‘So . . .’ Her mother leaned back in the chair and joined her hands behind her head. From the quiet tone of voice the girl knew immediately what was going to be said.
‘This has been a better . . . It’s been a less bad month.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
The girl chewed her toast – then leaned forward to take a sip of the tea. She always drank it hot with very little milk in it.
‘Compared to this time last year,’ said the mother.
The girl’s voice was on the edge of tears so the mother stopped talking. Her daughter rubbed her eyes, then stared straight in front of her, still chewing.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘He took your wee sister to the pictures. Just to get out.’
‘What’s the film?’
‘Something in the Odeon. With Matt Dillon in if.’
‘He’s amazing.’
The sun swung almost imperceptibly from side to side. The earth turned slowly to face the moon.
‘Any time we got a flea at home,’ said her mother, ‘it was blamed on the picture house. I used to come up in lumps and Mum’d say, “When were you last at the pictures?” There was never any possibility that you could’ve picked it up in church.’
‘Or school.’ She lifted her tray off her knees and offered it to her mother. ‘I’m too tired. I’ll have to lie down.’ She toppled her sitting-up cushion onto the floor and keeled over flat on the bed. Her mother set the tray on the dressing-table and sat down on the chair again. She said,
‘Take it easy.’
After a moment the girl leaned over and looked at the basin on the floor.
‘Where is it?’
‘It’s still there. Don’t panic.’
‘Give me the backscratcher.’
Her mother handed it to her. It was a stick with a small fake hand at the end of it, the fingers curled up. The girl dipped it into the water and tried to squash the flea between the plastic knuckles and the bottom of the basin.
‘Love . . .’ Again the quiet tone.
‘Talking about it doesn’t change anything.’
‘It gives a purpose. Goals. Something to aim at.’
The girl had turned the plastic hand round and was now trying to cradle the flea in its palm. Every time she brought it to the surface the flea slipped sideways off into the water.
‘What’s the point?’ she said.
‘You’re sick. You’re twenty-one years of age. You’ve improved. Someday you’ll be better. We have to prepare for that. Aim at it.’
‘Huh.’ She rolled her eyes away from her mother and looked up at the papier-mâché globes above her. ‘Improved.’ Her eyes filled with tears. Then she whipped the backscratcher down onto the surface of the water with a slap, splashing it over the carpet. She buried her face in her arm. She was half shouting words, half crying them – this is what talking about it does, she was trying to say. Her mother went to sit on the bed beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. The girl was shuddering and shouting into her hair and the crook of her arm and the tumbled sheets. Her words were wet and distorted.
‘I’m not, I’m not,’ said her mother. ‘Not for one minute am I blaming you. All I’m saying is that this time last year – no, two years ago – you couldn’t get to the bathroom on your own . . .’ The mother held tightly onto her daughter’s shoulder. It was sharp with thinness under the material of the football shirt. Eventually the girl stopped crying. Her mother went to the bathroom and damped a face-cloth with hot water and brought it to her.
‘Crying doesn’t help,’ said the girl. ‘Nothing helps.’ The cloth steamed as it was opened. Her mother massaged her daughter’s face. ‘What time will Dad be back?’
‘Ten? Half ten?’
The girl leaned out of bed, picked up the backscratcher again and began to stir the basin with it.
‘Maybe don’t tell him I was crying.’
‘Okay.’
She withdrew the plastic hand and this time the flea was stuck to the back of it. She brought it up close to her face to inspect it, curling up her lip as she did so. Suddenly it jumped.
‘It’s alive,’ she screamed.
‘I don’t believe it. It can’t be.’
‘It is.’
‘God Almighty.’
Both women squealed and laughed with the shock it had given them.
‘The flea jumped over the moon,’ said the girl and continued to laugh. She lay back on her pillows, her shoulders shaking, her hand over her mouth. Her mother smiled and straightened out the coverlet. She bent over, her eyes only inches above it, staring.
‘Right,’ she said, ‘ – let’s take it from the very beginning.’ Her mother searched every visible inch of the coverlet but could see nothing. ‘Don’t worry – we’ll find it before it finds you. It’s only a matter of time.’ She reached out and with a licked finger touched every speck.
‘No.’
Every black particle.
‘No.’
Any crumb.
‘Definitely not.’
The girl listened to her mother’s voice with closed eyes.
THIS FELLA I KNEW
This fella I knew – he spent his boyhood in a place between here and Sleivemish – out beyond the point there. On the outskirts of Lettermacaward.
And wait till I tell you this. He earned the best part of fifty pounds a day folding shirts.
And the best part of it was, he never folded a shirt in his life. His mother said he just threw them at his backside. But he was smart enough for being rared on a bit of a farm.
And he went to the University in Belfast. And did a degree in all kinds of things – engineering and physics and mathy-matics and God knows what.
And at the finish-up didn’t he get a job across the water folding shirts. In a big concern. Marks and Spencer’s, I think it was.
A new shirt, now, is an experience. And, before our friend with his University degrees got on the job, it was a dangerous one – for you could end up going out till a dance needing a blood transfusion, there was that many stabs in you from putting on the new shirt. That was until our friend came along – with the mathy-matics and the engineering. Folding, it seems, is a science. I’m told a bit of paper can’t be folded more than eight times, no matter should it be a sheet the size of Ireland itself. Anyway, the aim of the thing was to get the shirt-folding down to the one pin. And this your man did – no bother.
And they paid him a powerful sum of money for the knack of doing this.
And, do you know, when he had earned his money nothing would do him but he’d come back home from England and buy himself a bit of land and put eleven cows on it.
But somebody had it in for him – for it didn’t work out.
And didn’t the cows get the grass-staggers and warble-fly and God knows what and he had to sell up the bit of land and go off again and concoct a scheme for bending cardboard boxes into hexagons for decorated chocolates.
But he was a smart boy, right enough, for he made money hand over fist at this and d’you know what I’m going to tell you – he was the boyo who came up with the idea of thin bits of square sweets, each one in its own brown envelope. Would you credit it?
And they became all the rage and the bosses at the factory went down on their knees when they heard he was leaving, but no – nothing would content him but to buy a farm of land he had seen advertised in the ‘Dungannon Observer’ just outside Gortin.
And all along, his mother had been mailing him the paper every week to England – in a brown wrapper. Wasn’t that cute of her? To keep tabs on him, hoping to get him back one day.
Anyway, this time he stocked the farm with sheep and no sooner had he done it than they all got foot-rot and grooley stomach and that was him beat again – the lad had no luck whatsoever.
And it was back to the packaging. That’s what they called what he did. Packaging, by God. The kind of thing you or I would do at Christmas – for nothing extra.
And money became a plentiful commodity. In the digs he was paying that much he could leave the light on all night without raising any hackles.
And every week he put some by and when he had enough ha’pence scraped together didn’t he have a go at a bit of a farm for the third time. Serves him right, says you.
And this time it was the pigs. The fool gave up the job across the water.
And he comes back and buys a place beyond the bridge there. The Mammy’d be able to see him at half past ten Mass every Sunday from now on. He must have prayed the knees off himself or else the Mammy did. Because this time the boyo succeeds. And he starts making money hand over fist.
And buying that pink newspaper – and carrying a rolled umbrella from the house to the byre, if you don’t mind, and wearing glasses even though he didn’t need them – divil the bit – he could tell a full stop from a comma at the far end of the room. And having a mirror fitted to his bicycle instead of looking round like everybody else.
The difference between him and everybody else round here was packaging ‘the product’ – he wrapped it in cellophane and called it ‘Bacon like it was before the war’.
And he sold everything but the grunt. The bacon itself, the pig’s ears, the trotters, the curly tails – some said he sold the arseholes to school masters for elastic bands round the bundle of class pencils. Wasn’t he the cute one too?
A FOREIGN DIGNITARY
The view from my window at the inn looked outward onto a small courtyard garden where everything seemed to be in bloom at once. The effect was quite, quite lovely. I watched a gardener stooping among the plants weeding, occasionally watering. Like everyone else here, he wore a buff-coloured smock. He had a bag of maroon powder which he was trowelling into the soil around the roots of the more colourful species. It looked like the dried blood fertiliser I use in my own garden at home.
The man raised his head and, when he saw me watching him, smiled in a gap-toothed manner. I nodded to him, not wanting to seem aloof, and staggered a little as I stepped back from the window. I had been warned about the period of adjustment one must go through at these high altitudes so I sat on a wicker chair until my dizziness passed.
Away from home like this I write a letter to my wife at least once a week, sometimes two if I find time heavy on my hands. The fact that they reach her months later, sometimes even after I have returned, is of little importance to me. After the daylong babble of strange tongues and dialects, in the quiet of my room I establish a communication of a sort with her. In some ways it is a similar activity to prayer, and even though there is no hope of a reply I inquire after our daughter, Elgiva. She is a young woman who is ill with a skin complaint which makes her avoid the company of all but her closest female friends. Her condition comes and goes for no apparent reason. The skin of her face and throat flare up into a dry angry redness in a patch whose edge is as irregular as a coastline. Her eyes become blood-shot and inflamed. Although she claims the condition is not painful it is pitiful for others to look upon. After her last attack my wife and I decided that it would be best to have all mirrors removed from Elgiva’s rooms.
The Director of Prisons joined me for dinner at the inn. He was a small man with features typical of the region – a large hooked nose, olive skin, an unshaven look. His command of my language was almost perfect. Like everyone else he wore the buff-coloured robe. The only difference was that he had a medallion of some sort hanging on his chest.
He talked about each dish as it was presented, seeming particularly proud of one course containing sea fish. Coming from where I do this did not seem remarkable until I remembered that we were thousands of miles from any coast. And the transport, as I know to my cost, was lamentably slow. I cannot describe the discomfort I endured in getting to this place.
We were in an alcove slightly removed from the others who were eating and drinking. The Director pointed out various men of standing in the community but they all looked alike to me.
‘It is a very popular place,’ he said. ‘All the more so when they know a foreign dignitary is here. They are curious to see you.’
‘Dignitary indeed! I am a civil servant – doing my job.’
‘A highly placed civil servant.’
‘One who carries out other’s orders, none the less.’
The Director of Prisons leaned towards me and whispered,
‘It also means there will be entertainment.’
A small band of musicians began to play while we were having dessert. The sound was thin and, to my ear, quite quite raucous but I applauded loudly when they finished.
It was only when a young girl came out into the space between the tables that I realised she was the sole representative of her sex in that place. She began to dance to the music and again the Director leaned across to me.
‘This is for you.’
She was very young, not long out of her childhood, and was dressed in a kind of long white folk costume. The dance consisted mostly of arm movements and gyrations of the hips – the feet moved but rarely. As she danced her eyes were downcast – which I found very alluring – fixed on the floor some inches in front of where I was sitting. Towards the end of the dance its character changed and the girl stood stock-still with her feet wide apart and began to ruck up her costume finger by finger. Past her shins, past her knees, above her thighs until she revealed her tiny dark pubes and buttocks. The men applauded and banged the tables. The girl dropped her costume and bowed to me, then turned and left. Everyone was now looking at me. The Director said,
‘She is yours for the night, if you wish it.’
‘No, really. It is kind of you to offer but I am a married man. And as you know, that is forbidden in our culture.’
The Director raised an eyebrow and shrugged as if he didn’t believe me.
‘If it is disease which worries you I can assure you she is a virgin.’
‘No, really. Thank you.’
I offered to pay the girl some money lest she be disappointed at my refusal but the Director would not hear of it. He said that already she had been well rewarded.
I spent an uncomfortable night, sleeping only fitfully. I twisted and turned, thinking obsessively about the pleasures I could have had with the child dancer. I knew that as a representative of my Government I could not be seen to accept her and yet the child was so attractive. Visions of her little rounded buttocks, her scant hair below the paleness of her belly, kept me awake until dawn began to colour the room.
While at breakfast a note was delivered to me from the Director informing me that he would meet me before noon. I was amused at the mixture of formality and casualness of these people. When he arrived the Director bowed stiffly, yet apologised because we would have to walk to the prison. Someone had forgotten to arrange transport. I gathered my notebooks and papers and we set off together. As we walked the Director of Prisons insisted on carrying my briefcase.
‘I hope you had a comfortable night,’ he said.
‘Thank you, I did.’
The pavements were in a state of poor repair and the roads rutted and broken. Many people sat at street corners begging, but on seeing the man with the medallion they did not put their hands out to us. They were emaciated, with the result that their eyes seemed to have grown larger. Our progress was watched by a slow turn of the head.
‘Your Government have expressed great interest in our system,’ said the Director.
‘Indeed. Your crime figures are quite, quite remarkable.’
‘The only real crimes are political. Everything else is . . .’ He paused for a moment, searching for the right word. ‘Venial? Misdemeanours which can be forgotten. The man who steals a cow is made to pay it, or its value, back; the murderer usually acts in the heat of the moment and we forgive
him provided he makes a contribution to the family of the injured party. I will take you to the Courts tomorrow and you will see the process in action.’
‘I very much look forward to that.’
We were moving into a better district. Laburnum trees with their delicate hanging blossoms lined the streets; we proceeded through a wide gateway into a garden of open aspect and thence towards a colonnaded walk.
‘The philosophy of imprisonment is one that interests me,’ said the Director. ‘You can either punish, reform or protect. These are the options. There is no real need for the first one – punishment is very old-fashioned. The state should be above such a childish reaction. Although I agree with one of your famous writers – “The power of punishment is to silence, not confute”.’
I could not quite place the quotation so allowed him to continue.
‘And on the matter of reform, Councillors of the Courts can dissuade most people from committing another crime. Your prisons, I believe, are overflowing with petty criminals who will never change. All this is a great drain on the resources of a State.’
‘But what if they offend repeatedly?’
‘We have the ultimate threat of imprisonment. It is a great deterrent.’
I was becoming a little breathless and presumed it was the effects of altitude. I tried to hide my panting and asked,
‘How far is it to the prison?’
‘This is it,’ he said. ‘We are in it.’
I looked around. As I walked through the low colonnade, the place reminded me of a monastery more than anything else. There were two gardeners, one raking the grass he had just scythed, the other working with a hoe in the flower-beds.
‘No walls? Not even a gate?’
The Director smiled.
‘No.’ He seemed to dismiss my incredulity because he went on, ‘The one class of offender we have found who is NOT open to reform is the political animal – the revolutionary. He is a zealot who is . . .’ again he seemed to be searching for a word, ‘incorrigible, whose sole aim is the overthrow of the whole system and, quite logically, the system needs to protect itself against him more than any other.’
Walking the Dog Page 10