A Bird in the House (4 page)

“That damn pipe of his. It reeks to high heaven.”

“Grandfather never lets anyone else smoke,” I said, “so why Uncle Dan?”

“Don’t ask me.” Aunt Edna shrugged. “It’s one of life’s mysteries. Maybe it’s his present to Uncle Dan – the booby prize.”

I went into the living room to wait until the dishes were stacked and ready to begin drying. Grandfather and Uncle Dan were chatting, after their fashion.

“We’re neither of us as young as we used to be, Dan,” said Grandfather, who specialized in clear but gloomy statements of this kind.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Uncle Dan replied, sucking at his pipe and sending up grey clouds like smoke signals. “I feel pretty near as good as ever.”

“You don’t look it,” Grandfather said.

“What’s that?”

“I said you don’t look it. You’re getting hard of hearing, Dan.”

Uncle Dan puffed silently for a moment. Then, with deliberation, he removed the pipe from between his yellowed teeth and held it in his hands, stroking the briar bowl.

“Well, sir, maybe you’re right, at that,” he said reflectively. “I used to be able to hear a fly when he walked up the wall, but now I can only hear him when he rustles his wings.”

I snickered, and Uncle Dan looked down at the footstool where I was perched.

“There’s my girl,” he said. “What about a song, to while the happy hours away?”

Not waiting for my agreement, he struck up at once, in a reedy old-man’s voice, sometimes going off key, but sprightly nonetheless, tapping out the rhythm with one foot.

I clapped, feeling traitorous, not daring to look at either of my grandparents. Uncle Dan, encouraged, sang “MacNamara’s Band,” in which he always put himself instead of MacNamara.

He sang it very Irish, saying “foinest,” and when he got to the line “And when we play at funerals we play the best of all,” he winked at me and I winked back.

“Sing with me,” he said, before the next song, but I shook my head. I could never sing in front of anybody, for I always thought I might sound foolish; and I could not bear to be laughed at.

Uncle Dan kept right on, and now he was really enjoying himself. He sang “Nell Flaherty’s Drake” with great vigour, especially the part about the curse that’s laid on the person who stole and ate the bird.

All at once Grandfather slapped his hand down hard on the arm of the chesterfield, making it wheeze.

“That’s enough, now,” he said.

Uncle Dan continued his singing.

“Enough!” Grandfather shouted. “Are you stone deaf, man?”

Uncle Dan stopped, looking perplexed.

“What’s the trouble?”

“Sunday wouldn’t make no difference to you,” Grandfather said, “but you needn’t forget where you are.”

“Well, now, Timothy,” Uncle Dan said, “you needn’t be like that about it.”

“I’ll be any way I please, in my own house,” Grandfather said.

I judged this to be the right moment for me to go to the kitchen and help with the dishes. Now the two old men would sit and argue, and Grandmother would have to listen to the thing that distressed her more than anything in this world – a scene, a disagreement in the family. I knew quite well what would happen. Grandmother would remain as outwardly placid as ever, but later in the evening she would go out to the kitchen and call Aunt Edna and say, “I wonder if you would have an aspirin handy, pet? I’ve a little headache.” When she had gone back to the living room, Aunt Edna would say to no one in particular, “She’s been sitting there for hours with a splitting head, I don’t doubt.” And then, if I was in luck, my aunt would turn to me and say, “C’mon, kiddo, let’s drown our sorrows – what do you say to some fudge?”

The dishes had been started. Aunt Edna handed me a tea-towel.

“Let’s not break our necks over them, eh?” she said, and I knew she wanted to dawdle so she would not have to go back
into the living room. But we did not dawdle, for my mother was a fast washer and we had to keep up with her.

“Was Uncle Dan born in Ireland?” I asked, conversationally.

My mother and Aunt Edna both laughed.

“Mercy, no,” Aunt Edna said. “The closest he ever got to Ireland was the vaudeville shows at the old Roxy – it burned down before you were born. He was born in Ontario, just like Grandfather. The way Uncle Dan talks isn’t Irish – it’s stage Irish. He’s got it all down pat. Macushla. Begorra. He even sings rebel songs, and he a Protestant. It makes no earthly difference to him. He’s phoney as a three-dollar bill. I really wonder why I like him so much.”

“You always told me I was half Irish,” I said reproachfully to my mother.

“Well, you are,” she replied. “You’re Scottish on your father’s side. You take after the MacLeods as much as the Connors. You’ve got your father’s reflectiveness. And in looks, you’ve got your Grandfather MacLeod’s hands and ears –”

She looked at me, as though to make certain that these borrowed appendages were still there. The idea of inherited characteristics had always seemed odd to me, and when I was younger, I had thought that my Grandfather MacLeod, who died a year after I was born, must have spent the last twelve months of his life deaf and handless.

“You’re Irish on my side,” my mother continued. “Your grandfather’s parents were born there. Do you remember Grandma Connor, Edna? She lived with us for the last few years before she died.”

“Only vaguely,” Aunt Edna said. “What was she like?”

“Oh, let’s see – she was a tiny little woman with a face like a falcon, as I recall, kind of fiercely handsome. Father
looks quite a bit like her. She used to go out each year to the Orangemen’s parade, and stand there on Main, cheering and bawling her eyes out.”

“My Lord,” Aunt Edna said. “What did Father think of that?”

“He was mortified,” my mother said. “Wouldn’t you be? There was this small ferocious old lady, making a regular spectacle of herself. She always wore a tight lace cap on her head. She didn’t have any hair.”

“What?” Aunt Edna and I cried at the same time, delighted and horrified.

My mother nodded. “It’s quite true. She’d had some sickness and all her hair fell out. She was bald as a peeled onion.”

We were still laughing when we heard the shouting from the living room. I found it hard to switch mood suddenly, and could not take the raised voices seriously. Tittering, I nudged my mother, wanting the shared hilarity to continue. She did not respond, and when I looked up at her, I saw her face was rigid and apprehensive. The joke was over as though it had never been. My mother and my aunt went reluctantly into the living room, and I followed.

“What beats me,” Grandfather was saying, “is how you’d the nerve to ask. Easy come, easy go – that’s what you think. It never come easy to me, and it’s not going easy, neither!”

“Steady, Timothy,” Uncle Dan said, as though he were speaking to a horse that had turned mean. “Steady, boyo.”

“Steady, nothing. You think because I sold the store that I’ve got a fortune stowed away. Well, I’ve not. And what I’ve got, I’m hanging on to. The taxes on this house alone – it don’t bear thinking about. Who’s to look after things, if I don’t? Here’s Edna, keeps claiming she can’t get work. And Beth and Ewen, having another baby they’ve no business to be having if
Ewen can’t even get people to pay their doctor bills. I’d make them pay up, I’ll tell the world, either that or I’d stay away from the woman entirely –”

“Oh God –” my mother said, her face white.

“Steady,” Aunt Edna said, grasping her by the arm. “And now you,” Grandfather went on. “All of you, picking away, picking away, wanting something for nothing. I never got it for nothing. None of you know that. Not one of you knows it.”

“Hold on a minute,” Uncle Dan protested. “I never said give, I said lend. You’d have the horses for security. You done it before, Tim.”

“The more fool I, then,” Grandfather retorted. “I hoped you’d make a go of things. But no. It all went up in smoke or down in booze.”

“That ain’t true!” Uncle Dan said.

But there was something feeble about his voice. And I realised that it was true, what Grandfather had said.

“No use in talking,” Grandfather said. “You can get out right now.”

In the long silence, I looked at my grandfather’s face. He looked surprised, as though he could hardly believe he had spoken the words. Then his expression altered, grew set and stubborn.

“I will,” Uncle Dan said slowly, “and I’ll not be coming back.”

“So much the better,” Grandfather said.

Uncle Dan rose, walked out to the hall alone, and began putting on his coat.

“We can’t let him go like that,” Aunt Edna whispered. “He’s got no one –”

“Who’s going to argue it?” my mother replied bitterly.

The front door closed behind Uncle Dan, and everyone in the house stood quite still. Then a very unexpected thing happened.

“Timothy,” Grandmother said, “you’d best go after him.”

Grandfather swung around and stared at her.

“You’re out of your mind,” he said.

“You’d best go now,” Grandmother said firmly, “before he gets too far.”

For a moment I thought Grandfather was going to rage again, but he did not. He looked taken aback, almost stunned.

“You never liked his ways, Agnes,” he said.

Grandmother did not reply. She made a slight gesture towards the door, and that was all.
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle
. The line slid stealthily into my mind, and I felt a surge of spiteful joy at it. Then I looked again at my grandfather’s face, and saw there such a bleak bewilderment that I could feel only shame and sadness. His eyes chanced upon me, and when he spoke it was to me, as though he could not speak directly to any of the adults in that room.

“When he gets too old to look after himself, it’ll be me that pays to have him kept in a home. It’s not fair, Vanessa. It’s not fair.”

He was right. It was not fair. Even I could see that. Yet I veered sharply away from his touch, and that was probably not fair, either. I wanted only to be by myself, with no one else around.

Grandfather turned and looked at Grandmother.

“I never thought to hear you take his part,” he said. Then he walked outside and we heard his flat unemphatic voice, speaking Uncle Dan’s name.

When Uncle Dan and Grandfather had come back to the living room, the three old people settled down once more
and sat silently in the blue-grey light of the spring evening, the lamps not flicked on yet nor the shades drawn. I went upstairs with my mother and Aunt Edna. The air in the bedroom was still sweet and heavy with Attar of Roses.

“Mercy, do I ever need a cigarette,” Aunt Edna said.

“If I didn’t know Mother better, I’d say it was revenge,” my mother said.

“Know her? What makes you think you know her? Maybe it was just that.”

“Maybe,” my mother said, “but I’d hate to think so, wouldn’t you?”

“No,” my aunt said. “I’d cheer like sixty.”

“Anyway, there’s more to it than that,” my mother said. “We always just naturally assumed she loathed the sight of Uncle Dan, but she said to me once, ‘Whatever his faults, he’s a cheerful soul, Beth, always remember that.’ I’d forgotten until now.”

“Beth, do you think she ever considered marrying him?”

“What? Mother? Don’t be ridiculous. What makes you say that?”

“Remember how Uncle Dan used to take us out in that cutter of his in winter, when we were kids? Mother always worried in case we got dumped in a snowdrift or the horses ran away. Well, I went out once with him, and out of a clear sky he said ‘She picked the right man, Edna, your mother, no question of it.’ That was a funny thing for him to say, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t suppose it meant anything,” my mother said.

“I wonder, though,” Aunt Edna mused, “what all of us would have been like, if she’d –”

“A pretty ragged bunch,” my mother said. “There’s not much doubt about that. Oh Edna, think how he must feel –
Father, I mean. We’ve never given him credit for what he’s done.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Aunt Edna said. “Imitation is the sincerest form of compliment, after all.”

My mother’s head came up and she looked around this way and that, as though she smelled smoke and thought the house might be on fire.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know quite well what I mean,” Aunt Edna replied. “Not one of us could go any other way. And what’s more, for all you’re always saying Vanessa takes after Ewen, you know who she really takes after.”

“That’s not so!” my mother burst out.

“Isn’t it?” Aunt Edna cried. “Isn’t it?”

I was hardly aware of her meaning. I was going instead by the feel of the words, the same way the faithful must interpret the utterances of those who rise up and speak in tongues. Her voice was high and fearful, burdened with a terrible regret, as though she would have given anything not to have spoken.

We went downstairs then, and I helped to pass the coffee around, walking carefully because it was in the good Spode cups. Grandfather and Uncle Dan took theirs without a word. Grandmother said, “Thank you, pet.” Her face was calm, and no one could even have begun to guess, from looking at her, what she might have been thinking, if anything. When he had finished his coffee, Uncle Dan said he thought he would just stroll down to the Regal Café and get a few humbugs.

My mother, coming in with the coffee pot to see if anyone wanted a second cup, hesitated and looked from Uncle Dan to Grandfather, as though she didn’t know which of them to ask, and couldn’t ask both of them at once. Finally she
sighed, a mere breath, and refilled Grandfather’s cup. Uncle Dan went out, humming softly to himself, and when he had reached the front sidewalk he began to sing. We heard the song growing fainter as he ambled away.