In Too Deep (7 page)

Maggie pictured the scene; Paudie holding sway on some favoured topic, a pint of stout clenched in one sweeping fist, those eyes blazing, daring anyone to interrupt or contradict him. Maybe the grumble of his voice as he broke into song. And then the fall. On sleeping feet, she shuffled aside and watched the men as they struggled to carry her husband up the step and into the house, stumbling to navigate the narrow hallway, one groaning with the strain of such a weight, the other through clenched teeth hissing a few slurred words of comfort meant probably for anyone who wanted them. They stretched him out on the bed and Maggie thanked them, not really knowing what else to say or do. Both of these men had, over the years, been regular visitors to her home, guests of Paudie's, usually after the pubs had shut, hangers-on eager to slake the last of their thirst from the dregs of a whiskey bottle, but neither of them were from Douglas and at that moment, try as she might, she could not recall their names. For a few seconds they stood there staring at her, trying to weigh the situation through the fog of their drunkenness. Then, instinctively aware that there was to be no offer of further drink, they took their leave, reluctantly, muttering the usual promises that they'd call in tomorrow to see the patient and that if there was anything they could do she need only ask.

With great care, Maggie unlaced her husband's boots, then turned them, first one and then the other, towards the window. In the pale yellow light of a low-slung conch moon, she surveyed the damage, confirming with her fingertips the full extent of the scuffing. Polish would cover the worst of it she decided with a sigh. Then she undressed and climbed across Paudie's inert body to her own side of the bed. She lay there for a while, her eyes closed but the wash of the moonlight through the window still brightening her thoughts. She felt very small, almost childlike, and after some interminable length of time she drifted off into a light sleep, soothed by the scrape of laboured breathing beside her.

By morning, it was clear that something was very wrong. Paudie had not moved in the night; he lay there on the bed sheets, still dressed but for his boots, his breath still rattling in shallow heaves, his face sagging from the depths of a stony coma. Maggie shook him gently and his head lolled leftwards, revealing a black crust of blood that had seeped from his ear and down onto the pillow. She screamed, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere beyond her body. The world dimmed, just for an instant, and she had to steady herself against the bedroom wall to keep from passing out. The blood was a molten puss, with the thick, clammy texture of treacle, and her first thought was that his shirt was ruined, that she'd never manage to get such a stain from his collar.

After a few minutes Dan Hartnett from next door arrived at the window, his wife Kathleen at his side. He tapped at the glass, said that they thought they had heard a scream and asked if anything was wrong. Everything came apart then. Violent sobs tore from her, rocking her body. Kathleen held her, gently, as though afraid that a strong embrace might inflict serious damage. Then the worst of the shock subsided and through stuttering gasps she told them how Paudie had been brought home and how she had dismissed it as just too much porter. God knew it wouldn't have been his first time passing out drunk. She hadn't realised it was something more serious until she saw the blood. They listened, nodding in sympathy, then led her out of the bedroom and sat her in the old armchair by the empty fireplace. Kathleen stayed with her, holding her hand, trying to whisper words of solace that felt hollow and sounded worse. Dan hovered unsure what to do. Then, finally, he drifted outside, and within an hour an ambulance arrived, drawing up outside the door with sirens wailing.

Paudie had suffered a stroke. The doctor who explained the situation was a tall, slender man with a long narrow face and hangdog eyes, and when he introduced himself Maggie had been too distracted to catch his name. She thought it might have been either Brown or Bowen. He was elderly, or appeared so, and he dressed in a dark suit of some material made shiny with age. A white carnation bloomed on his left lapel, looking ludicrously out of place with the sepia tones of the hospital surround. He showed Maggie to a seat then moved behind his desk and considered her openly. She had a sense that he was helping himself to the secrets of her soul, and when he spoke his voice had the soft, gently indefinable quality of smoke.

‘The night spent drinking probably masked any early warning signals, Mrs O'Reilly. From the tests we have carried out, it appears that your husband had a minor stroke first. You said that the men he was drinking with told you he had fallen from his barstool? That would be in fitting with a small aneurysm. A sudden numbness or weakness down one side, dizziness, the loss of balance or co-ordination. Of course, the problem is that such symptoms can also be caused by inebriation, which is probably why no one even thought to send for medical help. Later, we believe that he suffered a major stroke, some time during the night. The blood was caused by a haemorrhage, though even if he had been in hospital when that happened it would have been very unlikely that we could have offered anything in the way of prevention. I'm afraid that there is extensive damage, with little or no hope of improvement. We do believe that mentally he is almost unharmed, though whether one would choose to see that as a blessing or a curse, giving the long-term prognosis, is really a matter of opinion, I suppose.'

He paused, set his mouth in a shape he adjudged to be most sympathetic. ‘You mustn't reproach yourself for any of this, Mrs O'Reilly. Sometimes these things just happen.'

‘He's only forty-seven,' Maggie whispered into the handkerchief that she held bunched in her small fist. ‘That's no age at all.' As if those few words of argument ridiculed this entire business.

It was the new year before Paudie was allowed home, and the better than three months spent confined to a hospital bed had reduced him to a fragile shell, a vague imitation of the man he had once been. Bound to a wheelchair parked almost permanently in the open doorway, held upright by a packing of pillows and wrapped in old woollen blankets against the cold spring air, he gazed mutely out at the goings-on of the village but seemed separate from it all, beyond the touch of that former life. Amusement and rage registered without note across his face, the sucker-punch of his brainstorm having so disfigured his features, wrenching his mouth agog, ripping the sight from one eye, slumping his once formidable shoulders, that it became impossible for him to express himself. At first, neighbours took a few minutes out of their day to offer some friendly words of chat, generally confining themselves to the usual light-hearted banter about the weather or the hurling, but also making mention of how much better he was looking and how he'd be his old self again in no time at all, they were sure of it. But any effort at consolation felt hollow, so one-sided that spoken aloud the words took on the characteristics of a taunt, and after a while it felt like a better option simply to wave and hurry along, better for everyone.

Weeks after his return home, Maggie was spoon-feeding him from a bowl of potatoes mashed in buttermilk when the pulped food went against his breath and he began to choke. Hunched sideways in his chair he struggled for air, barking out coughs as his face turned a sad shade of puce. There was nothing to do but sit and watch, and after a minute or so the horror of what she was seeing began to fade. While his bulging eyes blistered with tears from the strain, Maggie gently patted his hand and waited, accepting her helplessness and giving in to a little smile of sympathy, while things took their natural course. And when the worst of the struggle passed and he found his breath again, she wiped his mouth and chin with an old tea towel, kissed his forehead and told him that she was sorry for feeding him so hurriedly but that she just had so much to do around the house. Sweat cut runnels down his swollen cheeks, and he hunched there, a bleating wreckage, while she promised that she'd be more careful in the future. But no matter how diligent she tried to be, the choking fits became a feature of mealtimes, often growing so bad that she had no choice but to prize open his mouth and use her fingers to scrape the food morsels from his tongue and throat. The choking was a side effect of the stroke, she told Kathleen Hartnett, one of those terrible things that simply couldn't be avoided. ‘He has to eat or he'll just waste away.'

For Maggie, the whole world had changed. After years of living a plastic life, consumed by fear at every turn and every uttered word, she suddenly found herself with the freedom to do as she pleased. Paudie sat in his chair all day, and when he wasn't gazing out at the village from his doorway prison, he'd wordlessly watch as she attacked the chores of washing, cleaning and cooking. What he must have seen was the terror that he had once pummelled into her gradually replacing itself with the confidence of knowing that it was she now who held the upper hand of power. She controlled the household and in his disabled state he lost his air of menace and became vulnerable and weak, relying completely on her to feed and clothe him, to wash him and to keep him alive.

To anyone looking in from the outside, she appeared a dutiful and dedicated wife, constantly tending to his many needs and demands without a single uttering of complaint. She had long since stopped looking after herself and caring about her appearance, and that didn't change now that she had been presented with the opportunity for improvement. Her hair still hung mousy and lank across her face and shoulders, roughly clipped by her own hand to an uneven but perfunctory shape, and she still wore the threadbare skirts and pinafores that she found in the cheapest baskets of the second-hand shops along North Main Street and the Coal Quay. She still looked haggard and frail, weary to the very bone from her sleepless nights and her long days of toil, and her eyes and mouth were fringed with deeply etched cobwebs of wrinkles, tattoos of the strain under which she lived. Those who gave her situation even a second of thought supposed that the years of marital cruelty had damaged her comprehension, that she had slipped into a perverse state of punch-drunk love, a victim addicted to her captor, but in their hearts they had to commend her just the same for the selfless loyalty that she showed towards a man who scarcely deserved such care.

On Sunday mornings she could be seen wheeling him up through the village to mass, and she took a place on the outer edge of a back row pew and held his hand while the priest, Fr Mulcahy, murmured prayers and gave thanks for the little that everyone had. Paudie was never what could have been considered devout in the observance of his faith, but the idea that he needed whatever solace and comfort prayer could bring did make perfect sense to people. When Fr Mulcahy mentioned from the pulpit that even the most wretched soul could find redemption through the words of Christ, more than a few among the congregation pictured Paudie as the prime example. And after mass had finished, Maggie lingered outside or, if it was raining, in the church's porch, to share some small-talk with the other parishioners and thank them for their good wishes. She smiled like a believer edging towards zealotry when she stated that she could see a definite improvement in her husband's health, that he had always been a strong man and he'd need to use every ounce of that same strength now to bear this cross. The women nodded and praised her for the work she was doing, while Paudie sat between them, staring into space, his face mangled into a grimace.

Rushing his food was a small mode of torture that led to other things, little indignities that stoked Maggie's sense of dominance. On cold nights she would set his chair in the room's furthest corner, far away from the fire so that the flames would tease him without offering any of their benefit. She insisted on washing him twice a day, morning and night, always from a dish with the water set close to boiling, and she scrubbed him roughly with a flannel cloth, all the while singing songs that she knew irritated him, Christmas songs in summer, or Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby ballads, while his scalded skin made him moan in pain. She served him tea that was far too hot to swallow, holding the cup to his lips so that he had to take it all at once, and when she clipped his toenails she always made sure that the blades of the scissors nicked the tender flesh beneath the nail. And for hours at a stretch she would busy herself with cleaning the windows or scrubbing down the front step, steadfastly ignoring him even when the cloying stench of excrement announced that he had soiled himself. Sometimes she would leave him sitting unattended until nightfall, and when she'd strip off his clothes she'd find even the flesh of his back clammy with his own filth. Any guilt she felt over acting in such callous ways was nothing more than a light fluttering in her stomach, almost identical to a stirring of excitement, and easily enough ignored. She'd smile at Paudie, a smile she perfected a little more with each offering, and sing out an apology, maybe plant a kiss on his forehead and explain that she was just so busy, what with one thing and another, and surely he saw that, but of course she'd do her very best, her absolute damnedest, to ensure that it would not happen again. His eyes were the same small pale eyes that had fixed their sights on her back in the Ballinascarty céili hall on that long-ago Friday night, narrowly set and gleaming still, but with a ferocity that could only be dreamed of now. The love was gone, if it had ever been there at all, or had ever been anything more than lust mistaken for something fine, but a certain wisdom was in evidence now, an understanding of what exactly was happening to him, and why.

Occasionally, the district nurse would stop by to visit, and Maggie would stand there and watch while the usual cursory examinations were carried out. She never tried to explain away the bruises or abrasions except to say that Paudie could be a real handful at times, especially when dragging him into his chair or lifting him into bed. The nurse nodded, understanding, and murmured how hard it must be, having to bear such a burden. There were places, she said, over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, after Paudie had been dressed again and placed in his usual doorway position, places where trained staff would look after him. It would be a respite for both of them, because no man wanted to be such a trial to his loved ones.