Three Wise Men. Martina Devlin
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Mrs McDermott. She’s not the worst in the world but Gloria isn’t in the humour for her.
‘Lovie, I know exactly how you must be feeling,’ bawls the voice on the end of the line. ‘I lost two babies myself before Mick came along, bless him. You never forget a miscarriage, no matter how many babies you have afterwards.’
‘That’s a comfort,’ Gloria thinks bitterly, holding the phone a few inches from her ear.
‘Oh, it was hard in my day, sure enough,’ she bellows, ‘you had to get on with it if you lost a baby.’
Her mother-in-law continues in this vein for five minutes, while Gloria fantasises about hanging up and claiming they were disconnected.
‘Still, I have my boys and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. You should always remember this about babies, lovie, if they don’t make you laugh they’ll never make you cry.’
‘Margaret,’ Gloria interrupts, desperation lending her fluency. ‘You’ve no idea how much I appreciate your call, it’s helped so much. But there’s only the one phone on this corridor and I can’t monopolise it. I’m going home soon, I’ll ring you then.’
‘Are you indeed? I’ll pop down and visit you, so. I have the free travel since I turned sixty last year.’
Somebody up there has really got it in for her. Gloria sends the telephone trolley clattering against the wall and prepares to treat herself to another wallow, she’s earned it. So they’re turning her out on Monday: out to the tender mercies of a mother-in-law determined to be supportive if she loses her voice in the process, and of a husband who can’t bear to touch her. Gloria’s grown curiously attached to this sloppily painted orange hospital room although she’s shed tears in it, raged at Mick in it, leaked more tears in it and railed against life in it.
She contemplates her departure. Time to count her blessings instead of sheep, that’s what Bing Crosby recommends and he wouldn’t give you a wrong steer. On the plus side: she’ll have her own things about her, and didn’t Maureen O’Hara stress the importance of that on behalf of women everywhere in The Quiet Man. On the minus side: no nurses, fewer visitors and she’ll have to make her own tea. She confides in the bedside locker: ‘Maybe I’ll send Mick out to Amott’s for a Teasmaid, it can be my coming-home present from him.’
Except he doesn’t want her home, he prefers her safely out of the way in hospital.
Eimear always expected to be implacable if she discovered Jack straying. No wavering, no listening to excuses, no nonsense. Funny how wrong you can be. She still can’t bear to listen to his explanations, she finds it offensive enough that it happened without hearing the gory details to salve his confessional binge. Describing the affair makes the woman flesh and blood, she prefers her shadowy. Anyway, Eimear couldn’t care less about her rival.
‘Stop, she’s not a rival, this isn’t a competition for Jack O’Brien’s affections,’ she shrieks, equanimity in splinters.
Now what brought that on, she frets into a soothing Baileys with ice, leftover Christmas supplies. She’s rationalised this, it’s his infidelity that bothers her; the other woman hasn’t cheated and lied, Jack has. The other woman hasn’t ignored any pledges, Jack has. Eimear has no quarrel with her. She empties the dregs of the bottle into her glass, can’t be bothered adding more ice, and wishes Jack O’Brien’s other woman disease-ridden and bankrupt. Is that too extreme? She contemplates moving on to the remnants of the Tia Maria and decides it’s not extreme enough. How about disease-ridden, bankrupt and bald.
Perhaps she should make some coffee and pour the Tia Maria into it. To heck with coffee, it dilutes the alcohol. Jack’s other woman, the one with hair falling out in clumps if hexes work, is no sister of hers whatever the sisterhood claim. Eimear trails the liqueur over her tongue and glances at the clock: drinking at 11 a.m., see what Jack O’Brien has driven her to. Aided, abetted and bloody-well-chauffeured by a woman.
She vacillates between a rational need to understand and an irrational urge to bludgeon someone, preferably her husband but the other woman will do very nicely too. If women are all meant to be sisters, why do some of them allow themselves to become susceptible to married men? Sibling rivalry obviously, female emancipation means empowerment, so that when you envy another’s toys you snatch them off her. No room for maidenly modesty here. Eimear contemplates her unknown challenger: it would make her smash and grab easier if she dumped Jack and she doesn’t propose to do anything so convenient for her machinations.
But she does intend making him suffer for a while. Her strategy is that tried and tested formula, the silent treatment, coupled with separate meals and even more separate beds.
He’s lucky they’re still sleeping under the same roof.
A memory intrudes on Eimear’s punishment scheme, lurching into her thought processes and tickling a reluctant laugh; Kate always called Tia Marias ‘Tina Maries’ because she overheard two old dears order that once. The giggle turns into a snuffle and then a sob.
Eimear drags herself back from the brink and stands up, sending her chair clattering. She recaps the bottle so forcefully she loses a fingernail; it’s drinking in the morning that’s making her feel weepy, not this wobble in her relationship with Jack.
But she’s going to chart it back on course now and that means showing him the error of his ways. He relishes his home comforts, let’s see how he likes it when they’re unavailable to him.
‘This is a war of attrition,’ Eimear advises the Baileys bottle in the instant before catapulting it into the kitchen bin. ‘Whoops, forgot to recycle. Ah, so what, the world has stopped turning – doesn’t matter if the environment is banjaxed.’
She slumps back at the kitchen table, cradling her cheek with the heel of her hand. It’s peculiar, she reflects, how few men have any stomach for the kind of skirmishing that women excel at. Recriminations he can handle, tears he can handle, but silence and sulking and ignoring him? He’s actually accused her of mental cruelty.
Their conversation went like this:
Jack: ‘What sort of a day did you have?’
Eimear: Silence.
Jack: ‘I said what sort of a day did you have, Eimear?’
Eimear: Silence.
Jack: ‘Is it a crime to make conversation now?’
Eimear: Silence.
Jack: ‘Answer me, is it a fecking crime to make conversation now?’
Eimear: ‘Do you have to repeat everything twice but with expletives for good measure?’
Jack: ‘At least you’re talking to me.’
Eimear: Silence.
Jack: ‘Come on, Eimear, do you want blood? A pound of flesh? I’ve said I’m sorry, I’ve tried to make it up to you, you can’t bear a grudge forever. Tell me you forgive me and I’ll never look at another woman again, so help me God. I’ll give my lectures in blinkers, I’ll cross the street if I see a skirt approaching, I’ll stop kissing my mother if that’s what it takes.’
Eimear: Silence.
Jack: ‘You’re a cold piece and no mistake. This is cruelty, deliberate and premeditated. At least what I did was in the heat of the moment. You’re a hard-hearted witch and you’re savouring every minute of this. I bet you’re delighted you caught me out, it reinforces that innate sense of superiority you have.’
(She leaves the room.)
He’s right, Eimear admits now, curled foetus-like on the bed. She is gratified at having Jack in the wrong in a ditch and herself sitting pretty on the moral high ground. Except she loves this man, desperately, although he’s cheated on her and will again given half