Nora Webster: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

  Miss Kavanagh fought with everyone, except Mr. William Gibney Senior and his two sons. When they appeared, Miss Kavanagh became meek, but after smiling and bowing to them, she would, once they had departed, summon to her office one of the lowliest bookkeepers or typists and start screaming, or she would wander out into the large office and stand behind a girl and shout, “What are you doing now? What are you doing now this minute to justify your presence in this building?”

  Miss Kavanagh and Elizabeth Gibney ignored each other.

  “She is unusual,” Elizabeth said to Nora, “because her bite is actually worse than her bark. I suppose they told you that the woman before you left to get married?”

  Nora nodded.

  “One day the poor woman was driven so demented that she took out the contents of one of the filing cabinets and threw them up in the air, using language about Miss Francie-Pants that was not edifying. She followed this with her views on my father and my brothers and me and then ran screaming out into the street. Her people, who live in Ballindaggin, were summoned to take her home. Thomas and myself had to stay here late that night trying to re-fill the filing cabinet with the paper before my father, Old William, got to find out about it all. He won’t hear a word against Francie-Pants. He doesn’t know that I have nothing to do with the old battle-axe. I got a deal from Little William and Thomas only because I threatened them. I promised to seek revenge in ways as yet unimagined unless I was given my own office and unless Francie-Pants was told that I was off-limits.”

  Nora enjoyed the mornings with Elizabeth, even when she saw how much of Elizabeth’s day was actually spent planning her weekend or discussing on the phone the weekend just past. She found that she could work easily in the office with her. Elizabeth talked to her only when no one whom she phoned was available. She had one phone with a direct line out and another that was an office extension. Often, she went over the same events in her personal life with several friends in succession. Nora learned that there was a man in Dublin called Roger who was steady, dependable and well placed. He wanted to see Elizabeth every weekend.

  Elizabeth spent some weeks avoiding calls from him, letting calls on her direct line ring out if she thought it was Roger. She would then phone one of her friends, tell them about the call from Roger and ask for advice about how she might best avoid Roger in Dublin on Saturday night while making sure, in a later conversation with Roger, that he might, were she to come to Dublin, be available to escort her to some dinner or dance.

  “I like him. I don’t know what he reminds me of,” she said to Nora. “Maybe a nice car that you’re used to, one that never breaks down. Or a winter coat that you never wear but are glad you have. And he’s mad about me and that helps. But I’d love a big romance! I mean someone a bit wilder. I’d love an international rugby player, say. Mike Gibson now, or Willie-John McBride. Roger took me to one of the rugby dinners and they were all there. I didn’t listen to a word Roger said all evening. If he had told me that God Almighty was a woman and she was living in Bellefield with her husband, I would have nodded. I wish William or Thomas played rugby and could introduce me properly to members of the team. I’d love to go to a match in Lansdowne Road knowing that I’d be meeting up with the players in Jurys or the Gresham when they were all washed and dressed up, and they would know who I was.”

  Every Friday at four Elizabeth Gibney left the office and drove to Dublin. She shared a room in a flat in Herbert Street and went out with her friends on Friday and Saturday nights and on a Sunday night she drove back to Enniscorthy. On Saturday afternoons she went shopping in Grafton Street. Some weekends, she saw Roger; on other weekends she did not tell him that she was coming to Dublin and then on Monday she would recount to Nora how close she had come to bumping into him, the narrow escapes she had had at various tennis club hops and rugby dances. During the week she tried to recover from the weekend, and lamented the fact that she could not go out in the town, since everyone recognised her as one of the Gibneys. Therefore, if she went out during the week, it was to Wexford or Rosslare and usually in the company of her brothers and their friends. She made such outings sound like duty. Her real life during the week was spent on the telephone to her friends in Dublin. It almost amused Nora to see that she did not know the names of any of the girls or women in the outer office, other than Elsa Doyle, whom she had removed from her office. If one of them came in while she was on the phone, she would ask her caller to wait a moment and then icily outstare the intruder until she had left the room and Elizabeth could resume her discussion of the weekend.

  One Monday Elizabeth did not come in to work until almost eleven o’clock. Nora discovered that she could do her morning’s work in less than two hours without the distraction offered by the boss’s daughter, and she could manage the bonuses for the commercial travellers once she had unravelled the details, if she did not have Miss Kavanagh to deal with as well. She liked the peace, enjoyed having the office to herself.

  When Elizabeth arrived, she seemed greatly excited.

  “Did anyone call?”

  “No,” Nora replied.

  “On either of the phones?”

  “No one called.”

  She went over and checked the phones.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is a town clerk?” Elizabeth asked. “When I enquired from my mother she said it was someone who ran a town. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Nora said. “It’s a good job. A lot of town clerks go on to become county managers.”

  “I met one last night.”

  “The town clerk of where?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t remember. His name was, or is, Ray, that’s all I know. And someone introduced me as his fiancée, so maybe he has a fiancée, and she was at home watching television last night, or maybe I look like someone’s fiancée.”

  “Was he nice?”

  “At four o’clock in the morning he asked me to marry him, or else he nearly did. That was nice.”

  “And what did you say?”

  Elizabeth checked the phones again.

  “I met him with your sister and her fiancé in Rosslare Golf Club. There was some do on and I went to it. Thomas was with me for a while. I went with him and his girlfriend, but then I got talking to your sister, who was very nice and, since dry Thomas and Dishwater his girlfriend were leaving, she made her fiancé offer me a lift home once we had some drinks in the Talbot, but of course I didn’t take the lift in the end. I was driven home by my town clerk. Maybe he’s town clerk of Wexford.”

  “That would be a very good job,” Nora said. “And we can easily check.”

  “If he doesn’t phone, can you phone your sister and get the full details on him?”

  Nora hesitated. She had seen Una regularly, but had not been told that she had a boyfriend, let alone a fiancé. Nora did not want to phone her now on behalf of Elizabeth, which might suggest that she was prying into her life.

  “I’m sure he’ll phone. I think town clerks might be very busy on a Monday morning,” Nora said.

  “Or he might be calling his actual fiancée,” Elizabeth said.

  “And Una was in good form?”

  “Oh, yes, they’re a lovely couple. Someone said that last night in Rosslare, and it’s true.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Once the summer came, Fiona went to London, where she got work in a hotel in Earls Court, and wrote to say that she was enjoying life. The clothes shops, her letter said, were the best in the world and the Saturday markets were like a dream. London was better than she had ever imagined. Aine wrote too from the Kerry Gaeltacht to say that she had met a man who remembered her father and her uncle Jim when they were learning Irish nearly forty years before. There was even a woman, she said, who had taken a shine to Uncle Jim all those years ago, but, as the woman put it, he was too slow, and so she had marr
ied someone else.

  The boys went to the tennis club most days. Conor was always waiting for her when she came in; she could see him watching out from the window as she approached the house. She knew that he was too young to be at home on his own and she tried to make sure that he went to friends’ houses until Aine came home in August from the Gaeltacht, when she could look after him, or at least be there if he came home during the day.

  On Saturdays and Sundays, if the weather was fine, Nora drove with the boys to Curracloe or Bentley, and once ventured south to Rosslare Strand. It was hard to imagine that just over a year earlier they had been in the house in Cush as though nothing would change. She was worried that, on the strand in Curracloe, the boys would look north and think of the narrower, stonier strand at the foot of the cliffs that they had known all of their lives. But instead they were most concerned about where Nora would put the beach rug down, finding the right place among the dunes that was sheltered enough. Conor wanted to stay close to her; she was unsure whether she could lie down and read a book or the day’s newspaper or whether she should not try to see instead what he wanted to talk about, or what he wanted to do. Donal brought a book about photography that his aunt Margaret had given him and was content as long as it was agreed that he would not have to go into the sea and they would be back in town by six o’clock when he usually wanted to go to the tennis club.

  It was strange, she thought, that she had never before put a single thought into whether they were happy or not, or tried to guess what they were thinking. She had looked after them until the time came when that was difficult. Maurice had wanted her with him when he was in hospital in Dublin after his first heart attack; she could not have denied him that. She could not have left him alone in the hospital. She remembered his eyes watching out for her as she arrived every day, the sense of panic giving way to relief, and then her worry each night as she left him. She knew how lonely he would be. He must have known how serious it was. But she was not sure; he seemed to believe he was being moved home because he was recovering. He must have known, though, that she would not have spent all that time with him in Dublin if he had not been dying.

  She noticed then that Conor was watching her.

  “Are you going for a swim?” he asked her.

  “In a while. Why don’t you go down and check if it’s warm enough?”

  “And if it’s not warm enough?”

  “We’ll still go in. But at least we’ll know.”

  This was, she thought, a time that she would come to treasure in the future. In a year or two, Donal would not come with them. Perhaps he only came now because he guessed how much she wanted him to. He had a way of reading her mind or sizing up a situation that Conor did not have yet, might never develop. Donal would have known, or almost known, that she was just thinking about Maurice. Conor, on the other hand, would be completely unaware of everything except what was happening now in front of him, or what was coming next. Being with Donal sometimes made her afraid, but being with Conor could make her even more afraid, afraid for his innocence, his sweet loyalty, his open need to be taken care of.

  When Fiona returned from London, Nora invited Jim and Margaret and Una to come and have tea. Una told her that she would drop in early when she had finished work but she could not stay for tea. She did not give any explanation.

  Once Una arrived, Fiona carried down all the new clothes she had bought in London. Nora had noticed a large suitcase when she met her at the railway station but Fiona mentioned nothing of her purchases. She had bought Nora a very discreet pair of earrings, a blouse for Aine and books for the boys. Now, however, once Una was in the house, it was clear that she had bought a number of colourful dresses and skirts and blouses, many of the dresses and blouses low-topped and made of light fabric. Una encouraged her to go out of the room each time and come in wearing something new from London. She commented on each thing, saying that Fiona was developing a very fashionable look, especially when she wore the hoop earrings she had bought and a scarf on her head. Aine joined in, suggesting various combinations and accessories, and standing up at times to fix her sister’s hair. There was one russet-coloured dress in a light cotton fabric that both Una and Aine admired; they suggested that Fiona wear it with the earrings and a russet-coloured scarf around her head with no stockings and light sandals.

  “If you wore that to mass, then the whole town would look at you, that is all I have to say,” Una said.

  “It would be very nice for Sundays,” Aine said.

  “You are not going to mass in this town dressed like that,” Nora interrupted.

  The three others turned and stared at her as though she was an intruder in the room.

  “Well, it wouldn’t work unless it was a hot day,” Una said. “I mean, the material is very light. But the look is wonderful.”

  Nora interrupted again.

  “It might be wonderful in London, or in a magazine, but not down here.”

  All three of them glanced at her and then each other. It was obvious that they had recently been talking about her, or they had written to each other about her. During the time when Maurice was sick and the boys were staying with Josie, Una had lived in this house with Aine and they had sometimes seen Fiona. What was strange now was that this was the first time Nora had been in the room with just the three of them since Maurice’s illness. It was like being in a room with people who knew each other in ways that she did not, who had a language in common but, perhaps more importantly, could understand each other’s silence.

  It struck her in that second that Fiona and Aine knew more than she did about Una’s romance, that she had told them who her fiancé was and what her plans were. Even though there were twenty years between Una and the girls, their time together had bonded them. They had spoken about clothes and their lives with ease as though they were sisters. They had excluded Nora, as they did now; or perhaps, she thought, she had excluded them. She felt many years older. The bond between them was in the open, a bond that had arisen so naturally that Nora felt that none of them even realised it existed. It must have come into being because of Maurice’s absence as much as her own, and it must have been a way of masking the pain the girls felt. Nora crossed the room without looking at them and went to the kitchen.

  When Jim and Margaret came and the boys appeared, it was easier. Margaret had no interest in clothes and was merely glad that Fiona had arrived safely home. Once Una left and Margaret went into the front room to talk to Donal, Aine and Jim talked about various places on the Dingle Peninsula, the families whom Aine had met in Ballyferriter and Dún Chaoin and how Jim might have known members of the earlier generation. Nora noticed a light coming into his eyes when the name of a place or a person was mentioned. Jim was in his mid-sixties now; he was fifteen years older than Maurice. He was working in the same job as always. He had been a messenger in the War of Independence and was interned in the Civil War. Those years of excitement, followed by summers spent on the Dingle Peninsula, must, she imagined, be for him like things from the distant past. He was the most conservative man she knew. He had been thus since she had met him.

  Margaret, because she worked for the county council, earned more money than Jim and had even fewer needs. Paying for Aine’s school and giving pocket money to Fiona and the boys pleased her, gave her a stake in how they lived and what they planned to do in the future. It amused Nora, as they sat down to eat, to watch Fiona describing the cultural sights of London with her aunt and uncle rather than Saturday stalls and cheap clothes shops. Fiona had been to a Shakespeare play in which some of the actors had been in the audience and had jumped up at the most unexpected moments.

  “How d-did you know they were actors?” Donal asked.

  “That’s exactly what I was going to ask,” Margaret said.

  “They were in costume and they knew their lines,” Fiona said. “But it was a big shock when they stood up.”

&
nbsp; “Well, I hope that doesn’t catch on,” Margaret said. “Then you would never know where you were. The man beside you could be ‘The Bull’ McCabe.”

  “No, I think it’s just done in London and it’s new,” Fiona said.

  There was a discussion about Aine’s Latin grinds, with Margaret insisting that she take more grinds at both Christmas and Easter so she could be sure of getting through. Then the subject changed to cameras and the best way for Donal to buy film and have it developed.

  “You could take over the communion and confirmation photo business from Pat Crane and Sean Carty,” Jim said. “Put an ad in The Echo saying that you intend to undercut them by half.”

  “Or you could add colour,” Fiona said.

  “I d-don’t like colour,” Donal said solemnly.

  “No, he only likes black-and-white,” Margaret said.

  No one had asked Nora about Gibney’s or made the smallest reference to it. No one referred to Jim’s job either, or to Margaret’s. Everything was focussed on the four children, on their future. Every word they said was taken up by their aunt and uncle and considered and commented on. Conor’s complaint about his tennis racquet, his remarking that one of his friends had a better one, was treated with seriousness and sympathy. Whether it was safe for Fiona and her friends to hitchhike to Dublin was debated and then the price of weekend return train tickets versus day returns and then the price of the bus journey.

  By the time the evening was over Nora felt that she knew more details about the lives of her children than she had found out in months. Jim and Margaret had ensured that there was no silence and that everything discussed seemed natural and of immediate interest to one of the children. The fact that Donal and Conor were alone in the house when she was at work, when they were not in the tennis club, was never mentioned, however, nor the fact that Miss Kavanagh was beginning to treat her with the same level of shrill contempt as she treated the most despised members of the female office staff. It had been an ordinary evening, the first in a long time, and Nora was almost grateful for it as she went to bed.