by Edna O'Brien
“Not that I know of … you’re better off now with the men in Dublin, the specialists,” he says.
“But you see … you saw,” she says.
“I’m only guessing … I’m a simple sort of fella,” he says, abashed.
Their eyes meet and part, each staring into the forlorn space, a shaft of disappointment, he because he is unable to help her and she because she is thrown back into her own quagmire of uncertainty.
Flaherty
DILLY HAS BEEN ADMITTED, registered, x-rayed, tapped, and thumped, hammer blows to her chest and between her shoulder blades, a stethoscope onto her heart and upon being told to breathe deeply, made a fool of herself by coughing incessantly; different nurses leading her hither and thither, up and down the long corridors, the smells of wax polish, oranges, and Dettol. She has glimpsed into the wards, people with visitors, sitting up, others half doped back from their operations, and she has observed the various statues and holy pictures, particularly the vast painting of the Sacred Heart in the upper hall, the carmine red of his robes so rich and opulent, a lone figure in a desert landscape.
Bidding goodbye to Buss was a wrench, goodbye to the world as it were, poor Buss tipping his peaked cap over and over again as he stood by the outer glass doors, not allowed in any further but reluctant to go.
She is in her bed now, in a corner of the ward that is quite secluded from the main section. Her little niche with a view of the garden outside, the dark thin tapering branches, still leafless, scribbling their Morse onto the night sky. The sky, not pitch dark like country sky but flushed from the reflection of cars, buses, and streetlamps. She is on edge—the strangeness of things, strange sounds, coughings, moans, and the suspense of what is yet to be. The questions they flung at her on admittance, having to rake up so much of the past. What did her mother die of? What did her father die of? She couldn’t answer, which only proved how callous she had been. No, she had not given them enough love and that too a blemish on her soul. Another question that freaked her: Why had she gone in the first place to her local doctor at home? She had gone out of terror, pure and simple. Their matter-of-factness, so very heartless.
Nurse Flaherty is standing over her bed, arms akimbo, looming, as if to question why she is not yet asleep.
Nurse Flaherty is a big woman, her hair the color of gunmetal, drawn severely over the crown of her head and frizzed at the back, where it is held down with a wide brass slide. From the moment they met earlier, there was an innate antagonism between them, Nurse Flaherty that bit sarcastic, wondering aloud how Mrs. Macready managed to get the best spot in the whole ward and who was it that pulled strings, then remarking on her shortness of breath, dismissed the suggestion that it was from climbing the fourteen entrance steps, both steep and unfamiliar.
“Seventeen steps,” Nurse Flaherty corrected her.
“Are you sure, nurse?”
“Seventeen steps,” Nurse Flaherty said, thereby establishing her sovereignty.
Nor had Dilly liked it one bit when, as a young nurse was folding her clothes to be put in safekeeping until she was discharged, Nurse Flaherty kept commenting on them, weren’t they gorgeous and some people must be rolling in it. One garment in particular had taken her fancy, so much so that if its owner ever got tired of it, she knew who to pass it on to. It was a tweedex cardigan with mother-of-pearl buttons that Dilly had knitted throughout an entire winter and rarely wore, kept in tissue paper with camphor balls for that special occasion. Then the quizzing as to where she came from, which county, which the nearest town, and having discovered the exact locality, pouncing on her, with “Are you on the lake?” It transpired that the nurse knew Dilly’s son, Terence, the optician, met him at the annual Christmas spree when nurses, doctors, chemists, and the like met in that hotel out in Dunlaoghaire for a dinner dance, such a nice young man, sat with a load of girls for the starter and later asked her up to dance, a gentleman.
But now she seems even bossier having, as she says, read the report in the doctor’s file, au fait with Dilly’s medical status, the immune system weak from the shingles, the blood pressure sky-high, vessels blocked and furred up, lumps and bumps, the ticker erratic, hence that blackout in the bakery in Limerick, and with triumph concludes that she has the full picture.
“You should have had a Pap smear years ago … every sensible woman does … it’s the gold standard…” the nurse says, shaking the thermometer vigorously, as though aggravated by it.
“Well, gold standard or no gold standard, I didn’t,” Dilly says flatly, then foolishly enquires if there’s something she should know and know now.
“They won’t know until you undergo the knife … they’ll know then if you’re riddled with or not.”
“Don’t, nurse, don’t.”
“You asked, didn’t you?”
“Now I un-ask,” she says and, changing the subject, remarks how nice it is to be by a window with a view of garden and shrubs and those fine trees.
A black-and-gray striped cat has positioned itself on the windowsill outside, staring in at them, meowing and with its paws assaulting the steel window frame, determined to get in.
“She’s talking to you,” the nurse says.
“Send her away,” Dilly says.
“Sibsibsib,” the nurse says in a coaxing voice.
“Send her away.”
“She won’t go … she comes every night … she had kittens in a shoebox in that locker of yours a few weeks back … curled up inside it … this end was empty on account of the decorating … so she made it her headquarters … one kitten died and she keeps coming back for it.”
“I don’t like the look of her,” Dilly says.
“Oh, she could operate on you … she could get to your ovaries,” the nurse tells her and with a strange elation sings as she goes, “Coosh the cat from under the mat, coosh the cat from under the table.”
* * *
Jangled now, Dilly is thinking who might rescue her from there. It cannot be Cornelius, nor Dr. Fogarty, nor her hard-boiled son, Terence. It has to be Eleanora. She pictures her beyond in England with the shelves of books up to the ceiling and white flowers, usually lilies, in a big pewter jug, insouciant, mindless of this plea. She recalls the letters she wrote in the nights, on pink paper, on vellum, on ruled or jotting paper, pouring her troubles out in order for her daughter to know the deep things, the wounds she had to bear:
Dearest Eleanora,
I got shaky on a stepladder yesterday and nearly came a cropper. I was painting a ceiling for when you come. I know you like a nice ceiling. You mentioned one in the Vatican done by a master and many hands. You have traveled far and yet you do not forget you have a mother. Your letter and enclosures are a godsend. I needn’t tell you as you know from your own experience that men think five pounds should last a year. With your first pay packet from those misers you worked for you sent me the makings of a summer dress and a bristle hairbrush. The way you thought of me. Nowadays I don’t like to spend on myself but on Rusheen. When you’ve lived in a place for over fifty years you don’t like to see it go to wrack and ruin. As per your instructions I bought another electric blanket with the money and switch it on a half an hour before bedtime and God it’s like being in the Canaries, not that I ever was or ever will be. I also paid the TV license out of your enclosure and got the cooker fitted with two instant hot plates. The oven was not right either. If only life was plain sailing but it isn’t. Cakes used to never fail on me before but they do now. The last one I made was a flop, more like a pudding and suitable only with a rich custard poured over it. I will send you one anon as a cake always comes in handy for unexpected callers. As you know I keep the odd lodger. It’s company as well as a bit of pin money. I’ve had a German and his son for some time but the little boy is gone to Munich as the mother got custody for three months. She came to Dublin to collect him. Sad to see him go. Reminded me of the first time you left for the convent and I watched you going down the lawn and knew that it was
forever. The sped arrow cannot be recalled.
Dearest Eleanora,
When do you come? I saw in the paper where you were protesting along with others about nuclear weapons. I suppose you won’t be coming until the boys get their summer holidays. How they love roaming the fields. Did you get my last letter? I sometimes get addled and can’t remember if I posted it or if it might be behind a plate waiting for a stamp. Your postcard from Spain arrived. Was that business or pleasure? Mrs. Du Maurier has left Ireland, gone back to England, had her fill of here. I had a nice letter from Bude. She left Ireland last Tuesday with all her goods and chattels even the dog and the budgie and mind you she was lonely. She stayed here for four days and four nights and as you know she is fussy but she seemed to enjoy it and ate and drank everything I set before her. When she was going she handed me an envelope, said she would not be able to send any present as there might be duty on it from England and told me to buy myself a gift but I did not take it from her as I would not like her to think I had charged her. I think she was pleased not for the money’s sake but for the principle. I don’t know what was in the envelope but even if it was one hundred pounds I would not take it. Hooligans rotted some of our lovely old trees in the back avenue dumping heaps of manure against them. Pure spite. Your good friend poor Drue is gone. He wrote about six months ago from the north of England to say he had lost three stone and that he’d lost joints off his fingers working for the railway but he was expecting good compensation as the union was fighting his case. Yet he didn’t live to see it. He would have been better off in the country with an open-air life as most people are. The way you loved him as a child, doted on him, saying you’d marry at the consenting age and he and you would live in the chicken run. We used to laugh over it. I thought they may bring home the remains as is usually done but they didn’t. I’m sure he left a good bit of money but when you’re gone few care. Isn’t life full of twists and turns. I wish you’d come for six months. I seem to have got a big burst of energy writing this whereas sometimes I haven’t enough strength to hold pen or pencil. You will find that one day as you get older. I worry about you and your traveling to the different places. Nowhere is safe now. My undying love to you.
Dear Eleanora,
Had you been here last week you would have pitied your father and I, we lost a cow, a fine Friesian, due to the neglect of a pup of a vet who had come to de-horn them but was in such a hurry to get off to a horse show in the city he had not bothered to anesthetize their temples and as a result all the animals went mad around the fields charging into each other more like bulls than cattle, roaring, bellowing, a scene out of medieval times them setting upon one another, causing each other such wounds and lacerations the whole field was like a war zone. A spectacle over which your father or I had no control, all we could do was stand inside the gate and witness the carnage that was to cost us dearly, for when the young Friesian went down others who had been venting their rage and their itch teamed up, began attacking her and did their dirtiest and straightaway dogs came from all over and fought each other for the legs and shins and limbs of the unfortunate one who perished.
Dear Eleanora,
Yes I named you after a Swedish girl I lodged with in the States hoping that it would be lucky. Her first name was Solveig but her middle name was Eleanora. There are odds and ends you must take back when you come, eleven Doulton plates, one alas broken. Don’t blame me, my darling, for being upset that time five years ago when I got the wire at midnight from that queer-as-two-left-shoes husband of yours to say you had disappeared, abandoned your children, that you were very ill mentally as he put it and going to a psychologist so I thought it must be drastic. I fell for his lie and who wouldn’t but I just ask that you do not drink alcohol as drink weakens the resolve. The TV that you gave us packed up again and we got it fixed but it doesn’t stay right, our sewerage also gave up and must have been stopped for years. Yesterday a chimney pot fell down and the breakfast room chimney is blocked with crows’ nests so we’re upside down and downside up as the fella says. I saw your photograph in the paper but can I say the outfit you wore didn’t do you justice, it exaggerated your figure by twice your size, the gathers and belt made you fatter. You have many ill-wishers here. Poor Dunny died alone in the gate lodge, the rats nearly got him before he was found, it’s only fit to be demolished. There has been twenty so far wanting to get possession of it, grabbers, someone broke in there one night, slept there and left it in a disgusting condition. No visitors only William on Sunday evenings, endless speeches on world affairs and after two hours of it telling me the imperial sands are shifting Mrs. M. His brother Edward got a new overcoat maybe secondhand, so as they can go now to the same Mass on Sundays as previously one had to wait until the other came home from the first Mass to hand over the coat. It seems they don’t talk at all only fight, the mother’s will was unclear, Edward got a field up the Commons that William wanted to build on for the remarkable view and there followed dispute and foul play, a stream de-routed, a stream that animals drank from, Edward concluded it was his brother’s dirty work and the sergeant had to be called. A stranger came up here the other evening, a marvelous sunny evening and asked me to excuse his cheek but said he had never seen a house that looked so beautiful so we are not in the ha’penny places after all. The creeper makes for a splash of color in contrast with the sandstone and of course the trees are a feature. You used to have a swing on the walnut tree and talk to yourself. Your brother says he will sever all ties with us unless we do as he asks and sign Rusheen over to him. I forgot to mention that there are two cakes in the post for you, one is a flop, the other a standby. You get so little time to bake and remember you can steam bits of the reject one in emergency. You are never out of my mind. I feel the cold more than I used to and this house is big, ceilings high, one fire isn’t much. Moroney’s pub have got two new big electric heaters but Pa will make sure the drinking boys pay for them. The doctor is marrying his sister-in-law, a thing no papal bull would allow, but it is an old and a true saying a man’s wife is never dead. Little things keep coming back to me, I remember when you were young sitting on the back step one day and saying, “Mam, I’d love nice clothes.” I suppose style does give an uplift when one is young and minus the spare tire. Your father has the ulcer now for years, it’s getting no better always taking the magnesia or some jollup and won’t go for a consultation, says there’s nobody to look after the horses, says he can’t leave them to die so he has to wait. How I wish he’d get rid of them as they swallow money.
Gabriel
DIM NOW THE LIGHTS in the ward, one light from the passage, miscellaneous sounds, snores, coughs and groans, sleepers trapped in their dreams, in their nightmares, caught in them and Dilly wishing she had not come, wishing she had stayed home, sick or no sick. Thoughts, unbidden, come into her mind, like those bats that come in a window in the summer and roam and rampage the night long. Her mind a jumble. Things learned by heart at school: “The harp that once through Tara’s hall … Gearoid Og … The fall of the house of Kildare.” Again, she recalls setting out lonesome for America, the ship plowing the main, waves high as a house, crashing in, flying crockery, prayers and screams at the birth of that unwanted child.
A young nurse doing the rounds sees that she is fidgety, muttering to herself, stops to ask if she needs something and unwisely Dilly tells her how her mind is spinning, bats, the big ship, inspectors on Ellis Island shouting at people to “keep moving, keep moving,” at which the nurse runs off alarmed.
It is only a matter of minutes before Nurse Flaherty has arrived with two sleeping pills in a little plastic cup, which she rattles gaily like a child with its first fallen tooth, rattled for the fairies.
“Oh no, oh no, I don’t need them things,” she says, but the nurse will have none of it. Them things give such a lovely peaceful sleep and such lovely dreams, “moonlight in Mayo” time. Dilly is adamant. She never takes tablets and does not intend to.
“Well, y
ou’re taking them now because you’re up to ninety,” she is told.
“Even a spoon of a cough bottle dopes me … it’s one of my rules,” she says.
“Except I make the rules here,” Nurse Flaherty says, decisively.
“You see they don’t give a natural sleep,” Dilly says half placating.
“How would you know … you never had a one in your life.”
“I did when I was in hospital years ago and I was befuddled for a week.”
“Modern medicine is different … streamlined … six or seven good hours’ sleep and you wake refreshed.”
“Don’t ask me, nurse,” Dilly says, close to tears.
“Look, don’t you rise me because when I’m risen I’m a divil.”
“The doctor didn’t say I was to have them.”
“The doctor does his job and I do mine … that’s how things work in St. Joseph’s Ward.” And filling the tumbler of water from the bedside jug, she proffers the two turquoise capsules from the palm of her hand. Dilly swallows one. It tastes bitter and the aftermath bitterer still, as she retches in indignation.
Already the nurse has the second one to her lips, outlining them as with a crayon or a lipstick. One is not enough, one botches the whole procedure, it has to be two or nothing.
Dilly took the second one and scarcely had she lain back before the swoonings began. She clutched at the rungs of the bed, only to feel them soften and the bed itself beginning to sink as before her eyes there galloped a riderless horse and the consultant who had examined her is wringing the neck of a dead Rhode Island cockerel. I am Dilly and I am not Dilly, she says, clutching the strings of her nightgown, up-down, down-up, like milking a cow, and the last lucid bit of her mind going, going, gone as the tablets begin to wreak their worst. She pleads with herself to stay calm. She even believes that she is mastering these onslaughts, yet at that moment some ultimate door in her has been broken open and is swinging crazily on its hinges, then a burst as in childbirth and the floodgates flung open. I am I amn’t I amn’t. Feel for the bell feel for it Dilly it’s somewhere, find it squeeze it Nurse Nurse. She can’t hear me. They’re not listening. Is this how I die is this how one dies no one to give me the last sacrament all alone didn’t I rock the cradle like many another mother. Oh good God I’m slipping I’m slipping. Well … If it isn’t himself that’s in it if it isn’t Gabriel, eyes the softest brown the brown of the bulrushes, the lake reeds never boast a bulrush but the bog reeds do, cottony at first before they don their stout brown truncheons. Men are queer fish hard and soft both all pie when they want you so sweet and whispery sweeter than a woman then not. Distant. Wild irises beyond in that field they’re kinda swaying. Hard to beat them. The upper part of your face is kinda familiar and so is your good navy suit. You scamp you. Nothing is forgotten. Up to the time he was seven St. Columcille was a very unruly boy. Things miscarry. Letters. Gifts. The waistcoat I was making for you that black Christmas I sent posted it to Wisconsin to the wilds where you sawed trees all day long from dawn till dusk you and a Finn. Lost two fingers there. The pressed jasmine and aster that you stole in the municipal park that Sunday in Brooklyn, I have had framed. A simple dark green frame on a bed of white silk, ruching. You might have written. Every bit of your daily life interests me. I wrote this day fortnight but it was returned. Tampered with. Are you by any chance dead. A post office mistress has a specialty for opening other people’s letters. Not easy for me making time to write I have a man very hard on socks and workmen need three meals a day with jugs of tea and bread in between. My darling you will always have a message from me if only a postcard when I cannot make time for a letter. I would know if you were dead. Perhaps you are on your way here. Be sure to bring a candle a Christmas candle we need a bit of light to shed on things. So many misunderstandings. I was going across to you you were coming across to me but I was motioned back told to sit down and wait and that you would be with me seven years from this day. If you would get yourself photographed front face and silhouette and send it to me I will send postal order by return. Make sure the photographer catches the spill of your hair and your trim black beard. I have been told that you will be with me openly seven years from this day. Better call at night after the lights are out. Sometimes a well-dressed lady on horseback rides by here with leaflets to distribute, things on her mind I reckon. Once there was a child with her riding double. Walk right round the house in case of spies and then tap on the window a good smart rap and I’ll sit up. We could go to the boathouse in Googy Park, boat half rotten but we’ll be safe enough off over there on the island no one to split us asunder. Write to me I am weary weary of the pen weary of asking.