Wild Decembers

by Edna O'Brien

  “When you marry, will your husband have a share of your grave?”

  “Who said I’ll marry?”

  “Of course you’ll marry … A beautiful girl … A beautiful woman.”

  “Talk!”

  “It’s not talk, Breege.”

  “That’s the first time you ever said my name.”

  “Well, there’s always a first time,” he said, as if rebuked.

  When she told him to look away he did, and he waited for her to recall him, but after he had finished the second cigarette he decided that he must go and look for her. He called, then whistled, then repeated her name, and the echoes came close upon one another, eerily distinct in that lonely place. He would not want to be there without her, and maybe neither would she.

  He searched behind the gravestones and felt his way around the base of the round tower, expecting at any moment that he would feel her hair or her thin hands stretched out to be held. In the end he decided that she had left and gone down to the boat. It was only as an afterthought and on his way out that he looked in the moon-drenched oratory.

  He finds her in the far corner, prone against it, like someone flung there, shivering with fear and cold, excitement and terror, her body a vessel with a zip of fire running through it. He is kissing her now, kissing her face full of tears. Holding her, he can feel the agitation as she both rests in his arms and wrestles to get out. He smooths and resmooths her hair, sparks of electricity shoot out of it, zoom out of it, and her face, always pale, is blanched and votive in the moonlight. She is like one of the stone figures except for her eyes, which are mad and shiny. He speaks fond hushed words, the two clasped bodies like one, their shadows one, and what seems like only one heartbeat hammering out.

  All of a sudden there is commotion beyond the low stone wall as the cows and bull race around frenziedly.

  “Why do they keep a bull here?”

  “It’s the butcher … He rents the grazing. My brother says it’s to stop people getting across to their own graves …”

  “Your brother,” he says, half apologetic and half annoyed, and then asks her if she too thinks that he is a scoundrel.

  “I do.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “We’re here because you’re two people … Like everybody.”

  “Are you two people?”

  “Yes. My brother always said I was. He used to give me parts to play out in the fields. He said that I was Persephone.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “She’s in a fable.”

  “So why her?”

  “Because I loved picking flowers, primroses and things … She picked flowers.”

  “And what happened to her?”

  “She was half the year in Hades and half on earth.”

  “Oh, Breege,” he said, and then adds quite contritely, “I was sorry about Violet Hill … Really sorry.”

  “I know you were … He’s never mentioned her again. He’s like that.”

  “You’re very good to him.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “If we stay here, you know what will happen,” he says, solemn. “I want to stay here.”

  “You’re a dreamer.”

  “Would you rather I wasn’t?”

  “No … I would not. I wouldn’t change a single second of this.”

  “Still, in the year you barely spoke to me.”

  “There was a reason for that and you know it.”

  And they would stand a little longer in that sphere of moonlight, among the stone likenesses of saints and martyrs, not doubting, not hesitating, looking into one another’s carved face as if for the first time and for all time, saying nothing at all, full of happiness and dread, as though love and fatality were one and the same.

  “You’re trembling,” he said.

  “So are you,” she said, and they held each other then in that ordained nearness in which self is lost, self and other becoming one, one against cold desperate death and cold ravenous life, in that nimbus of heat and light, that ravish of courtship, that covenant which would be theirs for ever and yet never theirs, like flowers that are hatched in the snows.

  * * *

  They rode home before dawn, the swish of the oars, then the creak of the timbers in steady alternate regularity, the sky streaked pink and mirrored in the glassy water, low hills all around plunged in a lilac drizzle, the water birds busy, bossy, preening and grooming, perched on whatever matting of reeds they could find. She felt strangely detached. Going back to the same life and yet different. She did not think that she would miss him. She did not know. He dropped oars as they passed into the thicket of bamboo and he began to whistle. It was a low whistle, rapt, sustained, attenuated; it was for her, for the pink of the sky, for the pink shimmer on the water, and even when it hurt his windpipe and his lungs felt as if he were being punched, he went on whistling, the pain in exact and excruciating ratio to the happiness that he felt, a whistle with joy and exhilaration and suspense in it.

  “AT LAST, at long last.” Joseph is clasping his hands together in a celebration and praising himself for having persevered.

  Very soon it will be in his hands and he will walk out of there down the street a free man, then later to the bus station with his suitcase and a shop cake in a white box. They are on the first floor, with Moira knocking on a door marked Private, a yellowed lace curtain over the panel of glass. She is beaming, nudging him with “Didn’t I tell you.”

  It is a big gaunt room with a desk, a chair on either side, and a surprising lack of clutter. In the excitement of being allowed in, he is slow in starting to talk, taking in all the features of the room, surprised by how shabby it is, a carpet full of cigarette holes and lifelong dust settled over everything. The fire grate is empty, but on the slate mantelpiece is a statue of the Infant of Prague, the little boy with his plastered and curled orange locks, and on the opposite side a carved black figure that could be man or woman. A bare room, a cold room even in summer, but what does it matter, he is in. The man who has agreed to see him is not the Mr. O’Shaughnessy whom he has been seeking for days, as he is now abroad on business and with no knowledge of when he is coming back.

  “It’s good of you to see me,” he says, feeling at home with this man, who is not in the least bit crusty, big darns on his old jacket and a sty in his left eye.

  “I’ll take down all the particulars,” he says formally as he opens a diary on which there is not a single entry. He flicks the pages, and all of them are bare, unwritten in.

  “I’ve given Moira the particulars, it’s a document about my father’s ownership of a dirt road on the mountain near Derry Goolin … Where I was born.”

  “I’ve never been out to that part. I believe it’s very scenic,” the man says.

  “You ought to. It’s as near to heaven nature-wise as you could get …”

  “And you’re in litigation over it?”

  “Not yet. That’s why I’m here, you see … It’s an old track that belongs to me and he has a right of way.”

  “So how can I help?”

  “The proof is here. The piece of paper is here somewhere in this building.”

  “How far back was it?”

  “Eighty or ninety years.”

  “We’ve had the odd fire and things.”

  “Jesus Christ, it can’t be burnt … Don’t tell me it’s burnt.”

  “I’m not saying it is. All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be easy to find.”

  “Can’t we look … Even if you’re a busy man. You could let me root around. I have plenty of time.”

  “I couldn’t do that. I haven’t the power. All I can do is make a note of your case and talk to Mr. O’Shaughnessy on his return …”

  “He’s no use. Just let me open the files and search.”

  “That would be a breach of the profession. Every solicitor takes an oath.”

  “Goddamn your oath … Can’t you see that I’m desperate. And I’m stuck.”
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br />   The man seems to melt for a moment, then clears his throat and says, somewhat haltingly, “Unfortunately, I’m not a solicitor myself.”

  “What are you?”

  “I’m just helping out. I used to be their bookkeeper.”

  “This is crazy … Craziness.”

  “As I said, I will bring it to Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s attention.”

  “Don’t send me out empty-handed.”

  “I have no choice. It all hinges on Mr. O’Shaughnessy.”

  “On Mr. O’Shaughnessy,” Joseph says bitterly, and asks the man in the name of God to recognise how big a thing it is to him, his mountain, his life, his all.

  “I can appreciate that.”

  “No, you can’t, because you’re a crook like him and you cover for him.”

  “I have to ask you to retract that.”

  “Think … Just think how easy it would have been any day this week for him to have seen me … To have helped me. But he didn’t. He slunk away, either because he was too lazy or too busy or too afraid. And what does it do to me … It sucks up every ounce of hope. It finishes a person.”

  “That’s a bit extreme,” the man says, puzzled, and looking into the face with stark intensity up to and into the tortured blue eyes, he says, “I can’t promise, but I’ll look around for you.”

  “You won’t let me down?” Joseph says, leaning across now and wanting to grip the man’s hand.

  “Ring me tomorrow to remind me again.”

  “Don’t let me down.”

  HE ARRIVED PANTING in O’Dea’s office just before closing time bearing a ribboned box of chocolates for Miss P.

  The document which he handed over was thin as parchment, so that O’Dea held it gingerly as if it might disintegrate. It had obviously been torn from a larger sheet and it was a very faint copy, the boundary lines a spotted and fading brown. It carried the name of the mountain. There were divided sections within it, but no names and no entitlement, no writing save that of a blind lake and an area liable to flooding. It was over a hundred years old and bore the signature of an English colonel. At the bottom were the three capitals UND, which meant Undefined.

  “This is like the Turin Shroud,” O’Dea said, holding it up to the light to make sure there was no faint likeness concealed in it.

  “We’re in mighty order,” Joseph said, excited.

  “It has neither appurtenance rights nor servient rights … In short, it’s a bollocks.”

  “We have him.”

  “We can’t go into court with this, we’d be laughed at.”

  “Whose side are you on …”

  “Common sense, God help me.”

  “If you don’t help me there are others who will.”

  “Of course they will. They’ll take your money. Think on it. Eight hundred quid a day for counsel. Two firms of solicitors. Ourselves and the boys in Ennis … Tot it up,” and then recalling Breege’s desperate visit to their house late one night he relented, leaned across, and said, “Play ball … Let him cut his road and give us x number of pounds. That’ll cover some of the outstanding bills.”

  “I always pay my way.”

  “Look, Joe … Stand back from it. Take the moral high ground.”

  “I’d sooner die.”

  “Jesus … Why are you driving yourself nuts?”

  “I hate him.”

  “Sad. For sure that’s sad.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You need a doctor. You need to get yourself sorted out.”

  “I never felt saner.”

  “Okay, then. Hear it from the horse’s mouth … This document can’t deter him from building his road, and if you go into court the most you’ll win is a partition suit. They’ll make the road a yard or two narrower.”

  “He’ll die doing it.”

  “Christ, you’re warped.”

  “He’s out to get me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I met him late one night … I was out at our own gate and he asked me if I would care to come for a ghost ride on the mountain.”

  “That’s bizarre. Why didn’t you go to the guards?”

  “They wouldn’t believe me. They’re on his side.”

  Looking at the frazzled eyes, hearing the rapid jerky breathing, O’Dea saw the first dangerous sign, but because he had seen it so often, had seen men and women in that very same chair shouting murder, he thought, He’ll get tired … He’ll give up … They always do.

  “Forget Mick Bugler. Go home and stock your farm. Get back on your feet,” he says with a fatherly touch.

  Sensing some slight, some slur, Joseph rises and leans towards him in that pose of useless and aping belligerence.

  “Just because your daughter’s pony is allowed to graze on his lands.”

  “Listen, Rambo, I’m no whipping boy …”

  “You’re on his side. I could report you … I could have you struck off.”

  They are standing now about a foot apart, the one chalky, fanatical, the other with a ruddy expression and the eyes emptied of everything except the terror that he would be reported on once again to the Law Society and this time it would be curtains.

  “I take it back,” Joseph says, quashed, as O’Dea lunges at him with bruising punches.

  “You can’t take it back. But you can take your junk,” O’Dea says, handing him a folder that is bulging open, and then he pushes him out onto the stairs.

  He stumbled out into the street with the folder. He was alone and evicted. He bought himself a naggon of whiskey and drove straight to the mountain. He parked his car at the point where work on Bugler’s road had been begun and then halted. Looking in at it was like looking in at a crater, a wet hole with a few tins and bottles dumped in it.

  He went up the mountain shouting, roaring against Bugler, who had loosed such grief and harm upon it. With each swig of whiskey he got braver, the roars more bellicose, like the bulls of old across the provinces shouting the commands of their kings and their queens. He felt brave. He sat himself on a height of rock, drinking, and every so often roaring, to confirm his claim. The mountain became nearer and dearer to him, like it was a woman, like he could embrace it, like he could pick it up and put it down again, like he could defend it against all marauders.

  It was Boscoe who found him squatting in the heather, sunk into it, singing a song that was both sad and warlike.

  “Hello, Joe.”

  “What do you want?” The voice hoarse and strangled from all the use he had given it.

  “Come on home … It’s no night to be out.”

  “I’m staying put.”

  “You are not.”

  They fought then, up there in the grey solitude, like two figures in a windy tableau, cursing, shouting expletives at one another that could not be heard because of a sudden blinding rain; they stumbled and dragged one another down and got up again, and in the end they tired of it and linked one another for balance and came perilously down, as lavish now in their praise and solidarity with one another as earlier they had been in their denunciations.

  “He’ll never own the mountain, ’cos,” Boscoe vowed.

  “ ’Cos?” Joseph challenged.

  “ ’Cos, he’s not able to talk to it.”

  “Correct … And what’s more, it will never talk to him.”

  When they arrived at the crater they stood and stared into it.

  “How about deploying our personal artillery?” Boscoe said, and with telling vehemence their volleys drenched the slag stones and the debris.

  Full of verve now, they asked and answered their own questions. Would they be beaten, would they be dispossessed; nay, nay, and never. The long campaign was on.

  * * *

  After that Joseph became a recluse. He was to be found in the parlour each night poring over law books that he had spread out on the table, a light bulb suspended above his head, the very first grey hairs above his ears piteously silver. He read and reread with
immense concentration and underlined passages that applied, finding in them crumbs of hope, and he filled his notebook with citations of cases similar to theirs, of which there were thousands. She glanced at one of the books, at a section concerning quarrels between neighbours, but it applied only to city people, to arguments about ball games or garden refuse. He ate his supper alone.

  “You get no fresh air,” she would say, standing there, waiting for him to talk, to at least tell her what he intended to do next.

  With a cunning now akin to craziness, he never mentioned Bugler, and he stopped his surveillance of her, urging her to go down to the town and enjoy herself. He knew that he could trust her, knew that she would not deceive him. He told her of the fable from Aesop about the dog who grasped the shadow and lost the meat. That dog was meant to be Bugler.

  On the way out from Mass, when asked how he was, he replied in the same quiet but convinced tone: “Oh, the finest … The finest.”

  THE OLD MAN has not had a visitor in years. The cottage shows all the signs of neglect, the path up to it choked with brambles. He jumps up as he hears the latch lift and his name shouted a few times, a voice saying, “Dan … Danno.”

  “Almighty God but it’s you … My one and only friend,” he says to Joseph as he grips the hands, mashes them, then repeats Joseph’s name and his own shock at having a visitor. A nurse comes once a month, but never a visitor. Many’s the time he has wished for this, and now at last it has come true. He’s an old man, not wanted; his eyes bad, four operations in all, two for cataract and two for glaucoma, and another soon for the cornea if the drops don’t work. Joseph is a blur to him, but the voice is familiar, the voice of old when he took him up the mountain as a youngster to teach him target shooting. He recalls the man’s cap which Joseph wore, the makeshift rifle range that they set up, and his excitement when he fired his first shot and then the next and the next, and after an age shooting the bull. Years have passed, but the memory is bright, the broken post with the card taped to it, the scattering of the pellets a furore in the emptiness.

  “I taught you first the rifle, then the shotgun.”