A Pagan Place Read online

  You were dreading a speech. Lizzie boiled the kettle on the primus because it was quicker than the turf fire. The old people were hustled in the bedroom and Mr Wattle kept asking pointedly when all the strangers were going to be on their way.

  Your aunt talked of how it was only a short time ago that she had knitted dresses for you and bordered them with angora and she said how particular you used to be about those scalloped borders, incisive about the shades you wanted. Sacco said what a genius Churchill was turning out to be, a second Bismarck, a nab tactician. The doctor was to have come but the tailor’s wife was having a baby and being over forty there were complications attached. Your father said it wasn’t the Germans you had to fear now but the Reds and the Red Scourge. He said he had information first-hand from the nuns. He would have mentioned the priest also only that his name was taboo for all time.

  Someone said it was up to the Pope to quieten those Reds and that the Pope had better do it, cathedra or ex cathedra, and the sooner the better. Someone else said that the Pope worked an average of sixteen hours a day and ate one meal and one small collation. Lizzie said that her kitchen was not the Vatican and to eat up. The buns had too much cream of tartar in them and scoured the back of your bottom teeth.

  Hilda said she always regretted not having been a nun and your aunt butted in and said she’d have wept to have had her auburn tresses cut off. That was a tactless thing to say because Lizzie had so little hair left she had to wear a skullcap indoors and out. Her hair was in a pile under a fine net, like a pin cushion or an ornament, on show. She had cancer. Everyone knew it but her.

  From time to time Sacco raised whatever sweetmeat he happened to be eating and wished you bon voyage. He said life was a crucible. Your mother said life was a vale of tears. The Nigger said a fart. Sacco repeated the word crucible. Your aunt who admitted to not knowing what it meant was charmed by its name and said it again and again, crucible, crucible, crucible.

  In your mind’s eye you saw a small bone lid on which an object was being dropped from a tweezers and it turned out to be an eye that exactly fitted the circumference of the lid. A man’s eye, a sheep’s eye, any eye grey and without expression.

  They discussed the vicissitudes of life. Your teacher was convivial with you. She said she would venture to say that you would persevere and take your vows and possibly carve a name for yourself in the ecclesiastical world. Your father said not to let the nuns boss you and not to forget your folks especially your illustrious father. The Nigger said that you were only a nipper and that there was no knowing how you might turn out, that you might become a Follies girl. No one agreed and no one disagreed. Only God knew that. There were no speeches.

  *

  The barley stooks were in huddles in the fields, the wind trapped within them. There were five stooks to every huddle, the heads bunched together, the hinds splayed out to achieve the balance. It was through these splayed ends that the winds entered and made a channel upwards. They were well done and none had fallen. They had been done by Manny Parker’s men.

  It created a certain spleen, seeing all those strange workmen with their strange dogs in your field, for nearly a week of days and having to boil kettles for them as well. You were saying good-bye to fields and to trees, and even to headlands of fields where plough never got and where not an ear of barley had chanced to grow. In all these corners there were bits of things, machinery, broken delft, cowhorns that had served as funnels, machine-oil tins and the rags and remnants that the scarecrows wore.

  You felt a terrible burden as if something inanimate might speak or something motionless might get up and move. You got over a conglomeration of briars and bushes that had served as a fence to the next field. The gate had fallen down. The fallen gate was like a grille inside the gap. Your new brogue shoes on the metal made a clang and when you saw the horses coming towards you, you climbed out immediately although you had dared yourself to go and make some sort of last rapprochement with them. It would be a year before you came again. Brussels was too far away for a Christmas and Easter vacation.

  The blackberries were hard and wine-coloured. You picked three and before eating them consulted them to see if they had maggots. It was all done out of habit, bits of grass picked, stems of grass sucked, stones touched to find the smooth spot, sudden runs, sudden halts, all senseless, all necessary. In the fort of dark trees you made a wish and felt a lily. You wished that they would be all right, that he would not injure her.

  All of a sudden you decided that the car was probably waiting and you ran without having a last look at the chicken run or the tree that had been your abode for a period of time.

  She was nowhere. She had left a cake wrapped in greaseproof paper and a pot of lemon curd that was still warm, having just been made. You were spending the night in a convent in the city and these were to be presented in the refectory towards your supper. You could have arranged to see Emma but you didn’t, the rift was complete. The following day you were making the boat journey to England and then to France, and then by train to Belgium. There was another girl who had also volunteered and you knew nothing about her except that her name was Bernadette.

  Your mother’s big present to you was a wallet with E.d.M. written in gold. It stood for Enfant de Marie. You realized that she had been making it in secret over the weeks which was why when she went into the room she had insisted that nobody follow her.

  He came to see if you wanted anything carried down. He was sniffing to dramatize his sorrow. He said to write if there was anything wrong, if you needed money, or couldn’t pass your examinations. He said you had only to refer to the poem.

  No mun,

  No fun,

  Your son

  and he would send the spondulicks by return.

  To give yourself something to do you tried to close the window. Rain had come in. It was one of those windows that either closed with a thud or could not be budged at all. The glass had the dull gold smear of moths killed in June when she had ran round the house with a rolled-up newspaper to batten on them before they laid their eggs. The stitches of pain under your ears were the worst you had ever had, were excruciating.

  He helped you carry the trunk out. There were handles at either side. He said wasn’t it inspired of the Nigger to consider the handles. Your name was in capital letters on the lid and you were ashamed of it, so boldly was it printed. In the convent a name awaited you, a saint’s name, but you didn’t know it yet.

  He didn’t utter a word to the driver. You ran back to see if there was anything you had forgotten. He followed. The handkerchief that he cried into was a scrap from the cretonne that she had used to make curtains with just before Emma’s homecoming. He must have pocketed it then.

  I will go now, was what you said, hoping that she would emerge from the house and say good-bye and have done with you, but since no such thing happened you went anyhow and the last thing you heard was a howl starting up, more ravenous than a dog’s, more piercing than a person’s, a howl that would go on for as long as her life did, and his, and yours.

  About the Author

  Since her debut novel The Country Girls, Edna O’Brien has written over twenty works of fiction, along with a biography of James Joyce and Lord Byron. She is the recipient of many awards including the Irish Pen Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Art’s Gold Medal and the Ulysses Medal. Born and raised in the west of Ireland she has lived in London for many years.

  also by Edna O’Brien

  FICTION

  The Country Girls

  The Lonely Girl

  Girls in Their Married Bliss

  August Is a Wicked Month

  Casualties of Peace

  The Love Object and Other Stories

  A Pagan Place

  Zee and Co.

  Night

  A Scandalous Woman and Other Stories

  A Rose in the Heart

  Returning

  A Fanatic Heart

  The High Road


  Lantern Slides

  House of Splendid Isolation

  Down by the River

  Wild Decembers

  In the Forest

  The Light of the Evening

  Saints and Sinners

  The Love Object

  The Little Red Chairs

  NON-FICTION

  Mother Ireland

  James Joyce (biography)

  Byron in Love

  Country Girl

  DRAMA

  A Pagan Place

  Virginia (The Life of Virginia Woolf)

  Family Butchers

  Triptych

  Haunted

  The Country Girls

  Copyright

  First published in 1970

  This ebook edition first published in 2016

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © Edna O’Brien, 1970

  Cover design by Faber

  Cover photograph © Roy Mehta

  The right of Edna O’Brien to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–28297–5