Am I not the black pity of a woman? How often did I hear my own mother chant that refrain? She then would add that the cause of all grief in her life was her reluctance to become a nun, and if she had a chance to relive the days of her existence, then that’s the path she would have followed – to the convent, best of food, best of accommodation, work about the house all done for you as you prayed the knees off yourself, and what was best of all? No men. Absolutely no men to bother you or to need minding. Who could not be happy – delirious even – with such a set up?
But what about us, Mama? What would have become of your children? If you’d become a nun, where would we be? In heaven, she said, annoying the hell out of the angels and the saints, as you annoy me on earth.
Wasn’t that an appalling answer for her to give an innocent child? Is it a wonder I feel wanted nowhere? I suppose if you took things easy, and to my credit, I always try to do so, my mother’s words made me allergic to promises of plenty in the next world, and I’d fiercely refuse to countenance any palaver about what’s in store for us, if we believe in such nonsense as divine reward. That’s what I told himself, my fellow, for it’s what he wanted to hear.
If I have a fault, and I have many I admit, it’s that this was what I’d always do. Tell him what pleased him. What was the point denying him? He’d get his way in the end. Of course, he would argue the opposite. He would describe me as a woman hell bent on leaving him heart-scalded by what I would or, more likely, would not do. Odd that two people living in such closeness should have exactly the opposite notion of how they tick. Or is it odd? Maybe we each of us develop a knack for not listening to what the other is saying. That’s why, years ago, when he declared he was going to learn to lip-read, I told him it was the best thing he could ever do, so go on, full steam ahead. Did it ever go further than a declaration?
I can’t ask him now, for he’s lying there, his lips sealed. Nothing could shift a response from between them. Lips that once opened and out of them poured the sweetest of melodies, softest of sighs. There were times after he sang I swear his breath smelt like a woman’s perfume – comical that, for he had the purest tenor voice ever put into a man’s mouth. Say what you like, and I could say plenty, there was an occupation he did to perfection. An awful pity he didn’t just stick to the music and leave the writing to other boyos who could do nothing but the one thing, and then never as well as him either – hence, his determination never to let it go.
Would he have been a happier man if he’d done so? Me a happier woman? What is happiness, any road? There was a beggar woman used call to my grandmother’s house, regular as a clockwork mouse, twice a month in winter, once in summer, always on a Friday, looking for a feed of fish, but never mackerel. Though the poor creature be starving, she would not touch its flesh, maintaining it was what she called to our delight as children a lascivious beast whose behaviour disgraced the ocean. Behind her back we used mock her fancy way of describing a stupid old mackerel, and one day when I was older, I had to inquire from her why did she shun only this species.
What was I expecting to hear from her? A dirty story from under the seas? I was never a girl for such yarns at the best of times, so I doubt if it was that which prompted me. She told me I could never learn young enough the dire effect mackerel had on a young lassie. Eat your fill and more of it, and you would turn into the most beautiful girl ever to be seen in Connaught. Well may you jump hearing this as I can see you doing, she noticed, but pay full heed to what else I’m warning. Once you get a taste for this magic, it’s like a man who gets a taste for red-haired hussies, there’s no hope. Nothing else will satisfy. Isn’t that what happened me? Isn’t it why I lost house and home, family and friends – all in pursuit of becoming the loveliest of them all? Didn’t I get what I wanted, and my face, wasn’t there symphony after symphony, sonata after sonata, composed in my honour?
I never heard any, I remarked.
You wouldn’t, she confirmed. What happened to them? I asked her, for some reason expecting her to lie – why I cannot say – but no, she told me truthfully, they were all forgotten, not a soul remembers a single piece, except herself. And did I know why?
I didn’t – tell me.
Because she it was who wrote them, all in praise of her own splendour. She paid the price for this sin of pride. No one could recall a single note, and when she’d tried to remind them of the melodies she had plucked from the ether, what did the music provoke from this shower of begrudgers but a jeer, a thousand jeers, ringing in her ears, and all of them singing the same nonsense, you stole that from better fiddlers than yourself, you’re claiming credit for another’s labour.
The more she tried to deny this, the more she’d correct them, being well able to give chapter and verse exactly when she and she alone had been the hand that plucked these chords from nowhere, the more she was scorned by all and sundry, until once in the heat of argument a fat woman slapped her across the face with a mackerel that the beggar swore smiled at her tauntingly, daring her to blame an innocent fish for her lies and deceptions and all the bad cess that had brought her to this lowly status where she now found herself.
I listened and believed her. Then she asked had I the price of a night’s lodgings?
How could I as a child have such a sum of money on me? Then ask the lady of the house, she urged. But I knew my grandmother’s answer to that. It was the answer she gave to most requests. We are poor people, she would inform whoever asked for anything. We are poor people. These are the words I hate most in the English language, and when I told that to himself – was it in Dublin I first confessed this? If it was, then you would have heard him laughing in Galway.
Why did he think it so amusing? Why was he mocking me? Was it, I said, because he thought himself better than me and mine? Didn’t he spring from the loins of an old windbag that couldn’t leave that walking waif of his mother alone for the space of time to let her draw breath before she was up the pole with another babby? What right have you, I roared at him, what right have you to upcast my want when you are no better your good self?
I have no right, he said, that was why I was laughing. He left it at that, and I let him.
Others might have been tempted to regard what he said as no more than a back-answer you’d expect from a maid standing up to the housekeeper in a cheap hotel that would fleece you as soon as look at you, but I have enough gumption to admit when I’m wrong, and while wrong might not be the way to describe how I reacted to what he said, still and all I felt his honesty, when it came down to it, that we were, me and him, cut from the same cloth, and we’d never forget it.
Does he forget it now, lying there, near lifeless? How could I waken him? Will I tell him I’m going to pray for him? Would the shock of that stun him into saying something?
We were taught all the prayers in our school in Galway. My favourite was to Our Blessed Lady, the ‘Memorare’. I did believe once upon a time very long ago that if I recited it, I would be heard and given everything I wanted, so I was careful, very careful not to be a greedy gut and look for too much. It would not do, I knew, to expect the heavens to open and douse me with divine blessings – not with clothes or shoes or a big sofa.
What was it I tried to cajole then out of Mary, Queen of Heaven? Days off school likely, forget sweets and toys, I accepted such favours were of the wrong sort and I should be ashamed to torment her looking to receive these childish pleasures. No, I had drummed it into my head that when you put the poor mouth on with the purpose of the Virgin listening to your needs and wants, then it should concern itself – the prayer – with health or the necessity to find a job or pass an exam.
Not that this lady talking here concerned herself too avidly with the examinations, as my mother used delight to remark, but she was one who shouldn’t pass comments. My grandmother always said of her daughter, that lassie, she could not spell shite without a Q. Christ, was Ma livid when that was brought back into the conversation long after she believed it dead and buried. No, some cousin in her wandering mind or else a crone of a neighbour – there was one nicknamed Joan the Crone – they would bring it back again into circulation and there she was marked out for slander once more, if slander be the same as the truth.
And I did believe in the truth of that prayer. Long after I let all faith in so much of what had been nailed into us as God’s tenets cease to trouble me in the very slightest, it would come back in the dark night and console me, even if I might be too young at the time to need much consolation. Jesus, I suppose you’re never too young not to need that – even the infant in the cradle. I’m told when I was in the crib, I took to the holy water like a Wexford whore to whiskey, so all the more surprising I was not what they used to describe in Galway as gospel greedy.
Funny thing about that town, the way it divided its people into those who would not stray outside their front door without a scapular round their neck or row of medals reputedly blessed by a cardinal or bishop on their Confirmation day, and the others who would not give the same bishop or cardinal the wind of their fart in honoured greeting. As always with my crowd, nobody knew who was what, so you could rely on someone being offended and slamming the front door shut in a fit of pique, vowing never to address another word to that shower of infidels or holy Joes. You wouldn’t know if you were coming or going having a conversation, should the subject of religion arise.
Best then say nothing, but can you imagine the likes of us holding our tongues?
Speaking of Confirmation, we all chose another name, and I took Felicity, largely to annoy that grandmother I mentioned in relation to my own mother’s lack of learning. The same woman could provide you with all the songs ever heard through the confines of the city and the wilds of County Galway, but was not so hot when it came to putting pen to paper. They were united in wonder and a bit of disgust at the choice of Felicity. How in under good Christ did you come up with that gander of a name – is it a saint’s? Will you be allowed to use it?
That was their response when I let slip they would have to dig me into the grave before I’d pick Bernadette, as they both were urging.
Bernadette’s a lovely name, they insisted, what do you find wrong with it? Because it sounds like a sheep. I’m sure she did mind sheep in her day, I was informed, there’s nothing untoward with that at all – wasn’t she singled out for special honour at Lourdes and her a poor country girl like yourself? Then it’s hardly likely to happen twice, is it, I maintained, I’m not going to see any visions and even if I were, I’d stick to Felicity. Do as you please, do as you always do, my mother nodded to her mother, expecting and finding agreement. I’ll never get my tongue round it, she insisted. Who do we know called that? Nobody, I assured her. What was she? A martyr, I informed them.
Why don’t you go the whole hog and call yourself Robert Emmet, they asked, now there was a martyr, a man who died for Ireland, would your Felicity have done likewise? She was a martyr in Rome for the Christian faith, I informed them, if you read your prayer book you’d know that. The age of that one, advising me to read my missal, you have some cheek, my lady. I’d slap the badness out of her if I didn’t think she’d hit me back, my mother chuckled, an old saying and a true saying, you have them as you reared them, I’ve made the stick to beat my back. You said it, my grandmother noted, so how did they martyr poor Felicity?
Saint Felicity, I corrected her, give her the proper title, for she earned it considering how she died. That’s what I’m asking, how did she go? Grandmother repeated. I had no more notion than the man in the moon what way the poor bitch popped her clogs, so I had better find something they’d believe. Was it by fire? Granny wondered, or did they knife her? Maybe they flayed the skin from her and fed her bones to the dogs? They had a great fondness for that class of activity in Rome back then. How would you know? my mother demanded. The same thing happened to a woman in Moycullen, well before you were born, my granny said, the husband was the culprit, he got away with it though. How? He ate the evidence, he ate what was left of her, his poor wife. Wouldn’t it make you think twice about marrying? Though such advice is a bit late in the day for us, she observed.
Nothing like that happened to Saint Felicity, I said, she did not die by any of the methods you mentioned. They set fire to her, and she was consumed by flames. Just like Joan of Arc. In fact as a homage to her and maybe as an omen of what was to become her destiny, the same Joan took Felicity as her Confirmation name, also much against her parents’ wishes.
Weren’t they right? my mother sneered, didn’t she too go up in flames? I have only one thing to say about all this, my granny added, for I’m thinking of that poor girl, whatever you call her, and the sore end she came to, being eaten alive by the blazes of hell, and her a good-living, decent being – why in the midst of all this horror, why in such peril, why when all hope was lost, did she not turn to the sweet mother of God? Why did she not know Mary would have protected her as she tried to protect her only beloved son? Why didn’t that Roman girleen not say her ‘Memorare’?
You see now how I was reared? You can understand why I’d turn in that direction? How such recourse was ingrained through me? Himself thinks he knows it all about me and mine, but he wouldn’t credit the half of it. How could he, when I haven’t told him? That’s my look-out, but if I were to wonder why I kept my secrets – as many as I did – what would I answer? What would be my defence?
That he could never, ever keep anything to himself. The man even told his son how he was born. If the boy’s head were not turned by knowing such things about his mother, who would wonder at it? When the child looked, what could he not see but that same mother naked, swimming with blood? That planted firmly in his poor brain – how could the boy not have the most confused ideas about women?
I’d be the first to admit that I was the one who said my son married an invisible woman – I swear to Jesus that she was just not there. It was not so much a question of what he saw in her as of what he saw at all? Did she exist? Well, she must have, for they signed the contract legally uniting them, but the bitch was anaemic to the extent that I doubt if there was a drop of blood in her veins. Was there a vein even in her body? Was there an ounce of solid flesh to be found in her? At the end it’s said she did a runner back to her own people, but would they have noticed her returning?
I doubt it.
And of course the finger of blame for the ruination of my son’s happiness was pointed in his mother’s direction. I’ll pay it no heed. What crime am I guilty of? Have I not always tried to do the best for me and mine, and what thanks were ever offered? The mockery of himself. I could hear the sneering if I were to admit to the divine goodness I turned to for succour and mercy when there was neither in the vicinity of my home as we wandered through whatever city of Europe where he might find the few shillings to keep me in drawers and himself in drink and a bite in the mouth of our bonhams. That, to the likes of you, is a suckling pig. An uncle from Sligo passed on its usage, and it’s always been fondly employed by our ones. Himself though, my one and only, he would not be too fond if he knew whose blessing I craved on the whole shower of us. Or maybe he would, contrary fucker as he was, and me his match, I admit.
I look at him lying helpless on this bed in the lonely city where we’ve ended up on the run from the bastards who’d eat us without salt should we stumble into them. What makes people hate? It must be the roughest thing in the world to live with a heart so hardened that it can’t hear another being weeping in pain. Dear Christ, let no one say that about me after I’m dead and buried. Let me receive a softer word as a woman. I tried my best to harm nobody. That dying man, he is my witness. He would back me up in that claim. And what am I doing talking about death being so near? Am I hastening it on its way to him? And why do I hesitate to say the words of the prayer that never failed me, or if it did I’ve forgotten when? Is it just because I fear he’d laugh at me and jeer?
No, it can’t be, for I’d give anything even for him to deride me – to have even that much life in him. Then what is halting me?
I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to. Just say it and be done.
Who knows what reaction it will provoke? Might get a rise out of him. One time everything did. Not today or yesterday. Still, I’m one to talk. You could now parade a whole naked hurling team in front of me and I wouldn’t thank you. I’m talking serious. I wouldn’t know now what to do with a bare cock. Smoke it maybe. Get a bit of satisfaction that way if no other. I’ll be struck down for that kind of chat and me intending to invoke the Blessed Virgin.
What kind of woman was she at all, I wonder? From what little I know, I’d say she was fierce for the cleaning. Likely never had a scrubbing brush out of her hand. The talk of Nazareth for being house proud. Had she St Joseph and Jesus in a state if they dirtied a clean shirt she’d spent hours scrubbing? Worn the knees off herself polishing.
A neighbour of ours, Mrs Rooney, was notorious for leaving her kitchen floor slippery as ice. When queried why, she said she lived in hope her husband’s mother might visit. There was a chance the old witch might break her neck if she slipped, for she showed little other sign of ceasing to torment those afflicted by any connection to her. The Rooneys were widely regarded as not being right in the head, although I was pally with the eldest girl, Suzie. Poor Suzie – she took to the drink badly, and the last I heard was walking the streets of Cardiff, if you please, whatever notion took her there.
I wonder did she pray as I’m about to? A fine-looking youngster, gorgeous hair, thick, jet black. The old lady they all hated, she threatened to put a stop to her gallivanting, as courting was sometimes called in those distant days. She waited for Suzie to come home one night. Now it was late, after two in the morning. That must be acknowledged. She had two big thick sons of hers in attendance – boys you wouldn’t dare look crooked at in case they’d break your mouth for having the monstrous cheek to set eyes on them. One of them intended to wear a knuckleduster but the other persuaded him not to. Far too rough a punishment surely to use against a girl. There was no necessity for any other instrument than a pair of shears. They could work vengeance as well as any weapon or boot against a woman. They lay in wait for her, hiding inside the gateway of an abandoned forge.
She – the old one – got the men to grab Suzie when she ventured past and hold her against a wall. She hacked the girl’s beautiful hair off so you could see her scalp. If they expected the youngster to cry out of shame and beg their mercy, they had the wrong soldier. She didn’t even blink an eye – just kept looking straight ahead of her, saying nothing. That defiance must have been infuriating. Didn’t the old bitch skelp Suzie across the face? See how many of your fancy men like the look of you now, the witch jeered, hoping to provoke at least a tear out of the girl.
Suzie didn’t oblige. Not so much as a sob left her lips. She kept her eyes bored into her tormentor, ignoring the guffaws of the two centurions attending the scene. Finally she spoke, and word has it this is what she declared: Did you enjoy inflicting on me what you’ve just done? I hope you have, for it will be the last time you raise your hands against me in any shape or form. Remember that the next time you’re seen beating the breast of yourself at the altar rails. Remember what I’m about to deliver you.
And with that didn’t Suzie start to say the ‘Memorare’, much to the consternation of the three who assaulted her.
– Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary–
– Why are you invoking the name of Mary, stop it at once, you heathen, her grandmother demanded, to no avail.
– That never was it known–
– Will you stop this blaspheming, what are you trying to do? The old one was now panicking.
– That anyone who fled to thy protection–
– Stop it, Suzie, the grandmother warned.
– Implored thy help–
– You know what bad luck will follow this.
– Or sought thine intercession was left unaided.
– Make her shut her lying mouth, the older and more frightened of the bullies pleaded.
– Inspired by this confidence–
– Our Lady is listening to all of this, the old woman threatened.
– Jesus, I hope she’s not, the other bruiser stuck his oar in.
– I fly unto thee–
– What are you going to ask for anyway? they questioned her.
– O Virgin of virgins, my mother–
– I’m sure the same virgin is having a good laugh listening to that whore try to defile something so holy as this prayer, the younger bucko said.
– To thee do I come, before thee I stand–
– She has no shame, her grandmother observed.
– Sinful and sorrowful.
– Sinful for certain, but I’d not be too sure about the sorrow, would you be, boys? she asked.
– O Mother of the Word Incarnate–
– I’ve often wondered what in hell that all means, how can you mother a word? the younger lad wondered.
– It’s a mystery, just believe it, the grandmother menaced him.
– Despise not my petitions–
– Will you enlighten us what they may be? she was asked.
– But in thy mercy hear–
– You will not be heard, rest assured of that.
– And answer me.
They let Suzie finish her prayers. She did not give them time to plague her further. Rather she eyeballed them and said out straight, in case you want to learn what I want, it is that all of you, from the oldest to the youngest, die roaring and it is within my earshot. I would not so much as offer you a sip of water to ease your suffering. Know this much – you are hated from this hour onward. I have no time nor respect for you. You are the dirt beneath my feet.
So that’s the thanks I get at the end of my days, the granny was near crying, that’s all I need expect, well, you’ve shown me your true colours, I should have seen them years ago. Don’t darken my door again – you’ll never cross under my roof. If you act like a tinker and talk like one, you can live like one. Never come back.
I have no intention of ever doing so, Suzie assured her. I won’t wait for tomorrow. I’ll go this night. You’ll never set eyes on me again, nor will any in Galway.
And we never did. Not a sign of our pal.
You’d hear things in passing – hence the story about her in Cardiff from an Oranmore man who’d been working in Wales down the pits, but who knows, was it her at all he’d glimpsed? I always thought that our paths would cross, especially when I was working in that hotel in Dublin. She might call asking for me. But no, no. It never happened. Still, I thought of her often, especially at the end of October. That might have been her birthday, I’m not sure, but I am certain the two of us loved that part of the year when it would soon be Hallowe’en. How long since I celebrated that feast day? All Souls, 31 October, All Saints, 1 November. My family always threw a big party, the envy of Galway.
Hard to believe but nuts – nuts were a novelty then. Lovely in their strange shells. Hazels, Brazils, monkeys, almonds, walnuts – smelling of cats for some reason, the last ones I mentioned. In Paris you could buy them all the year round in any shop you’d enter. I made a show of us at one swanky dinner when come the meal’s end, they displayed the nuts and I asked, was it Hallowe’en or what? Sure those big noises – well, they thought they were – never heard in France of such a date, and I was given a look by himself that I’d better not start trying to explain. For once I did as he demanded, because that was the occasion when Suzie appeared in my mind’s eye, devouring slices of barmbrack, and all I could do was watch her eat.
Would it be fair to say that Galway ones, we’re always ravenous? Are we, to a man, woman and child, always shovelling grub down our gullets? Let me tell you, everywhere I travelled – Italy, France, Switzerland – they can wine and dine without restraint in all destinations. I say more power to them. Were himself now capable of a morsel or two, I’d be the first to take pleasure feeding him. Maybe a slice of roast chicken, or a wing, a taste of salty ham perfumed with sugar and cloves on the skin, a wedge of chocolate cake sandwiched with apricot jam or a hefty slab of bread drowning in the best Irish butter, if you can get your hands on it off someone travelling from home. He’d relish the lot of that, make no mistake, and I’d be the happy woman to see him sated. I wonder did I ever pass on to him that expression of my grandfather’s – he would claim that, at the end of his days, he could lift nothing heavier than a knife and fork nor raise only a glass. I must not have, for he would have repeated it to me to check he had his wording of it accurate, and I cannot recall that ever happening.
I recall my grandfather though – that man was a fount of knowledge about Hallowe’en. He was strong as an ox, able to break nuts just by squeezing them in his palms. Sometimes he’d do funny voices, pretending to be the shell squeaking as it broke, squealing in a high shriek not to be torn apart. As children we loved this performance, watching him like hawks, listening to his jokes, begging him to do it again, again, again. Then he’d stop and tell us to enjoy our party. We did because the bowls full of fruit, the baskets crammed with sweets – that would be a rare enough sight. We each had our two apples and an orange, a chocolate bar and a sherbet lollipop, four slabs of toffees and a bottle of lemonade. Paradise.
Some of us saved bits and pieces to eat later on or the following day. Not me. I wolfed the lot, for I wanted to be out and about on the night that was in it, playing games of chasing.
Were you chasing ghosts, or were they chasing you?
Who said that? Jesus Christ, who spoke just then? Was is you, Dick? Richard, now don’t do this to me – did you speak to me? Or am I only imagining things? My mother said that might prove to be the bane of my life, having a lively imagination. Or being a liar, depending on who was describing me.
I did hear his voice just now, didn’t I? It was him asking me about ghosts, wasn’t it? What did I say or do to rouse him? Was it just by referring to the night itself? Did the mere mention of Hallowe’en shake him out of his stupor, if only for a sentence? Should I answer his questions?
The answer is, I don’t know who was doing the chasing. We walked about in gangs, doing some innocent badness. One year, myself and the same Suzie, we overstepped the mark with our games, and we knew we had. Half, if not the entire population of Galway is what we describe as being bad with the nerves. This can account for everything from not washing your windows to murdering your husband with a stout blackthorn stick, flattening his skull like a pancake, claiming it wasn’t him you were putting the kibosh on but a replica the fairies had left in his stead. The wife who tried that as an alibi got twenty years. When she got out, she still claimed it was worth it. Anyway, there was a neighbour, a Sam McGowan, who suffered badly from the shakes – though he never touched a drop – when the darkness descended on him, and the night he and his own dreaded most was Hallowe’en.
Well, he had it planted in his head that there was among the McGowans a belief that a loud knock at the door was a terrible sign and that this had been historically proven. If it had been, then it was news to all belonging to him, but none could dissuade him. The poor fellow believed with all his heart, this knock was unlucky. Now what do you think was the consequence of this? All children love a bit of mischief, and who could resist at Hallowe’en the old habit of banging on a neighbour’s door and then running away like the hammers of hell before they opened it? Harmless enough, you would say, but not so if the man you’re tormenting thinks it’s the banshee dropping by with a Mass card for the soul of the departed and it’s his name she’s signed on the bottom.
The upshot of all this was, of course, there was a queue of us lining up to persecute Sam. Why didn’t he just leave his door open and catch the culprits? Well, he lived with his mother who was crippled with a bad chest, and Galway at the end of October is no Riviera. You daren’t leave a window ajar unless you plan to entertain a dose of pneumonia.
So, Sam was ripe for the mocking. But this year it was rumoured he could take no more taunting. Maybe tonight he might not relent from getting the police – maybe you would be behind bars at his insistence. That was the risk you undertook should you try to get a laugh or a chase out of him.
We’d better try nothing, Suzie cautioned, leave him this year. I was shocked at her. Since when had she turned into such a yellow belly? It was always me being the cowardy custard. But not this time. I said if she wouldn’t knock at McGowans’ door, then I would. You do, she challenged, and you best be ready to run like a scalded cat, and if you don’t, I’ll tell everyone. Better to be laughed at than to dirty yourself out of fear, and I could tell from the jumping in my stomach there was a strong chance of that happening. I decided it best I get a quick move on. No use hanging about trying to hear if he’s pacing inside, waiting to leap immediately on whoever dares this night to disturb whatever peace the poor man could ever summon for himself.
I ran to the house, and then, shocking myself as much as anything or anyone else, it wasn’t a knock I gave but raising my brogue, I kicked the lining out of the wood.
The sheer force of it must have stopped him stone dead, for the door didn’t spring open and I had a bit of time to dash, followed by Suzie, who was laughing herself to death. We heard him deliver a mouthful of oaths after us, with his old mother telling him calm down – Sam, calm down, they’re not worth following, leave them be, son. I don’t know for sure if he took her advice for we were too blinded by fear to look back and see was he on our trail. Suzie and her people knew the warren of streets in all arts and parts of the city like the back of their hand, so I trooped after her, happy to let her lead me through highways and byways and nooks and crannies of Galway, for we met, thanks be to Christ, no one who would know us, and I sincerely hoped Suzie would be able to find her way home.
We’d been warned all our lives about the river and the quays and beware of ships and sailors, never listen to them. Here now was where we found ourselves. If I’d thought about the danger I would have been petrified, too scared to take a step, yet I knew it was most urgent I keep my wits about me and be ready to race away should there be need to escape. We walked hand in hand, feeling we’d be safe if we stuck together. Nothing seemed untoward. The place was dark but quiet. We were feeling a little brave when we heard a voice ask us, what are you two girls looking for? You’re wandering here at this hour of a Hallowe’en night, why?
We did not know the man who spoke, nor did he claim any acquaintance with us. I felt no lack of manners in telling Suzie under my breath not to speak to him. His accent sounded funny, foreign even, but then I realised where he was from. The Aran Islands. Wasn’t the English language alien to them, so well versed in Gaelic, speaking nothing but that among themselves. We had an Aunt Rose on my father’s side who’d married a fisherman from Inishmore, I think – and he took her to live there, never letting her back to the mainland. She claimed she didn’t miss it, all you could want in life she had it where she lived, and her family believed her when she said that as she looked around her at the state of the world, she was the happiest of the whole lot of them. At one time her husband would call to us for his cup of tea when he’d come to the city, but that stopped. It was believed some offence was taken, but he would not reveal what and nobody wanted to know. He is reputed to have told his relations in Dominic Street that he believed we binned every cup he drank out of whenever he’d walked from our door. Does that buck eejit think I have money to burn, my mother asked, to throw away china just because his lips touched it? Let him go to hell and no longer bother me. His wife’s as odd as two left feet, and so is he. Well matched, the pair of lunatics.
And it was his voice I could hear in the stranger now speaking to us, wondering what we were doing here. He repeated the question and this time before I could stop her, Suzie replied, we’re minding our own business, and so should you be. Bold as brass that one, when she wanted to be. Aren’t you the courageous girl, he retorted, hasn’t that put me in my place? We don’t care where your place might be, though we can make a guess, I added, just leave us alone. Another smart colleen, where would you guess my place is? he challenged. We don’t have to answer any of your questions, Suzie reminded him, now will you be so good as to allow us make our way to home? Such politeness, the island man complimented her, haven’t you the dainty tongue in your head?
She has a dainty toe in her boot, as have I, I warned him, take care it’s not firmly planted up your hole.
Would you credit, what he next tried to palm off on us? He said to us that if we were to give him even the inkling of a court, it could well be the last one he’d ever enjoy, so would we not soften our hearts and let him have a hint of a feel? I looked at Suzie, who was looking at him saying nothing, but I came out with, Well now, Mister, you’re scraping the barrel and no mistaking, have you not the slightest dreg of shame?
What shame is it for a dying man to implore? What shame in pitching for a last favour before kicking the bucket? Have either of you a heart inside you at all? he wanted to know.
Indeed I’ve a heart, I let him know, and a hard one it is after hearing every sob story could be thrown in a body’s face, listening to the lies of Ireland pouring out of a prize chancer’s mouth. Your very teeth are turning green with shame spinning such awful stories as you’re now doing.
Is it for that reason I tell you I’m dying? he asked. Would you leave off with that nonsense, said I, you’re as healthy as the next man. Then didn’t Suzie pipe up, What has you on your last legs? Is it a sleeping sickness or the tuberculosis that’s taken half, if not two-thirds, of the men of Ireland? His answer was not what either of us expected.
He had been placed under sentence of death by a creature he’d met in the sea while fishing on his currach. You’ll be telling me next it was a mermaid, I said, bursting out in a laugh, would you ever catch yourself on? Who’d fall for such nonsense? Was it a mermaid? Suzie wanted to know, and I swear she was in earnest asking. Would you like it to have been? he smiled at her so sweetly you’d think they were stepping out together. Was it a mermaid? she repeated.
Why are you so anxious to know this? he asked her out straight. Because I think that’s what I am, she answered him. No, not a mermaid, he said calmly, there was nothing maidenly about the creature who passed on to me that fatal news. Suzie asked, was it a bird then? Some white gull that singled you out to hear and understand what it was cawing? Aye, he agreed, it was a fowl of some order or other, and it flew straight into my lap and took its ease there, as tame as a dove – but that’s not what it was, for how could a dove survive the wet and winds of the Aran Islands? Then what was its species? she wondered.
I can tell you that, it was a sand martin, he said, there in all its glory, the brown head and rump, its white belly and throat, smelling of the Sahara whence it might have just flown, for it was singing in a strange language that could have been Arabic or Aramaic, I can’t say, I know neither, but I followed its refrain for there was no mistaking the rattle at the song’s end, convincing me that, for the two of us, the game was up. Now, do you not regret you weren’t beside me on my boat?
Your currach, I corrected him, but she, Suzie, had clammed up. After what seemed like an age, she asked the two of us, You won’t tell anybody what I said, will you? They would kill me. Who would? I asked. My people, she said, for they’re not my people. It’s why they hate me. Why they’re so cruel. They found me and took me from the Atlantic, and as I grow older, funny enough I remember more clearly now than closer to when it happened as I was hauled out of the waves, my mother wailing to them to give me back, but they left her to weep on the shore. It’s said you could hear her crying there at night for years after, raging, searching for her lost little one.
How for the love of the crucified Christ, were you ever a mermaid? I observed, haven’t you feet beneath you, and not the tail of a fish? I can explain that, she said. Then the floor is all yours, I invited her, away you go. It’s all a question of belief about what you see, she declared, do you believe or not in mermaids? I do not, I told her honestly. Do you believe in them? she asked the island man. I do believe, he said. Then that precisely accounts for the difference, she insisted, you don’t believe, and so you see feet. He does believe, so he sees the tail. He knows what I am, don’t you? she said turning to him.
I don’t, he shocked her. Why not? she demanded. Because you’ve told us, he informed her, and such a secret must be forever under lock and key until it’s either taken to the grave with you, or you go back to the depths of the ocean. You’ve done neither, so I think you have just been lying through your teeth, trying to trick me, a poor fisherman. The pair of you, go back to your ma’s fireside, warming your arses before you hit the hay, safe and snug in your own shakedowns.
Suzie looked at him as if he were lice. Then she opened her mouth and spoke very lowly. The sand martin spoke the truth, she said, you will die, it will be soon, and no creature from the sea or air will step in to save you when the currach sinks, as it now must. Am I to understand you are placing a curse on me? he wanted to know. Understand what you like, she snapped.
They say no curse is ever heard without it rebounding on the one who spoke it, leaving her, who was without mercy enough to cast it, coming one day to look for the very same mercy she lacked, and being refused it. It’s a smart woman knows this is a weapon to be used sparingly, if at all. When I think of Suzie and wherever she might be wandering at night, through what city, Cardiff or not, what streets, what docks, what piers, does she remember that uncanny conversation, and her believing she was what so obviously she wasn’t, yet ready to argue otherwise till the cows should come home? Does she ever imagine what she said attacking that Aran man would affect all she’s done to herself? What has she brought on her two shoulders, her and her alone? Isn’t she the unfortunate?
And me – me, am I the same? No, I’d argue the opposite. I would say when push comes to shove, I’m doing all right. Maybe more than that even. Blessed, if you’re inclined to look at things in such a light – and we’re not, as a family. We would be united on that. We’re united on most things. We have our ups and downs. But we stick together. Or we try to. I’d be the first to admit that not everything has been easy going. The struggle for money when we were starting, that was a rough station. Neither himself nor myself were the best at providing for rainy days, but my excuse is every day in Galway the heavens bucket down, what else would you expect? We held body and soul together best as we could. A few friends had to put their hands into their pockets and bail us out, that is very true, but they believed in his genius, as did I, and they gave us the necessary to survive at times. You pay a price for struggling, though. Some would declare the price we paid was our daughter.
A difficult girl, no denying. Her father’s ruined her. His little darling. His pride and joy, he might declare. And I’m not afraid to admit the many ways she knows and always has known how to wrap him round her little finger, her smart ruses to snare him – she daren’t try such machinations on me – they have me heartbroken at the way she could destroy the lot of us, if I were not up to her, for haven’t I seen the like before? Is there a family in Galway that doesn’t have one in it – usually a female – who could cut the legs from under you with their letting on they need special attention, when a good thrash on the fat arse might prove the most effective of all cures needed to calm them down. But of course, if you say that out straight, you’re the worst in the world, so, against my nature, I keep quiet on the subject of that lassie, certainly in front of strangers.
Not that any vow of silence applies to the same young lady. There are tribes I hear tell out foreign in the darkest part of the earth where they tie some sort of handkerchief about the faces of girls to stop their finding fault with whatever is their lot. It’s said they pull their teeth out to make sure that any speech is sore, very sore indeed and you’d think more than twice before you’d be so bold as to give your opinion on this, that or the other. There was a family not that far from us where the father bred the fear of God into all his youngsters, but especially his womenfolk, where they’d feel the weight of his hand across their mouths should they ever make a comment that could in any way be construed as contradicting him. Wouldn’t I have been the smart woman if I’d followed suit with that most troublesome offspring rather than honouring her every whim? Of course I could only do as I was allowed, and for that I have to blame himself who would let her burn the house down if that was what she demanded.
I speak with some authority on that matter, having seen her in action with fire. To her a box of matches was some kind of plaything. Strike a match, set a curtain ablaze, watch the pretty shades melting. How many times did I stop her in time? How many times did I accordingly stop myself from letting the world know something was wrong – seriously wrong with what we were rearing under our roof? Why did I not brave her father’s wrath when he’d roaringly dispute that any sign of weakness in the head could not happen where one of his was concerned? Eyes see what they want to, ears hear as they please, there’s no persuading some, but at least I can spare myself the biggest of blame when it comes to pointing the finger at who should stand most accused for not facing up to the worst. I would have got none or next to no thanks had I said how much she was in need of treatment.
Will I ever forget the night she proved that to me beyond all reasonable doubt? We were in a nice restaurant, myself, himself, Archie, her and a long string of Protestant misery from County Dublin who claimed he had travelled to Paris devoted only to serving the great writer. I had my grievous doubts about the same boy’s intentions, and while some maintained the opposite, it is my contention he saw she would grow crazy about him and would do Christ knows what for the sake of a quick court, so he led her up the garden path and all the way to Renvyle to keep in with the supreme artist who was her father. Her devotion to this chancer, it was pitiful to watch, and maybe I was not the most attentive of mothers and made sure matters ceased, but how could I diminish her attentions towards him when he was clearly the apple of her eye and every other organ she possessed and the only unalloyed joy she might ever have known?
He got a bit of a revelation about her that night. We all did, I suppose. It was a swanky enough place, but we were holding our heads high, watching carefully what we were drinking, and then the waiter came for the order. Didn’t I make the mistake of letting the young princess precede her mother, she could decide first what food she might deign to eat. He asked her to repeat the dish requested, and she did. Magpie.
She wanted to start with a feed of magpies. Since the men had buried themselves in their menus, I was the one felt obliged to point out this would not be possible. The French are an ingenious people – certainly more than the Irish – at what they consider edible in flesh, fish and fowl, but not even they could make magpies a delicacy to consume.
She begged to differ. Why? her father asked. I ate them as a child, she recalled. Where? her brother wanted to know. In my mother’s bed – she fed me the whole bird, beak, feathers, she told him, she made me eat it all. I wouldn’t let her away with this, pointing out to her that to the best of my knowledge neither my good self nor any belonging to me would have the slightest notion how to cook a magpie. You baked them, she contradicted me. What? I challenged her, how in hell did I bake them? In a pie, she explained, and it cost sixpence. I follow her, her father said suddenly. Then you do more than I do, I let him know, what is she talking about? That’s when the Protestant skeleton shook his bony mouth and broke his customary silence.
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocketful of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing.
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
To set before the king?
She clapped her hands like a child, as did her father, delighted for some reason or other. The waiter was standing looking at us as if we were cracked. He just wanted us to make up our minds. You will eat fish, I insisted, as I will, and less of this carry on. I was glaring in the direction of her father, I was ready to kill him for encouraging her in this silly carry on. She was having none of it. She insisted she would eat nothing if she could not dine on magpie, and she wanted it here and now. The waiter, to my shock, played along. He said he would check in the kitchen, did so and came back to announce there was a great shortage in Paris of that particular bird. Might he recommend quail?
The scream emitting from her mouth shocked us all. I thought Archie was going to weep with embarrassment, poor fellow. I decided it best not to dignify her rudeness with any censure whatsoever, but made it clear when I rose from my chair I had no intention of allowing this bitch dictate that we were to spend an evening doubled over with shame. She had another think coming if such public outrage could unsettle me. I saw my drunk father pull his drawers down and, like an animal, dirty the streets of Galway, his cock waving in the pink wind. Did she think I would do a runner from this carry on with my tail between my legs, disgraced by her? The next thing I saw was her grabbing a jug of water. She then poured it over her lap, drenching it, the blue of her dress blackening.
I let her father make the apology. Archie accompanied me to the door, fetching my coat, politely not hearing my guts rattle with the hunger, for not a bite of food could be eaten in this establishment after what we’d witnessed tonight. I doubt now if himself will be able to turn his back on what would soon be necessary to be done and no mistake. I took no pleasure in leaving him to handle this mess, but my point is it is largely of his making. And it’s from his side this bad blood has flowed to her brain.
You can imagine how that would have gone down if I’d dared breathe a word along those lines. The same drunken father I’ve more than once mentioned, he would surely be hurled in my face. But his weakness was drink, pure and simple. And such simple associations cannot be made about my daughter. My daughter – it’s odd how hard I find it to say that statement. Why should that be the case? There was no one about me to ask, and it was hardly the kind of thing I could put in a letter home to my own mother. Who might get their Galway claws on it and read the secret? But she would have said something to take the weight of my dislike for my girl from my shoulders. Was it dislike anyway? Were it so, it might have weakened. Melted with the years. But it didn’t. Not in the slightest way. So I doubt if it could be put down to that. No, if I am to be forced into admitting what I believed lay at the root of what distanced us, I’d say fear.
How did I fear her? I can’t describe it, because I never would admit that, though the world knows she gave me reason enough. One Christmas I tried to buy her affection. For her present she got the most expensive doll ever made, beautiful, moving eyes, tender lips, a blush like a cream rose on her cheek, her dress cut from crimson silk, and her tiny feet fitted in little boots of softest leather. Could you guess what she did to it? She sliced every stitch off its back, dismantled every limb, cut the shoes to bits.
It now might seem like a warning, but what way did I react to the sight of this massacre?
I burst out laughing. Not the wisest move, I admit, but I’m the kind who would see something comical in destruction, as if the child didn’t give a tinker’s curse what she did, and what would be made of it. Gratitude was out the window. She would not so much bite the hand that gave as draw blood from it. And me, I was with her on that score. Still, I should have curbed that side of myself and taken this business under control. I didn’t.
Or maybe he should have, her father.
I’ve said he spoilt her, but that’s not half the story. If you want proof, look how he treated Archie. The poor son barely got a notice there, from that quarter. It’s why I always and ever took his side. Nobody else would. The great artist found fault with me on account of this, of course. He’d say, Women, what is it about you as a sex? You’d knife each other as soon as stand together – same with my sisters in Dublin. Either so docile they’d faint rather than bid you good morning, or they got stuck into each other, battling morning, noon or night, never knowing agreement.
I beg your pardon, I differed, such a state was never the story with me and my sisters. We were together through thick and thin. None could divide us. And that stretched to the whole clan of us. No one could stand in our way. We were unbreakable–
And you still think you are, he shot back at me, that’s what has us as we are, you not willing to admit our daughter will be grand, if we give her time. How much time does her highness require, I asked, that she’ll deign to have a civil or indeed sane conversation with her own people? You and her, you gang up against me constantly. Against Archie as well.
He tried to laugh me out of this, but I would not be swayed and I held my ground. He was intent on provoking me this time, for he would not let up, insisting again I devote to her the attention she’s been craving since I was the unfortunate woman who gave birth to her, and her very cries then split my head open. So I went further than I’d ever dared before, and I said to him, Dick, I can hardly be held responsible for the way she’s infected, that’s all your doing.
There might have been a time I’d regret not holding my tongue rather than using the word infected, but to be honest this was now long past. I knew the consternation it might cause, but there’s occasions it’s best to do more than bite the bullet but catch it instead and make a four-course dinner out of it. He bided his time before he came back and asked would I kindly have the consideration to enlighten him what I meant by infected? I would not be so foolish as to give him the straight answer he was dying for me to deliver, so I pinned all the troubles between myself and her down to the way she addressed me. She’s been reading you far too much, I suggested, I can make neither head nor tail of what the pair of you are on about, but it’s turned her head entirely and don’t you deny it.
He said indeed he would not deny it at all, but at least there was one in the house who understood him. Well, bully for the pair of you, I congratulated him, may you both be happy together, licking stamps for a living and sending begging letters to anyone fool enough to listen to your flotsam and jetsam. All our life we’ve been living on handouts.
I knew it, he knew I knew it, but I’d never thrown it so fiercely in his face before, and I was not sure how he’d take it.
Like a whirling dervish, that’s how. Have I ever seen him that angry? I suppose I have, but you forget the bad times. That’s why I now forget what it was he called me, but you can be sure it was not pleasant, nor did I refrain from giving as good as I got. It was when she coughed I noticed the cause of this warfare was standing listening to all, the door ajar, hearing the words, saying nothing. What’s keeping you there? I called, come in and give us the benefit of your wisdom. After all, aren’t we discussing what in Jesus to do with you?
That’s when she told us not to worry about herself – she was going to get married. Let me guess, I humoured her for the time being, is the lucky groom by any chance Protestant – from a sound clerical family in County Dublin, frequenters of Trinity College, given to a mournful look, with a bad habit of sucking his teeth, and worshipping your father for his lonely genius? I hate to break this to you but in my opinion he’d be better off wedding your Papa, it has more chance of happiness. Take it from your old fool of a mother, as soon as the same laddy smells church bells chiming, he’ll be flying out your door as fast as his Foxrock feet carry him. What have you to offer the likes of him and his, who, let me assure you, put more stock on a sizeable dowry than we can muster? Be under no illusions there, my lady.
I never suffer from any illusions, she informed me, bolder than brass and butter. You are the one who is under the illusion I could be your daughter, but I reject all your claims to my birth and status. I was reared by wolves in the black forests of Germany, it is where my lover and I must return, and there we shall die, each at the other’s hand, a pact we make to sanctify our love and sacrifice for each other, which no one can desecrate by putting a stop to it.
Did you ever bear witness to such gobdaw mutterings? Amn’t I right to have said no one could make head nor tail of what she was struggling to say, if there was struggle in it? I was determined to ask no questions nor heed a blind bit more of her wandering, when didn’t she confront me, asking, was it you, Mama, gave Papa his disease?
That went beyond the beyond. That deserved a slap on the cunt. Don’t think I’d hesitate. It was done to me, and I’d done it to her before, but on that occasion she, Beatrice, raised Cain to such an extent I thought her father was going to leave me – he wouldn’t do that – and her brother went into such a paroxysm of crying you’d think it had been him that was hit. Nothing ever emerged after to elaborate on what I’d done, but I can say pretty much for certain that it was from the date of that slap, she never trusted me, nor I her. A child knows its mother, and she did me.
It was a pity things were as harsh as they were, for in some way I think I still expected her to at least have a fondness for me, even if not to love me. It’s fair to say that was denied, and indeed so profoundly, I had to be on my permanent guard she might raise a hammer or hatchet and finish my head off as a smashed nest of bone and blood. In her ire I’d put nothing past her.
Why is she so angry? her father would ponder, what has set her in such a rage? Who can tell? I’d say, giving damn all away.
But he guessed. He always could. And I think it might have killed him. Might be killing him as we sit here, watching him die. She ruined our lives, my daughter. I cannot forgive her. We nearly did not make it across the Swiss border, him delaying till she was settled in a sanatorium he’d approve. I agreed we should be sure it was suitable. Christ, I’m not that black-hearted to leave her suffering from ill treatment or wandering round the French countryside in her shift and bare feet. I wouldn’t do that to her. Would she, in her right mind, do it to me?
Yes, she would, probably, but still there’s times I think of her and weep – not as sorely as her father, but I do genuinely weep for her. I’d look at her and wonder, who will want her in the end? What will become of her? I was thinking that, and maybe only that, on the day when we travelled to London to take the plunge at long last, our infants now well grown up, at a registry office in what’s called Kensington. Himself mocked me, of course, saying I’d finally let the old sow Ireland devour me, I’d be a good married woman in the eyes of the law, if not in God’s. I let him have his pleasure, for it was little enough to have the ring on my finger and the papers signed that might save myself, my son and above all my deranged daughter, growing more stricken by the day, from the workhouse.
There was money dribbling in from the books, and as I said to you, there had always been someone happy to stick their hand in their pocket and bail us out, but what if Himself were no more? What then? Eaten bread is soon forgotten, as our neighbour on Nun’s Island, Mrs Madden, used say should be pinned to the chest of everyone tempted to do a good deed. She spoke the truth, I’m sure, but that’s a rough lesson. Aren’t they all – rough?
The rough with the smooth, they say, and the smoothest thing I’d ever felt was a man’s pecker – again, a term from Mrs Madden, that she whispered once into my eager ear, and so I call it to myself from that day on.
He thought me the most wonderful of women when I kissed his, not that it hadn’t been touched, roughly, smoothly, many times before, but this was the one he’d been waiting to hold him completely and never let go if it were humanly possible. It was love, I suppose, and at first sight you could call it, which sounds as good as it might get for any woman or man, but, like everything else, it comes at a cost, and mine was he’d never trust me to do as much as glimpse any other man, or he’d maintain I was trying to give him the blessing I’d bestowed that June day on himself. Did he have justification? Was it all one big act on his part to tie me down and do as he pleased?
If I gave him cause to suspect me, I’m of the conviction I only did so because that was his delight. And if it pleased him to picture me up to no good with other men, then I’d say with a mind like his, an imagination that could buy and sell me, you and the whole of Carraroe, it wasn’t myself he dreamt rolling in their manly arms but himself, letting me do the dirty work he hadn’t the cock for, much as he hungered for his own kind.
I never broke that bit of revelation to him before now, as he lies in his stupor, getting ready to face Satan, and between us and all harm, I hope it is Satan, for he will show him more sympathy than the Christ he has spent his adult years insulting. If I ever had doubts about the good Lord’s existence, they’re now becoming more certain, for a bolt of lightning has not hit me, streaming from the bed where himself is lying, meeting his end in Zurich. Could he foresee that end as he trooped the streets of Dublin as a boy, eyeing them, every alley, every brick, every broken window?
How could he? Should I ask him, hoping from somewhere in his soul I’ll draw out an answer? Listen to him. Is that the river Liffey, or his blood flowing to a halt in his veins? The size of him, shrunken, yet I could trace every wailing woman he followed through every corpsehouse she ever haunted, bringing in her teeming cup the wine that will not quench the thirst of death and all its allies. He lies there, God forgive me, like a man debased, because he will not in his hour of agony call me by my name that I might, through his strength, summon powers that were powers that are powers that will forever be powers to save him from the fires where I fear he’s going.
Priests – fuck them, you see they think they have us trapped at the end, but damn them instead, such virgins do not realise we who have known the body take flight in bed, one lust grown into the other, we are given what is denied to them – the sturdy wings of Archangels Michael and Gabriel to shelter us from their sermons and allow us to love and to sin and to be saved by sinning.
Who has told me this? He did, on the night we first touched. Little did that smart show-off understand that, when it came to getting your tongue around the right corners, I was so well ahead of him in that game. He needed to write it down, these screeds of our salvation, but me, sure all I had to do was breathe and it poured from me like water strong as drink. You see that’s how I pulled off the miracle, miracle after miracle – I believed every word he told me, so I had the power to turn his lies, most beautiful lies, to truth.
And was he grateful? I think he was. Did he thank me? Do you know what – isn’t he stretched here before me? So I’ll ask him. Are you grateful? Do you thank me?
Not a sound. Not a sausage. Not a rasher nor an egg. Christ, the breakfasts the hard-working men of Galway could demolish. Boys fit for a day’s work weaklings would take a fortnight to finish. They were carved from marble, and their hearts – they were the flowers of the forest, beating to their own music, ceasing when they chose to stop. My most beloved, you are among their number. Let me feed you a last time, before you leave me. Do not leave me – I beg you, do not leave me. I will do whatever you ask to keep you by my side. I will free my son to be his own man. I will love my daughter, let her be what she is. Father, remember your children who need you. Husband, heed the wife who cries to you in this valley of tears, my life, my sweetness, my hope, most clement, most loving child of Adam and Eve.
What more does he want?
It goes without saying. Her, his daughter.
Let her loose. From far away in France, he will hear what she says. Fit her better it was the Rosary or her prayers she was reciting, but who am I to talk, I never let her learn them.
Again, all for him.
Let them be well suited. I could never come between them, try as I might. They can have each other now. And maybe she can do what I admit I cannot.