Two Lives

11

In time all those who can understand realize that nowadays things are being ordered differently. The three doctors who regularly visit the house talk in turn to those whom they believe would be better off in what they make a point of calling ‘the community’. Where there is no family, or if a family does not wish to cooperate, places will be found in sheltered accommodation.

‘Is it community singing?’ Belle D inquires. ‘Is that what they mean?’ Her name is Belle Dymock, but for reasons of her own she has forbidden her surname’s use, while insisting also that her first name should not be employed on its own.

‘The community’s where you came from,’ the Spanish wife replies. Her surname, too, has caused difficulties, not because she dislikes it but because no one can pronounce it. She is not, in fact, Spanish herself, but has acquired her sobriquet through marrying a Spaniard who deserted her in Gibraltar.

‘Did you ever hear the like?’ another woman asks, a faded woman who speaks only when a subject catches her imagination.

‘It’s the tablets,’ Mrs Leavy explains. ‘Medication works wonders.’

They all say that. They say it and repeat it: the new drugs of the 1980s make the miracle possible. The doctor who cares for Belle D has told her she could easily work in the carpet factory again. Pretty Bríd Beamish – no fault of her own she took a wrong turning – will be adorned in wedding finery yet, no reason in the world why she shouldn’t be. All that must be ensured is that the medication is taken, daily and precisely as prescribed. The assistance of family members will be required, assurances insisted upon. ‘Isn’t it the best leave-taking you could have?’ jovially remarks the doctor who has a beard, smiling at the faces of the unsmiling. Father Malley sits with each departing inmate, recalling Our Lady and her mercy.

‘Mary Louise! Come here, Mary Louise!’ Small Sadie beckons, and questions when she is obeyed: ‘Will you go back to the graveyard, Mary Louise? Will you get up to your tricks?’ Laughter cackles from the tiny woman’s throat. In the house she is often likened to a hen because of that noise she makes.

‘What tricks are those, Sadie?’

But Sadie only shakes her head. At night she is locked away alone. She broke a gardener’s arm one time. She’s in the house because too often she believes she has to break things and tear off wallpaper. A week ago she was told she would remain in care for a while yet.

‘Sadie’s the lucky one!’ she cries in the same shrill way. ‘Poor old eejits, what good is it to you? What good the Holy Apostolic Church? What good the dogs in the traps? Dog eats dog, Thundering Joe and Flashby. Tinned with rabbit.’

‘Oh, hold your damn noise,’ a woman snaps.