The Light of Evening (14 page)

“Don’t worry, lads … I’ll give her back … we’ll play for Red River another night,” and a sudden tide of happiness poured into that room as they lifted him onto their shoulders, four men carrying him to the supper room, tears of pride and joy springing not just from his eyes but from his whole being, and he saying over and over again, “I was afraid I’d win her … I was afraid of that.”

It was daylight when we set out for home, all of them merry, too merry, piling into the lorry, branches and fallen boughs down the avenue and along the main road, but far from being daunted they laughed and replayed the fractious moments of the game, the enmity and poor Miss Gleason like a little ban-

tarn, flaring up, not even realizing that hearts were trumps at the time. The rivers we passed were swollen, either a mud brown or a mud green and the lake water a gunmetal color, the reeds all along the shoreline slanted and flattened, and then a sudden shout and a hail of Jaysuses as the lorry swerved on a bend and Iggy pulled on the brake to avoid crashing into a fallen tree.

They spoke all at once, what a narrow escape and what an expert driver Iggy was, kept the head and didn’t lose control of the wheel. We climbed out and stood to look at the tree; it was the width of the road, bits splintered off and scattered everywhere, and a few new greens furled shoots, like small birds about to take flight.

“She’s gone,” Cornelius said.

“Lucky we weren’t gone with her,” another said, but their mood was ebullient; they raced after their caps that had blown off in the wind, two soaring over a high bank of hedging, forever lost, yet their spirits undampened as they returned to survey the tree in her fallen pride, Dessie tracing her age by the number of circles in the trunk, declaring her to be well over the hundred, a sorry sight, the base caked with damp clay, the torn roots, scrawny and maggoty and by the curl in them wanting to get back into the earth. Nothing for it, as Iggy said, but to get a pair of workhorses with the chains and the traces and pull the lorry that was on its hind wheels, like a balked animal, stuck.

“Keep the home fires burning” was their password as we marched down the road toward a public house that they knew of. The gold lettering that read fine ales and wines since 1892 faded and flaked into the black paint that bore the name of the owners. Pebbles were thrown up to the window and a startled man came down, his wife following, rushing to make us refreshments, thanking God that no one had been injured, and telling how her children had cried all night, had got into bed with them, scared that the wind would carry them off to the lake. Two of the younger men, Brud and Dessie, were sent to the yard to

get the horses and the chains and go back down to retrieve the lorry.

Cornelius had the woman open the rarest bottle of whiskey on the shelf and they were drinking once again as if it were nightfall, laughing over everything, the missing caps that were probably by now in the Shannon, poor Miss Gleason, a crackaillie, coincidence at the fact that Cornelius had won back Red River, but the gallantry of his giving her back for another game.

The pub adjoined a grocery and hardware, and Con insisted on buying new caps for everyone, shy men, drunk men, walking around, looking in a small mirror that was propped against the windowpane, saying one to the other, “Oh, we’re quality now,” lifting and lowering the new caps to get themselves used to the size and the feel of them, squeezing their old caps in their hands as if they were dishcloths.

It was late in the morning by the time we reached home, our two cows had been let out, the milk tankard and churn on their sides airing and when it came for me to say goodbye, the others insisted that Cornelius walk me up from the stile.

“Take the girl up home, can’t you?” they said.

Finding ourselves alone for the first time there was that shyness, that hesitancy.

“Will I sing for you?” he said and immediately began to sing:

Come and sit by my side if you love me

Do not hasten to bid me adieu

But remember the Red River Valley

And the cowboy that loved you so true.

The rain had stopped but a low cloud full of water and sunshine was ready to open, to burst asunder.

Fresh Horses

“go on … touch her … touch the side of her neck … she’s just a bit nervy … a nervy lady like yourself,” Cornelius said, as one of the mares, a chestnut, recognizing I was a stranger, shied away, then backed into the stall, snorting in jerky rapid snorts. There were five or six mares in all, a roan, a bay, and a piebald, and in the semidarkness, because the shutters were drawn, their eyes were a liquid blue, the big moist sockets navy and brimming with curiosity.

It was in the stables in Rusheen, so clean and snug, like a clean warm kitchen, a fire at the far end and the old groom boiling up pots of barley for their dinners, the tackle and the brasses all beautifully polished, the smell of leather and linseed oil and all the horses now in an agitation as the stallion at the far end began to kick at his partition so as to get to them.

The house across the paddock was a ruin that he’d walked me around, a bit of painted wall still standing, a staircase that dropped down into nowhere, its iron rungs choked with briar, the set of green gongs from the back kitchen still intact in a net of mildew, and starlings flying in and out with bits of twigs in their mouths, making nests in the crimsoned corners of the high rubbled ceiling. He told how it had had to be burned at the height of the Troubles to prevent the English from using it as a headquarters, and many of the big houses around had met with the same fate. He had done it himself along with three other

lads, going there in the dead of night with cans of petrol and bags of straw for tinder, took only minutes, a big bonfire lighting up the whole countryside, sucking the cold, the flames seen for miles around, the house exploding as would a paper house, walls and ceilings collapsing onto one another and the chimney pots skiving off. A new house, a stone’s throw from the charred ruin, was going to be built and it too would be called Rusheen.

“Sure, a child would touch her … would tame her,” Cornelius said and drew me in to sniff the fidgety chestnut, to make friends with her, but the moment I got close and saw her mouth damp and black as moleskin I must have shown my nerves because her whinnying got louder as did all the others and the stallion leapt, leapt high above the top of the partition, his arched neck black and ridged, gouts of dung and straw flying up, the neighing now furious and maddened.

Cornelius spoke to them, words and bits of words, and the old groom came across with two wads of tobacco, one for him and one for Cornelius because that was a favorite smell of theirs. Then it was feed time and it all quieted down, only the munching, munching and touching the chestnut mare and the proud sweep of her crest. Con said, “She’ll love you … she’ll love you yet,” adding that she would be one of the pair to drive us in a coach on our wedding morning. That was his way of proposing, and the old groom shook his hand and wept with joy at the announcement.

I knew my mother would be happy, because when the pony and trap had come to fetch me, she blessed herself, shook holy water on me, and hoped it would lead to prosperity.

Six weeks was the period of my engagement, six dizzy weeks, plans and purchases, gifts for my parents, a new set of false teeth for my father specially fitted by a dentist in Limerick and for my mother a bog-oak sideboard that she sat down in front of each evening, as if it was an altar. I would be fetched each day in or-

der to go over to discuss with Alphonsus the groom plans for the new house that was to be a replica of the old house, rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, tap rooms, bay windows, and even a rose window dividing the vestibule from the hall. Because I had hankered to go back to America, my husband-to-be agreed that we could go there for a year, while the building work was being done.

My parents were too shy and unsure to make the journey to the church on the quays in Dublin where we were to be married. Only a handful of guests
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Cornelius’s friends, unshaven and rough from the previous night’s binge, who had not gone to bed at all, merely splashed water on themselves and fortified themselves with coffee and spirits. Cornelius met me at the altar because I had gone alone, since it was deemed unlucky for the groom to see the bride beforehand. I had not wanted a white wedding, it may be that I had not wanted a wedding at all, because in the nights previous I had written Gabriel’s full name again and again in the hot ashes with the legs of the tongs. My mother, seeing that I was in two minds, made speech after speech of famine times and times when our forebears were evicted. I had a plum suit and matching hat, the veiling dotted with little bruised berries that looked edible.

When the moment came for the ring to be put on there was a hitch, the stocky priest standing on the altar steps scanned the faces swiftly and with mounting irritation, his gills getting redder and redder, the three altar boys sniggering, knowing the eruption that was to follow. Frank, the best man, had mislaid the ring. He tried all his pockets, then retried them, and for a moment I believed that I was free, standing there in a rapt and joyous suspense, the men, especially Cornelius, bashful and confused until a sacristan emerged, wormy and thin in a long frock coat, and cocked his head toward a side altar, beckoning to the best man to follow him. A long casket beside a statue of St. An-

thony was filled with keepsakes, gold chains, necklaces, rosary beads, springs of coral flower, and unlocking it, he picked out a wedding ring, then between them there followed a bit of whispering that no doubt was about money and my fate was sealed.

Opening my locked fingers for the ring to be put on, the thought came to me that it had belonged to someone who had died and who had possibly asked for it to be put in that casket for the repose of her soul. The vows were spoken at a gallop and by the time we filed out, the bell ringer was already at his task, the bells jubilant, and soon other bells, bells from all the steeples up along the quays, a convoy, their peals so clean and crystalline in that clean and crystalline air and when an altar boy threw a packet of rice over us, my husband and I exchanged our first married kiss in the view of the Liffey water, which was pewterish, with chunks of ice, some ungainly, others minute, rinsed and re-rinsed, scattering bursts of diamond light, like jewels, like so many rings, thousands of rings slicked in the water’s wetness.

Part III

Nolan

a multitude of small bells, followed by bigger bells, are ringing inside Dilly’s head, chimes half a century apart, bringing her gradually awake, her mind clogged with memories and with muddle. She sees a strapping young girl pushing a tea trolley with a flourish, coasting it down the ward as if she is in an open field, having a tournament, gouts of tea splashing from the spout of the metal urn, laughing as she throws a word to this patient or that.

“Mornin’ … mornin’, all … mornin’, all,” she says with a jocularity.

Then she is standing over Dilly, smiling broadly, her eyes flecked with amber motes, her hand with its puce tattoo thrust out to introduce herself
—
“I’m Nolan … I brought your breakfast”
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and goes on to say how Sister Consolata left a note with strict instructions for there to be no milk, no butter, no boiled egg, just black tea with bread and jam.

“You’re a gas woman,” she says, though she cannot understand how a country woman used to hens and chickens and cows and calves could be so pernickety about her diet.

“Is Sister Consolata the nice nun I met at the top of the stairs?”

“The very one … a nice craytur, but off the wall … woman brings anemones in here for a patient and Consolata says the reason they’re red and purply is that they grew at the foot of the

cross in Calvary and got splashed with the blood of Christ … woman can’t believe her ears … looks at me … thinks to herself am I in a regular hospital or am I in the John O’ Gods with the loonies and the alchies … still there’s no bad in Consolata … only daft … ready to float up at any minute to heaven … meet her boyfriend St. Augustine … ‘late have I loved thee, O beauty so ancient and so true’ … off the wall and that’s the holy alls of it.”

“I was drugged up with tablets,” Dilly says.

“Oh, the bitch, Flaherty,” Nolan answers, overfilling the teacup.

It only takes moments for them to be united in their grievance over Nurse Flaherty; Nolan deems her as only a step above buttermilk and kinda mad. Barely pausing for breath she raves on: “Frustrated bitch, right cow … not married … who’d have her … if there’s a plate missing she’s up to ninety … the likelihood of her hooking anyone is thin … don’t pay any heed to her … she’s off today … wishes she had a fella … good-looking young house-surgeon on his rounds and she tries to impress … ‘Shake that mat,’ she says to me. ‘Shake it yourself,’ says I back. She went every color. Red brown beetroot. Fit to kill me. ‘You do as I say. You do as I say.’ Shouting it. I stood my ground. I could see that she was effing and blinding inside but of course she couldn’t freak out altogether with him listening. Beads of sweat on her and the hairs on her chin like a man’s. She’ll have a beard, I’ll lay a bet on it. Them old maids always get beards. ‘You don’t expect the surgeon to walk on that mat,’ she says. He has to go out of the ward for laughing. I told her to go to Matron and report me. That shut her up. If you ask me people want to make life hell for others. It’s either that or the boasting. Some of them in here, big shots … the rose window at Chartres, life changing. Marcel Proust, whoever he is when he’s at home, life changing. Pure baloney. If you’ve got kids and no nappies nothing is life changing, only nappies. That’s how I feel.