Read Online Country Girl: A Memoir by Edna O’Brien - Free Book Online
Authors: Edna O’Brien
Tags: Biography, Non-Fiction, Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography / Literary
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it to me during my vacation and asked me to print out the names of the Russian characters with their patronymics, so that she would be more familiar with them on her second reading, which would be in the winter nights to come. I came to know a Prince Andrei who wished to be unmarried; Marya Dmitrievna, who puffed heavily when dancing; a beautiful Natasha; Pierre, who picked up the wrong hat in the salon of Anna Pavlovna; and an old contrary prince at Bald Hills who tormented his poor daughter, Mary, and yet on his deathbed told her to put on her white dress, which he liked seeing her in. I had copied these snippets into a notebook, which also contained the yield got from the miller for their corn down the years and the varying price of animal foodstuffs.
Sitting at that table, I wanted, as I am sure my aunt wanted, a truce, but neither of us was willing to take the first step. Then it happened. A shadow passed by the low window, and before I could think, was it or was it not him, Carnero was in the kitchen, in his good navy suit, saying he was gasping with a thirst. My aunt gave him a nip of whiskey in a small beaker that had come with a tonic bottle. He was holding a cushion to put on the bar of the bicycle on which he would bring me home, and already the gloom and persecutions of the holiday were fading. My aunt gave me a very clean new shilling and made me swear that I would never tell the nonsense about Peg, far away in Australia.
All the way Carnero and I chatted, he giving me the various news since I had left and saying there had been no terrible ructions. Sometimes we had to dismount on the steep hills, as he was a quite hefty man and also had the extra weight of me to contend with. We were sitting on a little low stone bridge, the river just beneath, chugging along at a merry musical pace. It was called Bo River, the very place beyond which my deaduncle had retreated when he was on the run. A herd of cows were lying down in the field, close to one another, wheezing the soft wheezes that they made at night. In the hazed blue of oncoming night, mountain and sky had melted into one another and looked substanceless. Feeling happy and content, Carnero lit a cigarette, and in that wild and spontaneous way of his started to sing:
As I went out to the fair of Athy
I saw an aul petticoat hangin’ to dry
I took off my drawers and hung them thereby
To keep that aul petticoat war-um.
Books
The first book that I recall holding in my hand was a cloth book with pictures and a rhyme:
Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon,
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
The letters, tall and painted, were like the painted pillars of a house that would never tumble.
Sitting on my mother’s lap, smelling her smell, feeling the itch from the wool of her cardigan, the particular heave of her chest, I studied every feature of her face, which was so beautiful to me, except for the forehead, a map of wrinkles, and on that map I wrote my first words, in praise of her.
Our house was full of prayer books and religious treasuries with soft, dimpled leather covers and gold edging to the pages that glittered when the sun broke through the tiny window in the pantry where they were stacked. There were ribbons of various colors so that one could open a page at random and read the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgins, prayers to Saint Peter of Antioch, Saint Bernardine of Siena, Saint Aelrod, Saint Cloud, Saint Colomba, and Saints Colman of Cloyne, of Dromore, of Kilmacduagh and, most wrenchingly of all, the prayers specially addressed to the stigmata of Saint Francis, that he may crucify the flesh from its vices.
These same prayer books are now on my bookshelves in London, and sometimes I take one down and realize how thoroughly they informed my thinking and even my dreams, as my mother and I, huddled close together in bed, recited the words over and over again:
May
Sitting at that table, I wanted, as I am sure my aunt wanted, a truce, but neither of us was willing to take the first step. Then it happened. A shadow passed by the low window, and before I could think, was it or was it not him, Carnero was in the kitchen, in his good navy suit, saying he was gasping with a thirst. My aunt gave him a nip of whiskey in a small beaker that had come with a tonic bottle. He was holding a cushion to put on the bar of the bicycle on which he would bring me home, and already the gloom and persecutions of the holiday were fading. My aunt gave me a very clean new shilling and made me swear that I would never tell the nonsense about Peg, far away in Australia.
All the way Carnero and I chatted, he giving me the various news since I had left and saying there had been no terrible ructions. Sometimes we had to dismount on the steep hills, as he was a quite hefty man and also had the extra weight of me to contend with. We were sitting on a little low stone bridge, the river just beneath, chugging along at a merry musical pace. It was called Bo River, the very place beyond which my deaduncle had retreated when he was on the run. A herd of cows were lying down in the field, close to one another, wheezing the soft wheezes that they made at night. In the hazed blue of oncoming night, mountain and sky had melted into one another and looked substanceless. Feeling happy and content, Carnero lit a cigarette, and in that wild and spontaneous way of his started to sing:
As I went out to the fair of Athy
I saw an aul petticoat hangin’ to dry
I took off my drawers and hung them thereby
To keep that aul petticoat war-um.
Books
The first book that I recall holding in my hand was a cloth book with pictures and a rhyme:
Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon,
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
The letters, tall and painted, were like the painted pillars of a house that would never tumble.
Sitting on my mother’s lap, smelling her smell, feeling the itch from the wool of her cardigan, the particular heave of her chest, I studied every feature of her face, which was so beautiful to me, except for the forehead, a map of wrinkles, and on that map I wrote my first words, in praise of her.
Our house was full of prayer books and religious treasuries with soft, dimpled leather covers and gold edging to the pages that glittered when the sun broke through the tiny window in the pantry where they were stacked. There were ribbons of various colors so that one could open a page at random and read the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgins, prayers to Saint Peter of Antioch, Saint Bernardine of Siena, Saint Aelrod, Saint Cloud, Saint Colomba, and Saints Colman of Cloyne, of Dromore, of Kilmacduagh and, most wrenchingly of all, the prayers specially addressed to the stigmata of Saint Francis, that he may crucify the flesh from its vices.
These same prayer books are now on my bookshelves in London, and sometimes I take one down and realize how thoroughly they informed my thinking and even my dreams, as my mother and I, huddled close together in bed, recited the words over and over again:
May
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