Bend for Home, The by Dermot Healy Page B

once a storeroom – with a galvanized roof. It was filled with antiques and books from my Great Aunt Jane’s time in France at the turn of the century, when she was au pair to two girls whose family suffered a grave scandal. The father murdered the mother. And later the sisters broke up over a man. Then a Hollywood film was made about the affair.
    Great Aunt Jane, who taught domestic economy in the Technical School, never married, and started the Breifne with a small loan from John Brady, draper, grandfather of Frank Brady. It was one of the few large businesses (maybe the only one) opened by a woman in the newly formed Free State. And it thrived. She in turn left it to her nieces – Maisie and Winnie – so it passed on through the female line, and perhaps in time would have continued on to my sister Una or Miriam, if circumstances had not changed. But anyway.
    It was a wonderful attic. First I found an elderly silver-bearded Santa standing in a scattering of yellow straw in a tall cardboard box. Later I’d learn that he went into the shop window at Xmas to nod at passers-by, and with a quick bow, dispense innumerable favours. In London, later still, I’d meet men from Cavan who’d turn sentimental at the days they spent in front of the Breifne asking Santa for things. He stopped there for a couple of weeks saying yes to everyone, then on the dot of twelve midnight on Christmas Eve Aunty Maisie would take him in and up he went to the attic to hibernate for another year.
    But now he was a complete mystery to me. It was like he was anadult’s toy. He stood resolute and stiff-bearded, staring straight ahead over the lid with silent eyes. I lifted him out and stood him on the floor. He was over two feet tall, wore a red velvet coat and little prim black boots. His eyebrows were dusty. I found a key stuck in his back. I studied the key very carefully and turned it once.
    Immediately, Santa nodded. I backed away. He nodded once, twice, three times, then, as if he were on the verge of a sneeze, his chin began to move very slowly, the revolutions diminished, and he stuttered to a stop. I started him again on the instant. He nodded away and I nodded back in return. We were at that a while until he came to a stop as before. So that was it. I put him back in his box of straw for again, and replaced him on the ledge where I’d found him, gazing at the hands of a clock that had suddenly stopped.
    Next I found a French medical book there that contained all manner of abnormalities. A huge foot like the trunk of a tree, an ear that opened out like a fruit, six-fingered hands, abnormal swellings on the calf, diagrams of the heart. Then the book fell open at a picture of a mother suckling a child. The fine lace shawl had fallen from the woman’s slender shoulder. She was fitting the nipple into the mouth of the child. The full dipping breast was exposed. It was shockingly real. The halo of the black nipple was peppered with small nodes. I could feel the soft dimensions of the flesh.
    Someone came into the old bakery below. My heart pounded. I hid the book. Went for a walk and came back again. And there it was breathing with life among the musty pages. I traced its contours. I studied the dark aureole. My mouth dried. My stomach raced. Trembling I hid it again.
    I went through tall green histories of Ireland with pencil drawings of the Tuatha De Dannan and Brian Boru. Then leafed through cookery books. I came across a French-English dictionary with the flyleaf signed in Great Aunt Jane’s hand – Paris 1912. Jane McGloughlin. There was a signed picture of the dancer Isadora Duncan. Then there was a dull photo of a huge mansion in which the murder must have occurred. News clippings from the New York Times: Scandal Strikes Prominent French Family. Seemingly the dead woman had been an actress from Hollywood. The man was arrested as he tried to step on a boat at Marseille.
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    I read on for hours till I heard my father calling my