— Is it true that the leg ligaments stretch endlessly while the woman is giving birth and how do they go back? Halim wanted to know.
The Lord save us, the man’s devotion was inexhaustible. She wondered would she have taken him up that field? She imagined her husband coming upon them. She could have defended herself. This was what I once had to witness. I had to find out how cold and uncomfortable it is. But she would have frightened him in a way no man deserved to be frightened. His wife would have been irretrievably mad, rather than momentarily mad.
*
She was not finished with Halim, if he won’t go in there, she will.
Episode 13
— Can you remember when your children were small and the words they said? Our Woman asks Joanie recent.
— I don’t know. Joanie, cautious. Do you want a hot drop?
The dodge to the teapot. They’re all doing it now. Trying to keep her off the subject, any subject, danger, trouble subjects.
She’ll not be budged.
— What’s the earliest story you have?
— Oh I don’t know. There are so many.
— Do ya know I’ve less and less. I am losing them all. She tells her by return post.
— Come on ’til we’ll measure the front window for curtains. Come on now.
*
Years back, when her girls were yet young and Jimmy not even born — as life is now: girls not young and Jimmy gone — details nestled tight in mental crevices. She could confidently look and not lose the shape of things so quick.
Today, thinking, on the Blue House beside her, she has the shape of the old woman, who sat in front, screaming instructions at those within and changing her tone whenever anybody passed. She can hear her.
— How’re ye gettin’ on? She’d call out to not quite hear the reply. When you passed her she’d turn again.
— In the name of God how long am I to sit here shouting for a spoon: are you all dead in there or what? She’d curse them.
Today, the poor repair, the present state of disintegration is not obvious, she can only see where the blue of the windows once sat, but since peeled and flaked into overgrown grass, so paint nor house nor garden are indistinct from each other. A protruding tree from the half-collapsed chimney declares neglect like a flag. It is a house dismissed. Fit for nothing. There will never be a good fire inside the grate again. Demolition would be the pale ordinary man’s verdict.
*
All incidental.
*
Still she does not have the story of its discovery. The when and why and how the Blue House invited her in. This is frustrating. She tries again. She must try harder. She must listen for it. Then maybe it will come again.
Was it Jimmy who remarked on the house, it must have been Jimmy, otherwise she would not have noticed it, but there’s no retrieving what he said. All her Jimmy moments feel like they’ve rolled under a cupboard and she cannot quite reach them, even with the handle of the broom extended. Whenever she can’t find a story she cries and she doesn’t like this, she wants the story for herself, rather than the inconvenience of a wet face needing swift repair when knuckles knock against the window, the way the knuckles do knock, or a voice calls out, so regularly around here. Hello within. God bless all here. Hello. Come in. It can feel like there is a set of teeth in through the back door every hour. Rap tap tap tap. All the different knocks she has come to identify. She’d love to roll under a cupboard and just wrap herself around the molecules of the story she cannot quite trace.
*
— Mammy.
— Yes.
— Where are you?
— On the bus. Me, talking on the mobile phone that Áine, my daughter, insisted on buying me and insists I carry everywhere, even into the toilet. There’s only three numbers in it.
— What are you doing on the bus? Áine, talking in my ear, via the phone she insists I carry.
— You’re breaking up. I lied and pushed the red button to disconnect her.
*
It is important to always answer the thing when she phones, in case she takes it upon herself to visit me. Áine’s my eldest, she’s a divil for interfering, but won’t interfere when interfering is necessary.
— Mammy what are you doing on the bus? Áine, back in my ear again. She always sounds impatient with me, even when wishing me Happy Birthday she sounds like she wishes it had less letters.
—Áine I am not on the bus anymore.
— Where are you now?
— I’m with Joanie, I said. I could hear her relax.
— Well, she said, I need to talk to you so you’d better be home later.
— Very good. I said the way her father would have and let my thumb slip again to hit the red button. I love to terminate a red button. I can’t resist it. I’ve given up offering God Bless the way other mothers do.
*
I don’t recall exactly when the Blue House became so important to me. It crept up and took me over in the way projects take me over. I’m in them before I contemplate them.
Our Woman takes the bus.
Too many Prime Time programmes on random gang violence in Limerick have her nervous of car-nappings. She read the word in an article about Brazil, thus Brazil and Limerick have merged. Never mind that legions live a peaceful life there, when they see her Mayo plates they see a plump duck, an invite to attack her. She can see faceless people pulling shovels from the boots of their cars to batter her into the ground, flattening her like a mole.
The bus driver, his stomach pressed against the steering wheel like the pleat of a duvet, explains the estate is on the outskirts. Hard enough to get there by bus, but describes the way to do it and wait now, ’til he sees, can he leave her at this spot, not on his route, but what harm, might it be easier for her, it would, it would so. A ruse to get her to sit up beside him perhaps. He talks of his daughters, one away in London, most unfortunately the other married a farmer in Thurles. And does he like the husband? I do, he says but I didn’t want her going marrying this quick, but what can I do? Two hours and Our Woman’s learnt of many things he likes and doesn’t like, his wife trying to insist he eat salad, he’s worried about farming subsidies, people are driving too fast and no offense now, but he doesn’t like Enda Kenny. She’s no opinion on the man, she says. Whether he eats salad or he doesn’t, he has generously delivered her, she’s there, stood in front of generic wood door, generic net curtains but peculiar statues stare at her from the window. China mermaids are they? White. An odd white, a not-quite-belonging white. Like they should have a dirty smudge where someone lifted them absentmindedly after messin’ with a car.
*
A man, nervous fluster of an aging male, answers.
— Yes.
— Hello.
— What is it?
— I need to talk to you.
— Is it you?
— It is.
— He’s long dead your father.
— He is.
— Is there trouble?
— No. No. It’s about the house above. I wonder would you rent it to me.
— There’s little left of it to rent.
— I’d be happy with what’s left.
— What do you want with it? It’d only be good for grazing animals.
— That’s all I want it for.
— Call back next week and give me the chance to think.