“The shock of what happened, Mrs. O’Hara, has made you close down the energy system. We might be able to …”
I’d laugh if I could remember how to make that sound. Is he going to jump-start me? Like a car? What would happen if I began to run out of control? And crashed? It’s strange to be numb and in agony at the same time, and to have the little brain God gave me get suddenly quick and clever like that daughter of mine. I never could abide people who talk the way I think-talk now. When you don’t care about much you can be very clever. And nothing clever is ever gentle. They’re all mind, the clever ones. Never the outstretched hand, the little squeeze of the fingers to just show they cared about your trouble, large or small. I’d sit for hours in the car with Tom or go for walks with him. All we did was talk and not a clever word between us and our souls, Brendan. Not your kind of clever.
“How did you meet Tom?”
Ah, the marriage story, is that what you want Brendan? An education? A few signposts? The lovers. You want the story, Brendan? Here it is. Easier in parts to tell than it was to live. I’m a wayward woman now Brendan. Perhaps I should warn him. I could do him harm today.
“Mrs. O’Hara. How did you meet Tom?”
I’m right. This is his way of getting me to feel again. Pathetic! Through memory? The memory of a feeling is as hard to catch as a butterfly, and in my opinion catching butterflies is a cruel sport. Though I’m trying to catch one that’s flying around in my head. Read somewhere that you forget the sound of the voice. I don’t have his voice. No little recording, you know. My cousins in America used to write to me, wanted to send me their home movies. I used to mock them. Home movies, for God’s sake! What I’d give for a home movie of him now. Or a recording … To hear him talking and doing his “Sarsfield is the word and Sarsfield is the man” stuff, jumping on the bed with one of my old scarves tied around his shoulders like a cloak and brandishing the wooden sword Tom made him. And what was the other line he loved? Oh yes. Robert Service, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” …“‘Boys,’ says he, ‘you don’t know me, and none of you care a damn.’” The child thought damn was a bad word. Ah well. Now, where is Brendan in his place of word-work? Brendan, the labourer in the field of silence trying to plough up words, trying to sow kindness and gather in a harvest of words. But the labourer looks tired. Come on now! I’m surprised at you, Brendan.
“Mrs. O’Hara, I’ll talk to Tom again and we’ll talk again and then see how we go. I’ll call Nurse Daly now and she’ll take you back to your room.”
I have my own room here. Dr. Sullivan has pull, as they say. Or perhaps they want to keep me away from the others in case I make them worse. Nurse Daly arrives. Lively, a cock-robin kind of girl. She smiles at me. I suppose she’s sincere.
“Hello Sissy. Here, take my arm.”
Oh God! My arm! Does that woman know what she has said? No. She does not. She rattles on. Loving me with talk.
“My mother said to tell you she is praying for you at Mass every morning. She knew your mother you know, in Offaly, God rest her soul.”
Not even God himself could rest that woman’s soul. My mother was on fire with the love of Ireland. Her meetings of Mná na hÉireann, Women of Ireland, as important to her as Mass and certainly more important than her daughters. Her sons fared better in the love stakes. Oh she worked hard for love. Love of country. Love of her hero brother, worship of the memory of Joe, who’d made her father the proudest man in Wexford. The debt we all owed Joe would be unpaid until what he’d died for, a united Ireland, came about. And then off she’d go. Robert Emmet’s speech from the dock, lines from Wolfe Tone, dazzling my boys when she came on her annual visit. Tom trying to be kind to a woman whose head and heart were so twisted in one direction she’d never be straight. “She’s not really interested in you at all. Not in any of you,” Tom said the first time he visited her. He was right. She just assumed she knew us all. As if the fact that she had given birth to us gave her access to our souls whether we liked it or not. She was convinced she could foretell what we’d do. The strange thing was that she was right about that. Almost. When I took Tom home that day to meet her she looked at the two of us and sighed long and loud to make sure we heard it clearly. Later, when I was alone with her in the kitchen, she put her two hands flat on the table and stared at me. Drummed the fingers for a minute or so. “You’ve gone for that life, have you?” “What life?” “Oh, that old dream,” she’d said. Before I could ask “what dream?” she raised her hands before her face, hiding it. “The love dream,” she’d said. “Body and soul in a love dream.” And I’d blushed at the word body, like a child. And then I’d remembered the same savage look in her face, a kind of hunger when she looked at my father when I was small, and which I thought had meant she was cross with him. And I think now, after all these years, maybe I was wrong about that look. Maybe after he died she substituted one love dream for another. He died young, my father William. And she said nothing much. Sent us all to her sister for a week, in Limerick. We were terrified though my Aunt Breda was kind enough. When we went home the house had been spring cleaned. He’d gone. All of him gone, in the cleaning. She never spoke again about him. That hiding of her face—that gesture which I would interpret differently in years to come—that night I understood it to mean that the conversation was over. She cut me with silence that night. Usually she cut me with words. She could cut both ways all right. And that little smile she kept for her girls, her daughters, none of us as brilliant as she, nor half as good-looking. Three daughters she brought into the world in order to get one son, then she got another. Two boys after three girls. Me first, then Clara, then Stella, the three disappointments, while she held out for what she wanted: boys. None of her daughters “were a patch on her. There was no comparison.” Which was true. She wounded each of us equally. Fair’s fair. Clara, named after my mother’s birthplace. What a mother! “Clara,” she’d say, “you’re a pretty little madam, but you’ve got the ambition of the respectable poor. You want a quiet life and a clean house and a husband who’ll go to the top of some clerical department, or middle in the civil service or maybe top man on the middle floor.” And Clara did. And seems happy enough. And Stella! “Ah Stella, star of no sea.” And every time my mother told her little joke Stella would smile. Tortured young and loving the torturer. Does it get any worse? My mother nearly broke Stella with her rage the day Stella cut her hair. “A desecration” that she could not understand, winding the long black plait of her own hair round and round that neat little head of hers and in revenge rechristening Stella Steve, after her favourite jockey who, though English, had an Irish name and had won something or other. “Steve suits her better. She’s got less hair now than half the men I know. You had great hair, Stella. It was your only claim to beauty. If I were you I’d marry the first man that asks you. There won’t be a queue.” And Stella, thereafter called Steve, did marry the first man who asked her. Who was handsome and tall, which my mother “liked in a man.” “Well, well!” she exclaimed when she first saw him. “And where did Steve find you? Where on earth did she find you?” “I found her,” he’d said. And Steve, who stood rosy and smiling the smile of a fulfilled and grateful woman who knew she’d brought home treasure, told me later that she’d “nearly fainted with pleasure.” That had been a triumph all right. One of the few over a mother who’d laboured to bring into the world five children when her maternal instincts would have been easily satisfied with two, both of them boys. One of whom, Joe, named after her hero-brother, heavy burden that, looked a bit like Pearse—Patrick, that is (no one seems to have an image of poor Willie Pearse, his brother, who was also executed; his face just never caught on, I suppose)—and the other, Brian, who didn’t look like any kind of Irish hero, though my mother hid her disappointment. He was a boy, after all. Joe and Brian both went on to be teachers in England, where I don’t suppose there’s much call for the story of Patrick Pearse. I loved my brothers, but on they went into another world and since my mother died we don’t hear much of them. They came home for the burial. Then it was over. We’re at the end of the corridor now and Nurse Daly guides me into my room and sits me down.
“Here we are Sissy. Didn’t Dr. Sullivan get you a nice little room in the new wing. Would you like some tea, Sissy?”
I nod.
“I’ll get it for you and sure I’ll sit with you for a while. I’m about to go off duty but I’ll sit with you and we’ll have a little chat.”
A little chat! No we won’t Nurse Daly. For you? You think I’ll speak for you?
“My granny went out with Joe, your mother’s brother. Did you know that, Sissy?”
I nod and remember that my mother told me that half the girls in the village later claimed they’d gone out with Joe, proud of the association with a hero.
“The man was a hero, Sissy. After he died my granny used to visit the house. Photographs of him in the sitting room and all the way up the stairs. And a copy of the Proclamation of Independence in every room. Almost as many as the Blessed Virgin. Do you know what I think, Sissy? Maybe it runs in the family.”
What is she talking about? What does?
“Yes, heroism! Maybe it runs in the family.”
She looks at me admiringly with her small brown eyes. What’s an Irish girl doing with brown eyes? Heroism? What is she saying? I keep staring at her.
“The lad, Sissy, I’m sure if he’d lived he would have been a great man for the cause. He would have been a hero. That’s what a few people in the town think. Sure he had all the ingredients. Didn’t he win a competition for Pearse’s ‘Boys of Ireland’ speech? Am I right about that? God Sissy, my head’s a bit gone. I’m engaged to a man who thinks Daniel O’Connell was Ireland’s greatest hero. All O’Connell did was talk, Sissy. It comes between us. Declan never told me in the beginning. I mightn’t have let things go so far. Still, he’s just been made manager of the new creamery. He’ll be a good husband. I come from a staunch Republican family. I tell you, Sissy, peaceful negotiation never worked with Albion! We’ll never get the North back through peaceful negotiation. Anyway, Sissy, we need the boys of Ireland to believe in heroes and Brother Rory—he’s a cousin, you know—says the lad was a real genius at science … chemicals—all that kind of stuff…”
… and I feel the sound coming and it’s rolling over me, it’s rolling, rolling over me … and I stand up suddenly and I throw my head back and I scream.
NINE
They tell me I’ve been asleep for a day and a bit. Tom’s just left, coming back in an hour. Olivia is still here, sitting on a chair by my bed, staring at me. She’s defiant. She is going to outface this shame. She won’t give me any quarter. A warrior girl. How did Tom and I breed a warrior girl? She’s a young angel of vengeance, knowing she’s been the one tested in the fire and hadn’t failed. She’s looking at her supposed protector, her mother, with such contempt. Ah, the contempt of the young! The anger! My daughter is very angry. She’s very young and she’s very brave. I am a coward. She looks at me and still sees a mother, and I look at her and I don’t see my child any more. I see this girl, separated from me. And lost and sad and terribly angry. Like she’s banging on a window begging me to open it so that she can fly in again but it’s locked. She believes I have the key. That I simply will not give it to her. Perhaps she thinks I threw it away in order to keep her out. Maybe she’s right.
“When will you come home?”
I must find words. With her I have no choice. She will not let me hide. She will not allow me silence. I look around the room. Go on, Sissy, I say to myself. The words are flying around here. Catch them. Go on, just a few. Let them sound. I owe her words.
I must try.
“Soon, Olivia, soon.”
There, I’ve spoken. Words. I’ve prised open the world of talk. What a place it is. And the minute you start more talk is demanded. You make a few sounds. Then someone sounds back at you. Good manners, they say.
“When?”
Oh God. Where did you come from, Olivia? My darling Olivia?
“When I’m better.”
Can’t do better than that. It’s all that comes out. Sounds bad? Bad sound?
“You look OK to me.”
She’s your daughter. Try to talk to her. Slowly. If I speak slowly each word will matter. She will know I’m trying. Why not try a long sentence?
“I’m not OK. I need this time here with the doctors.”
“When will you come home?”
“Olivia, if I don’t stay here I will never get better.”
“What’s wrong with you? I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”
What’s wrong with me Olivia? You know what’s wrong with me. Oh I think you do. But I can’t say that to her. Though it’s a good long sentence, that. Yes, that’s a longer sentence.
“I’m very sick, Olivia.”
“We’re all very sick. But you’re the only one in hospital.”
She knows it’s a mean few words she’s spoken. She’s a word-terrorist. Who will she destroy with words? She goes on.
“I can’t cook.”
Sure she’s a child still! Oh darling. The sound of those words could almost break the ice of the frozen lake I’m in. Almost. Now Sissy, try to be a mother to her. Talk to her more.
“I know you can’t cook, darling, but mucking along for a while won’t kill you. And you’ve got Sally. She comes in every day. She helps. Tell me how you manage.”
Does this sound kind?
“I don’t like Sally in the house. I feel invaded.”
Oh, has she upset Sally? Who helps, but is a bit tricky. Does it matter? Listen, she’s still talking.
“I do breakfast in the morning, cereal and things, and then we do soup and stuff in the evening. Dada does the meat.”
“Sounds good.”
“Daragh misses your apple tarts.”
You could almost make me cry. You’re getting close, Olivia.
“I tried to teach you.”
“I never wanted to learn.”
That’s true enough. You’d set about that pastry with such contempt that you pounded it into submission. You’ve got too heavy a hand for pastry making. “It’s the ugliest looking thing anyway,” you said. Hated the colour of it. Hated it. And no matter how often Tom said to you, “You don’t
hate
the colour of pastry, Olivia, you
dislike,”
it never worked. No half measures with Olivia. She doesn’t understand the concept. Which is why she can’t make my famous apple tart. Though she devours it. Well it’s a nothing thing, I suppose. But everyone loved them. Every time anyone in the street—and indeed not only in this street—was expecting a visitor they’d ask me, “Sissy, would you make one of your apple tarts for me? Everyone loves them.” Though once when I boasted, what a foolish thing but human I suppose, Olivia said, “No. Everyone loves you. They all love you.” And she kissed me. And it’s true. I am a much-loved woman. And then she said, “Except Granny, of course.” And I remember what my mother said of Olivia: “She’s too tart for tarts.” But Olivia was right that day. Everyone didn’t love me. My mother didn’t really love me, or Clara or Stella. She couldn’t help it. Though she loved her husband probably more than I knew, maybe even as much as Joe and Brian. Marriage is destiny, she used to say. She gave up a lot for my father. She was the best sidesaddle rider in the county. Spoke French and German. Lived in a house with parkland all around it. Gave up a certain way of life to “marry down,” as they say. Yes, marriage is destiny. Who else said that? Marjorie Brannigan! That night when Jim Brannigan was in another one of his states, and this the worst state, when he’d dangled his boys out of the window and Tom had been a hero, again, talking Jim out of it, cajoling, then threatening to “break every bone in his bank teller’s fingers” if Jim Brannigan did a thing to hurt them. And Jim was frightened of Tom and hauled his sons in and handed them over to him. Oh that awful, awful night when Marjorie sat there in our kitchen after we’d put her boys to bed with ours and told us, and herself I suppose, how she came to be sitting with neighbours, surrounded by the ruins of her life. Marjorie, who’d been the belle of the ball when she’d met her dangerous husband. When she’d been the most glamorous girl in Cork, which was not hard to believe. “She reigned supreme,” her father had told us once, on a visit. And Tom and I were sure that it was true. We could see still the glory that was Marjorie, so tall with such long, slender legs and all that tumbling hair. And Tom and I used to smile at the way she’d swish it around as though it were a veil. “She’d been the star of the convent as well.” Poor Marjorie, she’d probably seen her future stretch before her as an unbroken line of ado ration, parents, nuns, schoolfriends, boyfriends, husband, children. And she was right about the children. But she was wrong about her husband. Wrong, because as she explained to us that night, when she was young she’d thought Jim’s coldness had been exciting. His way of wanting to control everything was manly. “Sure, what did I know? I thought being a woman was flirting and playing a few innocent games with men. And the men adored me.” And we were certain they had. “Don’t you think someone should tell us before they let us loose on life?” Yes. But some things you only learn by living them. Olivia thinks she’ll learn it all from books. She thinks it’s the easy way to learn life. Books. She was going to “learn everything from books.” “You do that darling.” What else could I say? Shall I try again to talk to her? That’s love. Trying again, I suppose. Oh I’m so tired. Do I have to talk? Yes.
“What are you reading now?”
“Everything!”
Everything! That’s Olivia. Everything. Like what, I wonder. I don’t have to ask. She’s off. She’s always loved writers, even more than the books I think. They’re like personal friends to her. When she finds a book she likes she has to read everything ever written by the author. Then she’s in love: “I’m in love with Balzac, or Henry James …” Though he had the disadvantage that I introduced him to her. She likes to discover her own passions.
“Victor Hugo, Balzac, still mad about him. Ionesco, he writes mad plays. I understand them. Now.”
Oh God.
“Ibsen, Strindberg. Everything.”
“Good,” I whisper. But a whisper is better than silence. I suppose.
“Good? It’s better than good. I know everything. I know the whole world through reading and I know everything about a small town: I know about convents, I know about doctors, death, mothers.”
What can I say to her? I shake my head. And I look away from her.
“I know that mothers need protection.”
Poor Olivia. I’m so sorry. I’ve let you down terribly. Maybe eventually, Olivia, all mothers let their children down. Or maybe mothers get careless. Will I remember this? Will this be taken from me? “Short-term memory,” he said. To me, who never did a thing with only the short-term in mind? Will this defeat be taken from me? This defeat, by this child who when she was born was the triumph of my life? This child who first allowed me to say “I am a mother.” Who allowed me to understand the special meaning of “Mary, the Mother of God,” that first of all she was a mother. Was this what my mother’s hands to her face meant when I told her that I would marry Tom? But what else had she hoped for than that I would marry the love of my life and have children? Have I forgotten? Did I not wish to remember? Because it didn’t suit me? Ah my darling Olivia, what will you remember of this terrible time? Through times to come. Decades to come? The seventies? I suppose they’ll come and they’ll go. And then there’ll be the eighties? The nineties? 2000? What a thought! Oh I’ll be gone by then. Well gone. If I get through this time I’ll be gone in time to come. And then? What then? After I’m gone? Long after I am gone, who will I be to you, Olivia? When I drift up and down the colonnades of your mind? This woman, this mother, as she is now? This now-mother? Will she cancel everything that was the beauty of me and you? Who will I be? Drifting in and out of your life and dreams, child? Trailing what, child? Trailing what? Trailing love, child? My love, child … Oh trailing love … Or trailing what?