The South (17 page)

There is still only one matter which will keep hammering away in my mind and it is what happened in the jeep when it went off the road. What went through your mind? What about Isona? Did you know what you were doing? Why did you take her?

This is what you have left me with: anguish, speculations, doubts. Over and over again. Help me. Miguel, listen to me. I am in Barcelona now. Last evening the swifts came back to the city. I remember how we sat one evening as the sky darkened and stared up at them frantic in the air above Calle Carmen. We had been drinking. I remember it. The swifts frantic in the air.

DUBLIN IN WINTER

Dublin in winter. In November the sky was an intense, cold grey; the light was clear and brittle. In December the darkness almost never left the sky; the day was an interlude.

Fog seeped everywhere in January. In the little warren of houses around Oxmanstown Road where she moved when she returned to Ireland, the smoke from the chimneys didn’t lift, it hung heavy in the air all day. There was ice on the footpaths in the morning; there was a damp and bitter cold.

Michael Graves telephoned her every morning and came across the city twice or three times a week. Sometimes they drank until closing time in Mulligan’s pub in Stoneybatter; some nights she cooked for him, but she was a bad cook.

This was her second winter. She rarely travelled far beyond the few streets around her house. The weather reminded her of an impression she had once had of death. To be enveloped thus in a casual, alien cold.

She could think of nothing to do. Everything she touched was damp; every night the sheets on the bed were damp, no matter how long she left the electric blanket on. The walls were damp. She could feel the damp everywhere; she could feel the damp in the clothes she was wearing.

There were two upstairs rooms in the house. The front room was full of her stores: old paintings, half finished paintings. She tried to stay in bed in the morning. She tried to paint
when she got up. Michael Graves gave her books. Sometimes there was music on the radio and that was good.

The front room downstairs had a sofa where Michael Graves slept when he stayed. He was as lonely as she, even though he had his pubs, his friends, and a pattern to his life in the city. He hardly ever painted, only when commissioned, and even then he was slow and cranky. He lived on the dole which he collected every week. He complained about money, he complained about the cost of his flat. He wanted to move in with her.

She cared for him. Perhaps loved him. She needed him at the other side of the city, as a visitor, as a constant companion.

A LETTER FROM FARO

Hotel Eva

Faro

Portugal

May 8 1971

Michael Graves my love,

As you will have seen from the notepaper and the stamp on the envelope we are not in Venice as we were meant to be. This may come as a surprise to you and I can assure you it came as a surprise to me when we arrived at the airport in London and Mother produced the tickets. You will note from the date above that one week has gone and there are five more to go.

We fill three rooms of the Hotel Eva. Mother and I each have a bedroom with bathroom en suite; between our rooms there is another room with a dining table and some easy chairs, each room has a balcony looking out on to a small marina. It is, as Mother says, “much nicer than Venice—isn’t it dear?—much nicer than Venice.”

Mother has become larger than life. She was never small, but for this holiday she seems to have modelled herself on a number of well-known figures from the cinema. She has brought a lot of Henry James’s novels.

We have breakfast at eight in our dining room. Mother demands that I be dressed before she starts. She knows about you, or at least she knows a certain amount about you. She
asked me where you came from. I told her. She looked at me. Enniscorthy, she said, that’s where we’re from. Yes, I said, I know. “What’s his name again?” she asked and repeated it slowly. “Did he have a grandfather called Michael Graves?” I said I didn’t know. (Do you? If you do, send me a telegram.)

She remembered a man called Michael Graves well. He was tall. Were you tall? (Are you tall?) She remembered he was the only man in Enniscorthy at the turn of the century who could sign his name. “The rest of them just wrote X my dear, imagine that.” She looked at me daring me to say that I didn’t believe her. Then she added: “He is RC, isn’t he?” I said yes. That was a week ago, our first day on the beach and since then she has been chuckling to herself: “My daughter is going out with a boy from the town, an RC.” She repeats it four or five times a day and I don’t think that she is going to stop.

I have a lot of time on my hands. I hope you don’t mind if I ramble on for a while. Last night my mother looked out of the window and saw the town. “Oh,” she said, “there’s a town as well as a beach. A town. I hope you won’t be thinking now of going out with any of the boys, my dear.” I looked up from my book. “I am too old for boys.” There was silence for a while. Then she said: “Yes, so am I.” She is almost eighty.

There is the ceremony known as moving mother to the beach. There is no beach in the town and she knew that before she came. The beach is two miles across a lagoon. Mother loves saying the word lagoon. “There’s a lagoon, my dear, just like in Venice.” The hotel provides a motorboat and a boatman. Mother must first be moved from her room, all hats, sunglasses, scarves, necklaces and Henry James novels. Then she has to be helped out of the lift and into the boat. The boat must also contain an armchair and a footrest as well as a table for her use on the beach. The boatman, or, as she calls him,
the ferryman, is in charge of the furniture. She comments on everything that happens. “Now we are ready,” she will say, “for the ferryman to take us across the lagoon.” Or: “Halfway there, my dear, halfway there.” The boatman must then carry all the furniture to a
toldo
and then get mother and seat her in the shade, with her feet on the footrest, her sunhat on her head and her Henry James on the table. She will also have organised a small hamper and a tip for the ferryman who took her across the lagoon. A tip for the ferryman! I am not joking.

From then on it’s advice, comment, gossip, reminiscences. Nothing she tells me is true, or maybe some of it is true, but not much of it. Every time I sit in the sun, she croaks at me and tells me it will ruin my skin. Never sit in the sun. She says it five times a day. Never sit in the sun. One day she moved her glasses down her nose and looked at me. “My, my,” she said, “but your breasts have been and gone.” I did not ask her what she meant. And when I swim, she says that my father was never in favour of swimming. He always discouraged it among his men. His men? I asked her if he was in the army and she said of course he wasn’t; what put that into my mind?

My mother also has views on the North. “Dreadful situation, dreadful, never should have let it happen.” She seems to have read something about Irish history or the North which she keeps talking about. “You know I read that the RCs have been treated dreadfully up there. Dreadful time. You see they couldn’t vote.” And then she would go back to her book.

I am not allowed to spend money. This, she says, is her last fling. In future she will be too old to go anywhere, and too broke. The money’s all gone, she keeps telling me. Then she looks up: “Have you ever sold any of those paintings, my dear?” I tell her I have but she is already engrossed in her reading.

*   *   *

She’s living on the proceeds of a house she sold. After that there’s her house in London which she’s going to sell so that she can move into a maisonette for the aged—at least that’s what she calls it.

I feel like a paid companion, not allowed to stray for a single moment. This is why she chose here rather than Venice, I gather. In Venice I would have an excuse to go and look at the pictures and she wouldn’t be able to come. Also, Venice has frail, senile old ladies in every nook and cranny. Here at the Hotel Eva, Mother is a novelty. She likes being a novelty.

I feel that at any moment the act will break down and she will be serious as she used to be. This is the woman who ran away when I was little because of what she referred to the other day as her dread fear of the Irish. This is the woman who financed my own escape and has financed my life over the last twenty years, who asked no question but relished each morsel of information I ever gave her about what I was doing with my life. She loves it when I talk of Pallosa. She loves hearing about the festivals, the times we had with Miguel, she loves when I talk in Spanish to the ferryman.

She wants me to go home. It comes a few times a day, a question, a hint. Where is Tom buried? she wanted to know. I didn’t know. What did he die of? Then she forgets his name and refers to that man you married when you were young. Once I reminded her of his name she turned and looked at me: “I think you were right to get away from that hole, my dear.”

She talks about the great-granddaughter in Ireland she has never seen. She would like to leave her something. “Something valuable, something she would appreciate.” Was she a nice girl? I told her I have not seen Richard since he was a ten-year-old boy so why on earth should I know anything
about his daughter. “Would you mind if I left her my jewellery? You could take a few pieces, but most of it should go to her. Some pieces cost the earth, you know, even in my day. It was what men gave women when they wanted to show their appreciation. Does that boy from the town give you jewels?”

I should never have agreed to come. She is oppressive. I am used to spending so much time alone. Sometimes I lie down on a towel on the beach far enough away from her to pretend I can’t hear but she starts to shout at me. I pretend I’m asleep. The other morning she closed her book and said, “It’s funny doing things for the last time. This morning when I was shaving I thought . . .” “What?” I asked. “No, little one, I was just making sure you were listening.” I have to face five more weeks of this.

I know she wants me to go back home. What age is Richard now? she asked. I thought for a while. I told her I thought he was almost thirty. And what age is the little girl? I told her I wasn’t sure. Two or three. And how long has Tom been dead? I told her five years. And did I ever think of the house? I told her that I did sometimes. Did I like the house? Yes. Did I own the house? Yes, I thought I did. Did I own the farm? I told her that I believed she and I both had a share in the farm. She told me she had a share in nothing. She had left fifty years ago, never looked back and owned nothing. The house was big, wasn’t it? She remembered from pictures that the house my father built was big. You could easily get a little flat there, it would be a nice little home for you. Richard wouldn’t mind and, after all, you own the house. I told her I wasn’t sure I owned the house.

You must go back home. She became emphatic. I listened to her because I thought she was being serious. I told her I was going to stay in Dublin for the moment. For the moment, for the moment, she said it several times. You have
no money and you must find a home. Make Richard find you a home. The long, bony fingers of her hand grasped the chair. I suppose the boy from the town has no money. I did not reply. Are you going to marry him? she asked and repeated the question several times. I did not answer her. You must go home, if only to see. She went back to her book and I went into the water and stayed there for as long as I could.

At night from the window we can look down at the townspeople having their stroll. There is a café just on the waterside where they sit to look at the passers-by. Even at night there’s a haze of heat over everything. I am reading
The Ambassadors
, which my mother has just finished. She is asleep now, sound asleep, and will not wake until morning. I am like Chad, still starry-eyed at the sight of the new. I am like Chad who wants the opportunity to see more, to do more. I do not want everything to be over with me. There is more. There is more.

Michael, we have to be good and generous to each other. I will write again when there is more to say. You know I wish you were here. I wish we were all here.

All my love to you,

Katherine

HOME

I will be wearing a grey suit and the first thing you notice about me will be my eyes which tend to fix on things and stare at them. My hair is grey.

Maybe that part of the letter had been too strident; she must be gentler, her son would be nervous of her. It was a cold afternoon in late October: she kept her tweed coat wrapped around her knees. The ticket collector came and punched her ticket.

“Will we arrive in Enniscorthy on time?”

“We’ll be a few minutes late, ma’am.”

“It’s cold, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is, ma’am.”

After Wicklow the journey did not interest her. She could no longer watch the steely light on the sea. There were fields, a few ugly towns and a sense of order in the countryside, a sense of well-tilled soil. She did not open the book that Michael Graves had given her to read: there was too much to think about.

What did she want? Money, that much was certain. Quite a lot of money, every week, every month, every year, however it suited them. She owned at least three or four hundred acres of the farm. It would be easier if they offered—easier for them and easier for her. She had not mentioned money in the letter. Nor had she told them that she had been living in Dublin for almost six years. In her first letter she had
introduced herself, announced that she was in Ireland and said that she would like to see Richard. In her second she had accepted Richard’s invitation to come and stay.

What else did she want? She wanted to take a look at her son, once, maybe more. She knew nothing of his wife, nothing, not even a name. And then there was Richard’s daughter. But more than anything, she wanted to take stock of the place. She wanted to be there for a while, in the house her father built near the river, some miles from the town.

Outside Gorey the train pulled up and was delayed for some time. She imagined Tom at the station, too fastidious to ask if the train was going to be late. She imagined her son standing there exactly where his father would have stood with the same reserved, distant air. Ungainly. She hoped Richard had left his wife and child at home.