John Banville - Birchwood

And later that evening, while I was preparing for a visit to the hayshed to meet Rosie, there floated down from the hushed upper reaches of the house an eerie ululating cry, half laugh, half shriek, a truly terrible sound. I met Papa in the hall. We stared at each other for a moment in trepidation, listening intently.

‘Jesus, what now,’ he muttered, and plodded up the stairs, his bent black back the very picture of gloom. I followed solemnly after him. Mama stood in the attic among the shallots, still wearing Granny Godkin's gown. She took no notice of us as we entered, but stared into the corner under the roof, where there was a battered tricycle, a dusty bit of cracked mirror leaning drunkenly against the wall, a gutless tennis racket and a black leather trunk with brass studs. Papa sighed.

‘What, in the sweet name of Christ, are you at now, Trissy?’ he asked, slowly, wearily. Mama did not hear him. She had departed into another world.

‘Like black smoke,’ she mused, nodding slowly, intrigued. ‘Yes, yes.’

Papa took her by the arm. She disengaged herself gently and turned to the door, where she paused and glanced down at my Wellingtons, the incongruous badge of my love. Slowly she lifted her eyes to mine, with the faintest of smiles, conspiratorial, tender, and sad.

‘Poor boy, poor boy,’ she murmured. ‘All alone’

I stayed in the attic long after they had gone, thinking, I cannot say why, of Rosie waiting for me in a nest of hay. I imagined her very clearly, her fingers blue with cold, her cold lips. All that was finished. Part of my life had fallen away, like a rock into the sea. I do not think I am exaggerating.

THE SNOW MELTED ,the earth quickened. Spring came early. In March there was a brief mock summer, strange balmy days, still and close. I would have preferred the toothed winds of other years. Mama steadily journeyed on into the deeps of her new world. There was about her sickness something whimsical and mischievous, a secretive knowing air, almost as if she were humouring us. She laughed softly under her breath, and smiled hazily, mysteriously past us, clawing a paper napkin asunder under the table, the damp torn pieces falling to the floor like shreds of her own anguish. Some days she would go raging through the house, an uncanny replica of Granny Godkin, others she was a sobbing caricature of her gentle self. There was no denying her madness, and yet, in our hearts, we did try, with desperate nonchalance, to gainsay it. But none of us was really sane, I am convinced of that, none of the Godkins or their kin. Aunt Martha, during our increasingly rare tutorials, was given to sudden silences, unwarranted starts of fright, and often, with eyes narrowed and mouth working tensely, she would question me on my activities on certain and, for me, forgotten days. My indifferent answers provoked in her an excited hum of suspicion, but of what she suspected me I did not know. She fought interminable battles now with Papa over the mysterious terms of his will. Her son too cultivated new peculiarities, skulking in the garden among the bushes, on the stairs at dusk, preoccupied and distant, glancing at me covertly from under his pale brows. I began to wonder if they were all sharing a secret from which I was excluded, and my thoughts turned again and again to my lost sister, of whose existence I was now convinced, but in a detached, unreal way, I cannot explain.

On the feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel my father laid an unsteady hand on my shoulder and steered me into the library for a little chat, as he called it. He bade me sit on an upright chair in front of his desk while with ponderous solemnity he locked the door and pocketed the key. Then he sat down opposite me with his fists clenched before him, grimaced over a stifled sour belch, and gave me briefly one of his awful icy grins. He was half shot already.

‘Well Gabriel?’ he began heartily. ‘I suppose you know what we're here to talk about? I've dropped enough hints, eh? No? O…O well now.’ His eyes slid away from mine and gazed dully past me toward the window. It was a restless bright day, full of wind and misty light. The sight of the flushed spring garden seemed to annoy him. He unclenched his fists and drummed his fingers on the green blotter, regarding me with one eyebrow raised and one eyetooth bared. For Papa, the ideal of a son never fused with my reality. On those rare occasions when he could not avoid acknowledging my existence, it was with a vaguely disconcerted eye, a faintly rueful frown, that he considered me, his little pride and joy.

‘Well what I want to say to you Gabriel is, this house…’ He waved a hand before him, lifted his eyes to the ceiling, and sat quite still for a moment, frowning. Then he pushed back his chair and wrenched open a drawer, took out a flat leather-covered flask and tipped a shot of brandy into the cap, and hurriedly, almost angrily, threw the liqour down his throat. ‘Ach! frightful stuff. Anyway, Gabriel, this house, what with your mother sick, and, well, everything, I've been thinking-and your Aunt Martha thinks so too-that it's not really the place for a growing boy to grow up, you know? Look, son, what I'm really trying to say, now I'll be honest with you, straight from the shoulder, between men, what I'm saying is…’ He was silent once more, and looked at me glassy-eyed, helpless, his mouth moving feebly. Out came the flask again, and this time he left it standing by him, his right-hand man. Eventually, having circled the subject for as long as was possible, he came to the point. I was to be sent away to school.

I did not react at all to this supposedly stunning notion, but sat with my hands folded and waited for him to continue. He was surprised at my calmness, and disappointed too, I think. Did he expect tears and tantrums, a fit on the floor and drumming heels? If he did he knew nothing of his son. He rose heavily and plodded to the window, where he stood looking out, and the fingers of his clasped hands played with each other behind his back.

‘Mist is lifting,’ he said. ‘Be a grand day presently. I remember when I was your age, here. Better times.’

He came back again and sat down with a sigh, pressing his knuckles to his forehead. He took another drink.

‘It was easier then to be…for your grandfather to…I mean I was happy ! I had plenty to occupy me, friends, people used to come here. The parties we had! And then Martha, your Aunt Martha and I were very close, very…close.’ He glanced at me swiftly, with a shifty eye. ‘We were like pals, great pals. We had grand times, plenty of laughs, parties, all that. Things were better.’ He gazed glumly at his hands, shaking his head sorrowfully over the dead past. ‘People had more time, it went slower then, there was more…time. Yes. Great pals. And, you see, your Mama is going away too, into a…into a home.’

We were silent. He was getting old, beginning to crack. It was nothing to do with wrinkles or gray hairs, but it was a slackening of an inner fibre, a loosening of grip, his great word, grip. Keep a grip, boy, just keep a grip and you'll be all right. One did not need to be strong, only strong enough to keep one's weakness hidden, that was what he meant, I suppose. I watched him there, guzzling cheap brandy, good old Papa. What does one feel for a father? Resentment, disappointment-love? What do they mean, these words? Once I had respected and feared him, captivated by his violence, his arrogance, his pain. Now I only disliked him, found him distasteful. He would not send me away, for I was gone away already. Birchwood was dead. He started up again, like an ancient engine.

‘I haven't much advice for you, boy. Always try to play fair. Nobody likes a sneak, you know the kind of chap I mean, a bit of a mama's boy, a cissy, always mooning around the place, always…’ He stopped, perhaps realising that it was precisely my type he had described. ‘Well anyway, be a man, learn what life is about. Do the right thing! That's what I mean. And you won't go wrong.’ He lifted a clenched fist between us and grinned again. I knew what was coming. ‘Grip,’ he said softly. ‘It's your only man.’