Irish Literature - House of Mourning and Other Stories

sheltering her body from the rain, got into a livid conversation with two men. They were bachelors and they were both looking for wives. They came to Walsingham, Norfolk, from Birmingham each Whit Monday looking for wives and they went to Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, in September looking for wives. So far they’d had no luck and their quest was telling on them: their hair and their teeth were falling out. One bandied a copy of the previous day’s Sunday Press as if it was the portfolio of his life’s work.
    ‘And do you have a husband?’ one of them asked.
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘You’ve had your share of fellas,’ the other one said grinning. ‘A woman like you wouldn’t have gone without a man for long.’
    ‘What do you mean. A woman like me?’
    ‘Well, you’re not fat but you’ve loads of flesh on you. Like a Christmas goose. That’s not derogatory. You look as firm as my grandmother’s armchair.’
    Rose screeched with laughter.
    ‘And you both look as though the hinges are coming out of you.’
    ‘Mentally or in the body?’
    Rose laughed again.
    ‘Whatever hope there is in Clare there’s no hope here. Unless you want a Reverend Mother.’
    ‘Oh, you’d be surprised.’ A twinkle in the eye. ‘Lots of randy women go on pilgrimages.’
    19
    Nearing the sea as though it was the Atlantic Ocean that blanketed the west coast of Ireland all kinds of words and images came into the head of Lally, the driver: sentences, half-heard at Irish venues—music festivals, Irish ballrooms—and elaborated on by him. So they could take their place in a narrative song. But more than words and images came now—an apotheosis came too. Lally was flying with the success and daring of his life. He was proud of himself. He’d turned something of the decrepitude and semi-stagnation of his parents’ lives into art. More than that. Art for the young. He’d dolled his ancestry up in fancy dress.
    20
    How many days and months would she have to live? Ellie thought of Clare where she’d been born, the harvest fields there she’d walked before leaving Ireland, those blond, human fields, warm after days of summer sun. The imminence of death brought the friendliest images of her life.
    21
    The bastard, Áine thought, the bastard, he’s taken everything that was of my creativity; he’s used up my creativity. He’s left me as nothing. There’s no more to go around. He’s a man, an exploiter, a rampant egotist. He doesn’t see who he’s trampled on to get where he’s got, who he hurts. He doesn’t see he’s squashed my self-confidence out.
    22
    For Miles, as they neared the sea, it was a trip backwards: at least this journey, this expedition to Walsingham had allowed him to be solemn about his life, to see it: he sat back as though his life hitherto, as he could see it, was a state funeral.
    There had been state funerals he’d seen in his life. De Valera’s for instance, which he’d seen with his aunt, ‘Ah, sure, look at his coffin.’ All kinds of voices came back from Miles’s life. Especially the voices of early adolescence. ‘Ah, sure, look at the little eejit. The fool. Nitwit. Silly git.’ All kinds of names were planted on Miles’s always withdrawing figure with its gander legs in thin jeans. That figure was a continual epilogue, always disappearing around corners, always on the edge of getting out of the picture. But maybe that was because he knew there’d be an area where he could totally affirm himself, totally show himself—when the time came. Now there were ikons of Miles in fashion magazines, the young archangel in suave clothes. His tormentors in the Liberties would be bilious. But the young man in the picture was unmoved by this prospect. He seemed frigid of countenance. This loveliness was the product of pain. These secretive eyes in all the pictures looked back on tunnels of streets in the Liberties, streets where his mother had gathered men as if they’d been daisies.
    As they neared Wells-next-the-Sea the sky, towards evening, had almost cleared and there were a few white clouds in it—like defeated daisies.
    People in the car were mumbling, conversations were going on. Suddenly Miles wanted to go back to Walsingham.
    ‘Mammy.’
    23
    Rose’s shadow departed through the back door after her. Miles should have known there was something funny about her going that day. In fact he did know. Memory consolidated that fact. Rose’s shadow writhed off a yellowy picture showing