Nora Webster (12 page)

“You know when he talks to his aunt Margaret he doesn’t stammer at all. He just chats away to her. He’s used to her, so that’s what makes me think he’ll grow out of it.”

“Margaret always loved him,” Catherine said. “Do you remember the first summer in Cush when she drove down every night to see him? Even when he was asleep she’d sit beside the cot doing nothing else except looking at him.”

Nora felt herself becoming sad at the memory of that time. When she caught Mark’s eye, she saw that he was watching her with sympathy. She wished she had not let them ask her any questions about her life.

“Are you sure you’re going to be able for Gibney’s?” Catherine asked. “I mean, is it not a bit soon?”

“I don’t have any choice. And that old bag Francie Kavanagh runs the office.”

“Francie Kavanagh? We used to call her the Sacred Heart,” Catherine said. “I don’t know why.”

“And you should see Peggy Gibney. She’s grander than your friend Dilly. Almost too grand to move.”

“Is Dilly grand?” Mark asked.

“She is, Mark,” Nora said, and looked at Catherine.

“She remarked on her way out that you looked very well,” Catherine said. “It must be your new hair.”

“I was waiting for you to mention it.”

“There’s a marvellous woman in Kilkenny,” Catherine said. “We all swear by her. The next time I’d really like you to see her, if only to talk through what the options are.”

“It’s a fiver an hour,” Mark said.

“No, it’s not, Mark,” Catherine said. “Really, you should see her.”

“I suppose I should,” Nora said and smiled.

CHAPTER FIVE

W
hen they arrived home it was almost dark and the house was cold. She lit a fire quickly in the back room and made sure to give no instructions to Donal and Conor. They had, she felt, been under enough pressure all weekend; now they were home they could do whatever they liked. They had beans on toast and Conor watched television while Donal roamed the house uneasily.

On the way home, she had stopped in Kiltealy to let the boys switch places and, on seeing a shop open, had bought the
Sunday Press.
When she was checking the television listings for Conor she noticed that there was a film after the nine-o’clock news. It was
Gaslight
with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. When Donal came into the room, she pointed it out to him.

“It’s one of the best films I have ever seen,” she said.

It was before she was married, she remembered, and there was a temporary picture house in the Abbey Square and she had gone
with Greta Wickham. Maurice seldom came with her to the pictures in the years when they were going out together, and, once they were married, he lost all interest in them. He was too busy with Fianna Fáil and writing articles and correcting homework. And he liked being alone for an evening, knowing that later they would be together. It was something that never left him, a pure pleasure in the idea that they were married, that they did not have to separate and each go home, as they did in the years before they were married.

“What’s the film?” Conor asked when he heard about it.

“It’s about a woman in a house,” she said.

“Is that all?”

“Maybe something h-happens to h-her in the h-house,” Donal said.

Conor looked at Nora.

“Are there robbers?”

“You’d have to see it to know how good it is. And if I explained it to you, it would give it all away and then it would be no use.”

“Can we watch it?”

“It’s on very late.”

“Are you going to watch it?”

“Yes I am, I suppose.”

“Then we can watch the beginning, and then we can decide.”

“You won’t get up in the morning.”

“It’s Donal doesn’t like getting up.”

“I h-hate getting up,” Donal said.

When the nine-o’clock news was coming to an end, she noticed that the two boys had not moved. She could not remember watching
a film with them before and she became almost flattered that they trusted her opinion about
Gaslight.

When the film had started, however, she saw that Conor was disappointed, and probably Donal as well.

“Is it just about these people?” Conor asked.

At the first break for advertisements, she decided to tell the story of the film as best she could and then let them decide if they wanted to see the rest of it.

“The man is trying to get the house from her, trying to have her committed to a mental hospital so he can find her aunt’s jewels. That is what he is doing in the attic, looking for the jewels.”

“Why doesn’t he just kill her?” Conor asked. “Stick a knife in her or shoot her? Or tie her up?”

“Then he might be caught. He wants to live in this house without her. But he doesn’t want to go to jail.”

The two boys took this in quietly as the film resumed. After a few minutes, in a scene where Ingrid Bergman became frightened and perplexed as the gaslight flickered when she was alone in the house, Conor moved towards Nora and sat at her feet.

There was something in the film that she had not remembered. Before, it had seemed like a thriller or a sort of horror film. But now there was something else. Ingrid Bergman appeared so oddly alone and vulnerable in the film; every time the camera was on her face it captured some deep inner turmoil or uncertainty as much as any fright or horror. She was jittery and oddly estranged from things. Her glances were all nervous, her smiles had a worried edge. There was a sense of a damaged inner life. Both Donal and Conor had now become transfixed by the film, and when the next break came Donal moved beside her armchair as well.

As the man made the woman believe that she had forgotten
things and mislaid objects, the boys watched intently. The man’s plotting against her, his lies, and the maid’s cheekiness to her, all added to something, something uneasy and withdrawn. Nora wondered if she had ever seen Ingrid Bergman playing a part in a comedy. It was clear to her now that, if a knock came to their front door, then all three of them would know not to answer it.

And when, in the film, the gaslight flickered again and the woman became even more frightened, all three of them watched with hushed worry. It struck Nora that the boys had only ever before seen adventure films, or episodes of
Tolka Row
, which Conor thought especially funny because of the Dublin accents. They had never seen a film like this and it hit something in them that was raw and open, as though they were in a house with a woman, who, despite her best efforts, was jittery and worried too, who kept silent about everything that was on her mind. The more the film went on the more impossible the idea seemed that Ingrid Bergman had come from a large and happy family, but maybe Nora was imagining this, she thought, reading too much into the performance. Maybe Ingrid Bergman was just a great actress. Whatever it was, she evoked something hidden and strange, as Maurice’s absence, his body in a grave, must seem hidden and strange to the boys. She wondered if it might have been better if she had not mentioned the film, and if they had not spent a Sunday evening watching it.

When it was over, they went to bed. She sat up alone in the film’s afterglow, feeling the echoes of what she had been watching in the house where she had lived with Maurice for more than twenty years. Every room, every sound, every piece of space, was filled not only with what had been lost, but with the years themselves, and the days. Now, in the silence, she could feel it and know it; for the boys it came as confusion. In the film, somehow it had been obvi
ous, but whatever it was had served to unsettle them even more. She wondered how many other old films would come back to her with new and darker meanings. She sat there imagining Ingrid Bergman as unprotected and innocent, and then she turned off the lights and went upstairs to bed, hoping that she would sleep until the morning.

The following Sunday was her last day of freedom before she began work in the office in Gibney’s. When Fiona came home on Saturday she told her; when she told the boys they seemed already to know. She was sure that she had not told anyone in front of them, having given Jim and Margaret the news one night when the boys had long gone to bed. On Sunday Aine came home from school for the afternoon, collected by a neighbour’s family whose daughter was also at school in Bunclody. Nora would drive both girls back in time for study in the evening.

Margaret always read the newspapers carefully and looked at the advertisements for jobs. Nora used to joke with Maurice that if there was a vacancy for the assistant to the assistant librarian in West Mayo, Margaret would know about it and would remember the deadline for applications and the qualifications required. Thus when it was announced that there would be grants for students to go to university whose families lived below a certain income, Margaret mentioned this to Nora, saying that she was sure it would apply to Aine. The only problem, Margaret said, was that Aine had given up Latin and she would need Latin to go to University College Dublin, where Maurice had gone when he won a university scholarship. Nora did not know that Aine had given up Latin. Aine must have told her aunt about it, but not her.

On Sunday Aine told Nora that Margaret had written to her,
offering to pay for Latin grinds over the holidays, and suggesting that she take merely the pass paper so that she could concentrate on her other subjects. Nora was not sure if she should object that Margaret had not consulted her first, or indeed at all. She seemed to have taken over the entire question of Aine’s education. But she concluded that it was best not to think too much about it. She told Aine that she agreed with Margaret that she should take grinds in Latin.

For a few hours that afternoon she watched the boys transformed by the presence of their sisters. Conor followed the two girls from room to room and when he found himself expelled from their bedroom he came downstairs to know how much longer it would be before Fiona had to catch the train to Dublin and Aine return to school. He then went and sat at the top of the stairs until they relented and let him back into their bedroom.

Donal had bought film for his camera; he made them all pose for photographs. Even though the flash of his camera worked only sometimes he did not become despondent. He kept the camera around his neck on a strap and seemed more alert and involved than usual.

As the afternoon went on, Nora realised that she was not needed. She smiled to herself at the thought that if she slipped out of the house and went for a walk none of them would notice. It was only when Una came and the girls were downstairs that they began to focus on her.

“Well, it’s great that you had your hair done before you start work,” Aine said.

“I meant to say it’s lovely,” Fiona said. “But I got such a shock.”

“Girls, when you get to our age,” Una interrupted, “then you’ll know all about hair.”

“Are you going to work in the office full-time?” Aine asked.

Nora nodded.

“And what are the boys going to do when you’re working?”

“I’ll be home by six.”

“But they’ll be home by half three or four.”

“They can do their homework.”

“We’ll clean the house,” Conor said.

“Well, you needn’t clean our room,” Aine replied.

“We will, we’ll turn it upside down and find all the letters from your boyfriends.”

“Mammy, he is not to go into our room,” Aine said.

“Conor is the soul of discretion,” Nora replied.

“What is the soul of discretion?” Conor asked.

“It means you are a nosey little squirt,” Fiona said.

“But, seriously,” Aine asked, “would it not be better if they went to someone’s house and waited there?”

“I’m g-going nowhere,” Donal said.

“And Donal will look after Conor if there’s a problem,” Nora said. “And I’ll be home for dinner in the middle of the day.”

“Who’s going to make the dinner?”

“I’ll have it ready from the night before and Donal will put on the potatoes as soon as he comes in.”

She felt that she was being cross-examined and wondered if she could change the subject. All five of them seemed oddly suspicious of her now, as though her going to work in Gibney’s was something she was doing in order to avoid her real duties. None of her children knew how little money she had, and she was not sure how much Catherine had told Una. Since the car was still there and the house appeared untouched by poverty, none of them had any sense of how precarious things were, despite her selling the house in Cush, and
how, if she did not start working at some point, the car would have to be sold and she would have to consider moving to a smaller house.

“Why don’t you move to Dublin and get a job there?” Aine asked.

“What sort of job?”

“I don’t know. In an office.”

“I don’t want to go to Dublin,” Conor said. “I hate Dublin people.”

“What’s wrong with them?” Una asked.

“They’re like Mrs. Butler in
Tolka Row
,” Conor said, “or Mrs. Feeney, or Jack Nolan, or Peggy Nolan. All talk.”

“We could leave you behind here then to make sure you don’t miss an episode,” Fiona said.

“Is that woman, the Sacred Heart, still running the office in Gibney’s?” Una asked. “What’s her name?”

“She’s called Francie Kavanagh,” Nora said.

“Do you remember Breda Dobbs?” Una asked. “Well, her daughter worked in that office. Oh, God, maybe I shouldn’t tell this story. Conor, if you repeat this story I will personally bite both of your ears off.”

“Your secrets are safe with Conor,” Fiona said.

“I won’t say anything,” Conor said.

“Well, Breda’s daughter hated the Sacred Heart and she was there for years before she married. And on the last day she took her revenge.”

Una stopped.