The Bye Byes
Andrew PetersSomebody comes with the pills each day. He takes them with a thumb-measure of water (weak bladder, turning traitor after all these years—no need to provoke it). The pills do not go down easily. They are big, blue, about the size of a bullet. His observers make coo-coo noises of encouragement. There you go; in they pop, ah-one and ah-two; they don’t taste that bad, do they?
No response required. Coo-coo, yourself. Better to creep deeper into the bed, wait for them to leave. Which they always do, thanks be to whoever.
Outside, the light-footed snow. These days he lives in a castle on a bluff. Snow caps cover the eyes of the stone lions guarding the gate. The sloping roofs of the western front crisply loaved with white. Pages run the castle steps with salt. On the hills shepherds wedged in rocky nooks squint at distant village lights.
He (Baron? Duke? King?) lies abed on an upper floor. Propped on three pillows, he hears the arrival of the coaches. Stately landaus with raised hoods, rocking char-a-bancs and wagonettes for the singers and shouters, the red-faced burghers. In the moonlight the quicksilver braid of the coachmen’s livery, their frogged chests flashing, makes him think, unfortunately, of so many bright needles.
Zip along to the banquet, will we? Down six broad flights, along the torch-pricked corridors, burst into the Hall. Save time by donning ceremonials on the way, kicking off slippers, and so on.
Star jump and have the pages ram your dress shoes on your feet before you land. That’s the style.
The Great Hall. Seven rows of tables running its hazy length. He takes his seat, applause is thrown to the darker heights, rejoining. On the walls the faded pennants, the busy heraldry of the noble families.
Snow like sea spume rushes the high windows. The vizier (?), consulting the barometer in the library earlier in the afternoon, insisted on braziers between the tables. The waiters carefully dodge them as they ferry trays of victuals—venison, wild boar, salmon, and pike. Nothing like hospital food.
And she is late, of course. But no matter. And arrives in a flap—he hears her consulting in the corridor, her worry piping over the din, “How is he doing? Has he slept?” Then the quick flap of her shoes approaching, and the warm buffet of her breath in his ear, “I’m sorry, love, to be so late.”
Damp wool and camphor, and the sour air of the train she came on. The Royal Train. Ha! And the gin, of course.
“You’ve had a little drink?” he says.
She sits on the chair beside the bed, and he hears the crinkling of a paper bag in her lap.
“Just the one,” she says. “But that’s not why I’m late. I’m sorry.”
He has no wish to open his eyes. To see her gloopy tender look, gin-softened. When they married she had eyes like Bette Davis. Could see himself in them, reflected as a young man. They are shrunk now behind the heavy lenses of her glasses, but the wet pans of them when she is gloomy are still a thing. And unblinking when she looks at him, as though she would lasso his soul, place it carefully in that heavy handbag, slide it next to her Silk Cut, nest it in the exploded tissues.
She rustles the paper bag in her lap, seeking his attention. “Not to worry,” he says, “You can’t be here all the time.”
“And I’ve brought your history magazines. This month’s and last month’s came together, I don’t know what’s going on with the post at all.”
When he opens his eyes he sees her eyes.
Music! Lots of it. He clicks his fingers at the orchestra in the gallery. The conductor clears his throat and turns to the musicians. Raises his baton. Crouching, lets the baton fall. The notes are plucked and gently dropped over the assembly. Mild stuff, plinketyplonk. Conversation therefore possible, sadly.
“And I’ve brought you another little thing,” she says, rustling the bag. One hand disappearing into the bag’s mouth. She looks tired. Her hair rain-frazzled—she does not like to wear a hood and she must have forgotten her brolly again—and the eyes, of course, standing in their winter waters.
She says, “I think you are looking a little better today.” The hand in the bag grasping the little thing. But concealing also. She will not pull it out until he speaks again. The sad expectancy of the mouth, her cheeks snatched into the corners. The mouth stepping forward in her old age, suddenly prominent and lippily assertive—a stranger’s mouth, almost.
But the rest not so bad. He married a tall woman with good bones and she still has the memory of a sportswoman’s bearing in her shoulders, and there is the old skittishness about her legs as she waits restless in the chair for him to speak. Her hand still in the bag. All their communication these days bristling with transaction, minuscule, like the hundreds and thousands sprinkled on the cakes she brings him.
“I feel better,” he says.
“I thought you would.” Her face opens, lifts, she snatches the chocolate orange from the bag and places it on the bed, near his sleeping hand. “You probably don’t remember me coming yesterday. But I came yesterday and you were out for the count.
Right through visiting time. And not a doctor around of course but I asked the nurse and she said that it was perfectly normal or perfectly possible . . . that it was all right for you to go on sleeping like that. That you will just sleep when you feel like it now. Do you want me to open this? Here, let me.”
She takes up the chocolate orange and brings it close to her face for the unwrapping, her whitening finger and thumb jimmying the carton. The dry polish of her tired fingers, the skin as brittle as that paper bag. When did?
“Thanks, dear,” he says. He tries a smile and feels the lead in his lips.
“What a racket,” she says, nodding over her shoulder, towards the gallery. “Shall I turn it down?”
He makes no answer.
“I missed the five o’clock because your brother rang and wanted to know everything, of course. He’ll be in on Friday. And when I got to the station for the five-thirty I saw it on the platform and thought I would miss that one too, I’d put my ticket in the wrong side of my purse and I couldn’t find it, I thought I’d lost it, and then I had to run down the steps and nearly killed myself, and God knows how I made it through the doors before they slammed shut, which they do sometimes.”
A nurse steps in. Raises an eyebrow at them, smiles, steps out.
“You’re very quiet,” she says.
“Tired,” he says. “And thirsty.”
“I’ll get you a drink.”
“No. Then I’ll have to go to the bathroom.”
“And will you talk to me today?”
“Of course.”
“Yesterday you slept right through.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not complaining. I know how it is.”
“Want to sleep all the time.”
“Whenever you feel like it, the nurse said, let him drift.”
Silence for some minutes. Let the music fall over them, and the burghers eat.
When he opens his eyes he sees her amid her furniture. The dismal familiar stuff, with its sorry sheen of use. The grey tubing of her chair, dinked and scuffed. The tubes of his bed matching, chipped and scored to the metal, and the bed crowded over with gizmos, the fluid-carrying pipes, the stands attending, the call button dangling just within reach. On the bedside table, he knows, is the silver-framed picture taken on their wedding day. The pair of them leaning at an awkward angle on that sundial in the garden of the hotel, a surprising shaft of sun falling like a blessing on them, a preserving light.
“You have it very loud,” she says, “why don’t I turn it down?”
Up in the corner, behind her, the television. He likes to keep it on all day. In the long sleep-draughted afternoons it squeaks below his dreams with kiddy entertainment. Later, he hears the bongs of the Angelus and he stirs for the Six One News. Public affairs, now, as weirdly rancid as fairytales, but sometimes there is the familiar face, the name that trips a hidden wire, brings him back a little way. The echo of a carnival, its span longer than his own, that passed by once.
More minutes gone. A catch in his breathing, tripping into a high-in-the nose snore, wakes him.
She is looking across the bed, to the windows. The trees that border the carpark, and the municipally cut lawn, ragged at the edges, that slope down to the access road. At night the bollard on the traffic island glows white and yellow, like a fat candle. When he first arrived, and was stronger, he would take himself close to the glass and marvel at its distant warmth, or the idea of its warmth on his skin; or the warmth of it against the cold of the bay beyond it, the cold-hammered sea and the low bristle of the city’s mouth.
She takes up the picture on the bedside table, rubs an old hanky quickly over the glass. “Oh, you’re here,” she says, “I thought you were off with the fairies. This thing is covered in dust. Do they not polish around you at all?”
“They hoover, they bump the bloody bed. They whistle.”
The corner of the picture propped on her knee, the hanky motionless on the glass. For a moment he feels the hard warmth of the sundial through his jacket sleeve, the photographer—that friend of a cousin—shouting, “Cheese!” Man of limited ability, specialist in wonky shots. But he was lucky with that sudden light, the way the clouds parted and the sun poured quickly over them, he made them look like movie stars.
There was an argument about the music, at his wedding. Her mother was deafened by the band—what were they called? A lunatic gang, some wild friends of his brother. They saved on the band and blew the budget on that hotel on the edge of the mountain. Drove out from the city, through rain-struck Ranelagh, onto the quiet Saturday morning dual-carriageway, the wedding limo smelling of curry chips from the night before, the pink-necked chauffeur apologizing all the way to Cabinteely and wishing them the best, the very best, as good as he had had it, and his neck blushing through its fur as he explained about the curry smell and the mad crowd he had in the back the previous night.
Out to the country hotel with its slopes of garden propped by dark runs of rhododendron. The building’s flat white front and the fish tank glare of the wedding wing’s plate glass. A Saturday morning rolled over with cloud, dark sea vapours, the dew nourished by wet breezes.
Lunch on peach tablecloths and a three-tiered cake. The band came on and nearly blew an amp with their racket, and his new mother clapped her hands over her ears and her face fell into slides of horror—and she begged, oh please God, for the volume to be turned down.
But how could he? On his wedding day? That crazy band? The stringy drummer and the singer slobbering the mic, a wet slug of a top lip. Pelvis thrusters, and there were two priests present, more cousins. What were they?
“Mum wants you to turn it down,” she shouted in his ear. But how could he? And so they argued in the corridor and he punched the wall by her head and the whole day was pushed over, or seemed to be; the pricey three tiered cake, that long wedding service—the intricate height of the old ceremony thrown up in the vaulted air of the church, he felt it all about to crash.
The four maids of honour watched from the hall. He punched the wall close to her head and let out a terrible oath. Oh Lordy, to remember. And ran out to the garden. To get away from her.
It was one of the bridesmaids that saved them. She that got hitched the following year and moved to Australia. Dentist’s widow now. Name? Name? Not Persephone, but that direction. Dragged her out to the garden and made them talk. Left them there. Leaning on that sundial. And the photographer found them.
“What was the name of that band?” he says.
“What band?” she says. She is balancing the chocolate orange on her knee, working on the foil wrapper. She stops her scratching at the foil and gives him her attention, glad to talk.
“Our wedding band,” he says, “what were they called, can you remember? The Heys? The Goes?”
“Oh goodness, The Bye Byes. I’ll never forget.”
Her eagerness to talk. Leaning forward in the chair, as if to get a good start. And the gin again.
“That’s them,” he says.
“Oh, weren’t they a holy fright?”
“Your poor mother.”
“She never heard anything like it. She heard it for years after, she said, it invaded her old bones.”
“I might have tried something. But what?”
“And our silly row.”
“Who was your one who took you out to the garden, found me there?”
“Phil, of course.”
“Yes, Philomena.”
“I send her a card every year, still.”
“There was a nasty little wind off the mountain. It cooled us off.”
“And then the sun came out and that nice man took the photograph. Could you manage a piece?”
She holds up a slice of the chocolate orange, notices the shake of his head and takes a bite of it, offers the bitten half with its chamfered edge that follows the form of her small grey teeth. Drops it in his opened mouth, rests it on his tongue.
He lets it melt there.
Friend of a cousin, or something. That photographer. He interrupted their row, held up his camera. Got them to pose by the sundial, she was worried that the moss would ruin her dress. Cheese, said the photographer. And the sun fell on them and the shutter clicked and he was pleased with it, whatever he thought he had caught, and wound the camera on laughing.
“That’ll make you thirsty. Shall I get you a drink?”
He shakes his head. The chocolate sticking his mouth. He clears it slowly, lips jumping.
“A penny for your thoughts,” she says.
“Is a vizier an Arab or what is it?” he says.
“I don’t know. I believe it is. Or a Turk. But a Turk isn’t an Arab, is it?”
She wants him to talk. He supplies her with words, sentences. Never enough. The cold wash of light through the big window landing boo-hoo silver in her eyes, she pursues him daily. When
his mind begins to slip she tries to lead him from the closeness of those walls to a neglected territory—of old friends, acquaintances, the half-remembered landscape of family event—and, waking, he thanks her for it. The effort of it, although he has hardly heard a thing.
“Are you with me now, or away again?” she says.
“With you, always.”
“You’ll be off again in a minute, I know.”
“Don’t be sad. Can’t help it.”
“I know, I know, but it’s horrible, it really is, just horrible.”
“The nurses told you . . .”
“I know, I know.”
Bunches of oxycodone for the breakthrough pain. And the palliative advice that came so sweetly from that junior doctor, about the “pleasant place.” Just a kid, really, the doctor, who once came to his bedside with red eyes, the sore rub of another late shift. Amateur dolorologist, not her speciality but he was happy to take her tip.
Make the pleasant place yourself, was her advice. Put yourself there. A beach, she suggested, not knowing how he hated sand between his toes.
His wife squirrel-handed smooths the foil around the remainder of the orange, places it on the bedside table. “I don’t mind if it’s nonsense talk. I can listen to that, you know, I don’t mind it at all. I only hate it when you go somewhere I can’t go with you.”
New lanyards of flesh around her throat, he notices, and something turtleish in the way the neck emerges from the dropped shoulders. She drinks after lunch, only, she says. Just the one. She used to have Bette Davis eyes and an adroitness of body, a harsh cut to her that stopped his breath in his throat. Now they are both burled and wormed and knocked out of true, and not a pair of
flush edges to be set together no matter how they try. She thinks he’ll leave without her, every word a farewell.
“Did you call the man about the damp?” he says.
“Oh, dear Lord I forgot to say.” Lips tacky with chocolate. “He took a look yesterday and he says he’ll probably have to dig out the corner, but he reckons he can stop it there. He says we’re the third on the estate to call him this year, none of the foundations were done proper. I would have told you yesterday, only you were away dreaming.”
She rests a hand on his arm and gives a stroking pat, a flutter wristwards.
“I wish you wouldn’t drink,” he says. Alone in the damp house.
“Just the one, sometimes. After lunch.”
“You never used to drink so early.”
“I just hate it when you go away.”
“I’m still here, love.”
“I know I’m being ridiculous.”
“You are, a little.”
“Of course I am. The nurse told me about the sleeping. I know you can’t help it. Can’t you?”
“It just comes down so heavy. Whoosh. Like there are weights attached to my eyelids.”
“And there’s no one you would stay awake for? Oh God what a question!”
“I have no say in it anymore.”
“Oh, you must hate me, hate me, for being like this.”
“Like what?”
“So selfish, so stupidly me.”
“No, no.”
“And the first thing you said was that I was drunk. You must hate me.”
“I don’t like to think of you alone in the house, that’s all.”
“And I’m not drunk, but I’ve had a drink.”
“I would rather you didn’t.”
“But you have that stuff. The pills and whatever. And wherever they take you to. You go to places I can’t go to, and I’m left here in this chair. And now I’m being ridiculous, I know it.”
She slides her glasses down her nose and presses the tender corners of her eyes with finger and thumb. He shuffles lower into the bed, one shoulder leading the other.
“And so unfair, I know,” she says, “but that’s how I feel about it, and for God’s sake let’s be honest, shall we? I don’t want to pretend anything. That would be wicked, wouldn’t it?”
“Nothing but the truth, then.”
“I just wish I could take you home. That’s all there is to it.”
Six stops on the DART. A five-minute walk along a reasonable footpath, only minorly patched, with smooth transitions to the road at the three quiet suburban crossings. A week ago he might have done it with a stick. And home, the honest-faced house with its snug wooden porch, the steep roof expensively replaced ten years ago, which would outlast him, like his teeth, obscenely, maddeningly. And the things yet to be done never to be done. The carpet in the hall worn smooth in its centre, the sheen of a slipper track from the threshold of the kitchen to the foot of the stairs. The empty fish tank in the garden, its vivid skirts of algae, a miniature bridge lying toppled on the gravel bottom, awaiting the flood.
“I wish I could go home with you, love,” he says.
“Do you, really?”
“Of course I do.”
“You haven’t given up? I would quite understand it if you had given up. Sometimes it seems to me that you have. There, I’ve gone and said it. Because I’m drunk. Of course I shouldn’t have had a bloody drink.”
“Wherever you are, is where I want to be.”
Alone in the house she drinks and worries over the damp. Her own sister puts the phone down on her if she hears the drag of gin in her voice. The way her vowels get parcelled up, the ends of her words curled and snipped at the roots, her sister cannot stand it and says, “For the love of God, Sis.” And puts the phone down.
You have the patience of a saint, her sister said to him once, and then—they both must have thought of the line of saints and archangels waiting for him, hands patiently clasped—her mouth stretched into a kind of bridled tightness and she shook her head and nobody said anything for a while.
They have a twenty-five-year mortgage, paid off. The car loan, done. Two sons in Canada, one flying back. The way things come together at the end is a kind of cruel miracle.
Only to fly apart.
“You’ll want to sleep, then,” she says.
“I don’t want to. But I will. Sure as taxes.”
“Go ahead, love. I’ll wait here a while.”
“I have a few minutes in me yet.”
“If you’re tired, you must sleep. Forget what I said. You’ll think I’m selfish. I don’t want you thinking that.”
“I don’t, of course.”
“I think it is important to have nice thoughts about each other, just now. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do.”
“So sleep and have nice thoughts about me.”
“Perhaps I will, then.”
“Off to Nod with you. Or wherever. Do you go to that beach like that doctor said you should? Imagine yourself on the sand?”
“Yes, that’s it. I dream of beaches. You can make yourself dream about anything if you think about it hard enough. I think the pills help.”
“With white sand and the bluest of blue sea and banana trees?”
“Coconut trees.”
“Oh I see it, I see it. We never got to our tropical island, did we?”
“I didn’t know that was the plan.”
“Go on, what else?”
“And shells big as footballs and coral and all that,” he said.
“Am I there?”
“Of course.”
“Are we alone?”
“Only us and the birds. We have a hammock each.”
“Tied between the trees?”
“I guess so. Isn’t this just nonsense talk?”
“Yes. Don’t stop. I can hear you stopping.”
“Tied between the trees, the two hammocks, and the birds flying all over. Parrots and the like.”
“Don’t stop, please.”
“And warm breezes. Warm.”
“You’re stopping. You’re going.”
“Warm sand and warm sea and warm breezes, everything warm, as warm as you like as warm as warm as.”
And bears out there. In the snow. And stags, royally antlered. And the smaller, mysterious creatures of the wood making scuttling appearances (zoology never his thing). Beavers and such, raccoons and snow foxes and owls ghosting the trees like sprites. Squirrels have always made him chuckle. Feed out of your hand in Phoenix Park. Laughs himself out of his pre-sleep sometimes, wakes with a start and feels his own surprising weight in the bed, still there, but also the feathery memory of the squirrel’s touch, snatching the chocolate from his open hand.
“Goodnight,” she says, “Sleep tight.”
Her voice in the snow-footed trees standing at a distance. Scares the bejaysus out of that squirrel. Which hops and like a slinky arcs through the wood, crosses the open ground to the castle gate. Zips between the startled guards and is trapped in the courtyard.
Slabbed walls, and lonely lighted windows above. Servants running from black doors, bearing trays, heavy footed on the buried cobbles. They will shoot him and have him for dinner, poor chap. Squirrel on a spit. All over for the creature. As good as gone.
Unless, perhaps, it can make it to the centre of the yard and the protection of that roped-off monument, that mossy sundial, which somebody has taken the time to protect with velvet rope and brass stanchions. The sundial stands ready for his daily visit, the old stone giving off, despite the weather, a little warmth from a surprising winter sun.