Nora Webster (3 page)

“We’ll be able to go on holidays to different places,” she said. “We’ll be able to get a caravan in Curracloe or Rosslare. We’ve never stayed in a caravan.”

“Would we be able to stay in Curracloe the same time as the Mitchells?” Conor asked.

“If we like. We could find out when they’re going and go at the same time.”

“Would it be for one week or two weeks?” Conor asked.

“Or longer if we liked,” she said.

“Are we going to b-buy a c-caravan?” Donal asked.

“No, we’ll rent one. Buying one would be too much responsibility.”

“Who’s going to b-buy the house?” Donal asked.

“It’s very private now. If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone, but I think that May Lacey’s son is going to buy it. You know, the one who’s in England.”

“Is that why she came here?”

“I suppose it is, yes.”

She made tea and the boys pretended to watch the television. She had, she knew, unsettled them. Conor had become all red-faced and Donal was staring at the floor as if awaiting punishment. She picked up a newspaper and tried to read. She knew it was important to stay in the room, not to leave them, despite an urge to go upstairs and do anything, empty out cupboards, wash her face, clean the windows. Eventually, she felt she would have to say something.

“We could go to Dublin next week.”

They looked up.

“Why?” Donal asked.

“For a day out, you could take a day off school,” she said.

“I have d-double science on Wednesday,” Donal said. “I hate it, but I c-can’t miss it, and I have F-french with Madame D-duffy on Monday.”

“We could go on Thursday.”

“In the car?”

“No, we could go on the train. And we could see Fiona, that’s her half-day.”

“Do we have to go?” Conor asked.

“No. We’ll only go if we like,” she said.

“What will we tell the school?”

“I’ll send in a note saying that you have to go to the doctor.”

“I d-don’t need a note if it’s j-just one day,” Donal said.

“We’ll go then. We’ll have a nice day out. I’ll write to Fiona.”

She had said it to break the silence and to let them know that there would always be outings, things to look forward to. But it made no difference to them. The news that she was selling the house in Cush seemed to bring home something that they had been managing not to think about. In the days that followed, however, they brightened up again, as though nothing had been said.

For the trip to Dublin she laid their good clothes out for them the night before and made them polish their shoes and leave them on the landing. When she tried to make them go to bed early, they protested that there was something they wanted to watch on the television, and she allowed them to stay up late. Even then, they did not want to go to bed, and when she insisted, they went back and forth to the bathroom and they kept turning on and off the light in their room.

Finally, she went upstairs and found them fast asleep, the bedroom door wide open, their beds tossed. She tried to make them more comfortable, but when Conor began to wake she withdrew, quietly closing the door.

In the morning, they were up and dressed before she was. They brought her tea, which was too strong, and toast. When she got up, she managed to throw the tea down the sink in the bathroom without them noticing.

It was cold. They would drive to the station, she told them, and leave the car in the Railway Square. It would be handy when they came home that night, she said. They both nodded gravely. They already had their coats on.

The town was almost empty as she drove to the station. It was half dark and some lights in houses were still on.

“Which side of the train will we sit on?” Conor asked when they got to the station.

They were twenty minutes early. She had bought the tickets, but Conor refused to sit with her and Donal in the heated waiting room, he wanted to cross over the iron bridge and wave to them from the other side; he wanted to walk down to the signal box. Again and again, he came back to ask when the train would arrive until a man told him to watch the signal arm between the platform and the tunnel, and when it dropped, it would mean that the train was coming.

“But we know it’s coming,” Conor said impatiently.

“It’ll drop when the train is in the tunnel,” the man said.

“If you were in the tunnel and the train came, you’d be mincemeat,” Conor said.

“Begoboman, you’d be found in little bits all right. And, you know something, all the cups and saucers rattle in the houses when the train goes under,” the man said.

“They don’t rattle in our house.”

“That’s because the train doesn’t go under your house.”

“How do you know?” Conor said.

“Oh, I know your mammy well.”

Nora recognised the man, as she did so many others in the town; she thought that he worked in Donoghue’s garage, but she was not sure. Something in his manner irritated her. She hoped that he did not intend to travel to Dublin with them.

Just before the train came, and the boys had once more gone down to the signal box, the man turned to her.

“I’d say they miss their daddy all the same,” he said.

He searched her face for a response and narrowed his eyes with curiosity. She felt that she needed to say something quickly and sharply to prevent him speaking again and, more than anything, to prevent him sitting with them on the journey.

“That’s the last thing they need to hear at the moment, thank you,” she said.

“Oh, now I didn’t mean to . . .”

She moved away from him as the train came and the boys ran excitedly down the platform towards her. She could feel her face reddening, but they noticed nothing as they argued over which were the best seats on the train.

Once the train started, they wanted everything: to view the toilets, to stand in the precarious space between the carriages where the ground could be seen as they sped along, to go to the restaurant and buy lemonade. By the time the train stopped in Ferns, they had done all of these things, and by the time it reached Camolin, they had fallen asleep.

Nora did not sleep; she glanced at the newspaper she had bought in the station, and put it down, and watched the two boys slumped
back in their seats sleeping. She would love to have known just then what they were dreaming of. In these months, she realised, something had changed in the clear, easy connection between her and them, and perhaps, for them, between each other. She felt that she would never be sure about them again.

Conor woke and looked at her and went back to sleep with his head resting on his folded arms on the table. She reached out and touched his hair, let her hands run through it, tossing it and straightening it again. Donal was watching her, his calm gaze suggesting to her that he understood everything that was happening, that there was nothing he did not fathom.

“Conor’s fast asleep,” she said and smiled.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“We’re nearly at Arklow.”

By Wicklow, Conor had woken and gone to the toilet again.

“What would happen if you flushed the toilet in a station?” he asked.

“It would all go onto the tracks,” she said.

“And when the train is moving, where does it go?”

“We’ll ask the ticket collector,” she said.

“I b-bet you wouldn’t ask him,” Donal said.

“What harm would it do to the tracks in a station?” Conor asked.

“It would be all s-smelly,” Donal said.

The morning was windless, the clouds on the horizon were grey and the sea beyond Wicklow the colour of steel.

“When will the tunnels start?” Conor asked.

“It’s a while now,” she said.

“After the next station?”

“Yes, after Greystones.”

“Will that be long?”

“Read your comic,” she suggested.

“The tracks are too bumpy.”

At the first tunnel, the boys covered their ears against the rushing noise, vying with each other in mock fright. The next tunnel was much longer. Conor wanted Nora to cover her ears as well, and she did it to please him, because she knew how little sleep he had had, and how irritable he could be, and how easy it would be to upset him. Donal was already bored covering his ears, but he moved close to the window when the train came out of the tunnel and there was a sheer drop into the rough waters below. Conor now had moved beside her, making her move so he could be at the window too.

“We could fall over,” he said.

“No, no, the train has to stay on the tracks. It’s not like a car,” she said.

He kept his nose up against the window, fascinated by the danger. Donal, also, did not move from the window even when the train came into Dún Laoghaire station.

“Is that the end?” Conor asked.

“We’re nearly there,” she said.

“Where are we going to go first? Are we going to see Fiona first?”

“We’re going to go to Henry Street.”

“Yippee!” Conor shouted. He was trying to stand on the seat, but she made him sit down.

“And we’re going to have our dinner in Woolworth’s,” she said.

“In the self-service?”

“Yes, so we don’t have to wait.”

“Can I have orange with my dinner and no milk?” Conor asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You can have whatever you like.”

They got off at Amiens Street and walked through the damp and
dilapidated station. They moved slowly along Talbot Street, stopping to look into shop windows. She forced herself to relax, there was nothing to do, they could waste time wherever they wanted. She gave them ten shillings each to spend, but as soon as she did, she felt she had made a mistake, it was too much. They examined the money and looked at her suspiciously.

“Do we have to b-buy something?” Donal asked.

“Maybe we’ll get some books,” she said.

“Can we get comics or an annual?” Conor asked.

“It’s too early for annuals,” Donal said.

As they approached O’Connell Street, they wanted to see where Nelson’s Pillar had been.

“I remember it,” Conor said.

“You c-couldn’t. You’re too young,” Donal told him.

“I do. It was tall and Nelson was on top of it and they blew him into smithereens.”

They crossed O’Connell Street, alert to the several lanes of traffic, cautiously waiting for the lights to change. Nora was aware as they walked into Henry Street that they must seem like country people. The boys managed to take everything in and, at the same time, keep everything at a distance. They watched this world of strangers and strange buildings out of the sides of their eyes.

Conor had become impatient to go into a shop, any shop, to buy something.

“Would you like to look at shoes?” she asked, figuring that when he said no, he would be pleased that he was the one who was deciding where they would go.

“Shoes?” He wrinkled his face in disgust. “Is that what we came to Dublin for?”

“So where do you want to go?” she asked.

“I want to go up and down an escalator.”

“Do you want to do that too?” she asked Donal.

“I s-suppose s-so,” he said glumly.

In Arnotts in Henry Street, Conor wanted Nora and Donal to watch him going up the escalator and then wait for him and watch him coming down. He insisted that they not come with him and not move. He made them promise. Donal was bored.

The first time, Conor kept looking back at them, and they waited while he disappeared at the top and then reappeared on the escalator coming down. He beamed at them. The second time, he grew brave and took some of the steps two by two, all the while holding on to the rail. The next time, he wanted Donal to come with him, but insisted that Nora still wait below. She explained to him that this would have to be the last go, that maybe they could return here in the afternoon, but three times up and down the escalator was enough.

When they came down, she saw that Donal was animated as well. They explained to her that they had found a lift further over and they wanted to go up and down in that.

“One more and that’s it,” she said.

She moved away and began to look at umbrellas, noticing fold-up ones, small enough to put into your handbag, which she had never seen before. She thought that she would buy one in case it rained. As she waited for the cashier, she watched out for the boys, but they did not appear. When she had paid, she walked back to their meeting point, and then to the place near a side door to which the lift descended.

They were not there. She waited between the two points, looking out all the time for them. She thought of going on the lift herself, but realised that this would only add to the confusion. If she stayed here, she thought, she would be bound to see them.

When they found her, they pretended it was nothing, that the lift had merely stopped at every floor. When she told them that she had thought they were lost, they gave each other a look as though something had happened to them in the lift which they did not want her to know about.

By three o’clock, they had seen all the Dublin they wanted to see. They had been to Moore Street and bought a bag of peaches, they had had their dinner in the self-service in Woolworth’s and had been to Eason’s where they bought comics and books. The boys were tired now as they sat in Bewley’s waiting for Fiona. Nora believed that the only thing keeping Conor awake was the idea that you could take as many buns as you liked from the two-tiered plate.