In the window of my mother’s house – my old home where I’d grown up – there was a sticker. Rather faded now, the yellow and red sticker said, Atomkraft? Nein Danke.
She loved a cause did Nora. There had been the Dunnes Stores Apartheid bananas, the Mullaghmore sit-in, the Dun Laoghaire seafront. But her main place of activism had been a Peace Camp, hours and hours away in West Cork. The Government of the time wanted to build a nuclear fuel reprocessing site in this out-of-the-way beauty spot, a place of heather and gorse and stony fields and breath-taking views. But even though the plans were hastily shelved, the camp took on a different meaning, a nexus for the differently minded, those who weren’t interested in following the herd. Nora began taking longer and longer leave from her job, eventually taking an open-ended sabbatical until she was down there pretty much permanently for four or so years. I did go and visit her there once. It was Rosaleen’s suggestion. Anyway, I was fresh from my leaving Cert trauma, and at a loose end.
When I eventually got down to Mizen Head, after sixteen hours of travelling, I found it was a long way from the Shangri-La Nora had described in rapturous detail. Cold and muddy, it was far from any kind of romantic reverie. Toddlers and children ran riot, vats of lentils stew bubbled in giant cauldrons, the site hung with washing lines and Buddhist prayer flags. Everything was damp.
But there was singing and blazing bonfires. Nora stood giving a rousing rendition of ‘We Shall Overcome’, her long hair making her look as though she herself was aflame, her boyfriend Finty’s arm slung around her shoulder, ruining the song with his tuneless growl. I never forgot about how my mother looked standing there, in the light of the bonfire. I finally understood what kept her there. She felt alive.
I put my key in the door and pushed my way inside. ‘Mum!’
‘In here…’ Her voice from the front room, her swimsuit drying on the hall radiator. ‘Just to warn you,’ she said, ‘I’m in a comprising position.’
She was on the floor, in some kind of contortion, right leg bent in front of her, the other stretching out behind.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘The pigeon,’ she said. ‘Or it could be the crow. I can’t remember. For my back. Nellie was telling me about it earlier. Gave me a demonstration this morning. Said it has helped hers no end. Swimming is the only thing that loosens it out. But I can’t exactly spend my life in the sea.’
‘Very impressive. Your penguin. Or whatever it is.’
‘Crow,’ she said, rolling onto her back and hoisting herself up using the sofa as ballast. ‘Pigeon. Whatever.’
‘You’re still pretty limber, Mum,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I would be able to do that.’
‘Swimming and cycling,’ she said. ‘And don’t sit down.’
‘You’re sitting down now.’
‘Always on the move, that’s me.’ She stood up and I followed her into the kitchen. ‘Apart from the brief moments I sit down.’ She turned and gave me a look. ‘The sea was like a lake this morning, when I was down there. Nellie Noonan came down. You remember Nellie?’
I nodded.
‘We had a good chat… about a few things.’ Nora had a funny expression on her face, one I had seen before but couldn’t quite place.
‘Swimming is like meditating. Without the sitting down.’
‘All right, all right, I get it. You’re amazing and the rest of us who actually like sitting down and spend entire months on the sofa deserve all the aches and pains we get.’
‘It would be good for you, that’s all,’ she said, ‘wash away the cobwebs.’
‘That’s what Rosaleen used to say.’ The two of us instinctively glanced at the framed photograph of Rosaleen on the dresser. ‘Anyway, leave my cobwebs alone.’
‘Now, how is Rosie getting on? I hope she isn’t getting herself into too much of a twist about the exams. I hope you are not telling her they are the be all and end all. I mean, look at me. Not a single qualification to my name. Has it stopped me?’
‘I don’t think we should hold you up as any kind of trailblazer.’
‘Well, you tell her that as soon as those exams are over, I want to take her away. West Cork, I was thinking. My old stomping ground.’
‘Stomping?’ I laughed. ‘Still stomping are you?’
‘Ah, you’d be surprised.’ And there was that look again. The gleam in her eye.
‘How would you get down there?’
‘You could drive us?’ She smiled sweetly.
‘I don’t think so… I still have nightmares after the last time I drove you somewhere. You made us listen to Paul Simon all the way down and all the way back. Every time I hear Me And Julio I start to feel claustrophobic.’
She wasn’t listening but was rooting around in her cupboard. ‘Now, you’ll be wanting tea, I expect.’ She opened a tin. ‘I’ve run out of Barry’s but I do have fennel and liquorice. Highly recommended by the lady in the health food shop. Well, until they asked me not to go in anymore…’
‘What for?’
‘Said I was putting off customers. But it’s their fault for using Israeli chick peas. Anyway, let’s see… We have Rooibos somewhere…’
‘I’ll drink whatever.’ I had learned not to be too fussy in Nora’s house.
Her voice muffled from the dark and dusty recesses of the food cupboard. ‘Ah, here it is.’ She stood up, holding onto the work surface to help herself up and squinted at the jar, reading the label. ‘It’s still in date. Just,’ she said, filling the kettle. ‘I think. Not that I can see a thing, anyway.’
‘Put the light on then.’
‘No, it’s not as simple as that. Although that helps. It’s just I’m going a bit blind, that’s all,’ she said. ‘My eyes are getting bad. Can’t see as much as I used to. Have to get right in there to get anything. I’m already on the large print books in the library with the pensioners!’
‘Mum, you are a pensioner,’ I reminded her.
‘I asked if it was okay to keep cycling and Dr Jones said as long as I don’t enter the Tour de France I should be fine.’
‘But what is it?’
‘They’re thinking cataracts. Nothing to worry about. All very operable, they say. If it comes to that.’
‘Oh Mum, why didn’t you tell me?’ It was horrible seeing her get old. In school, when we had been taught about Grace O’Malley, the sixteenth-century pirate queen who sailed the Mayo coast, ruling the waves, I had thought of Nora. That was it, I remember thinking, she’s a pirate queen. And now even Nora was fading, her power slipping away. And I didn’t like it.
‘Anyway, enough about that, there is something I want to talk to you about.’ Her eyes had suddenly taken on a gleam. So much for being half-blind, she suddenly looked excited and wholly alive. Now I knew where I’d seen that look before, that sense of purpose. And I knew exactly what she was thinking of. The trees.
‘Mum,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Of course it’s my business. It’s everyone’s business. Trees belong to everyone. You know when I was a little girl, we used to play there. And you played there. Remember? And I still know where all the paths are and where the blackberries are and where that itching powder plant is.’
‘It’s all overgrown now… there’s nothing there. Just brambles and nettles. It’s of no use to anyone.’
‘Nature belongs to everyone.’
‘We just need a small injection of cash and we have exhausted every other avenue. This seems like an obvious solution. Anyway, who told you?’
‘Nellie.’
‘And how on earth does she know?’
‘She keeps an ear out. You know Nellie…’
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, okay?’
‘So it is true then? You are going to sell it?’
‘I told you, nothing’s decided. And when it is, you and Nellie will be the first to know. Brian Crowley from the board of governors is coming in to school this week. He says he’s found a buyer.’
‘Now, I’ve heard a few things about him…’ she started.
‘Mum, it’s just because he wears a shirt and tie.’ Nora was always too quick to judge. She only liked men who wore cardigans, preferably hand-knitted. By themselves. ‘Listen, whatever happens, just trust me that it’s for the right reasons. And whatever happens is going to be appropriate and sensitive. There’s not going to be a housing estate or an industrial park. What would you say if the proposal was for a community centre? You’d like that wouldn’t you?’
‘I’d prefer the trees,’ she said, looking utterly unconvinced.
*
That evening, I was foraging in the fridge for dinner. Thank God for eggs, I thought.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ I said, hearing Rosie come into the kitchen. ‘You’re in luck. Banquet time. Oh yes.’ I held up the eggs. ‘Omelettes!’
‘Omelettes!’ She looked aghast. ‘There’s nothing else, is there? You haven’t been shopping again. Other mothers are cooking and making everything nice for their daughters doing exams and you, you don’t bother…’
‘Well…’
‘Anyway, I don’t like omelettes.’ She sounded on the verge of tears.
‘Ro, don’t tell me you’re crying over an omelette?’ I almost laughed, thinking she might join in and all would be well. But instead, she burst into sobs. ‘Rosie,’ I said, rushing to her, ‘Rosie, what’s wrong, sweetheart?’ She pushed me away. ‘It’s an omelette. Only an omelette.’
She tried to speak. ‘All the other mums are cooking proper meals,’ she said. ‘They’re all cooking things like spaghetti bolognaise and shepherd’s pie.’
‘What?’ This was becoming a little too dramatic, I thought. Rosie wasn’t usually this emotional about food. She had always been relaxed about it, even when she became a vegetarian and, we all got over that shock, it was all pretty easy. We just upped the eggs and the tins of beans.
‘And Maeve’s mum is working through the Jamie Oliver cookbook for her,’ she went on, increasingly agitated. ‘They had koftas the other night.’
‘Koftas? I wished we lived with Maeve’s mum. Maybe she could move in with us.’ I tried to make her laugh, but she looked away, furious.
‘But we don’t, do we?’ she said, tearfully. ‘We don’t live with Maeve’s mum. We aren’t eating koftas. We’re having omelettes again because you can’t be bothered.’
‘Rosie, come on, sweetheart. This is ridiculous. Anyway, you’re a vegetarian. Koftas are made from lamb. Or chicken,’ I said, suddenly doubting myself. ‘Or whatever.’
‘That’s not the point!’ And she started to cry again.
‘Come here.’ For a moment, she stood there, not quite knowing what to do and then she walked towards me and let me put my arms around her and cried into my shoulder. I could feel the tears soaking through my shirt. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Sorry, Mum.’ She lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands.
‘It’s all right,’ I said gently. ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry about. You’re under pressure, that’s all, working for your exams.’ As soon as I said the word, her faced changed, as though a great shadow passed over her, making her sink further into herself. ‘Listen, I know they’re awful, but you’ll get through them, I know you will. Everything will be fine.’
‘Mum… I’m not feeling well.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know I’m not ill, it’s not that kind of not feeling well. It’s something else. Like my heart is racing or I feel all fluttery inside like there’s nothing left of me. Like I’m just empty. Like permanently hungry but nothing makes me feel better.’
‘And do you feel like this all the time?’ It was just exam stress, I reasoned. Normal exam stress. And it would be over soon. Not long to go. Rosie unpeeled herself from me and went to sit at the kitchen table.
‘No, forget I said anything. I’m fine. Just not getting enough sleep. That’s all.’ Her feet were up on the chair, her knees tucked up against her chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. ‘It’s just that… it’s just…’ She rested her head on her knees for a moment, as though exhausted.
‘What? Tell me.’ I went and sat on the chair next to her and took her hand.
‘It wasn’t really anything,’ she said, lifting her head. Let’s just forget it. I just need some sugar. That’s all. A Mars bar or something!’ She tried to smile. ‘And a good night’s sleep. That’s what you always say, isn’t it? I think I’ll get an early night tonight. And, Mum?’
‘Yes?’ I knew what that panic felt like, when you believed you teetered on the brink of annihilation. But you always got through it. And Rosie would too.
‘I would love an omelette, if that’s okay.’
‘After your Mars bar or before?’
‘At the same time. Melted on top?’