Grievance. Marguerite Alexander

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СКАЧАТЬ fail to understand it, then seems to regret drawing attention to herself. Always her opinions on Ireland are cast in strictly impersonal terms, as though she has arrived at an opinion through studying the subject rather than as a result of experience. As far as he can remember, she has never volunteered an anecdote about her childhood or parents, the kind of stuff that’s common currency among students who, in the early days of friendship, like to define and establish who they are. When such occasions arise, and members of a group try to outdo each other with stories of an outrageous parent or eccentric upbringing (for everything is exaggerated in the interests of glamour), Nora falls silent, or turns the conversation, or makes an excuse to leave. It’s as though she’s afraid of being found out.

      There is some discussion between them about whether Nora can’t or won’t talk about herself. Pete has always subscribed to the view that Nora doesn’t choose to talk, that she preserves her mystery so that they (the men particularly) can project their fantasies on to her. If she were known to have had a conventional middle-class background, albeit in a different place, she would be like the rest of them, apart from her extraordinary looks, of course.

      Nick isn’t so sure. Within the limits she has set herself, Nora is often touchingly eager to please, almost too compliant to other people’s wishes – a characteristic that Phoebe has been quick to spot and ready to exploit. He thinks that Nora is genuinely inhibited, but by what he hasn’t yet decided. Privately – because in a gossipy environment like a university where any hint of the glamorous, subversive or criminal is immediately seized upon and enlarged – he’s speculated about an IRA connection. It’s difficult to imagine Nora actively involved, but her conformity to the role of model citizen and outstanding student – like him, she gained a first in her first-year exams – would be the perfect cover.

      On the other hand, the revulsion she sometimes expresses against terrorism could be genuine. Sometimes he thinks that her adaptability, her unwillingness to impose her will, might indicate that she’s been a victim of aggression; that she’s used to keeping her head down. Whatever the cause, it’s thought that she never goes home and, as far as he knows, she spent the entire summer working in a hotel in Devon, presumably to help pay her way through college.

      He wonders what it would be like to have a relationship with her. The idea certainly appeals, but she seems to be as inhibited about sex as about everything else, and Nick is so used to girls who leave no room to doubt their willingness that he’s not sure how he would begin to break down her reserve.

      Putting aside for the moment thoughts about that particular reserve, Nick decides to chance his luck with a direct question about Ireland. ‘So tell me, Nora, how, in your opinion as an insider, did Steve tackle the Irish question?’

      She turns her head judiciously to one side, exactly as she might, he thinks, if she were marshalling an argument for an essay or a class presentation. It occurs to him for the first time that, although she never draws attention to her successes, she is most at ease with academic discourse, as though she has developed that side of her character at the expense of the rest.

      ‘He talks a lot about stereotypes, and how they tell us nothing about the country, only about the prejudices of those who subscribe to them, but he has all the prejudices about the Irish of the liberal London intelligentsia – how we’re all victims and it’s all the fault of empire, as though there’s no such thing as personal responsibility and morality. Irish Catholics are all angels, and all the others are now animals. He’s just turned the traditional model on its head.’

      He wants to ask her, ‘Then what, for Christ’s sake, is the reality, or your reality?’ but knowing that will get him nowhere, says, ‘In his own way, Steve’s an old romantic. He may subscribe to a cool, post-structuralist approach, but you could see that he fancies himself as a bit of a Swift – an outsider who uses his mordant wit and superior intelligence to see further and deeper than an insider.’

      ‘I don’t think he’s at all romantic,’ says Phoebe. ‘I’d heard so much about him that I was expecting something more…’ Unable to find the word she wants, she lifts her arms, then drops them to express her disappointment, only just missing, in their cramped surroundings, the empty cups and plate on the table. ‘I thought he was a bit of a cold fish.’

      ‘So what was he like – close up and personal, I mean?’ asks Nick.

      ‘He looked older,’ Nora says. ‘Tired, as though a couple of hours’ work had exhausted him.’

      ‘I suppose he’s getting on a bit. It’s hard for ageing rebels like him to know what to do with themselves, with younger generations yapping at their heels. Do they go back on everything they’ve believed in, like those Old Labour people trying to look comfortable in a New Labour government? Or do they find a new cause for themselves? I guess that’s why he’s taken on Ireland. At the moment it’s sexier than Marxism, but I’d say he’s a bit of a latecomer to the game. Wouldn’t you, Nora?’

      Nora merely shrugs, as though she’s reached the limit with this particular conversation. What she doesn’t say is that, throughout the session, Steve kept reminding her of her father. She doesn’t say it because she hasn’t yet found a way to talk about home, and to explain the resemblance she would have to tell her entire family history.

       Ballypierce

      Nora’s earliest precise memory is of a day shortly before the birth of her brother. She remembers that the baby’s imminence hung in the air that afternoon, charging the atmosphere and releasing in her father a restless energy. Always a boastful man, his pride in himself, and in her, seemed to know no bounds. And while she is sure, without having a clear memory of them, that there were other, similar occasions before that afternoon, she knows that there were none afterwards. This, she thinks, is why she remembers the afternoon so clearly, that it marked the end of an era: with Felix’s birth, another, altogether different, phase in their lives began.

      She remembers sitting on the counter in her father’s shop, surrounded by a group of admiring men. The pretext for her being there was that her mother needed to rest. Her father had come home for lunch, as he was in the habit of doing when it was just the three of them, leaving in charge one of the succession of young women that he had working for him. His routine was sufficiently established for people to know not to take in their prescriptions over the dinner hour, when many of the other shops, which couldn’t afford extra help, closed. Her mother had told him that the midwife had called, that her blood pressure was up again and she needed rest.

      ‘Will I take the wee girl back with me, Bernie?’ he had asked.

      ‘Since when have you needed my permission?’ her mother had replied.

      It was acknowledged between the three of them that she and her father were a team, and while her mother boasted of this to her acquaintance – the degree of interest that Gerald took in his four-year-old daughter was sufficiently unusual to arouse the envy of other women – her resentment at being excluded sometimes surfaced at home. Nora was hoping that the baby would be a boy, not for herself or her father, who were perfectly content, but for her mother. She and the baby boy would then form another self-contained team and the family would be perfectly balanced.

      So Gerald took her back with him and she spent the first hour or so sitting at a little desk that Gerald had rigged up for her in the corner, drawing and doing a few sums that he had set her. Really, this was only marking time until a sufficient crowd had gathered, mostly other shopkeepers who had left their wives, now released from kitchen duties, in charge while they slipped out for half an hour.

      Without understanding СКАЧАТЬ