*
It was the first time I was removed to Castlebar hospital in my husband’s lifetime.
*
I had not planned on it. That’s all I can say about that. There was nothing the matter with me. My neighbour Hannah told me that afterwards. There was nothing the matter with you, we all knew it, we knew you weren’t mad. It was your husband’s fault. He put you in there. There was no need, no need at all. Do ya hear? There was not a thing wrong with you.
If I had my time again I wouldn’t a done it to him. And I am out here again. Nothing learnt.
*
I can still recall the drive. My husband tried to talk about the horse. It’s the horse, he said. You’ve spent too much time on it. Thinking about that horse has put you under too much stress, he said. You’ve lost your courage, he said. We’ll hear no more about that horse. All the way to Castlebar he didn’t speak a word to me and in my mind I ran the word horse and think and horse and thinking and horse and horse and horse, gently to reassure myself that it was a horse that did this to me.
*
Do you know much about Castlebar? I’d say none of you do. You should know there’s a weekly newspaper. I realized it once they incarcerated me there, it’s the place they want the mad to congregate. In Castlebar they mop us all up.
*
— It was the horse, I told them at the check in.
— It was the horse, I told them the first time they brought me dinner.
— I should not have considered the horse, I told them the first time they handed me the Happy Days pills.
— If you’ll just co-operate, they replied, you’ll feel a great deal better.
— Will I get pudding?
— You’ll get pudding.
— Could I have a copy of the Racing Post?
My husband had to go and purchase me the paper, the nurse said.
These were some of the new ways I misbehaved once it had been confirmed that I was an old woman. Pudding. The Racing Post. And the hiccups I was plagued with the hiccups.
It wasn’t the horse gave me the hiccups that much I know.
*
They didn’t keep me long in Castlebar, sure how could they. An isolated incident I told them. They were not satisfied with my explanation. Had I ever had this swing before? No, I said. But I’d never heard the words DIRTY OLD WOMAN before. Was I concerned about growing old? Not at all, why should I be? But what had prompted this swing? It’s ever so simple I said and I let the whole of it gush out of me. My son in a field. I stumbled at the last station of the cross. The spectator, who refused to oblige me, came back and rightly told me what he thought of me once I’d fallen.
Er?
Well it was like this I had to find another way up him, and I did everything I could to achieve it, and you see he enjoyed it, ’til he thought about it and quite right of him he came back and told me exactly what he thought of it and me.
Er?
I took advantage of him while I was measuring the waist of his trousers to take them in. I put my hand down inside them.
Er?
Was I sorry? (Was that their question? Or was it how did I feel? I chose to answer the first.)
Not a bit, I said, should I be?
I figured if I told them this, as a sheep stands on four legs I would never see the daylight again. Only be camped in here eternally opposite Beirut and eventually we would get back to discussing the dogs.
*
It did not work. The talk continued of discharging me. The more I told them the healthier they found me. I was only confused they assured me and it would pass.
After that morning conversation I’d have to do better. They wanted me to be upset about getting old. I must be upset about getting old, I intoned a few times. Then mebbe they’d keep me. Was Beirut upset about getting old? He seemed young to be upset about such a thing, but I thought it’s never too early to be getting upset.
I decided to upset them by telling them more on the thing I longed to do to Halim that he wouldn’t let me.
They weren’t a bit bothered by it. Only wrote it into the envelope and asked how I had planned to do it. I just lifted my fingers at them and gave them the signal. In and up.
— Did he let you?
— Eventually he did, I said. I caught him unawares.
— Did he enjoy it?
— I’d say he did. Very much.
— Did you enjoy it?
— I found it peculiar. It was much harder than it looked watching it up the back field. I was surprised at how far up I had to go.
— Would I do it again?
— Oh God I would, indeed I would.
All into the envelope. And not a bother on them.
*
The second sign that I would be prone to misbehaviour took place in the company of my husband fortunately. I say fortunately because had it taken place in the company of a different man he might not have been so sympathetic and might have delivered me into the Garda van. But my husband thought of the implications.
Another gondola swing, the second one, that ultimately forced him to deliver me this time to Sligo hospital, overtook me in an unfortunate location. Not long after the first swing, like the good man he occasionally was, didn’t Himself say a drive out the country would do me the world of good and sure we’d go up to the museum. A place no one who lives in the country would tend to go unless there was someone home visiting and it was raining. It wasn’t raining.
A tiny country museum, tucked back in the road that drifted into some kind of heritage land with sculptures. I can tell you nothing else about it. My husband insists to this day it was the sculptures that set me off but I can tell you, and I have my hand across my left breast as I write this, I can tell you honestly, truthfully, I was thinking only of a set of golf clubs when I did it. A set of golf clubs that had knitted covers on their heads. Knitted by the fair hand of a woman I can’t name. That kind of knitting, you know an old ball of blue, a dash of pink, the remnants of wool.
I do recall removing my boots, probably enticed by the knitted woollen heads on the clubs. I recall this because the ground was damp and squelchy through my brown tights. The rest of my garments my husband insists I removed while he slipped to the toilet in the Visitors Centre. In removing my other clothes I do not know if the golf clubs came into it.
— I left my wife and went to the toilet doctor, and I came back and found a streaker! This is the way my husband probably had to explain it to them. God love him as they regard him sympathetically with looks that insist how hard this is on him. Stop it! I say. This is the first time his life has ever been interesting — don’t you see?
I do not remember being cold. This confuses me. How, if I had no clothes on me at all, do I not remember being cold? I wasn’t warm, I was lukewarm. It wasn’t a still day, the wind was up, no rain rightly, but not a smidgen of sun. That was the problem we shoulda been nowhere near that place unless it was raining. If it had been raining I instantly woulda known all was not well when my clothes came off. The absence of rain was what caused the trouble.
*
— I didn’t notice.
I told the nurse this, as she leant over me to take my blood pressure.
— Isn’t it funny a woman wouldn’t notice all her clothes gone like that? She patted my arm and told me to take a rest. She called me Mrs, it’s charming the way nurses do that, they call you Mrs once you’re old. I told you it was occasionally a good thing to be old. The pat and the Mrs.