The Truth About Love (6 page)

“Alas no.”

“‘It is further known,’ wrote Pearse, and I like this one myself, ‘that a pound a week is sufficient to sustain a Dublin family in honest hunger—at least very rich men tell us so, and very rich men know all about everything, from art galleries to the domestic economy of the tenement room. I would ask those who know that a man can live and thrive, can house, feed, clothe and educate a large family on a pound a week to try the experiment themselves. Let them show how the thing is done … they will drink their black tea with gusto and masticate their dry bread scientifically (Lady Aberdeen will tell them the proper number of bites per slice); they will write books on “How to be Happy though Hungry;” when their children call out for more food they will smile.’ Brilliant, that bit of satire by Pearse. He’s a hero, no doubt about it. But to Brother Enda he’s more than that. It seemed essential to remind the good Brother of the sin of idolatry but nothing stopped him. Said he wasn’t worthy to kiss Pearse’s feet. I assured him no one was going to ask him to go that far. Is this boring you Thomas?”

“No. Not at all, Bishop. Does he teach any history other than Irish history?”

“Oh indeed. The Reformation—not a period to be celebrated in a Catholic country.”

“No doubt he has his own version.”

“Ah we must not mock Brother Enda.” And the bishop smiles that sly smile again. “He tells the boys English lust destroyed the Catholic faith in England.”

“Lust is not a specifically British characteristic.”

“Oh I agree Thomas, but English lust! It is Brother Enda’s opinion that you’d not find an Irishman destroying the Catholic faith for a woman.”

“Is it not true, Bishop, that the greatest woman in Ireland is Cathleen Ní Houlihan? Does she not become young and beautiful when she has lured the young groom away to fight for her—for Ireland—in Mr. Yeats’s play?”

“Ah, wouldn’t you charm the birds Thomas! We appreciate it when a newcomer—because you’re no longer a stranger here, you’ve moved up in the pantheon—pronounces our most beloved names correctly. I’ll give you another: Roisín Dubh—dark Irish rose—how about that for the name of a country?”

“Enchanting.”

“The poet, seventeenth century I believe, was originally talking about his love—I suppose we stole his pet name for her and gave it to Ireland. Isn’t it a lovely thing to name your country after a woman? We gave her all those women’s names so that when we sang our rebel songs, even at a time when we sang them in Gaelic, the English wouldn’t know what we were singing about. We know what love is. It’s deep and enduring and requires sacrifice. It’s not lust, which is just a surrender to our baser nature. That’s one of my most popular sermons. I’m talking too much. Forgive me, I suppose I’m talking the encounter out of me in order to understand it better … Shall we start?”

After a short, not wholly companionable, silence we commence our game. His defeat is swift.

“No! How did you do that? You win again! I sometimes feel I come here for the good of my soul. Yes, ritual humiliation is good for the soul. It teaches one humility, which I must then teach others.”

“A bishop needs humility?”

“Most particularly a bishop.”

“Another whiskey?” I know he will say yes. He finishes the whiskey quickly.

“I am armed now and I’m ready again for battle, Thomas.”

“What an alarming prospect, Bishop.”

The explosive laughter again. I smile and demolish him. An uncharacteristic revelation of my contempt for the inadequacy of his game. He is hurt. I have been foolish. We sit in silence for a moment. Distraction is required. He picks up a book from a small side table.

“And is that Mr. Böll’s work I see here?
Irisches Tagebuch—
‘Irish Journal.’ Thomas? Following in eminent footsteps. And what’s this I see?
Speeches from the Dock
, A. M. Sullivan and, I do believe, a first edition. That’s a treasure you’ve got; all the great speeches there: Theobald Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, the Sheares brothers, hanged together while holding hands, Charles Joseph Kick-ham … The list is endless.”

He settles back in the armchair in which my father once sat. On which Harriet carelessly threw her wet cape, on which once I lay while she held me in her mouth for … How long was it? Sexual timelessness. Inaccurate memories of the dream. I get up abruptly.

“Forgive me, Bishop. I need to check something.”

“Of course, Thomas.” Then he settles down to my books.

I close the door gently and lean against the table in the hall. I hold its edges too tightly. I must control this sudden desperation to see Harriet Calder. I have much practice. When I come back he looks pensively at me. Is there something in my face? Bishop Fullerton is a man who searches daily for traces of a man’s soul in his face. He is a spiritual cartographer of the physiognomy. I may be the master at chess, a fact he resents, but I feel that he could position a man on his moral ladder with far greater expertise than he places his queen or pawn.

“A little supper, Bishop?”

We move to the sideboard where, with a flourish, he unveils the sandwiches and the cake.

“Did you mind me doing that? Ahhh! isn’t Bridget a saint … lower case, Thomas. A woman’s touch! Did I ever tell you that I once considered marriage?”

He is determined on this intimacy. His conversational ship has left port. It will take time to anchor him again. I can wait. As we take our plates back and I attend to the fire he begins his story.

“I was about twenty-four, in the year of my vocation. A late vocation, in a sense. I met her at university—we were friends. Aisling was her name and she
was
a vision. Clever too. But despite her infinitely careful encouragement over many months … well, shall we say I resisted. She married my cousin a few years later. They are not happy, my mother tells me, but they soldier on; they soldier on. We believe in endurance in these matters. You come from another world. Another set of rules apply here between men and women. Temptation, of course, comes to us all, but is easier to resist when the conscience is trained by a loving God. I do appreciate the discretion with which, I’m told, you entertain your female companions. You avoid scandal.”

I am appalled at this astonishing invasion of my privacy. I experience a momentary desire to respond. It passes. I must not forget that I now live in a sexually repressed, deeply religious, very small town. I must and do respect its proprieties. I have every intention of continuing to be discreet. After a tense moment or two during which he gleans that I do not intend to comment he continues.

“Ah well, tomorrow I visit Sissy O’Hara. It won’t be easy.”

“No,” I say and sit down opposite him again.

“You were at the funeral—you knew the boy?”

“I met him. Not often. In fact the last time I saw him he talked of Pearse and indeed Sarsfield.”

“Patrick Sarsfield! Earl of Lucan—one of my favourite heroes. When his own name was whispered to him as the password didn’t he throw it down like a gauntlet in front of his enemies when he relieved the siege of Limerick? That man had everything: wealth, brilliance and they say he was very good looking. He died later on the battlefield in France, crying out, ‘Oh that this was for Ireland.’ So he talked of Sarsfield as well as Pearse?”

“Yes—I found it moving. If a little unsettling.”

“And why would it unsettle you?”

“Such passion. Such competition with his sister to know by heart speeches, rhetoric.”

“Well I’ve told Brother Enda to calm the rhetoric a bit. I’m considering talking to the powers that be about a transfer for that pair, maybe to Dundalk or Drogheda. Might suit their temperaments better. Very passionate towns up there; they’ll feel more at home. I know it was a terrible accident and that any teenage boy, as they call them now, could lay his hands on a chemistry set—maybe more—still, after what happened in the North … in that pathetic campaign. Yes, minds were twisted there, just after we’d all settled down, though never giving up our legitimate hopes for the future. But there’s a world of difference between a free nation building its soul on the tales of men who fought hard and long against a ruthless oppressor and breaking young minds with the weight of old sadnesses and burdening young shoulders with an unpayable debt to ghosts. Do you know how Pearse said you appease a ghost, Thomas?”

“No Bishop, I do not.”

“You give it what it asks.”

“A dangerous concept.”

“Indeed it is, Thomas. It’s
Hamlet
, of course.”

“Who was unequal to the task: ‘an oak tree planted in a costly vase.’”

“Goethe! It’s marvellous to talk to you Thomas. This conversation with you will help me tomorrow when I visit the O’Haras, to begin to help them to forget.”

“I doubt they will ever do that.”

“If they allow themselves to be lost in God’s love they will remember differently. An embarrassing concept to you, no doubt.”

I cannot resist feeling angry in some obscure way.

“My father said there were four things a man or a nation could do with their history, which is, after all, their collective memory.”

“Well now, you have me fascinated, Thomas.”

I proffer the whiskey.

“No! I couldn’t. Oh, all right then. Eamonn will be cross with me. Just a splash. Continue. Not with the whiskey. With the story.”

His small brown eyes behind the glasses he dons for chess can sometimes glitter with a concentrated hunger.

“My father said a nation could forget, exploit, obscure or live with its history.”

“What a succinct appraisal. Wouldn’t I have loved to meet your father.”

I note that he uses the past tense.

“He rarely leaves Germany now.”

He has realised his mistake. Coughs, puts his glass carefully on the table. There is an uneasy silence between us now. The Bishop does not know how to deal with the history of my country. But then who does? He sighs and I watch to see him search for another subject, perhaps related in some way to what we currently discuss so that there will be no implication of a too-abrupt cessation.

“My sister’s husband fought in the First and Second World War. Is it indelicate to mention this?”

“Not at all, Bishop.” I am surprised he does not use the common terminology “The Emergency” to describe the Second World War.

“He’s a peer, you know. Much older than Deirdre. But I must say they seem happy. She met him in Dublin. His cousin was shot dead in front of his wife that terrible Sunday morning, 21 November 1920. Though he didn’t tell my sister for years. Thought it might kill the romance, I suppose. Michael Collins ordered the squad—the ‘Twelve Apostles’; never liked that name, obviously—to kill army spies from Dublin Castle. Hard to look a man straight in the face—which I suppose you must—and pull the trigger with his wife standing there screaming. Managed eighteen, they say, or was it fourteen?—it’s debated. They say he hoped the British would retaliate. He got his wish. They opened fire later the same day in Croke Park at a Gaelic football match. Thirteen killed, including three children. Bloody Sunday, they called it. The Anglo-Irish War: long, long and bloody story. Ah it must be the whiskey. I’m lost in history again. I didn’t expect to tell you that, about my sister and her husband, I mean. Nor about his cousin. It shall remain our little secret.”

“A confession, Bishop?”

“Confession to a non-Catholic is indeed a humiliation. To a Catholic, Thomas, it holds out the possibility of absolution.”

“And the memory of sin? Can anyone absolve that?”

“We try, Thomas. We try.”

        SIX

I do not drive a Mercedes, nor do I drive a Volkswagen. I drive an English car. Other than the Volkswagen which, I’m told, is assembled in Dublin—the first non-German franchise—few cars are manufactured in Ireland. Even in daylight the scenery in this part of Ireland does not obtrude. I am not dragged unwillingly by dramatic beauty into the world about me. This is not a colourful county. Fierce colour in Ireland is most often found in language. I, of course, am content not to be ravished. September is here. It is cold and it is wet. They do not have Indian summers in Ireland. They do not normally have summers at all. This year’s sudden summer days were an aberration.

There are few cars on the road. It is an under-populated country. This fact, whether demonstrated by the comparatively empty roads or by the nation’s difficulty in creating a successful modern economy due to its small population, which becomes each year ever smaller, inevitably leads one in any conversation, however short, to the tragedy of emigration. Which leads to the tragedy of the Famine and its cruel mathematics. Subtly in the mind of the listener the shadow of guilt arises, unjustified yet somehow essential if the conversation is to continue.

I am a careful driver. Harriet is not. This thought comes each time I drive. It is a connection to her that I need. I remind myself almost daily of my dependence. How else is my life—this shadow life without her—to be lived? Harriet. Dear Harriet. Not dear Harriet. When I first saw you, you were wearing white. Remember? You wore dresses then. I remember the dress you wore that first day. How easy it was. My terrible, easy first time. It should have been just that.

I turn slowly into the main street and approach the market square, which is used as an unofficial car park by the town. I succumbed some time ago to the
amour-propre
of the few I know here and no longer refer to this place as a village. As I manoeuvre my car into a space close to the library entrance, a task that is less than challenging since there are only four other cars, someone shouts. Then screams. And Olivia O’Hara, her head buried in a book, steps straight out in front of me, sways slightly and seems to disappear, while still holding her book, beneath the wheels of my car. My foot and the brake are in violent collision, my wrist twists to kill the ignition. I almost fall out of my car. People are running across the road. Olivia O’Hara is lying on her side facing the wheels, her arms outstretched towards them like a lover. She is still. Then she rolls over onto her back and looks up at me.

“Oh God! It’s the German! You nearly knocked me down, Mr. Middlehoff Indeed you did knock me down. You nearly killed me.”

I lean over her and with another man whom I recognise as Mr. Brannigan help her to her feet. Her face is slightly grazed and blood from her knee seeps through her woollen stockings.

“I’ll drive her to the hospital. My car’s just here.”

Mr. Brannigan wears a long, heavy raincoat and leans slightly on his furled umbrella, as though his height embarrassed him and he wished to shrink a little. He speaks with the fast rhythms of a man from Cork, an accent with which Bridget has made me familiar. It is one she mocks and mimics.

“I don’t think a hospital is necessary. Dr. Carter is just two doors away.”

They look at me, the German speaking with authority. They look at me in silence. Dr. Carter’s name resonates with the memory of another O’Hara child.

“Oh Mr. Middlehoff…”

The sound of Olivia O’Hara’s voice redeems us from remembered and imagined fears.

“I mustn’t forget my books. I ordered them specially.”

She looks around in panic. The shocked victim always seeks the insignificant, as a reassurance of normality. Looking at her it is clear she may cry at any moment. Crying is not weeping. I know that all will be well.

“Do not worry Miss O’Hara, I will retrieve the books.”

I pick them up.
Eugénie Grandet
, François Mauriac’s
Thérése Desqueyroux
. I am surprised this last is available in the local library. Perhaps Mauriac’s Catholicism? Perhaps respect for his Nobel Prize, or his passion for the mysteries of sin and redemption?

“I’m going through a bit of a French phase. I think it’s a bit like Ireland, only more sophisticated.”

She smiles. And I am reassured. Her smile, I note, is a little crooked, and reminiscent of that of Harriet. Then she hobbles, supported by both Mr. Brannigan and myself. This way will be quicker than by car, and the manoeuvres involved in seating her in either my car or that of Mr. Brannigan might prove even more painful.

Susan Carter opens the door. Her husband rarely speaks of her, whether through a natural reticence in personal matters or through boredom. I remember a comment about her love of hunting. I remember because of Harriet’s passion for the same violent sport, which women often undertake more recklessly than men. “Susan’s only connection with this country is hunting,” he’d said once. I know this kind of Englishwoman. Their education is equestrian. A hierarchical journey from Pony Club to the hunt that ensures an inculcation of courage and will. Physical courage is strangely compelling in a woman. When I said that to Robert Carter one evening he replied with some bitterness, “Susan required more than physical courage to marry me, an older ex-Major. War-damaged, as her mother put it to me once during an uncomfortable meeting.” After which outburst the subject of Susan had remained closed. In a rare personal moment he told me he’d left Britain for a country without constant reminders of the men he would not see again. He is good looking in that Battle of Britain boyish way, about which I feel no animosity. His appearance will not change greatly with age—his handsomeness will simply fade. As Susan’s flat looks will fade as she too becomes middle-aged in about a decade or so, as the luminosity of blondness drains gently away.

“Robert!” she calls out in a high, almost childish voice. Then, turning to us, “I’m sorry, we were having lunch.”

Why should she be sorry? The English of a certain class seem to live in a permanent state of apology.

“Miss O’Hara.”

He walks towards her unhurriedly.

“Please don’t call me Miss. Reminds me of school.”

We follow her into his surgery and help her on to his examining table.

“Will you turn around while I try to get my stockings down.”

“That might be painful, Miss O’Hara. Let me soak the area first. And then I will pull the curtain.”

“Don’t ruin them.” And she tries to smile. “Will someone go and tell my Dada where I am? He can tell Mama better than I can. Don’t tell him on the phone. It’s too much. Mama, well she’s not ready for any shocks, even small ones. He’s up at the showroom, trying to sell a car or a tractor, I can’t remember. Just get to him before anyone tells her.”

She speaks urgently, as though the breaking of the news of this thankfully minor incident is more important than any pain she might be suffering. She is too young to be so protective.

“I will take Miss O’Hara home. I have no further appointments this afternoon.”

“Thank you Dr. Carter. Please stop calling me Miss. You make me grown in a way I don’t want to be with this Miss O’Hara business.”

“Very well. It’s Olivia, then.” He motions us to leave. Outside the surgery door Mr. Brannigan starts to tremble.

“I can’t do this. I’m a bit shaky, you know. They talk about me I’m sure, even to you, Mr. Middlehoff.”

“No they do not, Mr. Brannigan.”

“Ah well, then you really are a stranger. I know there’s whispering. Tom O’Hara, well he steps in sometimes, into strange situations. We never acknowledge it after an incident. He always goes back to being just a decent neighbour. It helps to keep things normal. So if I go to tell him we might be forced to talk. And silence is best.”

He is now gripping his umbrella as if to stop the shaking of his hands.

“Very well. I will tell Mr. O’Hara.”

“Thank you. You must think me a coward. After all, I am a neighbour and, I suppose, a family friend.” He hesitates. “It’s awful to ask you to do it. I know it’s a small thing, this incident. I mean, Olivia’s barely scratched, but with the history …”

We walk to our cars. We nod to each other and part. I drive slowly, trying to prepare myself to tell Tom O’Hara that I have injured his daughter. He takes the news calmly. Just stands there. Rooted. This man strikes me as one who grew slowly, like an oak tree, and will withstand much.

“It’s nothing, you say?”

“Her face—slightly grazed. Some bruising on the knee. I don’t know. She’s shaken, that’s all. Dr. Carter will drive her home. You’ve had a shock, Mr. O’Hara. Would you like me to drive you to your house?”

“No. But thank you. I’m going to walk. It’s not far and this town knows not to face Sissy in her den. Her grief terrifies them and I don’t blame them. No one will tell her. Besides, the walk will give me time to think of what to say to Sissy. Though I’ll walk quickly enough. No loitering.”

Then as he starts to walk away, he turns suddenly and asks, “Have you thought about the gate? I’ve heard nothing from you.”

“Yes. I have thought about it, Mr. O’Hara.” I pause.

“No decision though? A slow man, are you, Mr. Middlehoff? A bit like myself. Sissy’s the quick one. Though I fell for her in an instant. She was like a bolt of lightning in my life. Anyway, sure it’s your gate. Ah well … goodbye Mr. Middlehoff.”

“Please call me Thomas.”

“You know, I think I won’t. I don’t think we’ll ever be close enough for that.”

And I can sense, as he walks down the street, the need in him to hurry and his resistance to it as though his heavy body is a force-field against which he needs to do battle. I go to my car and turn towards home. I had brought a message to a man who must now tell the tale. He must face his task.

When I get home Bridget tells me that the Garda have been fully informed by Dr. Carter who wants me to ring him, and that a Garda will come to Lake House tomorrow.

“I’m glad it’s nothing—but that Olivia O’Hara! She’s always got her head in a book that girl. She starts reading them as she walks out of the library. It’s almost happened before and she should be more careful after … the tragedy.” And her voice trails away.

“Miss O’Hara was in no way to blame.”

Bridget turns to leave; she is clearly rather distressed. Fear for the O’Haras, possibly.

“And Mr. Middlehoff, I nearly banged myself again on that table you have in the hall! That table is all angles. It’s dangerous. A child could brain itself on it. It’s my opinion, Mr. Middlehoff, that marble should only be seen in church. That’s what I think.”

“There are no children in this house.”

“You’re right there, Mr. Middlehoff. And wrong.”

And she set off to the kitchen promising—no, insisting on—tea. I need it, she tells me. And today I say yes. She is pleased.

“Cake?” Why not please her further?

“Yes. Thank you Bridget.”

I ring Robert Carter.

“Robert, forgive me for today’s intrusion. You were the closest—again. She’s all right?”

“All thankfully minor. Dr. Sullivan will take over now—the dressing on her knee needs to be changed, then a few days’ rest … I was glad to be of help. I rather like that girl. She was splendid at the inquest.”

“What did you think of it—the inquest?”

“We are outsiders. There was much to consider here … However, I think the coroner did his job with due consideration to the feelings of all concerned. He might have been a little harder on the chemist who supplied the chemicals. Still, the poor man was almost hysterical with grief. However, I still feel that there was nothing sinister. Though I gather there are rumours, but it is my opinion that most people agree that the matter is now, quite correctly, closed.”

“I agree. We are outsiders. Will you thank Susan for me, Robert. She was most kind.”

“She is.”

Robert Carter’s conversational style is one with which I feel at ease. He uses language to mark distance in a neutral zone. We recognise a certain similarity in our verbal style. Thus we are aware that this conversation is over and thus our friendship continues.