Amongst Women (8 page)

‘Do you still think that Maggie should go to England to nurse?’ he asked eventually.

‘I do. She’d always have something to fall back on. You never know what is going to happen in a life. It’s a profession.’

‘I don’t know. I was very much against it when that brother of hers wanted her to go. Of course he wasn’t interested in what was good or bad for the girls. He was doing it against me.’

‘I’m far from against you, you know that. I want it for her own good. This place will always be here for her to come home to as long as I breathe.’

Because of the shortages of girls for nursing, many ads were appearing in the daily papers. Rose helped Maggie to write away for the forms and then to fill in the forms when they came. To Moran’s surprise she was accepted for training by five hospitals. The whole house sat down after the Rosary one evening to pick the hospital she would go to. They chose the London Hospital because a few people from around were already working there. After they had reached that decision Michael began to cry and would not be consoled.

‘They’ll all be gone soon,’ he said to their humorous questioning.  ‘It’s awful. It’s not fair.’

When Rose suggested that they write to Luke to ask him to meet Maggie off the train when she got to London Moran was furious.

‘Didn’t the hospital say they’d have her met?’

‘He’s her brother. It’d be natural for him to meet Maggie.’

‘There’s not a natural bone in that gentleman’s body. I wrote him several times and all the answer I ever got was I’m-well- here-and-I-hope-you-are-well-there. Is that natural after all the years of bringing him up?’

‘These things happen in families and then they pass,’ Rose said quietly. ‘An accident happens or a wedding. People are forced back together again. I know how you feel, Daddy, but maybe it is better not to take too strong a stand. Things are always changing. You never know how they’ll turn out. If you do the generous thing, then you can’t be blamed.’

‘I can be blamed. Make no mistake about that. In this case I can always be blamed.’

‘I know it is hard but it’s better to try to ignore what is said against you. If you can ignore it then you’ll know that you have nothing to blame yourself for. Do nothing in a hurry.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I think it’d be better if
you
wrote him,’ Rose suggested.

‘I’ll probably just earn another kick in the teeth but I’ll do it none the less.’

Moran spent a long time composing the letter. He could not resist adding recrimination. Luke answered the letter by telegram. Seldom a telegram came and nobody liked to see one come to a house. The small green envelope with the harp generally came with news of sudden death. Moran’s high- strung nervousness, which was usually concealed by slow, deliberate movements, was all on show as he looked about him like an animal in unknown territory and tore open the envelope. When he read delighted to meet maggie stop love stop luke he had to struggle to contain himself. He was barely able to conceal his fury until after he paid the postman whom he walked all the way out to the iron gate.

‘Maybe he just sent the telegram and a letter will come after a few days,’ Maggie tried to soothe.

‘No letter will come. It leaves me like a right fool out in the bloody open.’

‘I don’t know how you can say that, Daddy. You did everything decent,’ Rose said.

‘Why in the name of the Saviour do you have to put your ignorance on full display,’ he turned on her. ‘You don’t know the first thing about the business, woman.’

That the telegram was formally polite and completely ignored his own attack infuriated Moran. After he had read it aloud he crumpled the note up in his fist and thrust it into the fire as if the very sight of it was hateful.

‘Well, at least you’ll have someone to meet you at Euston,’ Rose said softly to Maggie who already knew that she would be met.

‘Of course he’ll meet her. He’ll meet her to try to turn her against me,’ shouted Moran.

‘He was polite enough,’ Rose suggested.

‘What do you know about it? What in hell do you know about anything?’

He swept his hat from the dresser and crushed it on his head and went outside as if he might break down the doors in his way. Soon they heard the sharp, swift sounds of the axe as he started to split lengths of branches into firewood.

She stood stunned. He had never spoken to her like that before. In the spreading lull she looked towards the others. They had all been there when Moran read out the telegram. Part of her expected to find them laughing at his wild reaction beyond all sense and to return her to the blessed normal but when she looked around only Maggie stood in the room. The others had slipped away like ghosts. Maggie was kneading currants through dough in a glass bowl on the sideboard, as absorbed in the kneading as if all of her life were passing through the pale dough.

‘Where have they all disappeared to all of a sudden, Maggie?’

‘They must have gone out,’ Maggie looked up from the dough with intense attention.

‘I thought I might find them laughing at poor Daddy,’ Rose said, allowing her own shock and fear to ease out in the nervous laughter, but Maggie’s face remained pale and serious.

‘I don’t know what happened to Daddy,’ Rose said.

‘Sometimes he gets like that.’

‘I never saw him so upset.’

‘He’s not been like that for a long time.’

‘Was he often like that?’

‘Before, but not for a long time now,’ Maggie admitted reluctantly and Rose did not want to learn any more. She had already more than she wanted to deal with. In the silence the sound of the sledge could be heard thudding on stones from one of the near fields. He had already abandoned the timber.

Often when talking with the girls she had noticed that whenever Moran entered the room silence and deadness would fall on them; and if he was eating alone or working in the room – setting the teeth of a saw, putting a handle in a broken spade on a wet day, taking apart the lighting plant that never seemed to run properly for long – they always tried to slip away. If they had to stay they moved about the place like shadows. Only when they dropped or rattled something, the startled way they would look towards Moran, did the nervous tension of what it took to glide about so silently show. Rose had noticed this and she had put it down to the awe and respect in which the man she so loved was held, and she was loath to see differently now. She had chosen Moran, had married him against convention and her family. All her vanity was in question. The violence Moran had turned on her she chose to ignore, to let her own resentment drop and to join the girls as they stole about so that their presences would never challenge his.

He came in very late, wary, watchful. The cheerfulness with which Rose greeted him he met with a deep reserve. She was unprepared for it and her nervousness increased tenfold as she bustled about to get his tea. Sheila and Mona were writing at side tables; Michael was kneeling at the big armchair, a book between his elbows, as if in prayer, a position he sometimes used for studying. All three looked up gravely to acknowledge their father’s presence; but, sensing his mood at once, they buried themselves again in their schoolwork.

‘Where’s Maggie?’ he demanded.

‘She went to visit some friends in the village.’

‘She seems always to be on the tramp these days.’

‘She’s going around mostly saying goodbye to people.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be missed,’ he said acidly.

Rose poured him his tea. The table was covered with a spotless  cloth. As he ate and drank she found herself chattering away to him out of nervousness, a stream of things that went through her head, the small happenings of a day. She talked out of confusions: fear, insecurity, love. Her instinct told her she should not be talking but she could not stop. He made several brusque, impatient movements at the table but still she could not stop. Then he turned round the chair in a fit of hatred. The children were listening though they kept their eyes intently fixed on their school books.

‘Did you ever listen carefully to yourself, Rose?’ he said. ‘If you listened a bit more carefully to yourself I think you might talk a lot less.’

She looked like someone who had been struck without warning but she did not try to run or cry out. She stood still for a long moment that seemed to the others to grow into an age. Then, abjectly, as if engaged in reflection that gave back only its own dullness, she completed the tasks she had been doing and, without saying a word to the expectant children, left the room.

‘Where are you going, Rose?’ he asked in a tone that told her that he knew he had gone too far but she continued on her way.

It galled him to have to sit impotently in silence; worse still, that it had been witnessed. They kept their heads down in their books though they had long ceased to study, unwilling to catch his eye or even to breathe loudly. All they had ever been able to do in the face of violence was to bend to it.

Moran sat for a long time. When he could stand the silence no longer he went briskly into the other room. ‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ they heard him say. They were able to hear clearly though he had closed the door. ‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ he had to say again. ‘I lost my temper.’ After a pause they thought would never end they heard, ‘I want to be alone,’ clear as a single bell note, free of all self-assertiveness. He stayed on in the room but there was nothing he could do but withdraw.

When he came back he sat beside the litter of his meal on the table among the three children not quite knowing what to do with himself. Then he took a pencil and paper and started to tot up all the monies he presently held against the expenses he had. He spent a long time over these calculations and they appeared to soothe him.

‘We might as well say the Rosary now,’ he announced when he put pencil and paper away, taking out his beads and letting them dangle loudly. They put away their exercises and took out their beads.

‘Leave the doors open in case Rose wants to hear,’ he said to the boy. Michael opened both doors to the room. He paused at the bedroom door but the vague shape amid the bedclothes did not speak or stir.

At the Second Glorious Mystery Moran paused. Sometimes if there was an illness in the house the sick person would join in the prayers through the open doors but when the silence was not broken he nodded to Mona and she took up Rose’s Decade. After the Rosary, Mona and Sheila made tea and they all slipped away early.

Moran sat on alone in the room. He was so engrossed in himself that he was startled by the sound of the back door opening just after midnight. Maggie was even more startled to find him alone when she came in and instantly relieved that she hadn’t allowed the boy who had seen her home from the village further than the road gate.

‘You’re very late,’ he said.

‘The concert wasn’t over till after eleven.’

‘Did you say your prayers on the way home?’

‘No, Daddy. I’ll say them as soon as I go upstairs.’

‘Be careful not to wake the crowd that has to go to school in the morning.’

‘I’ll be careful. Good night, Daddy.’ As on every night, she went up to him and kissed him on the lips.

He sat on alone until all unease was lost in a luxury of self- absorption. The fire had died. He felt stiff when he got up from the chair and turned out the light and groped his way through the still open doorway to the bed, shedding his clothes on to the floor. When he got into bed he turned his back energetically to Rose.

She rose even earlier than usual next morning. Usually she enjoyed the tasks of morning but this morning she was grateful above all mornings for the constancy of the small demanding chores: to shake out the fire, scatter the ashes on the grass outside, to feel the stoked fire warm the room. She set the table and began breakfast. When the three appeared for school they were wary of her at first but she was able to summon sufficient energy to disguise her lack of it and they were completely at ease before they left for school. When Moran eventually appeared he did not speak but fussed excessively as he put on socks and boots. She did not help him.

‘I suppose I should be sorry,’ he said at length.

‘It was very hard what you said.’

‘I was upset over that telegram my beloved son sent. It was as if I didn’t even exist.’

‘I know, but what you said was still hard.’

‘Well then, I’m sorry.’

It was all she demanded and immediately she brightened. ‘It’s all right, Michael. I know it’s not easy.’ She looked at him with love. Though they were alone they did not embrace or kiss. That belonged to darkness and the night.

‘Do you know what I think, Rose? We get too cooped up here sometimes. Why don’t we just go away for the day?’

‘Where would we go to?’

‘We can drive anywhere we want to drive to. That’s the great thing about having a car. All we have to do is back it out of the shed and go.’

‘Do you think you can spare the day?’ She was still careful.

‘It’s bad if we can’t take one day off,’ he said laughingly. He was happy now, relieved, pleased with himself, ready to be indulgent.

He backed the Ford out of the shed and faced it to the road. Maggie had risen and was taking breakfast when he came in.

‘Is there anything you want, Daddy?’

‘Not a thing in the wide world, thanks be to God.’ She was relieved to hear the tone. ‘You’ll have the whole place to yourself today. Rose and myself are away for the day.’

‘When do you think you’ll be back, Daddy?’

Rose had left out his brown suit and shirt and tie and socks and he had started to dress.

‘We’ll be back when you see us. We’ll be back before night anyhow,’ he said as he tucked his shirt into his trousers, hoisting  them round his hips.

‘I’m holding everybody up,’ Rose fussed self-effacingly. She looked well, even stylish in a discreet way, in her tweed suit and white blouse.

‘Daddy looks wonderful. I hope I’m not too much of a disgrace,’  she laughed nervously, moving her hands and features in one clear plea to please.

‘You look lovely, Rose. You look like a lady,’ Maggie said.