Nora Webster (30 page)

Nora thought it was Josie’s age that made the snoring so heavy and loud. Even when Nora had switched on the bedside lamp and gently set to turning her, or even firmly waking her, Josie had settled back swiftly into sleep. Nora had lain in the bed beside hers and waited, and each time it had begun again, her snoring rising and falling, sometimes becoming a set of hard rasping sounds, and continuing even as the dawn light peered in through the slats in the shutters. Nora lay there exhausted, exasperated, realising after the fourth night that she still had ten days and nights left with her aunt until their fortnight’s holiday in Sitges would be over.

As they veered into the shady street where their hotel was situated, Nora saw Carol, their tour guide, entering a shop. She had thought that Carol had gone back to Dublin, and wondered now if maybe she had done so and then returned.

If she had not been so tired, she would have instantly approached Carol. But by the time she thought of this she was already in the bed
room and Josie in the garden. She wondered if it would be wise to tell Carol what was wrong. In a few days, if Josie continued snoring through the night, Nora might have to feign illness in the hope she could get an early flight home. Telling Carol the truth would prevent her doing that. She sensed that Carol would have a way of making clear to her that it was her own fault that she was a light sleeper, and hardly the travel company’s concern that her aunt was a heavy snorer. She knew that an additional single room, even if one was available, would cost much more than Josie had paid.

In the lobby of the hotel, when Josie was in the bar, Nora bumped into Carol.

“Are you all right?” Carol asked her.

Nora did not reply.

“I saw you on the street earlier,” Carol said.

“I can’t sleep,” Nora said.

“Is it the heat?”

“No, I like the heat.”

Carol nodded and then waited for her to say something more. Nora looked around her and then whispered.

“My aunt snores all night. It is like being in the room with a foghorn.”

“Did you say it to her?”

“I tried. I don’t think she knows what it sounds like. I haven’t slept a wink for four nights. I’m going demented.”

“We don’t have single rooms,” Carol said.

“Don’t worry then,” Nora replied. “Not to worry. I’ll just lie there all night until we go home.”

“I’m really sorry,” Carol said.

As they stood facing each other, Nora could hear the voice of her aunt and then sudden laughter as Josie approached. She seemed in high good humour.

“Oh, there you are, Carol,” she said. “Well, I just wanted to say that the room is lovely now, couldn’t be better, and I was just saying to a man at the bar that I don’t know how we are going to get used to making our own beds and cooking our own meals when we go home. But I won’t miss the heat. Oh I won’t miss the heat!”

Nora watched her coldly and saw that Carol was staring at her too. For a second, they caught each other’s eye. Josie was wearing a loose navy-blue dress that made her seem enormous, her hair was dishevelled and she was sweating profusely. She grinned at the two of them.

“Come and have a gin with us,” she said to Carol. “Or is vodka your tipple?”

“No, thank you. I really must go.”

“I already have one on the counter for you, Nora,” Josie said. “Oh, the heat!”

She shuffled towards the bar. Nora nodded at Carol and then fetched the key and went upstairs. She had a cold shower before going downstairs to join her aunt in the bar. Somehow, the possibility of the gin, especially if she put very little tonic in it, and then the food, gave her the courage to continue. But once dinner was over, she thought, she would implore her aunt to leave her the room for a few hours, and she would try to get some sleep before the night’s snoring began.

When Merce had served the dessert and poured more white wine for both women, she motioned to Nora to come with her, pointing towards the door to the lobby.

She led her down a narrow creaking staircase to the basement. The ceiling of the corridor they moved along now was low, and the paint on the walls was peeling. The air was cool, with an edge of damp and a smell
of mustiness that to Nora was refreshing. They squeezed past a pile of cardboard boxes stacked from floor to ceiling and then Merce opened a door to the right and switched on a light. It was a room like a prison cell, Nora saw, with a single bed and a tiny window with bars at the top of the back wall. The light-bulb was bare. The bed was made and the sheets were starkly white in the sharp light coming from the ceiling. When Merce crossed the corridor she opened a door into a bathroom. The air was even damper here, and there was a smell of mould. There was an old bath with plastic nozzles attached to the taps and a shower head hanging over the side. There was a toilet and a wash-basin. This room, too, had a small window with bars. Merce looked at her, and put her hands out as if to say that this was not much, but it was hers if she wanted it. She managed to say in English that there would be no extra charge. Nora nodded enthusiastically. Merce had a set of keys in her pocket and tried a number of them before she found the one that locked the bedroom door. She removed it from the key-ring and handed it to Nora and then went with her along the corridor and up the stairs to the lobby.

Nora left Josie at the bar once dinner had ended, carried her suitcase and her toilet things down to the basement, and then came and told her aunt that they had given her a room of her own and that she was tired and was going to bed now. Josie, she saw, was ready to become offended, but she did not give her time. She turned and disappeared. The idea that she could sleep, settle into sleep, filled her with such relief that nothing else could matter now. Once she had made her way back down to her basement quarters, closed the door of her room and undressed, she relished how crisp and clean the sheets were on the narrow bed. She turned off the light and tried to stay awake for as long as she could so that she could enjoy the prospect of solitude and long uninterrupted sleep.

When she woke she knew that it was morning. There was a faint,
insistent light coming from the small window but there was no sound at all. She did not think she had slept as deeply as this since she married Maurice and began to share a bed with him, and certainly not since she was pregnant for the first time. There was once, however, she remembered, when Aine was a baby and had cried throughout each night. No matter how often she was fed, or how many times lifted and comforted, she cried. Nora, without any warning, had taken Aine and two days’ supplies to her mother’s house, leaving Fiona with Maurice, and despite her mother’s nervous protestations, had left Aine downstairs with her, and gone upstairs to bed and slept solidly for twelve or fourteen hours. That was the only time in her life, she thought, when she had woken like this, the night’s sleep a heavy oblivion, utterly satisfying and complete in its blankness.

She felt alert now, excited at the prospect of the day ahead. She went to the bathroom and showered in cold water. When she checked the time, she found that it was only five o’clock. She put on her bathing costume and then a dress and a pair of sandals and stuffed a towel and some underwear into a bag. She walked quietly, stealthily, out of the hotel, aware that any encounter at all could break the spell of the night.

She walked in the early-morning sunlight down a side-street towards the beach that lay behind the church and was quieter than the others. She was surprised when she passed a few people in the street, people on their way to work. When the sea came into view, she looked at the pale morning sky above it. She walked towards the esplanade past white-painted buildings with shutters coloured a deep dark blue.

As she came to a café on the corner, the owner was rolling up the metal shutters. He greeted her casually as though he knew her. She would come here after her swim and linger at one of the tables the owner might put outside, and not return to the hotel until just before ten o’clock, when Josie would come down for breakfast.

There were large machines on the beach flattening out the sand, making everything smooth and perfect for the day. Men sorted sun umbrellas and arranged beach furniture. There was still a cool breeze, a remnant of the night, coming from the sea, and the water was colder than she had imagined, and the waves higher than they had been in previous days. She dived under a wave as it came towards her and felt a chill as she swam out.

She closed her eyes and swam without making much effort, edging out beyond where the waves broke. She noticed the sun’s first heat as she lay back and floated. She felt lazy now and tired as well, and yet the energy that had come to her earlier was there too. She would, she thought, stay in the water for as long as she could; she would use up her energy. She knew that a morning like this would not come to her as easily again, the early light so beautiful and calm, the sea so bracing, and the promise of the long day ahead and the night that would follow when she would be alone once more, undisturbed, allowed to sleep.

For the last few days of the holiday Josie became quieter, and the stories she told were more interesting. Nora loved her bed in the basement, although she preferred using the shower in the bathroom beside the room where Josie slept. She swam a few times a day, liking the way her bathing costume dried quickly in the sun. She and Josie did not mind paying for the deck-chairs and the sun umbrellas. And Josie never tired of commenting on anyone who went by. One day they found a market where Nora bought cheap clothes and presents for everyone at home.

She studied the buildings along the streets between the beach and the hotel, wondering about the people who lived in them, what their lives were like, and what hers would be like, were she living here. During those last days she thought about her walk to work in the morning,
the red raincoat she wore, an umbrella at the ready. All of it seemed remote and alien, as far away from here as it was possible to be.

On the last day she bought Merce a bottle of expensive perfume to thank her for rescuing her.

It was late when she arrived home. The boys had gone to bed and she was careful not to make a sound that might wake them. Fiona was at a dance and Aine was there alone. She sensed from Aine that something had happened, but then felt, as she quietly unpacked upstairs, that it was nothing more than the newness of where she had been and the strangeness of returning home. But the thought remained that there was something wrong so she went back downstairs and asked Aine if there had been a problem while she was away.

“It’s just that Conor has been put into the B-class,” Aine said.

“The B-class? Who put him into the B-class?”

“Brother Herlihy moved himself and two others into the B-class.”

“Which two?”

The two Aine mentioned were, Nora knew, along with Conor, among the very best in the A-class.

“Did he give a reason?”

“No, he just did it.”