The Love Object

by Edna O'Brien

  ‘No, no, no.’ She wakened from a nightmare with tears streaming down her face. She’d been dreaming that she met him at a bus stop and his face was more wretched than ever. He couldn’t come, he said. His wife had found out and threatened to kill herself. He had to promise never to see Mrs Farley again. In the dream Mrs Farley said she would go to his wife and beg her to show some mercy. She ran to his house although he called after her not to.

  His wife turned out to have the long, coarse face of one of the women Mrs Farley worked for.

  ‘If you let me see your husband every Saturday for an hour, I’ll scrub your house from top to bottom,’ Mrs Farley said. The coarse-faced woman seated on a chair nodded to this and from nowhere a bucket of water and a scrubbing-brush appeared. Mrs Farley knelt in that small room and began to scrub the linoleum which had some sort of pattern. She scrubbed with all her might, knowing that it was bringing her back to her friend. Just when she scrubbed the last corner, a wall receded and the room grew larger, and the more she scrubbed the greater the room became, until finally she was scrubbing a limitless area with no walls in sight. She turned to protest, but the coarse-faced woman had vanished and all she heard was the echo of her own voice cursing and sobbing and begging to be let out. She knew that her friend was at the bus stop waiting for her to come back, and greater than the pain of losing him was the injustice. He would think she had betrayed him. It was then she cried ‘No, no, no’ in her dream and wakened to find herself in a sweat. She got up and took an aspirin. At least it was a relief to know it was a dream. Her legs quaked as she stood at the window and looked out at the garden that was grey in the oncoming dawn. Sometimes she turned to glance at Mr Farley in case he should be awake. The sheet rose and fell over his paunch – he had thrown off the blanket. He was snoring slightly. Tomorrow he was going away, far away to the seaside, on an outing with thirty other men. Thirty other wives would have a day alone. And it came to her again, the conviction that he would die in exactly four years when he was sixty-six. A man in the flat downstairs had died at sixty-six, and because he too had been fat, and grumpy, and had a paunch, Mrs Farley believed that a similar fate awaited her husband. She would be fifty, not young, but not too old. The widow downstairs had bloomed in the last few months and begun to wear loud colours and sing when she was tidying her kitchen. Guiltily Mrs Farley got back into bed and prayed for sleep. Without sleep her face would look pinched and tomorrow she would need to look nice. She shook. That dream had really unnerved her.

  By morning she had composed herself. She cooked a big breakfast for Mr Farley and stood at the gate while he walked out of sight towards the main road. Then she dashed back into the house, washed up, dusted the lounge, made a shopping list. By nine o’clock she was at the furniture shop. The assistant smiled as she came forward with the money. When she had paid he murmured something about not being sure whether they could deliver on a Saturday.

  ‘But you promised, you promised,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to deliver it, where’s the manager?’

  Being easily intimidated the assistant fled to find the manager. She walked back and forth, hit her clenched fists together and finally to distract herself she went across to look at the cut-glass vases. Her face in the mirror of the display table was purple. Bad temper played havoc with her circulation. She held a vase in her hand and with her thumb felt the sharp, cut edges. Her eyes were fixed on the door through which he’d disappeared – if only he’d hurry. The vase she held in her hand cost nine pounds and shivering she put it down. ‘Lovely to look at, delightful to hold, but if you break me, consider me sold.’ An accident like that could wreck her plans for weeks, to think that the vase cost the same as the three-piece suite, to think there were people who could buy such a thing and run the risk of breaking it.

  ‘Madam, I’m very sorry but I’m afraid we can’t.’ A sly, unaccommodating person he was.

  ‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘You can’t let me down.’

  ‘It’s not me, madam, I’d be only too glad. The manager has got on to them now and they say they simply can’t.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Mrs Farley asked, and instinctively she went towards his office door. She’d get that suite delivered if she had to carry it on her back.

  The manager met her halfway across the shop. He wore thick, blue-tinted spectacles and she could not be sure what his attitude was, but he sounded sorry enough.

  ‘Is it very urgent, madam?’

  ‘It’s my whole life,’ she said, not knowing why she said such a rash thing, and then heard herself telling him an elaborate lie about how her son was graduating as a doctor that day and how his friends were coming in to tea and she wanted something for them to sit on. As a father himself the manager said he understood how she felt, and he would have to do something. Another customer stared, as if Mrs Farley had admitted to some terrible crime, then, when she caught his eye, he slunk away, embarrassed; maybe he thought he might be drawn into an argument or asked to contribute money.

  ‘We can’t disappoint your boy on a day like this, can we?’ the manager said. Mrs Farley thought it the saddest thing anyone had ever said to her. If Mr Farley was listening, or her friend, she’d die!

  The upshot was that the manager got another van from a removal firm who were willing to deliver the stuff. There was an extra charge of a pound. Mrs Farley protested. The manager said she could either wait until Monday and have it delivered free, in the shop van, or settle for the removers. She gave in of course.

  The movers arrived in an enormous pantechnicon, and she was worried that some of the neighbours might mention it to Mr Farley and ask if he was moving house or something. That was why, when they pulled up, she asked them could they move their van down the street a little, as it was blocking a motor-car entrance. They were very nice about it.

  The men put the three pieces of furniture where she told them and then, half-heartedly, she offered them a cup of tea. That delayed her another twenty minutes. When they were gone she went into the front room to re-affirm what she already knew. The three-piece suite was not a success; it did nothing for the room. It was dark and drab. Mr Farley would be right in thinking that it was a mistake. Frayed threads, dimmed stains, a leftover from someone else’s life. What had she been thinking of the day she chose it? Of him, her friend, the man she was going to see in a couple of hours. She got a clothes brush and began to brush the couch carefully, hoping that when she’d done it it would look plush. She came on a ludo button that was stuck down in one of the corners and for a minute she thought it was a shilling. After she had done it carefully with the clothes brush she got out the vacuum cleaner and cleaned it thoroughly all over.

  Just in case anything went wrong, Mrs Farley and her friend had previously arranged to meet outside the pub. When he saw her come towards him he knew there was something amiss. She held her head down and wore her flat, canvas shoes.

  ‘Hello.’ He came forward to greet her.

  ‘He didn’t go,’ she said. ‘He got suspicious at the last minute.’

  For the two hours Mrs Farley had debated what she should say to her friend. One thing was sure: she dare not have him in the front room because he would catch her out in her boasting. Always when she described that room she described the three-piece suite. What he would see was a drab piece of furniture in a drab room where brown paint prevailed. Mr Farley did his own decorating and insisted on brown because it did not have to be renewed so often. She could not let him see it. He would say she was no better than his wife and she did not want that.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Come and have a drink.’

  ‘You’re all dressed up,’ she said. He wore a dark suit, a white shirt and a lovely striped tie. He looked wealthy. He looked like the sort of man who would have a wallet full of fivers and a home with easy chairs, and a piano.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she was saying to his disappointed face.

  ‘We’ll have a nice day anyhow,’ he told her. He worried if the pound he had
would see them through. He had not banked on spending any money other than the drink in the pub when they met and a small bottle of liqueur as a little gift to her.

  ‘What will you have?’ He’d brought her into the lounge bar and sat her on a high upholstered couch that circled the wall.

  ‘Anything,’ she said. He got her a sherry.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, and pushed her cheeks upwards with his hand until she appeared to be smiling.

  ‘I dreamt about you last night,’ she said.

  ‘A nice dream?’ He smiled so gently.

  ‘A lovely dream.’ She couldn’t disappoint him any more.

  Mrs Farley insisted on buying lunch. They ate in the restaurant that adjoined the pub and they talked in whispers. It was a lovely place with embossed wallpaper and candlesticks on the tables. Everywhere she looked she saw wall couches and easy, comfortable chairs. He wondered if they put candles into the candlesticks at night and she said they probably didn’t because there wasn’t a trace of candle grease. Under the table they gripped hands every few minutes and looked into each other’s eyes, desperate to say something.

  The lunch cost over a pound, the amount she had set aside anyhow to get the pork chops and sherry and things. While she was in the ladies’ room, he debated whether he should propose pictures, or a bus ride around London, or a short boat trip up the Thames. With his money, it had to be just one of those.

  They settled on the pictures. They were both thinking that they could snuggle down and have a taste of the comfort they might have had in Mrs Farley’s front room.

  The picture turned out to be an English comedy about crooks, and though the handful of people in the cinema laughed, neither Mrs Farley nor her friend found it funny at all. It bore no relation to their own lives, it had nothing to do with their predicament. They said, when they came out, that it was a pity they’d stayed inside so long as the day was scorching.

  ‘Do I look a show?’ she asked. Her mouth was swollen from kisses.

  ‘You look lovely.’

  What to do next?

  ‘Let’s have a walk by the river, and then tea,’ he said. He knew a cheap cafe up that way.

  ‘Are you superstitious?’ she asked. He said not very. She said she’d broken something that day and was afraid she’d break two other things. A splinter from a kitchen cup was in her finger.

  ‘I’d like that black one,’ he said. He’d been admiring boats that were moored to the riverside. He’d rather have a boat than a car, he told her.

  They’d sail away under arched bridges, over locks, out to a changeless blue sea.

  ‘Is it true that the blue lagoon isn’t blue?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll go there and see when I get my boat,’ he said.

  She would wear trousers and a raincoat on the boat, but when they came ashore at Monte Carlo and places she would have flowered dresses.

  ‘You never asked me what I broke,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, tell me.’

  ‘A cup.’

  ‘A cup.’

  Possibly he thought it was silly but it worried her.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘Get a couple of old cracked ones and break them and then you won’t have anything to worry about.’

  The cups reminded them both of home and duty. He would have to go shortly.

  By five thirty they had talked and walked for an hour. But they had said nothing. He apologized for the bad picture, she said she was sorry she couldn’t bring him in.

  ‘Still we had a grand time,’ she said.

  ‘No, we hadn’t,’ he said. ‘I should have thought of something special.’

  ‘What do other people do?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, they go to the seaside, they go to hotels, they go to places,’ he said. She was sorry now that she hadn’t risked it and told him. He would have understood; it might have brought them closer together. She looked at him with regret, with love, she looked intently to keep his image more distinctly in her mind. She might not see him dressed-up again for ages.

  They kissed and made their arrangements for the following Saturday, at their usual place.

  As she walked away she did not turn round to wave, in case he might expect a smile. Anyhow he was occupied himself, with taking off his tie and rolling it up neatly. His wife had not seen him go out with it on.

  She walked, deep in thought. She’d lost her chance. Her husband would live for ever. She and her friend were fated to walk up and down streets towards the railway bridge, and in the end they would grow tired of walking, and they would return, each to a make-shift home.

  The Rug

  I WENT DOWN ON my knees upon the brand-new linoleum, and smelled the strange smell. It was rich and oily. It first entered and attached itself to something in my memory when I was nine years old. I’ve since learned that it is the smell of linseed oil, but coming on it unexpectedly can make me both a little disturbed and sad.

  I grew up in the west of Ireland, in a grey cut-stone farmhouse, which my father inherited from his father. My father came from lowland, better-off farming people, my mother from the windswept hungry hills above a great lake. As children, we played in a small forest of rhododendrons – thickened and tangled and broken under scratching cows – around the house and down the drive. The avenue up from the front gates had such great pot-holes that cars had to lurch off into the field and out again.

  But though all outside was neglect, overgrown with ragwort and thistle, strangers were surprised when they entered the house; my father might fritter his life away watching the slates slip from the outhouse roofs – but, within, that safe, square, lowland house of stone was my mother’s pride and joy. It was always spotless. It was stuffed with things – furniture, china dogs, Toby mugs, tall jugs, trays, tapestries and whatnots. Each of the four bedrooms had holy pictures on the walls and a gold overmantel surmounting each fireplace. In the fireplaces there were paper fans or lids of chocolate boxes. Mantelpieces carried their own close-packed array of wax flowers, holy statues, broken alarm clocks, shells, photographs, soft rounded cushions for sticking pins in.

  My father was generous, foolish, and so idle that it could only have been some sort of illness. That year in which I was nine and first experienced the wonderful smell, he sold another of the meadows to pay off some debt, and for the first time in many years my mother got a lump of money.

  She went out early one morning and caught the bus to the city, and through a summer morning and afternoon she trudged around looking at linoleums. When she came home in the evening, her feet hurting from high heels, she said she had bought some beautiful light-brown linoleum, with orange squares on it.

  The day came when the four rolls were delivered to the front gates, and Hickey, our farm help, got the horse and cart ready to bring it up. We all went; we were that excited. The calves followed the cart, thinking that maybe they were to be fed down by the roadside. At times they galloped away but came back again, each calf nudging the other out of the way. It was a warm, still day, the sounds of cars and neighbours’ dogs carried very distinctly and the cow lats on the drive were brown and dry like flake tobacco.

  My mother did most of the heaving and shoving to get the rolls on to the cart. She had early accepted that she had been born to do the work.

  She may have bribed Hickey with the promise of hens to sell for himself, because that evening he stayed in to help with the floor – he usually went over to the village and drank a pint or two of stout. Mama, of course, always saved newspapers, and she said that the more we laid down under the lino the longer it would wear. On her hands and knees, she looked up once – flushed, delighted, tired – and said, ‘Mark my words, we’ll see a carpet in here yet.’

  There was calculation and argument before cutting the difficult bits around the door frames, the bay window, and the fireplace. Hickey said that without him my mother would have botched the whole thing. In the quick flow of argument and talk, they did not notice that it was past my bedtime. My father s
at outside in the kitchen by the stove all evening while we worked. Later, he came in and said what a grand job we were doing. A grand job, he said. He’d had a headache.

  The next day must have been Saturday, for I sat in the sitting-room all morning admiring the linoleum, smelling its smell, counting the orange squares. I was supposed to be dusting. Now and then I re-arranged the blinds, as the sun moved. We had to keep the sun from fading the bright colours.

  The dogs barked and the postman cycled up. I ran out and met him carrying a huge parcel. Mama was away up in the yard with the hens. When the postman had gone, I went up to tell her.

  ‘A parcel?’ she said. She was cleaning the hens’ trough before putting their food in it. The hens were moiling around, falling in and out of the buckets, pecking at her hands. ‘It’s just binding twine for the baling machine,’ she said. ‘Who’d be sending parcels?’ She was never one to lose her head.

  I said that the parcel had a Dublin postmark – the postman told me that – and that there was some black woolly thing in it. The paper was torn at the corner, and I’d pushed a finger in, fearfully.

  Coming down to the house she wiped her hands with a wad of long grass. ‘Perhaps somebody in America has remembered us at last.’ One of her few dreams was to be remembered by relatives who had gone to America. The farm buildings were some way from the house; we ran the last bit. But, even in her excitement, her careful nature forced her to unknot every length of string from the parcel and roll it up, for future use. She was the world’s most generous woman, but was thrifty about saving twine and paper, and candle stumps, and turkey wings and empty pill boxes.