Donal Ryan: A Slanting of the Sun

The day room was empty when she arrived. The supervisor had them all in doing make-and-do in the arts and crafts room. The supervisor had a course done on that kind of thing, and she thought she was awfully swanky with the certificate they’d given her. It was framed on the wall of the arts and crafts room and it hung there like an accusation. Are you qualified to be in here, showing these people how to glue a button to a toilet roll? You are in your arse. You haven’t a certificate . Anyway, how’s ever. The supervisor was giving out yards about paint that was after being spilt on the floor and the spiller was standing bent-backed in contrition, one arm slung over his head, one still daubing at nothing with a dripping paintbrush. Sit down , sit down will you, the supervisor was saying, but the spiller wasn’t stirring, and the supervisor’s voice was getting louder, and her face redder, as she sopped at the bright blue puddle with a dirty-looking rag.

She was glad to be able to back out from there again, the mess of it; she was rostered onto the bungalow for the evening, where there were three profoundly handicapped patients, relatively elderly, mute, usually docile enough. There was a short walk from the main building’s back door to the low bungalow flanked by trellised gardens and copses of young fruit trees. She felt the rising wind as she walked along the narrow path; she looked at the darkening sky. She hoped it wasn’t going to turn stormy again. She’d forgotten to listen to the weather forecast. She’d Google it from the bungalow. She saw the new girl through the living-room window, standing with her hands at either side of her head. She was met at the bungalow door by screams. The new girl brushed past her, head down, almost charging. Thank God that day is over. The three of them are as quare all day. I don’t know. I’ve notes left on the table. Good luck.

Notes. Barry did pee at 12.10. No poo. He needs to go tho. Holding it. Mary L on console all day, gaga from it, wouldn’t eat lunch. Mary M like a bitch. Scratching. Nails too long. Have told Nurse about Barry’s no poo.

She breathed deeply, twice, three times, to steady herself. She clenched and unclenched her fists. She brought her hands together beneath her chin, tucking her elbows in tight to centre herself, like the yoga girl had said to do the time in the gym. She ignored Barry’s wails from the corner of the room where he was clutching his bum with one hand and describing wild arcs in the air with the other and walked to the giant bean-bag where Mary L sat, the flickering light of her child’s game console reflected in her wide brown eyes. Mary L. Mary L. Look at me. You have to put away that a minute and eat your food. Mary L. Mary L. And she reached down with her left hand and closed it around the top of the grey plastic console and as Mary L looked up she drew her right hand behind her and swung it back across Mary L’s cheek with just a shade short of all her strength. Mary L tumbled sideways from the bean-bag onto the floor, and lay there, long keening sobs escaping her. She took a handful of the hair at the back of Mary L’s head and entwined it in her fingers, and yanked upwards, so that Mary L screamed shrilly at the shocking pain, and rose to all fours, and she pulled on the hair so that Mary L began to crawl forward to lessen the pressure and relieve the pain, and in that way she was able to get Mary L across the living area and up onto a chair, and she took a segment of the sandwich that had been prepared earlier that day by the new girl and as a long wail exited Mary L’s mouth the sandwich entered it, and Mary L’s eyes bulged, and she bucked and coughed, and her hands went up towards her face but they were batted back down and the bread and ham and grated cheese fell in wet clumps from her mouth to the table and her lap.

Eat. The fucking. Sandwich. Mary L, eat it. Eat it. And she gathered the spit-covered clumps in a square of kitchen paper and smashed them back in past Mary L’s cracked lips and through the gaps in her teeth, and pushed upwards with one palm from beneath her chin and downwards with the other on the top of her head, so that Mary L could breathe only through her nose, and the air that was rushing in and out through her nostrils sent flailing lines of watery snot outwards and down, along her chin, and Mary L clawed at the arms and the hands that were holding her mouth closed, but it was no good, and all she could do was swallow, because she knew that’s what she was supposed to do, and then this would end.

Mary M and Barry were quiet now, watching. Barry was still holding his bum. She wiped Mary L’s face, and kissed her cheek, and said Good girl, Mary L, now look at you, aren’t you the great girl to eat your lunch after all, and they all saying you’re only a bad bitch? You’re not at all, you’re a great girl, so you are. Eat up the rest of it now. And she walked around the table and over to the kitchen area where she ran hot water over her hands and scrubbed them with anti-bacterial soap, and dried them slowly, her eyes meeting Barry’s all the while. He knew. He pointed towards the toilet door, and raised his eyebrows. Yes, Barry, she said. Get in there right now and do your poo, or I’ll fucking kick it out of you. Get in, you little bastard, and shit. And you can wipe your own arse. Mary M, sit down on your seat and watch your DVDs and mind your own fucking business.

And that way the evening was set, and everyone knew to be quiet and good, and it was not too bad, and she was able to Google the weather forecast, and watch Emmerdale , and Corrie , and they ate nearly all of the fish-fingers and waffles and beans that were delivered from the kitchen, and the nurse came in around eight with the tablets, and she passed no remark on Mary L’s livid cheek, and after the second Corrie the three put on their jim-jams no bother and toddled off to their beds.

The air was clear and still as she drove home, the low-pressure front had moved away. There were stars winking down from the gaps between clouds. She hoped her husband had cooked the meat properly. She hoped he hadn’t had a stressful day. She hoped in the morning she’d hear the skylark sing.

THE ROAD OUTSIDE this house is the same one my mother and father walked together each morning of their married life to Mass. Hand in hand, then arm in arm as they got older. That now is nearly seen as being sinful. Daily Mass-going is a thing to be suspicious of. Have you nothing better to be doing? No, faith, I have not. It’s not as though I sink too deeply into it; I only do it in memory of my dear parents. I only stay on nodding terms with Christ, just in case. What harm can it do to send a prayer or two skyward?

Suspicious also is living where you were born, on the road your parents walked. Did you never want to have a look at the world? No, faith, I did not. This road is as good as any, or as bad. The crows that blacken the sky above my yard each night are descended from the ones my mother watched. The same squawks and caws in the same prickled sky. What business have those crows in the hills east of here? Something important takes them there with each dawn, anyway, to Pallasbeg and Pallasmore and Ton Tenna. They process home with the fading light, an hour or so of staggered returning, weighed down and weary. And I stand beneath them, wondering, the way my mother and father did.

Crows have great notions. They perch before bed for a nightly confab on the ridges of the roofs of all this town’s important buildings: the courthouse and the town hall and the bank. They never grace the grocery shops or townhouses or any of the lesser structures, only relieve themselves on them as they pass. Then they shout across at one another all the news of the day. There’s three gangs, as far as I can make out, with a HQ each, triangled around the square, shouting over Our Lord’s stony grey head. Three factions, one murder. Once they’ve all their arguing and organizing done they turn their arses to the town and peel away to the dark insides of the giant evergreens in the grounds of the two Saint Marys. They’re fixed as firm to their home as I am to mine.