Amongst Women

  ‘I suppose one of these days you’ll be getting yourself a skirt.’

  ‘Trousers are far handier,’ he was able to smile it aside.

  ‘If you grew something like carrots it’d make some sense. It’ll be a long time before you’d eat any of those flowers.’

  ‘They’re fun to look at.’

  ‘Looking won’t get you far in this world,’ Moran said.

  But hidden in the boy’s answering nod was an equal contempt for Moran’s work, which he regarded as nothing short of voluntary slavery. Brought up from infancy by a screen of girls, and now growing confidently in Rose’s shade, he escaped the fear of Moran.

  After Maggie went away Moran took up his old habit of going to the post office. As he no longer wrote to relatives or old war comrades, he explained stiffly, ‘I’m expecting word from my daughter in London. Young people abroad can be quite heedless nowadays.’ Evening after evening passed by without Annie the postmistress finding a letter for him in the grey bag the mail van brought in. Eventually when the letter came in its blue envelope with the pious SAG printed across the seal, the hands so firm holding a gun or tool shook as he took it. Annie was annoyed by the abrupt way he turned away and went out. Outside on the footpath he stood like a stone reading the letter. People leaving the post office spoke to him but he did not hear. When at last he moved away he still combed through the letter as he walked. By the time he got to the house he knew each phrase by heart.

  ‘She stirred herself at last and wrote,’ he said as he handed Rose the letter.

  ‘She’d have a lot to get used to at first,’ Rose said absently as she scanned through the letter. Luke had met her at Euston. They had gone to the hospital by the Underground. All the student nurses each had a small room with a desk and bed in the nurses’ home. There were several Irish girls in the class and two girls from near Ballymote. She was just beginning to get used to the wards and the classes. There was a big park with a lake not far from the hospital. Last Sunday Luke had come out. They had gone to the park. Boats were for hire by the hour and they had rowed on the lake. Afterwards they had tea in a wooden café beside the lake. She sent lots of love and a whole line of kisses.

  ‘You’d think after all that that she’d say what his lordship was actually doing in London.’

  ‘Still, he met her and went to see her on Sunday.’

  ‘He’d do that. Yes. He’d do that all right.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t get round to asking him much about himself yet,’ Rose said just to break the brooding silence.

  ‘Maggie may be slow but she’s not that slow,’ he said impatiently. ‘Your man warned her not to say anything about what he is doing. That’s why she wrote nothing.’

  Carelessly he let a page of newspaper fall on the cement beside the table and spilled his beads from the small purse into his palm. He prayed absentmindedly, never able to fall into the even, sleepy drone and hum of ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary’. He even made a number of slips and repetitions that on a different evening he would have been quick to reprimand in others. Before he had put his beads away he was in search of pen and paper and spent till late writing to Maggie. He had a clean, bare style; when writing he seemed to be able to slip the burden of his personality as he could never do face to face. The three children had gone to bed and Rose was waiting by the fire by the time he was satisfied enough with what he had written to seal the envelope.

  With Maggie in London, Sheila and Mona had more light to themselves and were better able to come into their own. Sheila was more than good at school, impulsive and assertive, yet she withdrew into a shell at a hint of opposition. After school Rose loved to draw her out, to tease out of her reckless opinions and to watch her quick mind wheel and tack as she strained to defend what was usually insupportable. Mona was quiet, hardworking and extremely stubborn, anxious to be agreeable; but once she took up a position – or got caught in one – she was obstinately immovable and this had often brought her into conflict with Moran. Rose’s coming to the house had smoothed their lives and allowed them to concentrate everything on school and study, which, above all, they saw as a way out of the house and into a life of their own.

  Eventually a letter arrived from London in response to Moran’s exasperated inquiries about his elder son. The information could hardly have been more ordinary. Maggie had seen him nearly every day at first. Now she saw him much less. When he first came, he had worked on various building sites. Now he worked in offices of the Gas Board, and was studying accountancy, mostly at night, though the Board gave him one day off each week to attend classes. Also he had become friendly with a Cockney man, older than he, who had been a french polisher and who now sold reproduction furniture to antique shops from a van. He mentioned some plan they had of buying old houses and converting them into flats for sale.

  ‘You see, it didn’t take him long to find the riff-raff,’ Moran said.

  ‘He seems to be working hard enough and studying,’ Rose tried to reassure him as always from a careful distance.

  ‘He’d do that all right but look at what he’s getting mixed up with as well.’

  ‘It may be just talk,’ she ventured edgily.

  ‘How does anything start but in talk?’

  Outwardly it had been the easiest and quietest of times that the house had ever known but the unease did not go away. Increasingly Moran could be seen in the fields staring idly at some task he should be completing.

  The fierce rush of hay was over. The apples were ripening on the trees in the garden. Their eyes were turning towards winter. Rose was beginning to go regularly again to her mother’s house. The cane basket on the handlebars of her bicycle was always full on leaving the house and full again with things from her mother’s house when she came back.

  ‘I see there’s hardly a day nowadays that Rose doesn’t go to her relations,’ Moran said to Sheila and Mona one Saturday they brought him a flask of tea into the fields. ‘She seldom goes empty-handed.’ Rose had asked them to take the flask out to him at four. They knew she took bread to her mother, jam she had made from the blackcurrants at the foot of the garden but the basket always came back heavy with fresh eggs, a bunch of carrots from the bog, plums that they loved, sweet hard yellow apples.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Sheila answered carefully.

  ‘How do you not know? Haven’t you both eyes in your heads?’

  ‘She brings things back.’

  ‘Only stuff they’d have to throw out otherwise!’

  They knew that the accusation was untrue. They remained obstinately silent, abject looking as well, the camouflage they had learned to use for safekeeping.

  ‘Would you like us to tie the sheaves, Daddy?’ Mona asked.

  ‘That’d be a great push,’ he said.

  All the girls were skilled at farm work, work they had done since they were very young. Quickly the rows were gathered into sheaves and tied. They loved the sound of swishing the sheaves made as they were stooked, the clash of the tresses of hard grain against grain, the sight of the rich ears of corn leaning delicately out on the shoulders of the stooks.

  ‘That was great,’ Moran said. ‘What’s left is only trimming. I can do that myself. I am sure ye have books,’ he added with unusual thoughtfulness.

  ‘Thanks, Daddy.’

  ‘Thanks yourselves.’ And then he added, ‘We could get on topping without her.’

  It was not so much that she took things from the house – though his racial fear of the poorhouse or famine was deep – but that she left the house at all. Any constant going out to another house was a threat. In small things it showed. The shaving water was boiling. Did she want to scald the face off a man? God, O God, O God, did she not know anything? Look at the holes in these socks. ‘Where, O God, is that woman now? Has a whole army to be sent out to search for you whenever you’re needed?’

  She did not try to defend herself. ‘Coming, Daddy. Coming,’ she would call, often arriving breathless. Not once did she
protest at the unfairness. She seemed willing to go to almost any length to appease, lull his irritation to rest, contain all the exasperation by taking it within herself. This usually redoubled it. He seemed intent now on pushing to see how far he could go and she appeared willing to give way in everything in order to pacify.

  The children were deeply ashamed: ‘He used to be like that when Luke was here, Rose; only it was worse.’

  ‘These flare-ups happen in every family. It is easy to exaggerate. I’m sure Daddy never meant any harm. These things can be taken too much to heart.’ She would not hear the accusation.

  ‘It’s true what Mona says.’

  ‘Now, these things can be exaggerated out of all proportion. Daddy may act like that – none of us are all that good – but he never means it. I know how much he loves everybody in the house.’

  ‘It’s just not fair.’

  ‘You should know you’ll not change your father now and he means everything for the best for the whole house,’ she argued forcibly but the strain was showing on her own drawn, anxious features.

  Then one evening as she was tidying up the room he said as quietly as if he were taking rifle aim, ‘There’s no need for you to go turning the whole place upside down. We managed well enough before you ever came round the place.’

  She did not try to answer or to turn it aside. It was again as if she had been struck, her hands barely moving along the surface of the dresser she had been wiping clean of dust, her head going low, and when she finished she went to put the damp cloth carefully beside the sink, moving a simmering saucepan from the hotplate. Such was the slowness and enclosedness of all her movements that the girls instinctively looked up from their school books to follow her closely. Moran watched every move under cover of reading the newspaper. Then, with the same shocking slowness, without a word, without looking at anyone, she went to the door, opened it, and let it close softly behind her. They heard her open and close the bedroom door likewise. There was complete silence.

  Moran rattled the newspaper a few times but by the time he could look around the three children were locked back into their school books. After a while Moran tired of looking at the newspapers and went outside though it was almost night.

  ‘What happened?’ Michael asked laughingly, hoping to make light of what had taken place.

  ‘Rose went to bed,’ Mona answered without looking up from her books and though the boy thought about it for a while he did not ask anything further.

  When Moran came back he was even more restless. He went through the newspaper again. Then he got pen and writing pad and sat at the table. He deliberated for a long time in front of the pad, and then suddenly rose and put it away without writing anything.

  ‘We better say the prayers,’ he said, taking his beads from the leather purse. As they prepared to kneel he added, ‘Open the doors in case Rose wants to hear.’ Mona went and opened both doors. At the bedroom door she called softly, ‘Rose, we’re starting the Rosary.’ But not even a whisper came from the room. Mona came in. ‘The doors are open,’ and took her place without looking at anyone.

  ‘Thou, O Lord, wilt open my lips.’

  ‘And my tongue shall announce Thy praise,’ their response was like a muted echo.

  The doors stayed open but no murmur came from the other room. Moran paused after the First Decade. Rose always recited the Second Decade but when no sound whatever came from the room he nodded severely to Mona to begin. On the completion of the circle, Moran again had to recite the Last Decade. ‘Will we shut the doors, Daddy?’ Mona asked nervously after they rose from their knees.

  ‘What does it matter whether they are open or shut?’ he said and the doors remained open.

  As soon as they finished with their books the two girls made him tea. Rose always made tea at this hour. Immediately after they tidied and washed up, they went to kiss Moran good night and slipped away to their rooms. He sat for more than an hour alone before dragging himself to the room, shutting the doors loudly behind him as he went. He did not speak in the room, allowing his clothes to fall on to the floor in the darkness, waiting for some stir or sign from Rose, but the only sound in the room was the brushing of his own clothes falling in the darkness.

  ‘Are you awake at all there, Rose?’ he whispered before reaching out to pull aside the bedclothes.

  She did not answer at first but moved or turned.

  ‘I’m awake,’ she said at last in a voice strained with hurt. ‘I’ll have to go away from here.’

  ‘I never heard such nonsense,’ he blustered. ‘Are you taking everything up as serious as some of the other people in the house? Does every move have to be Judgement Day?’

  ‘I was told I was no use in the house. I couldn’t go on living in a place where I was no use,’ she spoke with the quietness and desperate authority of someone who had discovered they could give up no more ground and live.

  ‘God, O God. Has everything to be taken like this? I never meant anything like that. The whole world knows that the house was never run right until you came. A blind man could see that the children think the earth of you. They’d cry their eyes out if they heard even a whisper of this silly talk.’

  ‘It didn’t sound silly to me. It sounded as if it was meant. I’ll have to go back to Glasgow and take up my life there again.’

  ‘God, can’t a man say anything in his own house without it being taken up wrong?’ and the quarrel circled about the two positions until he reached and took her in his arms. She neither yielded to him nor attempted to pull away.

  ‘I love you dearly and I love the house but I couldn’t live here if I am not wanted.’

  ‘I thought we’d finished with that for ever.’ He was restless by her side, clenching and unclenching his hands. He had been checked. Instead of recognition, all that the quarrel had incurred was a deepening blindness. He now knew less about her than the day they had first met in the post office, standing beside one another on the scrubbed hollow boards, waiting for the evening mail van to come.

  Mona and Sheila rose earlier than usual the next morning. They had heard noises of someone rising very early and felt apprehensive. They weren’t sure if they would find Rose there at all or what way they would find her if they did. They were taken aback to find her smiling and totally at ease. The room was already warm and the furniture shone as if all the pieces had been gone over with a damp cloth.

  ‘You are all up a bit before your time. You could have stolen another few minutes,’ she said as if the evening had never happened. She poured their tea and sat with a cup of her own by the fire, chatting away as easily as she did every morning. ‘No danger of your brother ever getting up too early,’ she said and went to call Michael. When he came into the room, sleepy and rubbing his eyes, he too stared as if not able to believe how like all other mornings the morning was. Nothing seemed to have changed.

  Moran stayed in bed until late that day, disappearing silently into the fields after eating. When the children came back from school they found that still nothing had changed. Moran was in a rage about tools and a barrow that had been left out in the rain and complained about how much money was being wasted heedlessly about the house all the time.

  ‘Why does he always have to go on like that?’ Sheila was emboldened from what she saw the night before to ask Rose when Moran had gone out again.

  ‘Daddy worries. He worries a great deal about the house.’ Rose said it with such empathy that all criticism was stopped. All they could do was to look at her but no one could read Rose’s face and they turned back to their books. They were only weeks away from the examinations halls. So much work still had to be done, so much work had to be gone over again. The chance-throw of the exam would almost certainly determine the quality of much of the rest of their lives. Sheila especially had dreams of university. Much could be won, a great deal more could be lost, and there was always England.

  At this time Moran ordered an enormous load of lime that blocked the avenue. To
cut down on expense he did not get the big factory spreaders but started to spread it himself with tractor and shovel. For days he backed the little transport box into the huge mound and went up and down the fields in lines, stopping the tractor every few yards to scatter the lime, tossing each shovelful on the wind for the white dust to be blown out over the grass. No matter how carefully he sliced each shovelful in an arc out on the wind, there were certain unpredictable gusts that lifted the grains and blew them back towards the tractor so that by evening his clothes were filthy with lime, his face and hands as white as chalk, accentuating the inflamed red round his eyes. The theatrical paleness of his face and hands pleased him. ‘I’m a boody man,’ he pretended to chase Rose and the children with his old charm. Rose was delighted, the clowning bringing relief back into the house after the hidden battle. It would never be over but Rose’s place in the house could never be attacked or threatened again. ‘I’m a boody man. I’m a boody man,’ he made playful sallies to left and right while everybody pretended to back away, shouting and laughing.