Amongst Women

  That evening Michael dropped the deferential air he had always worn in front of Moran. He was not openly impolite but withdrawn and heavy. Moran was irritated by the conduct, watched carefully but held his peace. This went on for several days. School continued to be intolerable. His schoolfellows found him self-absorbed and violent when he joined in games. They ignored him. In a dull fog of self-pity he went in and out of class. In the house each day grew more tense. Rose was on edge. All she could do was to try bouts of amiable prattling that drew no response from either father or son. The very air felt as if it was being so stretched out that it had to change or break: as small a thing as a salt cruet eventually brought all that was between them to a head.

  ‘That salt,’ Moran demanded.

  ‘What salt?’

  ‘Are there two salts? Pass that salt!’

  Instead of lifting the small cruet, Michael pushed it across the table towards his father. Moran seethed as he watched. As it was pushed, the small glass cruet touched a fold in the tablecloth and overturned.

  ‘You wouldn’t pass salt that way to a dog,’ Moran rose from the table. ‘Have you any idea who you are passing that salt to?’

  ‘I didn’t mean for it to overturn.’ Michael was at an intolerable disadvantage sitting down.

  ‘You just shoved it over to the dog.’

  ‘I tell you I didn’t mean …’

  ‘I’ll teach you to mean something!’ Moran struck him violently but he managed partly to avert the blow, the chair falling over as he jumped to his feet. ‘You needn’t think you’re going to Lord-Muck-it round here for the rest of your days.’

  The second blow he took on the arms but it still forced him to back against the sewing machine. He felt the metal against his back but no injury or fear. Using the old foot machine as a springboard he jumped forward and held Moran’s hand as it came down again. In the short, silent struggle he was the stronger. Moran went down, dragging the boy with him but he wasn’t able to dash him sideways against the dresser as he fell. They struggled blindly, rolling about. Eventually it was the boy who pinned the father to the floor; but as he tried holding him by the arms, on rising he received several violent blows to the head from above. Shouting out with pain he let his grip go and jumped to one side. Rose was between the two men with a heavy brush in her hands.

  ‘I’m surprised at you, Michael,’ she accused and then went to Moran’s aid. ‘Are you all right, Daddy? Are you all right?’

  Brushing her help aside, he staggered to his feet and breathing very heavily went to sit in the chair.

  ‘Are you all right, Daddy?’ she asked again.

  ‘I’ll be all right in a minute,’ he said. ‘And I’m far from finished with that gentleman. If that gentleman thinks he can do anything he likes now in this house I’m telling him he’ll soon have another think coming.’

  It was then, coldly and deliberately, that he fixed his eyes on the shotgun where it stood beside the back door in the far corner of the room. Whether he was seriously thinking of using the gun or that he wanted Michael to think he would use it would never be known. If he just wanted Michael to think he might use it he succeeded absolutely. For the rest of that evening his son stayed dose to the gun. Any time Moran moved between him and the back door he found himself tensed to spring. He would have given anything to discover if the gun was loaded but he couldn’t check it. He reassured himself that Moran had always insisted that a gun should always be unloaded when approaching a house or climbing across a fence.

  If it hadn’t been for the heavy rain Michael would probably have left that night. In the morning he would leave and this time he would not come back. All he had to do was to get through the night. Obediently he went through the remaining gestures. Moran did not speak at all except to say the Rosary. Michael said good night to Rose but it was clear that he did not have to say good night to Moran any more. As soon as he got to his room he moved the bed so that it stood against the door and unlatched the window. He breathed a little easier when he heard his father and Rose go to bed but still he didn’t sleep. Towards morning, an hour or so before Rose usually got up, he stole towards the kitchen. All the doors were ajar and he could pass through them without sound. He could hear the pounding of his heart as he reached into the corner and slowly lifted the shotgun. He took it into the hallway before opening the breach. As it made a small click he listened intently but he could hear no sound from the far bedroom. He expected to find the breach empty. The gun shook in his hands when he saw the brass of the shell. If it was loaded it went against everything Moran had preached about guns all his life; but when he took the shell from the breach he found that it was empty. Breathing much easier he put the empty shell back and returned the gun silently to its corner. In bed again he fell into a heavy sleep. Rose had to shake him awake. He dressed quickly and made a small bundle of the few clothes he wanted to take. In the living room with Rose he was careful and silent and a bit depressed. He would never repeat these small acts of morning in this room again. The youthful self-absorption was comic. He would never take the top off his boiled egg again while looking across the fields to McCabe’s wall. Sentimentally, through each small act he found himself taking leave of his youth. Rose took his silence and faint air of depression as contriteness over the clash with Moran.

  ‘Don’t worry, Michael,’ she said. ‘All you have to say is that you’re sorry when you come from school and that’ll be the end of it. Your father thinks the world of you.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. The salt just overturned. I did nothing.’

  ‘You know it wasn’t just the salt, Michael.’

  ‘He never lets up at me for a minute lately.’

  ‘You know your father. He’ll not change now. All you have to do is appear to give in to him and he’d do anything for you after that. He wants nothing but good for the whole house.’

  ‘Thanks, Rose,’ he smiled as he got up from the table. Her whole little speech brought him close to tears. He wanted to get out of the house before they began. Rose saw the tears and they brought tears to her own eyes. She was sure everything would be all right again. She would have a word with Moran about his early morning contriteness as soon as he got up and make certain that everything moved towards reconciliation and the unquestioning love she herself felt with her whole heart.

  An early morning bread van took Michael as far as Longford, a cattle truck brought him from there to Maynooth. For a long time he had to hang around Maynooth until a priest gave him a lift into the city. It was past lunch time and he felt weak with hunger when he walked from O’Connell Bridge to the big government offices where Sheila worked. A porter who remembered him from the last time took him up in a lift to Sheila’s office.

  ‘What are you doing here again?’ she demanded sternly though she already knew.

  ‘I’m going to England,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight if I can.’

  He told her of the fight, Rose beating him about the head with the brush and Moran sitting staring at the gun in the corner of the room. It was all too familiar to be mere invention. She telephoned Mona who would come over from her office and meet them in the canteen. He had already said he was weak with hunger. She left him with an enormous plate of chips, eggs, sausages, black pudding and tea and went back upstairs to try to telephone Maggie in London. She found her at once. Maggie would take the day off from work and meet the morning train at Euston.

  ‘So the nest is clear at last,’ Maggie said when everything was arranged. ‘All the birds have flown. It’s sort of sad to think of it after all the years’; but Sheila was too upset to respond. Then she rang Sean Flynn who said he would leave work and come over to meet them in the canteen. Such is the primacy of the idea of the family that everyone was able to leave work at once without incurring displeasure. In fact their superiors thought the sisters’ involvement was admirable. Sheila won much sympathy and received many offers of help. ‘You can make up the old work any t
ime,’ they said.

  Mona was already with Michael when Sheila returned to the canteen. Soon after, Sean Flynn joined the little group. He was smiling complaisantly, glad to be part of the family drama.

  ‘He’ll be met at Euston in the morning,’ Sheila announced.

  ‘Will we all put him on the boat then?’ Mona asked importantly.

  ‘Some of us will have to anyhow,’ Sheila said and then turned to Michael. ‘You didn’t make much of a go of it after us taking you home and everything.’

  ‘I did my best,’ he said.

  ‘I doubt it was very much. How did we manage when we were your age?’

  ‘The whole lot of you were there then.’

  ‘He fell at the last hurdle,’ Sean Flynn said and laughed.

  Sheila met his laughter with a withering stare. He might be allowed through her into the family but it did not mean that he belonged. No outsider was allowed to laugh at anything so sacrosanct as the family.

  There was not much time. The boat sailed at eight-forty. They left the table to go to the early boat train. At the harbour Sheila took charge as usual. She bought the ticket, gave him money for the journey and forced her way on board the boat where she found a purser who promised to look after Michael and to put him on the London train. By the time the boat reached Holyhead everyone he met was helpful once the story was known: it was as if everybody at one time or another had run away from home themselves or had wanted to run away.

  The three of them watched the boat for a long time after it left the harbour. There were tears in the girls’ eyes and Sean Flynn put his arm round Sheila’s shoulders as they turned away from the sea and the granite wall with the small mica glints.

  ‘We’ve all gone now,’ Sheila said between low sobs.

  ‘It had to happen some time or other though maybe it could have happened in a better way,’ Mona said.

  ‘Maybe there’s no good way,’ a scolding note had come into Sheila’s voice.

  Wisely, Sean Flynn was silent.

  Around the same time that the boat was sailing for Holyhead Moran was kneeling to say the Rosary.

  ‘It doesn’t look as if he’ll come now,’ Rose said anxiously. She had kept his dinner warm for him in the slow oven though the food was already tasteless. ‘He must have gone to the girls again,’ Rose continued nervously. ‘He was always a great one to look for sympathy. We’ll probably hear from them tomorrow. Perhaps they’ll bring him back at the weekend.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’ll have to change his tune if he intends to stay here again.’

  ‘I don’t know what came over him. He told me he was sorry this morning. He was going to apologize this evening.’

  ‘We better say the Rosary in the name of God.’

  Moran took out his beads and rattled them impatiently. The light was dimming between the big trees but the stone wall along McCabe’s still stood out pale and solid. Moran had to recite the Third Decade because of the boy’s absence. Afterwards he sat morosely in the chair, not wishing to speak at all, just watching the light disappear. Rose turned on the lights and drew the curtains and started to make tea. Moran went to switch on the radio. Music played. He stood listening to it for a while, his hand on the knob and then, as abruptly, turned it off again. As soon as he had taken the tea and bread he stopped to loosen his boot laces.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he brooded. ‘They’re all gone now.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll be back no later than tomorrow,’ Rose tried to soothe.

  ‘Who wants him back? Who wants any of them back? They’re all gone now and who cares anyhow!’

  Mona and Sheila dithered about whether to write or telegram the news home. They decided against the telegram because of its alarmist associations and wrote a short note saying that Michael had gone to London and they would be down at the weekend to tell them about the whole business. They came together on the train.

  Usually Moran was on the platform to meet the train and if he was in good humour he often made little jokes as soon as he met them but this Friday night there was no sight of him even after the platform emptied. Finally they found him sitting in the car outside the station.

  ‘We thought you hadn’t come,’ Mona said nervously but he didn’t answer. He started the car and drove studiously out of the town.

  ‘Michael went to London,’ Sheila blurted out against the silence. ‘We tried to get him to come home but this time it was no use. There was no talking to him. He’d made up his mind to go. It wasn’t like the last time at all.’

  ‘Where did he get the fare then?’ Moran asked tersely.

  ‘We gave him the fare. We had to. He threatened to go without it and he’d give Luke’s name in London if he got caught.’

  ‘He might find it wasn’t that easy if he got caught.’

  ‘Anyhow he was going to go and we felt we had to give him the fare. We rang Maggie so that he’d be met on the other side.’

  ‘I suppose he has my name well blackened.’

  ‘He said there was a fight. He said he was afraid of the gun.’ It was Sheila’s turn to attack, tired of deflecting Moran’s aggression.

  ‘I knew I’d be blackened. I’d never harm any member of the family. Anything I ever did was done for what I thought was in the best interests of those concerned. Sometimes what I did might have been misguided but it was always meant for the best.’ Whenever Moran turned moralistic the girls knew that some resolution had been reached.

  The headlights were already lighting up the dark yew at the gate. Rose was so nervous that she did not come out to meet them at the door. They found her deep within the kitchen, pretending that she had not heard the car’s return. As she quickly dried her hands and ran towards them, her excess of gladness and affection masked an anxiety that had gnawed at her since Michael first ran away.

  ‘He went to London. They had to give him the money,’ Moran announced to Rose. The two girls were able to drop their apprehensiveness for the first time since they left Dublin and they embraced Rose wholeheartedly.

  ‘We had to give him the money,’ Mona said. ‘We couldn’t make him come home.’

  ‘Poor Michael,’ Rose said. ‘He thinks the streets of London are paved with gold and that there are girls falling out of houses everywhere.’

  ‘He’ll get his eyes opened,’ Moran said.

  In that one exchange the facts of his going were glossed over and instantly everyone made haste to return to the everyday. Rose made a big fry for tea as if it were a special Sunday. She kept chatting and laughing all through the meal and afterwards relayed fresh scraps of news as she washed up with the girls – new dresses and styles worn to Mass by those who had come home from England or America and how they had thought the scissors were lost and they would have to buy a new pair, but only the day before yesterday she came on them in an old boot of Daddy’s; they must have fallen into the boot …

  ‘There are none more blind than those who will not see,’ Moran said humorously.

  ‘Now Daddy. You know I looked day and night,’ Rose protested while joining in the laughter.

  ‘There are none more blind,’ Moran repeated and laughed even louder. They were relieved. His mood was clearing. As soon as they had the dishes dried, the room tidied, Moran suggested that they say the Rosary and they all knelt. At the very end he offered a special prayer for Michael and all absent members of the family and that no harm come to them in London. For the rest of the evening they played cards. In the silence of the card-playing, with only the sound of the trees stirring around the house outside in the darkness, Sheila more mused than asked, ‘I wonder what they all are doing in London at this very minute.’

  ‘They are probably sitting in a room just like we are,’ Rose said gently to turn aside any unease the question could bring.

  ‘Hearts were led,’ Moran said vigorously. ‘Let nobody fall asleep yet.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Daddy,’ Mona said emotionally as she stooped to kiss him good night. ‘Michael will be all right.
’

  ‘Fear not for me but for yourselves and for your children.’ Moran quoted ambiguously in the same half-playful mood he had assumed all evening.

  ‘Maggie will look after him,’ Sheila chose to ignore the quotation.

  ‘It would have been better if he’d had the manners to learn his lesson here,’ Moran pronounced the words slowly, this time unmistakably in his own voice. ‘Now he’ll have to learn his lesson from the world. The world will not care much about him.’

  ‘Good night, Daddy,’ Sheila kissed him.

  ‘God bless you,’ Moran responded. Then both girls went to kiss Rose.

  Next day was a Saturday. By the time the girls got up Rose had the fire long lit, the grey cat stretching in front of the stove.

  ‘I thought she wasn’t let in,’ Mona asked as she stooped to stroke the cat. She was fond of all animals.

  ‘She wasn’t,’ Rose said. ‘Then Michael started to let her in. Now, sometimes, we leave her be. She feels she has rights.’

  The room was warm and comfortable. They could have anything they wanted for breakfast, even grilled lamb chops, but they had orange juice, hot porridge, tea and toast. Moran came in from outside and sat by the fire and had tea. He was in marvellous good humour and started to tease them about their long sleep. They had come home expecting trouble and recrimination but found instead this pleasant warmth and good humour. They were ashamed of their fear. Their hearts were eager to respond to the warmth of the house. They would have been content with far less than what they were now being given. Mona wiped a clearing on the windowpane to look out on the dear fields and trees and the view that framed them against the far sky.

  Then Mona noticed the corner of a new shed that a neighbour had built which intruded on the view. When Sheila came to the window she was outraged. ‘I’m used to it now,’ Rose said. ‘It doesn’t matter all that much.’ Though Moran resented the shed he pretended to be in favour of it in order to provoke the girls more. Afterwards they walked with the old sheepdog in the fields to get a better view of the offence.