by Mary Lavin
Something of the sort he had undoubtedly said, but she certainly had not understood she had been specifically designated by Mona to take her place. It was one thing to think of Mona’s benisons vaguely showering down from Heaven; it was quite another to think of her dispensing them from her deathbed. Acquiescence from above seemed right and proper and in keeping with the supernatural state but from a hospital bed it seemed like a subtle accusation. ‘She didn’t really mean me?’ she cried.
She looked at him. Was this the constancy to which she had clung? Like the moon, it had two faces: on one side hers, and on the other Mona’s. But which to which was shown? If Mona had to live with anecdotes about her, what would it be like for her, Lucy, in a few hours’ time, when she’d be boxed up in Mona’s house? Suddenly she felt faint. She’d have to get out in the corridor for some air. But she didn’t want him to come with her. She got to her feet. ‘Will you hand me down my small case, Sam,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll have a wash.’ That ought to keep him from following her.
But he hadn’t thought of doing so, and after he’d put up a hand to assist her he settled back in his seat. ‘Remind me to tell you something when you come back,’ he said patiently. ‘A nice little thought that came into my head.’
Impatiently, she stood in the doorway. ‘Tell me now!’
But he’d taken out his watch and was looking at it, and then he glanced out of the window. ‘My little plan would depend on what time we arrive in Dublin,’ he said, ‘and whether or not there is any daylight left.’ Suddenly she knew what was in his mind. ‘Where is she buried?’ she asked, and her voice in her own ears sounded like lead.
But his face lit up, and she saw that he marvelled at her intuition and what he took to be another affinity between them. ‘You had the same thought? That would mean twice as much to her.’ But there was a draught from the open door. ‘We’ll talk about it when you return,’ he said affably, ‘and I’ll tell you a little incident that happened six or seven years ago. You’ll find it very touching, I know.’
Oh, no, you won’t, she thought, as emphatically as if she’d spoken. She got out into the corridor, and almost ran in her anxiety to get far away from him. The train was travelling fast. The noise of the wheels was deafening, and several times she would have been thrown from one side to the other if she hadn’t steadied herself against the rattling woodwork, now of a window and now of a door. The train seemed to be crowded, although in their first-class carriage she and Sam had sat in state. But finally she came on a carriage with only one young couple occupying a corner. Not noticing that the floor was strewn with confetti, she was about to take refuge there when, outraged, the man sprang up and slapped the blind down in her face.
Tears rushed into her eyes. But what did it matter where she went? Sam would eventually miss her and come to look for her. If only the train would stop, she could get off? She glanced out of the window. It was getting dark outside, but the fields between the darkening hedges were pale with a thin mist that seeped up from the ground. If the train stopped for even a minute, she could jump down and stumble across the line and lose herself in that bright but concealing mist. She could imagine herself coming to a stand, out of breath, in time to watch the lighted train move forward again without her. She would see the carriages slide past one by one, till in one of them, sitting foolishly waiting, would be Sam. But the train wouldn’t stop till it got to its destination. If she wanted to get off, she’d have to throw herself out. Involuntarily, she glanced at the door handle. It was green with verdigris around the stem, but the lever itself shone bright from handling. She’d only have to press it down and the door would fly open. Quickly, she clapped her hands into her pockets as if to save them from some act for which they alone would be responsible. She wasn’t as unbalanced as all that. But she had begun to tremble, and the thought of continuing on to the end of the journey was unbearable. And that house! It was unbearable to think of facing into it cluttered with all the paraphernalia of another woman’s life.
‘I’ve left everything as it was, Lucy,’ he’d said. ‘You’ll know better how to dispose of her little possessions than me.’
Her little possessions! What did that mean? Presses full of clothes? Chests of drawers stuffed with every kind of rubbish? Boxes, portmanteaux, little cubby-holes here and there filled with God knows what junk. She’d known enough of Mona to guess she’d been a great one for finery and gewgaws of all kinds.
Gewgaws? A frantic thought came to her. Her own wedding ring! Where had Sam got it? During the ceremony, he had clapped it on her finger so fast it was as if he had handcuffed her to him, but it was very thick, thicker than wedding rings were at the present day, and now, looking closer, she saw it had at the same time a worn look. Was it possible that it was not new? She shuddered. And her engagement ring? She’d known it was not new, but she liked antique jewellery, but she remembered being surprised at the alacrity with which he’d produced it the moment he’d broken down her scruples. He’d pulled it out of his pocket, where, loose as a pebble, it had rattled around among his keys and his coins. That, she’d supposed, was why there was dust in the crevices of the setting. She hadn’t washed it, because the setting looked so insecure. But now, examining it, too, very closely, she saw that it was grime, not dust, that clogged the claw. Feeling sick, she went to drag the rings off her finger. But they were a tight fit and her fingers swelled when she tugged at them, but she went on trying to drag them off until the skin broke and began to bleed. The sight of the blood steadied her for a minute. Anyway if she were to bare the bone, what difference would it make? For that matter, what difference would it make if she did get the rings off? If she threw them out the window, it would not alter her situation. It would have been to more purpose to have thrown herself out.
Insidiously, when it came again, this thought was less alien. A strange excitement made a vein in her throat throb, and at the same time it seemed that the train was gathering speed crazily, like a train derailed. The rattling carriages careered after each other, but every now and then they veered slightly, as if they would unlock their couplings and fly asunder. If at that moment she were to press the door handle, she knew exactly what would happen. In an instant the door would be dragged out of her hand and clatter back on its hinges, or else be wrenched off them altogether. Caught in a great current of air travelling as fast as the train itself, it might be a long time before the door would land on the tracks, perhaps not until the train had passed and the line was empty and silent again. And what about her? Snatched from her feet, freed from all volition, she, too, would be violently caught up and sucked out into that rushing current. Like a bit of paper, she’d be blown away. She went nearer to the door. Heaven had never been easily imaginable, but it would be heaven to feel those rushing winds sprout like wings from her shoulder-blades to uphold her and bear her through the air. To think that by a single act she might undo her folly and prove herself finally and forever to be what she had always been, a romantic figure.
But in her heart she knew it was too late. She was committed to being real at last. Sam had committed her. It was a long way back to the carriage where he sat, but she’d have to go back. She’d have to stumble along the train till she came to where she’d left him. She’d have to open the door and go in and sit down by his side.
Slowly she began to go back along the corridors. When she came to the compartment occupied by the lovers, she saw that the blind was up. It must have snapped up unnoticed by them. Tired of kissing and indifferent now to gapers, they sat hand in hand, staring in front of them. And although they didn’t care this time, she averted her face and hurried on, looking outward to where on the other side of her the fields should have been. But now against the glass only darkness pressed. Like a backing of mercury, it had made the windows into mirrors. And in one of those windows, sitting patiently waiting for her, she saw Sam. He was asleep. He was having a little nap, which wasn’t to be wo
ndered at, because Sam was tired and Sam was old.
Poor Sam, she thought, and her heart softened. What if he did meander on about Mona! He’d earned the right to it. He had learned a larger love than she or Mona knew anything about. ‘Sam,’ she said, stepping into the carriage.
With a start, he jerked his head up. He had been in a sound sleep, but he spoke immediately, as if out of his thoughts. She didn’t at once catch what he said. Does he know which of us it is at all, she wondered, Mona or me? And she tried not to mind. But Sam at that very moment repeated what he had said.
‘Poor fellows!’ That was what he’d said. ‘Poor fellows.’ And she realised with a start that not only was it of her he was thinking, and of the past, but that, in particular, he was thinking of the swains that had swarmed around her in the old days, and whom in the end he had bested. Little did he ever think he’d do it, he who had nothing to recommend him but his heart of gold.
The Cuckoo-spit
Drenched with light under the midsummer moon, the fields were as large as the fields of the sky. Hedges and ditches dissolved in mist, and down by the river the thorn-bushes floated loose like several branches. Tall trees in the middle of the fields streamed on the air, rooted by long, dragging shadows.
Vera stood at the French door, and then the night was so bright she ventured a little way down the garden path. It was a strange night. All that was real and erect had become unreal. The unreal alone had shape. And when close beside her in the long grass a beast stirred, it was only by its shadow she could see where it lay. Unnerved, she turned back to the house. The house, too, had an insubstantial air, its white gable merging in the white of the sky. But on the bright ground its shadow fell black as iron.
It was when she reached the edge of this shadow that the young man stepped out and startled her.
‘I thought you saw me,’ he said defensively. ‘The night is so bright. I saw you. I was watching you as I was coming across the fields.’ Then his voice changed. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. His concern had already made nonsense of her fright. And in the strong light pouring down she could see him as plain as day, a young man with a kind face, his thin cheekbones splattered with large, flaky freckles. Their eyes met, and they smiled at each other, surprised and happy. ‘I ought to know you, I am sure,’ she said, since it was late and he wore no coat.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’m only down here sometimes in summer. I come to stay with an uncle of mine who lives across the river.’
‘Oh, I know him. Tim Hynes? At least, I know him by name. I never actually met him. My husband used to talk a lot about him.’
‘I know,’ the young man nodded. ‘Tim was very upset by his death. So, of course, was everyone,’ he added hastily.
‘Your uncle more than most, though. I was told he took it very badly. There was something, wasn’t there, about his losing interest in the election – not voting at all?’
‘That’s right. He more or less gave up politics after that.’
‘I remember I got a wonderful letter from him at the time.’
‘Tim?’ He raised his eyebrows.
Remembering the old man’s spelling, Vera herself laughed.
‘I never forgot it. Something he said in it. He said it might have been difficult, even for a man like Richard, to save his soul in Dáil Éireann.’
‘That’s like a thing he’d say, all right, but I think it could have been to comfort you. Tim had no doubt whatever about the stature of the man we’d lost in your husband.’
The plural pronoun caught her attention. ‘Are you interested in politics, too?’ she asked, but she was hardly heeding his reply, she was so surprised at the sudden lessening of her interest in him. All the same, I ought to ask him into the house, she thought, if only for his uncle’s sake. Or was it too late?
‘Oh, it’s far too late,’ he said. ‘I didn’t intend to call. I was out for a walk, and I’d crossed over the bridge in the village and was going along the bank of the river below here when I saw that the windows were all lighted. To tell you the truth, I came up closer just out of curiosity. I was always fascinated by this house. Then I saw the French door open. Somehow or other, I got a strange feeling that the house was empty. So I came up and I was about to knock when I realised the odd situation I had got myself into, and I didn’t know what to do. I was just standing there when I saw you coming back. Do you do that often, go out and leave the door open?’
She turned and looked over her shoulder to where the open door let out a stream of golden light that cut its own shape on the shape of the shadow. ‘I wasn’t far away,’ she said vaguely.
‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘And it was a lovely night for a walk.’
It annoyed her that, having been worried at the start, he was so easily satisfied about her safety. ‘I shouldn’t have left the door open all the same,’ she said, ‘but I only meant to walk a little way, just up and down the garden path.’
‘I know!’ he said. ‘The usual thing! You were tempted to go further.’
Again she was irritated by his readiness to put his own interpretation on the situation. ‘As a matter of fact, there was nothing usual about it,’ she said. ‘This is the first time since my husband died that I’ve set foot outside the house after dark alone, except in the car, of course.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said quietly. ‘What could there possibly be to fear in the heart of the country?’
‘That was what Richard used to say. But I wasn’t brought up in the country, and that makes a difference. Even when he was alive, I was nervous out-of-doors after dark.’ She laughed. ‘I’ll tell you something that happened one night. We kept a few hens. They were supposed to be my affair. The henhouse was over there.’ She pointed to a small triangular field near the house, a small field bounded on three sides by a wood. ‘I was always forgetting to shut them up at night, and we often had to go out late and do it, but once it was the middle of the night when I woke up and thought of them, and I had to wake Richard, and we had to put on our coats and go out to them.’
‘Couldn’t he have gone alone?’
‘Of course not. They were my hens. It wouldn’t have been fair to let him go alone.’
He shook his head. ‘He must have been a very patient man.’
‘But it was a night just like this,’ she cried.
Immediately, with her words the night seemed to press closer, lapping them round, not just with its mist and moonlight but with its summer smells of new-mown hay and sweet white clover. ‘We didn’t go back to the house at all,’ she said, remembering that other night with quick and vivid pain. ‘We stayed out for ages.’ But suddenly she had an uneasy feeling that she was giving something away about that night, or about herself, or Richard.
There was a little silence.
‘Is he long dead?’
‘Four years this summer,’ she said, and turned her face away, although she felt his sympathy would not be so easily stemmed.
‘You must miss him very much,’ he said. ‘I was thinking that as I was walking in the fields, and looking at the house. I was wondering how you were able to go on living here without him.’ But he must have felt tactless, or impertinent, because he looked away from her, out over the fields. ‘It’s very beautiful here, of course,’ he added quickly.
‘Tonight, yes,’ she granted. ‘This is a night in a thousand,’ but she gave a cold glance over the moonlit stretches of which he spoke with such unconcern. Did he not know that there were other nights, when those fields could wear a different aspect?
But he missed the glance she’d given over the lonely fields and turned back to her. ‘I suppose the more beautiful it is, the more lonely it must be for you.’
She looked into his face. ‘I got over the worst of it long ago,’
she said harshly. ‘Do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking that there is, after all, a kind of peace at last when you face up to life’s defeats. It’s not a question of getting stronger, as people think, or being better able to bear things; it’s that you get weaker and stop trying. I think I couldn’t bear anything now, even happiness.’ She paused. That was true, she thought, and yet she felt she had expressed herself inadequately. ‘It’s just that I’ve got old, I suppose,’ she said more simply.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, but lightly, carelessly.
She sighed. ‘All the same,’ she said, ‘there is a strange peace about knowing that the best in life is gone forever.’
‘You mean love?’
She nodded. ‘And youth,’ she said, but she thought she saw doubt in his eyes. ‘Aren’t they the one thing?’
She was startled by the haggard look that came over his face. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I hope not. God knows I’ve never had much of either.’
‘What do you mean? What age are you, anyway?’ But before he could answer she realised that she didn’t even know his name. ‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ she said.
‘Fergus,’ he said, giving no surname.
He must be Tim’s brother’s child, she thought, and again at the thought of her old neighbour across the river she felt she ought to insist on his coming inside, no matter the hour.
‘Oh, no, no,’ he said, actually beginning to move away. ‘I’m afraid to think how late it must be now.’