by Sue Orr
Gabriel closed his eyes and tilted his head right back, as though sunning himself. Still he said nothing.
‘I’m right, aren’t I? Gabriel.’ I was crying, still trying to keep my voice down for the sake of the children. ‘I tell you about a boy I used to walk with, and you take yourself straight to the tarts of Earl Street.’
‘Not Earl Street, Gretta,’ he finally said.
‘Where, then?’
‘I don’t know. I walked and walked, then I slept. When I woke up, I walked some more. I can’t tell you where I went, because I don’t know. I have no idea at all.’
‘For three days?’
‘Yes.’
‘All because of the tale of Michael Furey?’
‘Yes, Gretta. All because of the first love of your life. The one you lost.’
‘You’re taking the mick, Gabriel Conroy. Sure, you’re not serious about this.’
‘Serious enough, Gretta,’ he said to me. ‘You said as much to me at the Gresham. You said you were great with him. And then he died.’
‘Yes, I did say that. Exactly that. We were great. At that time. We walked miles together. Him being a lad, and me just a girl. Just children, Gabriel, that’s all we were! You’re not thinking …’
‘I don’t know what to think, Gretta. You were in such a state over the lad …’
‘O, for goodness’ sake. I’d got myself worked up over that silly song, that’s all. The boy died, Gabriel. And if he hadn’t died, do you really think I’d have ended up with him? Me already set to leave for Dublin?’
‘Who knows, Gretta? That’s the point, isn’t it. We will never know.’
‘And so what, Gabriel? Life goes on. We met, you and I, we fell in love, we married, we had two fine children and we had — have — a fine marriage. Are you telling me I shouldn’t have shared the story with you, Gabriel? Because if I’d kept my mouth shut, we’d be having none of this malarkey, would we?’
‘No. I’m glad you told me the story. I’m very, very glad you did.’
WE GOT THROUGH THAT day, and the ones that followed. Don’t ask me how. Tom and Eva were alright — of course they were, I saw to that. They’d received lovely gifts for Christmas and were still having a grand time with them. We sat down to a nice meal and later in the day I suggested we pay a visit to some of the neighbours. I was hoping to lift Gabriel’s spirits with a change of scene. We put on our coats and hats and Gabriel’s splendid European galoshes and we galoshed ourselves around the neighbourhood.
To describe Gabriel as up and down is to do a disservice to all the up-and-down people in the world trying to cheer up. He moped around people’s front rooms, engaging in half conversations, then drifted off as though he had forgotten the topic.
A few people asked him if he was poorly. Yes, I am, he replied, nodding his head slowly, as though pondering the revelation afresh. Yes. Something I picked up in Dublin. And then he’d look my way — not accusingly, not at all like that — more like the look you’d get from a puppy begging for food. Except it wouldn’t be a puppy, it would be an old dog that had given up on life.
At first I nodded and tut-tutted in sympathy. Yes, I said, once. O, the Morkans’ party — there was a chap there, a quite well-known tenor by the name of Mr Bartell D’Arcy, and he had a dreadful cold which stopped him performing and undoubtedly is now spreading itself among everybody who attended …
I was carrying the story off, before remembering that it was Mr D’Arcy who’d sung the problematic song. I dropped that line of explanation.
After a while, though, I got entirely fed up with Gabriel. We’d galoshed on in someone else’s front door and for the umpteenth time demonstrated how the ridiculous guttapercha things worked. Then, just as a drink was being offered, just as we were all beginning to glow with the joy of the season itself, Gabriel remembered that he was irretrievably miserable.
I was recognising the routine by then. Head tilted back, as though he’d just noticed cobwebs in a high corner. A faraway look in his eye. A glance my way. He was the model of patheticness.
I’d had enough of it. While our hosts chatted to Tom and Eva, I skirted the room and took Gabriel’s side. I linked my arm through his, and leaned into him. I smiled, whispering in his ear, ‘Pull yourself together, Gabriel.’
No response.
‘Stop moping,’ I went on, my lips close to his ear. ‘You’re ruining everything.’
I would like to say that he immediately snapped out of the melancholy, stopped being the eejit and took up his usual overbearing ways. O, I would. I would love to tell you that. But he carried on carrying-on, running his fingers through his hair and sighing with total forlorn. I tried pressing his hand in a supportive way, but it made things worse. He turned to me and behind those gilt-rimmed glasses, his delicate and restless eyes (I stole that from ‘The Dead’ — thank you, Mr Joyce, just perfect) filled with tears. And that was him, for the rest of the day.
THE CHRISTMAS PERIOD CAN bring out the worst in people, wouldn’t you agree? All that joy. All the utter loveliness. A few drinks on, the knives come out and it’s stoush time. Old family feuds, new ones festering; they all get an airing around Christmas time. So, we hold our breath, knowing normal life will resume once the new year settles itself down.
Not for us, it didn’t, not that year. I began 1904 with a ghost.
The ghost inhabited the body of my husband. The body functioned, in as much as it got out of bed every morning, cleaned itself, kissed its children on their foreheads and went off to work. It presided over dinner and chastised the children for slovenly table manners and praised them for excellence in other areas. To that extent, the body performed.
The ghost within, however, had settled comfortably. All those little traits in a man that bother you under usual circumstances? Gone. No more pontificating on the importance of literature and Greek mythology. We heard no more about the superiority of Europe over Ireland — in the production of galoshes or any other class of item. The hangdog persona was to be a permanent thing.
January drifted into February. Gabriel moped on. Only at home, mind you — he was too proud to let the wider world see he was miserable over a matter of the heart. The children asked me why their da was sad. I told them he was not feeling quite right. A lovely phrase that, covering the entire spectrum of ailments from a cold to lunacy.
I was not at all sure what to do with him. I tried smothering him with kindness. I would spend hours cajoling him, assuring him that the child Michael Furey had long forfeited his hold on my heart. The whole situation was ridiculous. I could see it. Sure, you can see it. It was only a matter of time, I thought, before Gabriel himself would snap out of it. Meanwhile, I tried my best to maintain some notion of normality around the house.
I MENTIONED HE HAD stopped going on about literature. This is the moment, I suppose, where I should come clean about something. In terms of the whole story, this is where a person would mention it, if they ever planned to.
Gabriel had a little job on the side, over and above the teaching. He reviewed books for The Daily Express, the Dublin newspaper. Those books used to arrive in their brown packaging. Prior to that Christmas, Gabriel would tear the paper off them, like a child opening gifts, fondling them and exclaiming his delight at ownership of them. Then he would polish up his reading spectacles and take on the book-look, as the children called it, before heading up to his study to read and write about them.
After the Christmas party the packages kept coming, but Gabriel stopped opening them. At first there were just a few sitting on the hallway table, but the pile grew. Gabriel would walk in at night and barely glance at them.
I started stacking the books underneath the table then; when the entire entrance to the house was starting to look like a paper-parcel factory, I moved them to his study.
It saddened me greatly to see Gabriel lose interest in a passion that had always given him such joy — and one that bore no connection at all to the utterly depressing issue of Mi
chael Furey. One night, when we were sitting quietly in the front room, I asked him about it.
‘Do you not want to review the books any more, Gabriel?’ I said. Gabriel had been snoozing in his chair. He opened his eyes and looked at me as though he was confused by the question.
‘The books in your study. The ones that come from The Daily Express.’
Gabriel shrugged: I might as well have been talking about visiting the moon. Then he rested his head back against the chair again and closed his eyes.
‘Shall I write to them, Gabriel? Shall I tell them you’re too busy now to be writing the column?’
Maybe he had fallen asleep again. He didn’t stir to my question.
Well, what was I to do? The obvious thing was to put a stop to the books arriving. But other thoughts were starting to niggle away at me around this time. Gabriel’s morose behaviour was confined to the home, generally, but what if it took over the man entirely? What if he reached a point where he was no longer able to work?
Seize the day, my old da used to say, coming in from the morning chores. Seize the day, Gretta.
The next morning, after Gabriel had left for work, I telephoned The Daily Express. I explained that Gabriel had been unwell, and I apologised for the absence of his column in recent weeks. O yes, I told the nice chap, he’s well again. You’ll be receiving his work regularly from now on.
I went into Gabriel’s study. There must have been twelve or more packages. I took his letter opener from the top drawer of his desk and slit them all open.
None of the books was of particular interest to me. There was poetry, lots of it — I liked poems but of late I’d come to associate poems with songs, and songs with one song in particular and you don’t need reminding of what that was.
I opened more drawers, searching. Eventually, I found what I was looking for — a folder with newspaper clippings in it. They were the published reviews that Gabriel had already written. In another drawer, I found reviews for the same books, written by other people and published elsewhere.
I laughed, grateful for the competitive aspect of Gabriel’s former self. He used to read those other reviews and criticise the shallow nature of their analysis, compared to his own. I’d guessed correctly — in spite of his general derision, he wouldn’t throw them away.
I set to work. I took the first book and shuffled through all the clippings, putting aside the ones with a nice turn of phrase. Finally, I took up the pen and started to write my first review.
It was not difficult, not at all. In fact, I got into the swing of it very quickly. A sentence pilfered here, another there, and the odd word changed along the way to reflect Gabriel’s particular glossary.
Because he’d fallen behind in the reviews, most of the books had received attention elsewhere, in other newspapers and journals. And although he’d stopped cutting things out, the papers themselves had continued to pile up. I had a grand time matching the reviews with the books, then creating my first very own literary column.
I worked on it for some time. Under the light of Gabriel’s desk lamp, I felt quite the scholar. I took care with the balance of the thing. From what I’d read, it seemed important to say a few nasty things as well as some pleasant points. I got three books written about, in that first attempt.
With a flourish of the pen, I signed off. G. C. I laughed; Gabriel had never signed the column with his full name, on account of being slightly embarrassed at contributing to a Unionist newspaper. It was a bit of luck that he and I shared the same initial for our first names.
The envelope was posted that day — fifteen shillings would arrive in due course, to be quietly put away for the future. The real income, however, came from selling the books in town, down on Bachelor’s Walk and Aston’s Quay. Brand-new books, hot off the press. Once a month I’d head into Dublin with a heavy suitcase, and come home with a heavy pocket.
How long did I get away with it? I’m guessing you’re wondering about that. To be truthful, I can’t recall when I stopped. However, I can tell you that I was never caught out — Gabriel was away with the fairies and had no idea. As for the newspaper, well, there were no complaints from that quarter. I put aside a tidy sum of money as a result, money I was to be grateful for later on.
ONE NIGHT, MANY MONTHS into the misery, Gabriel and I lay together in bed with the curtains open and the moon lighting the room. It was no great occasion, no different from any other night: two souls lost in their own loneliness.
Gabriel leaned across and took my hand between his. My heart missed a beat. It was the first time he had reached for me since the night at the Gresham.
He rubbed my hand, as though warming it. O, that moment. I thought we were grand at long last. I started crying. He held my hand up to the pale light. I looked across at him. He was staring out the window.
‘Were they rough?’ he said quietly.
‘What?’ I thought I hadn’t heard him properly.
‘Were they rough?’
‘Were what rough?’
‘His hands. Michael Furey’s hands.’
Gabriel was still holding my hand, but he stopped rubbing it. His head had not moved, his eyes fixed on the night sky.
Tears gathered in the back of my throat, choking me. I thought I might drown in their saltiness. For a moment, I wished for that. Then I swallowed hard, forced down the anger and sadness.
‘He worked in the gasworks, didn’t you tell me that? His hands must have been rough, Gretta.’
I pulled my hand out from between his and turned away to the wall.
AT TIMES I LOST my temper. It was not in my nature to be putting up with a moping man. I’d tell Gabriel to get over himself and get on with it. It being life.
In the middle of February, he disappeared. He was gone for a night. Again, he returned with no clear explanation for his absence. From then on, he came and went. O, he kept teaching — from the outside looking in, you’d not necessarily notice any difference in the man at all. Some people remarked from time to time that he seemed tired, or Not his usual self, meaning he was no longer shoving his opinions down everyone’s throats. But the moment he crossed our doorway, the remnants of his old personality excused themselves and he got the beaten look again.
This went on. And on. I’m not talking months any more. I’m saying to you that it went on for years. Tiresome, isn’t it, even reading about it. Imagine living it. But what do you do?
The children got used to their da being as he was; I believe they’d forgotten he’d ever been any other way. I’d got used to his physical and emotional absence. You can get used to most things, once you give up any notion of changing them.
IT WAS A WARM Saturday morning at the end of spring in 1907. Tom and Eva had gone off somewhere. I was hanging the washing outside. Gabriel was in the garden, too, tinkering with his bicycle.
Ever since university, he’d taken a month’s cycle tour somewhere in Europe over summer. He’d go with old friends. That year the destination was France. In the past, Gabriel’s absence had been some source of aggravation to me, being that it precluded any other possibility of a family holiday for us all. But since the whole drama of the Morkans’ Christmas party, I’d come to look forward to his departure as much as he did.
So yes. It was a warm Saturday and we were both as happy as circumstances would allow. The birds were chirping their little heads off. You could smell the scent of flowers growing along the garden wall.
Gabriel’s bicycle was leaning against the side of the house, and he was crouched there beside it, working away. If you’d glanced over the wall, you might have been falsely envious at the picture of domestic serenity. Birds singing, washing flapping away, man whistling. All very lovely indeed.
The warm breeze caught the sheets and lifted them up around my head. They flicked against my face. From within the whiteout, I listened hard. Between the birdsong, I made out a tune. As he worked away on his bicycle, Gabriel was whistling ‘The Lass of Aughrim’.
I
couldn’t move, not a single part of my body. What it might have looked like — a pair of legs protruding from a jumble of flapping white sheets — is anyone’s guess.
The whistling stopped. I might have breathed then. I must have, at some point. I didn’t look out. On it went, the whistling. Then Gabriel starting to sing in a soft voice:
If you be the lass of Aughrim
As I am taking you mean to be
Tell me the first token
That passed between you and me
I STOOD INSIDE THE washing for a long time. I know it was a long time because the sky above me changed. There was brilliant blue, then cobwebs of cloud drifted across. They thickened to a white haze. I stayed still, just looking up. Grey replaced the haze and I got cold. Fat, cool drops of rain hit my face, just one or two at first, then more and more, like fists. I heard Gabriel picking up his tools and wheeling his bicycle into the shed. He kept on singing.
O don’t you remember
That night on yon green hill
When we both met together
Which I am sorry now to tell
The rain falls on my yellow locks
And the dew it wets my skin;
My babe lies cold within my arms:
Lord Gregory let me in
IT WAS POURING. I stayed entirely still until I was as sodden and cold as the washing hanging around me, as wet as Michael Furey had been under my window.
GABRIEL HAD BEEN GONE two weeks when the news came. It was a Tuesday afternoon. Tom and Eva had finished their lunch and were reading in the front room. There was a knock at the door and I knew.
It was a police constable. I don’t recall his name now but he was not much more than a lad; a downy hint of a moustache across his top lip. He took off his helmet and held it against his chest.
‘Mrs Conroy?’ he said. His helmet looked enormous, too big for his little head.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘Mrs Gretta Conroy?’
I nodded. He was holding an envelope in his hand. Get on with it, lad, I was thinking.
I’m afraid …’ he started. His voice cracked.