Anne Enright - The Green Road

‘Oh this is far too good for me.’

Rosaleen hated being upstaged by her own clothes. It was a rule. Vulgarity she called it, but the scarf was not vulgar, it was entirely discreet.

‘It’s lovely on you,’ Constance said.

They had all drifted in to watch: Constance, Dan, Emmet, Hanna. With Dessie at the back of the room, looking at all the Madigans.

‘Pink,’ said Rosaleen, taking it off and setting it against the dark green and glitter of the Christmas tree. ‘Very fresh. Though Lord knows, I’m probably a bit old for pink.’

No one answered, so she said it again.

‘Long time since I wore pink.’

‘I wouldn’t call it pink,’ said Constance. ‘Maybe lavender.’

‘Lilac,’ said Hanna.

‘Lilac shawl,’ said Emmet. ‘You know that’s actually Sanskrit.’

‘Is it?’ said Dan, because there was no getting around Emmet when he had a fact, you just had to let him slap it out there, and admire.

‘Yes. Both words. “Lilac” and “shawl”.’

‘Thanks, Emmet,’ said Hanna.

Rosaleen bunched up the ‘lilac shawl’, annoyed by Emmet, or annoyed by the thing itself. She chucked it into the easy chair by the fireplace, and was cross with herself then, because her children were all looking at her.

‘Oh I am tired of myself now,’ she said.

And because it was Christmas, she started to cry.

‘Oh, Mammy,’ said Constance.

‘My own children,’ she said, as though they had ganged up against her in some terrible way.

‘Your own children what ?’ said Emmet.

‘My own children!’ she said. Furious now. ‘My own flesh and blood!’

And Hanna, who had done nothing all day except mope, said, ‘Mama, Mama. Come on.’ Leading her gently to the sofa. ‘Would you like a little sherry?’

‘No I would not like a little sherry,’ said Rosaleen. ‘Tell them, Desmond. Tell them what I want.’

Dessie was standing well back from them all.

‘Sorry?’ he said.

‘Orange shampoo,’ said Emmet. ‘That’s another one.’

‘Oh shut up,’ said his siblings, almost as one: Hanna inserting, ‘the fuck’ in there so ending a little late and off the beat.

‘Tell them,’ said Rosaleen, looking to Dessie, as though to her only protector, and Dessie ( the fool , thought Constance) said, ‘Well.’

‘I’m putting the house on the market,’ said Rosaleen. ‘Dessie has it all arranged.’

There was nothing for Dessie to do now, except concur.

‘Your mother thinks it’s a good time — and it is a good time, it is a really good time — to realise this. . asset.’

He waved his hand vaguely, as though talking about the wallpaper, or the carpet, a gathered handful of air.

‘Excuse me?’ said Hanna.

‘She wants to get the money moving. Am I right? To divide it up a little. Now, rather than later.’

‘Well none of you has any money,’ said Rosaleen, perched on the edge of the sofa. She smoothed the cloth of her skirt over her knees and picked at a piece of fluff.

‘I don’t know whose fault that is. I mean, apart from mine. I don’t know what I did to deserve that.’

And there it was. Her children were going to object. They wanted to say that they had money or that they did not need money, but their failure gaped back at them, and they just stood there, looking at it. It was true. They had no money. And yet, and yet. They each struggled to remember this, they had enough. Whatever they wanted, it wasn’t this.

‘Please don’t,’ said Emmet.

‘It’s too much for me,’ said Rosaleen, her voice beginning to tremble. And this was also true: the house was too big for one person.

‘So that is the way, I suppose,’ Dessie said. ‘That’s where things are tending.’

‘I am moving in with Constance,’ Rosaleen said. ‘I’ve had enough.’

Dessie stopped then, as though this last was news to him too.

And Constance said, ‘Jesus, the dinner.’

The Brussels sprouts were burning. The smell of it had been getting worse for some time.

‘The sprouts,’ she said.

‘Oh please don’t fuss,’ said Rosaleen as Constance squawked and ran out the door.

‘Please stop.’ She lifted her voice. ‘No one likes them anyway.’

There was a silence in the hall. After a moment Constance came back in to the room.

‘You like them,’ she said to Rosaleen. The smell by now was quite intense.

‘Oh I just. I don’t know. Maybe I do.’

As they went in, at Dan’s behest, to the dining room, where the smoked salmon and asparagus was set, they could hear Constance in the garden beating the saucepan on the ground outside, and a noise out of her like a heifer stuck on a barbed wire fence. She was weeping.

Dessie said, ‘Maybe a little bungalow, Rosaleen. Maybe that’s what you are looking for.’

He pulled his mother-in-law’s chair out for her, and she sat down.

‘Oh Desmond,’ she said, picking up her napkin. ‘And the price of them going up by the day. As you tell me, yourself.’

Donal was in Australia, which left two young McGraths, Rory and Shauna, to sit at the little fold-out table, and though they were the size of adults, they stuck like children to their mobile phones.

‘Put them away ,’ Dessie said, as he passed, but they ignored him, and the Madigans sat in the tiny, demented sound of their electronic games. Hanna picked up the fork and set it down again. Constance did not come in.

They sat and looked at the food in front of them. It was half past two on Christmas Day, the weather outside was clear and fine; no traffic on the road, no wind to curl under the eaves or annoy the windows. The house was silent and large about them. There was no one to say grace — their father was dead.

It was Dan’s job now. Dan the spoilt priest. He looked around him, then down at the table. He took a breath.

‘Buon appetito,’ he said.

Which gave the siblings a small jab of pleasure. They applied themselves to the asparagus, which was wrapped in smoked salmon with a lemon dressing. It was very good.

‘This is very good,’ said Emmet.

‘Really simple,’ said Dan.

Outside, Constance had stopped weeping.

‘How’s school?’ said Hanna.

‘Good,’ said Shauna from the little table.

‘Any word from Donal?’

‘Surfing, sure. Byron Bay. There’s a whole gang of them there from Lahinch.’

When the starter was done, Dan cleared and went into the kitchen where Constance was filling the Christmas plates. He brought them in two at a time; ham, turkey, three types of stuffing, all the trimmings. Then Constance herself came in — red-faced, sweating, the silk of her blouse flecked with grease.

‘Ta-dahh!’ said Dan.

There was a little round of applause for Constance and she sat into her accustomed place, and there they all were, girls facing the window, boys facing the room: Constance-and-Hanna, Emmet-and-Dan. Their mother sat at the foot of the table, Dessie at the head, and for a moment they pretended that nothing had happened, that this room would always be the same, and always theirs.

It was older, now, of course. The damp had crawled higher through the bamboo patterned wallpaper, leaving its tea coloured watermark, and the edge in the north-east corner was spotted with black and curled up from the skirting board. The Madigan children saw it with wiser eyes. The chandelier — so wonderful, long ago — was a cheap enough thing. The brown carpet was the best you could do in 1973.

The people inside the room were older, too. All of them so child-like still, despite the absurd grey hairs and the sagging skin in which their familiar eyes were set.

They worked the gravy and the sauces, passed stuffing, the salt, the water jug and the wine. They looked at the plates heaped with food and marvelled aloud at it, each of them silently shouting that she could not take it away from them, whatever it was — their childhood, soaked into the walls of this house.