Bone and Blood (10 page)

‘Sliced pan – that's the sliced white loaf isn't it? Gran makes me laugh about that. Sliced white loaf was a treat when she was young.'

‘And so it was. White bread was almost a delicacy when we were growing up. We even preferred white soda bread to brown because it was Sunday bread. When I went back, I couldn't eat any of it. I lived on oatcakes. I had been away too long maybe. Soda bread reminded me too much of hunger.'

‘So how many of you lived in the old house?' Aisling heard their names reeled off by her Gran often enough but she had usually switched off her brain by that stage and never remembered them. Luckily Gran would repeat it all again as a preliminary to some bit of news or story of the past.

‘John-Joe, Liam, James, Mick and Peggy of course.'

‘So there was six of you and your parents in that little house.'

‘And it wasn't a small house compared to some – or a large family for that matter. We had three bedrooms upstairs. Peggy and myself shared the smallest room – the one on the right at the head of the stairs. And of course there was my grandmother in the good room downstairs.'

‘I always sleep in the little room upstairs. Maybe I even slept in the same bed as you. My father found some old iron beds in one of the sheds. He had them done up and put back with new mattresses. My mother was disgusted: she said he could have got some brand new pine beds for half the price he paid for getting the old beds restored.'

‘I hope he didn't put the springs on it again. I don't know whether it was the mattress or the springs but we always ended up in the dip in the centre fighting for blankets or the blanket with sleeves as Peggy used to say.'

‘Blanket with sleeves?'

‘Yes an old coat of my grandfather's – the wool in it was thicker than any blanket and warmer.'

Aisling grinned at the picture of Granny curled up in bed under an old coat. It was a long way from the image that she created of a quaint old farmhouse, good wholesome food, and a maid. The bathroom in the barn was always the bit that intrigued Aisling after the first time she stayed there. When they went there first, before they had the extension with the proper bathroom built on, the bathroom was a toilet and hand basin with a makeshift shower that either scalded you or doused you in cold water. You had to go out the back door to get to it. She hated using it. Once she asked her father what happened to the bathroom in the barn because she saw no sign of it. Wouldn't it have been easier to modernise it than to build on a toilet to the house, she asked.

Her father laughed, ‘Bathroom! What bathroom?'

‘Granny said something about the bathroom in the barn.'

‘That's my mother for you. If there is anybody who could make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, it's her. You may think that stepping out into the flush toilet that's two steps from the back door is hard going for you. Do you know what toilet your Granny used all the time that she lived here?'

Aisling shook her head, puzzled.

‘There was a bit of wood with a big hole in it in the barn above. The shit fell down through the hole into a pit below which they came to empty once a month. To be fair there might have been a pitcher full of water and a basin up there too. The big aluminium bath that was used for washing sheets and for Saturday night bath was kept there too. I love my mother sometimes – at least she's not one of these whingeing old people that spend half their time crying about the poverty of their youth and the other half complaining about the lack of religion now that people are better off. Bathroom indeed!' He laughed again, ‘They were still using that earth closet when I visited here first but my mother made sure I didn't have to use it. She carried a potty with her the whole way from Dublin on the bus. I know that story because of the jokes of Uncle Liam. It might even have been the potty that persuaded my grandfather to finally part with the money for the toilet and hand basin and the shower that never worked properly.'

‘Is it true that you didn't have running water or a bathroom when you were little?' Aisling asked Brigitte.

‘Indeed it is and we weren't the only ones – in the country anyway. When I came to Berlin, I couldn't believe the bathroom in the apartment. Believe me it was as good as anything you'd see to-day. It wasn't just the running water, the flush toilet, and the big bath. It was beautifully tiled too – so easy to clean and a long way from peeing into a bucket and then having to empty it or dragging yourself off to the barn for the obligatory Number 2. In Berlin the whole apartment was so modern – with electric lamps everywhere – inside and out. But more than anything else it was the life of the city that I loved. I hated the farm. The only time I ever missed it was when I came back to Berlin after my mother died. Then I missed the view out over the lake and the hills beyond. You know I never remember remarking on that view when I was young. The first time I even noticed it was when I went back for my father's funeral. I did appreciate it when I went back there for a week to look after my mother. A week that turned into nine weeks. Then I liked the peace and quiet too. I missed that when I came back here again.'

Brigitte was silent again. There were no words for the view over the lake from the front of the house. The sensation of light filled her whole being. Every night during those weeks, she stepped out into the night air; air that smelt and felt like a tangible presence, taking the loneliness out of being alone. She learnt to love the shades of moonlight on the fields and answering light on the lake –usually silver or grey but sometimes passionate red, swooping stories back across the fields. Stories of placid water turned to a stream of blood when neighbour turned on neighbour. Stories of the skirt of a married woman lifted for love and exiled forever; leaving the children confused and motherless. When she spoke her tone was matter-of-fact, ‘I loved to stand at the front door and look across the lake – especially on good summer evenings with the swallows out.'

‘Yeah – it's a good view all right. But would you think of going back there to live?'

Brigitte laughed, ‘Not now – what would I do there now?'

Aisling felt relieved somehow. The cottage as they called it now was all right maybe for a weekend but imagine being stuck in the country living like that with maybe the odd trip to Manorhamilton. You'd have to be off your head. The very thought of it made her restless to get out again and see a bit of Berlin.

‘I'm going out now for a bit of air. I thought I'd go and look at this famous Berlin wall. I saw a bit of it when we went to the States a couple of years ago.

Brigitte laughed, ‘So we sent if off round the world, did we? Here it's well hidden in memorials and museums. There's one bit they turned into a big art gallery – the East-side Art Gallery. Wall paintings near Warschauer Strasse. I've never been. Or some crosses by the Spree. Youngsters sitting in the steps in the sun. They have no idea of what it was like. Even Katharina agrees with me on that. I'd rather go to any graveyard if I want to remember the dead. Better to go to Bernauer Strasse. They built a small museum and a new church too. The old Church was on the wall. I remember the day they blew it up. Now there is a new one there.'

‘Yeah, yeah, maybe I'll go there.'

‘You can walk, if you want. It's not far and there's plenty of information and photos too according to Katharina.'

‘I'm not much of a one for museums but I'll pop in.'

The aunt was right. Armed with her directions, Aisling was there in no time. The place wasn't a bit like a museum. It helped make some sense of the bit of the wall that you could see from the viewpoint on top. When she went down again, she played a while in the documentation centre on their computers to get some pictures of what had happened there over the years. It was weird to think of going through cellars to get from one side to the next. The bit she liked best was the old newsreels with people jumping from windows. She couldn't help laughing at the guy trying to help a woman who looked a bit like the aunt – he had his hand up her skirt – then she fell. It wasn't clear what happened to her even though there were people waiting with blankets and things for people to jump onto. She was surprised to learn the wall went up around the same time as the Beatles– her father was already a student at UCD, growing his hair long. Embarassed now to remember that she thought the Berlin Wall went up right after the war. Glad her father wasn't with her to mock her lack of knowledge of history. Looking at the pictures of a young guy – about the age her father was at the time – swimming across the river and being shot.

The sense of desolation around the new church attracted her in spite of her tendency to avoid anything holy. There was a photo exhibition of the old church which had been slap bang in the middle of the wall. The people who had designed the new one to replace it were obviously not the usual religious hypocrites. This was surely a case of ‘less is more'. She'd tried to persuade her mother of that when they were doing up the living room but her mother was such a kitsch freak with traces of the hippy she once was and she would always add some Indian patterned cushions or a little shelf for photos which became a place of clutter and another opportunity to have an altar of candles and flowers for Michael.

Here, there was only the stark wood and cement structure – a never-ending circle of something. Of secret suffering maybe. No window on the world outside. The bits of the old church as a reminder of what happened. She had to admit that she preferred this new church to the old one that the Commies had torn down. It was a far better symbol of religion than any other church she had been in. ‘If I ever got married, I would get married here,' she told herself. ‘I would dress up Gothic style for it.'

Potsdamer Platz next on the list. The empty space overlooked by surveillance towers well filled up according to the aunt. By all accounts, as she said, never having been there herself. Coffee in the shopping centre, trying to work out where she was sitting in relation to the old Berlin. Walking around, Aisling found it impossible to tell what had been east and what had been west. Piecing together the bits from the Bernauer Strasse museum. Glitzy domes were apparently all the rage with the architects doing the makeover after the wall came down. Glamour and glitz for the plebs in the Sony Centre. Glassy stars and big screens. One big thing in favour of Berlin – no sense of snobbery. Scruffs and designer dolls rubbing shoulders. Moving on to the Reichstag. Dome for the people, making the polarities of east and west irrelevant. Does it really? Check out Checkpoint Charlie. More touristy than Bernauer Strasse: so glad to have been there first.

No sleep again. Aisling doodled as she leafed a few more pages from the sheaf. Was it all unposted letters of loneliness? Was the friend Mary in Ireland dead or alive? The letters gave the Second World War an original slant. Shapes forming for her own graphics. The old photo images of Berlin merging with the images in her guide book, merging with the photos she took. Could she reproduce a mix of old and new? Make Brigitte's story her story too? They would all laugh at her for wanting to write a comic book. Even Maeve had laughed at her for reading comic books. ‘What about Asterix comics?' she reminded her.

‘That's different. Those comic books are all about superheros, fantasy and weirdoes'.

‘And what's so different about the novels you read, Maeve?'

‘You can't compare adult literature with those comics – they're for children, Aisling. Time you grew up.'Time to tell Maeve there is a developing genre of graphic novels? No Maeve to tell and too soon to tell anyone anyway.

The anti-heroine Brigitte – two-faced young and old. Would it be possible to get hold of the film she mentioned in one letter, “Mein Leben für Irland”. Nazi propaganda using the Irish hero giving up his life in the struggle against British Imperialism. Excitement stirring. No-one to douse it. Material here for a comic-strip in book form to poke fun at nationalism by mixing the stereotypes. Using montage to merge image and experience. Ambition bites life into the crackling paper. No-one to ridicule her dreams of making her living with her comic-strips and cartoons. A sci-fi reality perspective on the past and present. Using a mix of styles of comic-strips and cartoons. Mixing the “Troubles” in the North, the border in Ireland and the Berlin wall. Forget the marketing and iconic images for sales pitch. Of course it could be hard to persuade her parents to give her an allowance if she quit her university course. How to survive? Worry about that later. Now for dipping into real history.

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