Free The Past by Neil Jordan

removed, aggrieved, defiant air. The implication was of course that those functions had no constitutional validity, that she graced them with her presence, as her late husband had graced them with his life. She began to refer to him by the letter M. As M. used to say. Handy, I suppose, a bare letter is as anonymous and distant and mysterious as you want to make it, I suppose. I’d hear it in drawing-rooms, not knowing who it meant. You sense these things and you learn more of them. But it couldn’t last, could it?’

    THE TWO OF them in black, on the sofa that whorls like a shell behind them, that seems to have been green velvet. The edges of the print are faded again by time, like a flame. Their figures stand out in what is an oval of light, or focus, the mother’s hands on her daughter’s shoulders, the sofa whorling out of the frame. There seems to be dust around.

    â€˜AFTER A YEAR they stopped listening, didn’t they? The more strident her claims became for him, I mean, the more embarrassing a figure she became. And by that time even Dev was looking for a way
into the second Dail. And so she wheeled round towards the worst fate of all—that of not being taken seriously. And it often happens to public widows. It began in what she would have called the “highest circles”, where the bow of deference changed to the nod of indifference, and it spread gradually, like a mild disease. In the end it hit even her audience and real parts—by which I mean theatrical ones—began to pass her by. But she never lost the indefinable air of being a figure of consequence, and as theatrical circles are more loyal than most, she kept her camp followers. Still, she found herself slowly excluded from that magic circle of rumour, clandestine meetings and Chiefs of Staff until in the end Dev himself didn’t turn up at the opening night of The Moon on the Yellow River. Needless to say, she reacted in turn, she learnt phrases like “betrayal of the cause”, “the true constitution” and when eventually Dev came to sign that book of allegiance to the King with his left hand over his eyes, she condemned him more vociferously than anyone. But by then people had almost forgotten who she was. Una who?’

    THE MONTHS AFTER the Communion breakfast are hardly memorable. The irises in the jam jars wither and before Sister Paul throws them out you filch one for your copybook, where it smudges the ink. The tree changes from green to golden and then finally empties itself and you wonder whether this is what is meant by the age of reason after all—a sense of absence. Then driver Jack comes and stands in the doorway with tears in his eyes and his cap in his hand and you see on the instant that this is one event that will distinguish this time
for you. You wonder what he is going to say. Something that will have the import of your father’s words over the heather in the yellow chair. You look to Sister Paul for permission to rise from your seat but she anticipates the news from Jack’s cap and his tears. She ushers you instead from the room, past Jack into a parlour you have never seen before, where there are oak chairs with slender ankles, green walls and a brown, glinting piano. You wait for Jack there, and his eyes and cap.
    Soon after that you were taken from the school. Your education became sporadic. You would run on the Abbey stage now and then, in minor children’s parts. Your mother, at the time of Jack’s news, was appearing in a St John Devlin comedy, which broke all box-office records for a week. And it was in the Green Room of that theatre, the Abbey, that the photograph was taken of you. It was the first photograph. I can see you at last, your mother’s arms framing your hair, which doesn’t look blonde, since the print is bad. Your dress could be satin. It seems to be wet, clinging to your knees. You are staring at what must have been the cowled head