Edna O'Brien

by In the Forest (epub)

  ‘I would if I had to ... I nearly killed my granny. My voices were telling me, egging me on, “do her do her”.’

  ‘What voices?’

  ‘Big tall man with horns . .. over in England after I got out of jail I went to my cousin’s ... he wanted me to pick up a carving knife and cut my cousin Anthony up in bits . . .I went into the toilet to fool him ... I counted . . . I counted to a hundred.’

  ‘Come on ... that’s what we’ll do ... we’ll count to a hundred,’ she says standing again. She starts counting, as if she is on a stage, then Maddie joins in and so does he, a rousing trio, a choir of voices, ringing out in the emptiness of the vast, drowsing, unheeding, noonday wood. When they have reached several hundred they are panting and he stops and leans against a tree, a baleful look on his face. She knows she has broken through to him, to that human kernel in him and as she believes, in all mankind. Even his eyes seem less threatening, bewilderment in them. He is trembling and she thinks that the fear which had run in her blood and run in her thinking runs in him too and that it is a matter now of reaching to the child in him, the child cut off from the outraged youth.

  ‘I was in the fear zone back there,’ he says wiping the sweat from his face, from his palms, with a filthy handkerchief.

  ‘We were all in the fear zone back there . . . but we’re better now.’

  ‘I was seeing hazes, I was cracking up,’ he says and looking at the sky, laughs, says, ‘Doctor cunt rode his horse down the mountain in the snow, got a bag of messages and hung them on the side of the saddle . . . you don’t believe me, do you?’

  ‘I do believe you.’

  ‘He wanted attention. Do you want attention.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Near thing with my cousin Anthony . . .’

  ‘You’re fine now,’ she says gently.

  ‘Send that kid tobogganing,’ he says, the toe of his boot squashing hers.

  ‘There’s nothing for him to toboggan on and anyhow he’s exhausted.’

  He draws her towards him, an urgency in his voice: ‘We really didn’t know, did we, how good it could be . . . them times rolling around up here in the leaves and the muck . . . knackered . . . stuffing the food into my mouth like a mother . . . like a mother. I must admit I don’t often fall in love but you got under my skin . . . animal magnetism.’

  ‘Tell you what . . . let’s go back to the town and I’ll buy you a pint.’

  ‘What do you teach them kids in that school?’ ‘Games. Rhymes.’

  ‘Up came the blackbird and bit off her nose,’ he says. ‘One two three four five, once I caught a fish alive. Six seven eight nine ten, then I let it go again,’ Maddie pipes up to surpass him.

  ‘Bogger . . . behave yourself whilst here.’

  ‘Darling, tell him the poem you learnt ... go on,’ she says, coaxing Maddie, trying to mediate. Maddie mutters it and she repeats it with a studied calm.

  I went out into the hazel wood

  because a fire was in my head

  and cut and peeled a hazel wand

  and tied a berry to a thread.

  ‘I’d like to learn that . . . the teacher learnt us a story about a princess that pricked her finger on a spinning wheel and was put away and the prince had to come and beat down the brambles to rescue her.’

  ‘We have that story . . . we’ll loan it to you when we get back.’

  ‘Who says we’re going back?’

  ‘I do, because I’m the boss . . . I’m the mother.’

  ‘OK . . . free kick to you’ and he goes into peals of laughter and Maddie stares at him, quite still, still and white like a little snowman.

  ‘That Swedish cow in your school is after me ... said the name of the rowanberries in her lingo . . . ever tell you about my first kiss . . . she bought me a charm . . . raving slut . . . hope you’re not going to ask me to dance.’

  ‘Not on this rough ground, nobody could dance here.’

  ‘That’s one of the things I missed out on, dancing and scuba diving. You go through them jail gates and you’re gutted. They drill a hole in you. Take your balls. I bullshitted them. Couldn’t unmask me. Extremely attractive nurse on wing said I was malingering. My grimace was not the prodoma of genuine psychosis. They studied my laugh, my grimace. Jack Pallance came by, stole it for Shane . . . never paid me a penny.’

  ‘Do you get help now that you’re . . . free.’

  ‘Help. Horse shit. I was misdiagnosed ... I got my mind back second day after I was released.’

  ‘I worked with disabled children up in Dublin . . . maybe I could advise you as to where . . .’

  ‘Who the fuck is talking about disabled children. I’m a man. You wanna watch your language lady, you could be prodomaed for that.’

  ‘I thought we were friends . . .’

  ‘We are ... I have a picture of you on my wall . . . next to a picture of my gun.’

  ‘What’s all this fascination with guns?’

  ‘You want to hear a secret?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘In the street the men watch you . . . want you . . . your honey pot.’

  ‘I’m a mother first and foremost . . . my little boy is closer to me than anyone in the world. He was born premature ... I was on a holiday with my sister Cassandra and the pains began and we thought it was indigestion . . . there we were walking along one of the canals in Amsterdam and I’m doubled over with pain and my sister starts waving a white handkerchief at the skipper of one of the ships and he stops and takes us in . . . my little boy came out in a big whoosh on the floor of a big ship, couldn’t wait to come into the world, could you?’ and she massages Maddie’s scalp under the mop of damp sweating hair.

  ‘I get very low and lonely . . . people leave out bread and milk for me the way they would for a dog.’

  ‘Where do you stay?’

  ‘In the area . . . mostly up here ... I hid here as a kid.’

  ‘What’s your real name?’

  ‘Mich . . . short for Michen.’

  ‘Michen, why don’t we drive over to your granny, like we said.’

  ‘Boom boom boom,’ he says, pointing the rifle alternately at them, at the latticed leaves, telling some imaginary gang to keep out, verboten, piss off.

  ‘You’re all right . . . you’re all right . . . they’re just voices . . . they’re just in your head.’

  ‘Fuck them . . . you and me will go and take that nanny goat out of her misery . . . broke her hind leg. I’ll let the kid pull the trigger . . .’

  ‘You will not.’

  ‘It’s along here,’ he says pointing to a trail. ‘I have a pet fox as well ... a dog fox, he has balls ... he only comes out at dusk.’

  ‘I thought we were going to Loughrea.’

  ‘This is on the way home.’

  ‘Horne, Maddie . . . home on the range . . .’ She is singing snatches of different songs, jumbling them together, knowing it is crazy singing but it is to get through the next minute to the next, to keep O’Kane on the last rafter of sanity.

  They come to a disused lime kiln and he stands and whistles. The goat has gone, only a twist of brown frayed rope, evidence of its being there. In a slant of sunshine, a crop of tiny toadstools, their fawn mantles trembling like little globes and a white flowering weed, a creamy lacework threading through the flaked and broken stone. Idiotically she breaks off a stern, it has a sickly, sweet smell, and puts it in her pocket as a keepsake.

  He runs back and forth whistling for his pet fox, ogling it. Ruben . . . Ruben.

  Back at home, Birdie feels that bit uneasy, deciding she should jot down what she saw in case she is ever questioned.

  I am a postwoman by occupation and I live alone. I am responsible for delivering the post in a van owned by An Post in an area which includes a radius of approximately one hundred miles. Much of it is very remote and includes a vast area of forest and mountain. I was sitting in the van which I had parked under the palm trees across the road from the post office when I
saw a light coloured car come round the corner. It could be called cream or beige but certainly not white. As it passed just beside me I had full view of the interior of the car. The driver was Eileen Ryan and she did not look towards me. It seemed to me that she might be restrained from the side to prevent her looking in my direction. It reminded me of someone having a crick in her neck. I thought it strange that she didn’t pull over for post, sometimes she would pull up when she met me and ask if I had post for her. The look on her face was one of anguish, of pain. Her hair seemed to be more tossed than usual. There was something on the front passenger seat, it would seem to be a child. There was a huge bulk in the rear seat. This bulk was a greeny canvas colour. This bulk did not show its face.

  Her car swerved to my side of the road after passing me and then raced up and seemed to move faster.

  When the car swerved the person in the rear seat was visible to me. I realised it was Michen O’Kane, him they call the Kinderschreck. He had a tight haircut and a new moustache. I know him since his mother died. From a week after her death until a short time before his father remarried the whole family including his father, himself and his sister came to my house five days a week for an evening meal. I am not related to the family. As a devout Christian it is my duty to look after someone in need. When he got into trouble at first and was later released from some reformatory I heard he was hungry and living rough. I used to leave milk and biscuits on a gate pier. After a few weeks I heard that he was caught again for something and was put away again.

  As time went on I had no contact much with him and for the first time in two years saw him last Easter Tuesday. I was going to deliver post when he appeared from behind a tree at Derrygoolin Bridge and waved me down. He told me he was starving and hadn’t eaten for two days. I felt pity for him. He said he had a few bob in his pocket and asked if I would get him food. I said I would pay for it myself He said he would hide there and meet me on my return. I bought biscuits, sweets, buns and oranges. He had asked for these items of food as he had no knife to cut bread or make a sandwich with. He said not to tell anybody that I’d seen him and said, ‘I know I can trust you . . . you were good to me as a child.’ Most likely he thumbed a lift from the woman, who may be moving away, as people are always coming and going in this neighbourhood nowadays, not like the old times, the decent times.

  He is lying on his belly, the gun cradled to his chest, pressing his nose into the earth, shreds of clay at the end of his nostrils, his eyes black-looking as he stares into the distance.

  ‘Let’s go to Loughrea,’ she says for the umpteenth time, her voice weak and hoarse.

  ‘Can we?’ he says excited like someone just coming awake.

  ‘We must. This little boy is dropping and he’s hungry.’

  ‘Hungry’ and he looks at Maddie as if he had been oblivious of him all along. From his pocket he pulls out a few loose biscuits. They are chocolate coated with a white putty filling. They taste stale and musty but they eat them out of duty.

  ‘I took rat poison once ... I bit my stitches . . . reason for refusing food, wants to die ... denied martyr status . .. fuck them. Not wired are you?’

  ‘No . .. I’m not wired . . . it’s just that it’s all been a bit of a shock for Maddie.’

  ‘He and me get on fine . . . I’m OK with him . . . I’m cool,’ he says, scuffing Maddie’s hair.

  ‘As I told you he has to take medicine every four hours . . . and we haven’t got it with us.’

  ‘He’ll have it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t hurt a child,’ she says.

  ‘Only an animal would hurt a child,’ he says and seeing there is feeling in him, way inside him, she weakens and suddenly she is crying, her head on her lap, tears streaming into her hair, onto her clothes, saying ‘sorry sorry’ and Maddie patting her in dismay. She had not shown her weakness before, not since morning, since the drive, passing the ponies, the man at the gate, taking the main road and him telling her she was a fuck bitch and a messer and having to reverse. She had trembled but she had not cried, staring out at the wasteland of tree stumps and charred branches and the realisation that something drastic had commenced.

  ‘They’re at me again,’ he says and he plugs both ears with his fingers and runs around the trees, hitting them and yelling at his assailants.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she says going up to him. ‘He’s whispering ... so as no one can hear.’ ‘Whispering what?’

  ‘He’s not pleased with me.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He smiles when he’s pleased . . . but he’s not smiling now . . . he’s fuming ... he says we can’t turn back.’ ‘Tell him that we will give him a reward ... a big reward.’

  ‘Ssh,’ he says and shuts his eyes to listen.

  She kneels and prays, not the known prayers, an interceding to God, each word plucked, eked, from the pit of her being and then he turns, shakes his head and picks up the gun - ‘If it was up to me I would turn back.’

  ‘Who is it up to?’

  ‘My master.’

  ‘I beg you ... I am at your mercy and I am begging you,’ she says as if she is still praying, but he hustles her on.

  They are moving again, crawling through a tunnel, dark within dark, scrambling on their knees, her breathing jerky, Maddie’s face burning and the rest of him quivering.

  ‘He hasn’t a pet fox,’ he whispers to her.

  ‘No, but don’t let on.’

  ‘Redhead,’ O’Kane calls as he emerges and she knows by the suggestiveness in his voice that he wants her alone.

  She takes Maddie across to where there is a trough of muddy water, with bits of broken stick and picking them up she says - ‘Look you can play boats.’

  ‘They’re not boats.’

  ‘Just pretend ... just be a champ for a little while more.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘I know. When we go home I’ll make you a big pan of chips.’

  ‘I don’t want chips,’ he says querulously, vexed with her because she is leaving him alone. ‘I don’t love you . . . I don’t love you anymore.’

  Crossing back she sees O’Kane haul something cumbersome from a grove of young saplings, drag it, then prop it up for her to see. It is a glass casket with the figure of the Virgin Mary, such as she has seen on roadside shrines.

  ‘That’s Our Lady,’ he says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Have you been devoted to Our Lady?’

  ‘When I was young at school.’

  ‘Top woman. Never known to fail. She baked me a fruitcake at Christmas.’

  ‘So you’re devoted to her.’

  ‘Oh she’s the business’ and he runs his hand in the folds of her plastered body and then throws her aside -‘Fuck you Our Lady.’

  Next he takes out a bunch of withered lilies and scatters them on the ground, then a crumpled green dress, a scarf, an umbrella, a large white comb and a cassette with a tangled tape spilling out of it. He unfolds the dress and holds it up in front of her, the creased sleeves dangling down, as he watches for her approval. ‘You like it.’

  ‘It’s very nice.’

  ‘When it comes to fashion I know my stuff . . . put it on.’

  ‘I won’t put it on now . . . I’ll do it later.’

  ‘You’re getting married in it.’

  ‘Ah no,’ she says, over-gently.

  ‘Let your hair down,’ he says and hurriedly, she starts to unplait it, to keep his hands off her.

  ‘To your bum,’ he says and runs the comb through it, breaking the teeth in his frenziedness.

  ‘Am I fat? Am I ugly?’ he asks.

  ‘No . . . you’re not.’

  ‘Running around your kitchen naked . . . there’s man eating maggots in that swamp near there . . . gagging for women . . . Monaghan fella told me ... nasty customer . . . schizo . . . high risk . . . high high risk ... so how you do feel about the future?’

  ‘Hopeful,’ she says. When she sees him take
out the wedding ring she almost screams. It is thin with a brassy lustre and she makes a fist as he tries to put it on.

  ‘I have a ring from the father of my child ... I can’t have two rings . . . that’s bigamy . . . keep it for your own . . . sweetheart.’

  ‘Sweetheart shit. Why do I go to this trouble . . . haul this stuff up ... this gear . . . flowers . . . music . . . beef or salmon madam . . . you know what I’m saying.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then say yes.’

  ‘Look I’m not who you think I am . . . you’re confused . . . you’re confusing me, with others . . . your mind is in a ferment.’

  ‘Are you on my wavelength, are you on my ECG?’

  ‘Not completely.’

  ‘I’m talking to you Goatgirl.’

  ‘I know I know.’

  ‘Tell me what that means, yes or no?’

  ‘I can’t,’ she says and thinking it might pacify him she takes the bit of flowering weed from her pocket and offers it to him.

  ‘Cunt . .. you don’t give a shit about me . . . didn’t even come to my birthday. Go. Just go.’

  She picks her steps nervously but unerringly to where Maddie is, lifts his hands out of the muddy water and takes him in her arms. She starts to run. The ground feels light, like it is on springs and her head terrifically calm, as she begins to recall different landmarks, the tunnel, the toadstools, an old sock, the churned-up roots of the fallen tree and the long steep path that led from the entrance.

  He has almost caught up with them. He calls furiously, like some demented general egged on by the heat of battle. It could be heard for miles, it must be heard for miles.

  She turns, then Maddie turns. ‘He’s going to shoot Eily,’ Maddie says.

  ‘I won’t let him and I won’t let him shoot you ... I know what to do ... you just hide here and I’ll be back in a minute, minutes.’ She tucks him down, covering his head in a camouflage of pine needles, kisses him, says ‘Not a peep . . . not a peep.’

  A quiet has come over O’Kane, a deathly quiet that seems like deliberation but is not, his jacket on the ground, the rifle on top of it, his sleeves rolled up, the eyes a molten black, absorbing her.

  Motionless, barely breathing, she knows she has come to the rim of horror, but still, still trying to reach the inner crater of his mind she says, ‘Spare me . . . spare me and I will make it up to you.’ But he is not hearing, the grand plan had commenced long before, the grand plan evidenced in the bit of mirror hanging from the tree, the strewn branches over the grid, she the instrument of something outside of herself, iconic, picked from a thousand faces for wanton ritual.