Has Anyone Here Seen Larry?. Deirdre Purcell

       For Maureen

      1: What’s in a Name?

      It’s not my real name, you know. Larry Murphy sounds to me like a builder with his trousers at half-mast. No, my real name is Larissa, a much classier name, I think you would agree. Mother gave me the name because my father was a Russian sailor.

      This, of course, was a scandal, especially in those times. Poor Mother, who was only 20 years old, was quickly married off to my stepfather, who was much older than she. He ran a small dairy in Cork Street, near where she and her own family lived. He and Mother never had children of their own. Since Mother was an only child, I had no cousins either. So I was sort of an orphan in my own home as I was growing up.

      A charity case, too, as the dairy man reminded me almost every day of my life. Although I suppose I shouldn’t judge him too harshly. Those times were different.

      In those days of big families, to be an only child was to be a freak. In my case even more so because I was born on the wrong side of the blankets. (Since we all lived in each other’s pockets there were no secrets in Long Lane.)

      Anyway, to get back to how I got my name. Everyone in the Liberties in those days had a nickname, so I suppose I couldn’t escape. And so ‘Larry’ I became forever. Sometimes, I think that naming me Larissa in a world of Nellies and Joans was the last brave thing Mother could do before she settled down to a hard life of work.

      Secretly, I love the idea that I am half-Russian and with such a romantic name. No one talks of it now and I no longer mention it. Only in my own mind.

      All right, I know that everyone sees only Poor Old Larry, the 87-year-old pain in the corner of the room. Poor Old Larry who can’t even get up the stairs any more and who has to have a commode beside the bed at night.

      Inside, however, Larissa is still 17 and golden. Instead of wearing cardigans day and night, even in bed, she always wears soft silks and satins. And while Poor Old Larry has to walk slowly with the aid of a stick, golden Larissa skips and hops down the road outside. She tosses her hair so that people always turn their heads to admire her fine skin, her slim, tall body.

      Yes, Larissa is a princess who deserves life’s little luxuries.

      I would be happy enough with the ordinary stuff, never mind luxuries, if I could have it. Here I am in the closing years of my life and I have no say at all in anything I do. Even what I eat! Since the arthritis got bad and ‘they’ decided I could no longer mind myself, Martha had to come to live with myself and Mary. You see Mary works, and I need someone to be around during the day. Money-wise it was no hardship for her to move here because she had been in a rented flat.

      I don’t find it easy. She and I stagger along from day to day with one row following another. It wears me out, to tell you the truth. It is a terrible thing to lose your independence.

      You know, it is still a surprise to me how two such different girls as Martha and Mary came out of the same womb. (They are hardly girls any more, of course, they are both in their fifties now.) But isn’t it amusing that my late husband Josie and I called them Martha and Mary just because we liked the names, and yet they have become so like the Martha and Mary in the Bible. It is almost as if somehow we knew in advance what they would be like.

      No wonder the Bible Martha complained. There she was, the poor thing, slaving in the kitchen to make the place nice and to make food for Jesus when He visited. Mary, on the other hand, didn’t lift a finger to help, just sat at His feet rubbing oil into them and listening to His stories.

      And what did Martha get for her pains? A lecture from their guest that her sister had chosen the ‘better part’.

      Not that I read the Bible. As a matter of fact, I don’t even go to Mass any more. No need. I’ve heard enough Masses and priests during my long lifetime to see me safely into heaven. If there is a heaven at all.

      So do people grow into their names?

      2: Martha Speaks

      Here is an example of what goes on in this house. Here is my day-to-day life. I get up at ten minutes past six. Before I bring Mammy her cup of tea – her first cup of tea, I might add – I have the washing in the machine and last night’s load out on the line, rain or shine. (I have a special raincoat for going out to the line.) ‘Good morning, Mammy,’ I say as cheerfully as I can when I push open her door. I put the tea on her little table. Of course all I get in return is a grunt.

      I try to ignore this and go back downstairs where I put on the porridge for the three of us. I slice up the bread for toast and lay the table. It is a quarter to seven by this time. When the porridge starts to simmer, I tramp back up the fifteen steps with Mary’s cup of tea. I don’t bother to bid her good morning. There is no point. She is in cloud cuckoo land, that one. All the time. I could be Godzilla coming in with a hatchet for all she knows or cares.

      I go back into Mammy’s room and find she hasn’t even touched the tea. So I have to make her sit up. ‘Drink that now, Mammy,’ I say each day, as though for the first time. ‘It will wake you up. And I’ll be back in a minute or two to help you into your dressing-gown. The porridge is on.’ She’ll squeak something about it being too cold to drink. But I tell her it’s her own fault. I try to be gentle about it – and of course I take it back down the stairs to put a hot drop into it.

      When I have her sitting up and drinking, it’s downstairs again. Then upstairs to check on the