The South (11 page)

“I have thought of you too,” she said.

“Think of me now, then, and think about Richard. I want
you to come back with me. I have told Richard I’m meeting you. I have told him that I will ask you to come back.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I did it because I meant it. Seriously, I want you to come back now.”

“Tom, listen to me. I married you and when I did I owned a large house and three hundred acres. It was in my mother’s name then, but it was mine. Are you telling me that I own nothing now and you will let me have nothing?” She tried to change her tone, to speak more quietly and firmly.

“What’s ours is Richard’s, it’s for him, it’s not for us to sell, no matter how badly we behave.”

“Will you buy it from me?”

“I don’t need to buy it from you. I own it, but it’s not mine to sell or buy or dispose of. I told Richard I would ask you to come back. Do you wish me to tell him you want to sell half his land?”

“You will tell him what you like. You can tell him his mother is impoverished.”

“I can’t talk to you here.”

She did not answer immediately, she didn’t know what he wanted: did he want to leave the hotel and walk the streets with her, did he want to move to her room, or did he just want to talk somewhere more private?

“Do you want to come upstairs?” she said.

“Where?”

“To my room.”

“All right,” he said, and stood up hesitantly. She had the key with her and she beckoned him to follow her towards the staircase.

*   *   *

Once in the room she closed the door and leaned against it looking at him. It was now clear that he had aged more than
five years. As he went to the window and looked out, she noticed that he had developed a slight stoop and his face had thickened. She could hear herself breathing.

“I’ve never been upstairs in this hotel before,” he said. “What made you choose it?”

She didn’t reply. He stayed at the window looking out. “It’s frightful weather,” he said. “It’s been a dreadful summer.” She went over and stood beside him at the window and looked out too.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s been very dull here.”

She turned around and put her head on his shoulder—at first he did not respond, but stayed there dead still as though he was embarrassed, his hands hanging by his sides. After a while he held her and moved her towards the bed where he lay beside her. He took his jacket off and his shoes. For a long time he held her against him, saying nothing. Until the light outside began to fade they lay there, together.

“Tom,” she said, “put your hands on my tummy.”

“Why?” he asked.

“You won’t be able to feel it yet because it’s too small, but soon you will. I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a baby in the New Year.”

“I don’t want to put my hands down,” he said. His voice was low.

“I’m going back,” she whispered. “I’m going to have a child.”

He rolled away from her and sat on the side of the bed.

“You’re pregnant. Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s the father? Can I ask?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I’m going to go now,” he said quietly. “I would like to have an address for you.”

“My mother always knows where I am.”

“Will you be here for long?” She could hear him putting on his shoes.

“No, I will go as soon as I can.”

“Could you wait for a few days? I will send you a cheque. Can you wait?” His voice was subdued.

“Yes, I can.”

“Wait then. I must go now.” He put his two hands on her arm and held her for a moment before he left the room.

ISONA

Even months later the memory of the pain stayed with her, the shock of the pain. She had bought a jeep so that when the time came, there would be a way of getting her down the mountain to help, if help was needed. She tried to teach Miguel to drive but he was impatient and useless behind the wheel. She would have to let someone in the village drive down.

The first pain she felt was like a period pain, but when it came again she knew what it was. She could not make it to the unused stone church to ring the bells as she had arranged to do; she called from the window but there was no response. When the first contractions came she had to lie down. She had no idea how the child would be delivered. It seemed too big, it seemed impossible. They sent for the midwife. When Miguel came Katherine told him the baby was going to die. For hours and hours she believed this and she told it to anyone who came into the room.

She wanted it to die, to lie still and die. It was the life in it which tore her. All night Miguel held her hand and she whispered to him that she wanted the child to die.

The night would not end. When she asked what time it was they told her it was three in the morning. She asked the midwife what time the child would come, and the midwife said it was difficult, it could take a long time.

“Am I going to die?” she said in English. It had not
occurred to her before, but when she looked at the midwife’s face, it struck her, it struck her that she was going to die and the child was going to live.

“Miguel, Miguel!” she shouted as loudly as she could; he came bounding up the wooden stairs.

“Qué pasa? Qué pasa?”

“Me voy a morir? Me voy a morir?”

“No.”

“Seguro? Estás seguro?”

He did not move from the bed again. His denial that she would die did not reassure her; he had accepted her question as natural, had been too quick to answer it. The midwife wanted her to relax, but Katherine watched her eyes for some sign. The pain came back with the contractions. The baby would live, she knew, but the baby would kill her. And they would bury her as soon as they could, and the child would live. The child was too big not to kill her.

In the last few months as the baby grew bigger, she and Miguel had spent most of the time in bed together, wrapped up against the cold. In the few hours of daylight she covered herself up and went down to the workroom to draw and paint. She drew the room with a pencil and coloured in only what could be seen through the window, the wide white air, the mountains in the distance, odd rough stone buildings. She gave the room a spare domesticity by moving only a table against the wall and putting a few jugs on it and a chair beside it at an angle as though someone had just been sitting there. She made the room seem dark, sketchy and unfinished. She had done one or two of these a day on small sheets of white paper. That’s what would be left now, these small things drawn when she was happy, when there was energy to spare. Some people would know that they had been done in the months before she died.

She hardly remembered giving birth. She remembered very little once the midwife cut her with what she thought was scissors. She remembered that she cried. She remembered that Miguel held her hand and told her she was well.

Months later the scars and bitterness remained. She had not wanted a child; she was not prepared to go through such fear and agony. It had been easier when Richard was born, the midwife could not believe that this was her second child. And then they had presented the child to her, clean, swaddled, quiet. It was a girl, they told her as they put new sheets on her bed and took the other ones away,
una noia.
She had not wanted to be diverted thus into caring for a child, feeding the child, nursing it. She had not sought any of this. She could not tell anyone how much she believed the whole thing had diminished her.

She took the baby into her arms; she was tiny, a small shadow of black hair on her head. As the months went by she watched, amazed by the baby’s absolute trust, by the calm way the baby looked at her. It had not been like this when Richard was a baby. The baby smiled more when Miguel was there to play with her and make sounds and faces to amuse her.

Summer came around again. In front of the house the baby lay in a pram. Miguel wanted to call her Isona. They sat in easy chairs drinking wine in the afternoon. The hot sun shone down on the Pyrenees. Soon they would need to start getting wood in again for the winter.

A DIARY: 1957

Pallosa, 23 June 1957

This morning when I woke up I could hear Isona in the room downstairs. She was standing leaning against the bars of the cot, crying, and as soon as I came in she began to laugh. Her face lit up. She put her arms out to me and I picked her up. She was all wet. She kept laughing as I carried her into the kitchen. Sometimes it is wonderful having her here to trust me and to love me the way she does.

There is no one here who will understand how much at certain times she looks like my father, how a look comes on her face and she becomes the image of him. Richard had that too when he was her age, although they don’t look alike in any other way. We have removed her from a world where that sort of recognition means anything. We are her only roots, no one comes before us.

She will never know where she came from, where we came from, the accidents that have brought her into the world. I would love her to know the house I come from, the river, the farm. I would love it if we could all meet sometime, Richard, Tom, Miguel, Isona, Michael Graves. I would love to see Richard picking her up and carrying her. I’m afraid I have placed myself beyond all that.

Things are difficult with Miguel now. I had a nightmare. I woke in the night, still screaming, I couldn’t stop the dream,
even though I was wide awake and Miguel was holding me, it stayed on and I was afraid to sleep it was so real and close, I believed it would start happening again.

I dreamed about the fire. I dreamed about being led down through the long corridors of the big old house, a man behind me, guiding me along, with all the rooms on fire and the corridor running on and on until we came to the stairs. I could feel his hand on my neck guiding me. The dream was as real to me as being here now in the kitchen after dinner and the pen in my hand.

When we got to the door we couldn’t get out, there were men waiting outside for us and one of the men was Miguel. They had guns. He had a gun and he was shooting at me. I feel afraid again as I write this down, it was so bad. It was ghastly. I don’t know who it was behind me but when I woke up I thought it was Tom. I woke up when the bottom of my nightdress caught fire. I couldn’t believe the fire had stopped, even though Miguel kept telling me that I was fine, that there was nothing to worry about.

I told him about the dream. I told him things I had not told him before. I told him about the men setting fire to the house in Enniscorthy and about us running out in our bare feet in the middle of the night. I had not told him any of this before. He understood. He asked me questions about Ireland and about Irish politics, but I only knew that this had happened to us and to others like us before the British left.

He was puzzled by this new context he had for me, as though I was some sort of victim of history. Not a victim, perhaps, but a participant. I have failed to explain to him that I am not. I am on my own here without all that weight of history and I differ from him in the way I manage. He’s decided I am someone who was on the wrong side of a war. I am sorry I told him anything. I am as innocent as our child.

Miguel has gone down to Fuster’s house. He took down the beer I brought up from Llavorsi today. They will talk about the war, what happened before the war, the war they had. When I have washed up I will go down and join them, have a few drinks. I hope Isona sleeps all night. I hope things get better between us.

A LETTER TO MICHAEL GRAVES

Pallosa

1 May 1958

Dear Michael Graves,

Miguel, you will be glad to know, has discovered illness and is thoroughly enjoying himself wrapped up in bed with a walking stick to hand so he can bang on the floor when he wants something. He says he is not growing a beard but he refuses all offers of a razor, soap and a mirror. I’m not sure I want him to have a beard.

He has become addicted to soup, which he says is much easier to eat than meat and vegetables when you’re in bed. He’s been lying up there for ten days now. Sometimes he coughs just to let me know that he’s still suffering from a bad cold, or flu, but most of the time he sits up with a sketch pad resting on his knees drawing very unlikely faces. He says he may never get up again, but he has to move at least once a day, as I refuse to come up and down the stairs with a chamber pot, despite his requests that I do so. I have told him that I may go to bed myself soon too, as I’m not in the full bloom of health either and he says I will be very welcome but we’ll have to put Isona into an orphanage.

Isona, who has now fallen asleep, has been a nuisance all morning. Her cheeks are red from moaning and crying. I try to send her up to her father but Miguel has developed a cunning way of forcing her to come back down again. I think he
just ignores her. Yesterday she came down crying and said he was making faces at her. She won’t stop crying and whingeing. I began to cry as well when she cried at me. She hates that and I have made myself stop. There’s no point in making the child more of a monster than she already is.

Miguel has good reason to stay in bed. What will happen when he gets up again is beyond me. He has been involved in a running battle with Mataró. The reason for this battle is as clear to you as it is to me. Miguel doesn’t like Mataró because he is a fascist. I don’t know if he is a fascist. Do you know anything about that? Anyway, Miguel has been making every effort to have a fight with him since the day we arrived here. The only reason such a battle has been avoided is that Mataró is too stupid to understand the sort of thing that Miguel has been shouting at him, or too deaf. I think actually he is a bit deaf.

The women in Mataró’s life are much put upon, as you know. His wife and daughter run if they see me coming. They’re like a pair of idiot nuns. Why the daughter, whatever her name is, is dressed in black, I have never understood. They look like small fierce birds, both of them, and they oppress me whenever I think of them. I don’t often think of them. Someone wanted to send for them when I was in the middle of giving birth to Isona, and one of the things that made Miguel laugh most is the idea of the two of them arriving up in the bedroom with me squealing like a pig on the bed. They give me the creeps.