Araby

by GRETTA MULROONEY

  She lapsed into a silence, staring to her side. Dermot reached up and switched the hospital radio on.

  ‘Have a bit of music, it cheers the place up.’

  We sat, listening to a pop song. I found it grating, unnecessary. She seemed unaware of it.

  ‘Will ye get me some grapefruit juice from the shop below?’ she asked me.

  I left them to go and buy it. While I was at the shop I picked up an English paper, thinking that they would like some time alone. Dermot had to fly back in forty-eight hours. I sat on a window ledge, reading. There was an obituary for a Hollywood star who had died, but when I saw that it had been of cancer I turned the page. My parents had bought Irish papers in London; the Cork Examiner, the Dungarvan Herald, Ireland’s Own. My mother would turn to the back pages of the Cork Examiner, immediately looking to see who had died. That was the only section that interested her. She spent hours mulling over the columns, jabbing her finger at well-known names, wondering aloud about others who she thought she remembered, speculating about causes of death; ‘Wasn’t he the fella who lived up around Brian’s Bridge and had the wife who fell into the quarry; she had every bone in her body crushed and was the cousin of the one who sold the mother’s horse to the tinkers. I wonder, did he die of a thrombosis like his ould one?’ Once she saw the name of her meanest employer, the one from whom she’d stolen the marmalade, and gave a crow of laughter, saying she hoped she’d gone to the hot place and was being tormented by divils with pokers.

  She was attracted by death, the ways in which people met it and the forms of their funerals. She sometimes attended the funeral masses and burials of people she had barely known or not known at all, watching out for the services advertised in the parishes around us. She would slip into the back of the church, attaching herself to the cortège afterwards. No one ever questioned her, probably because she played the part of the grieving mourner so well. She had a second-hand funeral outfit, a swanky D. H. Evans black suit, plain with a purple trim on the collar. Her head was covered by a black lace mantilla which imparted a vague look of celebrity; she would keep it bowed reverently, rosary beads twined in her fingers.

  On one occasion when she was lured further afield, to Twickenham, she took me with her; it must have been a school holiday. She had read a newspaper report about a lonely old woman, originally a native of Galway, she was in her late eighties and had been murdered in her bed for the two hundred pounds she kept under the mattress. The local priest was interviewed, expressing his shock, regret, etc; Mary Quinlan had had no family in England and had never been married. My mother deduced correctly that Mary would have few to mourn her passing and decided that she had a duty to bolster the numbers. She donned her D. H. Evans outfit, dressed me in a black Little Lord Fauntleroy jacket from Sue Ryder and we embarked on a long bus journey. There were four mourners: us, the priest and an altar boy. I wondered if Mary Quinlan had been a recluse or a horrible woman no one liked. It was the first funeral I’d been to and I found it disappointing; no choir, no music, no pomp and ceremony, just the priest’s droning voice, the lacklustre warbling of the altar boy and a cheap-looking coffin. I pictured the figure in there. I knew that she had been stabbed to death and I tried to puzzle out if the body would still be bleeding, but decided that it couldn’t be because there were no red stains on the coffin. My mother belted out the responses, her rosary beads clicking ten to the dozen, determined to give Mary a decent send-off. The undertaker let us ride to the cemetery behind the hearse, assuming that we were kin. I was impressed with the size of the car and its gleaming bodywork. After the interment the priest enquired how we were related to the deceased and when my mother said oh not at all, he’d got the wrong end of the stick entirely; we weren’t family, just concerned Catholics, he looked taken aback, as if he’d been conned.

  I folded my paper and returned to the ward. Dermot was standing outside in the corridor, puffing at a cigarette and blowing the smoke out of an open window. In between puffs he concealed the cigarette in the hollow of his hand, turning the fingers inwards. He gave me a jaundiced look as I approached and grimaced, jerking a thumb in my mother’s direction.

  ‘She got rid of you on purpose so she could work on me,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I got the lot; you forced her in here, she didn’t want to be in hospital, I’ve got to help her get out. She wants to go home right now. I’m not to tell you because you’ll try to stop me.’

  Oh God, I thought, I can’t face this. Will she ever lay off blackmailing people? Could she not stop now she’s dying? I took my jumper off and loosened the collar of my shirt.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘What could I say? She started crying on me. She was trying to climb out of bed; a nurse had to help me get her back in. I ran out in the end, couldn’t take it. What should I do?’

  I found myself thinking; you should know what to do, you’re the eldest, you should be shouldering the responsibility.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. Let me think.’ I walked up and down, wishing suddenly that I smoked. ‘Let’s go in and talk to her together.’

  He shrugged. ‘Okay, but she’ll be impossible.’

  There were two women, other patients, at her bedside, offering her tissues and patting her hands.

  ‘Sure stop now, pet,’ one was saying, ‘you’ll only make things worse.’

  My mother took a deep breath and bellowed with an alarming strength:

  ‘Please, please God, let me out of here!’

  When the women saw us they got up and pattered away. One of them started crying. My mother slid down in the bed, tears on her cheeks. Seeing us together, she knew that Dermot had told me.

  He sat down. I stood, the bully who had imposed his will, holding the newspaper and grapefruit juice.

  ‘You shouldn’t tell Dermot I forced you in here,’ I said. ‘He’s come a long way and you’re not being fair to him.’

  ‘The docs have got to find out what’s up,’ Dermot said.

  ‘Ye’re like a pair of vultures, waiting to pick at me carcass.’ She reached out for Dermot’s hand. ‘I want to be alone with me eldest son,’ she said plaintively, grasping at him and throwing me a venomous look.

  I blinked. He won’t be here to look after you when you get home, I wanted to tell her; he wasn’t here to wash your hair and fetch you a bottle for your feet.

  I nodded. ‘I’ll meet you downstairs,’ I told him and turned away.

  The nurse who had helped with the hot-water bottle was at the nursing station, filling out charts. She gave me a sympathetic smile and picked up a file.

  ‘I’m glad I caught you,’ she said. ‘The doctor wanted me to ask you; has your mother ever had an alcohol problem?’

  ‘Alcohol?’ I repeated stupidly.

  ‘Yes. Her liver seems to be in a bad way; we just wondered …’

  ‘No, no. She doesn’t drink, never has.’

  The nurse made a note. ‘Thanks.’ She made a little gesture with her pen. ‘Your mother’s a bit worked up today. We had trouble persuading her to go for the biopsy, she wanted to get off the trolley.’

  I pictured her, fighting them, frightened of the tests to come. All her life she had flirted with medicine and now the reality was daunting. I wanted to cry for her and spit rage at her. I couldn’t speak to the nurse whose kind eyes were too much to bear. I hurried away and walked around the outskirts of the hospital. Leaves were drifting and forming little mounds. The sharpness of November air scratched my cheeks.

  Sometimes, in the autumn, my mother used to take me to Hampstead Heath; we’d kick through the leaves and feed the squirrels, then she’d say that we’d go and have a gander at Kenwood House, see what the toffs had on show today. I would laugh as she mimicked someone’s walk in front of us, but I was always holding part of myself in reserve in case the person turned around accusingly and she squared up to them, asking what were they gorming at and didn’t they have anything better to do?
She had been my entertainer and my persecutor.

  Alcohol! I thought, and laughed. My mother had one glass of sherry every Christmas which she drank with her little finger cocked, just the way she’d seen it done in the big houses. In Tottenham she used to share this rare treat with Miss Diamond, the elderly spinster lady who lived next door to us. Miss Diamond fascinated me because she had a whiskery chin and whistled as she talked. My mother made Miss Diamond her Christmas dinner; it was laid out on the best china and delivered next door by my father on a tray with a snowy napkin. Then, at ten to three Miss Diamond’s tentative knock would be heard at the front door; my mother would open it and Miss Diamond’s tray would appear, the china and cutlery washed and dried, followed by the lady herself. She and my mother would sit in armchairs, their sherry poised, and wait for the Queen’s Christmas message which they listened to with appreciative murmurs. Every year I would sit in the background, waiting with mounting excitement to mouth the words that were always exchanged at the end of the broadcast; my mother would turn to Miss Diamond and say, ‘Hasn’t she a lovely voice, Miss Diamond,’ and Miss Diamond would reply in her broad cockney accent, ‘Yais, Mrs Keenan!’ I would clutch my over-full stomach in silent laughter and succumb to hiccups.

  Miss Diamond, who smelled of mouse droppings and tinned peas would then pass her Christmas present for us to my mother and my mother would return with our gift. Miss Diamond’s offering to us was always a painting, executed by herself in dark, forbidding colours, of a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers. Her initials, B. D., featured in yellow like a trace of egg yolk in the bottom right-hand corner. We always gave her embroidered handkerchiefs. The paintings were stacked year after year in the top of the airing cupboard until there must have been at least twenty of them up there. They fell on my father’s head one day when he was rootling for a towel and he said he was lucky he’d kept his brain and why did we have to hang on to these bloody yokes, they looked like dead things and the colours were enough to give you the screaming hab-dabs. My mother said that we should keep them in case Miss Diamond became a famous artist; then we’d be on to a fortune and laughing all the way to the bank.

  I turned for the car. Dermot was walking slowly from the building, holding his coat, head bent to catch the flame from his lighter.

  ‘Phew,’ he said, ‘that was something. I persuaded her to stay until they got the biopsy result.’ He looked like a man who’d been through ten rounds in the ring.

  ‘When did you say you’d be in again?’

  ‘In the morning, then in the evening. I didn’t tell her yet that I’m flying back the day after tomorrow. Better not upset her too much.’

  ‘I’ll let you and Dad visit tomorrow. I think it’s best if I stay away for a bit.’

  He nodded and tipped ash on to the grass. ‘That hospital’s a dump.’

  I didn’t reply; it seemed average to good to me.

  ‘If there’s any costs for nurses, things like that when she comes home, let me know,’ he said, starting the car. ‘Will you be around for the duration?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve arranged for my job to be covered.’

  Dermot stared at the road. ‘She’s going, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. She’s going.’

  And like all the journeys I’d made with her, this one was fraught, unpredictable and subject to swift changes.

  Raising the Banner

  War was waged between my mother and her arch-enemy Assumpta Flanagan for over twenty years. The battle terrain moved according to opportunities presented and quick reflexes were needed to maximize combat capabilities. Guerrilla tactics with unexpected ambushes were deployed; there were skirmishes, flank attacks, sabotage, tactical withdrawals and the occasional pitched battle.

  Mrs Flanagan was a skeletally thin, dried-up-looking woman who had had her womb removed by mistake. It happened in the days before people had the confidence to sue for medical negligence; the experience had left her embittered and with a pinched expression that my mother described as looking as if she had a lemon stuck in her gob. Her husband was a small ratty-looking man with a delicate chest and permanently greasy hair who my mother referred to as the oily gom. When I had a Saturday job in the chemist’s, he came in regularly for cough drops and Brylcreem but we were too embarrassed to acknowledge each other because we were trapped in the no man’s land between campaigns.

  Although Assumpta and my mother knew each other from church, they had first sniffed the scent of mutual enmity when they met in the factory where they worked as part-time cleaners. It was one of the many fleeting jobs my mother tried out, hoarding the money for her shopping jaunts.

  The incident which had triggered the first clash was buried in the mists of time; something about a missing mop and bucket seemed to lie at the bottom of it. My mother had steamed home, claiming that that ould Flanagan jade had held her up in her work, bad cess to her, and the boss had ticked her off for not finishing an office floor. Further despatches were delivered about ripped dusters, fecked polish, banjaxed brushes and adulterated detergent.

  I was once taken along to the factory for an evening sentry shift so that I could stand guard over my mother’s locker; she had decided to become pro-active, declaring, ‘’Tis too late to sharpen the sword when the drum beats for battle,’ to a startled night-watchman. There were six cleaners; they had a floor each and their own equipment. My mother posted me by the door of the cleaners’ room with my orders: ‘If that ould one comes near ye, holler. Tell her if she touches me things I’ll melt her into an ointment.’ I hovered by the grey steel lockers, reading The Dandy and twitching nervously every time I heard a footstep. I half-expected Mrs Flanagan to creep up and chloroform me, or perhaps send an agent to lure me away under false pretences. My imagination was fired by the empty feel of the building and the odd faint echo of a dragging bucket or vacuum cleaner. It raced into overdrive and I envisaged being taken hostage, secured with dusters and held to ransom. Every quarter of an hour, my mother would come puffing up the corridor to ask if I’d seen anything, but I had nothing to report. She would then blow some cooling air down the front of her dress and head off, warning me to stay sharp and keep my eyes peeled. I was disappointed that nothing had happened so I took a blue crayon from my pocket and made a little mark on the door of Mrs Flanagan’s locker, but it wasn’t noticed. When she saw me at the end of her shift Mrs Flanagan merely sniffed and made some comment about grown-ups using children to do their dirty work.

  The culmination of the factory campaign came with the incident of the shoe marks. Someone had sabotaged Assumpta’s clean toilet by coating a shoe sole with black polish and pressing it down on the floor tiles and up the wall by the wash basins. The crime wasn’t discovered until the following morning and questions were asked at the beginning of the next evening shift.

  My father and I were having a quiet leisurely tea when my mother stormed in, wrestling off her apron and the scarf she wore over her hair à la Ena Sharpies. As she reported it, the Flanagan one had burst into tears and accused her, saying words that my mother couldn’t possibly repeat but that she wouldn’t have expected a Catholic woman to know. (She touched the edge of the crucifix on the wall as she mentioned this.) My mother, who was obviously tiring of both the job and that particular field of combat, had handed in her notice, saying grandly that she didn’t have to listen to such filth; sure didn’t she have a husband to support her, she had no need to go out to work at all and she’d only done it for a bit of pin money.

  My father and I were relieved, hoping that the lull in hostilities might be a long one. But an hour later Mr Flanagan rapped on the door. My mother saw him through the curtain and vanished to the bathroom, leaving my father to tighten his braces and answer the knock. I hung around at the bottom of the stairs, listening and chewing my nails.

  There was a nervous coughing. ‘Ah, Mr Keenan, ain’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m Des Flanagan. Listen, mate, can’t you control that Mrs o
’ yours?’

  ‘Now, wait a minute …’ my father started, but Mr Flanagan had obviously built himself up to the confrontation and was eager to say his piece.

  ‘I dunno wot’s up wiv your Mrs but she’s aht of order, mate; off ‘er bleedin’ rocker if you arsk me. She’s got my Mrs in a right old state and it’s not on, mate, just not on. It’s gotta stop or I tell ya, I’ll end up in the bleedin’ nut ’ouse.’

  I had the feeling that my father might like to join him there. He glanced behind to check that my mother was still upstairs and stepped forwards, pulling the door to so that I had to strain to hear.

  ‘Look, I don’t know what’s been going on but why don’t we both try to calm our women folk down?’

  ‘Easier said than done, mate,’ said Mr Flanagan, rubbing his chest.

  ‘You talk to your Mrs and I’ll have a word with mine. See if we can’t get them to back off.’ Then my father engaged in a crafty psychological ploy; ‘women, eh!’ he said knowingly, drawing Mr Flanagan into the male brotherhood; ‘what makes them tick, who can tell?’

  Mr Flanagan was hooked. ‘Don’t tell me abaht it!’ he groaned. ‘What would you do wiv ’em?’

  ‘Ah, the age-old conundrum. Sure they’re a mystery.’

  ‘Certainly are.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Yeah, okay. Honest though, mate, I can’t take much more. She’s at ‘ome in tears. Couldn’t even tell me wot it’s abaht this time. D’you know?’

  ‘Shoe marks in the toilet.’

  ‘Oh. Right. You won’t let me dahn?’

  ‘I’ll see to it once, you know, once she’s calmer.’

  Mr Flanagan coughed his way to the gate. My father closed the door and slumped against the hall wall, rubbing his forehead. He saw me and shook his head.

  ‘Your mother,’ he told me in a resigned voice, ‘could eat me for breakfast, dinner and tea and start on Flanagan for supper.’

  He took himself off to the garden and tidied sweet peas. My mother came down for a snack, looking haughty, and reminded him that he needed to cut back the wisteria. She spread fish paste on toast and watched him through the window.