A Pagan Place Page 6

  She was asking to keep your mind occupied. The odd thing was that although you could hear cars going along the road and in summer time identify voices you never heard them coming up the avenue unless you happened to be looking out the front window. The first evidence of a visitor was if the dogs began to go mad.

  The minute she heard the barking she pulled off her apron and used her tortoiseshell side-comb to do her hair. From the rain the back door had swollen and you heard Hilda before you saw her because they had to coax the door, one pushing and one pulling and your mother apologizing and Hilda laughing.

  It was a thrill, a visit like that, unexpected, and at that hour. Hilda wore her leopard-skin coat and her hair was in a French pleat. She handed you a cat full of sweets. She had ways and means of getting luxuries like that. It was a black cat, made of cardboard, with ridges in it. They were assorted sweets, some with glassy paper, some with silver paper. You offered them around.

  The moment he heard her voice your father must have got up because in no time he was in the kitchen doing up his tie and saying Am I in my own house at all Mister, in imitation of Mr Wattle. He said what a shame it was not to have had a fire on but due to the funeral they had not got around to it.

  He was all pie, admired your cat and said to find him a peppermint. She took Hilda’s coat and fitted it on and Hilda said she ought to get one and your mother said she would but in jest. The fur your mother wanted was Persian lamb anyhow. He put on the kettle straight away. Hilda said it was a funny hour to arrive but he interrupted and said she was welcome at any hour of day or night and she was to remember that. Of all the callers she was his favourite.

  Some that came were brought to the front room where everyone sat stiffly and struggled to think of topics of conversation, and then later the ladies were brought on a tour of the bedrooms to admire bedspreads and curtains and then they took turns in the lavatory where some peed quietly and some made a great splash. If the lavatory did not flush you told them it was all right, not to persist, that was why you stayed there, to tell them so. So slowly did these entertainments pass that your father always developed a headache and your mother made two if not three rounds of tea.

  But with Hilda it was different. Hilda was full of gizz. Your father liked her. When she took up spiritualism he defended her. Hilda had got some books and a special round table to try and speak to her dead husband but most people said that as she hadn’t spoken a civil word to him when he was alive it was mere hypocrisy trying to talk to him when dead.

  She was the richest woman around. Her bathroom led off her bedroom. There was always a mat under the lavatory and a candlewick seat cover that either matched or contrasted with the mat. She had her own electricity plant. Every night there were lights in all the windows and day and night there were batteries charging away quietly and methodically. Her garden was laid out in the form of a Grecian one and between the walks there were heart-shaped flowerbeds. She was noted for her displays of tulips and when they withered they were followed by wallflowers, and she herself said that she had a penchant for wallflowers though her tulips were celebrated. She had a lighter in a gold sachet which she kept flicking on and off even when she was not smoking. Since her husband died she smoked, for her nerves.

  Your father said they must go to the races soon. She said def. There were certain words she abbreviated. Definitely was one, and spifflicated was the other. She said spiffo. She herself drank, or as your mother put it, bent the elbow, but she knew when to stop.

  Your mother got out the tin of shortbread. Shortbread was Hilda’s favourite thing and your mother reserved it specially for her. Hilda ate two before putting her lips to the tea. She was wearing a black crêpe dress and the swoon of her belly was noticeable under it. She kept saying that she ought not to eat any more but your mother pressed her and said she could mortify herself another time. Hilda gave your mother her old clothes and a gift of two pair of silk stockings at Christmas time.

  With the eating and the cigarette smoke the kitchen soon got festive. He and Hilda wrangled over whose cigarettes to smoke because they each wanted to wield their generosity over the other. He asked Hilda if he’d ever told her that one about being in the monastery taking the cure, getting up at six for Mass and Matins, getting big breakfasts of rough bread and watery tea but not a drink and how he and Archie Slattery decided to duck away one morning and scrounge a lift to the town. Hilda said to tell it again because it was her favourite story.

  He described the frost, the monastery grounds slippy, and the two of them trying to walk away as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing. Up on the road, he said, there was hardly any cars, because petrol was rationed, there were only creamery cars and bicycles. Not a vehicle, he said to emphasize their plight, and then he described how their hands were cold and their breaths were cold and that it was useless putting their hands in their mouths to warm them. Just when he had built up the bit about the cold he described the car coming round the corner and Archie Slattery nearly throwing himself in front of it. Your mother and Hilda laughed, said he was a scream, said he ought to be on stage. Spurred on by this, he did the accent of the driver who happened to be a Protestant Minister, a bird-watcher and a right cod. The Protestant Minister refused them a lift because they had come from the monastery and your father described how Archie Slattery soft-soaped him by becoming a turncoat and saying that the monks were a pack of blackguards and a pack of money-grubbing blackguards at that. When they got to the town the first thing they did was to buy a razor and have a shave, then they went to a pub for a few large ones and when they were nicely, Archie Slattery whose profession was a bacon-curer, phoned the local bacon-curer and made an appointment for lunch at the Railway Hotel. Over lunch Archie Slattery became Archibald and they all got drunk and then wrangly and the bacon-curer sent them back to the monastery in one of his delivery vans that was going in that direction.

  He said the monks would have kicked them out except that the Prior who was a friend of his, intervened. But they had their pockets searched and they were relieved of the baby bottles that they had brought back for the thirsty days and nights. The minute he finished, the laughing stopped. It was like turning off the knob of the radio.

  They were all quiet, probably thinking how wretched these bouts were. He put his head in his hands and uttered some infant sound and said Never again. Hilda fidgeted with her lighter and said there was a reason why she had come.

  Your mother tensed up, thinking it was to demand the money they owed her but it was worse than that. His mare that was at the trainers shied coming out a door, slipped and broke her leg. He looked up stunned and sorrowful and said no. Then he said the mare’s name in case there was any mistaking it. She was called Giddy because of her tendencies.

  Your mother said in all her born days she had never known two such chancers as those trainers, the Boyce twins who looked identical on purpose so that if you had a crow to pluck with one he could refer you to the other. Thieves, she said, and thick like thieves. He said how was he to know. Hilda said exactly.

  Hilda was on his side. Miss Davitt’s death she cited as an example of fate. Hilda said they had phoned her about nine o’clock and she had come straight away. She must of course have done her eyelashes and put the French pleat in her hair but she did not mention that. She used olive oil on her lashes to make them glossy. It made her blink to excess.

  He thanked her for her trouble. He asked what else they had said. Hilda said that was all she had heard and that the line was bad.

  Giddy was brown, so brown that her hide was nearly black and she had come third at a point-to-point on St Stephen’s Day and your father said it was because the course was soggy that she hadn’t come first. Her hooves were better on hard ground because he had treated them with vinegar. It was after the excitement of her coming third that he embarked on sending her to a trainer.

  He stood up and said he’d better go to her and see how she was. Your mother said what was the
use at that hour of night. Hilda said she’d gladly take him but that it seemed fruitless. Your mother said that horse would never see the winning post now. He said what worried him was the loss of her completely, he feared she might have to be shot. Hilda said it might not come to that, it might be a sprain, or a tendon but even as she said it no one believed it.

  That night awake or asleep he cried and moaned and from time to time your mother went down and made him a cup of tea and each time when he spoke he said some curse was on him, some blasted curse from antiquity. Your mother said not to talk like that, not to think like that. In the morning he was gone. The thing that you thought would never happen happened.

  She left. She put her hens and chickens in the care of Lizzie and everything else she let take care of itself.

  Lizzie met you at the gate on her way down from your house. She had eggs in the lap of her apron, which she had gathered up. Your mother would have told her to have them to make up for your keep but to Lizzie that would be a pittance because she liked meat better. She was always hankering after a meat supper.

  She said you were to stay with them. She had washed her hair and the tight curls shaped like sausages stuck to her scalp and were secured with grips. She said your mother had left in order to teach your father a lesson. She had gone to her sister, your Aunt Bride. You couldn’t go because you had school.

  You asked for how long. She said for ever if necessary. She said your mother had thought of applying for a job as housekeeper in a holiday camp and you envisaged a cloudless future with your mother and you as caretakers and young children disporting themselves. It was a castle in the air and did not last long. You said what about your sleeping suit. She said your birthday suit would do. She used a lot of slang.

  All of a sudden it began to hail and you both ran towards her house. The eggs impeded her running and she harangued because she had just curled her hair. She banged on the door. The old people always locked it when she went out, being scared of tinkers and of the Nigger. Standing by the door you got the biggest ducking of all where the gutter overflowed. They could only turn the key a fraction at a time, it was that stiff. She took her blue telescopic umbrella and went out to examine her snowdrops. Stepping over the low box hedge into the small rectangle of garden she began to coax them. They had fallen down. She knelt and touched them, she tried to make them stand up but no matter what she did they wilted. They were sodden from the impact of the hail and the petals were black from the clay. She told you to go in and get some milk.

  You hated their milk knowing how Mr Wattle had allowed the cow to do number two into the pail. She poured it for you. There was dust in it. You thought when she wasn’t looking you’d put it into the plant on the window. The plant was mimosa, purchased so as to remind her of Australia. She said to stop biting your nails and drink the milk. You said you only drank the milk from your own cows. She said she had never heard such impertinence in all her life. She loved that cow, called her Silky, patted her haunches, often plaited her tail for fun.

  It fell dark while you were doing your lessons. You had to draw a map of Europe. You traced it on butter paper and then drew it. That was cheating. The new teacher was stricter than Miss Davitt, but fairer, she had no pets, and no set on anyone. She was called Miss Bugler. When you finished your lessons there was tea and the Rosary. The Wattles retired early. During the Rosary, every time you heard a car you thought it might be your father being brought home and you waited for it to stop or to turn in your gate, and each time when it didn’t you murmured a second and a silent prayer in thanksgiving.

  But even praying your mind wandered. You thought about your mother and Aunt Bride and what they might be discussing. They never had much to say. Your aunt repeated the love stories she had read or imitated the different bird sounds that she knew whereas your mother liked to dwell on practical matters such as how to make a carrageen soufflé or how many ounces of wool was required for a tweedex cardigan.

  No sooner were you in bed than you wanted to pee again. Lizzie said Bugger. You were in her bed, on the inside near the wall and you had to crawl out over her. It was a sloping roof and the window was a skylight. Downstairs you stepped into Mr Wattle’s big shoes because they were near the door and you clattered out in the yard to the appointed place where everyone peed day or night. It was as fixed as if it were a lavatory. It had been chosen because dock leaves grew there in plenty in summer time. A couple of drops came. You waited for more, tried to squeeze them out, urged and prayed but in vain. There were dogs barking. You could identify the bark of your own dogs, or you thought you could. The moon was bright and not a soul went by. On your way back through the kitchen Mr Wattle called from the downstairs bedroom to know who was it and you said it was you and he said to his wife what bug had got into your kidneys because you had been out there no length ago. His wife told him to go to sleep. The red coals buried under the ashes were only raised shapes. You could not see their redness or their glow. You climbed the stairs, skipping the one wooden step that was split, a necessary precaution. You put socks on so that your feet wouldn’t freeze hers and getting back into bed you bumped your head because with all the other chain of events you had forgotten about the sloping roof.

  Lizzie was crying because of her hair. She had lit the candle and was holding the comb near it. In the wide teeth of the white comb there was a tuft of brown hair. She couldn’t stop it falling out and she combed it every few minutes to see how much she would shed. There were balls of it like balls of knitting wool on the table where she had placed them, to remind herself of her tragedy. You said hair fell out in fits like that. You said it was Nature’s way of getting rid of waste. You said your hair used to fall out. You went too far. She recognized the bluff and said maybe you had had jaundice too and a permanent wave. She blamed the permanent wave. She held one ball of hair to the flame for a minute and the smell of scorching reminded you of a chicken being plucked, and brought your mother to your mind. They yelled up to ask if the house was on fire and she yelled down to them to get to sleep and then she winked at you and asked you to do a dummy for her. It meant you were friends.

  You were the only one who knew the Melody dummies well enough to imitate their sounds and their slobber. Theirs was the second nicest house in the parish, Hilda’s being the first. They also had legacies from relatives in America. The eldest of the Melody brothers who was not a dummy spoke to the other three with fingers and in sign language. You went there every Friday or Saturday bringing the cake of bread that your mother made for them. In return he gave her plums for jam and sugar plums for eating. The cooking plums were black with a dusk on them like a blight, only it was not, it was a bloom. Your mother nearly always included cakes or jam tarts. The dummies went mad for the sweet things.

  It was a back road, untarred. In summer time it was dusty and the odd car going by showered dust on the fuchsia. Also it was a terrible road because of the bends. You never knew what to expect, what mad man or mad woman, or motorcar, or animal might be careering around intent on harm. When you were afraid your legs went like spindles and your knees got out of control. The other time when your knees got out of control was when men tickled them to see if you were fond of tea. An auctioneer offered you a shilling once to let him but you said you were too young and ran out of the room.

  In one of the fields there was an old bus with two hairy fellows living in it and although they never accosted you, you thought they might. Everyone called them the Hairy Fellows. They left England to escape the war. They were deserters. Your mother said she would love to give them a good wash but your father said it was a kick in the pants they wanted. Manny Parker’s sister praised them because they were prompt payers and your mother found that riling. They lived on oatmeal and honey.

  The Melodys’ house was ornate. It was pebble-dashed with bits of china and glass, mostly dark blue glass, wedged in between the white pebbles. Indoors everything was spick and span, with blossom or a sprig of green in a jug on the kitch
en table, depending on the season. The best cups and saucers were produced for you. The dummies had nice manners but they were always struggling to get their thoughts out and their tongues were slapping and slathering inside their mouths. All sorts of gurgles and noises issued from them. They had hollow cheeks from the exercise and their hands were demented at trying to make sense. They mauled you and kissed you until their speaking brother had to clap his hands and order them to sit down. At first they sat very timid with their hands joined. But then at the sight of the jam tarts they jumped up and grabbed them and fought over them and bit into them as if they had no impediments in their mouths at all. Their chewing was funny.

  You did a dummy for Lizzie. You stuck your tongue out, rolled it round and round then let it right back in your throat and made a vomit sound and all the time she kept asking you what you wanted for Christmas. That was what everyone asked the dummies, even when Christmas was ages away. The girl dummy always said a Christmas box. The two male dummies said tobacco, wrote it down. But the girl dummy said it in dummy language. Asked what kind of Christmas box she always said red. Asked what she wanted in the red box she said a box. That was all.

  Lizzie laughed and forgot about her hair. Before blowing out the candle she took a powder. She held the paper about her mouth and allowed the powder to slide in. It was a pink powder and it was for pain. She had pain and was losing weight and that was why she was moody.

  You faced the wall and she put her arm around you but it was not like your mother’s clasp. You thought it all wrong, you in one bed, your mother in another, Emma in another and your father asleep somewhere, anywhere, maybe on a chair.