My Oedipus Complex (39 page)

‘I suppose,' she said, throwing back her head, ‘you must think I'm simply terrible?'

It wasn't intended to be a good opening but it turned out that way. The girl smiled, and her broad face crinkled.

‘And what about me?' she asked, putting them both at once on a common level. ‘Will you get away with it though?'

‘Oh, I'll have to get away with it, girl,' said Katty flatly. ‘My livelihood depends on it. Did nurse tell you?'

‘She did, but I still don't understand what you did to your husband to make him do that to you.'

‘Oh, that's an old custom,' said Katty eagerly, seeing at once the doubt in the girl's mind. ‘Now, I know what you're thinking,' she added with a smile, raising her finger in warning, ‘but 'tisn't that at all. Ned isn't a bit like that. I won't wrong him. He is a country boy, and he hasn't the education, but apart from that he's the best poor slob that ever lived.' She
was surprised herself at the warmth that crept into her voice when she spoke of him. ‘So you see,' she added, dropping her voice and smiling discreetly, ‘you needn't be a bit afraid of us. We'd both be mad about him.'

‘Strange as it may seem,' said Monica, her voice growing sullen and resentful, ‘I'm a bit mad about him myself.'

‘Oh, you are, to be sure,' said Katty warmly. ‘What other way would you be?' At the same time she was bitterly disappointed. She began to realize that it wasn't going to be so easy after all. Worse than that, she had taken a real fancy to the baby. The mother, whatever her faults, was beautiful; she was an educated woman; you could see she wasn't common. ‘Of course,' she added, shaking her head, ‘the idea would never have crossed my mind only that nurse thought you might be willing. And then, I felt it was like God's doing.… You are one of us, I suppose?' she asked, raising her brows discreetly.

‘God alone knows what I am,' said the girl, taking a deep pull of the cigarette. ‘A bloody atheist or something.'

‘Oh, how could you?' asked Katty in a shocked tone. ‘You're convent-educated, aren't you?'

‘Mm.'

‘I'd know a convent girl anywhere,' said Katty, shaking her head with an admiring smile. ‘You can always tell. I went to the Ursulines myself. But you see what I mean? There was I looking for a child to adopt, and you looking for a home for yours, and Nurse O'Mara bringing us together. It seemed like God's doing.'

‘I don't know what you want bringing God into it for,' said Monica impatiently. ‘The devil would do as well.'

‘Ah,' said Katty with a knowing smile, ‘that's only because you're feeling weak.… But tell me,' she added, still wondering whether there wasn't a catch in it, ‘I'm not being curious or anything – but isn't it a wonder the priest wouldn't make him marry you?'

‘Who told you he wouldn't marry me?' asked Monica quietly.

‘Oh, Law!' cried Katty, feeling that this was probably the catch. ‘Was it the way he was beneath you?' she asked with the least shade of disappointment.

‘Not that I know of,' said Monica brassily. Then she turned her eyes to the ceiling and blew out another cloud of smoke. ‘He asked me was I sure he was the father,' she added lightly, almost as if it amused her.

‘Fancy that!' said Katty in bewilderment. ‘But what made him say that, I wonder.'

‘It seems,' said Monica in the same tone, ‘he thought I was going with another fellow at the same time.'

‘And you weren't?' said Katty knowingly.

‘Not exactly,' said Monica dryly, giving Katty a queer look that she didn't quite understand.

‘And you wouldn't marry him?' said Katty, knowing perfectly well that the girl was only trying to take advantage of her simplicity. Katty wasn't as big a fool as that though. ‘Hadn't you great courage?' she added.

‘Oh, great,' said Monica in the same ironic tone.

‘The dear knows,' said Katty regretfully, thinking of her own troubles with the medico, ‘they're a handful, the best of them! But are you sure you're not being hasty?' she added with girlish coyness, cocking her little head. ‘Don't you think when you meet him again and he sees the baby, ye might make it up?'

‘If I thought that,' said the girl deliberately, ‘I'd walk out of this into the canal, and the kid along with me.'

‘Oh, Law!' said Katty, feeling rather out of her depth and the least bit frightened. At the same time she now wanted the baby with something like passion. It was the same sort of thing she sometimes felt at auctions for little gewgaws from women's dressing-tables or bits of old china; as if she couldn't live without it. No other child would ever satisfy her. She'd bid up to the last farthing for it – if only she knew what to bid.

Then Nurse O'Mara came back and leaned on the end of the bed, her knees bent and her hands clasped.

‘Well,' she asked, looking from one to the other with a mocking smile, ‘how did ye get on?'

‘Oh, grand, nurse,' said Katty with sudden gaiety. ‘We were only waiting for yourself to advise us.'

‘Why?' asked the nurse. ‘What is there between ye?'

‘Only that I don't want to part with him,' said Monica steadily.

‘Aren't you tired of him yet?' asked the nurse ironically.

‘Jesus, woman, be a bit human!' said Monica with exasperation. ‘He's all I have and I had trouble enough having him.'

‘That's nothing to the trouble you'll have keeping him,' said the nurse.

‘I know that well enough,' said Monica in a more reasonable tone, ‘but
I want to be able to see him. I want to know that he's well and happy.'

‘Oh, if that's all that's troubling you,' said Katty eagerly, ‘you can see him as much as you like at our place.'

‘She could not,' said the nurse angrily. ‘The less the pair of you see of one another, the better for both.… Listen, Mon,' she said pleadingly, ‘I don't care what you do. I'm only speaking for your good.'

‘I know that, Peggy,' said Monica.

‘I know you think you're going to do marvels for that kid, but you're not. I know the sort of places they're brought up in and the sort that bring them up – the ones that live. I tell you, after the first time, you wouldn't be so keen on seeing him again.'

Monica was staring at the window, which had faded in the pale glare of the electric light. There was silence for a few moments. Katty heard the night wind whistling across the rooftops from the bay. The trees along the canal heard it too and sighed. Something about it impressed her; the wind, and the women's voices, and the sleeping baby, and the heart contracted inside her as she thought of Ned, waiting at home. She pulled herself together with fictitious brightness.

‘Now, nurse,' she said firmly, ‘it isn't fair to push the young lady too hard. We'll give her till tomorrow night, and I'll say a prayer to Our Lady of Good Counsel to direct her.'

‘I'll give her all the good counsel she wants,' said the nurse coarsely. ‘If you're thinking of yourself, Monica, you might as well say no now. We won't have to look far for someone else. If you're thinking of the kid and want to give him a fair chance in life after bringing him into it, you'd better say yes while you have the chance.'

Monica suddenly turned her face away, her eyes filling with tears.

‘She can have him,' she said in a dull voice.

‘Oh, thank you, thank you,' said Katty eagerly. ‘And I give you my word you'll never have cause to regret it.'

‘But for Christ's sake don't leave him in the room with me tonight,' cried the girl, leaping up in bed and turning her wild eyes on Nurse O'Mara. ‘I'm warning ye now, don't leave him where I can lay my hands on him. I tell ye I won't be responsible.'

Katty bit her lip and her face went white.

‘There's supper waiting for you downstairs,' said the nurse, beckoning her to go.

‘You're sure I couldn't be of any assistance?' whispered Katty.

‘Certain,' said the nurse dryly.

As Katty turned to look back, the girl threw herself down again, holding her head in her hands. The nurse from the end of the bed looked at her with a half-mocking, half-pitying smile, the smile of a childless woman. The baby was still asleep.

The station – it is really only a siding with a shed – was empty but for the station-master and himself. When he saw the station-master change his cap he rose. From far away along the water's edge came the shrill whistle of the train before it puffed into view with its leisurely air that suggested a trot.

Half a dozen people alighted and quickly dispersed. In a young woman wearing a dark-blue coat who lingered and looked up and down the platform he recognized Michael's wife. At the same moment she saw him but her face bore no smile of greeting. It was the face of a sick woman.

‘Welcome, child,' he said, and held out his hand. Instead of taking it, she threw her arms about him and kissed him. His first impulse was to discover if anyone had noticed, but almost immediately he felt ashamed of the thought. He was a warm-hearted man and the kiss silenced an initial doubt. He lurched out before her with the trunk while she carried the two smaller bags.

‘ 'Tis a long walk,' he said with embarrassment.

‘Why?' she asked wearily. ‘Can't I drive with you?'

‘You'd rather have McCarthy's car but 'tisn't back from Cork yet.'

‘I would not. I'd rather drive with you.'

‘ 'Tis no conveyance,' he said angrily, referring to the old cart. Nevertheless he was pleased. She mounted from behind and sat on her black trunk. He lifted himself in after her, and they jolted down the village with the bay on their left. Beyond the village the road climbed a steep hill. Through a hedge of trees the bay grew upon the sight with a wonderful brightness
because of the dark canopy of leaves. On and up, now to right, now to left, till the trees ceased, the bay disappeared over the brow of a hill, and they drove along a sunlit upland road with sunken fences. Hills like mattresses rose to their right, a brilliant green except where they were broken by cultivated patches or clumps of golden furze; a bog, all brown with bright pools and tall grey reeds, flanked the road.

‘Ye were in about eight, I'd say,' he commented, breaking the silence.

‘Oh yes. About that.'

‘I seen ye.'

‘You did?'

‘I was on the look out. When she rounded the head I ran in and told the wife “Your daughter-in-law's coming.” She nearly had me life when she seen 'twas only the ould liner.'

The girl smiled.

‘Ah, now,' he added proudly, a moment later, ‘there's a sight for you!'

She half raised herself on the edge of the cart and looked in the direction his head indicated. The land dropped suddenly away from beneath their feet, and the open sea, speckled white with waves and seagulls' wings, stretched out before them. The hills, their smooth flanks patterned with the varying colours of the fields, flowed down to it in great unbroken curves, and the rocks looked very dark between their wind-flawed brightness and the brightness of the water. In little hollows nestled houses and cottages, diminutive and quaint and mostly of a cold, startling whiteness that was keyed up here and there by the spring-like colour of fresh thatch. In the clear air the sea was spread out like a great hall with all its folding doors thrown wide; a dancing floor, room beyond room, each narrower and paler than the last, till on the farthest reaches steamers that were scarcely more than dots jerked to and fro as on a wire.

Something in the fixity of the girl's pose made Tom Shea shout the mare to a standstill.

‘ 'Tis the house beyond,' he said, brandishing his stick. ‘The one with the slate roof on the hill.'

With sudden tenderness he looked quizzically down at her from under his black hat. This stranger girl with her American clothes and faintly American accent was his son's wife and would some day be the mother of his grandchildren. Her hands were gripping the front of the cart. She was weeping. She made no effort to restrain herself or conceal her tears, nor
did she turn her eyes from the sea. He remembered a far-away evening when he had returned like this, having seen off his son.

‘Yes,' he said after a moment's silence. ‘ 'Tis so, 'tis so.'

A woman with a stern and handsome face stood in the doorway. As everything in Tom seemed to revolve about a fixed point of softness; his huge frame, his comfortable paunch, his stride, his round face with the shrewd, brown, twinkling eyes and the big grey moustache, so everything in her seemed to obey a central reserve. Hers was a nature refined to the point of hardness, and while her husband took colour from everything about him, circumstances or acquaintance would, you felt, leave no trace on her.

One glance was enough to show her that he had already surrendered. She, her look said, would not give in so easily. But sooner than he she recognized the signals of fatigue.

‘You're tired out, girl!' she exclaimed.

‘I am,' replied the younger woman, resting her forehead in her hands as though to counteract a sudden giddiness. In the kitchen she removed her hat and coat and sat at the head of the table where the westering light caught her. She wore a pale-blue frock with a darker collar. She was very dark, but the pallor of illness had bleached the dusk from her skin. Her cheekbones were high so that they formed transparencies beneath her eyes. It was a very Irish face, long and spiritual, with an inherent melancholy that might dissolve into sudden anger or equally sudden gaiety.

‘You were a long time sick,' said Maire Shea, tossing a handful of brosna on the fire.

‘I was.'

‘Maybe 'twas too soon for you to travel?'

‘If I didn't, I'd have missed the summer at home.'