Chapter 6 #11
Phina recalls all this, the cracking of nuts and the brothers and the pipes and the shawl and the talk of papers, and she also recalls what came after, the fearful things, and these reside in a different chamber of her heart, and she is careful to tend to them, these moments and the people held in them, for it is the first thing she does upon awakening, every day, to recite a silent prayer for them all: Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
When any thoughts of the awfulness intrude, snagging Phina’s mind, like a sleeve catching on a door, she invokes the remainder of the prayer, and she recites it with fervent rapidity, over and over again—May-their-souls-through-the-mercy-of-God-rest-in-peace—and it is partly for them all and also for the child she had been.
Because when they all passed, one by one, when the yellow house sank into silence, it was as if the opaque shades of blindness fell upon Phina.
She had turned the key in the door, she had sat by the empty fireplace, and kicked her heel against the hearthstone, because she didn’t want to be the last one left, and she was too frightened to go into the other room, so she would sit by the burned-out grate, with the shawl wrapped around herself.
When the pounding came at the door, for a wild moment Phina thought it might be her father, returned from across the sea to fetch her away, and she would say she was sorry, she tried to save them but she hadn’t known how.
It wasn’t him, of course, it was just the old neighbour who had once had the pony, and he had a man with him, and the two of them were telling her she couldn’t stay here and, dear God, what was that fearful stench, come away out now, child, and up onto this cart, we’ll take you to a place you’ll be looked after.
Phina had struggled, she had clung to the chair, and said, I’m to wait for my daddo, he’ll send for me or he’ll come back on a big ship, I was told I was to wait.
The neighbour said he would tell her daddo where she was, if he came, he promised, but she was to be a good girl, to go along now.
God love you, the old neighbour said, placing a trembling hand to her hair, and together he and the man lifted her up.
She had wanted to ask, where was the pony, could she not ride it one more time, but she was afraid of the answer, so she said nothing, just watched as the old neighbour got smaller and smaller, as the track between her and her home unribboned behind her, stretching out until the yellow-walled house was so little she could have pierced through its centre with a pin.
Phina sits on the edge of her chair, her arms around Rose, her fingers clutching the tassel. She sees that Enda is now standing on the threshold, her outline aflame with glaring daylight, a dishevelled fiery vision.
“It belonged to…” she begins, then abandons the sentence. How to tell this story, where to begin, how to pick out the words?
“It was cut from a shawl that…” But these are words she cannot utter.
Her children wait, their eyes upon her.
“It was sent all the way from America,” she begins. “But…”
“But what?” Enda demands.
“Your father…” she tries cautiously, and this feels feasible, so she continues hesitantly, like a person uncertain of welcome might step into a house “…your father saved it…he cut this scrap off it and gave it to me.”
Phina stands, gently easing Rose off her lap, her words suddenly drying up like a streambed in the heat. She stows the tassel with great care in her skirt pocket. Her children watch her do this. Then she swallows, several times, before turning away, back to her mixing bowl.
With mutinous deliberation, Enda scuffs her clogs against the verge so that they become clotted with thick, claggy mud. This is forbidden, of course, and she’ll have to clean them later, with a stick. A tiny act of resistance but solace must be found in small doses, wherever it resides.
They are walking to the lough to collect the eggs, a task that must be performed twice a day.
Rose and her mother have gone on ahead, hand in hand.
The basket bangs against Enda’s leg, its sharp weave snagging on her stockings, so that she has to pause and kick it, every now and again, her toe connecting with its creaking wicker.
Tears, angry and salted, sting her eyelids and she tries to allay them with a knuckle but somehow they elude her, trickling down her face.
Fiercely, she sticks out a tongue to catch them. She never cries. She’s not a baby. She prides herself on not crying, not even when she fell down a flight of tenement stairs back where they used to live.
At the thought of the Lanes, Enda catches her breath.
That they have gone from there, might never return, never see it again, is beyond comprehension.
She feels its loss like a wound, a pulsing rent in the skin of her side.
There, she had known who she was: the stretch of cobbles between the rows of tenements had been her world.
If she suggested a game, all the children in earshot would run to join in; if she wore her hair in two plaits, every other girl followed suit.
The nuns at school had told Enda that if she worked hard she could be a teacher one day, and Enda had liked to think of herself standing in front of a classroom, opening a book to read aloud to rows of pupils.
Here on the peninsula, though, she can see that the only things lying before her are the baking of bread and the sweeping of floors and the milking of cows, and the interminable time these tasks take, and the way they must be done every day, over and over again.
It’s intolerable. Gone is her world of the cobbles, her eager acolytes who would play whatever she came up with, the nuns who loved her for her neat handwriting, her future as a teacher. All gone.
Over the bluff are her mother and Rose, and they are entering the part of the boreen where the hedgerows on either side have grown up to almost touch, forming a manner of tunnel, with the twisted fibres of tree roots and ferns curving up on either side of her, and the branches and leaves linking into a roof overhead, and Enda imagines she could slip through the roots and trunks, leaving behind all that—
Her thoughts are interrupted by a call: “Enda! Hurry now. Bring the basket.”
Enda sighs again and, when her mother turns away, gives the basket another kick. Her mother had the idea of setting up the henhouse on the islet in the middle of the loughan that fills the hollow below their house. No fox will get them there, she’d said. They’ll be safe and sound.
Which is well for them, Enda thinks, as they emerge from the tunnel of the boreen onto the lough’s shore, but who’s the one who has to tuck up her skirts and wade through the water, basket over her arm?
Enda, that’s who. And she must then deliver the eggs to the widow, who has made an arrangement with Phina to sell them in town on market day, who knows the best place to set up the stall, and the light-fingered people to keep an eye out for, and she’d be going anyway to sell her cheese and her dulse.
She has said that, come winter-time, she’ll be glad to take Enda with her for company on the road, and that way Enda can learn the trade.
Enda stops, slams down the basket and, without looking at her mother or her sister, sits down on a flat stone to pull off her clogs. There is nothing she wants less than to learn the trade. The very idea of being a market-seller appals her.
If her wide-ranging discontent, her grief and irritability could be traced, like the delta of a river, to its source, it would be this: Liam and his long absences from the house. He leaves at dawn, a slice of bread in his pocket, and isn’t back until near bedtime.
It’s not so much his absence, Enda thinks, as she steps into the water, which is the colour of strong-brewed tea, her feet finding the smooth pebbles beneath the weeds and water-murk, but the unfairness of it.
The priest had come up the lane from down below; they had seen him from a long way off, his black robes swirling about him, his hand holding a hat firm to his head.
Her mother had gone quickly inside to build up the fire, put a kettle on to boil.
Enda had pulled at Liam’s jersey and said, Come on, let’s go, we don’t want to sit and listen to him.
But Liam, to her astonishment, had said, Actually I do.
Enda, still gripping his sleeve, had been unable to believe it.
I’m not coming, her brother said, without looking at her, without taking his eyes off the approaching figure—and how had the priest known where to find them, how had he known the way because the path was winding and confusing?
—and Enda said, What?, and Liam said, I’m staying.
Worse was to come. The priest stepped into their house and their mother offered fresh milk and griddle cakes spread with butter, and the priest said he couldn’t, and then he said, he might, and then he ate several, placing them hot in his mouth, as if his tongue had no feeling.
Their father, upon seeing the priest, had made himself scarce, disappearing beyond the haggard wall, muttering something about how he needed to turn the soil.
The priest had ignored his exit and summoned Liam to sit at his side.
Rose leaned on her mother’s knee, sucking her thumb; Enda stood in the doorway but she was near enough to hear that the priest had decided to establish a school, not much to speak of, a hedge school, you understand, for the handful of children in the area, taught by himself, the priest placing a modest hand to his chest, with a laugh, and the boy would be most welcome.
He touched Liam on the shoulder and said that he was aware of the young man’s considerable gifts, and Liam grinned up at him like a gom.