Bend for Home, The (26 page)

Why, yes.

And who is she?

She’s a medium.

Can we walk just right in?

Of course you can. We are delighted to see new people.

We entered a pink room with an ornate ceiling. Incongruous wooden chairs, six each side, formed about nine rows. People arrived singly and sat at respectable distances from each other. Two couples, outsiders like ourselves, quickly sat down and waited. We, of course, took chairs in the back row, in the far corner, at the furthest remove.

There was no whispering. A woman I took to be one of the audience entered. She was wearing a tweed skirt, quite fashionable blouse and pert shoes. She sat down in front of us and began unexpectedly talking in a matter-of-fact way.

I’m just going to say a small prayer, she said, there is nothing to be afraid of. And for those newcomers among us let me explain that when I speak to you, and you realize that I have met someone you’ve known who has passed over, please say
yes,
say
yes
when they speak to you, for if you say
no
well then I will lose them.

She smiled, said a short prayer, and turned immediately to a woman halfway down the room.

James sends his regards, she said.

The woman nodded. Yes, she said.

He believes you
should
go to Canada.

Oh yes, the woman agreed enthusiastically.

And forget about the piano.

I will.

Then she turned to a man with ginger sideburns wearing an off-white suit, who was seated in the front row.

Madeline is here, she said.

Yes, he said.

She is trying very hard.

Yes.

I see sadness.

Yes.

But she wants you to know that that is all over. You can forget about it now, she desperately wants you to know that.

Yes.

She’s happy.

The medium moved so fast at the beginning from one person to another that I did not know the mediumship had begun. I thought these were people she knew. That she was calling out greetings to old
companions. But then she began to call out to people,
You
in the red hat, yes you, or,
You
in the raincoat, and suddenly it struck me she was talking to strangers. Her features would twitch. Some spirit would possess her ever so slightly, she’d give a small grimace or smile, and without hesitating pass on to another lost soul. Without stopping, she ran through the available dead, offering advice, encouragement, intimacies, to which the people in the room said
yes,
and nodded, and I was wondering was all this real when suddenly I heard her saying,
You,
you down there at the back.

We held our silence.

She bowed her head a moment then stared at me.

You in the blue shirt.

John and Becky looked at me.

Yes, I said.

I have a man here.

Yes.

He appears to be in a uniform.

Yes.

And he’s saying
Straighten your back!

Yes, I said, for that was something my father always said to me.

Is he a soldier, I wonder?

He’s a policeman, I replied.

Ah, she said, for he holds himself very, very correct. Yes. And he’s saying not to worry about the writing.

I could feel John look at me in wonder.

Yes, I said.

He’s saying that you’ll never come in the front door, you’ll always come in the back.

Yes.

Are we in a village?

Yes, I said.

And there’s water.

Yes.

And you’re on a horse.

I was never on a horse.

Yes, it’s a big horse. And the policeman, who is your father, is holding the reins.

No, I said.

But I see it, she said crossly.

I’m sorry, I said, I was never on a horse.

But I can see it.

No, I persisted.

This was the first time since the mediumship began that such a negative hiatus had occurred. I was ashamed of myself. Everything had come to a stop. Some of those who had already spoken turned to look at me with curious disdain or to urge me on to say
Yes, yes.
I wanted badly to say
yes,
but knew I had never been on a horse. There was silence a while as she contemplated me. She was not going to give up.

Have you ever had a pet monkey?

No, I said with great certainty.

Then a young lad who had come in last and was sitting next to me slowly put up his hand.

I had a pet monkey, he said.

Strange, she said, I could see it sitting on his shoulder. Oh well.

Then the conversation passed on from me to him, and from him to others, as I sat there light-headed after a visit from my dead father which ended with a question about a horse. Becky was visited by her grandmother in Texas, others spoke to dead husbands and wives, and then, just as she had arrived, the woman got up purposefully and thanked us, strode off and went away into the night and a few moments later we followed her.

The astrologist was peeved that we’d missed Mrs — but delighted to find that I’d been unnerved by contact with my father.

And the monkey, he said excitedly.

What about the monkey? I asked.

Don’t you know what having a monkey on your shoulder means?

No.

It means having an addiction, he said with a great deal of satisfaction.

Years later I told the story to Anne-Marie after we got married. One night she came racing into our bedroom in the Breifne with an old
Healy family photograph album she’d been looking at. She placed it in front of me and pointed. There was a photograph of my father standing, with just the side of his head in view, by a horse in great wonderful winkers, Tom Keogh’s horse in Finea, while I, about four years of age, sat astride it happily.

Today Mother is quiet. The nurse came and said Mother looked wonderful so both myself and Eileen were pleased and proud and she ate a brave breakfast.

Today is Thursday, I leave Sunday when Una returns from the States, so we have only a few more days together. The routine we’ve established will be broken. And of course I’ll be glad to shed the responsibility of the twenty-four-hour day, and yet in another way, I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to her, not maybe emotionally, but in some intimate way I can’t articulate.

There have been moments I thought I was going off my head, but then the routine would re-establish itself, Maisie would cheerfully reappear on her walking-aid and send us off down some vitriolic
non sequitur,
Eileen would come in. I think of Mother’s death, a death to which she constantly refers, and yet I find it hard to imagine her giving up the body which is refusing her peace. She is strong physically and when she is quiet like now, she is endearing, innocent, a porcelain doll again. She was always impatient whether cleaning or polishing, and this impatience now controls her every need. Housework haunts her. The things she would have done slip through her mind with a guilty sense of
déjà vu.
The ghost of her earlier self flies ahead of her through the rooms, dusting and clucking, and she totters along in her own wake. Even an orange, upon which she once used gorge, is a mystery. She hurries towards work to be done only to find that the actual act eludes her. She rushes headlong from bed to table, table to armchair, armchair to toilet, toilet to bed, searching for something, but wherever she ends up that something is missing.

Only prayer and sleep halts this rush to duty. These two poles are her only peaceful states, except perhaps for sitting in a car. Going someplace is a powerful peacemaker, but to arrive is to grow impatient again. I know this feeling in myself. Her genes have put in mine the same need to be away. Like her I speed between moments of rest, impatient to arrive and then impatient to be gone again.

At various times, we have shared intimacy but not for long, we must be always bustling ahead, and then with each departure, we’re again embroiled in loss. And this sense of loss makes for telepathy. It’s like years ago, the mother was dreaming of me in the Breifne and she suddenly darted awake when she saw something hit my head. At that same moment I was being treated in a London hospital for a wound to the skull. And when we next met she said I saw you bleeding,
bleeding,
she repeated as if she could find the actual word for blood like red fluid gushing onto her tongue, and I woke, she said, and the room was cold.

I felt, she said, the blow.

But telepathy does not bring us any closer. It is the result of the distances between us. Even if we knew the future, we could do nothing about it. It would happen as planned. Our natures are set. The loss is predetermined.

When we are alone together for hours in the morning Winnie and I rarely speak. She looks over her shoulder at me sometimes as if startled at finding a stranger in the room. Yoh! she says. She tries to reassemble my features into somebody familiar. I smile, she touches an earring. I roll a cigarette, she concentrates on this.

Leaves? she asks.

Tobacco, I answer.

God, she says, and goes back to her rosary. Her breathing eases. This little exchange has reassured us both. Then within seconds her mood changes and she tries to get out of the chair.

Where are you going?

To the room.

No.

She clasps her hands on her lap. Her chin stirs. She looks downcast. She studies the shining aluminium dessert dish that contains her beads, the prayer to Padre Pio and an Address to the Virgin. The earring shakes. She bows her newly dressed head and ponders her fingernails. I hear a noise off. Soon we head on a tour of the house and encounter Maisie illicitly searching drawers in the kitchen.

What are you looking for, Maisie?

Apples, she says, green apples. Will you give me one?

They only give you heartburn, I say.

Never mind that. Everything gives me heartburn – can I just have one?

All right.

Oh you could supervise the devil, snaps my mother and she pulls sharply at my arm.

We go to the front door, visit the toilet and head to the bedroom.

She lifts the pillow to see if the second rosary is beneath it. I put on her hairnet and she dabs her skull. I turn her onto her side.

Are you writing another book?

I’m trying.

You’re spending a lot of time with the pen in your hand, she says with extraordinary lucidity and I realize that while I’ve been watching her, she’s been watching me.

Will you call me in the morning?

I’ll call you for tea.

God bless you, she murmurs, content at last. I turn her again so that the wounded part of the head is not touching the pillow. I ease the door to. Go back to my armchair. Putting together the banal events of these days seems pointless, yet it gives me relief. It passes the time. It is a record of days I would otherwise not recall.

Soon I’ll have to wake her. The earrings, the glasses, will be replaced with shaking hands. Whatever dream she’s in will accompany her for hours. Because her sleep is so deep she cannot shake off who she encounters there.

There will be things to be done that cannot be done. Stray figures
out of the past will be at the door. The house will be totally new, not like the house she encountered in sleep, or the bend for home she was on before she was rudely awakened. And when she’ll encounter Maisie across from her in the dining room some sort of mania and distress will make her flinch. She’ll eat with relish the first few spoonfuls then push the plate away. I’ll push it back. She’ll stuff her mouth one more time. Then push the plate away. I’ll put it back.

She’ll drink the tea with great gusto. And when the mug is finished she’ll shake it as as she used to do in the good old days when there were real tea leaves in it. And before she’s quite finished she’s struggling to get out of the chair.

Away! Away to where?

At four I enter her room. It’s stifling. The bottom false teeth have come loose in her mouth. The edge of the plate is bared like a fang. The set pushes against her lower lip and swells out the cheek she’s lying on. The loose teeth give her a demented look. The side of the face has fallen in. It’s as if she’s had a severe stroke.

The minute I touch her she opens her eyes.

Dermot, she says and smiles.

She struggles to say something else but the sentence will not allow itself to be articulated. She babbles incoherently for a few seconds.

Time to get up, I say.

No-ono, she mutters and begins to weep.

Out with the legs.

I can’t.

Yes you can.

I reach an arm under her back, put her chin on my shoulder and lift her. She falls back. I hold her. She grabs me. I get an arm under her knees.

I want – I want, she stammers. I put on her shoes. I put on her earrings. She puts on her glasses. She touches her hair. With her tottering badly behind me, I lead the way through the house. We are walking through a dream of unremembered objects. She follows me, her body hanging to the left and her knees quaking.

I sit her a while in the armchair.

Have you got it fixed? she asks me.

I have.

Then sign it, she says, holding out her hand.

I will.

And hurry up!

She prays with shaking chin.

Dermot!

What?

Take me up.

No. You’re only out of bed.

Dear God.

She prays, then kicks, glowers over at me. Prays out loud.

Tch. Tch, she says and touches her scalp. You got me out of bed for what? she demands succinctly.

For tea.

There’s silence a while, but she is not settling.

She returns to her beads. Like a bold child she stamps her feet. Touches an earring. Commands me again.

Dermot!

Yes.

Get me up.

I do and bring her into tea.

There you are, says Maisie cheerfully.

The two ladies face each other over small plates of tinned salmon and mayonnaise, sliced tomatoes and buttered white bread. Mother lifts her mug of tea and drinks thirstily. Maisie picks and contemplates. Mother shakes the saltcellar repeatedly. She eats everything. Afterwards I wash her false teeth while she hangs onto the sink. The minute we’re back in the dining room she starts again.

Bring me up, she says, to where there is peace.

No, I say quietly.

Get me out, she says after a while as she reads Padre Pio’s prayer, to where there’s peace and quiet.

There’s peace and quiet here, I say.

She starts her chant that is much like the lament of the Marsh Arab women, and makes to get out of the chair. I put her back in. She kicks at me and claws at my face. I slap the back of her hand.

My God, she cries, walloping! Walloping! And me eighty years of age. For an hour she stubbornly fights to return to bed. She gets up. She makes fake excursions to the toilet. We go back and forth like sleepwalkers till eventually Maisie enters like a saviour.

Weep, says Maisie, and you weep alone.

Soon Eileen arrives. I’m out the door like a shot. It’s my hour in the pub. When I come back the mother greets me like a long-lost stranger.

Did you enjoy yourself?

I did, I say.

I pour Eileen and Maisie a glass of brandy.

When you were out, says Eileen, she asked me to phone Una. So I said Una was in America. Phone, said your mother, for the gig of the thing, and she started laughing. I couldn’t believe it –
for the gig of the thing,
she said.

I start the crossword. The mother relaxes. The ladies chat.

How do you spell earring? I ask.

Earring? says Maisie speculatively.

Is there two r’s in it?

I don’t know, replies Maisie. We’re regular dunces. She considers Eileen. Princess Anne got remarried. And I don’t blame her.

Did you not like Captain Mark Phillips? asks Eileen.

A regular tramp.

God, but you’re severe, Maisie.

Captain Mark Phillips,
God bless us.

I cough.

You have a frog in your throat, says Maisie.

I have. A cold one.

The cursed fags, says Maisie. You should give them up. As Monty Montgomery said to Mary Kate
–you’ll make a fucking job of yourself yet
.

She turns to my mother. Winnie!

What?

What age would Mary Kate Dowd be now?

Forty, says my mother.

That was then. I mean now. Do you hear me?

I hear you.

See that – she can hear you when she wants to, remarked Maisie. Winnie.

What?

The travellers will be back Sunday.

What travellers?

Una and Joe.

Una
, Mother says, testing the word.

Yes, they’re coming back from their stint abroad.

Eileen takes Mother to the toilet. When she returns Mother asks me: Were you on holidays?

I never budged.

It’s Una is on holidays, confirms Maisie. Your son is here with us pair of dolls.

Una,
says Mother ruminatively.

As Shirley Sheriff said, remarks Maisie, we all have to die.

I know what you mean, I say.

I know what you mean, answers Maisie with a smirk, but the grass is wet.

She grins lustily.

And the train is gone and you with your chicken in your hand, she continues with glee. Then there was the time Andy B. was in the church after his wife died. He was kneeling in the pew next the coffin. And the sacristan came up to say the church was closing.
Well you see, child,
said Andy,
she was always difficult.

She was always difficult,
repeats Maisie, and tears of laughter come to her eyes. Oh Andy B. He was standing at the door of the shop looking out and he saw Fegan go by on a bike.
Look at Fegan, Miss Slacke,
he said to me,
and a pair of balls on him like the weights on a grandfather clock.

Maisie! says Eileen in mock horror.

Then there was that cursed fiend out of hell. A Jesuit. I stepped into the confessional and he asked me:
How many times?
I said,
I can’t remember. Well, I have plenty of time,
said he, the cursed fucker.

What did you do that brought him down on you? I asked.

Nothing. It was only trivial. Now that I’ve become a great sinner I can see that. The cursed fucker. I could wring his neck. Did you ever have that Eileen?

No.

Back then we did.

I give Mother her pills.

God help her, says Maisie, she’s taking her pills. If you shook her she’d rattle. And when she was young she couldn’t. She’d hold it in her mouth till she soaked the coat off it. And then it would poison her.

My mother spits the red aspro out.

See, says Maisie. What did I tell you? Poor Winnie, she says sadly.

Then Eileen’s husband looks in.

There’s the binman, says Mother.

On comes a documentary about wildlife in Africa on the TV. Maisie starts laughing.

When the elephants passed by the Breifne in a procession with Duffy’s circus, declares Maisie, they appeared to be up to the windows.

Didn’t you go off with an acrobat?

I didn’t. Babs did.

You were too grand.

Not at all, they were nice people.