The All of It: A Novel Page 3

  “You never asked your dad about the room, Enda? You nor Kevin?” he asked gently.

  She turned on him a face fired with frustration: “I can tell it’s hopeless, Father.”

  “Hopeless?”

  “Speaking of it. There’s no way to get it across to you”—she spoke through her teeth—“the fear we had of our dad.”

  “Ah, I see. Forgive me, Enda. But I see now—”

  “You have to see,” she said deeply. “If you’re to understand, you have to.”

  “I do. I see now. Believe me, Enda.”

  “So, I’ll go on then?”

  “Please, Enda.”

  “I can’t say I didn’t wonder about the room, but only to myself. I didn’t, I mean, ever talk to Kevin about it. That I didn’t had to do with the fear of our dad, like as if he’d know if myself and Kevin were to talk of it and get himself in a rage and take it out on us. Do you follow me, Father?” And at his nod: “One day, Kevin was twelve when this happened, and me eleven—and I don’t know what brought it on—our dad went terrible queer, called Kevin and me to him and told us, ‘We’ll be clearing out that upstairs room now.’ He had a big black key in his hand and he spent some time in showing it to us, holding it up close to our faces, all the time saying it was time now to clear out the room. He’d not been drinking but he was that queer-looking, very far off he seemed to be, but there, tall, right over us, but not at the same time…. I’m hard put to say how it was.”

  “I understand all you’re saying, Enda.”

  “Yes…. Well, he started us up the stairs, rough, having us go before him. I snatched a look at Kevin. He was white as a sheet. I took hold of his sleeve, just to hang onto like, but our dad reached up and tore my hand off it, I don’t to this day know why, except maybe as he decided to come between us…. When he put the key to the lock he said to us, ‘It’s all to be cleared out and all of it burned.’ He had trouble with the lock and that got him frantic, but it let at last and he put us in through the door….” She stopped.

  “It’s all right, Enda dear. Take your time.”

  “I’ve not talked of it before,” she explained. “All these years, Kevin and myself never made mention of that day…. It’s necessary I tell you of it, though, Father, you’ll see why….” and to his encouraging nod: “It turned out the room had been our dad’s and our mother’s. The minute we were in it we understood that, the way you do, you know, not that you’re told, but that it comes clear to you. All our dad said was, ‘It’s to be emptied out,’ and he started in, pulling at the bed, raving at us to give him a hand down the stairs with the mattress…. It wasn’t a big job, the clearing-out, there being only the mattress and the wooden bed-frame and a chair. Oh, and a table, very small and rickety. Everything was filthy with mould from the damp. Green, you know. Mildew And creatures had got to the mattress so the stuff was out of it in places and it smelled….” She faltered, but only slightly. “There was one final thing in the room, a clothes-rack, thick with cobwebs and two dresses hanging from it—in tatters they were—and our dad…,” she raised her hand as if fending off a blow, “…our dad flew at the dresses like a rook on a dead rabbit, ripping and tearing at them, his eyes wild. The dresses…” she seemed unable to go on.

  “…were your mother’s,” he supplied for her.

  She nodded quickly, and in the field of his resting gaze cast upon him a look that caused him to feel he was being greeted. “You do see,” she said with a linking show of relief.

  “I do. I do, Enda.” He would have liked to touch her, to make some show of reassurance, but asked instead, wanting to help her along: “And was everything burned?”

  She nodded again, still with her eyes in the clasp of his. “All of it,” she said, “with Kevin and me looking on. He—our dad—had us to look on.”

  “And then?”

  “Over the fire—it was a long time burning—our dad quieted down, drew in on himself you might say, and when the fire burned out, he told Kevin and myself that the next thing we were to do was to lock the room tight shut again and that after we’d done that we’d have done all that must be done…. What he meant was he would do the locking, and Kevin and me the watching of him at the doing of it…. He made a great thing out of locking the door, Father, put himself against it after the bolt took, and shoved at it and turned the knob over and over, making sure like, and when he was satisfied holding the key close up to our faces again before he put it in his pocket. And then—I don’t know—with the key in his pocket, he seemed very pleased, had that look on his face of having struck a good bargain for his yirrols on fair-day…. And—that was the end of it, Father.”

  He let her have a full moment, appreciating her need of it. Then: “The end of it, Enda, as to your dad and the room, you mean?”

  She reacted to the question almost frantically, like a slack labourer who, caught in a drowse, and roused, hectically reaches out for the nearest set-down tool: “To the end of clearing it out,” she picked up, nodding violently. “But the room”—her eyes, in the candlelight, glittered with a sudden unnatural excitement—“the room came to figure for Kevin and me.”

  Her agitation drew his hand to her arm, laid there to calm and reassure, but barely offered, withdrawn, the gesture challenged by the greater force of her concentration.

  “Our dad took to caging us up in it…. The first time—it was about six months after we’d cleared it out—he got very quiet and private-like the way he could, and he called us to him and took us up the stairs and put us in the room, telling us he’d let us out when the time was right. Those were his words—‘When the time is right,’ he said. Then he left us, locking the door behind him. Kevin and myself, we were that upset as to not venture a whisper between us to pass the time, just sat, waiting on the bare floor like a pair of birds with the tongues cut out of them.”

  “How long?”

  “The whole of the afternoon,” she answered softly, then turned her eyes from him to the opposite wall and stared at it in so melancholy and mesmerized a way as to cause him to suppose she perceived its blankness as the inverse of every marking life had inflicted on herself.

  “Enda, dear?”

  She started. “Oh,” she breathed, present again, bustling: “Your tea, Father. I’ll just strengthen it.”

  “No, no. Don’t get up.”

  She did get up, though, and poured out fresh cups for them, then fetched, from the corner stall, two sods of turf, adding them to the fire and stirring it. When she returned to her place, she seemed refreshed, like someone who has inhaled a stimulating draught of cold air. But as he looked closely at her, he saw he was misreading the look on her face, that it had nothing to do with stimulation, but was rather the sharp aspect of determination.

  “Over the next couple of years, our dad would do that, lock us up every so often, whenever it came over him to do it. There was never a way of knowing when it would be, not until it happened, if you follow me…. There’d be just his calling of us to him and our knowing by the manner of him when we got to him what was in store for us…. He was drinking more and more. A terrible lot. He’d take off on the long hike to town, you know, of a morning, and come back at dusk-time and you wouldn’t know how he could have made it home, how it was he didn’t fall and break a bone, stumbling all the way and the ground so uneven, full of stones and ruts…. Drink brought out the temper in him, too. Kevin took the worst of that. You’d not believe the strappings Kevin stood up to, Father, and not a sound out of him.” She brought her hands together: “I…I don’t know…it was always different, but always the same, too, the locking-up of us, until the time I’m to tell you about. That was in February…. It was a terrible cold winter that year…. We’d had one snowfall after another and it’d stayed in the slope-hollows. There’d been no sun for days, just the snow and sleet and the nightly freeze and more snow, regular-like, over and over…. This time I’m telling you of, we’d got up in the morning—”

  “How old were you?�
� he interrupted, having to know.

  “Fifteen, Kevin was, and myself just turned fourteen…. As I was saying, we’d got up that morning and I was just pouring out the tea when our dad said to put down our cups and get up the stairs, he had things to do in town, he said, and no time to waste. He was wild-like, and he started in telling us how our mother always liked for us to be with her when he went into town and how now we had to get upstairs to her right away as she was tidying the room and he had to be off. Raving crazy he was, in a way we’d never heard from him before. That, his crazy-talking, and the queerness coming on him at the first of the day—well, we knew to mind him. It wouldn’t have done to cross him, I mean.” She stopped. “You’re looking at me in such a way, Father…. You’re following me all right?”

  “Yes, Enda. Truly.”

  She cast upon him a speaking look, but remained silent.

  He inclined himself towards her: “You’ve all my regard,” he told her imperatively.

  She nodded like a restless dreamer. “Well, he put us in the room, but before he locked the door on us, he stood a long time just looking around, turning his head this way and that, feverish-like, you know. Jacked-up. Then, it was like he’d settled on something in his mind, he turned around and went out, locking us in after him. He locked up the whole house that day, front and back. We heard him at it, sealing us in every way he could. Then he went off, yelling to us he’d be back after he’d seen to his affairs.”

  She broke off and looked towards the bed. He saw the swift tears come into her eyes. “Enda,” he said, “spare yourself, Enda dear…. Leave off for now. Tomorrow—”

  She drew a breath. “No,” she whispered. “I’ll finish with it. It’s for me to finish with now…,” and, lifting her head: “The room had but a slit of a window in it. You know the kind—”

  “I do,” he said, knowing bitterly well the deep, set-in type still to be seen in houses built at the time the English levied the window-tax. “I do,” he repeated. “Slits, as you say. Narrow as your fist.”

  “Aye…. That window and some breaks in the rotted-out roofing, that was all the light in the room…. I told you the house was of stone? Well, the room wasn’t plastered but for the one wall the door was set in, and the stones—the stones had the winter cold stored up in them…. It happened all so fast, our dad putting us in the room and all, we’d not thought, Kevin nor me, to grab onto an extra bit of a jacket or a sweater….” She faltered, made an empty gesture, then added, “We didn’t know to.” She swallowed. “I’ll not draw it out, Father. We got through the day, long as it was, knowing as we did our dad’s way of always coming back by nightfall. I mean we figured on that, his coming back and letting us out, so we stayed cheerful.” He winced at the word. “We talked. With me, Kevin always had plenty of talk him. And there was a bit of a stone he found in his pocket and we made games with it—target, you know, and the like. That kept us stirring about and helped to keep our minds off the cold. And Kevin, smart as he was, had us to thromp our arms about and to jump up and down against the chill.

  “Even so, the cold was harsh…. We felt it more than we felt being hungry. We’d not had a proper breakfast, as you know, and Kevin”—her mouth broke in a sudden, strong smile—“along about dinnertime, Kevin put out he’d swallow a whole pot of scalding tea and eat a loaf all for himself if he but could. He set me laughing the way he said it, it was so daft. Exaggerated, I mean…. I’m telling you all this so you’ll see how we passed the time. How we kept our spirits up all the day….

  “It was when it got to be late afternoon, dusk-time and after, then dark and the night full on us and our dad not come back, that we began to lose heart—though, mind, we didn’t say so…only felt it between us…. Out loud, of course, we kept telling each other it’d be any minute now our dad would come. We kept hoping, is what I mean to say….

  “There was stars out; we could see them through the breaks in the roof. Kevin said he was glad for the sight of them but I don’t know, for me they were like another worry, there was such a might and pull to them, like they’d draw me out of myself. Telling of the way they made me feel sounds cracked does it, Father?”

  “No, Enda dear, I’ve had the feeling myself.”

  She gave him a slight, drifted smile. “It’s strange about stars. To this day I’m not sure of them.”

  In the light from the fire and in the candles’ pale flickerings her beauty, like a scald, set a fresh mark on him. In the five years he had known her he’d never got used to the sight of her, of her deep enormous eyes, her fair skin and her hair, dark still and darker every year he could count back, with glints of rust in it, the length of it bound in a bun or braided down, or loose sometimes, flying in the wind around her face and her laughter breaking through the strands of it….

  “Father?”

  Abashed, he looked swiftly from her, down, to his shoes. Then: “Shall you go on, Enda?”

  “Aye…. Like I said, it was our hope that kept us going. That, and our listening for a sound of our dad…. You’ve seen a good dog when its master’s due home, how it’ll sit, all the life of it in its ears, trying to catch the hint of a footfall on the sod a mile away…. We were like that. I can still feel how it was, Father. How the listening took us over and carried us along all through the night.

  “In time, though—it was around daybreak—we took in that it was useless to listen and hope anymore…. Kevin brought it up, that this might be the time our dad would never come back. He didn’t forward the end for us, that we’d die, he just said, ‘This might be the time he won’t come back,’ very quiet and set-like. I’d been thinking it of course myself, but that Kevin said it set me to crying….

  “You have to know, Father, that Kevin never liked me to cry. It was so from the time we were mites. Whenever I did—and I credit myself it wasn’t often—but the few times I did, Kevin never spared himself till he’d got me soothed down. He’d make a clown’s face, put his thumbs to his mouth and stretch his lips back to his ears, stand on his head—whatever—anything antic, you know, to make me laugh. He was good that way. Tender as a mother. So when I started crying after he said that about our dad’s not coming back, he jerked right into cheering me up, said it was a foolish thing, the very idea of our dad’s not turning up, him a bad penny, and I should put it straight out of my head. And furthermore—very excited he was now—furthermore, he said, when our dad did come back and we were loose again, we’d grab the first chance we got to run off. Leave Donegal behind us forever. South, he said we’d go, that we’d not stay about and ever again let ourselves in for another locking-up like this one. He’d been planning it, he said, our running away, how we’d get along and all, letting ourselves out as a pair, him at stable and yardwork and me indoors as helper to a cook or at laundering. It was lovely the way he told how it would be. Like a dream….

  “Very quieting to me, too. Made me fall asleep…or not what you’d exactly call asleep, for when I did stir again, it wasn’t like a proper waking-up at all—fresh, you know, and on the ready—but only a slow sort of coming ’round and of feeling terrible dizzy….

  “There was a first bit of dawn-light beginning to show through the breaks in the roof…. Kevin, when I turned to him, was just as he’d been when I drifted off, sitting with his back against the door, his legs straight out before him, only now his eyes were closed so I figured him to be asleep…. But then”—her eyes widened and a stricken look came over her face—“I got terrible frightened over something about him, the stiff way he was sitting maybe it was, or that I couldn’t hear him breathing, and I edged my way closer to him so I could see him better.” Her eyes filled now with terror: “He looked—” she shuddered, “—his face and his hands—the fingers—they were the colour of set tallow, and, I don’t know, I lost my head…went daft, I suppose you’d say…screamed and started in shaking, thinking he was dead—”

  At this crisis-point of the past and as he intently watched at work the present mounting effects o
f her recollected anguish, himself in the power of her profound capacity, the cords of her neck enlarged and throbbed and her body seemed suddenly to heave itself upright and the room to fill with a strangling scream, coming from her throat.

  “Enda!” he cried, brought to his feet. “Enda,” stooping to her, “Swallow! Can you swallow?” taking up her half-empty cup, holding it to her lips, and, as the fluid spilled, his hand on her throat, rubbing it: “Enda, Enda,” then, seeing her breast lift and heave with a rasped-in draught of air: “Enda dear,” his relief a moan.

  She sat back, spent and, in his near, urgent look, remote; yet on his arm her hand’s hold, the grip more powerful for its wordlessness: “Enda,” he whispered passionately, a stranger to himself.

  She caught—he saw it happen—the intense interiority of the voice he hardly recognized as his own (what had been done to him?) and instantly withdrew her hand from his arm. Then, in a distant, gathered way that sent him from her back to his chair: “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought it was laid deeper to rest in me than I see it is.”

  “But you’re all right now?” he asked, staging matter-of-factness. “You’re sure?”

  “I am,” she answered, regarding him from what he accepted as being her position of control; and, after a moment, “So I’ll go on?”

  He nodded.

  “He wasn’t dead of course, Kevin…. My screaming”—she shifted in her chair—“it jolted him. Wagged him to like he’d been jumped! So I knew he was all right. Saw that he was, I mean.” Her brows came together in a frown of wonderment. “Rightly, knowing he was alive, I should have come out of my scare and calmed down, but—” she bent earnestly towards him: “I don’t know…,” and to his encouraging gesture, “thank you, Father…. What took me was the other side of the coin. I mean, his not being dead set me to shaking worse than when I’d thought he was. I tried,” she hastened on, “to take charge of myself. Made all the effort I could—with my will, as you’d say, and, you know, with my body too. Held my breath for as long as I could. Clamped my jaws to, determined. That sort of thing…. But the power wasn’t in me.” Then, as if she had a sudden inspiration: “I just thought, Father—that cousin to the Cowpers? The one that visits now and again? You see her on the street with Mrs. Cowper, every bit of her shaking?” and to his nod: “I was like her, Father.”