A Pagan Place

by Edna O'Brien

  Ambie said it was gas, all this blood and thunder but that in spite of it decent people had to eat. He was pushing cabbage into bacon water. The level of the water rose up over the edge of the saucepan and when it fell onto the hot-plate the water made a terrible racket and ran into little beads. He said he could eat a young child.

  Your father would have taken umbrage at the innuendo. You said you were fasting for a special intention. He said what intention. You pretended it was an examination and talked a bit about your studies. You said needlework and singing were your worst subjects. He said he had socks to be darned and would you like a bit of practice. You said it was buttonholes you were bad at. He said he could do with buttonholes too, and buttons. He pointed to the numerous safety pins on his person. His trousers were held up with a canvas belt that he had knotted. Above it was a bulge of fat, pinkish.

  For a minute you were afraid, afraid that he might copulate with you. He dropped the sweater over the belt and over the assembly of safety pins. The end of the sweater was ravelled and for fun he took hold of one of the loose threads, pulled it and ravelled it more. He said he would teach you how to sing. You both sang If I were a Blackbird, and now and then when it was going nicely he stopped and let you sing alone but the moment you realized you were unaccompanied you stopped too and put your hand to your mouth in embarrassment. Then you both began again.

  He said you definitely had an ear and a melodious voice and that with a small amount of practice you could do nice renderings and go on stage and get bouquets, and eventually marry a boxer or someone lusty like that. You said he could be a boxer if he trained. You enumerated his skills, his green fingers, his pig killing, his cunning with the cards.

  The cabbage was boiling but the water had stopped boiling over and the smell made your mouth water. It had lost its crinkle and each strip was like a ribbon. He put a bit on the end of a fork and brought it to your lips to see if it was tender enough. It was. He said Emma would be eligible for oranges and wasn’t it a most paradoxical state of affairs. He laid places for two. You agreed to eat but you knew you were letting Emma down because you had promised to fast and that it was a similar bargain as between God and Moses in the desert, and that as long as Moses kept his arms aloft the tribe won but the minute he lowered his arms the tribe lost. For every mouthful you ate, Emma was being put through some worse ordeal. You did not rule out miscarriage. You also thought of quins. There were quins in the world and your heart rent for their mothers and all the stitching their mothers would have after such emissions.

  Ambie put mustard and brown sugar on the bacon fat, to make it sweet and juicy. He told you not to split on him but that he had an offer of a job in England in a factory. He told you that his brother was there and what he earned and how much he liked it, and how he wasn’t completely cut off from nature because he also had an allotment of thirty rods where he grew potatoes and lettuces. He said how his brother’s wife belonged to a club which allowed her to save money every week so that she had a haul at Christmas with which to buy hampers and things.

  It seemed a perfect life. He said his brother’s wife had a job, stringing pearls in her own home and earning pin money for herself. Ambie said that when he first got to England he would stay with his brother but that later on he would have a place of his own. He did not specify a wife but you knew that somewhere in his expectations there figured a woman who would string pearls and at the same time be at home rearing children and cooking the dinner.

  He was so emboldened by it that for a moment you forgot Emma, but then it came back like a pain after a lull. Through the window you could see the dogs. They looked in at you. They were waiting for their dinner. Automatically you started to scoop the potatoes out of their skins and mash them. You made pandy for the dogs. You used his plate and yours. He took milk from the jug. He could drink a great slug without stopping. When you opened the door and called them the dogs bounced in and they were so pleased they nearly spoke to you. He asked in Christ’s name how you were ever going to get them out again. You said it did not matter. They appeared like two figures in a painting, dark brown figures, trundling along, on some sort of pilgrimage. At least he was sober, he was not staggering. You ran to meet them and your mother said that it was too chilly for you to be out without a coat. She had no packages, no presents. You told her that you got nineteen eggs.

  First thing she did before taking off her coat was to put the kettle on. They had not broken their fast since morning. You proffered the cold bacon but your father said he could only eat bread and milk. She crumbled white bread into a saucepan of milk and put it to boil slowly and stirred it so that it was smooth. While she was doing that she ate a piece of bacon from her fingers and remarked that it was delicious. He said not to tantalize him by telling him that something he couldn’t have was delicious. He was briary, found fault with everything, went to great lengths to kick the dogs. He had had a haircut. The tops of his ears showed. The tops of his ears looked narked. They must have had time to spare. You said what a nice haircut it was. He didn’t answer. Where had they left Emma? What was happening? When was the wedding? When would you know?

  They ate in silence. Afterwards, she said the least they could do was go and tell the doctor, tell him the developments. He said he had no intention of going anywhere.

  She and you went. Her good coat was on the chair where she had put it down when she came in, her gloves in the pocket. She debated whether or not she should change her shoes, then didn’t. He had his head lowered onto his hand and with the other hand was scratching his scalp abstractedly. There were no good-nights.

  She spelt things for the doctor, she spelt the words rather than say them. She said it was all U-P. She talked with the doctor outside his house where she had waited to catch him, not being on speaking terms with his wife. She sent you off to have a little walk, a little constitutional.

  You stood a decent distance away and there were things you heard and things you didn’t. The doctor said yes-yes to everything she said. The two yeses were significant. He was not nearly so expansive as the previous night.

  She said the gentleman in question was nothing but a gurrier. She went into details over his garb and his accent. He wore a blazer with brass buttons and his trousers was grey flannel. He was the sporting type. His accent she said had to be heard to be believed, likewise his impertinence. She called him a pup. Then she said gurrier. Then she reverted to pup. She said he had the audacity to light a cigarette, remained as cool as a breeze.

  The doctor pressed her to summarize. He wanted the net result. She said the net result was that he had turned to Emma and said What about the others, the Tom, Dick and Harrys. She said to top everything Emma had the audacity to sob.

  The doctor said was he or was he not marrying her. She said that not only was there no marriage but that he suggested Emma toss for it to know which of the men on the team was the donor. They had put Emma in lodgings with some devout lady, some good Samaritan who took care of such people.

  She did not say so but it was evident that they had located this lady through a friend of theirs, Father Scanlon, who had a parish in the city. She kept saying that only for the priest they would have been sunk. The baby itself was eclipsed in all the talk about the priest and the devout lady and the pup with the blazer.

  Then she addressed the doctor by his first name, a daring thing for her, who was on first name terms with no one except her sister, your Aunt Bride; and she pleaded with him for an honest answer and she said could it be some disease Emma had, something hereditary, from her father’s side of the family, perhaps. He said it was a moot point and he did not think so.

  They were silent for a minute, she sighing and he going through his bunch of keys to find the one to his hall door. It was time to go. He kissed her once, then twice, and they were noiseless kisses and she stayed in his arms for a second, content. You knew about them being attached, from the day on the kitchen table but you knew too how assiduously they denied them
selves each other’s company. He said to be of good heart, to be of good cheer, to be invincible. Quickly he went in home. Only then did she break down.

  You took her hand. You were very familiar with it. Her hand in yours was weightless.

  When anyone saluted she did not answer, she did not want to be greeted. The lights in most of the houses were gone out and twice she turned on her ankle. Passing Della’s house there were lights in each of the four small windows and it was like Christmas Eve but you knew in your bones that Della had died then, although you did not know it officially until Ambie brought word from the creamery the following morning.

  When you went to the wake she was lying on her back and all the colour had been drained from her cheeks and her cheeks were as white as her hands. She was wearing a brown habit with scapulars to match. She was too young for brown but that was the colour the undertaker stocked. The filmstars were covered over with a bit of white sheet. Nearly everything was white, the candles, the counterpane drawn up and folded under her chin, the two flowers in a vase. They were plastic lilies.

  She was holding a crucifix in her hand, holding it tight, like she was clenching it. You thought it funny that her will should be dead but her grasp alive, and you wondered if her soul had got there, if it had been told of its abode for all eternity. It took some time for the soul to make the journey and no one knew exactly how long it took. She was dead for nearly twenty-four hours.

  Her mother sobbed away steadily and though she moved her lip nothing in the way of speech came out. Each time the door opened the candle spluttered. The floor was newly varnished and those with heavy steps stuck to it. When they lifted their shoes it was an effort and they made a squelching sound.

  After an appropriate amount of prayer you went downstairs for refreshments. You sat between your mother and father. Everyone was eyeing them, waiting for them to divulge, to say something about Emma. Your father refused a clay pipe. The clay pipes had a funny smell and they made a hollow sound when the men tapped them on the table. You were afraid your teacher might come in and make an example of you. You had missed school three days in a row. You wanted never to have to go back to school. You prayed that you might get consumption, or scarlet fever, or inherit a legacy and employ a tutor. There would be nudges about Emma. No girl would link you or have a stroll with you at playtime. You would be ostracized.

  Lizzie appeared from the kitchen. She had broken the pledge. She towered over your mother and asked if it was permitted to partake of the same oxygen. Your mother said certainly but her voice was strained. You went as red as anything. Lizzie said that some people, hitherto friends, had the gall to bar doors and windows in her face. Ambie tried to intervene because he hated to see women sparring but Lizzie just pushed him away with her elbow. She said it was all right to call on Lizzie, to incommode her when a loaf of bread, a jar of nutgall ointment or a quid was needed but it was all wrong if she offered a helping hand about a more grievous matter.

  Your father was bristling. You could foresee him hitting her and her skull cap falling off and it being very awkward and disgraceful. Fortunately a miracle occurred.

  A frog jumped out of the ashes and everyone started screaming and yelling and all deference for the corpse was forgotten as the room became a hubbub of noise and pandemonium. Your father took the initiative. He took the tongs and felt in the fire to see if there were any others. He said there might be a litter. Two other men were trying to chase it out. The door was held open. It was a rabid dark outside. A stray dog rushed in to add to the consternation.

  It was a black dog and people kept warning each other not to move, not to do anything to it, to keep still. A black dog and the devil were one and the same. The frog darted back to the middle of the floor and then the dog started chasing it round and round in a circle and men were shouting at each other to kill it, to kill them both. Your father asked was there a shotgun. You distinctly heard your mother say Oh Jesus, oh no.

  The frog was in a tizzy and was trying to escape at all costs, using any outlet, getting under chairs and advancing in any direction, but always the dog was on its track either with its paw or with its tail or with its nose. It was a hunting dog without doubt. Someone said it was a cur and no earthly cur at that. There was a sudden squelch as the frog’s intestines spewed all over the floor after one of the men had succeeded in trampling on it. Unaccountably the dog departed.

  Della’s mother who had come down to see what all the ructions were about, was led back up the stairs. It augured bad. The frog and its remains were shovelled and thrown in the fire and soon there followed a burnt flesh smell. No one knew what to say.

  People huddled closer to the fire, glad of its warmth but revolted by its smell. A woman said she had it on good authority that Hitler was anti-Christ. Someone else said that Hitler had a girl-friend called Eva Braun. There was talk of a man who had died in France, fighting with the British. There was a bit of bitterness about that, some saying that to fight for the British was a scandalous thing. The women said wasn’t it terrible for his mother and how she didn’t know he was dead and how she watched for the mail to come every day expecting news of him, and even went to the post office while the letters were being sorted out. His mother was doting.

  The person who held the floor was a girl home from England talking about the air-raids. She described how one minute she was in the room of a house and how the next minute and after a rumble, the walls were gone and she was able to reach out and touch the branches of a tree that had fallen from the pavement. She was the only living thing in that household not to have got killed. The cats, the kittens, the mistress, the Austrian cook, everyone had got killed but her. She was a private nurse.

  People said it was because she was a Catholic she had been so mercifully spared. Then someone said she heard that air-raid shelters were dens of vice and the Nigger said if it weren’t for the fact that he hated pavements he would have been in the city long ago, but in Paris where the Follies of Bergère and the boulevards were. He did a swagger to show how he would acquit himself there. The wild geese had gone there, wild geese rising on clamorous wing, went to follow the flight of an alien king.

  There was a man sitting opposite you and he had half an ear and your mother leaned over to Lizzie who was sitting two places away and said I wonder what bit the ear off him, was it the devil? and they looked at each other and first did nothing and then they relented and your mother smiled a small smile, and Lizzie’s face dissolved into a beam and they shook hands. Lizzie changed places so as to be next to your mother and they began to talk in a whisper and you knew that your mother was confiding.

  On the way home your mother said there would be no happiness and no redemption, and Lizzie said there would, there would, to always remember the cross and the blood gushing from Christ’s side, redeeming everything and everyone. They each swore to pray and make sacrifice and the Nigger who caught up with them said that maybe it was a bit of the male relic the ladies wanted, and then he panted and your mother pulled you near her and said to Lizzie that if the Nigger did any bestial thing to shout for help. Your father was some bit behind arranging with some man about getting the loan of a machine to mow his hay. Your mother and Lizzie and you formed a tight huddle and when the Nigger couldn’t get any hearing he walked on and your mother said Once a ram always a ram and Lizzie said Ssh and not to exasperate him any further.

  Going up the field your father predicted it would rain. The horses were standing under trees, in pairs. The cows were in a herd, wheezing and lying down. The moon was the shape of a sickle. It was a young moon. The Nigger said that the infinite bodies of the heavens affected all earthly things and that a person had only to look at the sea to apprehend how the full moon disturbed it. Butting from one horse was his stump, and it was stout and black and given to spasms and they were so regular you could have bet on their occurrence. You shut your eyes. Your mother said she hoped it would rain because happy was the corpse that the rain fell on.

&n
bsp; In the cut hay there were flowers, meadowsweet and buttercups that hadn’t yet died and hadn’t yet withered. The hay was green. They cut it too soon because the man with the machine came and they had no choice. It would sweat and have a sour taste but the cows and the horses would munch it, and relish it, nevertheless. They were not fussy.

  You lay on the ground. Your nose got tickled. The world was empty. The world was deserted. You didn’t hear a dog or you didn’t hear a bell, you heard nothing only your heart hammering. You contrived the rolls, so that you went from one green swarth to the next, skipping the grass in between, getting wet, getting intoxicated.

  The only thing that might have alarmed you, that might have terrified you, was a frog or a fieldmouse. Nothing did. There were no snakes. St Patrick had banished all the snakes. The snakes had gone to Australia, so had the convicts, so had the man that shot the girl because she refused him a drink, the man that shot and missed.