“God bless you for bringing it. I never needed it more. Last night I wouldn’t have got a wink of sleep without it.”
“Do you want some now?”
“Are there any of those nurses looking?”
“No.”
I cursed the barman’s zeal as I unwrapped it, unscrewed the top, took a glass from the plastic-topped locker where both bottles from two days before were hidden away empty. I poured it slowly, waiting for her to call enough, but she let it rise to the brim.
“I don’t trust those pills. They give you those pills to get rid of you. I know it costs a lot but I’ll never forget it to you. It’s the only thing that does any good for the pain now.”
“Shush! Don’t you want it now?”
“Is there anyone looking?”
“She’s several beds away.”
Turning towards the windows, she covered over the glass, covering the dark little act with a small bird’s wing, and I winced as I heard her swallow, all that raw brandy burning its way down. Catching her guilt, I stirred uneasily at the foot of the bed, watching the nurse’s long back bending over a patient, five beds away. The nearer beds were all encircled by their visitors. As soon as she finished I took the glass and filled it with water, but not quickly enough. She started to cough violently into the bedclothes. I put a hand to her back and held the water to her lips, saying silently, “Drink, for the love of God,” as the nurse looked enquiringly in our direction. The coughing eased as she took some water. I nodded to the nurse that everything was all right and breathed easily when she turned back to her patient. I handed my aunt the blue packet of peppermints.
“In this place they have noses like whippets,” she said.
“Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much and so quickly.”
“It’s easier to get it done while you’re here. It’s all that does any good any more. I can feel it killing the old pain already,” and reaching for control returned my scold with one of her own. “You should have known better than to bring in those two bottles with your uncle. You must know by now what he’s like. He was never able to take anything up right. He’ll have it rooted in his head now that I’m well on the way to being another Sticks McCabe, when you know I only take it for the old pain.”
The three-thirty bus is climbing Seltan Hill on a hot July day. As it passes the monument of the stone soldier with his stone rifle at the top of Seltan, Sticks McCabe, drunk, rises from his seat and shouts, “Respect the memory of the dead. Everybody stand to attention,” before falling backwards, bringing down a suitcase from the rack as he falls. Jimmy the conductor does not smile as he returns Sticks to his seat and crutches, making sure he has not hurt himself, and puts the suitcase disdainfully back in the rack. A boy on a motorcycle looks back to see why the bus has stopped on Seltan as he whizzes past towards Mohill.
“He’ll not think that,” I said and she hadn’t even noticed that I’d been away in a more permanent day than this the day of the ward. “I told him you only took the brandy for the pain,” God knows where she had been since, in what different permament, impermanent day.
“You’d never know what he’d think but as long as he doesn’t go and tell poor Cyril. Cyril has enough to worry about. Where did he go after he left?”
“We went down the docks. He wanted some parts for the saws.”
“Of course he went and hauled you down the docks, as if you hadn’t a thing in the world else to do. All he thinks about is those old saws. There’ll be plenty of saws when he’s gone,” and then the tone dropped. “Do you think will I ever get out of this place?”
“Of course you’ll get out. You’ll be out and around in no time. But you’ll have to be patient. You’ll have to wait till they have you better.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think they have you in here just to get rid of you,” but her eyes searched mine eagerly, pleading for her words to be denied.
“That’s just rubbishy talk. The brandy may be doing as much harm as good.”
“Say nothing against the brandy,” and I shifted uneasily as she began again to thank me profusely.
It was cut short by the nurse’s arrival at the bedside. I made way for her and she asked, “Which of you has been boozing?” as she put light, tidying touches to the bedclothes.
“I’m afraid I have,” I answered.
“Maybe you both have,” there was far more a hint of challenge and even laughter behind the counter than any rebuke.
“It’s not allowed in here.”
“There are many things not allowed in here but they still go on.”
She lingered, but when nothing more was said she asked professionally, “Are you all right?”
“If I was all right I wouldn’t be in here,” my aunt said belligerently.
The nurse left quietly and authoritatively, without the slightest response to the attempt at a joke.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Nurse Brady,” my aunt was more than willing to tell. “She’s an awful ticket. Pure man-mad. Sings and dances in the ward.”
“Why didn’t you introduce us?”
“She’d like nothing better. The unfortunate that gets her will have his work cut out.”
I spent the next minutes trying to talk myself out of having to come in for the next few days. I pleaded work, saying I’d fallen days behind in the work.
“But you’ll come on the Tuesday,” she said.
“I’ll come on the Tuesday,” I said as we kissed.
The tall, black-haired nurse was waiting at the end of the ward as I passed out.
“I hope I’ll see you soon,” I said as much out of simple attraction as to counter what I’d thought of as my aunt’s rudeness.
“Why don’t you come in to see us the next time,” she laughed. “Auntie is well enough taken care of.”
“Auntie is well enough taken care of. Why don’t you come in to see us the next time?” echoed all the next morning as I tried to get to the typewriter.
I’d shaved, dressed, lit the fire, washed my hands several times, scraped fingernails, had cups of coffee … and each time I tried to move I’d hear, “Why don’t you come in to see us the next time? Why-don’t-you-come-in?”
I saw the ridiculous white cap pinned to the curly black hair growing thick and close to the skull, her strong legs planted apart, her laugh, its confident affirmation of itself against everything vulnerable and receding and dying.
To ring her. To go out with her into the evening, turning it into adventure, accepting whatever it brought; turning it into a great vital kick against all the usual evenings that seemed to fall like invisible dust.… But — there was still this work to do, this typewriter on the old marble of the washstand to get to.
If she came out with me and if the evening did not turn out well, and I was too old not to know its likely outcome, how would I be rid of her, having to risk running into her every time I went in with the brandy to the hospital. Caution and cowardice were getting me closer to the typewriter. It was the same caution that never allowed me to indulge in more than a passing nod or word with any of the other people who lived in this same house.
I sat and typed frivolously, like dabbing toes above steaming water: “There was a man and a woman. Their names were Mavis Carmichael and Colonel Grimshaw. They lived happily, if it could be said that they lived at all,” and I x-ed it out and put a fresh page in the typewriter, and then started to work, the worm at last spinning its silken tent.
Several hours and blackened pages later I got up from the typewriter for the day when the barely audible turning of a key sounded from one of the upstairs rooms after a loud banging of the front door. I thought it could be only two or three o’clock and yet it must have been close to six if one of the office girls had got home. It had just gone six. Seldom is it given, but when it is it is the greatest consolation of the spinning, time passing — sizeable portions of time — without being noticed. Is it a promise of a happy eternity or just another irony, the realization of the unawareness. We feel that we have been freed of the burden of time passing, and the happiness is in the feeling and not in the blind forgetful play among the words.