Demons (5 page)

Happiness

Did Mum really not know what it was like to
be

different when everyone else around you was
the same?

‘
We’ve always wanted you to
be happy,’ she said.

Something in her voice made me forget about
myself and ask: ‘Does that mean you haven’t always

been happy?’

‘
No one’s ever happy all
the time,’ Mum said, evasively.

‘
That’s not a proper
answer. In fact, the way you said it makes me think there’s
something you’re hiding.’

‘
I wasn’t very happy when I
was at school,’ she said. ‘But you knew that.’

‘
The mad, kid-strapping
nuns. Yes, you told me about them. Why didn’t they make you stop
wanting to be Catholic?’ I asked her.

Mum shrugged. ‘They almost did, but I’ve
always been a bit stroppy and I decided I wasn’t going to let them.
But they definitely changed the way I thought about religion. They
were strict but that had the effect of making me much more
easygoing.’

I snuggled up to her, the way I had when I’d
been much younger. ‘What about you and Dad?’ I asked.

‘
What about us?’

‘
Have you two always been
happy?’

‘
Always? No. As I just
said, no one ever is. But most of the time we have been. Still are.
Which is all anyone can reasonably expect.’

‘
But . . . ?’ I
persisted.

I’d learnt, going on marches, to meetings
and on door knocks, to be persistent.

‘
Things haven’t always been
easy,’ Mum admitted, looking around the room in case
someone

was listening to our conversation. But there
wasn’t. Mum chose her talk times well, knowing that I didn’t
particularly want Dad, or Gran, to interrupt our talks about
periods, intercourse, childbirth and the rest. The

topic today had turned in a different
direction but it was still private nonetheless.

‘
What things?’

‘
Well, Gran for
instance.’

More about Gran

That
did surprise me. Gran had always been there and, in
particular, had always been there for me. OK, she could be pushy, a
grump and a nuisance at times, and if anyone was a Catholic with a
reasonably large capital C it was Gran (except I knew by then that
part of it was an
impression
she liked to give, an act) but despite
everything, I loved her more than I could say. We all loved her,
didn’t we? What connection did Gran have with
unhappiness?

‘
Your Gran’s not the
easiest person to have around,’ Mum said by way of
introduction.

‘
No,’ I
said slowly, considering this, ‘I guess not but she’s not difficult
either. Not
really
difficult. Is she?’

‘
Depends what you mean by
difficult. You’re not as involved with her as I am.’

Wasn’t I! ‘She’s independent,’ I said.
‘Always has been.’

‘
Exactly,’ said Mum. ‘She
speaks her mind.’

I grinned, the childhood memory of playing
at priests coming back to me and, with it, Gran’s implied criticism
of the Pope and church rules. ‘Woman power!’

Mum didn’t grin back.

‘
Power,’ she said. ‘That’s
it in a nutshell. Your

Gran’s always been a woman
with power - and I don’t mean
of
power, they’re two separate things - and it’s not
something she’s been able to give up easily, if at all.’

‘
What do you
mean?’

‘
Before she came to live
here with us she had her

own home.’

‘
I know.’

‘
She had status in the
village.’

‘
She’s told me the stories.
Including how she once hid an IRA man in her basement and all
that.’

‘
Look Andrea,’ said Mum,
‘when I met your Dad and we decided to marry, Gran wasn’t only sad
that she was going to lose her last remaining son to a strange
country and a strange woman, she was really pretty
angry.’

‘
I suppose she would be,’ I
said. ‘I mean, my two uncles were killed by the British and she was
going to be left all alone. She probably hoped Dad would come back
one day. She never thought he’d get batoned standing next to a
beautiful woman, not to mention a strange one.’

I used the word ‘beautiful’ deliberately,
trying to soften the increasingly rough edge of Mum’s tone. I’d
decided, too late, that this was information I could have done
without. But Mum was on a roll. Now that she’d started on Gran she
had to carry on unburdening herself.

‘
Exactly,
she didn’t think. Not ahead. When she heard our news she realised
for the first time,
properly
realised, that the chances were he wasn’t coming
back. Not to live.’

‘
But what’s all this got to
do with happiness?’ I asked.

‘
Your Dad finally persuaded
Gran to come and

live with us,’ Mum said. ‘He wanted her to
be with the closest family she had left. She agreed, reluctantly,
but she agreed. I thought we’d help her find a small flat nearby
but, as things turned out, she

ended up staying permanently with us.’

‘
And you didn’t want her
to?’

Mum sighed. ‘It’s not as if I didn’t,
exactly. In principle as much as anything else I believe that
younger people should carry some responsibility for looking after
older ones, but Gran . . .’

‘
She
still wanted the power she was used to?’ I said, pleased with my
perceptiveness yet finding it hard to know what Mum was on about.
Gran and Mum involved in a power struggle? It didn’t seem likely.
I’d never heard them shout at each other. They seemed to
agree
more often than
not.

Mum nodded. ‘I know it
sounds like something out of a soap opera and most of the time I
can treat it like that and just laugh it away but other times, the
whole thing becomes almost . . .
malevolent
.’

‘
But all she did was make
us pray the rosary together and that stopped when I started primary
school.’

Gran was a strange contradiction, true
enough. As Mum paused before replying, I saw in front of me
pictures of Gran and me.

The two of us walking in the park, Gran

unexpectedly tackling the playground
equipment, sliding the slide, swinging the swing.

Gran reading to me before I went to sleep,
stories from the Bible of course, but not a child’s version, the
real thing. Scary but thrilling Old Testament tales of violence,
revenge and seduction, as well as nicer but not as interesting New
Testament parables about

being kind to strangers,
turning the other cheek and labouring in the vineyard.

Gran in silent prayer, falling asleep as her
rosary beads slipped from her hand to the floor. Sometimes

she prayed without her rosary, her lips
moving but no sound coming from them. What were you praying for

I’d ask her when she woke up. But if she
could remember, she never told me.

Gran supporting my childhood desire to be a
priest.

Gran and I poring over
Michelangelo’s painting
The Creation of
Adam
.

These days the finger of God seemed to be
retreating, rather than coming closer.

‘There were other things,’ Mum continued.
‘We didn’t really mind doing the family rosary thing for a while.
Salved our consciences, at least.’

‘
What other things
then?’

‘
Sometimes Gran tried to
come between your dad and me. Not often, but occasionally and
subtly. When we didn’t expect it. It was never to do with the big,
important issues just about small, silly things. A grizzle here, a
moan there. Feeding an argument, fanning the embers of a dispute,
that sort of thing. Made it worse really because there was never
anything specific to accuse her of. And because I’ve never talked
about it with you before, it probably all sounds a bit ridiculous
and power seems far too big a word to describe it, but power is
what it was all about. Anyway, it hasn’t happened for a while.
Gran’s an old lady now. She’s tired. She’s helped, she still helps,
she’s done a lot to make life easier for all of us, and yet and yet
. . . there’s something between us that hasn’t ever gone away and
probably never will.

‘
Maybe
it’s time to let the anger go,’ I said. ‘And that line
did
come straight from a
soap opera, by the way.’

Mum laughed, and so did I, and we both felt
a little better for it. ‘You’re undoubtedly right,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll
keep trying. Anyway now that I’ve heaped

my
troubles onto you I feel appropriately guilty and probably
haven’t done a thing to help you with yours.’

‘
Mine,’ I
said. ‘What troubles do
I
have?’

Mum laughed again and hugged me. ‘Weren’t
you just telling me about them?’ she said.

That’s how our talk of journeys ended. The
facts of life I’d learnt that day were not the ones I’d expected.
My ideas, my perceptions, about Gran and about Mum had changed and
I didn’t know if, or how much, it mattered. This new Gran was still
the old Gran as well. The new Mum was the same as the old. The same
but different.

Afterwards I wish I had talked to Gran about
what Mum had told me but I didn’t and soon it was too late.

Later

Not long afterwards, one
day after school, I re-membered what had started our one-child-only
conversation. I felt an urge to go back to it.

Mum was frantic making tea, running late for
a night shift at the hospital

‘
The
other day you really meant that you didn’t - don’t -
actually
care
about the Church’s rules,’ I said.

Although Mum and Dad not seeing eye-to-eye
with the Church was something I had been vaguely

aware of since dressing-up days, it hadn’t
occurred to me to wonder how deep it might go. Now I was eager to
know where she and Dad stood. I wanted to know where I myself might
stand in the future.

Mum did a double take. Then she clicked.
‘Oh, I see. Artificial birth control?’

‘
Yes,’ I said.

She paused briefly from forking mince in a
mixing bowl to calculate her answer. ‘Well, there are some things
that I think aren’t really any of the Church’s business.’

‘
You can’t believe some
things the Church says and not others,’ I said piously, hearing
uncanny echoes of Ms Proctor and other religious education teachers
coming from my own mouth.

‘
Of
course you can,’ said Mum, throwing tomato sauce into the mince.
‘The Church can be -
has
been - wrong, many times,’ she
declared.

‘
So why do you and Dad, and
me, still go to Mass every Sunday?’

‘
Can you get me the mixed
spice please Andrea. You’ve heard of Vatican Two, the big Church
Council?’

I nodded and went to the pantry. Young
Father Wright, parish priest of our church since old Father Brady
had retired, had visited each class a couple of times a month to
deliver a pep talk. During one of his visits he had spoken about a
big, ages-ago church

conference called Vatican Two and how what
he called its ‘winds of change’ had ‘blown away the cobwebs’ and
changed everything. I got the impression that he wasn’t too happy
about it.

‘
Well Vatican Two changed a
lot of things,’ said Mum. ‘Thanks.’ She tipped in the spice. ‘Blow,
that’s far too much. Gran will complain of indigestion.
Oh

well, never mind. Breadcrumbs please.’

I went back to the pantry.

‘
There were new
understandings, new rules,’ said Mum. ‘People could see that the
old rules hadn’t

been written in concrete. It was a confusing
time but quite liberating too. That’s why we stayed. And because we
choose to believe in Happy-Forever-After

or, should I say, Heaven.’

‘
But still rules,’ I
pointed out, passing the breadcrumbs. ‘Do you need an
egg?’

‘
Yes and some milk as well
thanks. I prefer to think of them as guidelines.’

‘
So, basically, we can do
what we like even if the church says we can’t?’

‘
That’s not what I
said.’

‘
But it could be what you
meant,’ I explained.

‘
Only if you take a black
and white view of what I said,’ said Mum. ‘Can you wipe up the milk
I’ve just spilled?’

‘
Why can’t Dad get tea?’ I
asked.

‘
He’s off to a meeting
tonight,’ said Mum.

‘
What sort of a
meeting?’

‘
Something about the Pope’s
encyclical on social justice,’ said Mum.

‘
His what?’ Father Wright
had used the word but now I couldn’t remember what it
meant.

‘
His letter to the Church.
Oven on low,’ Mum muttered to herself. ‘What were we talking
about

Andrea?’

‘
Black and white,’ I
reminded her. ‘That’s interesting because it’s sort of what we’re
doing at school right now. Looking at how different people
interpret the same things. Taking opposing views.’