Nora Webster: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

  The face, cleared of suffering and of familiar expression, resembled her mother in old photographs when she had a thin, dark, shy, watchful beauty. That, or traces of it, had returned. Her mother would have liked the idea that her youth, or some part of it, had come back.

  Her two sisters came and looked at their dead mother. Catherine knelt and bowed in prayer and blessed herself as she rose to her feet. Nora watched her as she self-consciously stood by the bed in the role of prayerful, sorrowing daughter. She wished that Catherine would go downstairs. When she caught her sister’s eye for a moment, she found an expression there that she did not trust and she determined that no matter what happened over the time that followed she would not find herself alone with Catherine; she would stay here in the room all night if she had to. She would not leave the chair. When Maurice arrived to be with her, she told him that she was going to stay the night here in the room. He held her hand for a moment and then said that he would bring the children in the morning, but he would go home now and stay with them. She smiled at him as he left. Her mother had loved Maurice. That was not unusual, Nora thought, as everyone loved Maurice.

  Over the next few hours neighbours came. They each knelt down and said a prayer. A few leaned in to touch the dead woman’s hands with rosary beads entwined, or her forehead. They nodded at Nora and a few whispered to her, about how peaceful her mother looked, or how she had gone to a better place, or how she would be missed.

  When Nora was alone in the room, she could hear voices downstairs and she guessed that people were having tea and sandwiches. The candles had burned down to half their size. Her mother was nothing now except an old woman who had died. There were no features in her face that Nora could make out, just whitened wrinkled skin and a chin that was still oddly noticeable. Without her eyes open, without her voice speaking, her mother was nobody, there was no life in her.

  Eventually, the house became quiet. Una came and offered to stay instead of her, but Nora refused, and she suggested that her two sisters try to get some sleep. She would make sure that there were candles kept burning and that her mother was not alone on her last night in the world. There was silence in the house, broken sometimes by the passing of cars and by the rattling of the windows in the bedroom in the night wind.

  Nora wondered if it was the tiredness, or the light from the candles that cast long shadows on the wall, but she would not have been surprised if her mother had moved now or spoken. The talk between them might have been easy.

  What was strange as she began to look at her mother again was how little she was sure of. The details of her mother’s face had vanished, but there was an expression still, a sense of someone. And then that sense became more exact, more clear, the more she watched. She could see other people in her mother’s face—the faces of cousins, the Holdens and the Murphys and the Baileys and the Kavanaghs; the faces of Catherine and Una; Nora’s own face; the faces of Nora’s children, especially Fiona. It was as though her mother in this long night alone became all of them.

  All the natural life had gone and instead something else had come, something a long time in the making. It lingered there, and then it faded and something else replaced it. The face exuded an impression more powerful than anything it had ever done in the days and nights when there was breath and voice.

  Nora was not sure. She tried to picture her mother as she remembered her best—an old woman in a grey coat of soft wool, a brooch in the lapel of the coat, a scarf. An old woman walking towards her; or a young woman in a photograph. But none of these images was as real as the face in the bed that night. She wondered how she would remember this, but remembering would be nothing compared to this looking, the intensity of this here and now.

  The chin ceased to matter, it was a mere detail, and details now were of no consequence. What mattered could not be named or easily seen; if one of the others came into the room they might not see it at all. It was maybe what she and her mother had been waiting for. She wondered if she had kept away so that this encounter with the body of her mother, with her mother’s dead image, could matter more, or simply be possible. Her mother’s face was both more masklike and also more individual than it ever had been; Nora would be the only one who would recognise that. None of the others would be able to see it, they were too busy, too close, too involved. It was her distance that made it possible. It was her distance now that allowed her to sleep for a while and then wake with a start in her own room, and realise that she had been dreaming, that the night’s vigil by her mother’s body was part of a dream. She was in her own house, and it was time to get up and wake the others and make breakfast and go to work.

  That day, when she went to the cupboard in the office to fetch a file, she fell over. When she came to, Elizabeth was on the phone to Peggy Gibney, who gave orders that if Mrs. Webster could walk at all, she was to be taken over to the house. As soon as she was standing up, Elizabeth insisted on guiding Nora out of the office and through the storeroom at the side and across the street to the family house.

  “You know, really I’m fine,” Nora said.

  “My mother is always the expert on how people are,” Elizabeth said.

  Peggy Gibney was sitting in her usual chair. When Elizabeth and Nora appeared, she called for tea.

  “Well, I think you are looking very pale,” she said. “Now, who is your doctor?”

  “Dr. Cudigan.”

  “Oh, we know him well. Now, I am going to phone him and ask him whether it would be better for him to come here, or for you to go to him, or for you to go home and let him call there.”

  She went into the hall, followed by Elizabeth. Nora was afraid to close her eyes, afraid that she would fall asleep here in the Gibneys’ living-room. She thought that if she could go home now she would sleep for the rest of the day. But she knew that if she did, then she would not sleep again that night or she would have more dreams. It would be better to get sleeping-pills from Dr. Cudigan, even if he thought they would not be good for her with the painkillers. She touched her chest and arms and could feel the residual pain in the muscles. It was taking its time to fade.

  “Dr. Cudigan is out on a call,” Peggy Gibney said when she returned. “He does the county home so he might be there. I don’t know who it was who answered the phone. I thought of phoning Dr. Radford instead. He’s our doctor.”

  The implication that there was something wrong with Dr. Cudigan and that somehow Dr. Radford was superior to him woke Nora up.

  “Oh no,” she said. “You see, I know the Radfords socially, so I would really rather not.”

  Peggy Gibney sat back in her chair. The idea that someone working in the office saw her doctor socially seemed to offend her.

  “I think the best idea would be if Elizabeth drove you home and then I’ll arrange for Dr. Cudigan to call as soon as he can. But we’ll have tea first. You were pale as a ghost when you came in. And Elizabeth will let Thomas know you have taken ill. I mean, you might be better tomorrow. Thomas always likes to know what’s going on. And I wish I knew what was keeping that child of God Maggie Whelan with the tea.”

  When tea came, they sat in silence. Somehow or other, Nora sensed that she had not been grateful enough for being taken into the house rather than being sent home or to the doctor directly.

  “Elizabeth, can you spare a few moments now to drive Mrs. Webster across the town?” Peggy Gibney asked.

  The way she said “across the town” suggested somewhere quite far away from her own comfortable place of residence.

  “My mother,” Elizabeth said as soon as they were in the car, “is marvellous, isn’t she? She could run the country. She’s the real power behind the throne.”

  Nora nodded. She was too tired to think of anything to say. She wondered about sleeping-pills. They were dangerous things to have in a house. She determined that if she had to take them, she would keep the bottle of pills in her wardrobe and thro
w them out as soon as she was back sleeping normally again.

  Once she was in the house, she found that she had forgotten if she had had any further conversation with Elizabeth Gibney in the car. They must have talked about something, she thought, and she must have thanked her for driving her home. Or perhaps she had slept in the car; the journey was blank; she had no idea what route they had taken home.

  She went into the back room and sat in her armchair and slept, woken only by an insistent banging at the front door. When she checked the time, she saw that it was only eleven o’clock so it could not be Conor or Fiona. And then she remembered that they had a key anyway. When she went to answer the door she heard a voice calling her name and recognised Dr. Cudigan.

  “Oh, thank God,” he said. “I was going to get the fire brigade. I got an urgent message from Peggy Gibney. She phoned all over town looking for me. She phoned Sister Thomas in St. John of God, and she found me. There’s an old man very sick in there.”

  She brought him into the front room and told him that she could not sleep.

  “It happens to us all,” he said. “We all need less sleep as we get older.”

  “I have not slept at all,” she said.

  “For how long?”

  “I told you. It’s eight days since I started on those other pills.”

  “I could prescribe sleeping-pills for you, but I don’t like doing it. Have you tried giving up tea and coffee?”

  A surge of anger came over her.

  “I am really at my wits’ end,” she said. She wondered if Dr. Cudigan treated his female patients in a different way to his male patients.

  “Peggy Gibney led poor Sister Thomas to believe that you were at death’s door. I’ll have to find her now and tell her that you are in one piece.”

  “I can’t sleep,” she said.

  “I’ll give you a prescription for sleeping-pills. One pill will knock you out for five or six hours. Don’t stay on them for too long, or you’ll get used to them, and don’t drive when you’re taking them, or maybe just slowly around the town, but don’t tell anyone I said that. And come over and see me in about a week and we’ll check how you are getting on. Don’t take a pill until tonight and try and stay awake if you can until then.”

  “And should I go on taking the painkillers?”

  “Until I see you next week.”

  She was almost going to remind him that he had told her that she could not take both.

  “You’re very good to come up,” she said.

  “Sister Thomas told me that they do an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament every day at three o’clock and she goes into the nuns’ chapel and she prays for you every day. She’s the holiest of them all, I think. And she went out and found me today when Peggy Gibney phoned her.”

  “Peggy Gibney,” Nora said and sighed.

  “I hear she sits in that house being waited on hand and foot,” Dr. Cudigan said. “Women have it very easy.”

  “It was nice of her to phone,” Nora said.

  Dr. Cudigan gave her the prescription and left.

  When Fiona and Conor came in, she did not tell them that she had come home early from work. She drank a cup of coffee in the kitchen and this gave her enough energy so she could talk as though there was nothing wrong. As Fiona was going back to school, she handed her the prescription and asked her if she would get the pills in Kelly’s on the way home.

  “When did you get the prescription?” Fiona asked her.

  “Dr. Cudigan sent it over to Gibney’s,” she said.

  “Are you all right? You started saying something and then you stopped.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just the pills have me a bit groggy.”

  “And what’s the prescription for?”

  “It’s for sleeping-pills,” she said. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

  When they had gone, she went back to her armchair. She could feel her heart racing and she was having difficulty breathing. It occurred to her that putting on some music might soothe her. She stood up and crossed the room and flicked through the records, but none of them was what she wanted, they were too distant and loud and full of their own passions, but when she found the Archduke Trio she looked at the jacket sleeve again and thought that even if the music made no difference she could dream of being young, as the players were, and free. If she listened carefully, she thought, and followed each note of the cello as though she were playing it, the music might distract her and keep her awake.

  The notes the cello played caused her to sit up almost involuntarily. The players were moving towards a melody but hinting at it and then resisting. She loved the groaning sound the cello made. A few times, when her mind wandered, she forced it back again, to listen to every note, every suggestion of the melody. She smiled when they played it out bravely before letting in the sadness, the hesitancy.

  When the slow movement began, she noticed that she was struggling for breath every few seconds. She closed her eyes and began to shiver. It felt much colder in the room and she wondered if she should light a fire. She decided not to move, to sit and listen, to follow the deep tones of the cello.

  It was when the slow movement swung into the faster movement, as though it had been going there all along, and the music became almost joyous, that she heard a noise upstairs. She went across the room quietly and opened the door, hardly making a sound. She listened. Something moved upstairs; someone was moving a piece of furniture. No one could be upstairs, she was certain. She had seen Fiona and Conor going out and they could not have returned without her hearing.

  A sound came again, louder. She thought that maybe she should go next door and see if the O’Connors were there, and if Tom would come in with her to see what the noise upstairs was. She made sure that the front door was locked. She checked the back door too. There was silence for a while, but it was broken as the noise came again, and louder, of furniture being pulled across the floor. She went quickly up the stairs, calling out.

  “Who is it? Who is there?”

  Her bedroom door was closed. She usually left it open when she was not inside. She listened again. A sound came. Suddenly, she winced in pain and lifted her hand up to look. She had driven the fingernails in so hard that there was blood on the palm of her hand. When she heard the noise now, it was more like a voice. She opened the door of the bedroom.

  “Maurice!” she called out.

  He was sitting in the rocking chair by the window, facing her.

  “Maurice,” she whispered.

  He was wearing the sports coat with green and blue flecks that they had bought in Funges in Gorey, and grey slacks and a grey shirt and a grey tie. He smiled for a moment as she pushed the door closed with her back. He was like he had been before he got sick.

  “Maurice, can you speak? Can you say something?”

  He gave her the shy smile he had, curling his lip.

  “The music’s sad,” he whispered.

  “Yes, the music is sad,” she said. “But not always.”

  “Sister Thomas,” he said. His voice was fainter now.

  “Yes, she prays for us every day. She found me on the strand at Ballyvaloo.”

  He nodded.

  “I felt you were there, but not for long. That’s the only time.”

  “I know.”

  His voice was softer than she had ever heard it.

  “Your voice,” she said and smiled, “has changed.”

  He looked at her sadly as if to say that there was no adequate reply he could make.

  “Maurice, can you stay a while?”

  He shifted then and his presence was less complete, his down-turned face more blurred and even the colours on the jacket less vivid to her.

  “Are you . . . ?” she began. “I mean, is there anything . . . ?”

  He shrugged and almost smiled. />
  “No,” he whispered. “No.”

  “Will we be all right? I don’t know if we will be all right.”

  He did not reply.

  “Will Fiona be all right?”

  “Yes, she will.”

  “And Aine, will she be all right?”

  He nodded.

  “And Donal?”

  “Yes, Donal.”

  “And Conor?”

  He lowered his head and seemed not to hear her.

  “Maurice, will Conor be all right?”

  His eyes appeared to have filled with tears.

  “Maurice, I need you to answer. Will Conor be all right?”

  “Don’t ask,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and faltering. “Don’t ask.”

  When she edged towards him, he put his hands out, indicating that she should not move closer.

  “Did you know . . . ?” she began.

  “Yes, yes,” he said.

  “It was only when you were sick I knew—”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “And did you ever regret . . . ?”

  “Regret?” he asked, his voice louder.

  “Us?”

  “No, no.”

  He smiled again, and then the expression on his face was puzzled.

  “Maurice, is there something else?”

  “The other one. There is one other,” he said.

  “You mean Jim?”

  “No.”

  “Margaret?”

  “No.”

  “Who?”

  “The other one.”

  “There is no other one.”

  “There is.”

  “Maurice, give me a name. There is no other one.”

  He covered his face with his hands. She watched him; he was in pain. Then he looked at her. He seemed ready to smile again, but he did not smile.