The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

Author:Edna O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780316378239
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2015-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

A real Irish lady,

I’m longing to call you my own.

I’ll not be contented

’Til she has consented

To be Mrs Barney Malone.

It is a small ward with the vases of flowers squeezed onto the ledge that fronts the television.

The nurse is reeling off the next stage of her recovery, the rehabilitation process, learn to cope again and regain control of herself and her body. Staff are there for her, to give care and counselling. Words. Words. There is a place inside her that no care and no counsellor can reach. But she still smiles the grateful smile of the obligated.

‘Who’s coming?’ she asks, nervous.

‘The guards, the doctor, the pathologist, the house surgeon who examined you on admission, the gang.’

A baby is not mentioned. It never would be, not by them and not by her either, a sinful clot that had been disposed of. On the windowsill there are some ‘Get Well’ cards. The Book Club have sent cut-outs of hearts in gold and silver cardboard and Peggy has knitted her a woollen doll. The head was a tangle of mad wool sprouts and the body ended just below the navel, a stump really that she held for courage.

Dante and the boys had sent a message – Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

‘What will they want?’ she asked the nurse.

‘The oral evidence … what happened to you out on the mountain.’

‘I can’t tell them that.’

‘You must tell them … you must … for the law to do its duty.’

‘I don’t have the … vocabulary.’

‘Then you’ll have to find the vocabulary.’

‘They butchered me …’ she said and gave a little insane laugh.

‘Fidelma,’ and now the voice is stern, ‘are you or aren’t you going to co-operate?’

‘Will my husband be with them?’

‘Poor man … What he’s been through … Walking around in a daze … His pyjamas on under his trousers, not knowing whether it’s day or night …’

‘Do you hate me nurse?’

‘I pray for you,’ the nurse replied.

They were coming in, a phalanx of men in suits or white coats, the inquisitors, Jack among them. He had a teeny plaster on his chin, where he had cut himself shaving. They surrounded the bed, saying how good it was to see her sitting up and the house doctor read her thermometer off the hanging chart.

‘Might I have a few moments alone with my husband?’ she asked tentatively and they filed out like recruits.

Once alone, he half fell in over her, his face inches above hers, the hammer of his heart thudding on hers as a slew of obscenities came from him. Words so ugly that she could not believe it was him speaking and she cowered under the covers. It would have been better if he had struck her, it would have been better still if she had died, because he now would be weeping and gnashing on a grave, mourning her.

‘I won’t come home,’ she said.

‘Oh yes, you will come home,’ he said, the mad blue glitter in his eyes, nailing her.

‘I’ll go

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