‘Jimmy, shut up – will you?’ Now that he had disturbed her she got up and went to the bathroom. When she came back he was snoring loudly. She closed the latch of the bedroom door so that he wouldn’t waken and tried to get some sleep on the sofa. She felt alone on the narrow rectangle of foam – lonely even – a very different feeling to the wonderful solitariness she had experienced in the cloisters. She couldn’t sleep. The thought of leaving Jimmy came into her head but it seemed so impossibly difficult, not part of any reality. Nothing bad enough had happened – or good enough – to force her to examine the possibility seriously. Where would she live? How could she tell the girls? What would she tell her parents? Jimmy was right about getting a job. It seemed so much simpler to stay as they were. The status quo. People stayed together because it was the best arrangement. She slept eventually and in the morning she could not distinguish when her deliberations had tailed off and turned to dreaming.
‘Jimmy, I think we should try and salvage something from the last day.’ She spoke to wake him. Startled, he turned in the bed to face the room. Maureen had the large suitcase open on the floor. She was holding one of his jackets beneath her chin then folding the arms across the chest. She packed it into the case, then reached for another. Jimmy tried not to groan. He sat on the side of the bed and slowly realised he was still in his clothes. She must have taken his shoes off him. He put his bald head in his hands.
‘Is the kettle boiled?’
‘It was – a couple of hours ago.’
He got up and finished the packet of All-Bran – bran dust at this stage. He made tea and a piece of toast in the skeletal toaster. Maureen continued to pack.
‘What time’s the flight?’ he asked.
‘Eighteen hundred hours.’
‘I hate those fucking times. What time is that?’
‘Minus twelve. Six o’clock.’
Jimmy had a shower and changed his clothes. After he cleaned his teeth he packed everything in sight into his washbag. He came out of the bathroom with a towel round his middle. He was grinning. Maureen was kneeling on the floor packing dirty washing into a Spar plastic bag.
‘I’ve got the hang-over horn.’
‘Well, that’s just too bad. There’s things to be done.’
‘Indeed there are.’
Maureen got a brush and a plastic dust-pan. The living room floor was scritchy with sand spilled from their shoes. Earlier in the week Jimmy had knocked over a tumbler and it had exploded on the tiled floor into a million tiny fragments. She thought she had swept them all up at the time but still she was finding dangerous shards in the dust.
Between the bathroom and the living room the dead ants still blackened the margins of the honey-poison. There was no mop and she had not wanted to sweep them up and make the floor sticky underfoot. Now it didn’t seem to matter and she swept the whole mess onto the dust pan. Individual ants had lost their form and were now just black specks. She turned on the tap and washed them down the plug hole.
Jimmy was sent down the street to the waste-bins while she put any usable food in the fridge as a gift for whoever cleaned up. When he came back everything was done and the cases were sitting in the middle of the floor. Maureen was drinking a last coffee and there was one on the table for him.
He stood behind her chair and put his arms round her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘About last night. Going on and on about those . . .’ He kissed the top of her hair.
‘Jimmy – promise me. You mustn’t annoy me about that again.’
‘Okay – scout’s honour.’ He began massaging the muscles which joined her neck and shoulders.
‘Oh – easy – that hurts.’
‘What time do we have to vacate this place?’
‘Mid-day.’
He bent over and whispered, ‘That gives us twenty minutes.’
They left their luggage at the Tour company headquarters for the remaining hours and went down to the beach. They walked along to the rocky promontory at the far side.
‘I’ve really enjoyed this,’ said Jimmy. ‘The whole thing.’
‘Who did you meet up with last night?’
‘They said they were social workers. Which means they admitted to being priests in mufti. They were okay.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘I’m afraid eh . . . Large chunks of it are missing. We seemed to laugh a lot. I think they were every bit as pissed as I was.’
‘I don’t like the look of them. They’re the kind of people who’d go out of their way to take a short cut.’
They sat on the rocks watching the sea swell in and out at their feet.
‘It’s very clear,’ said Jimmy. The water was blue-green, transparent.
‘You can be a real pest when you come in like that. You look so stupid.’
‘Sorry.’
They became aware of an old couple in bathing suits paddling into the sea close by the rocks. They looked like they were in their eighties. The woman wore a pink bathing cap which was shaped like a conical shell. Her wrinkled back was covered in moles or age spots as if someone had thrown a handful of wet sand at her back. The old man had the stub of an unlit cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth. Their skin was sallow. Mediterranean but paler than those around them for not having been exposed to the sun – although their faces and arms were the nut-brown colour of people who had worked in the open. The old man was taking the woman by the elbow and speaking loudly to her in Spanish, scolding her almost. But maybe she was deaf or could not hear, her ears being covered by the puce conical cap. She was shaking her head, her features cross. They were thigh-deep and wading. When the water rose to her waist she began to make small stirring motions with her hands as if she were performing the breast stroke. She made the sign of the cross. The old man shouted at her again. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand, then submerged herself by crouching down. She kept her face out of the water. The old man reached out from where he stood and cupped his hand under her chin. She began to make the breast-stroke motions with her arms, this time in the water. The old man shouted encouragement to her. She swam about ten or twelve strokes unaided until she swallowed sea water, coughed and threshed to her feet. The old man yelled and flung his damp cigar stub out to sea.
‘Jesus – he’s teaching her to swim.’ Jimmy turned and looked up at his wife. Maureen was somewhere between laughing and crying.
‘That’s magic,’ she said. ‘What a bloody magic thing to do.’
THE WAKE HOUSE
AT THREE O’CLOCK Mrs McQuillan raised a slat of the venetian blind and looked at the house across the street.
‘Seems fairly quiet now,’ she said. Dermot went on reading the paper. ‘Get dressed son and come over with me.’
‘Do I have to?’
‘It’s not much to ask.’
‘If I was working I couldn’t.’
‘But you’re not – more’s the pity.’
She was rubbing foundation into her face, cocking her head this way and that at the mirror in the alcove. Then she brushed her white hair back from her ears.
‘Dermot.’
Dermot threw the paper onto the sofa and went stamping upstairs.
‘And shave,’ his mother called after him.
He raked through his drawer and found a black tie someone had lent him to wear at his father’s funeral. It had been washed and ironed so many times that it had lost its central axis. He tried to tie it but as always it ended up off-centre.
After he had changed into his good suit he remembered the shaving and went to the bathroom.
When he went downstairs she was sitting on the edge of the sofa wearing her Sunday coat and hat. She stood up and looked at him.
‘It’s getting very scruffy,’ she said, ‘like an accordion at the knees.’ Standing on her tip-toes she picked a thread off his shoulder.
‘Look, why are we doing this?’ said Dermot. She didn’t answer him but pointed to a dab of shaving cream on his
earlobe. Dermot removed it with his finger and thumb.
‘Respect. Respect for the dead,’ she said.
‘You’d no respect for him when he was alive.’
She went out to the kitchen and got the bag for the shoe things and set it in front of him. Dermot sighed and opened the drawstring mouth. Without taking his shoes off he put on polish using the small brush.
‘Eff the Pope and No Surrender.’
‘Don’t use that word,’ she said. ‘Not even in fun.’
‘I didn’t use it. I said eff, didn’t I?’
‘I should hope so. Anyway it’s not for him, it’s for her. She came over here when your father died.’
‘Aye, but he didn’t. Bobby was probably in the pub preparing to come home and keep us awake half the night.’
‘He wasn’t that bad.’
‘He wasn’t that good either. Every Friday in life. Eff the Pope and NO Surrender.’ Dermot grinned and his mother smiled.
‘Come on,’ she said. Dermot scrubbed hard at his shoes with the polishing-off brush then stuck it and the bristles of the smaller one face to face and dropped them in the bag. His mother took a pair of rosary beads out of her coat pocket and hung them on the Sacred Heart lamp beneath the picture.
‘I’d hate to pull them out by mistake.’
Together they went across the street.
‘I’ve never set foot in this house in my life before,’ she whispered, ‘so we’ll not stay long.’
After years of watching through the window, Mrs McQuillan knew that the bell didn’t work. She flapped the letter-box and it seemed too loud. Not respectful. Young Cecil Blair opened the door and invited them in. Dermot awkwardly shook his hand, not knowing what to say.
‘Sorry eh . . .’
Cecil nodded his head in a tight-lipped way and led them into the crowded living-room. Mrs Blair in black sat puff-eyed by the fire. Dermot’s mother went over to her and didn’t exactly shake hands but held one hand for a moment.
‘I’m very sorry to hear . . .’ she said. Mrs Blair gave a tight-lipped nod very like her son’s and said,
‘Get Mrs McQuillan a cup of tea.’
Cecil went into the kitchen. A young man sitting beside the widow saw that Mrs McQuillan had no seat and made it his excuse to get up and leave. Mrs McQuillan sat down, thanking him. Cecil leaned out of the kitchen door and said to Dermot,
‘What are you having?’
‘A stout?’
Young Cecil disappeared.
‘It’s a sad, sad time for you,’ said Mrs McQuillan to the widow. ‘I’ve gone through it myself.’ Mrs Blair sighed and looked down at the floor. Her face was pale and her forehead lined. It looked as if tears could spring to her eyes again at any minute.
The tea, when it came, was tepid and milky but Mrs McQuillan sipped it as if it was hot. She balanced the china cup and saucer on the upturned palm of her hand. Dermot leaned one shoulder against the wall and poured his bottle of stout badly, the creamy head welling up so quickly that he had to suck it to keep it from foaming onto the carpet.
On the wall beside him there was a small framed picture of the Queen when she was young. It had been there so long the sunlight had drained all the reds from the print and only the blues and yellows remained. The letter-box flapped on the front door and Cecil left Dermot standing on his own. There were loud voices in the hall – too loud for a wake house – then a new party came in – three of them, all middle-aged, wearing dark suits. In turn they shook hands with Mrs Blair and each said, ‘Sorry for your trouble.’ Their hands were red and chafed. Dermot knew them to be farmers from the next townland but not their names. Cecil asked them what they would like to drink. One of them said,
‘We’ll just stick with the whiskey.’ The others agreed. Cecil poured them three tumblers.
‘Water?’
‘As it is. Our healths,’ one of them said, half raising his glass. They all nodded and drank. Dermot heard one of them say,
‘There’ll be no drink where Bobby’s gone.’ The other two began to smile but stopped.
Dermot looked at his mother talking to the widow.
‘It’ll come to us all,’ she said. ‘This life’s only a preparation.’
‘Bobby wasn’t much interested in preparing,’ said the widow. ‘But he was good at heart. You can’t say better than that.’ Everybody in the room nodded silently.
Someone offered Dermot another stout, which he took. He looked across at his mother but she didn’t seem to notice. The two women had dropped their voices and were talking with their heads close together.
One of the farmers – a man with a porous nose who was standing in the kitchen doorway – spoke to Dermot.
‘Did you know Bobby?’
Dermot shook his head. ‘Not well. Just to see.’ He had a vision of the same Bobby coming staggering up the street about a month ago and standing in front of his own gate searching each pocket in turn for a key. It was a July night and Dermot’s bedroom window was open for air.
‘I see your curtains moving, you bastards.’ A step forward, a step back. A dismissive wave of the hand in the direction of the McQuillans’. Then very quietly,
‘Fuck yis all.’
He stood for a long time, his legs agape. A step forward, a step back. Then he shouted at the top of his voice,
‘Fuck the Pope and . . .’
Dermot let the curtains fall together again and lay down. But he couldn’t sleep waiting for the No Surrender. After a while he had another look but the street was empty. No movement except for the slow flopping of the Union Jack in Bobby Blair’s garden.
Cecil came across the room and set a soup-plate full of crisps on the hall table beside Dermot.
‘Do you want to go up and see him?’
Dermot set his jaw and said,
‘I’d prefer to remember him as he was.’
‘Fair enough.’
The man with the porous nose shook his head in disbelief.
‘He was a good friend to me. Got my son the job he’s in at the minute.’
‘Bully for him.’
A second farmer dipped his big fingers in the dish and crunched a mouthful of crisps. He swallowed and said to Dermot,
‘How do you know the deceased?’
‘I’m a neighbour. From across the street.’
‘Is that so? He was one hell of a man. One hell of a man.’ He leaned over to Dermot and whispered, ‘C’mere. Have you any idea what he was like? ANY idea?’
Dermot shook his head. The farmer with the porous nose said,
‘When Mandela got out he cried. Can you believe that? I was with him – I saw it. Big fuckin tears rolling down his cheeks. He was drunk, right enough, but the tears was real. I was in the pub with him all afternoon. It was on the TV and he shouts – what right have they, letting black bastards like that outa jail when this country’s hoachin with fuckin IRA men?’
He laughed – a kind of cackle with phlegm – and Dermot smiled.
The signs that his mother wanted to go were becoming obvious. She sat upright on the chair, her voice became louder and she permitted herself a smile. She rebuttoned her coat and stood up. Dermot swilled off the rest of his stout and moved to join her on the way out. The widow Blair stood politely.
‘Would you like to go up and see him, Mrs McQuillan?’ she said.
‘I’d be too upset,’ she said. ‘It’d bring it all back to me.’ Mrs Blair nodded as if she understood. Cecil showed them out.
In their own hallway Mrs McQuillan hung up her coat and took an apron off a peg.
‘Poor woman,’ she said. ‘Did they ask you to go up and see him?’
‘Aye.’
‘Did you go?’ Her hands whirled behind her back tying the strings of the apron.
‘Are you mad? Why would I want to see an oul drunk like Bobby Blair laid out?’
He went into the living room and began poking the fire. Their house and the Blairs’ were exactly the same – mirror images of eac
h other. His mother went into the kitchen and began peeling potatoes. By the speed at which she worked and the rattling noises she made Dermot knew there was something wrong. She came to the kitchen doorway with a white potato in her wet hands.
‘You should have.’
‘Should have what?’
‘Gone up to see him.’
‘Bobby Blair!’ Dermot dropped the poker on the hearth and began throwing coal on the fire with tongs.
‘Your father would have.’
‘They asked you and you didn’t.’
‘It’s different for a woman.’
She turned back to the sink and dropped the potato in the pot and began scraping another. She spoke out to him.
‘Besides I meant what I said – about bringing it all back.’
Dermot turned on the transistor and found some pop music. His mother came to the door again drying her hands on her apron.
‘That poor woman,’ she said. ‘It was bad enough having to live with Bobby.’ She leaned against the door jamb for a long time. Dermot said nothing, pretending to listen to the radio. She shook her head and clicked her tongue.
‘The both of us refusing . . .’
As they ate their dinner, clacking and scraping forks, she said,
‘It looks that bad.’
‘What?’
‘The both of us.’
Dermot shrugged.
‘What can we do about it?’
She cleaned potato off her knife onto her fork and put it in her mouth.
‘You could go over again. Say to her.’
‘What?’
‘Whatever you like.’
‘I don’t believe this.’
She cleared away the plates and put them in the basin. He washed and she dried.
‘For your father’s sake,’ she said. Dermot flung the last spoon onto the stainless steel draining-board and dried his hands on the dish towel, a thing he knew she hated.
Collected Stories Page 45