Colm Tóibín

House For Sale - Colm Toibin

A short story published in the Dublin Review

She laid their good clothes out for them and made them polish their shoes and leave them on the landing. When she tried to make them go to bed early, they protested that there was something they wanted to watch on the television, and she allowed them to stay up late. Even then, they did not want to go to bed, and when she insisted, they went back and forth to the bathroom and they kept turning on and off the light in their room.
Finally, she went upstairs and found them fast asleep, the bedroom door wide open, their beds tossed. She tried to make them more comfortable, but when Conor began to wake she withdrew, quietly closing the door.
In the morning, they were up and dressed before she was. They brought her tea, which was too strong, and toast. When she got up, she managed to throw the tea down the sink in the bathroom without them noticing.
It was cold. They would drive to the station, she told them, and leave the car in the Railway Square. It would be handy when they came home that night, she said. They both nodded gravely. They already had their coats on.
The town was almost empty as she drove to the station. It was half-dark and some lights in houses were still on.
‘Which side of the train will we sit on?’ Conor asked when they got to the station. They were twenty minutes early. She had bought the tickets, but the boys refused to sit in the heated waiting room, they wanted to walk over the iron bridge and wave to her from the other side, they wanted to walk down to the signal box.
Again and again, they came back to ask if the train was coming until a man told them to watch the signal arm between the platform and the tunnel, and when it dropped, it would mean that the train was coming.
‘But we know it’s coming,’ Conor said impatiently.
‘It’ll drop when the train is in the tunnel,’ the man said.
‘I’d say if you were in the tunnel and the train came, I’d say you’d be mincemeat,’ Conor said.
‘Begoboman, you’d be found in little bits all right. And, you know something, all the cups and saucers rattle in the houses when the train goes under,’ the man said.
‘They don’t rattle in our house.’
‘That’s because the train doesn’t go under your house.’
‘How do you know?’ Conor said.
‘Oh I know your mammy well.’
Nora recognized the man, as she did so many others in the town; she thought that he worked in Donoghue’s garage, but she was not sure. Something in his manner irritated her. She hoped that he did not intend to travel to Dublin with them.
Just before the train came, and the boys had once more gone down to the signal box, the man turned to her.
‘I’d say they miss their father all the same,’ he said.
He searched her face for a response and narrowed his eyes with curiosity. She felt that she needed to say something quickly and sharply to prevent him speaking again and, more than anything, to prevent him sitting with them on the train.
‘That’s the last thing they need to hear at the moment, thank you,’ she said.
‘Oh now I didn’t mean to ...’
She moved away from him as the train came and the boys ran excitedly down the platform towards her. She could feel her face reddening, but they noticed nothing as they argued over which were the best seats on the train.
Once the train started, they wanted everything: to view the toilets, to stand in the precarious space between the carriages where the ground could be seen as the train sped along, to go to the restaurant and buy lemonade. By the time the train stopped in Ferns, they had done all of these things, and by the time it reached Camolin, they had fallen asleep.
Nora did not sleep; she glanced at the newspaper she had bought in the station, and put it down, and watched the two boys slumped back in their seats sleeping. She would love to have known just then what they were dreaming of. In these months, she realized, something had changed in the clear, easy connection between her and them, and perhaps, for them, between each other. They had learned to hide fear and not to show pain, and she felt that she would never be sure about them again.
Conor woke and looked at her and went back to sleep with his head resting on his folded arms on the table. She reached out and touched his hair, let her hands run through it, tossing it and straightening it again. When she turned her head, she saw that Donal was watching her, his calm gaze suggesting to her that he understood everything that was happening, that there was nothing he did not fathom.
‘Conor’s fast asleep,’ she said and smiled.
‘Where are we?’ he asked.
‘We’re nearly at Arklow.’
By Wicklow, Conor had woken and gone to the toilet again.
‘What would happen if you flushed the toilet in a station?’ he asked.
‘It would all go on to the tracks,’ she said.
‘And when the train is moving, where does it go?’
‘We’ll ask the ticket collector,’ she said.
‘I bet you wouldn’t ask him,’ Donal said.
‘What harm would it do to the tracks in a station?’ Conor asked.
‘It would be all smelly,’ Donal said.
The morning was calm, the clouds on the horizon were grey and the sea beyond Wicklow the colour of steel.
‘When will the tunnels start?’ Conor asked.
‘It’s a while now,’ she said.
‘After the next station?’
‘No, about three stations. It’s after Bray.’
‘This is too long,’ he said.
‘Read your comic,’ she suggested.
‘It’s too bumpy.’
At the first tunnel after Bray, the boys covered their ears against the rushing noise, vying with each other in mock fright. The next tunnel was much longer. Conor wanted Nora to cover her ears as well, and she did it to please him, because she knew how little sleep he had had, and how irritable he could be, and how easy it would be to upset him. Donal was already bored covering his ears, but he moved to the window when the train came out of the tunnel and there was a sheer drop into the rough waters below. Conor now had moved to the side of the table closest to the sea but tried to stay near her.
‘But it could easily fall over,’ he said.
‘No, no, the train has to stay on the tracks. It’s not like a car,’ she said.
He kept his nose up against the window, fascinated by the danger. Donal, also, did not move from the window even when the train came into Dun Laoghaire station.
‘Is that the end?’ Conor asked.
‘We’re nearly there,’ she said.
‘Where are we going to go first? Are we going to see Fiona first?’
‘We’re going to go to Henry Street.’
‘Yippee!’ Conor shouted. He was trying to stand on the seat, but she made him sit down.
‘And we’re going to have our dinner in Woolworth’s,’ she said.
‘In the self-service?’
‘Yes, so we don’t have to wait.’
‘Can I have a Coca-Cola with my dinner and no milk?’ Conor asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You can have whatever you like.’
They got off at Amiens Street and walked through the damp and dilapidated station. They moved slowly along Talbot Street, stopping to look into shop windows. She forced herself to relax, there was nothing to do, they could waste time wherever they wanted. She gave them ten shillings each to spend, but as soon as she did, she felt she had made a mistake, it was too much. They examined the money and looked at her suspiciously.
‘Do we have to buy something?’ Donal asked.
‘Maybe we’ll get some books,’ she said.
‘Can we get comics or an annual?’ Conor asked.
‘It’s too early for annuals,’ Donal said.
As they approached O’Connell Street, they wanted to see where Nelson’s Pillar had been.
‘I remember it,’ Conor said.
‘You couldn’t. You’re too young,’ Donal told him.
‘I do. It was tall and Nelson was on top of it and they blew him into smithereens.’
They crossed O’Connell Street, alert to the several lanes of traffic, cautiously waiting for the lights to change. Nora was aware as they walked into Henry Street that they must seem like country people. The boys managed to take everything in and, at the same time, keep everything at a distance. They watched this world of strangers and strange buildings out of the sides of their eyes.
Conor had become impatient to go into a shop, any shop, to buy something.
‘Would you like to look at shoes?’ she asked, figuring that when he said no, he would be pleased that he was the one who was deciding where they would go.
‘Shoes?’ He wrinkled his face in disgust. ‘Is that what we came to Dublin for?’
‘So where do you want to go?’ she asked.
‘I want to go up and down an escalator.’
‘Do you want to do that too?’ she asked Donal.
‘I suppose so,’ he said glumly.
In Arnott’s in Henry Street, Conor wanted Nora and Donal to watch him going up the escalator and then wait for him and watch him coming down. He insisted that they not come with him and not move. He made them promise. Donal was bored.
The first time, Conor kept looking back at them, and they waited while he disappeared at the top and then reappeared on the escalator coming down. He beamed at them. The second time, he grew brave and took some of the steps two by two, all the while holding on to the rail. The next time, he wanted Donal to come with him, but insisted that Nora still wait below. She explained to him that this would have to be the last, that maybe they could return here in the afternoon, but three times up and down the escalator was enough.
When they came down, she saw that Donal had become animated as well. They explained to her that they had found a lift further over and they wanted to go up and down on that.
‘One more and that’s it,’ she said.
She moved away and began to look at umbrellas, noticing fold-up ones, small enough to put into your handbag, which she had never seen before. She thought that she would buy one in case it rained and she moved over to the cash register with it. As she waited to pay, she watched out for the boys, but they did not appear. She concentrated for a moment on dealing with the cashier. When she had paid, she walked back to their meeting point, and then to the place near a side door to which the lift descended.
They were not there. She waited between the two points, looking out all the time for them. She thought of going on the lift herself, but realized that this would only add to the confusion. If she stayed here, she thought, she would be bound to see them.
When they found her, they pretended it was nothing, that the lift had merely stopped at every floor. When she told them that she had thought they were lost, they gave each other a furtive look as though something had passed between them, or had happened to them in the lift, which they did not want her to know about.

By three o’clock, they had seen all the Dublin they wanted to see. They had been to Moore Street and bought a bag of peaches, they had had their dinner in the self-service in Woolworth’s and had been to Eason’s where they bought comics and books. The boys were tired now as they sat in Bewley’s waiting for Fiona. Nora believed that the only thing keeping Conor awake was the idea that you could take as many buns as you liked from the two-tiered plate.
‘You have to pay for them,’ Nora said.
‘How do they know how many you’ve taken?’
‘Most people are honest,’ she said.
When Fiona arrived the boys became excited and bright again, wanting to talk at the same time. To Nora, Fiona seemed thin and pale as she sat opposite her.
‘Do you want to hear a Dublin accent?’ Donal asked her.
‘We were in Moore Street,’ Nora said.
‘Get the ripe peaches,’ Donal said in a sing-song voice.
‘Look at my “buke”,’ Conor added.
‘Very funny,’ Fiona said. ‘I’m sorry I’m late, the buses all come in twos and threes and then you have to wait for ages for the next one.’
‘I want to go upstairs on a double-decker bus,’ Conor said.
‘Conor, let Fiona talk for one second and then you can talk,’ Nora said.
‘Are you having a nice day out?’ Fiona asked.
Fiona’s smile was shy, but her tone, Nora noticed, was adult and confident. She had changed in these few months.
‘Yes, but we’re all tired now and it’s nice to be sitting here.’
Neither of them seemed to know what to say next. Nora realized that her answer to the last question had been too formal, as though she were talking to a stranger. Fiona ordered coffee.
‘Did you buy anything?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t really have time,’ Nora said.
Nora noticed how briskly and efficiently Fiona had ordered the coffee, and now she noticed her looking around the cafe, her eyes sharp, almost critical, and then changing her expression as she began to talk to her brothers, becoming sort of girlish again.
‘We’re selling the house,’ Conor said to Fiona suddenly in a loud voice.
‘And are you going to live on the side of the road?’ she asked, laughing.
‘No, we’re going to rent a caravan in Curracloe,’ he said.
Fiona looked at Nora.
‘I’m thinking of selling the house in Cush,’ Nora said.
‘Nobody mentioned that to me,’ Fiona replied.
‘I didn’t decide until recently.’
‘Decide? I thought you just said you were thinking of it.’
Fiona had never spoken to her like this before. Nora sipped her coffee and did not answer. The boys did not move or speak.
‘Does Aine know?’ Fiona asked.
‘I told you that I’ve just decided.’
‘So you have decided?’
Once more, Nora did not reply.
‘I was hoping to go there in the summer,’ Fiona said.
‘I thought you were going to England in the summer.’
‘I am, at the end of June, but I finish at the end of May. I was going to spend the month of June in Cush.’
‘You had it all planned,’ Nora said drily.
‘So did you, obviously.’
Nora brought Conor with her to find the toilets. And when she came back she ordered another coffee. Fiona’s attitude as she sat down was almost hostile.
‘Who are you selling the house to?’
‘I’ve had an offer, but it’s private at the moment.’
‘I know,’ Conor interrupted.
‘You don’t know, Conor, and that’s enough,’ Nora said.
Donal nudged him and put his fingers to his lips.
‘In two years’ time, I’ll be earning a salary,’ Fiona said.
Nora felt that Fiona’s efforts to talk and argue like an adult sounded like a sort of mimickry.
‘I need the money now,’ she said.
‘You told me only a few weeks ago that you had enough,’ Fiona said.
Nora realized that she should not have said that she needed the money.
‘I have enough,’ she said, ‘but there are things I want to get, and I want to have some for a rainy day as well.’
‘So you don’t need the money urgently?’
‘I don’t think this is the time or the place to discuss my personal finances.’
Fiona sighed in exasperation.
‘I need to know - do you or don’t you need the money?’
‘I’m selling the house and I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘I don’t think you can make decisions like that without consulting anyone.’
‘I’m afraid it’s my house, my decision.’
‘And we’ve gone there every summer since we were small and it has nothing to do with us?’
‘Fiona, you’re the one who used to get fed up in Cush and you used to complain - God, I remember how hard you were to put up with - about how there was no one to play with and nothing to do.’
‘That was years ago,’ Fiona said.
They said nothing for a few moments. Nora wanted to go, take the boys back to Henry Street.
‘When are you going to sell it?’ Fiona resumed.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Well, I think it’s a mistake and I think you’ll regret it in a few years’ time.’
Nora stopped herself saying that she couldn’t bear to go there any more and could Fiona not understand that. She would not be able to say that in front of the boys, it would sound too emotional, it would give too much away. She would keep her reasons to herself, and if Fiona believed she was behaving capriciously, then it was a pity, but there was nothing she could do about it. They were, all of them, too young to understand.
She stood up to go.
‘How do you pay here? I can’t remember.’
‘You have to get the waitress to fill out a docket,’ Fiona said.
‘And you have to tell her how many buns you’ve had,’ Donal said.
When they walked out to Westmoreland Street, Nora wanted Fiona to leave them. She had spoken as though she were her mother’s equal, but she was not her equal, Nora thought, she was starting her life, she could live where she liked, do what she liked. She did not have to get the train back to the town where everybody knew about her and all the years ahead were mapped out for her.
‘We’re going to walk around to Henry Street by the Ha’penny Bridge,’ Nora said.
‘But that’s really going out of your way.’
‘Are you getting a bus?’ Nora asked her.
‘I was going to go to Grafton Street.’
‘We’d better be off,’ Nora said.
As soon as she walked away, she regretted not having said something kind to Fiona before they left her; like asking her when she was coming down next, or if she needed anything, or offering to go to a shop with her. But she knew that Fiona would have made herself disagreeable.
It would have been better, she thought, if she had just spent the day with the boys. Fiona, she imagined, must have her own problems being away from home. It might have been better to have seen her separately.

In Talbot Street, on the way to the station, the boys spent the rest of their money on Lego, arguing over which colour bricks to choose, heatedly discussing whether to buy windows or doors or roof tiles. Both of them wanted her to arbitrate, and although she was tired, she listened, paid attention and offered suggestions. But each of them had consulted her only to have his own views confirmed, or the other’s preferences dismissed. She could easily have walked away and they would not have noticed, they were so totally preoccupied. She smiled at the cashier as they changed their minds at the cash register and went back to exchange one box of Lego for another.
It was dark now and becoming cold. They sat on broken plastic seats in the small café of the station. When Nora reached into her shopping bag to find her purse, she discovered that the peaches that had seemed so fresh and firm just a few hours before had become all soggy. The paper bag had split open; she lifted the peaches out one by one, knowing that there was no point in trying to take them home, they would only rot further in the train.
The boys had not realized that it would be dark for the trip home, and as the train began the journey south, the window was covered in condensation. They opened the Lego and played with it, but they could not agree, so Donal read and Conor moved over to her side of the table and fell asleep against her. She noticed as she looked across at Donal that he would need to start shaving soon.
‘We’re going to school tomorrow, aren’t we?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes, I think you should,’ she said.
He nodded and looked back at his book.
‘When is Fiona coming down next?’ he asked.
Her words with Fiona in the café, she knew, would work quietly on his mind. She wondered if there was one thing she could say which would stop him worrying and brooding over this.
‘You know, Fiona will love the caravan,’ she said.
‘She didn’t sound like that,’ he said.
‘Donal, we have to start a new life,’ she said.
He considered her statement for a moment, as though he had a complex piece of homework in front of him. And then he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that it was all too much for him, and went back to reading his book.
Nora gently moved Conor aside while she took off her coat in the overheated train. He woke for a second, but did not even open his eyes. She made a note that she must ask about caravans in Curracloe, she must write to Aine and maybe to Fiona as well and she must write a letter to Frank Larkin.
In her mind, she stood in the house in Cush again, and she tried to picture the children on a summer’s day, taking their togs and towels from the line and going down to the strand, or herself and Maurice walking home along the lanes at dusk trying to keep the swarms of midges at bay, and coming into the house to the sound of children playing cards. It was all over and would not come back. The house lay empty. She pictured the small damp rooms in the darkness, how miserable they would be. Inhospitable. She imagined the sound of rain on the galvanized roof, the doors and windows rattling in the wind, the bare bed-frames, the insects lurking in the dark crevices, and the relentless sea.
As the train made its way towards Enniscorthy, she felt that the house at Cush was more desolate now than it ever had been, or ever would be.
When Conor woke, he looked around him and smiled at her sleepily. He stretched and lay against her.
‘Are we nearly home?’ he asked.
‘Not long now,’ she said.
‘When we stay in Curracloe,’ he asked, ‘are we going to put the caravan near the Winning Post or are we going to the caravan park up the hill?’
‘Oh near the Winning Post,’ she said.
She knew she had answered too quickly. Donal and Conor earnestly considered what she had said. Then Conor glanced at Donal, watching for his reaction.
‘Is that definite?’ Donal asked. As the train slowed down, she managed to laugh for the first time all day.
‘Definite? Of course it’s definite.’
They studied her uneasily for a moment as the train shuddered to a stop. Then slowly and methodically, they gathered up their belongings. As they made their way to the door of the train, they met the ticket collector.
‘Ask him now about the toilets,’ Donal whispered as he nudged her.
‘I’ll tell him that you’re the one who wants to know,’ she said.
‘Would this little sausage like to come to Rosslare with us?’ the inspector shouted, making as if to pick Conor up.
‘Oh no, he has to go to school tomorrow,’ Nora said.
‘I’m not a sausage,’ Conor said.
The inspector laughed.
As she drove out of the Railway Square she remembered something, and she found herself telling the boys what had come into her mind.
‘It was when we were married first, and it must have been during the summer holidays, and didn’t we drive to the station one morning to find that we had missed the train by one second. It was gone and, God, we were very disappointed. But the man in charge that morning was not the usual station master, he was a young fellow, and he was taught in school by your Daddy, and he told us to get back into the car and drive to Ferns and he would have the train held for us there. It was only six or seven miles away, and that’s how we caught the train that morning and that’s how we got to Dublin.’
‘Did you drive or did Daddy drive?’ Donal asked.
‘Daddy drove.’
‘He must have driven queer fast,’ Conor said.
‘Was he a better driver than you?’ Donal asked.
She smiled as she answered him.
‘He was a good driver. Do you not remember?’
‘I remember he drove over a rat,’ Donal said.
The streets of the town were empty and there were no other cars. The two boys seemed alert now, ready to talk more, ask more questions. When they got home, she thought, she would light the fire, and they would tire quickly after the long day.
‘But why didn’t you just drive to Dublin and forget the train?’ Donal asked.
‘I don’t know, Donal,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to think about that.’
‘Can we go to Dublin some day in the car?’ Conor asked, ‘and then we can stop where we like.’
‘Of course we can,’ she said as she pulled up in front of the house.
‘I’d like to do that,’ he said.
Soon she had the fire lit, and the boys were in their pyjamas and ready for bed. They had become quiet and she knew that they would fall asleep as soon as the light in their room was turned off. She wondered if anyone had called that evening, and she pictured someone approaching the house in darkness, and knocking the front door and getting no answer, and standing there and waiting a while before walking away. She was glad she had missed them, whoever they were.
She made herself a cup of tea and came and sat in the armchair beside the fire. She turned on the radio but they were reading sports results and she turned it off. On going upstairs, she found that the boys were sound asleep and she stood watching them before closing the door and leaving them to the night. Downstairs, she wondered if there was something she could watch on the television. She went over and turned it on and waited for the picture to appear. How would she fill these hours? Just then she would have given anything to be back on the train, back walking the streets of Dublin. When the television came on it was an American comedy. She watched it for a few moments but the canned laughter irritated her and she turned it off. The house was silent now except for the cracking of wood in the fireplace.
She had bought a book in Dublin, a paperback, something that had looked interesting but she had known nothing about. She could not remember what had made her buy it. She went out to the kitchen and searched for it in her bag. When she brought it into the room, she turned on the reading lamp and turned off the main light and relished the shadows and soft light which made the room seem more cosy and comfortable. As soon as she opened the book she left it down again. She closed her eyes. In future, she thought, she would learn not to answer the door. In future, once the boys went to bed, she would have the house to herself. She would learn how to spend these hours. It would be better like that, no more visitors, and slowly, she thought, in the peace of these winter evenings, she would work out how she was going to live.

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