Man or Mango?

by Lucy Ellmann

  An inquest was held, same day, upon the body of James M’ Garry, at Ardcurly. Verdict—“died of insufficiency of food and clothing to support life.”

  An inquest was held on the 9th instant on the body of Patrick Ward, Tunagh. Verdict—“deceased came to his death by starvation.”

  An inquest was held on the 13th inst., on the body of Michael Kilmartin, Emero. Verdict “deceased came to his death by starvation.”

  An inquest was held same day, on the body of Catherine Kilmartin, of Emero. Verdict “died of want of food.”

  An inquest was held same day, on the body of Bridget M’Dermott, of Doonskeen. Verdict “died of want of food.”

  An inquest was held same day, upon the body of Patrick Dyer, Ardagh. Verdict “died of starvation and want of proper clothing.”

  An inquest was held at Aughanah upon the bodies of Edward Tighe, John Tighe, and Anne Tighe brothers and sister. Verdict “died of starvation and want of proper clothing.”

  The Vindicator, Belfast, 20 January 1847

  Eloïse

  My favourite cat has died and my house has been burgled. A speeding car ran over the cat and broke her back, just outside on the lane. She was still breathing, so I took her to the vet, yelling at her all the way to live.

  Returned, minus cat, to find a police car outside my house. The neighbours had called them when they noticed a window had been broken. But not only had I been burgled, I’d been incompletely burgled. My parents’ papers were strewn everywhere a sea of papers — and my clock and my cello were gone. Eventually, the police found the clock beside the broken window: the burglar must have been disturbed as he was leaving (perhaps by the neighbours), panicked, and left the clock behind. But he took the clock key, so now I can’t wind it. But why do I need to know what time it is? I know all too well it’s too late, too late.

  The neighbours are thrilled — their every new D.I.Y. window lock has been vindicated. While I lie here in a pool of parents’ papers, papers designed to overwhelm the soul.

  Why couldn’t the world just leave me alone, me and my little clock and my little cat?

  In the roads lie the broken spears …

  Without roofs are the houses,

  And red are their walls with blood.

  Maggots swarm in the streets and squares,

  And the ramparts are spattered with brains.

  The waters have turned crimson, as if they were dyed,

  And when we drink them they are salty with blood.

  ‘Anyone wishing to pick her nose should do so now,’ said Eloïse’s father as the car entered another tunnel on their trip through Switzerland.

  Childhood is a swindle, a very unequal bargain. There was Eloïse, poor mummy-infatuated kid, in ecstasies of devotion at her mother’s side, loving her mother’s face, the most important face in the world, her voice the most important voice, her hands the only hands, the way she did things the only way, her things the best things: her perfume, her shoes, her handbag, her black coffee, her cigarettes, her watch, her aprons, her lipstick, her songs, her stodgy puddings and slavish adherence to the notion that there must be meat and two veg every night …

  And there was Eloïse’s mother, exasperated beyond bearing with this clingy child and twelve years spent opening tins when she could have been writing poetry. The daily vigil of keeping a child alive and happy, a child that was often to be found masturbating behind the sitting-room settee, a child that persisted in secretly festooning her bedroom wall (in one particular spot near her pillow) with nose-pickings, a child that was always a little too plump, shy, weepy, and behind with her school work.

  Eloïse sensed (not without some bewilderment and anger) that she was not allowed to love her mother as much as she wanted. She was too demanding a child. When her mother became ill, Eloïse took it as a punishment for her too-great love. She must learn not to burden her mother with love. She must learn never to depend on her mother, and never again to take love to extremes. Her love could kill.

  She clung to what was left of her mother (who sometimes miraculously surfaced from illness like a mermaid for air). But Eloïse always felt she lacked vital divulgences, even vocabulary, which mothers pass on to their daughters. She hardly knew what these gaps in her education were, but one was: Do you love me? Another: What does one do with soda crystals?? And because her mother never told her these things, ignorance and deprivation would be handed down the generations: Eloïse would not be able to love her own children or tell them things.

  To preserve what was left of infancy, Eloïse went on reading children’s books well into her twenties, returned home after university to tend her parents, and never quite took to coffee. (Babar the Elephant’s orphan childhood particularly moved her.)

  Her father made up the housework as he went along. It was a rather haphazard business. The only thing he liked to cook was ice cream, and even that usually had little undissolved lumps of gelatin in it that were hard to swallow. He was a willing hooverer though, and enjoyed shopping: bottle-brushes were his greatest find.

  But if the truth be told, most housework can be omitted without grave consequences.

  Most popular songs at funerals:

  1 ‘I Will Always Love You’

  2 ‘My Way’

  3 ‘In the Mood’

  4 ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’

  5 ‘Imagine’

  Grandma hates women (herself included). She seems to think they count for nothing. She was only ever interested in her paunchy husband, her paunchy husband’s business, her paunchy husband’s paunchy frame and the unfairness of his early death. For years she made my father wear his father’s old suits (taken in by the tailor but still humiliatingly out-of-date), and doused him daily in her scorn.

  When my parents eloped to London to evade her wrath, Grandma jumped to the conclusion that my mother, being Catholic, must be pregnant. They eventually made a dutiful wedding visit back to Connemara, where my father lapsed into the torpid state he maintained whenever he was with his mother, and failed to notice for quite a while that she had reduced his bride to tears with all her talk of feckless Catholic cleaning ladies.

  My parents took up permanent residence in London, intending never to return. But when I was born a few years later, a telegram appeared at the hospital, saying ‘I FORGIVE YOU’. My mother had just had an emergency Caesarean and had no interest in being forgiven. But thus began a steady strained acquaintance, from which I at first benefited Grandma gave good presents. She once gave me a doll that talked! My mother hated that doll.

  Every few years we would trek out to see Grandma, staying at the near by Rossadilly Hotel for a week or two. Rossadilly: donkeys in the field smelling of tarragon, puppies in the barn, boats on the lake, green grass meeting blue water all round me, porridge for breakfast, strange orange juice from a tin, and Grandma a barely remembered afternoon chore.

  To my surprise the Chanukkah presents stopped coming when I reached thirteen (I was supposedly an adult). Grandma’s affection for me just as abruptly dried up. Then my mother went into hospital again and my father had to spend all day watching amateurish doctors muck her about (one neurosurgeon managed to paralyse her permanently down one side). I was shipped off to stay with Grandma until things improved. She criticized my hair, the way I dressed, the way I ate (too much cheese), my bralessness, my poor posture, my ignorance of make-up, my interest in Guinness, my exam results, my day-long wanderings (which she dubbed my ‘escapades’), my silence, my shyness and my vague desire to see Galway. But most of all, she criticized my mother — for being ill. Her main concern was the effect of my mother’s illness on my father: whether or not my mother would ever be able to relieve him of his household duties.

  I slept on the couch and wept in the bathroom. For months I listened to that woman’s whining and the hourly attempts of her three chiming clocks to make contact in that loveless house. There was no colour anywhere, only dampness and every shade of grey.

  My mother finally came o
ut of hospital and I returned home. She was barely recognizable but she was my mother still. One night, I found the nurse yanking her off the commode by her breasts, making my mother cry.

  I never forgave Grandma for any of it.

  Little or nothing is doing to relieve the sufferers. By this time fever has made its way into almost every house. The poor creatures are wasting away and dying of want. In very many instances the dead bodies are thrown in waste cabins and dykes and are devoured by dogs. In some parts the fields are bleached with the bones of the dead …

  The postman wakes me from a dream in which I’m walking down a grassy gravelly lane, walking into the past: Memory Lane. I can walk down it or turn at any time and go back to the present, where I’ve left the car.

  I have slept the whole night on the unassuageable bones of my parents, lying on the floor still covered with their lifetimes’ papers. It isn’t easy getting up. I go to the door (once the postman has gone) and there on the mat is a letter from Grandma’s solicitor belatedly informing me of her death (he had difficulty tracking me down). I have been awarded yet more ill-gotten gains: her hideous hunting lodge in beautiful Connemara, wretched remnant of her tirades and tyrannies.

  Now I realize what was so familiar about that lane in my dream, lined on each side by long grass with a wide white sky beyond. It was the lane to the Rossadilly Hotel.

  Derravonniff — piglet wood

  Lettermuckoo — the hillside of pigs

  Derreennagusfoor — the small wood of the cold feet

  Sheeauns — the fairy hills

  Griggins — the lumpy or pebbly places

  Mace — buttock (a broad, elevated area)

  Snauvbo — swimming-place of cows

  Keeraunnagark — the moorland hill of the hens

  Gooreenatinny — the fox’s small sandbank

  Coorhoor — the uneven road

  Lemnaheltia — the leap of the doe

  Shannanagower — the slope of the goats

  Gorteennaglogh — small field of stones

  Eloïse’s Grandmother

  … the aged queen often spends the evening of her life very pleasantly with her little hand of worn-out workers. They sit together on two or three cells on top of the ruined edifice …

  Widowhood was hard to bear. It had now taken the form of constipation. A laxative treatment involving senna pods had had a violent effect all over her clothes and the bathroom floor. The epitome of solitude, cleaning up one’s own shit (no one evades this responsibility). She was mopping it up off the floor when she heard a loud trumpet sound behind her. Whizzing round in surprise, she found that it was her own bottom that had trumpeted and, in turning, she had splattered another whole wall.

  Soon after this, she slipped on a wet stone on her way to the neighbours’ farm to get mutton for Susie-cat. The incident wasn’t frightening, only irritating. She fell so slowly she had ample time to anticipate the inevitable injury, but not to prevent it, and in her attempt to buttress herself with her right arm she split a bone in her wrist.

  The indignities of such an injury, the difficulties faced by an old woman trying to bathe, pee, dress herself, open tins and manage the kettle, one-handed; the worry of having to keep the plaster cast dry for six weeks in that damp house, in that soft rain (or else get to hospital for a new one); the infuriating questions people asked about whether she was right-or left-handed what did they care? She did manage to bathe, but getting dressed took hours.

  She was chopping wood one day, holding the axe with difficulty under her arm, when the Calor-gas man suddenly appeared behind her. Hard to know who was the more alarmed, the great burly chap or the mad axe-lady!

  Trips twice a week to hospital by minibus once the cast was off, for ‘physiotherapy’. What good was it? But ‘One must just be as cheerful as possible about these things’, as she told her fellow beleaguered passengers.

  ‘Would you try to make a fist for me, please?’ asked the handsome young doctor.

  ‘Oh, I’d do anything for you, Doctor,’ she replied, but immediately regretted flirting with him, for he seemed embarrassed (and she couldn’t make a fist anyway).

  She no longer recovered from things. Nothing healed. Instead she had learnt to reshape her life around each new, permanent sign of deterioration. A heating pad. Handlebars in the loo. A rubber bath mat, its suckers pressed determinedly into her tub by a social worker. Loose clothing that could be pulled by a weak right wrist over an aching left shoulder … But the bath mat was the worst. Horrid pink thing! A bath was not the same with that thing in there. She had hoped never to sink to this but the combination of soap and soft peat water had become lethal.

  Long-widowed, estranged from her son and son’s family, holed up in a remote corner of a country that had never cared for her. Her only companion: Susie-cat, who at twenty and a half had begun to pee on carpets at night. It was a race to see which of them would die first.

  Sometimes, out shopping, the old lady would waylay strangers to gripe to. She complained to them of blacks, Arabs and other sad things. But she tired of these newfound companions quickly. She was really only interested now in other widows.

  That she should have sailed so far and for so long on the port tack with her jib and foretopmast staysail set on the starboard tack is not as improbable as it may sound.

  Owen

  Owen hated taking unnecessary risks with Ellen’s life, so abruptly entrusted to his care. He was reluctant to buy a car at all: they’re so prone to accidents, life and death hanging on a moment’s loss of concentration or a flat tyre. He didn’t use his car unless he absolutely had to, preferred Ellen not to be in it, hated even more for her to be in someone else’s — no one could possibly drive as carefully as he did.

  He worried about her diet, which consisted these days mainly of monosodium glutamate: crisps and instant Chinese noodle soup. He worried about her sleep pattern, or lack of one. She wouldn’t go to bed early enough, then had trouble getting up in time for school. She also woke in the night and dreamed things that bothered him. Lately she had been sleeping in his bed, after seeing a programme on telly about alien abductions. She wasn’t going to let that happen to her out of earshot! (Though what could Owen have done about an alien abduction?) She would lie there reading for hours, too frightened to fall asleep until he joined her.

  He worried about her at school all day with teachers he barely knew. What if they were cruel to her? What if she vomited (as he had) and became the laughing-stock of the class for ever? Anything could happen when she was out of his control, anything. Owen now thought he knew why some mothers stay at home all day. It’s not to catch up with the housework and soap operas — it’s just so that they can worry about their offspring non-stop, without the interruptions of some silly job. He too would have liked to stay at home all day worrying, in fact on some level he half-believed that if he stopped worrying, Ellen might not survive. But he had a job to go to – as a council committee clerk, taking the minutes of adoption-panel meetings. All day he was distracted from worrying about his own child by having to listen to bureaucrats discussing other children’s fates; each case was treated as if the child (why not the adoptive parents?) was doomed from the start, its life already a hopeless enterprise, badly conceived and executed. Orphans and abuse victims were left to languish in unsafe institutions while tetchy windbags squabbled over the ethics of non-ethnic placements, single parenthood, poverty, lesbian love nests — and, worst of all, whether or not the children had ‘anything in common’ with their adoptive families. Absurd, when the bond between a parent and a child is such a jumble of imponderables — a committee of eight or eighty could never figure it out! Owen (who knew more about single parenthood than anyone else in the room) was never allowed to speak. It was truly a form of torture. His life only began at home — once Ellen was safely there.

  He had always been wary of air travel, but the fear had become acute since Ellen was born. He would rather have her die in a car crash on land than p
ermit the remotest chance of her falling alone through the sky.

  He hated the present plan too. He was scared of the sea, mother of all mistakes. Its impenetrable ruminations. To take Ellen (who herself was scared of sharks) on a ferry, put her to sleep deep in its bowels … Just the thought of all that black fumbling water — you lose your bearings, lose touch with gravity, gliding insensibly through the sludge of a night-time sea.

  He watched the lorries being loaded ahead of him. The terrible size of the things and, presumably, the weight. Each must be an added liability, dragging the ferry down. ‘Ro-ro-ro’ your boat: Roll on, Roll off, Roll over. That was what was said after the Zeebrugge ferry sank in three minutes.

  The car park was almost empty except for a few lads playing a dilatory game of football and a poor half-blind dog who seemed to keep getting in their way looking for a safe place to sit. As he watched the sad old dog from his sealed car, with Ellen asleep in the back seat, all Owen could hear was his own swallowing. Not for the first time, he wondered if other people swallow as deafeningly.

  He tried to remember if he had ever not been frightened of water. He’d been forced to learn to swim at school, despite his certainty that he was too thin to float. Caves, grottoes, bottomless lakes, unlit water creeping through crevices unknown … No, these things were and had always been terrifying. Nothing to do with his wife.

  He found the bravery of lifeboat crews deeply moving. The thought of them setting off in sorry weather out of empathy for other people’s distress, joining people in their watery tragedies just so that they wouldn’t have to drown alone, adding terror to terror, atrocity to atrocity, all out of a sense of duty never failed to bring a tear to his eve (though he had a lingering suspicion that they would not sacrifice everything, might not even get out of bed, to save him).

  In the free element beneath me swam,

  Floundered and dived, in play, in chase, in battle,

  Fishes of every color, form, and kind;

  Which language cannot paint, and mariner