Lark's Eggs Read online

  Margaret chirped in: ‘About time someone got interested in money. They’re starving beyond in England and Germany for want of money. We’re lucky here.’

  Ireland was the land of full and plenty to them, legends about other countries somehow awry.

  Margaret boldly got up, put on the gramophone while I was there one evening and asked Karl to dance. Whereupon he threw off his shoes and danced with her, a waltz, the kernel of the music binding them together.

  Mona watched, quiet, but not too jealous. They’d always been strange together and now the strangeness emerged. They saw in Karl a common ideal. They wanted to get him come hell or high water. High water came with the floods in early October. Mona outshone herself, russet in her hair, a dress of lilac and her arms brown from summer. Margaret became pertinent to the fact that Mona was more attractive than she, so she did many things, wore necklaces of pearl, daubed her lips in many colours, wore even higher high heels. She stood above Mona and was nearly as tall as Karl.

  Their house had a bad reputation and now Margaret began appearing like an expensive courtesan; she wore her grandmother’s fur to the pictures while all the time Mona shone with the grace of a Michaelmas daisy.

  Geese clanked over; bare trees were reflected in water. The sun was still warm, the vibrancy and health of honey in it. The leaves had fallen prematurely and the floods had arrived before their time but still the days were warm and Mona wore sandals while Karl sported light jackets.

  The ladies of town noted the combat between the two girls, or rather Margaret’s unusual assertiveness. They were overjoyed and sensed a coming downfall on a house that had distressed them so much with its joyful sounds.

  Karl had taken to talking to me, talking about Korea, Chicago, war, the race problem. He found a unique audience in me and I listened to everything and I watched his silences, his playing cards by himself. I started accompanying him on his walks; he sometimes sitting to read Chinese poems out loud while cows mooed appreciatively.

  He took my hand once or twice and distilled in me the sense of a father. I suppose with Karl holding my hand then I decided I would have a child of my own some day, a male child.

  Karl spoke, spoke of the weather in Chicago, winter storms over the Great Lakes, ice skating, swimming in the huge oblong winter pools. There was something Chicago didn’t yield him, though, despite multi-layered ice creams or skyscrapers always disappearing into the clouds, and that was the sky of Ireland, clouds over the mustard-coloured marshes, Atlantic clouds heaving and blowing and provoking rancour in the bog-water. He’d come to our town looking for the ease of an Eastern shrine, found it. Now two young women were vying for him.

  He spoke about his mother, his father, Americans, scoffed at the American belief in war. I told my parents that Karl didn’t believe in war and they didn’t hear me. I told my grandfather. Eventually I told our dog.

  To the women of town Margaret and Mona were as courtesans, they’d stopped going to mass. God knows what they were doing with that American.

  They made cakes, desserts, cups of tea for him. Eventually he tired of their intricacies and reached for them. One evening I came in the front door, pulled back the curtain to see Karl with Mona in his arms, her dress at her waist, her breasts heaving in her bra. I sped off.

  I returned some evenings later, peeping through the curtains to find Margaret in a similar position.

  Then one evening I came and the lights were off except for one red bulb that Karl had inserted. He and Mona were dancing to music from the radio in semi-darkness, the fire splurting and a rose light overlooking them, holding them.

  This time I waited. I watched through the curtains as they danced, Karl reaching to kiss Mona. Their kiss was tantalizing. He removed her ribbon. Hair shot out like a hedgehog’s prickles.

  I knew Margaret to be in Dublin. I watched them leave the room. He followed her. I looked at Our Lady on an altar and she looked back at me quizzically. Outside a cat protested.

  I don’t know what happened that evening. I always imagine Margaret returned prematurely from Dublin and found them sleeping. But Karl left without saying goodbye and of all hurts I’ve had in my life that remains the most instant, the first hurt of life. My father, brother, friend, didn’t acknowledge that a farewell was necessary.

  It doesn’t seem like a major incident looking back, but it took the rainbow from the girls’ eyes, the flush from their cheeks, the splendour from their dress. Jealousy created a barrier. It created an iron curtain. Jealousy came and sat where Karl had once sat. Jealousy came, another tenuous stranger.

  He was a celibate and didn’t wish to make love to either but took Mona as an off-chance and showed to Margaret all that was missing in her: real physical beauty, a good singing voice.

  Mona under the weight of Margaret’s acrimony became plump, looked like an orphan in the convent.

  No more parties, no more songs; many guests, much work.

  And then in spring Mona left on the evening train. I went to the station with Margaret to say goodbye to her. Margaret looked like a lizard, fretful. Mona was wrapped like a Hungarian refugee. The sisters didn’t kiss but I can still see the look in Mona’s eyes. She’d been betrayed by Margaret’s loss of faith in her. She undid her own beauty, the beauty of her soul as well as the beauty of her body to satisfy an impatient sister.

  Years later when Mona was dying of cancer in a Birmingham hospital Margaret visited her. There was still no forgiveness, but both of them had forgotten what it was exactly that had come between them; a burgeoning of possibilities in the form of a young ex-soldier, an eye to another world. I doubt if either of them ever for a moment reached that other world but they were left with an intuition of it long after their father’s money had run out.

  Mona died a few years ago.

  Margaret still runs the guesthouse. And me?—I put these elements together to indicate their existence, that of Margaret and Mona, their enchantment with a young man who came and unnerved us all and left a strange aftermath, way back there in childhood, a shadow on the water, the cry of a wild goose in pain, an image of tranquillity in far-off Asia where candles burned before perennial gods, gods untouched by war, by the search of a young man, by the iniquitous failure of two young women who reached and whose fingers failed to grasp.

  The Hedgehog

  The valley was situated somewhere in the Cevennes. It was mid-August when Dony stayed there, red berries fired in the blue air, the ground covered with fir cones. To one side the valley was encompassed by blue conical mountains. On the other side the Alps sometimes reigned in the faraway sky, their crests rose-coloured, tenuous.

  Dony was brought to the valley by the Jouvets, the sallow-skinned, drably dressed Parisian family with whom he was staying on an educational holiday, during this, the seventeenth summer of his life, only a few days left before he was to return to Ireland.

  Paris where he’d spent his first three weeks had been vastly disappointing. There’d been a tiredness after the students’ revolution of the previous May and the weather had been autumnal—cold, rainy—a delirium of cloud over the tourist-infested city. He’d been mainly confined to the Jouvet apartment—a Van Eyck reproduction transfixing the marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini on the otherwise unadorned wall—his time occupied by reading back issues of glossy French magazines and by listening to Wagner and Beethoven on record, the music crashing his brain. Altogether his stay in Paris had been a very lonely experience.

  He hadn’t expected much of an improvement in the final stage of his vacation. But he had hoped for some change.

  They were staying in a holiday colony, forest darkness encroaching on the bungalows that were grouped on the side of the valley. There was a tennis court nearby, boys and girls running, jumping about, reaching out, white shirts and shorts contrasting with the dark of their bodies. Everywhere were signs of activity. Children being banded off on picnics by chaperones. Groups of young people wobbling off on bicycle tours. Tours in a countryside of
clear air, antique farms, leisurely peasantry.

  Dony ventured to the community centre on his first evening in the colony. It was there he met Claire. She was sitting by the fire as though in contemplation when he was introduced to her, a radiance about her cheeks, a sense of poise about her. Her creamy blonde hair fell loosely, grooves of dark green shadow in it. Her pink blouse was pale where her breasts were defined.

  He sat beside her as they spoke, his head largish over an orange T-shirt, charcoal brows converging on his eyes, an acne faded on his face. In his fragmentary French he told her about himself, Ireland, his hometown—the business town anchored in the rainy Midlands—the reds, blues, yellows of the fire filling his mind. The conversation touched on many subjects and finally led to politics, which provided ground for common discussion. Dony gave his views on the patchwork wars in Vietnam, Biafra, the Middle East, and expressed a lively hatred for the regimes in South Africa and Greece, targets of youthful concern.

  Dony’s politics overlapped with the remonstrance of Joan Baez and Donovan, delicate downtending faces on the covers of his record collection.

  When he’d finished speaking Claire told him that he was an idealist.

  Just then a youth approached. Claire introduced him as Remy. He wore a scarlet shirt, his hair bronze—indented with curls—masculinity concentrated in the expression on his face. He sat down, stretching his legs, remaining silent as the conversation was resumed.

  Suddenly Claire pointed to the window. Sunset had accumulated outside. She went to see it, Dony following, looking over her shoulder. Between distant, extinct volcanoes the sky was glowering pink and purple. The pink was strange. It reminded Dony of the undersides of mushrooms.

  But he was conscious of Remy slouching behind them, a sort of resentment about him, an expression of boredom on his face. Feeling that he ought to go Dony said goodnight to Claire, shaking her hand which entered neatly into his grasp.

  As he made for the door he heard her say of him, ‘Il est gentil.’

  ‘Trop,’ Remy replied caustically.

  Despite that final uncomplimentary remark, Dony harboured hope after that night. He’d felt an awakening of romantic emotion as he’d spoken with Claire, an awakening of romantic trust.

  At home he didn’t involve himself with girls, overburdened with shyness.

  He’d found an opportunity at last to make a relationship with a girl. However, something in him cringed at the prospect, he wanted to retreat into himself.

  Next morning he started on a lone walk along the road that led from the holiday colony. On either side fields of corn rose in celebration of blue sky, children scrambling upwards, tiny figures lost in the clean glisten.

  He passed a few people sitting in sun dapple on a tree-shaded bench as they imbibed the morning beauty together. The women wore straw hats, spotted dresses. An old man who looked like one of Cézanne’s peasants leaned forward on a walking stick. The group watched Dony with mask-like expressions.

  As he walked on he noticed many things and he fitted them into a nook in his mind as though he wanted to retain them.

  Suddenly his attention was caught by a dead hedgehog that lay on the open road, blood dried on its bristles, the tender little creature utterly mutilated. He stood over it for a few moments, considering it. But it was just an object of curiosity, a detail of the morning.

  Further on he encountered Claire and Remy who were returning from a nearby village together, a shopping bag in Claire’s hand, ripples of colour in it. Her midriff was bare under a white blouse, her body slim, tapering in slacks.

  ‘Tu es tout seul,’ she exclaimed. It seemed to surprise her, shock her even that he should have been alone. But it was as if she extended affection to him by using the second person singular.

  He accompanied them back to the colony, feeling a little awkward as he straggled to one side of Claire, something unreachable about her blondeness, her self-contained body. She told him about a woodland picnic that had been arranged for the following evening, the evening before he was to return home. She made him promise that he’d come.

  The remaining part of his holiday was mainly taken up with touring in the surrounding regions with the Jouvets, new impressions converging on him, colours interchanging, the hard exhilarating greens of the upper valleys with the gradations of blue in the plains.

  But he was back on time to join the picnic on his final evening. The young people gathered outside the colony, bags in their hands, an air of expedition about the picnic. They trekked in a group to the forest, Dony walking alongside Claire, exchanging views on films they’d both seen. Remy was somewhere ahead in the crowd, absorbed in conversation with two girls, their buttocks clenched tightly by blue jeans.

  They found a suitable spot by the stream. It was twilight as they piled wood on a fire, sunset trailed in the sky, bells tinkling in nearby fields where goats moved in the growing dim.

  The picnic began as potatoes, sausages, scraps of meat were roasted over the fire. There were half-hearted attempts to start a sing-song. A man wearing a traditional costume of the Auvergne played folk tunes on a pipe, the music filling the air.

  The heat became intense, sparks crackling upwards towards the stars that were beginning to illumine the sky.

  Dony’s face and forehead were burning. He got up and sought the quiet of the stream, standing over it. He could no longer stand the heat, the crowd, the din. There was still a faint reflection of twilight on the stream and the sounds of water were soothing, the tinkling of bells still coming from the fields.

  Suddenly a little boy touched his arm and thrust some cheese at him. ‘Voulez vous du fromage?’ he piped.

  Dony accepted it, thanking him. Glancing about he saw Claire’s eyes fixed on him, her cheeks heated as she sat by the fire, a glimpse of colour in her cravat. She’d obviously spotted him by the stream and had sent the little boy with cheese for him. But there was a questioning expression on her face now, the points of her eyes indicated by the flames, knees hugged to her.

  He stood transfixed there, uncertain of himself, hoping that she’d come to him. But when he looked in the direction of the fire again she wasn’t to be seen.

  The group was diminishing as he crouched by the flames once more, couples withdrawing, their writhing bodies distinguishable among the trees. With utter disappointment Dony realized that Claire was among them. She’d probably taken Remy as her partner or perhaps she’d secured someone else, participating with him in the grove among the other couples.

  He started back to bed, hoping that no one had noticed his ignominious departure. But it didn’t matter. He’d never see these people again, never see Claire again.

  They were representative of an interim in his life, a few suspended days away from home, their images embedded in those days. But they had confirmed the apparent failure of his life, his failure to merge with other people of his own age, to enter their world, to endure the hops at home, the smoky atmosphere, the shrieking music.

  The past day had been like a piece of paper curling in intense heat, the edges becoming brown, the paper gradually diminishing, falling into ashes.

  Sleep intersected his misery, a night in the bungalow, his case packed beside him. He was woken at about seven o’clock the following morning, the prospect of the long journey before him. M. Jouvet was to drive him to Lyons where he would get a train to Paris. From Paris he was to catch an evening flight to Dublin.

  The morning was bright outside, trees innocently chequered by sunshine, but the light offered no consolation. There was a spectral quality about it as the previous evening was remembered.

  As he dragged his case into the kitchen M. Jouvet was bent over a transistor set, listening to it intently as though to some important news. It had just been announced that the Russian army had invaded Czechoslovakia during the night, taking it over in one shattering move.

  The news overhung the car trip to Lyons, M. Jouvet talking about it, valleys awakening in evanescent sun, mist dr
ifting idly about orange and green tents, the first signs of activity in low-lying villages.

  But the event was lost in the heat of the train journey, place names hailing him—Dijon, Fontainbleau—each stage of his journey bringing him nearer home, nearer to the lies he’d have to tell. He’d have to pretend that he’d enjoyed his holiday.

  It wasn’t until he was in a plane bound for Dublin that evening, a fantasia of moving cloud outside, that he recovered his earlier sense of dismay. The evening papers ranged before him, proclaiming the news of the invasion, displaying the first dazed photographs. The photographs showed ominous tanks, showed the bewildered faces of a people who didn’t realize as yet that they were caught up in history.

  The images were swathed in a new emotion. They’d never be forgotten—the tanks, the faces, the flags—they were seized upon by a moment of youth, the fires in Prague inerasible in the mind.

  Embassy

  She ran a pub where old men slouched over Guinness and where the light was always dark. Two or three regular customers were always there and the conversations revolved around sick dogs or bottled ships as these were an important property in the community, symbolizing social status and a good clean home.

  The calendar in the pub literally looked as though it was about to fester and give. A doll-like model was represented on it. She was leaning over a log and her lips were red.

  She had blue eyes, delicately outlined by black. She wore a brown coat and despite the snow on distant pines she did not look at all cold.