The Light of Evening

by Edna O'Brien

  “At long last, at long last,” they kept saying, as though it were a dirge.

  Keepsakes of my brother everywhere, a photo of him in uniform, his leggings, his revolver, and a letter in a frame that a priest—who had risked coming into that square to give him absolution—copied out in those last moments, in broiling heat.

  My father was upstairs bed-bound and they sent me up with a cup of tea so full that it sloshed onto the saucer. Since he had taken to his bed he ate almost nothing, only currant-top biscuits, which he dipped in his tea. His teeth didn’t fit, so he couldn’t chew. My poor father, too proud to let me see him without his false teeth, his stubble white and raw and sharp as thorn, saying that he meant to shave for me, that he should have shaved in my honor but that he would do so next day, I would bring up the mirror, a bowl of water, his shaving brush, and his cutthroat razor and guide his hand while he did it. He was so thankful that I had come. He said I had grown to be quite a swank but there was no sarcasm in his voice or his saying it.

  At the supper it was nothing but questions. Questions. Was New York full of gangsters, how wide were the streets, what friends had I made, what foods did people eat, and did the different races live in ghettos and come out to challenge one another? A child under the table kept on tying and untying the shoelaces of my brown high-heeled shoes, then its mother, Josie, smarted at the fact that I didn’t realize whose child it was, it was hers and Ned’s, Ned that I’d driven cattle with and forked manure with before I went off and forgot them all. My mother kept urging me to eat up and not to be so standoffish. How long was I staying? They both asked and answered for me. I would not leave a mother alone in her plight. They described how she had kept the news of my brother’s death from our ailing father and on the evening that he was brought home, chapel bells rang out and kept ringing in honor of him, his valor, and my father kept asking if it was a bishop or something that was visiting the parish, not knowing that it was his own son. He was not told of it until the day of the funeral itself, because they believed that if they had told him earlier he would insist that the lid be lifted and it would be too much for him to see a son with half of him blasted off.

  The neighbors were at great pains to remark on the spread my mother had got ready for me, the oxtail that she had ordered weeks before, fearing that either it or I would arrive too soon. Noni described how it had to be left to simmer for hours, then taken out and my mother having to remove the root and the gristly bits, the broth half-jellied and my mother thickening it with a corn flour for flavor. So why was I not eating it? The over-strong smell of the country butter that I had not smelled since I left had made me nauseous. They remarked on how different I was from the good-natured girl who had left with the oilskin bag and her few treasures in the tin box that Dinnie had padlocked.

  My mother fed the crusts of dry bread that she had soaked in cold tea to the dog at her feet. It was a new dog, the spitting image of the old one, black with white splotches on her forehead and mismatching eyes. Princess she was called, on account of the other dog being called Prince.

  They were eager as they stood around the open trunk while I took out the presents, my mother instantly saying that my father would have no use for fur-lined gloves, nor she for a black coat with a turquoise clasp, but the others grateful, over-grateful, for the things I had given them: a rope of artificial pearls, a glitterish bracelet, a nightdress case, and a box of handkerchiefs with lace borders and embroidered mottoes.

  * * *

  The rain wakened me, the mountain through the back window lost in gray drizzle, the few cattle and our one horse huddled under a wall but not lowing, just standing there shivering, because they were soaked wet.

  My mother was crisp with me for coming down in my style and would not hear of me going out to the yard with her to do the jobs. I was a lady now. There was a gulf between us, she knowing I had already gone and I not knowing how soon I could break it to her. After she went out, I did something rebellious. I emptied the contents of the cutlery drawer onto the floor and poured a kettle of boiling water over them to clean the stains, egg yolk and meal and cod-liver oil, wanting to throw away everything that was sad and poor and stale and musty and rancid.

  Silverfish

  IT WAS TESS who told me about the crowd going to the all-night dance. We’d been school friends. We’d picked mushrooms and pretended to have seen a big ship. She had got married since I went away; it was a made match, a man from the midlands, a Donal, who had worked in a garage but took to farming, out all day, draining fields and callows so that he could till them and sow corn. It was Tess that put the keepsake in my hand, saying it would bring good luck. It was a silverfish with gold-threaded scales and when she put it in the palm of my hand, I felt it spring backward as if it was a real fish, something telling in it. Their new house, built on the grounds next to the old thatched cottage, was ugly, it felt like a barracks, the walls only recently plastered and damp coming up from the cement floor. We were in the good room and at first she had been shy, remarking on the change in me, my clothes, and even a bit of a twang. The wedding presents, even after a year, still lay on the dining room table, a tea set, sheets, pillowcases, small blue glasses, and a blue decanter with a silver chain hanging on its throttle that read CLARET. Among them the silverfish that she made me take. She was happy I was home, I would come often, I would be company, Donal was the best man, the kindest man, but men were not company. On the floor there was a cradle, a low cradle like a little boat, padded and lined with white linen, and she was praying for it to be filled, for a baby to fill the days. Then all of a sudden she ran out and I could hear her mounting the stairs as I looked at the one picture on the wall, a petrol-blue sea, the waves moiling but the ship with its sails and rigging bellied out, ready to go. She came back with what remained of her wedding cake. It was in a white cake box with a doily and the icing had to be hammered with the handle of a knife before we could crack our teeth on it.

  She said lads would be going to the dance-cum-card party the following Sunday, and telling it she blushed scarlet as if she harbored a secret yearning to go.

  Revel

  THE LORRY TO COLLECT me hooted and I ran down to the stile in my silver-crusted shoes, my long velvet coat trailing in the grass.

  There were six men, all in their good suits, and they gabbled their names as I mounted the high step and a hand helped me in. I was squeezed between Iggy the driver and a man named Cornelius, a chain-smoker, his brown hair flopping over the side of his lean face, the others all beholden to him and Iggy telling me to watch out for that man, that he was Mr. Coaxyoram himself and many a young girl soft on him, but oh, what a gentleman and from a scion of gentlemen. I learned that it was his horse, Red River, that would be played for. He had given it to his friend Jacksie who had lost his all gambling, and the lady he’d been engaged to had jilted him and had not even returned the engagement ring that was his mother’s, which was an heirloom.

  Careering along the country road and then onto byroads that were wet and icy, there was such jocularity, their telling me I might be out for a week or more.

  Carts and sidecars had pulled up in the big courtyard of Jacksie’s house, horses feeding out of oat bags and a fiddler ignoring the rain, coming out to usher us in. Jacksie was dressed as a bandit, had a patch over one eye, and ran to Cornelius to tell him that twelve tables had been taken, six players per table at five quid a head, packs of cards and grog donated by publicans far and wide, and Red River, as he whispered, in a barn miles away, because with a crowd like that and maybe a bit of jealousy, a horse could get stolen or poisoned or nobbled or anything.

  Greyhounds rushed and yelped around the hall where there were pots and pans put down to take the rain that came pouring in.

  “Have a tour, have a tour,” Jacksie said to me and regretted the fact that since his poor dear mother died, the rooms lacked a woman’s warmth, a woman’s touch. In the kitchen two big women in cooks’ outfits were carving legs of ham and beef
for the sandwiches that would be served all through the game, then a big breakfast at dawn.

  The players were mostly seated, itching to begin, impatient men shuffling the packs of cards, a center lamp on each table, and a hail of welcome as Cornelius entered. From the moment they started, everything quieted, the faces serious and concentrated, except for two men who were drunk and skittish asking if Red River had been covered by Man O’ War himself.

  The players were mostly men, with only two women, a Mrs. Hynes, who kept shouting to her partner to remember more of the red and less of the black—“Remember more o’ the red and less o’ the black, Timmy”—and a Miss Gleason, who had kept her hat on, a pearled hatpin skewering the cloth, the pearling a sickly yellow.

  Nobody danced but the fiddle squeaked in fits and starts and the greyhounds slipped in and out under the tables that wobbled as fists were banged in recrimination. Disputes after each round as to how many tricks this person or that person had got, and muting when Miss Gleason got flustered, first reneged on herself, then played her best card, which she needn’t have, and her partner, a gruff man, jumping up, calling her a mad Irish eejit and telling everyone, “She can’t count, she can’t blasted count, she doesn’t even know that a five is better than a knave.” Poor Miss Gleason mortified, her cheeks the same vermilion as the walls, asking him in a screechy voice to take that remark back and people next to her pulling her to sit down, then Jacksie standing on a chair and in a thunderous voice declared her a liability in any game. She sat frail and sulking, her cheeks scalding, vowing that she would never darken his doorstep again, some hushing her and others sniggering at her disgrace.

  Cornelius and Iggy were in the final round and their opponents, who were from the city, displeased and spiteful, not a sound in that room until, at the very zenith, cries of disbelief as it turned out that Cornelius had the knave, the ace, and the king, each of which he threw down with a braggart air and Iggy pooled the winning cards onto his lap. They were the joint winners. They agreed to toss for it and one of the women from the kitchen, being thought to be impartial, was called in to throw a half crown into the air. She flipped it up with such vigor and the excitement was contagious as we watched and saw it spin through the air, almost invisible to the eyes in its dizzy descent. And then the whirl and rewhirl before it made up its mind to land. She stood with her arms kilted out so that nobody could trespass, her arms the two boundaries around the spot where the coin had fallen, and shouted “harp,” which meant Cornelius had won the toss.

  “Don’t worry, lads … I’ll give her back … we’ll play for Red River another night,” and a sudden tide of happiness poured into that room as they lifted him onto their shoulders, four men carrying him to the supper room, tears of pride and joy springing not just from his eyes but from his whole being, and he saying over and over again, “I was afraid I’d win her … I was afraid of that.”

  It was daylight when we set out for home, all of them merry, too merry, piling into the lorry, branches and fallen boughs down the avenue and along the main road, but far from being daunted they laughed and replayed the fractious moments of the game, the enmity and poor Miss Gleason like a little bantam, flaring up, not even realizing that hearts were trumps at the time. The rivers we passed were swollen, either a mud brown or a mud green and the lake water a gunmetal color, the reeds all along the shoreline slanted and flattened, and then a sudden shout and a hail of Jaysuses as the lorry swerved on a bend and Iggy pulled on the brake to avoid crashing into a fallen tree.

  They spoke all at once, what a narrow escape and what an expert driver Iggy was, kept the head and didn’t lose control of the wheel. We climbed out and stood to look at the tree; it was the width of the road, bits splintered off and scattered everywhere, and a few new greens furled shoots, like small birds about to take flight.

  “She’s gone,” Cornelius said.

  “Lucky we weren’t gone with her,” another said, but their mood was ebullient; they raced after their caps that had blown off in the wind, two soaring over a high bank of hedging, forever lost, yet their spirits undampened as they returned to survey the tree in her fallen pride, Dessie tracing her age by the number of circles in the trunk, declaring her to be well over the hundred, a sorry sight, the base caked with damp clay, the torn roots, scrawny and maggoty and by the curl in them wanting to get back into the earth. Nothing for it, as Iggy said, but to get a pair of workhorses with the chains and the traces and pull the lorry that was on its hind wheels, like a balked animal, stuck.

  “Keep the home fires burning” was their password as we marched down the road toward a public house that they knew of. The gold lettering that read FINE ALES AND WINES SINCE 1892 faded and flaked into the black paint that bore the name of the owners. Pebbles were thrown up to the window and a startled man came down, his wife following, rushing to make us refreshments, thanking God that no one had been injured, and tell- ing how her children had cried all night, had got into bed with them, scared that the wind would carry them off to the lake. Two of the younger men, Brud and Dessie, were sent to the yard to get the horses and the chains and go back down to retrieve the lorry.

  Cornelius had the woman open the rarest bottle of whiskey on the shelf and they were drinking once again as if it were nightfall, laughing over everything, the missing caps that were probably by now in the Shannon, poor Miss Gleason, a crackaillie, coincidence at the fact that Cornelius had won back Red River, but the gallantry of his giving her back for another game.

  The pub adjoined a grocery and hardware, and Con insisted on buying new caps for everyone, shy men, drunk men, walking around, looking in a small mirror that was propped against the windowpane, saying one to the other, “Oh, we’re quality now,” lifting and lowering the new caps to get themselves used to the size and the feel of them, squeezing their old caps in their hands as if they were dishcloths.

  It was late in the morning by the time we reached home, our two cows had been let out, the milk tankard and churn on their sides airing and when it came for me to say goodbye, the others insisted that Cornelius walk me up from the stile.

  “Take the girl up home, can’t you?” they said.

  Finding ourselves alone for the first time there was that shyness, that hesitancy.

  “Will I sing for you?” he said and immediately began to sing:

  Come and sit by my side if you love me

  Do not hasten to bid me adieu

  But remember the Red River Valley

  And the cowboy that loved you so true.

  The rain had stopped but a low cloud full of water and sunshine was ready to open, to burst asunder.

  Fresh Horses

  “GO ON … TOUCH HER … touch the side of her neck … she’s just a bit nervy … a nervy lady like yourself,” Cornelius said, as one of the mares, a chestnut, recognizing I was a stranger, shied away, then backed into the stall, snorting in jerky rapid snorts. There were five or six mares in all, a roan, a bay, and a piebald, and in the semidarkness, because the shutters were drawn, their eyes were a liquid blue, the big moist sockets navy and brimming with curiosity.

  It was in the stables in Rusheen, so clean and snug, like a clean warm kitchen, a fire at the far end and the old groom boiling up pots of barley for their dinners, the tackle and the brasses all beautifully polished, the smell of leather and linseed oil and all the horses now in an agitation as the stallion at the far end began to kick at his partition so as to get to them.

  The house across the paddock was a ruin that he’d walked me around, a bit of painted wall still standing, a staircase that dropped down into nowhere, its iron rungs choked with briar, the set of green gongs from the back kitchen still intact in a net of mildew, and starlings flying in and out with bits of twigs in their mouths, making nests in the crimsoned corners of the high rubbled ceiling. He told how it had had to be burned at the height of the Troubles to prevent the English from using it as a headquarters, and many of the big houses around had met with the same fate. He had
done it himself along with three other lads, going there in the dead of night with cans of petrol and bags of straw for tinder, took only minutes, a big bonfire light- ing up the whole countryside, sucking the cold, the flames seen for miles around, the house exploding as would a paper house, walls and ceilings collapsing onto one another and the chimney pots skiving off. A new house, a stone’s throw from the charred ruin, was going to be built and it too would be called Rusheen.

  “Sure, a child would touch her … would tame her,” Cornelius said and drew me in to sniff the fidgety chestnut, to make friends with her, but the moment I got close and saw her mouth damp and black as moleskin I must have shown my nerves because her whinnying got louder as did all the others and the stallion leapt, leapt high above the top of the partition, his arched neck black and ridged, gouts of dung and straw flying up, the neighing now furious and maddened.

  Cornelius spoke to them, words and bits of words, and the old groom came across with two wads of tobacco, one for him and one for Cornelius because that was a favorite smell of theirs. Then it was feed time and it all quieted down, only the munching, munching and touching the chestnut mare and the proud sweep of her crest. Con said, “She’ll love you … she’ll love you yet,” adding that she would be one of the pair to drive us in a coach on our wedding morning. That was his way of proposing, and the old groom shook his hand and wept with joy at the announcement.

  I knew my mother would be happy, because when the pony and trap had come to fetch me, she blessed herself, shook holy water on me, and hoped it would lead to prosperity.

  * * *

  Six weeks was the period of my engagement, six dizzy weeks, plans and purchases, gifts for my parents, a new set of false teeth for my father specially fitted by a dentist in Limerick and for my mother a bog-oak sideboard that she sat down in front of each evening, as if it was an altar. I would be fetched each day in order to go over to discuss with Alphonsus the groom plans for the new house that was to be a replica of the old house, rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, tap rooms, bay windows, and even a rose window dividing the vestibule from the hall. Because I had hankered to go back to America, my husband-to-be agreed that we could go there for a year, while the building work was being done.