Grievance. Marguerite Alexander

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and touchy reserve about anything that might reflect less than well on them, so she had no intention of letting the two women, whose presence in her house she now deeply resented, see her fear, shame and bewilderment. She didn’t want them to know that she had overheard their conversation, so she sat there and hugged to herself the horrific possibilities that the word ‘gerbil’ had unleashed.

      Nora stayed in the garden until Mrs Daly, with a great show of bustle and concern, came out to get her.

      ‘Whatever can you be thinking of, pet, to stay out here for so long, catching your death?’

      Nora knew that, in the grand scheme of things, it was Mrs Daly’s task to call her in, and that she had suddenly woken up to the time she had allowed to pass while she was gossiping in the kitchen with a woman who had no business being there anyway.

      ‘Now, you come inside and warm yourself up while I make you a bit of dinner. I’ve had a wee look and there’s sausages, ham, fish fingers, soup. You just tell me what you’d like.’

      She allowed herself to be led into the house, but eluded all Mrs Daly’s attempts to take her by the hand. When they reached the kitchen the other woman had already left, as Nora had suspected would be the case. She sat, composed and docile, at the kitchen table, while Mrs Daly heated some soup and toasted bread for them both, and although her appetite had not returned, she forced herself to eat a few mouthfuls. More than anything, she didn’t want Mrs Daly to know that she had heard the word ‘gerbil’, as though the word itself had a special power and the mere act of saying it might bring into being what she most feared. She felt sure that, if the subject were raised, Mrs Daly would smother her with a pity she didn’t really feel, for what she had picked up from the overheard conversation wasn’t concern but relish in other people’s misfortune.

      Besides, she was trying to convince herself that what she had heard was a mistake. Nothing was real unless her father told her it was so, and she remembered now her father’s poor opinion of women like Mrs Daly, whom he described as ignorant and superstitious, and on one occasion had had to explain to her what he meant by ‘forces of darkness’ when something that had upset her mother was being discussed. When her father came back from the hospital Mrs Daly, who seemed to Nora to be swelling with importance, would wither and disappear back into her house.

      In the middle of the afternoon, while Nora was doing her best to occupy herself in her bedroom, the telephone rang. She heard the kitchen door close before Mrs Daly answered it. Then, shortly afterwards, it rang again, and after that it seemed that it never stopped.

      Finally Mrs Daly appeared at her bedroom door and said, ‘That was your father, pet. They’re waiting for an ambulance to bring them back from the hospital. Then they’ll all be home.’

      Nora nodded. It seemed that the baby had indeed been born, but Mrs Daly was volunteering no information about it.

      ‘Will you come and sit with me?’

      ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

      When, shortly afterwards, she heard the bustle of arrival at the front door, Nora went and sat on the floor, her back to the wall, waiting to be called. There were sounds of movement, and strangers’ voices, and then she heard Mrs Daly say, ‘The Lord love him, the poor wee boy. But they do say they bring luck to a house.’

      ‘They do, do they? Well, I suppose “they” would know, whoever they happen to be,’ said her father. ‘And who told you anyway? Did I say anything to you about this baby?’

      ‘Well, Mary Donovan popped in. She has a friend, a nurse at the hospital who—’

      ‘So, the bush telegraph has been functioning as well as ever, I see. I wondered why it was taking me so long to get through on the telephone in my own house.’

      ‘It wasn’t like that. Don’t make it so hard for yourself, Gerald. I know it must be a terrible shock, and my heart bleeds for you, but everybody wishes you well.’

      ‘Do they? Do they indeed? Just as they say this will bring me luck? Well I’m sure that will be a great comfort to me.’

      Rigid with fear, Nora lay on her bed. Normally, she was his first thought when her father entered the house, but muted sounds of conversation, and the louder noises of people moving about, continued outside, and nobody came to get her. Straining her ears, she thought once or twice that she was picking up new and unfamiliar sounds, of a tiny living creature hovering somewhere between human and animal, but she couldn’t be sure. Then the doorbell rang, and shortly afterwards rang again, and she heard the clear, measured voices of men other than her father.

      Suddenly she could bear the suspense no longer. She went out into the empty hall and tracked the new voices to her parents’ bedroom, but the door was closed. She wandered into the kitchen and there was her father, standing at the kitchen counter staring at the teapot and waiting for the kettle to boil. He turned when he heard her and looked at her, not as if he had never seen her before but as if he now saw her differently and was having to make up his mind about something.

      ‘The house is full of priests and doctors and it’s all cups of tea and little snacks, though if I know Father McCaffrey there’ll be no leaving this house until he’s seen the whiskey bottle.’

      ‘I’ve a baby brother, then,’ said Nora.

      ‘That’s right,’ said Gerald. ‘And I have a son. What every man’s supposed to want. Am I not right? They do say, be careful of making a wish, it might come true. You know what’s going through my mind?’

      Nora shook her head.

      ‘There’s this book, Nineteen Eighty-four, written by this Englishman, years ago, before anybody knew what 1984 would be like, but he made it sound like the end of the world, the people not really human – not what you could call human – any more. Well, this is 1984, so we must give him the credit for getting something right.’

      He loaded the tray with tea and fruit cake, cups and saucers, milk jug and sugar bowl, and Nora realised she had never seen him perform even the smallest household task before. All that had been left to her mother. In its way, the sight of her father fussing over cups and saucers was as frightening as anything else that had happened that day, and she wondered whether that was the way it was going to be from now on.

      Lifting the tray, he said, ‘I’ll take this through to the vultures who’ve come to prey on our misery.’

      When he had left the room, Nora sat at the kitchen table, eating the cake crumbs and bits of dried fruit left in the tin. Her father hadn’t asked her if she had eaten, what kind of day she had had, how Mrs Daly had been towards her. He hadn’t said when he would be back to attend to her, whether her mother had been asking for her, or given any clue as to how life would proceed. All these concerns had to a degree displaced her fears about the baby, but she was also doing her best not to dwell on her new brother. In particular she avoided visualising him. She sat there while the telephone rang intermittently and was answered elsewhere in the house, staring at the empty blackness of the window, where nobody had thought to draw her mother’s flower-patterned curtains.

      After what seemed a very long time, she heard her parents’ bedroom door open, and then her father was with her again.

      ‘You’d better come in,’ he said. ‘Father McCaffrey and Dr Murphy want a word with you.’

      He didn’t take her hand but led the way to the bedroom, where he waited at the door while she went inside. He didn’t go in himself, СКАЧАТЬ