The Light of Evening (31 page)

“My mother is dead, my mother is dead,” she kept saying it in her numbed state, because it had not sunk in. It is outside of her,

it is a figment, both because it is so sudden and because she cannot pinpoint the exact moment, it being such and such a time in one land and a different time on the clock of the other. It had happened in lost time.

The three previous days are jumbled, the hospital bed that she fled from, the famished blue vein of her mother’s elbow, the thick vinegary consistency of the rollmops herring, the motorcycle brigade, the tiny airport with its paltry souvenirs and Siegfried’s rueful goodbye, then the air journey through fog, trough after trough of fog, strapped into their seats and full of foreboding. Then arriving through her own front door to a ringing telephone, picking it up, she heard the voice and recognized it as being that of the sister with the steel-gray hair, telling her that her mother has died and the remains were being brought down home on the morrow. Coronary thrombosis
—
in other words, heart failure.

Her father in the front seat is lighting one cigarette from the other and repeating the same mournful sentence, his eyes welling with desolation and wrongedness, “I didn’t think she’d go so fast … I thought she’d pull through” and Vinnie doing his best to console him.

Vinnie is a big man, an ebullient man, keeps touching Con’s shoulder, points to houses, farms, and gateways that they pass, telling how such and such an owner came home from the States with a load of money and opened a takeaway joint and made another load of money, tastiest chicken in the land, but the health not too good, so money isn’t everything. “So money isn’t everything,” he says and suddenly Con turns on him, not wishing to hear baloney about takeaway chicken, saying Christ Almighty, his wife is dead and will no one throw him a crumb of pity and then turning to his daughter asks where are her tears, where are the natural feelings for a mother.

“Ah, you poor man, you’re gutted … you’re absolutely gutted,” Vinnie says to Con, knowing how to humor him, having

humored him all his life, in drink and out of drink, and nudging Eleanora, but for her father’s benefit tells it as he has told it numerous times: “I’d buy a horse for some big shot but your daddy would come with me to look it over … a genius with the horses … an absolute genius … he’d see the potential in one and he was never out … by God, he was never out, knacker, hunter, thoroughbred, he could tell what stuff was in them … he and me, by Christ, we made the jackpot for other men but not ourselves, but not ourselves … am I right, boss, am I right?”

“Oh, right as rain,” Con answers with a dreariness as Vinnie points to other farms owned now by foreigners, or Dublin people, solicitors and accountants, chaps with thesises, buying farms for their weekend shoots, aping the gentry of long ago.

It is Vinnie who suggests that they halt for a snack and Buss having beeped to the driver of the hearse waits, sees him reverse, then follows as they loop off the road and through a long winding avenue, dense with woodland on either side, big trees, leafless the upmost branches in lacy sway, the littler trees like foot soldiers with blousy buskins of ivy.

A girl meets them at the wide entrance door, her fingers twiddling delicately to wave them off. She is a young girl in a bright embroidered tunic, her high black boots draped with black fringing, the expression on her face apologetic
—
“We are very sorry … we cannot serve you … it is midwinter time”
—
and to emphasize it she points to the scattering of curled bronze leaves that have blown in under the heavy door and are strewn all over the great hall into which the travelers are looking with longing. It is empty except for a carving chair and a skeleton of bog oak, coal-black in color, on a center table, its limbs forking in all directions and to one side a huge copper gong lamentably mute.

Vinnie pleads with the girl, leads her around the side of the house where the hearse has been discreetly parked under a canopy of beeches, alludes to their grief, and wonders if she could see her way to make them a pot of tea.

They troop into the large dining room, the several tables laid with white cloths, mostly free of dishes except some cruets in which the damp salt has hardened. They sit in different places, the undertaker being a stranger to them, choosing to sit apart, and Buss being the last to have seen Dilly, simply repeating what a great lady she was. Terence and Cindy sit side by side holding hands, her father asking for a brandy and after much wrangling between him and his son, a tumbler of warm water and a tot of brandy are fetched.

From behind the folded shutters a butterfly, disturbed either by voices or the heat from her father’s cigarette, appears, opening and shutting its wings in a quick shuddery motion, the tortoiseshell brown unfolding to show a tinge of vivid orange, its suckers moving wildly as though indecision dogs it, but then nature or perhaps folly prevails and presently it does a giddy pirouette around the room and roams into the cold hallway.

The young girl has returned with two branches of laurel that she has just plucked and that she lays down before them in a gesture of welcome and perhaps commiseration.

“The kettle, it boils slow,” she tells them.

“And what might a beautiful girl like you be doing in the wilds of Ireland?” Vinnie asks her.

“It is poor wage in Latvia so I cannot live,” she answers.

“I bet you live now … I’d say the fellas are queuing up in the woods at night.”

“I am queen alone in my castle,” she says proudly and suddenly draws their attention to a herd of deer that have come to look, to enquire, the dusk of their shapes at one with the dusk of the shrubbery, curious and furtive, the shrubs not stirring and the animals not seeming to stir, just watching and then without warning and in a beautiful elongation, disappearing, apparition-wise.

“The gamekeeper he say they are getting too many … we shoot some,” the girl says.

“Which ones do you shoot?” Vinnie asks.

“The old ladies,” she says and giggles, then realizes the faux pas, puts her hand to her mouth, and does a little curtsy.

Cindy in a show of false sympathy asks Con if he would not be better sitting elsewhere as the sun is in his eyes and again he flares: “What blasted sun in my eyes? What would you know? An ignoramus,” at which Terence takes her arm and leads her solicitously away.

The girl has returned with the tray, different mugs chipped and putty-colored, apologizing for not being able to unlock the cabinet with its nice china. She has brought a cake of soda bread that is defrosting, the small beads of frost like hailstones on the yellowish crust. She does not sit with them, simply moves among them, remarks on the chilliness of the room, but brightens at the fact that they will open Easter week, except that she will no longer be queen alone in her castle.

As she wanders through the hall Eleanora hears her brother and his wife celebrate the fact that Rusheen is theirs, marveling at the good fortune that got him to the hospital in the nick of time, and the good friend Flaherty that had the acumen to tip him off. It was theirs on paper but it would always be her mother’s, and in time her mother’s ghost would demolish it, for the wrong done. She thinks of the three days ahead, mourners, endless pots of tea, endless plates of sandwiches, the low Mass, the high Mass, boats to the island grave, the first boat with the flowers, as is the tradition, the other boats following, and in her mind she goes upstairs to collect a few mementos, a gauze fan and from the blue room a bone box with the severed Bakelite head of an infant as ornamentation, in which there were old necklaces. In that instant it happens. It came first in her gut and thence to her thoughts and she knew before knowing. A tapestry bag belonging to her mother, with its birds and its griffins, seems similar to the one she had left in the porter’s keeping at the hospital. Then a terrifying tableau as she sees it being handed

to her mother, the bent fingers rummaging and the words jumping out, as might an animal. She runs from the hall, through the porch, pulling back the heavy oak door, around to where the hearse stands so stately under a canopy of beeches, a few stray husks fallen onto the glass roof, her mother in her cerements inside the new, too-yellow coffin, all quiet, so quiet save for a stirring branch, and she kneels, praying that it be not so, prayers rapid, incoherent, and jumbled.

For the farewell, the Latvian girl escorts them, two metal ice buckets wedged into her arms that she bangs, the music loud, brazen, and tuneless, something reckless about it, breaking the veiled and somber hush.

Pat the Porter

the porter with the croaky voice is on duty inside his glass cubicle and seeing Eleanora he runs, having waited, as he says, for the last four days to tell her, his hands raised helplessly and in futile anger: “Shure, he made her cry … her own son … it was him that caused her to fall.” Then he mashes her hands in sympathy. He saw it all, heard it all, with his own eyes, with his own ears, the poor woman sitting in the porch, by herself, minding her own business, waiting to be collected, her mind clear as a bell, going home for a private reason, except that there was an informer. Her son arriving, livid, ordering her down to bed, brooking no excuses, and a demon of a nurse in cahoots with him.

“Shure, that’s what did it,” he says and drags her into the inner hall to reenact the misfortune, them linking her, tugging, then he stops suddenly on the tiled spot where she turned round and saw the driver from home and bolted, but too hastily and in her flounder fell; pandemonium, bells ringing, nurses flying it, and the poor helpless woman collapsing, then lifted onto the wheelchair.

He tells her that wicked though that was, it was not the worst moment, the worst was when they tripped her up, caught her out in a lie, and she denying it stoutly, then her son throwing down the gauntlet, asking her was it not so that she had confided to a young nurse about changing her will and caught red-

handed the creature blushed having to own up to it, pleading to be forgiven, begging him to let her go home anyhow, will or no will, if only to see the place, if only to walk around it, because Father Time was winding down her clock. But they wouldn’t. And they didn’t.

“Shure, that’s what did it,” he said, proud that he was there to be a witness but vexed that he failed to prevent it, staring with pale, watering eyes.

“The bag I left with you … could we get it?” Eleanora says gesturing to the glass booth and he not registering the question. She takes him by surprise as she goes there, into his little bivouac, where none are allowed.

“A bag with bone handles … it must be here,” she says, rooting in corners, in which there are stacks of newspapers, boxes, his raincoat, and a man’s black hardhat.

“Ah, I sent that back up … I’m never here of a Tuesday,” he says, proud of the fact of having remembered but shocked by the sudden eruption in her voice.

“Find it … find it,” she is close to screaming, when to placate her, as he thinks, he produces the death notice that her brother had in the paper, and the sickening opening words:
“To our darling Mammy who will be sorely missed.”

“Where did you put it?” she asks, her face now only a few inches from his, his fluster, his tremor.

Then it dawns on him and he smiles, a baleful childlike smile. He has remembered.

“I sent it up … little Aoife brought it to your mother … you see I’m never here of a Tuesday,” he says, at which she exclaims at the bungle, his denseness, his stupefaction, telling her the same useless thing over and over again, about never being there of a Tuesday.

She is no longer listening.

She has fled from that hall to the inner hall, down the corridor, heading for the ward on the third floor, where she last saw

her mother and where she pictures the bag at the foot of the wrought-iron empty bed, with a ghastly white coverlet over it.

He is behind, trying to catch up with her, the impediment in his voice worsening, pleading to be heard, explaining how there are thieves everywhere, women’s jewelry swiped off them, hooligans coming in off the street to rob.

“At least hear me out,” he begs, but she can’t. The frenzy to find the bag is all-enveloping.

He stands a gaunt, abject figure, apologizing for his foolish mistake as the steel doors of the lift meet and shut him out.

The Little Parlor

sister consolata was expecting me, the electric fire turned on, a tea tray with a mohair tea cozy with a picture of a quaint cottage, sandwiches and assorted biscuits, and on the circular table, written immaculately on a ruled sheet of paper, was the inventory of my mother’s belongings.

I longed to ask her to go at once and get the bag but decency forbade it. Word had reached her that I had been hasty with Pat the porter and she regretted that and assured me that there was no kinder or more trustworthy person.

The room felt icy, even though the fire was on. It was one of those tall electric fires fronted with a simulation of logs, broken chunks of coal, lit from within by a red bulb that gave a semblance of heat, but not real heat.

Rain rushed down without warning. It came plopping through the trees and plashing onto the grass, sheeting the flowerbeds and then smack up against the glass pane as if there were hailstones in it, frozen beads of water running down the long double windows that rattled. How they rattled.

Her voice though very low was full of rapture and as she spoke her tiny hands kept darting in and out of her wide, black, capacious sleeves. She described being called out of the chapel of the retreat house to be given the urgent news, then being excused by one of the fathers and tearing from the south side of the city in rush-hour traffic, the young nun, her chauffeur, jumping traffic lights, nearly mowing people down, only to come through