Amongst Women

  ‘Leave the doors open in case Rose wants to hear,’ he said to the boy. Michael opened both doors to the room. He paused at the bedroom door but the vague shape amid the bedclothes did not speak or stir.

  At the Second Glorious Mystery Moran paused. Sometimes if there was an illness in the house the sick person would join in the prayers through the open doors but when the silence was not broken he nodded to Mona and she took up Rose’s Decade. After the Rosary, Mona and Sheila made tea and they all slipped away early.

  Moran sat on alone in the room. He was so engrossed in himself that he was startled by the sound of the back door opening just after midnight. Maggie was even more startled to find him alone when she came in and instantly relieved that she hadn’t allowed the boy who had seen her home from the village further than the road gate.

  ‘You’re very late,’ he said.

  ‘The concert wasn’t over till after eleven.’

  ‘Did you say your prayers on the way home?’

  ‘No, Daddy. I’ll say them as soon as I go upstairs.’

  ‘Be careful not to wake the crowd that has to go to school in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll be careful. Good night, Daddy.’ As on every night, she went up to him and kissed him on the lips.

  He sat on alone until all unease was lost in a luxury of self- absorption. The fire had died. He felt stiff when he got up from the chair and turned out the light and groped his way through the still open doorway to the bed, shedding his clothes on to the floor. When he got into bed he turned his back energetically to Rose.

  She rose even earlier than usual next morning. Usually she enjoyed the tasks of morning but this morning she was grateful above all mornings for the constancy of the small demanding chores: to shake out the fire, scatter the ashes on the grass outside, to feel the stoked fire warm the room. She set the table and began breakfast. When the three appeared for school they were wary of her at first but she was able to summon sufficient energy to disguise her lack of it and they were completely at ease before they left for school. When Moran eventually appeared he did not speak but fussed excessively as he put on socks and boots. She did not help him.

  ‘I suppose I should be sorry,’ he said at length.

  ‘It was very hard what you said.’

  ‘I was upset over that telegram my beloved son sent. It was as if I didn’t even exist.’

  ‘I know, but what you said was still hard.’

  ‘Well then, I’m sorry.’

  It was all she demanded and immediately she brightened. ‘It’s all right, Michael. I know it’s not easy.’ She looked at him with love. Though they were alone they did not embrace or kiss. That belonged to darkness and the night.

  ‘Do you know what I think, Rose? We get too cooped up here sometimes. Why don’t we just go away for the day?’

  ‘Where would we go to?’

  ‘We can drive anywhere we want to drive to. That’s the great thing about having a car. All we have to do is back it out of the shed and go.’

  ‘Do you think you can spare the day?’ She was still careful.

  ‘It’s bad if we can’t take one day off,’ he said laughingly. He was happy now, relieved, pleased with himself, ready to be indulgent.

  He backed the Ford out of the shed and faced it to the road. Maggie had risen and was taking breakfast when he came in.

  ‘Is there anything you want, Daddy?’

  ‘Not a thing in the wide world, thanks be to God.’ She was relieved to hear the tone. ‘You’ll have the whole place to yourself today. Rose and myself are away for the day.’

  ‘When do you think you’ll be back, Daddy?’

  Rose had left out his brown suit and shirt and tie and socks and he had started to dress.

  ‘We’ll be back when you see us. We’ll be back before night anyhow,’ he said as he tucked his shirt into his trousers, hoisting them round his hips.

  ‘I’m holding everybody up,’ Rose fussed self-effacingly. She looked well, even stylish in a discreet way, in her tweed suit and white blouse.

  ‘Daddy looks wonderful. I hope I’m not too much of a disgrace,’ she laughed nervously, moving her hands and features in one clear plea to please.

  ‘You look lovely, Rose. You look like a lady,’ Maggie said.

  ‘I’m bound to be taken for the chauffeur,’ he laughed out, mispronouncing the word with relish but he was not corrected as he hoped.

  ‘There’d never be a fear of that,’ she said with feeling.

  They set off together in the small car, Rose’s girlish smiles and waves only accentuating the picture of the happy couple going on a whole day’s outing alone together. Maggie watched the car turn carefully out into the main road and then she went and closed the gate under the big yew tree.

  Moran drove purposefully. The car crossed the shallow racing river in Boyle, passed the grey walls of the roofless monastery, and it kept on the main road leading across the Curlews. Rose hadn’t asked him where they were driving to; she didn’t care anyhow: it was enough to be with him in the day.

  ‘O’Neill and O’Donnell crossed here with cannon and horses on the way to Kinsale in one night,’ he told her as the car was climbing into the low mountains. ‘They were able to cross because the black frost made the ground hard as rock that night.’

  He seemed to relax more after he had spoken, to be less fixedly focused on the empty road.

  ‘I suppose some of your own nights when you were on the run were not unlike that,’ she ventured into what they had never spoken of.

  ‘No. They were different,’ he said not unkindly but it was clear he didn’t want to talk about those nights.

  ‘Would you like to go to Strandhill? When the children were young we went there every year.’

  ‘I’d love to see the ocean,’ she said. She didn’t care where she went or what she saw as long as he was pleased and she was with him. Now most of her pleasure and all of her pain flowed through him. For her there was always a strange excitement in his presence of something about to happen. Nothing was ever still. She felt inordinately grateful when he behaved normally.

  ‘That’s the calm sea,’ he pointed out the inlet that ran to Ballysadare as they came along the narrow twisting road into Strandhill. ‘We all used to swim there. It’s more private and safe. The rough sea at the front is dangerous. There was hardly a summer that three or four weren’t drownded.’

  ‘It was very good of you to take them to the sea. Hardly anybody else about except the schoolteachers ever thought of taking their children to the sea.’

  ‘I always tried to do the best or what I thought was best. It is not easy to know sometimes. When you think you’re right that is the very time it’ll fly back in your teeth. Luke wouldn’t come to the sea in the finish.’

  ‘All boys growing up get that way,’ she said.

  ‘We had to stop selling the turf then,’ he said.

  ‘What turf?’ she asked.

  ‘We took a lorry load of turf for our own fire and sold the rest in bags door to door.’ He pointed out the pebbled street in front of Park’s Guest House where they had first stayed and a bungalow they had taken between the church and the golf links. ‘We sold the turf from there. It paid for the entire holiday. There was a great take on it. That whole summer was wet. Everybody wanted a fire because of the rain. We made money on that holiday.’

  There were only two other cars at the front and they rolled to a stop alongside the plinth on which the antique cannon stood pointing out to sea like some deep-chested mongrel. They sat for a long time in silence watching the Atlantic crash down on the empty shore.

  ‘We haven’t come to the sea in three years. I suppose that’s how you get old. You find yourself not doing a whole lot of things you once did without a thought.’

  ‘You’re not old,’ Rose said.

  ‘The mileage is up,’ he said. ‘You can’t turn it back.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure what you’d want to do,’ Rose said with the utmost ca
ution, ‘and I brought a flask of tea and sandwiches just in case.’

  ‘That’s great.’ He had been dreading having to look for a place for lunch. He knew no cheap place here any more and he would have to search one out like a blind man. ‘We can go anywhere we want to afterwards,’ he added in case he was appearing stingy.

  Rose opened the flask, spreading the sandwiches on the dashboard. ‘Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts …’ He ate and drank with relish, pointing out a fishing boat leaving Sligo harbour, remarking how Rosses Point across the bay had safe bathing while here you couldn’t stand in the water without feeling the currents pushing the sand out from under your feet. ‘But it’s dull at the old Point, Rose. The waves there are small even in a storm. Here you get the real feel of the ocean. That’s what I always used to say to the troops.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful place,’ she said.

  ‘I feel like a new man,’ he said as she put the flask away and combed the crumbs from the dashboard into her cupped hand. They both took up together, ‘We give Thee thanks, O Almighty God, for all Thy bounty which we have received through Christ Our Lord who liveth and reigneth world without end, amen.’ Cheerfully they got out of the car into the open day and went down the rocks to the strand and then out to the tideline. They walked along the tide’s edge for a mile. Rose picked some sea shells and rounded stones and Moran put bits of dilsk in his pocket. They turned back before reaching the roofless church in the middle of the old graveyard out on the edge of land.

  ‘The locals still bury there,’ he told her.

  They came back along the path that threaded a way between the sand dunes. Some bees were already crawling on the early clover.

  ‘This place will have a lot of tents and caravans and people in a month’s time.’

  ‘It’s nicer walking here than on the strand. There’s a lovely spring in the turf.’

  ‘Except you have to watch for the rabbit holes. You could twist an ankle like nobody’s business.’

  ‘Aren’t we lucky to have met and to have this whole day to ourselves and the sea and the sky,’ Rose said enthusiastically.

  ‘It’s our life,’ he said harshly. She looked at him carefully. He was changing less predictably than the tide. Soon he would need to vent the anger she felt already gathering, and she was the nearest person. Her life was bound up completely with this man she so loved and whose darkness she feared. They should go home before the whole day was about them in ruins.

  ‘Maybe we should go to one of the hotels for tea or icecream?’ he asked fretfully, as if somehow sensing her withdrawal.

  As if to point out that they were not entirely alone, a man with a white terrier came towards them from behind the sandhills. He carried a pale bone which he kept throwing out into the dune for the terrier to retrieve. Without speaking he lifted his cap as they passed.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I think we should go home. It’s easy to spoil the day by trying to do too much.’

  ‘Are you sure, Rose?’

  ‘I’m certain.’

  ‘We must do this more often, Rose,’ he said as he backed the Ford out from the ornamental cannon. There were now four people on the long wide stretch of strand. They looked small and black against the width of rushing water and pale sand.

  ‘We can but of course it won’t be as easy for us to get away once Maggie is gone,’ she said it in a pleasant way that sometimes humoured him and sometimes could put his teeth on edge. This time it seemed to please him. He would not have liked it if she seemed to be saying that they could get away any time they wanted to. Anything easy and pleasant aroused deep suspicion and people enjoying themselves were usually less inclined to pay attention to others.

  Before the marriage Maggie had been little more than a drudge round the house. Rose set her free. She saw that she had pretty clothes like other girls her age and a little money of her own for going out. She listened to the stories of small triumphs brought back from the dances. Maggie had never received so much attention. With this new confidence she went willingly out to Moran in the fields. She helped him with chores, gathering branches or rounding up cattle, or just stayed to keep him company while he worked.

  Soon she was leaving and it was easy for him to be charming. He never scolded except in passing fits of irritation. His instinct was to draw her closer to him. ‘Life is a peculiar venture,’ he was fond of saying. ‘You never know how low or high you’ll go. No matter how you rise in the world never look down on another. That way you can never go far wrong.’

  ‘Daddy is great,’ Maggie said with pride when she came in.

  Rose remained silent but the pleasure showed in her features.

  ‘When he’s nice he can be that way,’ Mona looked up gravely from her schoolwork.

  ‘It’d be even nicer if he was always that way,’ Sheila added tartly.

  ‘Maybe we are not always that good ourselves if we look closer,’ Rose countered quickly.

  Michael looked up from where he knelt on the floor in front of the old armchair, his books spread out on the chair. When he discovered their attention was not on him he went back to his books.

  On Maggie’s last night in the house Rose gave a little party. The night before she had stayed out late saying goodbye to all her friends. Her last night belonged to the house.

  Moran said the Rosary early, at the end of which he added a prayer for the girl’s safekeeping in the world she was about to enter. He said it with a heavy emphasis which brought them all close to tears but the mood was soon scattered by all the joyful preparations Rose had planned.

  Bowls of the clear chicken soup they loved were put on the table. A roast chicken followed, with pale stuffing, a hot gravy and masses of floury roast potatoes. Lemonade was poured into glasses and the meal was toasted. ‘This is America at home,’ Moran boasted. Bowls of trifle followed. ‘We’ll burst!’ He and everybody were happy. Rose wanted to leave the washing-up for morning but the girls insisted on getting it over with. Then they played cards until stifled yawns and missed tricks told them that tiredness was now king. The three who had to go to school in the morning went to bed. After a decent interval Maggie followed them.

  ‘You’ll have a long day tomorrow,’ Rose encouraged.

  ‘God bless you and keep you safe,’ Moran said.

  Maggie looked at him with the light of love as she kissed him good night. He was her first man, her father, as she faced for London and the further opening of her life.

  The next day on the platform of the little station he was very fine. He dressed carefully in the brown suit he had been married in and he bought the ticket with quiet authority. As he wasn’t friendly with anyone present he had no occasion to speak to others waiting about on the white gravel. Rose knew many of the people on the platform even though she had spent half her life in Scotland and she responded to each greeting with warmth, careful to watch that her friendliness did not grate on Moran. Maggie was silent. She too, in spite of the dances and concerts they had been attending lately, knew far fewer people at the station than Rose. Maggie looked on this isolation he had built up around them as distinction and strength. In her heart she felt that Rose was a little common in knowing so many people. Moran stood erect and apart on the platform, totally separate as he gazed at the hill across the tracks where the stationmaster’s brown horse and a few cattle and sheep grazed.

  Rose kept touching Maggie as they waited, sometimes kneading her shoulder and arm. ‘Look at the fine girl we have. You need have no fear facing the world,’ as if she were already clearly seeing her happiness and her children in the fullness of the years.

  As the diesel train came in and people were already picking up suitcases from the platform Moran turned and kissed her as if it were a last good night to all the nights she had come to him.

  ‘Remember, the house you left will always be your house. While Rose and I are here you’ll have one home that you can always come back to.’

  ‘We’ll be looking out for
you,’ Rose said as they kissed.

  Maggie wept. As the train pulled out of the station she searched back for Moran’s face among the crowd and found it and waved.

  ‘Do you think that gentleman will meet her?’

  ‘Of course he’ll meet her. He’s not going to let her wander round London on her own. He’s her brother.’

  ‘I wish I could be as certain but I asked the hospital to meet her as well just in case. If for no other reason, he’ll probably meet her just to get back at me.’

  Even on very wet days Moran seldom hung about the house. He had converted one of the outhouses into a sort of workshop where he tinkered with a collection of small engines, antique lighting plants and water pumps that he had bought for next to nothing at country auctions over the years. He had neither the patience nor method to understand properly how they worked and he would not bow to any instruction other than his own perusal of certain manuals and textbooks. Quite often though, through various hit-and-miss applications, he would get one of the engines running. Then he would be very happy, his natural energy spreading that happiness out to everything around him. Rose shared those sort of days with him even more extravagantly than if the days had been her own. There were many other days when nothing would work for him and every space on the long blackened workbench would be covered with a confusion of parts. Those days Rose dreaded and fretted through and it was a kind of peace to turn to the two girls and the boy. She had won them over completely. They would chat away to her about their day until they got down to the schoolwork. Both girls were exceptionally good at school and fond of study. In their earlier years schoolwork had been a haven. They felt safe and protected when they studied.

  Michael too was good at school but only did the minimum of study. After less than a half-hour of sitting alone he would grow restless, scatter his books untidily about the table and disappear outside. ‘Are you finished so soon?’ Rose would call teasingly but he would have gone with a slam of the door. ‘If he’s finished you’d think he’d have the manners not to leave the table in such a mess,’ the girls would grumble; but they or Rose would always put his books away. Though tall and strong for his age he had no liking for hard physical work and he was slow to give Moran any help on the land. He had several pets: a grey cat Maria, Shep the sheepdog who went everywhere with him over the fields, several birds including a lame pigeon that he loved to tease Maria with; and one spring he reared a wild duck from the egg of an abandoned nest and was upset for weeks after the October day it finally flew away. Rose started a small flower garden in front of the house soon after coming and there he could often be found, at first helping Rose, then taking over and extending the garden across the footpath until all the green inside the thorn hedge was alive with colour: little beds of forget-me-nots and sweet william, rows of wallflowers that gave out their fragrance in the evenings, formal lilies and roses. His way with birds and animals seemed to go out to all flowers and plants, too. This both amused and irritated Moran.