Marie Fallon was in a foul mood as she contemplated her home. She dealt with her pain in the same way she dealt with all things. She cursed and ranted as she turned to her housework after deliberately mistaking the humour in Vincent’s comments about her wrinkles. Upon surveying a tidy kitchen, she began cleaning the windows.
“The cheek of him to tell me I’ve got wrinkles, as though I’m ugly and old,” she demonstrated angrily, the cloth in her hand rubbing a sheen in the kitchen window through which she could see Vincent disappear. “Do I tell him that he’s got a belly?” she asked, holding her hand over her stomach in parody of her husband, who had taken to rubbing his protruding gut in recent times. “And yet he comes to me and tells me about his investment whilst rubbing that great big lump of lard he calls a stomach. And so what anyways if I’ve got wrinkles! He likes to tell his stories; well he can damn well understand that mine are written in my skin. Does he think that they came for free, that I was born with them? No, Vincent Fallon, they’re cultivated,” she said, almost forcing the words from her throat with the effort of squeezing the water from the cloth. “You don’t get wrinkles like these in a package doll, because they’re all skin, and you, Vincent Fallon, don’t like pretty dolls, do you now? There’s more beauty in my wrinkles than in that smooth-faced harlot you’re so fond of staring at, that I’ll tell you; that whore who’s never learnt to smile or frown.” She worked the cloth into the window frame with care, but vigour, using a blunt knife behind the cloth to get into the edges. The effort calmed her. She smiled, happy for the energy her indignation provoked. Her mood lightened in agreement with the knife sliding smoothly along the wooden frame. “You’ve got no personality if you’ve got no wrinkles. Got no soul, either. There are some people who just don’t know what life’s all about. They think it’s all about their things! They think it’s all about what they have! They think it’s all about how they look! Well they’re only part right, because life’s about accumulating wrinkles, deep as rivers and as wide as is needed to travel along their path, so that by the time you’re ready to die, your life can be read.” She stepped down from the stool even as she spoke, her breath coming in large gasps. She grabbed the kettle, carrying it to the sink. “You think Peter opens the gates for those with no wrinkles? You think God judges those with no wrinkles? Well, I don’t think so, ‘cause if you’ve got no wrinkles you’ve not been tested and you’ve never known doubt.” She was now beginning to feel happy. “If you’ve got no wrinkles you’ve never suffered.” Her smile widened. “If you’ve got no wrinkles, you’ve never been happy. Hell, if you’ve got no wrinkles, you’re just a doll and heavens got no space for dolls.” She bustled, placing the kettle on the stove. “There’re three billion of us here and maybe the same there already, all wrinkled folk, and when I get there I’m going to join them with my wrinkles and we’re all going to be happy, and you, Vincent Fallon, will have a problem because no smooth-skinned people will be allowed.” The stove burst into flame beneath the kettle, whilst Marie took a seat, for the first time in years feeling safe about her place amongst the dead.
Moments later she was groaning. Her joints ached. Like her mother before her she’d begun complaining of arthritis at too early an age, and the dampness of the house exacerbated the condition. She would sit rubbing her knees trying to work some heat into the stiffness, but that stiffness also held her hands and elbows tight so that the mornings saw her rising late and the days passed idler than before. She worked against it and could be seen picking nettles out the back of the house, much to the amusement of Tara, who brought friends about to observe. Taking frequent walks even as the damp March evenings forbade pleasure, she caught a cold that became a flu, which ran throughout her system, so that the resulting bout of pneumonia left her bedridden. Her crankiness increased, which set everyone’s nerves on end, though Vincent had long learnt to answer criticism with a smile and treat meanness with a kiss. On occasion, he would make her tea, leaving a flower on the tray alongside a nettle that she would rub into her joints with glee. She lost her haughtiness with him on those occasions and even once asked him to forgive her for her manner. “Not to worry, love,” he simply said, whilst shooing Tara from the room.
Tara was her granddaughter, the daughter of Conor, her one and only child, but who’d now passed. He’d been born by caesarean section, the slit cut down her womb but a trace of his presence that would leave her feeling scarred for the rest of her life. Sitting up in bed in a cold sweat, she would run her hand over her scar and call out in a terrified voice, proclaiming, “I’m blind, I’m blind,” as though her very faculty of vision had been erased, though till old age set she beheld all things clearly. She could often be heard bemoaning how her perfect sight was a curse, a second prize, the honour being claimed by those that could see with an inner clarity, even as her neighbour, Eileen Fitzgerald, walked into doors and walls. But she was a woman of her time, born in an era of angels and priests, though that’s not to confuse the two, just to remind of the religious fervour of the first half of the 1900s. In fact, around the same time as Marie had been born, fascism was baptised and like an impetuous child announced its intention to conquer the world. That snake had bitten hard, spreading its venom through the discourse and veins of youth, so that a precocious Marie had often cursed the Jews for the world’s problems, even whilst encouraging her mother to put a ha-penny in the mission box for the poor black babies that adorned the entrance to the parish church.
She would remember her mother as she lay in her bed. She’d remember her son, too, with tears in her eyes that offended her. “God damn it,” she would curse and wipe her face, letting the moment pass. No joy, only in forgetting. No pride in bearing weakness.
She was inscrutable, even her age hidden from all but the most ardent of observers. “I felt fifty when I was five, and five now that I’m fifty, and only ever my age upon giving birth,” she said, on a day marked by nothing in particular. “There’s only death to look forward to now,” she said, drawing laughter for the matter-of-fact tone of the pronouncement. She looked at the tea and biscuits he’d placed on the tray. “Sure you needn’t have done this for me now,” she said, pretending to be cross with all the attention.
Vincent knew better. He smiled. “Fifty indeed,” he chuckled, “and not a wrinkle in sight, eh?” He nudged her in humour. She didn’t take the comment kindly.
°
As Marie rested, life slowly returned to normal. Whilst Vincent was reading or busy with some enquiry or another, she would survey her disintegrating home, and in moments of utter weakness sit on the floor and cry, her tears joining the streams that ran down their walls and lodged in the gaps of the floorboards. Tara would sometimes hug her grandmother, and understand the sadness that engulfed her for her unrequited dreams. She’d been listening to Cornelius, and considered the truth in his words, that money was like water that flowed in rivers and washed down like the rain, and as there are monsoon forests and the driest deserts, there is wealth and poverty. As she looked up from her grandmother, who sobbed in her arms, she surveyed the walls and floor and saw the drip of water seeping through the plaster of the ceiling. And understanding what her crazy granddad meant, she considered that what flowed past Poulnabrone was but a stream, and they were positioned at a distance from its banks, their allotted share running right down their walls.
°
It was as Vincent arrived back from the meadow that it happened. On any normal day he would bring her flowers, softening her heart, even as the crystals in her joints hardened. It was a ritual, the kaleidoscope of colour in the room joined by the aroma of lavender or spring lilies. It made her smile, the care he showed, which she had never asked for, brightening her days, but all days carry the possibility of changing moods. He brought flowers to her the day he brought the news, but he was already too late, her nerves agitated, her arthritis refusing relief.
Having woken, shaken alert with the thundering sound of collapsing earth, she was already sitting by the window staring at the depression in the garden, the tunnel’s collapse beneath their back lawn a portent of deathly significance. Dust fell about her from the widening of the cracks, fissures foretelling the future with more certainty than any mere runes. Any would-be observer would be struck by the almost oriental look of the house that now leaned towards the middle, the windows slanting inwards towards its centre.
“What? Cassandra Clony? Dead?” she shrieked. Glaring at him briefly, her eyes returned to the ceiling. “And now this, after all that work and energy,” she growled, her heart thumping with rage. They’d spent a tidy fortune on the house and now the tunnel’s collapse had made it worse than ever. “Is this the home you’ve built for my old age?” she snapped. He blanched at her roughness. It was as though, in spite of all he’d done, his love and care and patience, and despite her gratitude, that she somehow hated him. And at that moment she did hate him. She hated that very feeling of gratitude and its attendant obligation. And she hated him for that hatred. And she loved him and hated him for the confusion. It was his fault. He could never have been indifferent. Why couldn’t he just be indifferent? Surely that wasn’t too much to ask after almost forty years of marriage. Climbing out of bed she resisted his attempts to keep her relaxed. She’d had enough and walking with stubborn haste to the kitchen, muttered, “No one is burying me yet,” drawing a smile on the sullen face of Tara, who was busy banging pots and pans in the same way she had always done.