Collected Stories

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘When’s the tea?’

  ‘Just as soon as I choose to make it.’

  Grandma moved back out to the kitchen. She fried three eggs, scrambling them on the pan with a fork, and divided them into four. A slice of bacon each and soda bread which she’d baked earlier. The soda bread was always served dry side up hiding the bacon and egg. She set the four plates on the table.

  ‘Sit over,’ she said. ‘And give your Granda a tap.’

  Ben reached out and touched his grandfather’s arm. The old man looked out from behind the newspaper and saw the tea ready.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. He unhooked the wire legs of his glasses from behind his ears and heaved himself to his feet.

  Grandma opened the door and shouted up the stairs,

  ‘Tony – Tony your tea’s ready.’

  Nobody spoke as they ate. Ben listened to the noises they all made. His grandfather’s mouth was shut as he chewed but he breathed heavily down his nose. Grandma had a knob of gristle at the hinge of her jaw which sometimes clicked – like somebody pulling their knuckles. Tony deliberately opened his mouth to annoy Ben, letting him see the half-chewed contents.

  ‘Stop that,’ said Grandma.

  ‘How long to go now?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Three days – it’s past the halfway mark.’

  ‘What day do they come back?’ asked Tony.

  ‘If I told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times. Wednesday.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘How would I know. I’m not flying the plane.’

  ‘What are they saying?’ asked the old man, cupping his ear towards Grandma. She leaned forward and shouted,

  ‘Just – when are they coming back.’

  The old man nodded and stared at Ben.

  ‘Wednesday,’ he said. ‘They’ll be back on Wednesday.’

  ‘Why don’t you wear that hearing-aid of yours?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. It’s not important.’ Grandma dismissed the whole thing with a wave of her hand.

  The boys had been told that their mother and father had gone to France. They didn’t know much about France – the only thing Ben knew was that French films were dirty so when his grandmother said they were on a pilgrimage he felt better. People went on pilgrimages to places in Ireland – to Knock and Lough Derg. One of the teachers in the primary school, Mister Egan, went to Lourdes every summer to help with the sick and the dying. Working in the baths, lifting the afflicted out of their wheelchairs, lowering them into the holy waters. Everybody said he was a saint – and they always remarked how he never got anything himself – no matter what diseases had washed off into the water.

  The door bell rang and Grandma stopped chewing.

  ‘In the name of God . . .’ she said. She closed her eyes. ‘Nurse Foley.’

  ‘Well I’m off,’ said Tony, wiping his mouth with his hand. ‘I couldn’t stand the excitement.’

  Both brothers got up from the table. Ben went to open the vestibule door and Tony ran upstairs.

  Nurse Foley smiled and walked down the hall past Ben.

  ‘Hello Tony,’ she called up the stairs at Tony’s heels.

  ‘Hi.’

  When Nurse Foley came into the kitchen she said in a kind of aghast voice – ‘You’re not at your tea, are you?’ Grandma smiled. Granda didn’t even look up. Nurse Foley went and sat by the fireside facing towards the table. Before she sat down she smoothed both hands down her coat at the back of her knees to make sure she wasn’t going to crease it.

  ‘Take off your coat,’ said Grandma.

  ‘I’m not staying,’ said Nurse Foley.

  Granda made an excuse that he was going to get his hearing-aid and left the room. Nurse Foley was about the same age as Grandma and dressed in much the same way, except in black. Ben had heard that one of Nurse Foley’s jobs was washing the dead. How could anybody do that? How could a woman do that – especially if it was a dead man. He looked at her knuckly hands unbuttoning her coat. There was a blue apron hidden underneath.

  ‘Would you look at me. I took a last-minute notion to go to confession and I just dashed. Sure nobody’d mind the apron, especially Himself.’ She rolled her eyes up to heaven.

  ‘Would you take a cup of tea – there’s plenty in the pot.’

  ‘If it’s going spare – I wouldn’t mind.’

  Grandma got a cup and saucer from the cupboard.

  ‘A snig of sugar?’ she asked, smiling.

  ‘And just the one milk,’ said Nurse Foley and gave a sort of laugh. Grandma passed the tea over to her.

  Granda came back with his hearing-aid clipped to the front of his cardigan. Ben thought it looked like a small bakelite wireless. Sometimes when Granda tried to turn the volume up, it gave a shrill whistle and annoyed everybody, including him. He sat down in the corner and looked from one woman to the other so that the wire which led up to the flesh-coloured thing in his ear became more obvious.

  ‘Was there many at confession?’ asked Grandma.

  ‘A good few,’ said Nurse Foley, ‘but there was three priests hearing. They were getting through them rightly.’ The empty saucer remained on her lap as she sipped her tea. Grandma said,

  ‘I meant to go myself. But it’ll keep till next Saturday.’

  ‘Och Mrs Coyle – sure don’t I see you at the altar rail every morning in life.’

  Grandma nodded, tight-lipped.

  ‘There’s some hard praying to be done.’

  Nurse Foley shook her head in agreement and sighed.

  ‘Any word from them?’

  ‘Not a thing – sure a postcard takes ages. The best part of a fortnight. So I’m told.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Nurse Foley’s face was solemn but when she turned to the boy she smiled.

  ‘Well, Benedict – any luck with the pools this week?’

  Ben shook his head. Grandma said,

  ‘Divil the bit.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been great to be able to hand them the seventy-five thousand as they stepped off the plane,’ said Nurse Foley. Grandma nodded her head and smiled a bit.

  ‘It’d be a little compensation.’

  ‘Och I know that – Mrs Coyle. No question.’

  ‘But isn’t it typical of you, Nurse Foley – wanting to win so’s you could give it away to somebody else.’

  ‘Acchh – sure what would I want with all that money.’

  When Ben looked up at her she winked and laughed. Grandma said,

  ‘It was good of you to lend them the suitcase.’

  ‘I’m just glad to see it used. And where would I be going at my age?’ Nurse Foley shook her head again. ‘They’ve had no luck whatsoever. But maybe that’ll change, please God. Only time will tell.’

  ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways,’ said Grandma.

  ‘His wonders to perform,’ said Nurse Foley. ‘I just hope he can keep his strength up. Although how anybody eats the slime and muck the French eat I have no idea. Did you ever taste garlic? It would turn your stomach. And they put it in everything. Like the way we use salt here.’

  ‘And snails, I believe.’

  ‘What are you talking about – horses, Mrs Coyle. They ate horses.’

  ‘Away –’

  And then after a pause in which Grandma shook her head Nurse Foley repeated,

  ‘Horse meat – how-are-you.’

  ‘Och away . . .’

  The fire crumbled and sparks flew up the chimney.

  ‘Ben, get a shovel of coal.’ Ben did as he was told and went to the coal-hole in the back yard. The new coals were damp and hissed when they went on the fire. Ben set the shovel outside the back door and came into the room again.

  ‘And what about her?’ said Nurse Foley. ‘Do you think she’ll cope?’

  ‘I’ve never known her not to.’

  ‘The flying – the strange food – organising and remembering everything – above all, the thing of knowing – it’s a lot to as
k of her.’

  ‘Prayer’ll see her through. Everybody is praying.’

  ‘Only time’ll tell.’

  Ben looked at his Grandma and then at Nurse Foley as they talked. They seemed not to look at each other. Nurse Foley stared down sideways into the fire. Grandma stared up at the frosted top pane of the window.

  ‘Have you your own prayers said yet?’ asked Nurse Foley.

  ‘No – always straight after the tea. As you know,’ said Grandma.

  ‘Sure I’ll join you since I have the beads with me.’ She took out her rosary from her apron pocket and eased herself off the chair to kneel down.

  ‘Call Tony,’ said Grandma to Ben and held up her beads and rattled them at Granda.

  They all began saying the family rosary. When Granda knelt at the chair his hearing-aid was useless. He said his prayers into himself because he couldn’t join in the responses at the right time.

  Tony knelt by the door so’s he could escape immediately it was over. Ben made sure he was at the chair with the paper on the seat. He read an advertisement for Burberry raincoats while they repeated the Hail Marys over and over again. There was a drawing of a woman wearing a raincoat and striding through rain which was just black strokes all going the same way. The woman’s leg, with its seamed stocking, was reflected in a puddle. Ben thought about washing a dead girl. The thought leapt into his mind and he couldn’t get rid of it. A soapy flannel able to move anywhere. He tried to be good and put the thoughts out of his mind. He was getting a hard-on and if he allowed the thoughts to stay it would be a sin. In the middle of the rosary – it would be double the sin. He tried to concentrate on the prayer.

  ‘Holy Mary Mother of God prayfrus sinners now and at the arovar death Amen.’

  Beneath her armpits. Around her belly button. The wet face cloth moving down between her legs.

  ‘Ben, can you not kneel up straight?’ said Grandma. ‘You’re bent over there like a pig at a trough. The Second Joyful Mystery – The Visitation. Our Father who art in heaven . . .’

  He turned his body away from her in case she would see what was happening to him and knelt up straight with his hands joined. He looked at the ceiling. He tried not to think of washing the body of a girl. Then he would definitely know whether they had hair hidden down there or not – or whether his brother was trying to make a fool out of him. Tony was smart. Tony knew everything. But Ben had seen marble statues in books with nothing obvious down there. What he did know was that they had hair under their arms. Last summer a French girl student had come into their class to teach for a while. On hot days she wore a summer frock and when she pointed out things on the blackboard they all saw the hair in her armpits.

  He had to think of something different.

  The worst thing he had ever seen in a paper was the air crash of the Busby Babes. The snow on the wreckage of the plane carrying Manchester United back from Munich. The thought of Duncan Edwards, his favourite player, lying dead. And all the others. It was beyond crying.

  What if the plane bringing his Mum and Dad back from France crashed? That would make him an orphan. It was the first time they had ever flown and they’d seemed very nervous leaving.

  ‘The Fifth Joyful Mystery – Jesus is Found in the Temple. Nurse Foley?’

  Nurse Foley began giving out the prayer.

  ‘Our Father who art in heaven . . .’

  He thought for a while of being an orphan. Maybe it would be good. Everybody would make a fuss of him. Giving him extra things. But the thought of both his parents being dead was unendurable. Either one of them, maybe. Sometimes he made himself choose. Mum or Dad? Which was worse? Who would he miss the most?

  After the rosary proper they said all the trimmings – right down to a prayer for a special intention. His Grandmother would never tell Ben what it was – it would ruin any chance of success if she said it out loud. And he noticed that when she said this prayer she clenched her eyes tight shut and moved her lips more than she usually did. When everything was finished Grandma blessed herself and kissed the cross of her beads and hung them on the handle of the cupboard. Tony left the room immediately and they heard him pounding up the stairs.

  ‘I suppose Lord Duke McKittiax has better things to do than listen to us gabbing away,’ said Nurse Foley, sitting back up in her chair and putting her beads in her pocket. Granda continued kneeling at his chair, not realising that the prayers had finished. Ben tapped the old man’s shoulder and he looked up a bit startled. He smiled at Ben and said he was doing some extra praying – a wee prayer of thanksgiving for Celtic winning.

  ‘That Charlie Tully’s something else.’

  Grandma had begun to clear the table, stacking the dishes up on the draining-board of the sink. The two women talked as Grandma went to and from the table. Granda fell asleep with his head lolled to one side and his mouth open. When Grandma had finished clearing the table she covered him with an overcoat to keep him warm. Nurse Foley asked,

  ‘How’s he keeping this weather?’

  ‘He’s rightly. The pains bother him a bit – but touch wood he’s been fine today.’

  ‘Surely they’ll bring back some Lourdes water. You can put a drop of that on his joints.’

  Grandma turned to Ben who was sitting pretending to read the paper.

  ‘Ben, why don’t you go into the other room and amuse yourself.’

  ‘There’s nothing to do.’

  ‘There’s those dishes to be done.’

  ‘I’d better be on my way,’ said Nurse Foley.

  ‘Stay where you are. The dishes can wait.’

  Ben lowered his head closer to the paper.

  ‘I know there’s nobody better than Our Lady when it comes to that kinda thing,’ said Nurse Foley, ‘– but did they ever think of McHarg?’

  ‘McHarg?’

  ‘Seventh son of a seventh son.’

  ‘Where’s he?’

  ‘Beyond Randalstown somewhere. It’s nearer than France and it could do no harm.’

  ‘I haven’t heard of him.’

  ‘It might be worth a try.’

  Granda stirred in his sleep and made chewing noises. The coat began to slip off him and Grandma leaned over and adjusted it.

  ‘His ears is beginning to flap,’ said Grandma, nodding at Ben. ‘Why don’t you go and play some records, son?’ Ben made a face and moved out of the room. As he closed the door he heard them lower their voices but did not listen to what was being said. He never listened at a door in case he heard something bad about himself.

  He considered going up to talk to Tony but he would be reading or pretending to read. Going to Grammar school had changed him a lot – it had given him a big head about himself. He liked showing off – trying to scare everybody, quoting stuff like Beware, beware the Ides of March in a hoarse voice. Ben hoped to get his eleven-plus and be able to join him after the summer. It would be good if they had to walk to the College together.

  In the sitting-room it was a grey summer’s evening and the window panes were covered with rain. Away from the fire it was cold. There was a damp patch of wallpaper on the chimney-breast caused, so his mother said, by some cheapskate builder patching a hole with ‘weeping sand’ and it became more obvious on wet days. The noise of traffic passing was in that room all the time and somewhere a blackbird was singing. When a certain type of double-decker bus went past, the window pane vibrated, shaking the droplets of rain. There was a fly somewhere but he couldn’t see it.

  The chiming clock on the mantelpiece had stopped long ago because the key to wind it up had been lost. Ben stood staring at it. It had Roman numerals which turned more and more upside down the nearer they got to half-past.

  He lifted the clock down and set it on the rug. There was a long hat-pin with a black pearl handle beneath where the clock had been and he took this and lay down. He opened the door at the back of the clock. Inside, a row of tiny brass hammers. The chimes were made of brass rods of different lengths. With the hat-pin he lifte
d and dropped each hammer onto its chime. The echoes went on and on and on – the different notes interfering with each other until the noise of traffic came back. It was the saddest sound he had ever heard. If he lifted all the hammers and released them slowly by withdrawing the hatpin then it sounded like a harp – unearthly. Like heaven. Deliver us from evil. He played the clock because there was nothing else to do. Once, when he was much smaller, a visitor had asked him if he played anything and when he said – the clock – they all threw back their heads and laughed. He smiled but he wasn’t sure what was funny.

  When he tired of the clock he went over and looked out at the street. The bluebottle flew into the window bizzing against the glass. The sound stopped and it climbed slowly. Ben folded a paper record sleeve so that the central hole became a bite out of one side. He folded it again so that the bite disappeared and it became a strap of paper.

  After a while the fly zig-zagged back into the centre of the room and flew in squares around the light bowl. You could see a freckle of dead flies and moths in the bowl when the light was turned on. Eventually the bluebottle buzzed to the window again and Ben whacked it to the floor where he stamped on it. When he took his foot away the fly bounced against the pile of the fawn rug.

  In the street a woman walked beneath her umbrella so that he couldn’t see her face – just a coat and legs. He put his hands in his pockets. The face of a dead girl might be covered with a sheet – pulled up from her grey feet until only her face was hidden. Everything else he could see. He felt the beginnings of a hard coming and took his hands out of his pockets again. His eye kept being drawn to the dead fly on the carpet. He scooped it onto the record paper and threw it in the fireplace. Against the black of the grate he couldn’t see it.

  He went out into the hall and heard the voices still going on and on. His father had modernised the doors – hiding the panelling beneath hardboard – so that it made a double thickness. The voices were murmuring – indistinct. They were up to something. If he opened the door they would stop talking. They would look up at him waiting for him to give a reason for his being there. He hated that.

  He went back to the front room and plugged in the radiogram. It was a huge unfinished affair being built by his father – ‘a genuine piece of furniture’. The wood inside had not been varnished yet and smelt like freshly sharpened pencils. To the right of the turntable was a pile of records without their paper covers. They made zipping noises as he sorted through them. He played Whispering Hope very low – it wasn’t the kind of thing he should be playing. Far too sloppy. If his brother caught him he would laugh at him and taunt him. Why do you play that when Johnny Ray’s there? So he lay down with his ear very close to the black cone of the loudspeaker. His father had not got round to covering the speaker with material. Whispering Hope made him want to cry, it gave him a strange feeling in his stomach. Two voices, a man and a woman’s, threading in and out of one another. Harmonising. Later he played Johnny Ray singing Just-a-walking in the Rain and turned the volume up loud.