Nora Webster: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

  “Is it just about these people?” Conor asked.

  At the first break for advertisements, she decided to tell the story of the film as best she could and then let them decide if they wanted to see the rest of it.

  “The man is trying to get the house from her, trying to have her committed to a mental hospital so he can find her aunt’s jewels. That is what he is doing in the attic, looking for the jewels.”

  “Why doesn’t he just kill her?” Conor asked. “Stick a knife in her or shoot her? Or tie her up?”

  “Then he might be caught. He wants to live in this house without her. But he doesn’t want to go to jail.”

  The two boys took this in quietly as the film resumed. After a few minutes, in a scene where Ingrid Bergman became frightened and perplexed as the gaslight flickered when she was alone in the house, Conor moved towards Nora and sat at her feet.

  There was something in the film that she had not remembered. Before, it had seemed like a thriller or a sort of horror film. But now there was something else. Ingrid Bergman appeared so oddly alone and vulnerable in the film; every time the camera was on her face it captured some deep inner turmoil or uncertainty as much as any fright or horror. She was jittery and oddly estranged from things. Her glances were all nervous, her smiles had a worried edge. There was a sense of a damaged inner life. Both Donal and Conor had now become transfixed by the film, and when the next break came Donal moved beside her armchair as well.

  As the man made the woman believe that she had forgotten things and mislaid objects, the boys watched intently. The man’s plotting against her, his lies, and the maid’s cheekiness to her, all added to something, something uneasy and withdrawn. Nora wondered if she had ever seen Ingrid Bergman playing a part in a comedy. It was clear to her now that, if a knock came to their front door, then all three of them would know not to answer it.

  And when, in the film, the gaslight flickered again and the woman became even more frightened, all three of them watched with hushed worry. It struck Nora that the boys had only ever before seen adventure films, or episodes of Tolka Row, which Conor thought especially funny because of the Dublin accents. They had never seen a film like this and it hit something in them that was raw and open, as though they were in a house with a woman, who, despite her best efforts, was jittery and worried too, who kept silent about everything that was on her mind. The more the film went on the more impossible the idea seemed that Ingrid Bergman had come from a large and happy family, but maybe Nora was imagining this, she thought, reading too much into the performance. Maybe Ingrid Bergman was just a great actress. Whatever it was, she evoked something hidden and strange, as Maurice’s absence, his body in a grave, must seem hidden and strange to the boys. She wondered if it might have been better if she had not mentioned the film, and if they had not spent a Sunday evening watching it.

  When it was over, they went to bed. She sat up alone in the film’s afterglow, feeling the echoes of what she had been watching in the house where she had lived with Maurice for more than twenty years. Every room, every sound, every piece of space, was filled not only with what had been lost, but with the years themselves, and the days. Now, in the silence, she could feel it and know it; for the boys it came as confusion. In the film, somehow it had been obvious, but whatever it was had served to unsettle them even more. She wondered how many other old films would come back to her with new and darker meanings. She sat there imagining Ingrid Bergman as unprotected and innocent, and then she turned off the lights and went upstairs to bed, hoping that she would sleep until the morning.

  The following Sunday was her last day of freedom before she began work in the office in Gibney’s. When Fiona came home on Saturday she told her; when she told the boys they seemed already to know. She was sure that she had not told anyone in front of them, having given Jim and Margaret the news one night when the boys had long gone to bed. On Sunday Aine came home from school for the afternoon, collected by a neighbour’s family whose daughter was also at school in Bunclody. Nora would drive both girls back in time for study in the evening.

  Margaret always read the newspapers carefully and looked at the advertisements for jobs. Nora used to joke with Maurice that if there was a vacancy for the assistant to the assistant librarian in West Mayo, Margaret would know about it and would remember the deadline for applications and the qualifications required. Thus when it was announced that there would be grants for students to go to university whose families lived below a certain income, Margaret mentioned this to Nora, saying that she was sure it would apply to Aine. The only problem, Margaret said, was that Aine had given up Latin and she would need Latin to go to University College Dublin, where Maurice had gone when he won a university scholarship. Nora did not know that Aine had given up Latin. Aine must have told her aunt about it, but not her.

  On Sunday Aine told Nora that Margaret had written to her, offering to pay for Latin grinds over the holidays, and suggesting that she take merely the pass paper so that she could concentrate on her other subjects. Nora was not sure if she should object that Margaret had not consulted her first, or indeed at all. She seemed to have taken over the entire question of Aine’s education. But she concluded that it was best not to think too much about it. She told Aine that she agreed with Margaret that she should take grinds in Latin.

  For a few hours that afternoon she watched the boys transformed by the presence of their sisters. Conor followed the two girls from room to room and when he found himself expelled from their bedroom he came downstairs to know how much longer it would be before Fiona had to catch the train to Dublin and Aine return to school. He then went and sat at the top of the stairs until they relented and let him back into their bedroom.

  Donal had bought film for his camera; he made them all pose for photographs. Even though the flash of his camera worked only sometimes he did not become despondent. He kept the camera around his neck on a strap and seemed more alert and involved than usual.

  As the afternoon went on, Nora realised that she was not needed. She smiled to herself at the thought that if she slipped out of the house and went for a walk none of them would notice. It was only when Una came and the girls were downstairs that they began to focus on her.

  “Well, it’s great that you had your hair done before you start work,” Aine said.

  “I meant to say it’s lovely,” Fiona said. “But I got such a shock.”

  “Girls, when you get to our age,” Una interrupted, “then you’ll know all about hair.”

  “Are you going to work in the office full-time?” Aine asked.

  Nora nodded.

  “And what are the boys going to do when you’re working?”

  “I’ll be home by six.”

  “But they’ll be home by half three or four.”

  “They can do their homework.”

  “We’ll clean the house,” Conor said.

  “Well, you needn’t clean our room,” Aine replied.

  “We will, we’ll turn it upside down and find all the letters from your boyfriends.”

  “Mammy, he is not to go into our room,” Aine said.

  “Conor is the soul of discretion,” Nora replied.

  “What is the soul of discretion?” Conor asked.

  “It means you are a nosey little squirt,” Fiona said.

  “But, seriously,” Aine asked, “would it not be better if they went to someone’s house and waited there?”

  “I’m g-going nowhere,” Donal said.

  “And Donal will look after Conor if there’s a problem,” Nora said. “And I’ll be home for dinner in the middle of the day.”

  “Who’s going to make the dinner?”

  “I’ll have it ready from the night before and Donal will put on the potatoes as soon as he comes in.”

  She felt that she was being cross-examined and wondered if she could change the subject. All fiv
e of them seemed oddly suspicious of her now, as though her going to work in Gibney’s was something she was doing in order to avoid her real duties. None of her children knew how little money she had, and she was not sure how much Catherine had told Una. Since the car was still there and the house appeared untouched by poverty, none of them had any sense of how precarious things were, despite her selling the house in Cush, and how, if she did not start working at some point, the car would have to be sold and she would have to consider moving to a smaller house.

  “Why don’t you move to Dublin and get a job there?” Aine asked.

  “What sort of job?”

  “I don’t know. In an office.”

  “I don’t want to go to Dublin,” Conor said. “I hate Dublin people.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” Una asked.

  “They’re like Mrs. Butler in Tolka Row,” Conor said, “or Mrs. Feeney, or Jack Nolan, or Peggy Nolan. All talk.”

  “We could leave you behind here then to make sure you don’t miss an episode,” Fiona said.

  “Is that woman, the Sacred Heart, still running the office in Gibney’s?” Una asked. “What’s her name?”

  “She’s called Francie Kavanagh,” Nora said.

  “Do you remember Breda Dobbs?” Una asked. “Well, her daughter worked in that office. Oh, God, maybe I shouldn’t tell this story. Conor, if you repeat this story I will personally bite both of your ears off.”

  “Your secrets are safe with Conor,” Fiona said.

  “I won’t say anything,” Conor said.

  “Well, Breda’s daughter hated the Sacred Heart and she was there for years before she married. And on the last day she took her revenge.”

  Una stopped.

  “What did she do?” Fiona asked.

  “I’m not sure I should have started this story,” Una said.

  “Go on,” Fiona said.

  “Well, they all knew that one of the Sacred Heart’s things is that she doesn’t take a dinner break. She works right through the day without eating. I suppose this makes her very cranky by four o’clock. And up to this time she used to hang her coat up in the corridor where all the other coats were hanging. Breda’s daughter hated her so much that she spent a week collecting dogshit and then she filled both pockets of the Sacred Heart’s coat with what she had collected sometime in the morning, and then at four she asked the Heart, or whatever her name is, if she could leave fifteen minutes early since it was her last day and the Heart told her that she most certainly could not and she was to go back to her desk forthwith. The Sacred Heart was working late that evening so none of them ever got to see what happened. Maybe she didn’t notice until she was on her way home and she put her hands into her pockets.”

  “Were they big pockets?” Conor asked.

  “So now she hangs her coat in her own office,” Una went on, “but the funny thing is that she wore that same coat to work the next morning as though nothing had happened. It’s an old brown coat and she may still have it for all I know.”

  “Yuck,” Fiona said.

  “I’d say that Dobbs girl had no luck for doing that,” Nora said.

  “Oh, she married one of the Gethings of Oulart, he’s a very nice fellow, and they have a new bungalow. He has his own business. I’ve played golf with her a few times and you couldn’t meet a nicer girl. She’d had enough, that’s all.”

  “It would have been worse if it was cowshit,” Conor said.

  “Or b-bullshit,” Donal said.

  On the way to Bunclody, Aine, in the front passenger seat, asked her if she knew that Una was going out with someone in the golf club. Aine’s friend in the back seat confirmed that her mother, who was in the golf club, had also heard the news.

  “Una?” Nora asked.

  “Yes, that’s why she is in such good humour. We asked her when she came upstairs but she just blushed and said that there was always too much talk about people in the golf club.”

  Nora calculated that since she was forty-six, Una was forty, or would be soon. She and Catherine had decided some years before that Una would never marry, but would remain working in the offices of Roche’s Maltings and living in the house where she had lived with her mother until her mother’s death.

  “So you don’t know who the lucky man is?” Nora asked.

  “No, but we told her that if she didn’t tell us soon we were going to spread a rumour that it was Larry Kearney. She was raging, but still she didn’t tell us.”

  Larry Kearney was, she knew, a drunk in the town who often sat on the ground outside the public houses he was barred from entering. Years before, when Catherine and Una had gone to a golfing hotel in County Cavan with Rose Lacey and Lily Devereux, they had to have their tea one evening with a Dublin couple who were very snobbish and had spoken of their posh golf club in Dublin. They boasted about themselves until Lily Devereux said in a grand voice to the Dublin husband that he was the spitting image of a man in Enniscorthy, one of the best golfers in County Wexford, and his name was Larry Kearney and she wondered if they were related in any way. Catherine had to run out of the restaurant howling with laughter, closely followed by Una.

  “What are you laughing at?” Aine asked her as they passed through Clohamon.

  “Has Larry Kearney joined the golf club?” she asked.

  “No, don’t be silly.”

  Later, Donal and Conor came with her to the train Fiona would take back to Dublin. As the boys were standing on the metal bridge, Nora noticed that Fiona seemed sad.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I hate going back,” Fiona said.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “The nuns, the dorm, the whole training college. Everything really.”

  “But you have friends there?”

  “Yes, and we all hate it.”

  “You’ll be in London in the summer and then it’s just one more year and then you can come home.”

  “Home?”

  “Well, where else would you go?”

  “I might stay in Dublin and do a degree at night.”

  “Fiona, it’s very hard for me here. I just don’t know if I’ll have enough money.”

  “Do you not have the pension? And the money from the house in Cush? And are you not starting in Gibney’s?”

  “Gibney’s are paying twelve pounds a week.”

  “Is that all?”

  “He was very brusque about it, the son Thomas. He more or less said that I could take it or leave it. His father and mother were all smarmy. But he’s the money man. That’s how business works, not that I know anything about business.”

  “I suppose I could look for a job down here,” Fiona said quietly.

  “We’ll wait and see anyway,” Nora said.

  Fiona nodded and then Conor announced that the train was coming.

  “I’m sorry about the house in Cush,” Nora said.

  “Oh, I’ve forgotten about that,” Fiona said. “I was upset that day, hearing the news, but I am okay about it now.”

  She picked up her small suitcase.

  As they drove back home, Donal said that he had checked the Sunday Press and there was another film on the television that night.

  “What’s it called?” she asked.

  He was silent, she knew, because whatever the name of the film was he could not say it.

  “Hold your breath and take it slowly,” she said.

  “L-lost Horizon,” he said.

  “I’m not sure what that is but we can look at the beginning anyway.”

  “The one last week was queer frightening,” Conor said.

  “Did you like it though?” she asked.

  “I told the class about it in school and Mr. Dunne said I shouldn’t have been up so late.”

  “Why did you tell them?” />
  “We all have to tell a story. It was my turn on Friday.”

  “Is t-that in Irish or in English?” Donal asked.

  “In English, stupid.”

  “Don’t call your brother stupid,” Nora said.

  “Sure, how would you say Gaslight in Irish?” Conor asked.

  As soon as she read the description of the film in the newspaper, Nora recognised what it was. She remembered the name “Shangri-La” and was sure that she and Maurice had once laughed at a house in Dublin with that name on the gates. They had wondered if the owners had ventured out into the world only to discover their real age. As she remembered the film, it seemed a fantasy, harmless compared to Gaslight, and when the boys asked if they could watch it she agreed, saying that they could go to bed if they got bored.

  But as soon as the film began there was something sharp and strange about it. First, it was the music; and then the plane crash itself was frightening, almost hard to watch it was so realistic. When the first break for advertisements came, the boys asked her to tell them the story.

  “It’s like Tír Na nÓg,” she said. “It’s Shangri-La and people don’t get old there. Some of them could be a hundred or two hundred but they look young.”

  “As old as Mrs. Franklin?” Conor asked.

  “Yes, and older. She would look like a young girl once she entered Shangri-La. But it’s just a film.”

  Slowly, however, as the film went on, she saw that no matter what they watched, it would remind them of their circumstances more than anything that had been said all day in the house. She did not know whether it was right or wrong for her to sit like this with them in a silence broken by the dramatic music and the soft voices coming from the television. She could not recall the name of the actor playing the lead part; she did not think she had seen him in anything else. He was a type, reliable, strong, romantic, filled with openness and curiosity.

  During the scene where the Lama began to weaken and it was clear that he would die, Conor moved close to Nora until she gave him a cushion and he sat on the floor near her. Donal kept away. He seemed to her even more involved with this film than with Gaslight. When the break came, he watched the advertisements and did not even look over when Conor asked questions that she tried to answer.