decide to be all the friendlier and more animated with Mark. As she did this, she could see how irritated Catherine was.
“Nora, it’s all right for you,” she said. “But we have to live here and even though I meet the Protestants from the big houses in the ICA or the golf club, and even though they know Mark in the IFA and knew his father and mother before him, they would see you coming in Kilkenny on the main street and they wouldn’t even look at you. I don’t know what we went to that auction for.”
“What auction?” Mark asked.
“Catherine’s friend Dilly attacked a Protestant woman with a pair of fire irons,” Nora said.
“She did not!”
“She seemed very nice, Catherine,” Nora said. “But I honestly thought she was joking. I mean between the fire irons and the sheep it was hard to keep a straight face.”
“What sheep?” Mark asked.
They went to bed early. Nora was glad to be away from them and from the talk of auctions and big houses and new washing machines. It was clear to her that there was nothing she could have spoken to Catherine and Dilly about, nothing that would have interested her or them. When she asked herself what she was interested in, she had to conclude that she was interested in nothing at all. What mattered to her now could be shared with no one. Jim and Margaret had been with her when Maurice died, and that meant that all three of themcould talk easily when Jim and Margaret came to the house because, while they did not refer to those days in the hospital, what they went through then underlay every word they said. It was there with them in the same way as the air was in the room, it was so present that no one ever commented on it. For them now conversation was a way of managing things. But for Catherine and Dilly and Mark conversation was normal. She wondered if she would ever again be able to have a normal conversation and what topics she might be able to discuss with ease and interest.
At the moment the only topic she could discuss was herself. And everyone, she felt, had heard enough about her. They believed it was time that she stop brooding and think of other things. But there were no other things. There was only what had happened. It was as though she lived underwater and had given up on the struggle to swim towards air. It would be too much. Being released into the world of others seemed impossible; it was something she did not even want. How could she explain this to anyone who sought to know how she was or asked if she was getting over what happened?
She woke early in the morning, dreading the day ahead. She wondered if the boys felt like this too. Did Fiona and Aine also dread the day ahead when they woke? Jim and Margaret? Perhaps, she thought, they had found other things to preoccupy them. She, too, could find other things to think about—money, for example, or her children, or the job in Gibney’s. Finding things to think about was not the problem for her; the problem for her was that she was on her own now and that she had no idea how to live. She would have to learn, but it was a mistake to try to do so in someone else’s house. It was a mistake to lie here in a strange bed when her own bed at home was strange too. The strangeness of home, however, did not require a bright response from her. It would be along time, she thought, before she would leave her own house for a night again.
Downstairs, she found that Catherine and a local woman who came to help her with the housework had decided to do a full clean-out of the kitchen and the pantry before they installed the drier beside the washing machine in the pantry. Every single piece of delft and crockery had been removed from shelves to be dusted and Catherine was in the process of cleaning out drawers and sorting each object, some for discarding and others to be put back. Conor and one of his cousins were helping while Donal sat apart. As soon as Donal saw her, he shrugged as if to say that all this had
“Nora, it’s all right for you,” she said. “But we have to live here and even though I meet the Protestants from the big houses in the ICA or the golf club, and even though they know Mark in the IFA and knew his father and mother before him, they would see you coming in Kilkenny on the main street and they wouldn’t even look at you. I don’t know what we went to that auction for.”
“What auction?” Mark asked.
“Catherine’s friend Dilly attacked a Protestant woman with a pair of fire irons,” Nora said.
“She did not!”
“She seemed very nice, Catherine,” Nora said. “But I honestly thought she was joking. I mean between the fire irons and the sheep it was hard to keep a straight face.”
“What sheep?” Mark asked.
They went to bed early. Nora was glad to be away from them and from the talk of auctions and big houses and new washing machines. It was clear to her that there was nothing she could have spoken to Catherine and Dilly about, nothing that would have interested her or them. When she asked herself what she was interested in, she had to conclude that she was interested in nothing at all. What mattered to her now could be shared with no one. Jim and Margaret had been with her when Maurice died, and that meant that all three of themcould talk easily when Jim and Margaret came to the house because, while they did not refer to those days in the hospital, what they went through then underlay every word they said. It was there with them in the same way as the air was in the room, it was so present that no one ever commented on it. For them now conversation was a way of managing things. But for Catherine and Dilly and Mark conversation was normal. She wondered if she would ever again be able to have a normal conversation and what topics she might be able to discuss with ease and interest.
At the moment the only topic she could discuss was herself. And everyone, she felt, had heard enough about her. They believed it was time that she stop brooding and think of other things. But there were no other things. There was only what had happened. It was as though she lived underwater and had given up on the struggle to swim towards air. It would be too much. Being released into the world of others seemed impossible; it was something she did not even want. How could she explain this to anyone who sought to know how she was or asked if she was getting over what happened?
She woke early in the morning, dreading the day ahead. She wondered if the boys felt like this too. Did Fiona and Aine also dread the day ahead when they woke? Jim and Margaret? Perhaps, she thought, they had found other things to preoccupy them. She, too, could find other things to think about—money, for example, or her children, or the job in Gibney’s. Finding things to think about was not the problem for her; the problem for her was that she was on her own now and that she had no idea how to live. She would have to learn, but it was a mistake to try to do so in someone else’s house. It was a mistake to lie here in a strange bed when her own bed at home was strange too. The strangeness of home, however, did not require a bright response from her. It would be along time, she thought, before she would leave her own house for a night again.
Downstairs, she found that Catherine and a local woman who came to help her with the housework had decided to do a full clean-out of the kitchen and the pantry before they installed the drier beside the washing machine in the pantry. Every single piece of delft and crockery had been removed from shelves to be dusted and Catherine was in the process of cleaning out drawers and sorting each object, some for discarding and others to be put back. Conor and one of his cousins were helping while Donal sat apart. As soon as Donal saw her, he shrugged as if to say that all this had
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