pregnancy but, when I was expecting Nessa, she tried hard to be gentle and kind. And she tries still.

  Chapter Five

  In late November, Margaret came from Kinlochbrack to visit me in Glasgow. She sat in my bedsit, trying to look like she was impressed with the place, but she held herself away from everything. I was glad Charlie was not with her; I didn’t want to deal with watching her change his nappy, feed and cosset him – I dreaded his very babyness. I made tea and we sat beside the window, looking down at the street.

  ‘You could be a maternity model from a magazine, pet; that dress cleaving to your bump like clingfilm,’ Margaret said.

  I smoothed my dress over the egg of my belly, as if doing that might rub it away. The size of my stomach alarmed me most days.

  ‘Have you seen Struan?’ I said.

  ‘Once or twice. He’s cut up.’

  ‘Well, he should have thought of that before, you know, having sex with my brother.’

  ‘He’s really sorry, Lillis. He seems depressed; very down. He’s been neglecting the inn.’

  I shrugged. ‘Am I supposed to care?’

  ‘Lillis, Sam came to see me.’ Margaret put her hand on my arm.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Have you heard from her at all?’ she asked.

  ‘Me? How or why would I have contact with Sam? I can’t stand her.’

  ‘It seems she was in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago and she spotted you on Sauchiehall Street. Lillis, she knows you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Oh fuck. Has she told him?’

  ‘That’s what I don’t know. She came to see me, to suss me out I suppose, but I didn’t say a thing. I mean, I neither confirmed nor denied. I said she’d have to ask you.’

  ‘Jesus, is there any way she’d say nothing to Struan? There isn’t, is there? She’s always been a horrible little shit. She’ll love this.’

  Margaret sips her tea. ‘Lillis, you need to keep yourself stress free, for the baby. Don’t dwell on it.’ She shakes her head. ‘But you know Sam. She’s squibby – liable to go off at any moment.’

  ‘You think she’ll tell him?’


  Margaret grimaced. ‘Can you see her keeping her powder dry on this?’

  I spent Christmas in Glasgow with Margaret, Gordon and Charlie. We stayed with Gordon’s elderly father, who was confused about exactly who I was.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, a couple of times, ‘you’re Margaret’s sister. I see.’

  He was a congenial old man and I enjoyed the few days in his large house. We ate and chatted; dozed and played Scrabble. All the while I tried to ignore Charlie, who was too real, too present, too baby-like altogether. I observed the care that Margaret and Gordon took with him – everything was about Charlie – and curled myself away from it.

  Two weeks after Malachy was born, I returned to Dublin. I watched the clouds below the aeroplane prancing like poodles, top to tail. Nothing would settle inside me and I was tired, so outrageously tired. A beautiful young man sat beside me on the plane, he was chiselled like a sports star from head to toe, and I had a mad urge to grab him and kiss his mouth. I didn’t want to kiss him – not really – I just felt fit to explode; I was like a grenade with a wonky fuse.

  Verity and Robin met me at the airport and I sat in the back of the car, taciturn and close-mouthed, all the way home. Neither of them spoke much either. I caught Verity looking at me in the rear-view, over and over, as if she had something she wanted to say to me, but couldn’t get the words out.

  Just like when Dónal died, I was pulled tight between forgetting and remembering. Any sense of myself as a competent human being, with things to do and achieve, had left me. I was a rag doll, floppy and useless. I signed on the dole and stayed in Verity’s; I slept during the day, for hours and hours, and drifted through the weeks, doing little. I unscrewed the mirror from the dressing table in my old bedroom and put it against the wall, so I wouldn’t have to face myself. Everything seemed pointless, even absurd. Why should I shower every day? Why should I eat proper food? Why should I care about getting a job, or socialising, or about anything at all? I woke up each morning without myself, glum with the realisation that I had to get through another day.