The Light of Evening, page 26
Dear Eleanora,
Now for the bombshell, we might have to sell Rusheen. Things are getting on top of us. Your brother is making demands. We know it’s her, she’s cracked but he is not man enough to stand up to her. We have said goodbye to them for the last time. We might build a bungalow. He demanded ten thousand pounds immediately and let everyone else go to hell. We hear now they have gone to Spain to recuperate. We’re not the only ones who had to sell their homesteads, nobody ever counted with him only her and I believe his life is hell, a brother of hers let it out at a funeral. The animal that won the race is now one and a half years in training at seven guineas a week plus jockey’s fees, plus stablemen, plus fifty pounds to the jockey every so often, a dead loss but if I say anything there’s ructions so I sing dumb. Some critic commented that you as a writer are trying to present a false and malevolent picture of your country, said your works will not live on. Another critic to outsmart him wrote that your work is hocus pocus so you see how controversial you are but sometimes we get the sting of it. I regret to tell you that more trouble is brewing regarding your most recent book. Some have written to publishers to say they are going to take an action against you. Of course they are money mad but they are also out for your blood. I say that I do not want to hear about it but they are evidently upset and very sore with you. They did not expect you to go back years and years to make them objects of ridicule and humiliation. Your father and I do not discuss it as I feel it hurts him too. Yet I know I can go to you if I am in need. I have heard indirectly that you were seen crying in public. I hope it does not bode some fresh disaster. With the last money you sent me, I’m going to buy myself a rocking chair and rock away for the remainder of my life. Gore House that you enquired after went for thirty-five thousand and you could drive a car through the woodworm in it, fungus all over the place and everything rotten. The report is you bought it and as late as last night three people congratulated your father on the purchase. When shall I see you again? You hinted about living in New York, but I pray you don’t. A bank strike and shipping strike so tourists have canceled as they can’t bring their cars. Your father cried a lot before his operation as he was afraid it would perforate at any time. I am telling you it would be better to be married to a man in a cottage earning a weekly wage as there is no money in farming. Last night I had a dream of being back at home in Middleline and looking from the field in front of the door in through the window and seeing a beautiful metal crucifix and white beads hanging on the wall and saying to myself the room is changed, it means change and what does it signify? When you have a minute, would you ever draw a sketch of your black jacket with the grosgrain reveres, I am getting one made like it as I have black skirts but no good jacket.
Dear Eleanora,
Great news that you are coming for a weekend. I had to read your card twice in case I imagined it. I hope to have chickens in good killing order and have a new recipe with apples and chestnuts, for the stuffing. We’ll go up the mountains to see the scenery like long ago. I must give you the tapestry picture of the Statue of Liberty as you will have it when I no longer exist, something you could never buy in a shop. This racing bug is a form of lunacy and he keeps getting into debt in the hope of getting out of debt, utter folly, he works for horses alone. I did more perhaps for your brother than for you long ago when I had a couple of pounds and went to Limerick on a lorry, deprived myself of even a cup of tea to come home with a tennis racket or a new flannel trousers for him that never even said thank you. I have a little request but really it’s not that important, if you can’t get it don’t worry, a copper bracelet for rheumatism to be worn on the arm and never taken off. A nurse told me about it, says it’s miraculous. Even my toes are rigid and sore. I set out to pick a few blackberries and ended up with half a bucket, I made fifty pounds of jelly and only wish I could hand it over the hedge to you. So please bring baskets galore when ye come. The boys love it on scones. You must be lonely without them. Let us pray they don’t grow up heartless and ungrateful and that they never take against you. The most unkindest cut of all, like you once read to me from some book.
Dear Eleanora,
The coat you posted is beautiful but it has one defective skin in the back which the manufacturers stretched to make it fit and I brought it to the furriers in Limerick to ask if they could put press studs in the vents down the back to make it sit but no go as it wasn’t bought there. They even showed me where and how the skin had been faultily cut as if I wanted to know. I got you a supper cloth as I remember you saying you liked them. Our dogs fought Saxton’s dog and ours got the worst of it, one had to be carried in, not even able to stand. The new fridge you ordered has been delivered, it’s pure marvelous as milk always went sour and meat kept only a day. I have a German lodger for six months but of course he has not two words of English. Great to-do here over your latest book, ninety-five percent shocked, they have borrowed from one another to see how revolting it is and ask why can you not write parables that would make pleasant reading. There are lovely teaspoons that I got for coupons out of cornflake packets and they are yours if you fancy them. Another death in the factory, an only son. So that girl you got to help you did something dishonorable I am not surprised. The fire barrel of the stove conked out on me and I will have to go to Teresa O’Gorman’s to have your Christmas cake baked. There are many parts of my life I would not want to relive but I must say I had good times of it in Brooklyn. New York I only set foot in once and on a very unhappy mission, searching for a friend who wasn’t even there at the time. How I long for us to have a big chat one day as there are things I’d like to tell you. You have not forgotten us or our creature comforts but there is something that bugs me. It hurts the way you make yourself so aloof, always running away from us, running running to where. Are we lepers or what. . .
Or . . .
What
Or . . .
What
Epilogue
We were sitting by the kitchen stove, my mother and myself. It must have been September, too early to light a fire in the front room, but nevertheless a bit of a chill to the evening, even the dog, the old rheumatic dog, had gone into his cubbyhole and we had not the slightest difficulty putting in the hens, they wandered in of their own accord. After she’d bolted the door we stood to look at a most ravishing sunset, a shocking pink that spanned a huge panoply of sky, rivers and rivulets crimsoning all before it, ruddying the fort of somber trees, seeping into cloud that was erstwhile and sullen and straggly.
“There’s no place like home,” she said, and I nodded because she wanted me to think likewise.
Once in the kitchen she opened the two oven doors to let the heat out and we sat for one of our chats. Quite unselfconsciously she ran her hands along her neck, all along the sides and then to the back to feel the stiffnesses, and though she had not asked me I felt without the words that she wished me to massage her and I did, searching out the knots and the crick, then along the nape, under her swallow, holding the bowl of her head in my hands, entreating her to let go, to let go of all her troubles and she replying, “If only we could, if only we could.”
Somewhat emboldened, she opened the top button of her good Sunday blouse so that I might lay my hands above the mesh of blue veins that were raised like braid over her sunken chest. She began to bask in it, her expression melting, a happiness at being touched as she had never been touched in all her life, and it was as though she was the child and I had become the mother.
Twilight falls upon her in that kitchen, in that partial darkness, the soft and beautiful light of a moment’s nearness; the soul’s openness, the soul’s magnanimity, falling timorously through the universe and timorously falling upon us.
Acknowledgments
So many people helped me in my researches that I sincerely hope I have forgotten none: the Clare Heritage in Tuamgraney, the Irish Folklore Commission in Dublin, the National Library of Ireland, Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh, the Brooklyn Public Library, the New York Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, and the American Irish Historical Society in New York.
Of the many people who not only answered my questions but also encouraged me to look elsewhere, I would like to include Eilis Ni Duibhne, Criostoir Mac Carthaigh, Chris McIver, Kevin Whelan, Niamh O’Sullivan, Bernadette Whelan, Colum McCann, Chris Kelly, Emily Stone, Mike Onorato, Ron Schweiger, Judith Walsh, Joy Holland, and Dave Smith of the New York Public Library, all of whom were tireless in their continued efforts on my behalf.
In my native County Clare, I am indebted to my nephew Michael Blake, John Howard, Paddy Ryan, a faith healer, and Gerrard Madden, who allowed me to quote from his magazine Slieve Aughty.
Sister Maura, who befriended my mother, gave so much of her generous time. Her profound insights into the journey of death were an enlightenment to me.
I wish to thank Nadia Proudian, who typed the manuscript again and again with such meticulousness.
About the Author
EDNA O’BRIEN is the author of eighteen works of fiction, including the New York Times Notable Books and Book Sense picks Wild Decembers and In the Forest, and Lantern Slides, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2002 she won the National Medal for Fiction from the National Arts Club. An honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, O’Brien was born and grew up in Ireland and has lived in London for many years.
Edna O'Brien, The Light of Evening
