Bibliofemme: Extras

If at times it left her feeling hollowed out, Pauline prided herself on her ability to entertain. Being funny was how she dealt with things, from petty nuisances all the way, even, to the death of her mother. Though she'd loved her mother as much as the next person, when the occasion called for it, she could, for instance, tell a comic version of the night she'd died, her following undertaker orders to keep the body cool, opening windows, shutting off radiators, only to realise, hours later, she'd left the electric blanket on-high.

But this morning, bumping into Detta in the supermarket, she was dealing with a whole other item on the Top Ten List of Major Life Events. 'If I didn't get rid of him soon I was going to start flinging tins of tomatoes at him!' As she said this she performed a clownish little tin-hurling mime and had the not unfamiliar sensation of looking down upon herself from up above the mirrored aisles and asking in an oddly detached version of her voice: Do I want to make fun of my husband to this woman?

'Oh, Pauline, stop! You're too much!' Detta hooted and, buoyed by this approval rating, she felt herself descending from her bird's eye viewpoint, returning to do what she did, after all, do best.

'Well, I ask you? A grown man, a man with a proper job to go to this past thirty odd years, traipsing round the supermarket on a Tuesday with a load of women?'

'So you sent him to the coffee shop?'

'Well, they'd hardly take him in the creche, now would they, Detta? Bless him, see, he thinks he's being helpful, tying demented little granny knots in all my bags, triple checking the price per milligram. As if I haven't been shopping along just fine without him since the day we were married!'

'So he'd no warning then?'

'Not a clue. Into work the Friday morning with five years till retirement, out that evening with the contents of his desk in a cardboard box. Too old and too expensive, they said. We're okay on the pension front, thank god; he's been topping up for years, but still…'

'Still,' Detta nodded. 'They say it can be hard on a man.'

'Hard on a man? Let me tell you, my husband seems to be adapting to the life of an unemployed layabout with remarkable ease. He's convinced he's busy. Keeps saying he doesn't know where he ever found time to go to work!'

'Go on!'

'No, I'm serious Detta, deadly serious. But what is he doing. What is he actually doing? Apart from putting that blessed dog of his on a heart attack diet, he's hanging around under my feet, making umpteen cups of tea, doing laps of honour round the house, standing in doorways nearly surprised to find a room there. Pleasantly surprised, mind you, but it's as if he doesn't recognise his own home…'

Though she could think of a few choice remarks on the matter, she was loyal enough to her husband to keep to herself the added annoyance of suspecting they might at least had had a few months forewarning. She'd long considered Hugh to have an overly trusting nature and, after the buy-out, he'd continued to insist that as long as he did his job and did it properly all would be fine. How it maddened her to think of the hints that must have been dropped in his direction, only to lie there and die there for the want of a hearing. It probably made no difference in the end but whatever rumours were doing the rounds-and it beggared belief there hadn't been some-her Hugh had been, as they say, out of the loop.

Still, it must also be said that people were full of understanding when she told them about Hugh's early and unexpected retirement. 'Fair play to you, Pauline,' Detta had chuckled off to the meat counter. 'I might have known you'd take it all with a dose of humour.' At the shops, yoga, choir, Friends of the Hospice, they all commended her on how well she was handling it, were quick, too, to assure her it was perfectly normal to feel as she did. If they didn't have a husband-at-home themselves they could tell you a horror story about someone who did. The lucky ones, it seemed, had spouses who were keen gardeners or golfing fanatics. Hugh, unfortunately, had never been a sportsman and, left to his own devises, would have front and back under tarmac.

'I wouldn't mind but I'm up to my eyeballs.' Pauline griped to her daughter as she loaded the dishwasher, phone wedged under her chin. 'I'm running now, to extra choir practice. If you don't mind, he wants us two nights a week between now and Easter. And we've that salsa night for the Hospice on the twenty-fifth…'

Siobhan sighed. 'Where's Daddy? Can't you have him do the dishes if you're in such a rush?' Pauline knew this was more comment than question and comment more about her than her husband.

'Ach, I sent him round the block with Fudge. You know what he's like... Did I tell you what he did with the brand new kettle yesterday? Wait till I give you a laugh...'

Though the church was chilly, Pauline held back chatting after choir. The usual crowd, having a giggle about their new young conductor. Fresh from the academy, didn't smile much, nervous, they all agreed. He'd worked them hard tonight, kept them well over. People were in the mood to let their hair down. Pauline knew any minute someone would suggest that they go round the corner. The trouble was, while she felt herself in no rush to get home, the thoughts of sitting down with the women tonight seemed oppressive. When she spotted their organist spilling her music all over the floor, she grabbed her chances.

'No Lily, you stay right where you are,' she made a beeline for the organ. 'I'll pass things up to you. We'll get you sorted in a jiffy.'

Pauline had often felt drawn to Lily. She liked that way she had of cocking her head when you spoke. It made her think of a little garden bird. Lily wore a hearing aid so it could be dismissed as a case of best ear forward but there was something about her eyes, how they seemed to blink in everything you said. Between them, they came up with a system, Pauline on the floor, scooping up sheets, calling out names and numbers, handing them to Lily, who sifted them into piles on top of the organ. When Eithne 'yoo hooed' in her direction, making fluttery little drinking motions and pointing towards the pub, Pauline waved her on. The door banged on the last of the stragglers. The main lights went off. An almost audible silence descended on the church. Lily didn't seem to notice, seemed as happy as ever there sorting through her Kyries and Glorias. But she was, after all, pretty deaf these days. Plus she had keys; probably came down to practice all the time. Pauline wasn't used to being there at night, not even a couple of coughers shuffling in the pews. She reckoned their sorting strategy was sufficiently established to allow for a bit of chat.

'So, Lily, how are you keeping?'

'Oh, I can't complain. No wonder Easter is when it is. It's always such a joy to see the days stretch out again.'

'You're like me, Lily. You prefer to be up and about. Not a bit like my Hugh I might add. Hugh would sleep for Ireland now he's been given the boot.'

'I believe I heard about that. Tell me, how's it going?'

'Oh, you've no idea Lily, no idea! He straggles along behind me like me-and-my-shadow. If he'd a note in his head he'd have joined the tenor section. And I'm so busy. Choir, of course, my hospice work, the grandkids two afternoons a week, and that's not even to mention the running of the house. When I do manage to peel him off me, if you can believe it, an intelligent man like Hugh, a man who liked to read a book, he ends up watching those dreadful American chat shows. I came in this afternoon...'

'Pauline, don't be too tough on him,' Lily interrupted. 'It's a difficult thing for a man to find himself suddenly without a job.' Pauline stopped shuffling papers.

'Oh I know all that, Lily. But what about the wife? What about me? Without expecting to, she heard a shake in her voice. It might help if she could get up off the floor, insert herself into a pew, but Lily had her pinned down. As if to prevent any straying from the subject, she'd leaned forward, planted a hand on Pauline's forearm.

'Of course it's difficult for you dear, but take it from someone married fifty years and widowed now five: Put Hubby First,'-Lily squeezed her arm three times for emphasis-'at least some of the time. All the activities, even the grandchildren, much as you don't want to believe it, they'd get by without you if they had to. But Hugh, he's yours and only yours, as you are only his. In a marriage there's just the two of you. Given time-and patience, of course-you'll find you both adjust.'

Pauline opened her mouth to say something but she felt if she tried to speak she might end up in a heap on Lily's lap, so she halted herself, let the old woman continue. 'I was like you once, always running here and there. I'm afraid when Frank first retired I must have made him feel like little more than a nuisance.'

'Ah, Lily, I'm sure you didn't.'

'Oh but I did. All too often he was just one more person at the end of a very long line. Thankfully, I realised what I was doing in time and I tell you I'm forever grateful.'

Pauline cut the engine, started reaching for her stuff, slumped back into the seat. She cracked her window, sat, half-turned, head tilted, sucking in sips of air. She reminded herself of a goldfish the children once brought home from a school fair that had an unfortunate habit of leaping out of its bowl. She'd hear one of them scream, come running, find it twisting about on the kitchen counter, gulping for wet air. She must have rescued it a dozen times before she came down one morning to find it dead. At the time she'd asked herself why she hadn't rigged some sort of grating over the bowl, accusing herself of not exactly wanting the poor creature. But she knew too there was something about that dumb fish she'd admired; how it refused to stay put. It had died at least in part because she couldn't bear to see it cooped up any more than it already was.

But she should stop her dilly-dallying. Hugh was in the front room watching TV. She could tell by the flicker on the curtains. If he didn't hear her key in the door soon he'd be out. After she'd dropped Lily off, she'd actually cried. How nice it would be if, powered by Lily's message, she could run home and embrace her husband. They may not be anyone's idea of soul mates but she and Hugh had spent a lifetime together. Settling with him into some maw-and-paw groove was not without appeal. She flashed on that older Canadian pair she'd seen in the Botanic Gardens awhile back. One of those look-alike couples; same blue eyes, same grey hair, his-and-hers khakis, identical little backpacks. When she'd first noticed them, she'd giggled to herself, thinking, Hansel and Gretel! Mental camcorder on, she'd watched them make their way together through the Curvilinear Range, imagining how amusingly she'd describe them later. She'd honestly thought she was enjoying herself ('They even had the same haircut!') until she was ambushed by a sudden stab of envy. How very mutual they seemed, how easily they fitted together with their shared interest in botany, their matching outfits. How alone they left her feeling.

When Lizzy, their youngest, left home, she and Hugh had found themselves just the two of them on holidays together. Everyone said what a time they'd have. But almost as soon as they'd arrived at the hotel she'd found herself itching to get home, driven into a static heat or irritation by his habit of being there, two steps behind her, the whole time. Holidays with Hugh were like a bad run at the three-legged race. After a couple of tries, she'd orchestrated things so that they went with other couples, usually Nora and Jim, sometimes Colette and Martin. She and Nora and Colette would sometimes joke about when their husbands had all had their coronaries, what merry widows they would make, heading off together on cruises and other exotic trips, unburdened by their men folk. She knew this was supposed to be an exercise in anxiety reduction, laughing in the face of grim likelihood. All the same, she couldn't help wondering if the others ever felt that giddy twitch of excitement? Did either of them ever have to remind themselves not to get too visibly wistful at the thoughts of such freedom? She'd often thought that marriage for her generation was a conspiracy of silence. It was so different for her daughters and their friends; with separation and divorce, custody sharing and god knows what, they took it all in their stride. But people could say what they liked, at her age and stage it was still not acceptable. If your husband wasn't knocking seven bells out of you or running round with some floozy (and sometimes even if he was), you couldn't say a thing. You were allowed let off controlled amounts of steam telling humorous little tales about his foibles but according to the rules you could say nothing of substance. There was a line you could not cross. Only the disgruntled and the devious wanted to hear and to reveal anything to the likes of them left you wide-open to blame, shame, pity and scorn.

The door opened. The front light snapped on, staining the night a harsh yellow. Fudge trotted out first, then Hugh. They halted expectantly on the porch, Hugh peering towards her car, a hand over his brow to shield his eyes. As he stood there so tall and straight and seeming to salute, Pauline thought she glimpsed the young man she'd met on O'Connell Bridge, the lank in the FCA uniform who'd made her laugh with his mock parade-ground strut. She crossed her fingers. Please, Hugh, please do something different… Something…anything at all!

Troops on the move again, she reached for her music case, hugged it close while he stooped to open her door. 'And how were the choirs of angels this evening?'

'Oh, in fine voice, so we were,' she stepped onto the drive, Fudge running rings around her. For a second her back was to Hugh, but she knew-just knew-he was pretending to check his watch.

'Would that be in the church or round at the pub after?' Watching her husband's ears move upwards as he grinned at this well-worn joke, Pauline felt the last bit of puff leave her. Given time, Lily had said. She was dead right there; whatever about anything else, time they now had-in buckets and spades. It was the rest of the recipe that wouldn't come easy.

'Is everything okay?' Hugh wondered. 'I thought I heard you pull up awhile ago?' Pauline rested a hand in the crook of Hugh's arm, steering towards the house. When she spoke, she made sure to keep any edges from her voice.

'Ach, I managed to tip my music all over the car, that's all. I was just putting myself put back in my case.'

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