The Little Red Chairs (32 page)

At Christmas, we put on a play. It was a very free interpretation of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Actors strolled on in motley attire, togas, crowns, scraggy beards, gauds, ribbons and ill-fitting pumps. Lions roared, asses brayed, infatuations abounded, as the fairy world mingled with the rustics and Robin Goodfellow the Puck, with his goblins, squeezed a love juice into the eyes of the unsuspecting.

Jade spoke the first lines, to set the theme of love:

One turf shall serve as pillow for us both,

One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.

Cupid, blindfolded and on his bicycle, was thus to deliver love pizzas to wrong addresses, presaging the mayhem that was to follow.

Poor Snout the baker, who became a wall, through which Pyramus and Thisbe ‘did whisper’, had an avalanche of loam thrown in his face. Nathaniel, the son of the coaching teacher, had brought along his child’s bucket and spade, and kept tossing indiscriminately, ‘Mud in your eye, mud in your eye.’

The forest was represented by little clumps of pine cone and some fading castor oil plants. From a swinging cage a foul-mouthed parrot kept saying ‘Silly sluts, silly sluts,’ but the cage was whisked away for fear of greater obscenities.

Lips were kissing cherries, dewdrops were pearls, a nigh-nigh, lullaby-lullaby accompanying the sweet moments. True love melted like snow, dotage was contagious, betrothals broken and paramours, with seething brains, roamed the forest, seeking revenge.

Helena, the spurned maiden, was heard to say, ‘I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, the more you beat me, I will fawn on
you.’ Demetrius, for his part, warned her not to tempt too much the hatred of his spirit.

Kings and queens lost their usual froideur. Theseus the King, who had won Hippolyta’s love by the injuries he caused her in war, lifted her gown with his spear, in order for her to flaunt her bruises. Oghowen, as his wife, began to undo each hook and eye of her black lace corset, proud of these stigmata, and consequently held up the action of the play.

Titania, who was played by Maria and who was supposed to remain asleep until much further on in the drama, sat up from her drugged sleep, and seeing the weaver, Nick Bottom, with an ass’s head upon him, loudly exclaimed, ‘What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?’ Even she, finding it all so beautifully ludicrous, yielded to laughter, while Bluey as Oberon, her abjuring husband, breaking from strict pentameter, called loudly, ‘Get your ass over here Titania,’ much to the delights of the audience.

Nahir also broke from strict tradition, having acquitted himself well as a meddling monkey, now metamorphosed to a clown – ‘Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.’ With a small magnifying glass, he went to sniff out the secrets of other lovers, except that he had forgotten his wooing lines, and plucking the air with a pitiousness, cried out, ‘The thing is gone from me,’ which clearly it was.

‘Thou runaway,’ some of the actors called, and followed him into the audience, where he had fled, and there en route, and again stepping out of character, stopped to ask friends or family if they were enjoying the evening. Although it was due to a technical hitch backstage, and not an artistic consideration, the house went dark, yells and shouts rose out and actors down there continued with a rousing repetition of ‘O grim-looked night! O night with hue so dark!’

On stage, it was left to Allissos and her Maenads in their rainbow chiffons, to advance the beguilements, with ringlet and roundel dance, encouraging the audience to participate.

The entertainment came to a conclusion, with Robin Goodfellow recalling the zanies and all the actors made to join hands, as wrongs were righted, true love and its virtuous properties restored. Nuptials were celebrated, twine rings exchanged, and packets of rice wantonly thrown on the heads of the eternally betrothed.

Give me your hands if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.

For the finale, the word
Home
was to be sung and chanted in the thirty-five different languages of the performers.

At first, even after many rehearsals, it was awry, the voices grated, the very harmony they had aspired to was missing, and then one woman stepped forward and took command, her voice rich and supple, a wine-dark sea filled with the drowned memories of love and belonging. Soon others followed, until at last thirty-five tongues, as one, joined in a soaring, transcendent Magnificat.
Home. Home. Home
. It rose and swelled, it reached to the rafters and through the walls, out onto the lit street, to countryside with its marsh and meadow, by graveyard and sheep fold, through dumbstruck forests, to the lonely savannahs and reeking slums, over seas and beyond, to endless, longed-for destinations.

You would not believe how many words there are for
home
and what savage music there can be wrung from it.

Acknowledgements

I received immeasurable help writing this book from people in Galway, Roscommon, London, New York, Bosnia and the ICTT in The Hague. Words fail me to express my enormous and abiding gratitude and the list could go on and on. I do want to give a robust thanks to my inspired and painstaking editors, Lee Brackstone and Judy Clain, to Ed Victor, most staunch agent and ally and lastly, but by no means least, to Nadia Proudian, who typed draft after draft with all the expertise and readiness at her disposal.

Permission to print from
Gilgamesh
, the book by Robert Temple.

I was made welcome at Pilgrims Hatch Dog Kennels many times.

About the Author

Since her debut novel 
The Country Girls
 Edna O'Brien has written over twenty works of fiction along with a biography of James Joyce and Lord Byron. She is the recipient of many awards including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Art's Gold Medal and the Ulysses Medal. Born and raised in the west of Ireland she has lived in London for many years.

By the Same Author

FICTION

The Country Girls

The Lonely Girl

Girls in Their Married Bliss

August Is a Wicked Month

Casualties of Peace

The Love Object and Other Stories

A Pagan Place

Zee and Co.

Night

A Scandalous Woman and Other Stories

A Rose in the Heart

Returning

A Fanatic Heart

The High Road

Lantern Slides

House of Splendid Isolation

Down by the River

Wild Decembers

In the Forest

The Light of the Evening

Saints and Sinners

The Love Object

NON
-
FICTION

Mother Ireland

James Joyce (biography)

Byron in Love

Country Girl

DRAMA

A Pagan Place

Virginia (The Life of Virginia Woolf)

Family Butchers

Triptych

Haunted

Copyright

First published in 2015
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA

This ebook edition first published in 2015

All rights reserved
©Edna O’Brien, 2015

Cover design by Faber
Cover image © Tom Tom/Shutterstock

The right of Edna O’Brien to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–0–571–31630–4