He backed away, as others have, when she asked too much of love, when she tried to change the circumstances that are the past by imposing a brighter present, and constancy in the future above all else. She has been the victim of herself: with vivid clarity she knows that now and wonders why she does and why she didn’t before. Nothing tells her when she ponders the solitude of her stay in the Pensione Cesarina, and she senses that nothing ever will.
She sees again the brown-and-green striped tie of the old man who talked about being on your own, and the freckles that are blotches on his forehead. She sees herself walking in the morning heat past the graveyard and the rusted petrol pumps. She sees herself seeking the shade of the chestnut trees in the park, and crossing the piazza to the trattoria when the first raindrops fell. She hears the swish of the cleaner’s mop in the church of Santa Fabiola, she hears the tourists’ whisper. The fingers of the praying woman flutter on her beads, the candles flare. The story of Santa Fabiola is lost in the shadows that were once the people of her life, the family tomb reeks odourlessly of death. Rain has sweetened the breathless air, the angel comes mysteriously also.
Widows
Waking on a warm, bright morning in early October, Catherine found herself a widow. In some moment during the night Matthew had gone peacefully: had there been pain or distress she would have known it. Yet what lay beside her in the bed was less than a photograph now, the fallen jaw harshly distorting a face she’d loved.
Tears ran on Catherine’s cheeks and dripped on to her nightdress. She knelt by the bedside, then drew the sheet over the still features. Quiet, gently spoken, given to thought before offering an opinion, her husband had been regarded by Catherine as cleverer and wiser than she was herself, and more charitable in his view of other people. In his business life - the sale of agricultural machinery – he had been known as a man of his word. For miles around – far beyond the town and its immediate neighbourhood - the farm people who had been his customers repaid his honesty and straight dealing with respect. At Christmas there had been gifts of fowls and fish, jars of cream, sacks of potatoes. The funeral would be well attended. ‘There’ll be a comfort in the memories, Catherine,’ Matthew had said more than once, attempting to anticipate the melancholy of their separation: they had known that it was soon to be.
He would have held the memories to him if he’d been the one remaining. ‘Whichever is left,’ he reminded Catherine as they grew old, ‘it’s only for the time being.’ And in that time-being one of them would manage in what had previously been the other’s domain: he ironing his sheets and trousers, working the washing-machine, cooking as he had watched her cook, using the Electrolux; she arranging for someone to undertake the small repairs he had attended to in the house if she or her sister couldn’t manage them, paying the household bills and keeping an eye on the bank balance. Matthew had never minded talking about their separation, and had taught her not to mind either.
On her knees by the bedside Catherine prayed, then her tears came again. She reached out for his hand and grasped the cold, stiff fingers beneath the bedclothes. ‘Oh, love,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, love.’
The three sons of the marriage came for the funeral, remaining briefly, with their families, in the town where they had spent their childhood. Father Cahill intoned the last words in the cemetery, and soon after that Catherine and her sister Alicia were alone in the house again. Alicia had lived there since her own husband’s death, nine years ago; she was the older of the two sisters – fifty-seven, almost fifty-eight.
The house that for Catherine was still haunted by her husband’s recent presence was comfortable, with a narrow hall and a kitchen at the back, and bedrooms on two floors. Outside, it was colour-washed blue, with white window-frames and hall-door, the last house of the town, the first on the Dublin road. Opposite was the convent school, behind silver-painted railings, three sides enclosed by the drab concrete of its classrooms and the nuns’ house, its play-yard often bustling into noisy excitement. Once upon a time Catherine and Alicia had played there themselves, hardly noticing the house across the road, blue then also.
‘You’re all right?’ Alicia said on the evening of the funeral, when together they cleared up the glasses sherry had been drunk from, and cups and saucers. On the sideboard in the dining-room the stoppers of the decanters had not yet been replaced, crumbs not yet brushed from the dining-table cloth. ‘Yes, I’m all right,’ Catherine said. In her girlhood she had been pretty – slender and dark, and shyly smiling, dimples in both cheeks. Alicia, taller, dark also, had been considered the beauty of the town. Now, Catherine was greying, and plump about the face, the joints of her fingers a little swollen. Alicia was straight-backed, her beauty still recalled in features that were classically proportioned, her hair greyer than her sister’s.
‘Good of them all to come,’ Catherine said.
‘People liked Matthew.’
‘Yes.’
For a moment Catherine felt the rising of her tears, the first time since the morning of the death, but stoically she held them in. Their marriage had not gone. Their marriage was still there in children and in grandchildren, in the voices that had spoken well of it, in the bed they had shared, and in remembering. The time-being would not be endless: he had said that too. ‘You’re managing, Catherine?’ people asked, the same words often used, and she tried to convey that strength still came from all there had been.
The day after the funeral Fagan from the solicitors’ office explained to Catherine the contents of the few papers he brought to the house. It took ten minutes.
‘Well, that’s that,’ he said, and for a moment the finality with which he spoke reminded Catherine of the coffin slipping down, filling the hole that had been dug for it. The papers lay neatly on the well-polished surface of the dining-room table, cleared now of the debris of the day before, and of the cloth that had protected it. Fagan drank a cup of instant coffee and said she had only to pick up the phone if ever there was anything.
‘I’ll help you,’ Alicia said later that same morning when Catherine mentioned Matthew’s personal belongings. Clothes and shoes would be accepted gratefully by one of the charities with which Alicia was connected. The signet ring, the watch, the tie-pin, the matching fountain-pen and propelling pencil were earmarked for the family, to be shared among Catherine’s sons. Shaving things were thrown away.
Recalling the same sorting out of possessions at the time of her own loss, Alicia was in no way distressed. She had experienced little emotion when her husband’s death occurred: for the last nineteen years of her marriage she had not loved him.
‘You’ve been a strength,’ Catherine said, for her sister had been that and more, looking after her as she used to, years ago, when they were children.
‘Oh no, no,’ came Alicia’s deprecation.
Thomas Pius John Leary was by trade a painter and decorator. He had, for this work, no special qualifications beyond experience; he brought to it no special skill. As a result, he was often accused of poor workmanship, which in turn led to disputes about payment. But he charged less than his competitors and so ensured a reasonably steady demand for his services. When for one reason or another the demand wasn’t there he took on any kind of odd job he was offered.