Nora Webster: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

  “I hear he’s in the bank,” Nora said. “Is he the manager?”

  “Well, no,” Una said.

  “I heard that some of the best become managers quite young.”

  “It’s a lot of responsibility,” Una said.

  “And is that why he hasn’t been married before now as well?”

  Una reached for her handbag and made to stand up.

  “I suppose he didn’t meet the right woman,” Fiona said. “Until our Una came along.”

  “I see,” Nora said.

  She realised that she had gone too far. Once more, she tried to think of something to say to relieve the situation quickly, but she could think of nothing. Aine crossed the room and left.

  “But it’s great news,” Nora said, “and I’m really looking forward to meeting him.”

  Una tried to smile. Fiona stared at Nora.

  “Well, I must be going anyway,” Una said.

  She walked out of the room, followed by Fiona.

  On Monday night Mrs. Whelan called and Donal led her into the back room.

  “Now, I have a message for you from Peggy Gibney herself. She said that she would love to see you tomorrow in the afternoon. If three o’clock would suit you, she said, that would be fine, but, if not, then four.”

  “Oh, I’m not well enough to go out, Mrs. Whelan.”

  “And Elizabeth misses you. I was told to tell you that.”

  “I’m sure. But I’m not well enough to go out of the house at all.”

  “So, what will I say to Mrs. Gibney?”

  “That I’m not well enough to go out, but it’s nice that you called, and that you and I had a cup of tea.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t, Mrs. Webster.”

  Nora insisted on making tea. It occurred to her once more that it might not suit the Gibneys to have it known that they had bullied Maurice Webster’s widow and run her home. She did not know the name of the young girl who had witnessed the final scene with Miss Kavanagh but she imagined that she would have told everyone in the office. Soon it would reach the few people in the town whose opinion the Gibneys might care about.

  As she carried the tray into the room, she made every effort to seem sprightly and in perfect health. She hoped that Mrs. Whelan would report to the Gibneys that she did not believe there was anything at all wrong with Mrs. Webster.

  Two days later, Sister Thomas arrived. She was more frail than she had appeared on the strand at Ballyvaloo.

  “I wanted to see you before the boys came home from school,” she said once she was sitting in an armchair in the back room. “Now, I found out everything. You’d be surprised who comes to the convent. Nothing escapes us. Or maybe some things do, but they are always things we have no interest in. So I heard everything, down to the scissors. She is one of God’s children, Frances Kavanagh, and very holy. If people only knew! So I spoke to Peggy Gibney and she may tell you herself what I said. And she assembled all of them, her family and your friend Miss Kavanagh. And, strangely enough, they are all afraid of her. I don’t know why because she is very gentle. And she may tell you the whole story. I told her that she could. She has never told anyone, but I think she wants to tell you. And you can go and see her tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want to go back there.”

  “She has a new offer for you, and don’t turn it down. And also I have one thing to ask you. Could you be nice to your sister?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “She came into our little chapel where you came after Maurice died when you wanted to avoid people. And I saw her and I have always had a soft spot for her, the way she was left alone after your mother died.”

  “And what did she say about me?”

  “Nothing, or nothing much. But enough. So I have to go now because I am busy. And you have two things to do. See Peggy and look after Una. And maybe say a prayer for all of us too.”

  She moved slowly towards the hallway.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Nora said. “I don’t like people knowing my business.”

  “Your mother was the same. I knew her when she sang. She was a wonderful singer, but it was the pride, or the not liking people knowing her business, that made her difficult. And that did her no good. Now, you are more practical. And we should all be grateful for that.”

  “You want me to go and see Peggy Gibney tomorrow?”

  “I do, Nora, at three or four, or in between.”

  “I will then.”

  “And you’ll invite Una and her fiancé up to the house to meet the boys. A wedding is a very cheerful thing and they might enjoy hearing all about it.”

  Nora opened the front door for her, and as she made her way laboriously down the steps, she said, “All I hope is that things will be simpler in heaven. Say a prayer that things in heaven will be simpler.”

  When Mrs. Whelan answered the door, she whispered that she had told Peggy Gibney that Nora was too sick to visit.

  “Will I tell her you got better?” she asked as she took Nora’s coat.

  “If you like.”

  Peggy Gibney was sitting in exactly the same chair as the last time. There was no book or newspaper nearby. Nora wondered if she sat there all day every day in this shadowy room, with the evergreen trees swaying outside the window, thinking her thoughts, being served tea at intervals by Mrs. Whelan.

  “Here we are again, Nora, then,” she said, speaking like a doctor to a patient who had come to have her bandages removed or her blood pressure taken.

  Nora looked at her coldly.

  “There has been war in this house,” Peggy said. “Elizabeth is developing a very sharp tongue, but of course I blame Thomas. It’s one way of blaming my husband without having to say so. William Gibney Senior has enough on his plate, what with all the changes afoot, without being blamed too. And Thomas can take it, of course.”

  “Peggy, I have no idea what you are talking about,” Nora said.

  Peggy put her finger to her lips, stood up and went stealthily to the door and opened it suddenly.

  “Maggie, we need some privacy now,” she said. “If we want tea later, I will find you in the kitchen.”

  She sat back in her chair.

  “Nora, you’ll have to tell me what you want. And then I’ll get it for you.”

  “Nothing,” Nora said.

  “Sister Thomas said that I was to tell you to get down off your high horse if you were on it.”

  “I don’t want anything, thank you.”

  “All of them say, except Elizabeth, that is, that Francie Kavanagh is an invaluable office manager. She knows the company inside out, which is why she doesn’t need things written down. And she can be abrasive, or so I’m told, because if she wasn’t, nothing would get done. My husband and Thomas think the world of her. In my opinion she is a rip and a Tartar, but no one listens to me, so even Elizabeth doesn’t know that I agree with her. Now, I said that no one listens to me, but every so often I lay down the law in this house. What I do first is I close the kitchen. They can eat where they like, but they will get nothing here. And then I wait. And then I tell them what I want and I get it. So all you have to do is tell me what you want.”

  “I want to work only in the mornings and I will work under Thomas and Elizabeth, but Miss Kavanagh cannot be allowed even to look at me. I think I can do the same amount of work, but I might need some help. I will take a small cut in salary, but not much.”

  “Done,” Peggy Gibney said. “Come over here early on Monday morning and you and Elizabeth can arrive together.”

  “What does Sister Thomas have to do with this?”

  “That’s a long story, Nora, from long ago.”

  “Was that when you were going out with William?”

  “You were the only one who knew because William said that you overheard the argument he
had with his father. And we always appreciated that you told no one. I was to go to England. That was what William’s father said. You know that. So I went to the nuns at St. John’s to ask them where I might go. And Sister Thomas had just arrived at that time. Oh, she was very different from the other nuns. She had worked in England, you know, and seen it all, the Irish girls coming. She worked for Michael Collins, you know. Nuns were great messengers and she was one of his messengers. Did she never tell you about it? Oh no, I suppose because you were in Fianna Fáil.”

  “Maurice was, and Jim. Jim still is.”

  “I suppose because of that she might not have mentioned Michael Collins. Anyway, she came over here and in this very room she threatened William’s father. She said she would go to the bishop, whom she had known years before, and they would close all the church accounts with Gibney’s. She said that she would ask the bishop as a personal favour to call to the house too, unless the matter was sorted to her satisfaction. William and myself were to marry, she said, which was what we wanted, of course, even though the Gibneys didn’t think I was good enough. And that was the end of all our problems. I told Sister Thomas then that if she ever needed anything in return, she was to come to me. And she waited all these years. So you can see why I could not refuse her. If it wasn’t for her, William Junior would have been in an orphanage or would have been adopted in England, and I don’t know where I would be.”

  “Michael Collins, that’s a good one,” Nora said.

  “She told me that several times. Seemingly, he had the nuns eating out of his hand.”

  “Well, we all seem to be eating out of her hand now.”

  “Come on Monday morning and have coffee with myself and Elizabeth. We often have coffee in the morning. She’s very lively these days, Elizabeth. I don’t know what is wrong with her. Or maybe it’s a good sign.”

  It was clear to Nora that she should tell no one what had happened. When she called on Una on Saturday, she merely said that she had moved to half-time in Gibney’s because she was finding a full day too hard. She had a sense from Una’s response that she had heard about the fight with Francie Kavanagh.

  It was arranged that Una and Seamus would take her out for drinks in the golf club one evening the following week.

  When she told the boys that she would be working half-time, they took it in the same suspicious way as any news about change. And when she told them that she was going to leave them alone for one evening to go to the golf club with Una, which was the first time they would be alone in the house in the evening, they were more openly suspicious, wanting to know if she was going to join the golf club. When they discovered that she was going merely to the bar, they wanted to know at what time she would be home.

  It took them a while to get used to the fact that she did not go back to work each afternoon, and that she was there when they came in from school. Even though they fought sometimes, and Donal clearly bullied Conor, that had become their lives, and a change in the regime made them uneasy, as though they had to start all over again.

  Una asked if Nora could collect her and take her to the golf club, as Seamus would be on his half-day and was going to play a round of golf and then have some sandwiches in the clubhouse before meeting them. While Nora thought that Seamus should have driven in to town to collect them, and wondered if this might be an excuse for her to cancel, she decided in the end to agree to everything in case she met Sister Thomas, who would ask her about Gibney’s and about Una. It occurred to her that in any other century, Sister Thomas would have been burned as a witch.

  In the afternoon before going to the golf club she went to get her hair washed and set. She would wear a woollen dress with a cardigan over it and take her winter coat in case there was a walk from the car park to the clubhouse.

  “Seamus is delighted you are coming with us,” Una said when she collected her. “The Gibneys are among the bank’s best customers and he thinks very highly of William Gibney Senior. He says he has a real business brain. The sons are going to make big changes and Seamus is very impressed with them too. Seemingly, the whole place is completely overstaffed. Did you know that? Seamus says that cuts in the wage-bill will make things more efficient.”

  Seamus was in the clubhouse waiting for them. He ordered drinks.

  “It’s been a bad day all round,” he said when he came back. “I hit into the rough on the third hole and it might have been wiser to walk away.”

  He was tall and red-faced. His accent, Nora thought, was from the midlands. He spoke to her as though he had always known her. This must be useful, she imagined, for someone who worked in a bank and moved from town to town.

  Soon they were joined by two other men, one of whom had a chemist shop in the town. Nora had been in his shop but had never spoken to him before.

  “I could have been luckier on the fifth hole,” he said. “I mean, if I had placed the ball better. I think there was a wind.”

  “Oh, I noticed that all right,” the other man said. “It was not as calm as it looked.”

  “I think I got the measure of it after the fifth hole,” the chemist said. “And then the birdie on the eighth hole was the making of me.”

  He looked at Nora and Una as though they had been involved in the game too.

  “You know,” he went on, “I always say that this is the best time of the year for a good round of golf. If it’s dry, I mean.”

  “And it stayed dry, did it?” Una asked.

  “I should have called it a day on the third hole, hail, rain, or shine,” Seamus said.

  “Christy O’Connor himself would not have been able to edge the ball out of there,” the chemist said.

  “But there must be a way of doing it,” Seamus said. “There was an iron I used to have when I lived in Castlebar and that might have done the trick. It was light, you know, with a terrific swing.”

  “Could you replace that?” Una asked.

  “I lost it in a game of poker,” Seamus replied. “And the fellow who won it went on to win the club championship that year and the year after.”

  The chemist went to the bar to get a round of drinks.

  “I prefer here to Rosslare, do you?” Seamus asked the other man. “I like a well-designed nine-hole golf course. Some people swear by Rosslare, and they might be right at the weekend when there’s a crowd down. But there’s nothing like a quiet weekday here.”

  “Were there many playing?” Una asked.

  “Few enough. There was a ladies’ foursome. I don’t know who they were. That’s what being in a new town does for you. Do you play yourself?” he asked Nora.

  “No,” Nora replied.

  “Ah, it’s a great game. It’s not just the exercise, but it’s a way of getting to know a town. You can tell a town by its golf club.”

  When the chemist came back with the drinks, Una excused herself to go to the bathroom. Nora followed her.

  “It would be lovely if you could stick it out a bit longer,” Una said.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Nora said. “When Maurice was alive I used to have to listen to them all talking about Fianna Fáil, and it got worse at election time, and it’s nice and relaxing because you don’t have to pay any attention.”

  What she had wanted to say was that this was the sort of conversation that Maurice had despised all of his life, despised almost as much as she did now. For a second it seemed as though Una was going to be offended by her suggesting that she didn’t need to pay attention, but then Una smiled as she looked into the mirror.

  “I know what you mean,” she said.

  Later in the night, a man, and a woman who was introduced as his fiancée, joined the company. Slowly, Nora realised that this was Elizabeth’s Ray. It took Ray a bit longer to figure out who she was.

  “She talks a lot about you,” Ray said. “She says you are the quickest worker of anyone she’s ever
seen. It might be better if she didn’t know I was out tonight. I mean, it might be better if you didn’t mention it.”

  “Elizabeth and I have plenty of other things to talk about,” Nora said.

  “Well, she’s not short of talk. I’d say that for her.”

  “She’s very efficient at work,” Nora said in a tone that she hoped would put an end to this conversation. “Very much her father’s daughter.”

  “She’s a marvellous girl,” Ray said and took a sip of his pint.

  “You know, when I said I was coming here tonight, Elizabeth said that she might look in later if she has the time,” Nora said. “She has a very busy social life, as you know.”

  It was untrue. She had not mentioned anything to Elizabeth, but she wanted to see what would happen now. She was pleased when Ray appeared alarmed and looked around him as though checking where the exits were.

  In the morning she was surprised to find Elizabeth at work before she was.

  “A little bird who was in the golf club last night,” Elizabeth said, “told me that you had a long conversation with Ray.”

  Nora was sure that none of the Gibneys had been in the golf club. She could not think who else might have told Elizabeth.

  “He phoned me himself,” Elizabeth said. “First thing this morning. He had told me he wanted to have an early night when I was all set to go out. But he said no. And then Seamus phoned him and told him he was terrified of meeting you and he wanted support.”