The China Factory (3 page)

Sometimes in the months following I'd be sitting in a packed lecture hall and I'd think of the spongers at their tables and the water turning white in their basins and every minute and hour unfolding, interminably, day after day. I'd think of my own family in the warm kitchen at night with the noise and the arguments and the TV blaring and Gus, alone with his Western novels, finding fidelity in far-off men, and I'd think of his hand reaching out and touching Vinnie's shoulder that day and the rarity of that, for Gus, the rarity of any human touch.

And then in my last year in college, during the coldest winter of my youth, my mother wrote me a rare letter. I sat at a table by an upstairs window in a redbrick house on Dublin's northside. I had spent the evening in the college library and my head was brimming with lines from John Donne's God sonnets. When I opened the envelope a fifty pound note fell from the pages of the letter. She wrote of the comings and goings on the farm, of my father and my younger siblings and their school work. And then:

I am sorry to tell you that your old friend Baby Face was found dead the other day. It was an awful sight, I believe, Lord have mercy on him. They think he went outside to get water from a barrel and he must have collapsed into the barrel somehow—he must have had a massive heart attack and fallen over, and that night was the start of this freezing cold weather we're having and didn't the water freeze solid, and that's the way the poor fellow was found. Everyone is talking about it. The funeral is tomorrow at eleven. Your father and I will go. He had no one left belonging to him. An awful ending entirely, the poor creature…

The sight of a bible in a hotel room now, or a drunk in a doorway, or my mother setting down her china cups, or even King Kong, all call Gus to mind. Or the word
meek
. Or a boy, any boy, any boy's eyes, evokes the small boy tethered in the sun and the thoughts that must have assailed him all day long. I remember Gus's
aloofness inside the factory, and I know now that he was sparing me, that he understood how our association would contaminate me in the eyes of others. I remember the car journeys, the odours, and my own Judas moment. I think of him standing at his back door at night looking up at the drift of stars, pondering last things. I try to imagine what went through his mind when he staggered out to the barrel that cold night, or as he strode across the factory lawn that summer's day, bearing all of our realities in each stride. I think that something must have escaped and drained out of him into the other man that day. I wonder if he'd had an inkling that a gap would open and he would lever his way in between two orders, two domains, and when he reached out his hand and leaned his head towards Vinnie's, was it to the man or to the madness he spoke?

I think of our blood tie sometimes, mine and Gus's, and the ties that bind us all. I would have liked to have taken him with me that autumn, taken my own family too and the factory girls and made them all fit into my new world. I would have liked to have mitigated the loss and the guilt I felt at leaving them behind, the feeling that I was escaping and walking away. It is not an easy walk, I longed to tell them, but I'm not sure anyone was listening.

YOU FILL UP MY SENSES

She loves when she is alone with her mother in the car, like this. They are driving to check on the cattle and sheep in the summer grazing seven miles away. They stop at Burke's for petrol and buy loose pineapple cubes and cigarettes. Her mother smokes two cigarettes very quickly as if she'll be caught. Her mother never smokes in front of her grandmother. At night when her grandmother has gone to bed, and her mother and father and all the children are together in the kitchen—a normal family at last—she is happiest. Then her mother puts her youngest sister up to bed and afterwards walks along the landing calling out Holy Mary Mind Me so that her little sister will hear her voice and not be afraid, and her sister calls back Holy Mary Mind Me too, and they keep up this singsong as her mother comes down the stairs and in along the hall. Then her mother is in the kitchen making the supper. She is humming softly. The television is on. She watches her mother putting out the bowls and spoons, the sugar bowl and the milk jug. She loves her mother very much. When she grows up she wants to be exactly like her.

They walk to opposite ends of the land—her mother to count the cattle and she the sheep. She is nine now. As she tramples through the fields she forgets all about the sheep. She stands under a tree looking up at the undersides of the leaves and the little veins almost make her weak. She walks on, avoiding the thistles and the
cow dung until she gets to the hill. There are crooked stones on the far side where unbaptised babies were buried long ago. She stands at the top of the hill. She opens her arms wide and runs down the hill, her hair blowing, her eyes watering in the breeze. She goes up the hill again and stands still and starts to sing. She raises her face to the sun. She would like to be a singer on TV. She would like to make her mother and father proud. She would like to bring tears to their eyes.

Her mother is not cross when she finds her—her mother is never cross with her. Together they start to count the sheep. How many are in the other field, her mother asks her, and she runs to the gap and counts them and runs back again, breathless, and the number is right. They walk back to the car. She hands her mother a pineapple cube from the paper bag and as they drive home they make sucking noises and laugh. Her mother is not like other mothers. She is young and girlish and runs in the mothers' race on sports days and tickles her and her brothers and sisters at bedtime and grinds sweets as hard and fast as they do. On Sundays when they have Neapolitan ice cream for dessert, her mother takes spoonfuls from her own bowl and drops them into the bowls of her younger brother and sister until her own ice cream is almost gone. She does not know how her mother can bear to give away her ice cream. She does not mind not getting any from her mother's bowl, and her mother knows this. Her mother understands everything about her.

As they drive her mother sighs. When her mother is far away like this she tries to bring her back. She asks her about her life when she was a child. Were there really three hundred and sixty-five windows in your house? she asks, though she already knows the answer.

—Yes, one for every day of the year, her mother says.

—And two stairs?

—Two stairs. One lovely wide one in the front hall and a narrow one near the back kitchen.

Her mother's home was called Easterfield. She remembers it from when she was very small, a big house with tall windows and a wide lawn facing the wrong way—facing out to the fields instead of to the road—and a gravel yard with barns where her father parked the car. And upstairs long landings with creaking floorboards and rooms with no light bulbs, and the creepy backstairs at the far end. She has a faint memory of her mother's father with snow-white hair and round glasses sitting by the range holding a red plastic back scratcher in his hand. The house is all closed up now. On the day of her mother's fourth birthday a blackbird flew into the dining room and tore a piece of wallpaper from a spot above the window. The wallpaper had swirling ivy and serpents, and was very old. She sees her four-year-old mother standing in the room looking up at the blackbird. Suddenly her thoughts turn dark. She is getting too close to the sadness of her mother's life.

At home her father and her older brother are gathering in the sheep and lambs and flocking them in the yard, for dosing. She hates when there are big jobs going on. The night before the sheep-shearing or silage-making or cattle-testing she cannot sleep. She lies there, rehearsing it all in her mind, searching for dangers—open gates, charging cattle, escaping children—or the rage of her father when an animal breaks loose or the baler breaks down. By morning she is exhausted, and all day long she keeps watch. She is not as quick at the farm work as her brother and sister—at turning the turf or stacking the bales—and she is relieved when evening comes. She is always waiting for evenings and happy endings.

In the yard her father and her brother make hooshing sounds at the sheep and Captain the sheepdog rushes in and nips them on the legs. When they are penned tightly she looks in through the rungs of the gate at the ewes' big faces. They look calmly back at her. She has the feeling that they know more than she does and
that, somehow, like her mother, they understand her. And maybe even love her.

One day when she was seven she turned to her mother, smiling, and said, What was your mammy like? Her mother stopped for a second.

—I never knew my mother, she said. She died when I was three. A week later the bird flew in and tore the wallpaper in the dining room.

The mother was in bed, coughing, for a long time and her mother's older sisters came home from boarding school to mind her and their baby brother. Her mother remembers being lifted up on the bed to give her mother a kiss.

—She had a white nightdress on and long hair. I put out my hand to touch her hair but they must have thought I was going to pull it so they lifted me down and took me away.

She wanted to say something but she was afraid she would make her mother cry.

—She told my sisters which dress to lay her out in. And to be sure to use the linen tablecloth for the meal after the funeral. I remember the men carrying the coffin down the stairs.

Her mother stands on the steps at the front door and calls her in. In the kitchen her grandmother is sitting by the range knitting. She tells her to take the brush and sweep the floor. Afterwards she plays with her small sister and brother on the floor. Her other sister, who is eight and the middle child, is cutting out cardboard shapes with scissors that are too big for her hands. Her mother is making bread at the kitchen table, and every now and then turns to check the steaming saucepans on the cooker. Her mother is always working, inside and out—putting down fires, making meals, bringing in turf. She is always tired. Sometimes at Mass she falls asleep and she or her sister has to wake her up to stand for the prayers. The work is never done. Every week brings new jobs on
the farm. She tries to see ahead and help her mother—she hoovers the house on Sunday mornings before Mass and stuffs the chicken and sews up its behind with a needle and thread, the way her grandmother taught her.

It is not her father's fault, all this work—he is tired too. But at night when he sits down to watch television, her mother is still at the cooker frying the tea, or at the table making apple tarts, or ironing, and the television is blaring and the kitchen is hot and the younger kids are arguing and fighting. Sometimes her mother snaps at her father and her father snaps back and her grandmother tells the kids crossly to have manners and then her mother cries. One winter's night her mother flung a plate of rashers and sausages down on the table in front of her father and ran out of the kitchen. The food bounced on the plate. She followed her mother into the hall, begging her, but her mother put on her purple coat and walked out the front door. She ran after her, pulling at the coat, crying Come back, but her mother ran down the steps, and off into the night. She stood at the open door not knowing which way to turn. She thought she should be loyal to her mother but the little ones were crying in the kitchen. She ran in to her father. She's gone, she cried. Are you happy now? His face was dark and lonely. She remembered that look on him before, when she woke one night and came down for a drink, and he was sitting in the armchair watching a film. Go after her, she said softly, you have to go after her. But he just sat there, sad and silent. When the kids were fed she stood at the front door again looking out into the dark. Her heart was shattered. Then her grandmother called her in. An hour later she heard the front door close quietly and her mother's footsteps on the stairs. Later when she went up to her own room her mother was in her bed. She put her arms around her and kissed the top of her head. Her mother only ever kisses her when she is sad. She thought her mother must have walked to the end of the lane, and might have kept going if the lane hadn't ended.

*

The dinner is ready and she goes outside and calls down to her father and brother in the yard. Her brother is inside the pen, holding a lamb like a baby in his arms, its legs in the air. She knows that sometimes they are happy, the whole family is happy. Some mornings when they are at the breakfast and her mother is standing by her father's side pouring out his tea he touches her waist and she sees the look they give each other. Last winter when her grandmother went on holidays to an uncle's house, her father carried the record player out to the kitchen every night and put on Jim Reeves, and taught herself and her sister to dance. He lifted them, in turn, onto his stockinged feet and waltzed them around the floor. When they were finished she said to him, Dance with Mammy, and she ran and tugged on her mother's arm. But her mother was tired. She was sewing buttons on a jacket. Her father stayed standing in the middle of the kitchen for a minute with his arms by his side, staring at the tiles.

At the dinner table an argument starts and her middle sister grabs a crayon from her small brother's hand and he starts to bawl. Give it back to him, her mother tells her. It's mine, her sister says. She doesn't care. She gives backchat to her mother and father all the time. To her grandmother too. Her mother is cutting open an apple tart now. Sometimes she is helpless; she does not know what to do or how to be a mother. She gives her sister a look across the table but her sister is defiant. The little brother thumps her sister and she thumps him back, harder, and her father shouts at her. Her grandmother says, That's the family ye're rearing now. Her sister looks across at her grandmother. Shut up, you, she says. Her heart is pounding and she kicks her sister under the table to make her stop. But her sister keeps on going. Then as her grandmother turns to get up from the table her mother reaches across and slaps her sister on the elbow with the tip of the bread knife. Her sister's
mouth falls open and she howls. Blood falls from her elbow onto her plate. Her mother has a terrified look and she jumps up and runs to the sink. Her father's face darkens and his mouth clenches in anger. She expects he will pound the table with his fist and knock over the chair and storm out. But he doesn't move. He is staring at her mother. They are all staring at her mother, and at the big drops of blood falling on the plate. She doesn't feel sorry for her sister at all—her heart is raging at her sister.