“Did you sleep well, Elizabeth?” he asked.
“Yes,” she lied, though hard to believe from the look in her eyes.
“That’s powerful, that’s what’ll have you on yer feet soon. The doctor will be here on his way from the dispensary and we’ll ask how about the nurse.”
“That’ll be perfect,” she said. “You’re a little late this morning.”
“Aye — half-eight. Always a rush for this cursed nine. Jesus, people get more like clocks these days and they have to.”
“Will you go on the bog today?”
“You can be sure. I’ll have to see what the men are doin’, though I can’t risk takin’ the day.”
“Who have you?”
He named the workmen as he pulled on his tunic, letting it swing open, and then he was gone for his breakfast.
The fire would be blazing, she remembered. He’d shave before the scullery mirror, the eyes blind with soap and the hands groping for the towel; the kitchen clean and lovely, a white cloth on the table. That’s where she’d love to be now, in the middle of the life of the morning, and not alone and clammy under these bedclothes.
Mullins was barrack orderly, pounding upstairs to the storeroom with his mattress and load of blankets, she saw his shoulders and arms clasped about the grey blankets through the open door and between rungs of the wooden railing. She heard his shovel and tongs at the fire. The outside door opened, the gate at the lavatory clanged, he was going down to the ashpit with his bucket of ashes and pisspot. The iron gate shut, there was some minutes’ delay while he made his morning visit to the lavatory, and then his feet on the gravel and the scraping of his boots at the door.
“Johnny Aitchinson was thrashin’ ashes in Johnny Aitchinson’s ash hole,” repeated itself in her mind after the door had closed, it brought no smile or grimace to her lips — just, “Johnny Aitchinson was thrashin’ ashes in Johnny Aitchinson’s ash hole,” over and over again.
Close to nine he brought some last thing up to the storeroom and then crossed the landing to Elizabeth’s room. Whoever was b.o. came each morning to see her.
“All’s finished and ready to go for the auld breakfast now. I’m just lookin’ in to see how you are,” he stated.
“You’re always very good, John,” she said.
“Not a bit trouble in the world, for nothin’ at all,” he said, put ill at ease by the touch of praise or courtesy; it made him overflow with the feeling that he should somehow be better than he was. She saw the effect of her slight politeness, and wished she’d been silent, it wasn’t true courtesy if it made Mullins so uneasy, only a silly, affected fashion of manners.
“What kind of night had you?” he asked.
“I slept all right,” she said, she must try to divert him away.
“You’re lookin’ better than ever and there’s a powerful feel of the summer comin’ and it’d damned near bring a dead man to life, never mind some one foxin’, like you.”
He’d never accuse her of foxing if it wasn’t blatantly untrue: they must have very little real hope that she’d recover, she thought. She must try to divert him quickly.
“Was there rain, was there rain last night?” she asked. “I couldn’t hear your boots on the ground this mornin’.”
“We can’t make many moves anownt of you, can we?” he bantered. “There was showers, still clouds in the sky, the ground’s as soft as putty. Believe me, you’re not missin’ much not to be out in this weather.”
He was returning to her sickness, though she’d easily fence him away now.
“How is the potato settin’?” she asked.
He began to tell her, the hands of the clock were close to nine: the other policeman arrived below, soon he had to leave her.
She heard the bustle of the dayroom and Reegan go down the hallway after he’d gone; the banging of the dayroom door. The roll would be called and she had the sense, as always, from that bang of the door at nine that the morning was over, the day had started.
“I am Elizabeth Reegan and another day of my life is beginning,” she said to herself. “I am lying here in bed. I’ve been five weeks sick in bed, and there is no sign of me getting better. Though there’s little pain, which is lucky, and the worst is fear and remorse and often the horrible meaning-lessness of it all. Sometimes meaning and peace come but I lose them again, nothing in life is ever resolved once and for all but changes with the changing life, calm had to be fought for through pain, and always when it was given it was both different and the same, every loss had changed it, and she could be sure it never came to stay, because she was still alive.
“The same but different, Elizabeth,” that was Halliday and she could only smile and turn.
It was the day, the stale day of this room. The saws were singing, the stone-crusher. She heard a motor, the noise was like the green mail van’s, and ten minutes later the postman was at the dayroom door. “Nothing else today,” she thought she heard him say. Probably he had no letters except the official brown ones with the black harp, addressed to the Sergeant-in-charge, that no one wanted.
“Jesus! Jesus tonight! Jesus this day,” she muttered, hard to know whether it was a curse or prayer, as she heard the postman’s feet fade away on the gravel.
The roll call was over, Casey installed as b.o. for the day and night, Recgan coming upstairs to tell her he was going out on patrol.
“To the bog, I suppose?” she managed to smile.
“To the bog,” he affirmed, a secret musing on his features that she thought was beautiful.
“Quirke’s been quiet these last days?” she asked.
“Aye. A calm before a storm I wouldn’t wonder. He’ll pester us then for days: some other poor bugger must have distracted him. The gentleman’s nature is so busy that if he didn’t manage to be all the time on somebody’s tail he’d probably have to jump into the river or something.”
She laughed: it brought such relief and he was leaving.
“You don’t want me to get you anything outa the shops?”
“No. Nothing.”
“And if I’m not back when the doctor comes you’ll mention to him about the nurse?”
He was gone, nothing but wait for his bicycle to go past beneath the window on the gravel, even now so many distractions to look forward to, far more still to remember if she looked back. She’d probably never have to meet herself alone in the awfulness of the living moment, stranded on a crumbling ridge over the abysses, her life rising to a scream as she fell.
He was gone, the morning of spring light moved alive in the room, she drank water.
Mrs Casey was in the dayroom: she did not stay long there, but came upstairs, leaving the dayroom door open behind her so that Casey could go for his newspapers. She’d have to dash down to call him if the phone rang and there’d be one wild moment of panic but it was unlikely that anything would stir while he was away.
“I’m here at last and Ned is just gone for the papers,” she stated, and the same questions were asked, the same answers given, the same encouragements and hopes. The good weather was coming to stay for ever. With relief Elizabeth saw her find a duster and brush, tie a blue scarf over her hair, and she hummed between snatches of talk as she tidied the room.
Casey returned with the newspapers, and roared from the bottom of the stairs that he’d not go up till they’d finished their gossip.
“Go and read your precious paper, you’re not wanted here,” his wife bantered back.
“It’s worse than a harem up there so,” he shouted, and Elizabeth wondered how long the little game of sexual titivation would continue.
“Go and read your paper, you and your harems, nice talk in a Christian country,” Mrs Casey laughed.
“Oh, why did I ever get married, that’s when I met me Waterloo; no man can get the better of a woman,” he went grumbling loudly and happily back into the dayroom to smile with general goodwill and well-being out in the direction of the garden and bridge before he fixed the cushion on his chair in front of the fire and opened the newspapers with exaggerated slowness, as if every motion was a beautiful end in itself.