Town and Country
My grandmother was a country woman. If you were to add it up, she spent – by far – the majority of her life in towns and cities: in places of grey, and concrete, and brick. But somehow, that first decade counted the most. It shaped her, as much as anyone is ever shaped. It shaped her speech. Long after she left her small village, she carried pieces of it with her, in the bends and turn of a word. Wi’hinsday. Ennyhownall. Wexford wrapped itself around her, and I don’t think it ever quite let go. I don’t think she wanted it to.
I loved the way she said my father’s name. A-ha-nee. Soft, and affectionate, and hers alone.
I was a city kid. I read books about farms, and circuses, and desert islands. I dreamed about living in hollowed-out trees, and wading across foaming waters. I learned words like ‘babbling’ and ‘brook’, but didn’t know how to pronounce them, because I had only ever seen them written down.
In my mind, of course, I was an adventurer. I knew all the tricks. I knew to pick soft moss for bedding (with some heather or bracken for added bounce). I knew to let my dog (always called Timmy) drink the spring water (from the aforementioned babbling brook), but not to drink it myself. I knew to plant willow sticks, and train them as they grew (oh! to have a home which grew around me!). I knew to not eat the pickled eggs from the jar. I knew I wanted to have a boy’s name (like George). I knew I did not want, under any circumstances, to wear a skirt, and to be a weak girl (like Anne).
I knew plenty about the countryside, after all. I had read all about it.
As I grow older, my memories my grandmother change. I see us together: the small girl, so certain, and the older woman. I would have told her all about it, of course. My imagined fields, and my imagined green. I wonder at the woman, and what she would have thought of this babbling brook of a child. I wonder at what she left behind.
I have snippets, mostly. A red house, with a tin roof. Her mother, so young, and the sickness in the house. Hard fields, and a harder life. A boat to Liverpool; a teenager in the city; the glint of pint glasses, and the stale smell of beer. The return.
She told us stories, too. Somehow, I knew that there was a line, between her countryside, and mine. The two coexisted, and tumbled over each other, into a confusion of half-symbols and part-truths. Changelings, and healing of the skin; the laying of a curse, and the terrible dark yearning for land. Timmy did not lap at a brook; he was a work-dog, and worked on the farm. You ate potato, not crumpets, and you slept on a bed with your brothers and sisters, not on heather or bracken. There were no pickled eggs. For god’s sake, Elaine, who eats pickled eggs?
Some things remain.
Some things will always remain.
My hand in hers, and feel of her skin (so rough, so sure). The way she walked down a road (so fierce, so strong). The swing of a bag of potatoes over her shoulder. The skin of milk in the morning. The way she said my name.
Sometimes, she would take us – my sister and I – to the pier. We would walk to the very end, where the concrete gave way to rocks, and the rocks gave way to the glossy black. We would stand with her, her city children, at the very edge of the sea, our hair whipped about us, and our breath lost to the wind. I had one foot in the wild (the wet, the surge and fall beside me), and one foot in my city (the grey streets and bright dawns), and all of my heart beating in my chest. Country or city, what did it matter? We belonged to each other. Jenny, me and Nanny: three together, and terrible and great and strong. I didn’t need to be Anne, or George, or any other sort of beast (for a girl can be weak, and a girl can be strong, and what shame to either?). I was a part of her. I was Elaine. And it was all I ever needed to be.
