Annie Dunne (24 page)

And when now and then rarely I saw another bowed-back girl, all my instinct was to jeer her too, although I had no licence to. This afflicting music of my childhood was hard to hear then, but I o‘ercame it. It is now, oftentimes lying these decades later on a flattening mattress with a ticking of old goose down, that I am gripped by fearsome rages, to think of it. Never kissed, never fondled, never embarrassed by a boy’s desire! It is a wretchedness.

Truly it is said, the child is father of the man, or mother of the woman, in my case.

So wrongdoers against children should not imagine their crimes are forgiven, just because the child heals quickly before their eyes. The wound seeps down like a drowned person. Many years later it will bob up again to the surface, frighting the districts all about. This I know, this is my caution.

The next morning early I betake myself to Lathaleer, hoping to find him there. It is not a house I relish going to, because it was there my father endured his last days of freedom, as one might say, and that I tended him in the closing infirmity of his mind. He had been delighted to have the renting of it, that time his life as a policeman was at last over, and he was obliged to make some fist of a retirement. But forty years he had been among the men of the DMP, as recruit, as constable, as sergeant, as inspector, all the ranks even as far as chief superintendent, the highest rank a Catholic could hold. Commissioner was the only rung above that, and that was reserved for some English politician, and, truth to tell, a commissioner was rarely sighted and did no work that I know of. In my father’s time also I remember there was not anyone to fill that job, so he was
de facto
the head of the Dublin police.

But Dublin at length became a ferment of murder and discontent, and his last days were spent among the insults and wounds of revolt and revolution. That great change in things I do believe hurt his simple mind. He could not rise to the new dispensation, he could not get crowns and kings out of his head, and give his loyalty to common gunmen, the sort that came in after and called themselves leaders.

His wits were sundered in his head. He sat in Lathaleer, the prospect of which had given him such initial joy, and felt even the scratchings of the mice and rats as things against him, the sough of the wind as an army of murderers. I could not hold that old humpty-dumpty together. The ropes that bound his skiff to the land of sense unravelled before my eyes.

Lathaleer was a site of sore suffering for me and him, and the poor end of it all was him bundled into Matt’s car on a wicked, cold Sunday, and driven down to the county home like an old bullock sent straight to the glue factory, there to be rendered down slowly by the havoc of his mind and the indifference of his keepers. And at last, the cowardice of his daughter. Oh, well I know it. And God will curse me for it at day’s end.

In the upshot, Matt is not there. I wonder why I have been so foolish as to imagine he would be. He has gone out early as usual, the girls there tell me, and as he has brought a parcel of bread and butter and cheese—my butter I hope - they do not expect him back till late. I suppose that strange fever of making is upon him, when everything else passes to the second place, and all he desires is the next intoxication of fields and hills and riverlets, of browns and greens. It is an obstacle to my purpose, at any rate, although he still might wander in to us in Kelsha, so I turn back for home.

To reach the road going up to Kelsha, I must of course pass the stile leading in to the farm at Feddin. I fear this now for present reasons, as being infected by the presence of Billy Kerr. His insults are still loud in my head. But once a thought is in the mind, to cause some change in things, once the courage has been found to make the heave, it is hard to let it go by just because a man is about the landscape painting. Do I really need Matt to address the problem of Billy Kerr, when I might be as well to enlist again the assistance of Winnie?

Something in my inner heart bids me go on, to pass those gates and take the green road to Kelsha, but alas I crush that small instinct, and climb the stile, and make my way along the verdant avenue of buttercups and bell flowers. The musky heat hangs under the old oaks, the mothy ash trees. The yellow buttercups blaze like butter pats. The ground is dappled like a cowhide.

‘God bless all here,’ I say, as I cross their threshold and enter the wooden hall. There is no one there, no sound in the house at all, except the anxious beating of the grandfather clock, half done in by mildew and mould. Indeed the panelling I can see is suffering, buckling out from the water in the walls behind it. The sunlight peers in in a dusty column, revealing these secrets, like the hand of a stranger in the possessions of an old woman. For the house is old and female. There is a cleanliness to it, but also a suffering, a decay behind the front of things. I pass on through the parlour, silent as the hall, the table where we were given our tea and our salad, bare and scrubbed. They must be away out, at their tasks. I put my head around the door of the kitchen just to check. There is Winnie, with her reading glasses on her nose, and she would be reading the Wicklow paper, except she is sleeping. A bowl of sunlight cowls her round. She looks old but content, far, far more content than myself. She has a farm and sisters and a strong man to drive her about the place in the trap, and dig, and build walls back up when they tumble. She is rich in certitude, in affections, in place. I do not want to trouble her again. I go back out to the hall, tip toeing on the creaking boards. They dip under my shoes, springy and strange.

‘It’s you, Annie,’ says Winnie, now standing in the door behind me. ‘Why are you creeping away?’

‘Oh, Winnie, I did not wish to wake you.’

‘I was only napping. Forty winks. It is the sunlight. Did you want to talk to me? Come back in, dear, sit down, have a glass of water for your thirst.’

I do as I am bidden, quite like a child. Winnie is not much older than me, but her manners are more a parent’s than a cousin’s. I sit in the chair allotted, an old child.

‘I hope you did sort that out with Sarah. I know how hard these matters of - whatever you might call it, can be. I never had such troubles myself. But I have been thinking about you. I spoke to Billy. He was very feeling. He is considerate. He promised to take due care, to steer a happy course if he could. Did you speak to him?’

‘I did,’ I say, remembering the torrent of curses. ‘I—I wish you would speak to him again.’

‘There might not be any use in going over the ground again. I think he will not disadvantage you if he can help it. Of course, it is for Sarah to think of too.’

‘I cannot stand in the way of Sarah.’

‘No, no, I wouldn’t counsel that you do!’

‘Of course not, Winnie. No, but if you could speak to Billy Kerr.’

‘There’s not much more to say to him. You know, if we lost him, there would be hardship in it here too. He has a strong and willing back!’

‘I know.’

Now here’s Billy Kerr in the kitchen door. I am suddenly afraid. I am creeping about right enough in the plans of the living, me, a half-dead person without rights or land. I am like those landless people that the hunger of the last century destroyed, creatures that could brook no change, without the consequence of their demise. Like Simeon, I would like to see the coming of the Lord before I die, but I will not even see John the Baptist, as the saying goes. Billy Kerr, all force and smiles, stands in the door. Such a smile he has, beaming at Winnie and me. He crosses to the water bucket, the surface still knocking about from the dipping of the ladle to quench my own thirst.

‘I am beaten by the thirst,’ he says, and dips the ladle, pours the liquid into a chipped cup, and drinks it down gladly, as if gladly. ‘So, Annie,’ he says. ‘What brings you to us today, this fine morning?’

To
us.
How is it he vexes me so? Vexation upon vexation! And yet it is
us.
Because Winnie does not baulk at the word, and Winnie is queen of Feddin. Without bothering to wait for an answer, he says, ‘The two sisters are up by the Humewood boundary, knocking the hell out of those brambles. Such women they are, with a slash hook. I never saw such swipes. They are like devils possessed.’

‘We hate brambles, generally,’ says Winnie, laughing.

‘Well, that’s quite clear!’ he says. What pleasantry, what ease. I hate this man. If I could kill him quietly, I think I would. I would like to cleave his breastbone with a slash hook, now slash hooks are the topic, and reach into his ribs and put my fingers round his vigorous heart, and tear it from what tethers it.

‘I was only passing,’ I hear my small voice say.

‘What’s that, Annie?’ he says, pausing and looking at me.

‘You asked me a question. I was just passing, is the answer.’

‘She was just passing,’ says Winnie, smiling.

‘Did I?’ he says, and looks away again, and strides from the room.

‘You see,’ says Winnie. ‘He has nothing against you. He bears no grudge.’

‘Why would he?’ I say.

‘Well, a man doesn’t like to find someone standing in his way. A man is like a flooding stream. He will leap the rock.’

‘I am not trying -’

‘You are not trying to stand in his way. I know.’

Oh, now the tears come. It is the motherly tone. So long ago since there was that tone to guide and comfort me.

‘Oh, Annie...’ she says, and crosses the red and black tiles of her comfortable kitchen. She stands beside my chair and puts a hand on my shoulder. This time I do not flinch away. I care not a jot now for bowed spines and hunchbacks. For that is what I am. How easy and nicer to say
bowed.
Cupid’s bow indeed, something springy and useful. A bowed back. Almost a pretty phrase. Hunchback, hunchback is what you are. The hunchback of Notre Dame. The hunchback of Kelsha.

At length I bring myself and my tears away. Winnie comes to the door and, by grace of her concern for me, she hugs me briefly as I go. She passes back into her house, no doubt to resume her seat, her paper reading, maybe lightly to think on my visit, my dilemma, I do not know. So lonely and wretched I feel.

Billy Kerr leans against the big hay shed. He is smoking, idle. I glance at him, and my eye is caught by his eye. His face does not smile, he does not speak. I am so surprised by the aspect of menace in his slouch, in his lack of expression, that I actually stare. Is it really him, or is it a stranger? My long vision is not what it was, though not nearly akin to Sarah’s. Both near and far vision are going with her. I have a horrible picture of her groping blindly towards Billy Kerr, in our bed! Banish such things, Annie Dunne! I . almost think of calling for Winnie, such is my expectation of him speaking, or attacking me. He has roused the full measure of menace in himself, or so it looks from that distance. It is blurred, it is blurred. And then I think he is raising a hand, with the pointing finger extended, and he is wagging it at me, like a schoolteacher. That I do not imagine. I take myself off like a fox that hears the hounds as yet hidden behind the hills.

Chapter Fourteen

When I reach our farm at Kelsha, I pass up the deserted yard. There is an upturned bucket out of its proper place that I must tend to, I notice. I see the children playing in the sloping field, rolling and rolling. The best days of their lives, simple days. But Sarah is like a flame in the kitchen, dancing here and there.

‘You will not know what has happened,’ she says. ‘Poor Matt, poor Matt.’

My first thought is, he is dead. Then an emotion larger than a horse invades me. Sorrow flashes along on its lightning lines, jagged, painful spears behind the eyes. My arms ache with a sudden emptiness. It is very peculiar and confusing. In the next moment I am angry.

‘What has he gone and done to himself?’ I say.

‘Will you be vexed about this too, Annie?’ she says.

‘He is a man to make anyone angry,’ I say. ‘Bumbling about. Well, well?’