Nora Webster (42 page)

“And Donal?”

“Yes, Donal.”

“And Conor?”

He lowered his head and seemed not to hear her.

“Maurice, will Conor be all right?”

His eyes appeared to have filled with tears.

“Maurice, I need you to answer. Will Conor be all right?”

“Don’t ask,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and faltering. “Don’t ask.”

When she edged towards him, he put his hands out, indicating that she should not move closer.

“Did you know . . . ?” she began.

“Yes, yes,” he said.

“It was only when you were sick I knew—”

“Yes, yes.”

“And did you ever regret . . . ?”

“Regret?” he asked, his voice louder.

“Us?”

“No, no.”

He smiled again, and then the expression on his face was puzzled.

“Maurice, is there something else?”

“The other one. There is one other,” he said.

“You mean Jim?”

“No.”

“Margaret?”

“No.”

“Who?”

“The other one.”

“There is no other one.”

“There is.”

“Maurice, give me a name. There is no other one.”

He covered his face with his hands. She watched him; he was in pain. Then he looked at her. He seemed ready to smile again, but he did not smile.

“Maurice, stay a while.”

He shook his head.

“Maurice, is it the music? If I play the music, will you come another time?”

“No, not the music.”

“Maurice, tell me about Conor. Is there something . . . ?”

“There is one other.”

“Maurice, there is no one else. Tell me a name.”

He faded again, and she heard a low gasp from him.

“Maurice, will you be there when I come?”

“No one knows,” he said. “No one.”

She heard the sound then of a car horn beeping on the street. She was lying across the bed with all her clothes on. When she sat up the room was empty. When she crossed the room and touched the rocking chair it rocked gently back and forth on the old springs. She put her hand where he had been sitting but there was no heat from it, nor any sign that anyone had been there.

Downstairs, she found the keys to the house and the keys to the car. She put a coat over her arm and walked out, closing the door behind her. As she started the car, she wondered where she would go, but it hardly mattered. It was only when she found herself veering off the Dublin Road towards Bunclody that she knew she was going towards her aunt Josie’s. She concentrated hard on the road ahead, forcing herself to stay awake. As she turned away from the river up the steep hill towards Josie’s, she wondered what she should say, how she could explain why she was here. There was a gateway on the left with space for a car or a tractor to pull in. She parked the car there and switched off the engine. She put her head back and closed her eyes. She wondered if she should turn now and drive back into the town, but she felt that she would not be able to concentrate enough on the driving. She would rest here for a while, she thought, hope that Josie or John or John’s wife would not pass and see her. She would sleep for a while and then drive somewhere else. She did not know where.

When she woke, John was rapping on the window. She started in fright when she saw him and then pulled down the window of the car.

“I couldn’t think who it was for a minute,” he said and smiled. He had left the engine of his tractor running.

“I was having a rest,” she said, although she knew that this would make no sense to him.

“My mother’s in the garden,” he said.

“Are you going up to the house?” she asked.

“I am,” he said.

“I’ll follow you then.”

Once she was sitting in Josie’s kitchen, John put on the kettle and went in search of his mother. Nora moved from being sharply
awake, noticing colours in the room and hearing sounds outside, to feeling drowsy and then feeling the desire to sleep, to lie down anywhere and sleep.

When John and Josie came into the room, she could see the looks of concern on their faces. John stood at the door for a moment and then withdrew. Josie was wearing her work-clothes and began to pull off her gardening gloves.

“Has something happened?”

“Maurice came back. He was in the room upstairs, our bedroom.”

“What?”

“He spoke to me, Josie. He said things.”

As the kettle boiled, Josie moved to turn it off.

“Nora, what is wrong with you?”

“I can’t sleep, and then when I sleep . . .”

“Are you on some medication?”

“Yes, I strained my arm and the muscles in my chest. I’m on painkillers.”

“How long is it since you have slept?”

“More than a week. Sometimes I can fall into the deepest sleep but it never lasts.”

“Have you told the doctor this?”

“Yes, and Fiona is collecting sleeping-pills for me on her way home from school.”

Josie filled the teapot with hot water.

“Maurice was in the room and he spoke,” Nora said.

“Did you tell this to anyone else?”

“No, I came out here. I have nowhere else to go.”

“John says that you were fast asleep in the car.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Nora said. “And he said,
Maurice said, when I asked him if Conor would be all right . . . he told me not to ask. What did that mean?”

“You were dreaming, Nora. No one appeared.”

“He was in the room,” Nora said. “I know what a dream is, but he was in the room. And he said—”

“He was not in the room.”

“He was, he was, he was.” She began to rock back and forth, crying. “If I could be with him—”

“What did you say?”

“If I could be with him, that’s what I said.”

Josie and John led her to the bedroom upstairs and gave her a nightdress. Josie came in a minute later with a glass of water.

“Now, this pill is going to put you fast asleep, and when you wake you’ll feel groggy for a while, but I’ll be here and just call out and don’t try and walk. These are the most powerful sleeping-pills you can get, so we use them carefully. And I need the key to your house.”

Nora handed it to her.

“Now, I am going into the town to settle some things and John will check on you.”

“And Conor?”

“You don’t worry about Conor or anyone. Your job is to sleep.”

When she woke she felt a heaviness in her limbs. She tried to move her arms but they were sore and her chest was sore. She wondered where the painkillers were. She thought she had them in the drawer in the table beside the bed but she was not sure. When she reached for the table, she found nothing. It was not her own room. It was
dark and there was a faint sound coming from somewhere but she could not think what it was. And then she remembered Josie and the pill and the feel of the sheets and the big pillow and the soft mattress. She wondered if there was a lamp and reached out in case there was a bedside table further away from the bed but there did not seem to be one.

She called out and Josie came, turning on a lamp that was near the window.

“I came and looked at you earlier,” Josie said, “and you were fast asleep.”

“What day is it?”

“Friday.”

“What time?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“I have to go. Conor . . . and Donal tomorrow.”

“You are going nowhere. Conor is fine. I told him that you were staying out with us for the weekend and I called in on Margaret and he is going to spend the day there working on his photographs. And Una is going to visit Donal tomorrow and maybe Fiona will go with her. And Una and Seamus will also make sure that Conor is all right and maybe Conor will come out here on Sunday if you are well enough. And I phoned Sister Thomas, you know I often talk to her if I am worried about you, and she’ll talk to the Gibneys and tell them that you will be back as soon as you’re better. And I have the sleeping tablets that Dr. Cudigan prescribed and the other pills that Fiona was able to find. They are very strong painkillers. You wouldn’t give them to a horse. But maybe you needed them. So everything is taken care of. All you have to do is sleep, that’s all you have to do. And, in return, when I get sick, you can come out and look after me when the others get fed up of me. That’s what we are all for.”

Josie took the dressing-gown from the back of the door.

“You must get up now. I am going to run a bath for you and I’ll put on music so you don’t fall asleep in the bath and it would be best if you leave the bathroom door open. And then we’ll have something nice to eat and you can go back to bed and see if you can sleep naturally, and if you can’t I’ll leave a pill out for you.”

“Please don’t put on any music,” Nora said.

“All right, but don’t fall asleep in the bath.”

“I won’t.”

Nora sat in the room downstairs as Josie made spaghetti with a tomato sauce. She opened a bottle of wine.

“I bought that bottle in Dublin,” she said. “We’ll have a glass or two tonight. They say you shouldn’t drink alcohol with sleeping-pills, but I often find the opposite is the case.”

“You don’t believe me about Maurice,” Nora said.

“No, I don’t.”

“It was him all right, everything about him.”

“We barely manage, all of us,” Josie said, “to see what’s there. That’s the hardest thing, although no one would tell you that. If we could just look at what’s there!”