Martin Sloane (26 page)

Standing at his new, but temporary, window, Martin tried to consolidate old visions with new ones. But he couldn’t see a church spire here without pressing his cheek to the glass and looking aslant down the street. And here they seemed to be in the thick of the city, but there was no centre to look toward: it was all sprawl. Across the way, a tailor’s dummy stared out blankly over the cobble.

The radio played a commercial.

Oh, is that an electric toaster, Mary? Goodness, it must be expensive to use!

Mary chided that electricity was cheap. I must show you my electric cooker and iron, she said. And I have the neatest little electric fire in my bedroom.

There were nine of them in a five-room apartment. The Sloanes had come from their red-bricked, iron-gated house on Iona to the life of indigents. In the mornings, their father would set out to find them a house, while their mother and Mrs. Hannah busied themselves with shopping and cooking. Out on the streets, going quietly in and out of the shops, it all felt so ephemeral — like an ill-chosen vacation spot rather than real life. Martin was on one side of his mother, safely separated from Theresa on the other. Mrs. Hannah showed their mother the best place to buy apples, the best covered buttons, the best cheese shop. Over the bridges spanning the branches of the Corrib, down the cramped medieval streets with their smells of damp and crumbling brick. They crossed the Dominick Street Bridge and went up by Nun’s Island and the old jail, but then somehow the river was to their right again (as it had been before they crossed the bridge), and still flowing down into the bay, although they had not turned around or crossed the street.

Martin, stop pulling on me, said his mother.

Mrs. Hannah? How many rivers are here?

Just the one, she said. All the way to Galway Bay, that’s a song. And she sang it, dispelling none of his confusion. How could a river change direction? Mrs. Hannah had a sharp little voice, not like his mother’s, but his mother had not sung anything for a long time.

The Hannahs’ children were in a private school up past Newcastle Road where the university was. Their father proudly walked them every morning, his pockets full of unhulled hazelnuts, and he sounded like a game of dice walking out the door with the three of them. How shameful, Martin thought, that his own mother would be seen in public with two children out of school in May. Although she seemed to be enjoying the change of habit, and smiled down at him and Theresa often.

Feeling okay, honeylamb? she’d say, stroking his cheek with her fingers.

This is the temple, Mrs. Hannah said one afternoon. Everyone calls it the St. Augustine Synagogue — can you imagine? It was like all the other shops on St. Augustine Street, only it featured a placard with Hebrew writing in the window. The curtains were drawn behind it. Seeing a synogogue brought Martin fresh feelings of guilt.

New members welcome all the time, said Mrs. Hannah.

I’ll keep my word, said their mother, shaking her head. But maybe I’ll come with you and Michael one evening.

I want to come, said Theresa. I feel more and more Jewish every day.

You’ll honour your father’s wishes as you do mine.

They walked on, but Martin’s spirit felt bruised by his own sins.

That afternoon, Mrs. Hannah boiled the cod for the evening meal and put all of the oatmeal in a pot of water to soak until morning. It was to become a pot of flummery. The best kind of invalid cookery, she told Martin.

I’m not an invalid, though, he replied.

Soon you’ll be right as rain. She held his head in her hands and squeezed. She smelled like butter going bad and he noticed his own mother looking unhappily at her friend. He knew then that they were only at the Hannahs because they had no other option, and Mrs. Hannah’s friendship was not one his mother wanted particularly. He understood that there was something about these people that his mother had walked away from; only duty (on the part of the Hannahs) and great need (that was their portion) had drawn the two families together.

He looks like your da, Adele. Martin squirmed between Mrs. Hannah’s hot hands. She turned his head down and laughed. A little spray of red straight from Poland.

His mother came over from the table where she’d been sitting and smoothed down his hair. Both women gripped his skull in their hands, like they were testing a melon. It’s more likely straight out of Antrim, I’d think. From those Antrim Sloanes.

Mrs. Hannah released him. I love his colour. We’ve all black hair to our flanges, look at us, like dark purebreds! She clapped her hands, her eyes shining. She nodded at Malcolm, who was sitting with a book on the couch. That one, he looks like we brought him straight from Palestine.

I was born in England, the boy protested.

You were right, said Mrs. Hannah. The future is in people of all different types coming together. No stopping it, anyway. You were right to ignore the prating of your friends. People can be backwards, as we know.

I’m sure you remember when I came back with Colin to Hammersmith. It must have been hard to hear all the things people were saying. Wasn’t it?

Oh it was, it was, said Mrs. Hannah, pushing her fish back down into the frothing water. But you know how hard it is to talk sense to some people.

Yes, said his mother, staring at the back of Mrs. Hannah’s head. I do know.

That night, at dinner, they tried their best to eat Mrs. Hannah’s meal. It was called kedgeree, and it smelled exactly like the streets: of mildew and salt.

Malcolm, Sheila, and Gabriel cleaned their plates, and Gabriel, sitting beside Martin, rescued him by quietly offering to finish his supper. When dinner was over, Martin’s father spoke.

Well, I’m glad to be able to share happy news. Our little streak of bad luck is at an end. He raised a glass of water to the rest of the table. I’ve found us a house.

Their mother was beaming. You didn’t tell me!

It was a surprise.

Where is it, then?

It’s a beautiful house in St. Mary’s Terrace, down on Taylor’s Hill. A beautiful little house behind a gate. We’ll have you over when we’re settled, he said to their hosts, and drink to your graciousness and hospitality.

But of course they didn’t have them over. They never had the Hannahs over, even though they had an acknowledged debt to them, and the two families, in fact, never saw each other again. Instead, the Sloanes unpacked their boxes and set about transforming the little house on Taylor’s Hill into a home, a role it resisted. It was a not uncharming house, with its warm mahogany banisters and a three-piece mantel that framed a fire like someone sheltering a match in their palm. But the kitchen at the rear of the house was cold and cramped, and there were only two bedrooms, which forced Martin and Theresa into close quarters after years of independent living. Furious at the change in her station, Theresa reproached Martin in any way she could, and at night she folded herself into bed in silence, even refusing to respond to a plaintive goodnight, if he were so bold to offer one.

But worse in the little house was the situation of light, something they discovered on their first morning. Although the front windows faced east, the houses on the west side of Taylor’s Hill were triangulated in such a way that none but the very end houses of St. Mary’s Terrace enjoyed any sunlight at all. From their new front windows, bits of sun like torn wrapping paper could be seen in the broad oak leaves over the rectory across the street. But it stopped there, in the oak leaves, censuring them. The darkness of the house hit them all like a
coup de grace
, extinguishing the last bit of optimism they had. The sense of cautious hopefulness that attended the closing of the house purchase was now briskly replaced by a sepulchral gloom. After a few weeks, Martin noticed that Theresa had stopped chastising him, and the cessation of even this form of caring chilled him.

Soon the dark, cold little house became a fact of life, and they adapted, although their father complained bitterly that the dimness of the house would make them all blind, or turn them into lemurs. More lights with better wattage were found, and at night (at least) the house took on a semibright kind of a warmth that wasn’t entirely negated by the sun that had failed to reach the house by day.

Gradually, bravely, their parents tried to reassume their lives. Not knowing anyone presented them with the daunting task of finding their equals, and they began trying on other couples for size. How hard it was for them, combating their loneliness, Martin thought, when he at least had Theresa, however obelisk-like she was at times. Their parents, alone in a new and cryptic social order, couldn’t find their place. Visits from strange couples became an unhappy ritual. A man and a woman, approximately their parents’ ages and located through mysterious channels, would appear around the hour of six, bearing flowers or a jar of clover honey or a sack of loose tea from Newell’s. Then the introductions (we have a young man very much your age!) and the dinner. More often than not, offal was served — tripe or liver or kidney — in an attempt to appear continental. Quantities were eaten, and then afterwards there was the smoking and the ponderous remembrances of one disconnected thing after another.

Later, Theresa would creep out of bed to listen to the evening’s progress through the bars at the top of the stairs. He’d hear her, and venture out himself, standing close, but not beside her. The sound of the clock on the mantel would be louder than the guests, and the scent of pipe tobacco overpowering. Sometimes there would be a record on the turntable, and Martin would think contentedly that maybe they were all having fun down there.

Mrs. Shaughnessy thinks Dad is below her, Theresa would say without turning to him, or, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips were dressed poorly. She was good at parsing the code of their parents’ guests — what a certain type of gift meant, how the length of the visit and the volume of the conversation correlated with the potential for friendship.

His parents seemed to Martin on those evenings even more foreign to this place than they did during the days. What they belonged to were the alder trees on Iona Road, the churning wrens circling the chimneys, the walled nunnery past St. Columba’s, the Morris cars ticking in the sunlight down the street. Not to this rot of wood and netting! Not to these sparse trees pocked with burls, or these raucous magpies! Their parents seemed pasted onto it all like cut-out figures from
Everybody’s
.

He would lie in bed, the sounds of the last omnibus clacking past ten streets over in Eyre Square, and try not to drift off on those nights, would try to listen for the sounds of the cards being brought out, or the old photo albums, and sometimes, in the flickerings of near-sleep, it felt that one moment there was Sheila Dunne’s Popular Band and the sound of pennies crossing the table, and the next, silence and darkness, the moon a pale band across the foot of the bed. He’d call to Theresa across in her own bed, and she’d lift herself up on her elbows and say, You fell asleep. They’re gone. And they won’t be back either.

After some time, people stopped coming altogether, and the effort was abandoned. It was a great relief. Now their parents resigned themselves to the gradual acquaintanceships of neighbours, connections that grew as slowly as quartz on the nourishment of occasional encounters. There were the Cadburys at one side and the Raleighs on the other; they hardly spoke to either, but by the middle of the summer, two of the Raleigh girls had absorbed Theresa into their circle of play. The stories she told of their adventures were Martin’s main connection to the world outside. The summer, however bright, however fragrant, was compressed for him into long afternoons of reading or rearranging his belongings. Their father had long since located a shop in town, but he discouraged Martin from coming there, and Martin had only once seen the grey interior of the store, bereft of browsers and certainly of buyers: his father didn’t want him to see what appeared to be impending failure. Later, Martin began to take solitary walks over the bridges and through the streets, and although this was not Dublin, some of Galway’s charms did gradually give themselves over: now the shop windows began to seem a little less dusty and prim — Thomas McDonogh & Sons always had a vibrant display of cheeses and fruits in pyramids, as well as an assortment of model trains half out of their cardboard boxes. Again, the peaceful silence of things began to come back to him and comfort him. They had their mute order, their grace and vitality. These thoughts, with their power to make him happy, became his main solace as the lonely summer went on. His parents, though, however they tried, could not disguise their unhappiness. His mother sometimes smiled at him, trying to hide an expression he’d just catch a flicker of. And once, he heard his father in the kitchen say,
What have I done?
and when he’d quietly entered the room, he’d found his father alone there.

They carried on as best they could. In the evenings, they all took their supper with the windows open, or sometimes even outside, their china in their laps, since they had no outdoor table. There was the occasional play in town, or visit to the movies, but although the feeling of real life had returned in their rituals, the centre of things felt hollow. Galway pushed them away. It was as if they skimmed along the surface of their new reality, like waterstriders on a pond.

Finally August came, and at the end of it, it was time to go to school. Martin and Theresa walked together in the mornings behind the nunnery and the stream full of grassy islands. The banks, in early morning, were always occupied by two or three old men with their fishing poles and bowls of maggots, hoping to attract one or two of the salmon that made it past the weir at Newcastle Road Bridge. Beaky old men hauling beaky salmon out of the glistening waters. Then to the public school, to the left and up the hill.

Martin recognized some of his fellow students in his form — the city was small enough that even two encounters with someone was enough to make them seem familiar. The Raleighs were here, and there was a girl who probably lived around the corner from him, he’d seen her so often. There were others — a grey-faced boy he’d seen once when he’d been taken to buy shoes; a couple of girls memorable for their tallness; a Chinese boy who was the only such child he’d ever laid eyes on, whose teeth tapered out from blackened stems.