The Country of Our Dreams. Mary O'Connell
of the farmhouse bedroom. He had not known then that blue carnations were a fantasy. In his childhood illnesses those carnations had brought him comfort, along with the erratic attentions of Bran, his father’s dog, who would occasionally burst into his bedroom to check up on him. Bran and he would rub noses together and then the great brown creature would turn and spin out, unkempt toenails skittering on the old flagged kitchen floor, his mother calling out threats. She did not like the dog, any animal, to be inside.
Their father was far less strict. On the rare occasions Kate was out - up at a St Vincent de Paul meeting, or a Catholic women’s thing – Sean always let the big dog in, encouraged him, even let him onto the couch. All the boys, giggling, would be sworn to secrecy.
Later, the blue carnations of the farmhouse bedroom were replaced by the dark orange paisley wallpaper of the cramped Lithgow house. And no Bran. That zany wallpaper had made Vianney feel faintly nauseous, yet in a pleasurable way. His adolescent gaze would drill into it, seeking to penetrate, unlock its arcane meanings. There had to be some there.
Now, in Coogee, in another cramped over-expensive flat, he is back gazing at wallpaper, not so much exploring as hanging on to it for dear life. Inside him the dark river threatens to flood. It has been building depth and strength over the last few weeks. His attempts to struggle against it, to swim to some non-existent shore, to drown it with work and alcohol have only weakened him, not it. They do say nowadays, let go, let it come through. Yet to let the dark waters flow over his head – to cut off all air and light – that is a horror Vianney cannot allow. He gasps for breath, trying to bring oxygen and feeling back into his fingers and toes. If he can hang onto the wallpaper, he may not be carried away by the flood.
His father had suffered from bouts of depression too. There was no doubt a genetic factor. Funny thing is, that’s what they said Sean had suffered from, but in all of Vianney’s memories, except the very last, his father was boisterous, energetic, crackling with life. Full of jokes and songs, plans and stories. He was a treasure house of stories.
He was the one who told them about Michael Davitt their ancestor, one of the bravest men Ireland had ever produced. And that was saying something, Sean said proudly, because courage to the point of recklessness is a thoroughly Irish trait.
Michael Davitt had faced down the greatest Empire in the world, Sean had told them. As father of the Irish Land League, he had organised collective resistance to the landlords and their harsh rents, and saved a new generation from a second terrible Famine. What’s more, he had organised the Irish people all around the world into a unity of resistance and courage, and had stopped the kow-towing, the bowing and curtseying to their so-called betters. He had told them to be proud, to be rid of their shame as a defeated beggared people. He had told them to wake up to their true manly selves.
When Michael Davitt had died, Sean said, the train bearing his body home to Mayo had gone slowly through the fields and country towns of Ireland. And the people had come to the train stations to stand with their caps off as the train went through. And the ones who couldn’t get to the station had stopped working in the fields and had bowed their heads and prayed. One of their greatest protectors and defenders had gone from them. There was another decade to wait before the Easter Rising.
One of the paintings on the walls of the Ryan’s farmhouse in those days had been Millet’s The Angelus, a popular sentimental Catholic image, where a man and a woman stand amidst the fields, their heads bowed in prayer at dusk, a basket of potatoes at their feet and a church steeple in the luminous distance. A dream picture of French rural devotion. But for years the young Vianney had believed it was a picture of Irish peasants praying in the fields as the coffin of his ancestor Michael Davitt (his blood in your veins, Sean had said, pinching his sons’ small arms) went by on its solemn journey homeward, after a lifetime of exile. A lifetime of work.
Irish grief. Like their father before them, they have inherited the pain body of Ireland. Maybe he should lay off working with the Lament. Is ar mo chroí atá do chumha – on my heart is such sorrow. Maybe he shouldn’t be reading those drafts of Xavier’s work-in-progress, A Right Glorious Name - his historical novel on the Irish Land War, with all the derring–do of the land league, especially the ladies. Maybe that was reactivating the schtuff, as Siena calls it. The family schtuff.
Siena says it’s the childhood that has screwed them all up. Vianney, though, feels it’s older than that. Less personal. Genetic. Irish grief embedded now in their diasporic DNA, in the five damaged Ryan children. Aquinas, unsupervised, drowned. Xavier, in and out of sobriety and clean time. Siena, chaotic, no savings, no real career, hanging on to her PhD for the last seven years as an excuse. Only Loyola the human rights lawyer won’t admit to anything, any suffering, any pain, in personal or cultural pasts. But why then is his hair falling out, and why is he living with that terrible woman Claudia who refuses him any rights or freedoms? All of which must have been why Vianney had been so attracted to shining robust golden haired netball-thighed Hilary from the Shire. Where nothing from the past is ever recalled, except sporting finals.
Hilary pulls at his right foot hanging out over the bed. She has crept up on him. 'Come on, get up, Vi.'
'Vianney' he says, automatically, and kicks at her with the foot. He hates any corruption of his name. If he could have connected, it would have been a good strike.
'Come on!' she says, darting back in to slap his lower leg, and there’s a meanness too in her slap. ‘You know it’s no good to just lie there.’
Hilary’s version of shock treatment. Quick, beat it out of him. Maybe she thinks that resentment at her insensitivity will get him up. As if I do it to her, deliberately. It is not something I do to you, Hilary. It’s not all about you, my love.
Hilary doesn't understand the river; how wide and deep and dark and cold it is. She has no idea. She says, ‘You go on for weeks like a normal person and you say nothing about it, and then for no apparent reason you go down and away, and you are so bloody ill mannered with it.’
‘Depression is an illness, not bad manners on my part.’
‘If it’s an illness, then go and see a doctor.’
Maybe he will. He used to ring LifeLine on occasion as a teenager when the Lithgow wallpaper threatened to do him in. The uni has an employee assistance program with free counselling. It’s supposed to be about workplace issues, but that would be a start. And there is plenty of them, workplace issues. The whole workplace is an issue.
Or perhaps he will ask Xavier for the name of his guy, the one who helped get him off the turps. If he still is off it.
Oh god. Just thinking about asking for help was exhausting. It’s too hard. And it – the schtuff- it’s too big. They’ll just do cognitive behaviour bullshit. They won’t know about Eckhart Tolle and his pain body.
If Hilary ever leaves him, goes off to have test tube babies with a man who really wants them, at least there'll be no one to hide from any more. He will be free to stare at the walls for days and weeks, till they notice his absence at the office and come round to find the rotten smelling body. The drowned body. The pain body.
Chapter 4 - We are a dark people
‘Get in the car.’ Their father’s voice was urgent, a low growl, in the tone that meant he would brook no opposition. ‘Get in the car – damn you.’
A hot dark evening, shrill with the sounds of the bush. Cicadas ticking like clocks, the deep drumbeat of frogs hunkered down in the last damp patch in the rocky bed of the creek.
All around them the synaesthesia of the bush, the sound of heat. A land singing and humming with heat. Everything tinder dry. Breezes like a hot breath, wafting through the white barked gums. The world around them waiting, even calling for fire. Moths and other, darker winged insects flying around the car’s inside light. Their father’s strangely lit face – yellow down one side, one dark eye looming at them as he pushed them down the back seat, into hiding. ‘Get down you bastards’ he swore. “Don’t let yourselves be seen.’
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