Leftoverlifetokill3

    And now I am on my way at last, in the Rome Express, with so much Laugharne, the cemetary, and the whole of Dylan, good, bad, glorious, filling me, that I am impervious to chianti: though lapping it up as though parched in a desert for an eternity; vines, olives, and the extraordinry fact, that I am not treated as scum any more.
     I thought it was not possible to feel any more: that I had gone to the dirty limits of my rat path; that having lost all I had, there was nothing left to lose; that I was immune, untouchable, inside and out, by anything that might conceivably happen to me. But I had not bargained for the rats following me quite so closely; for my weak vulnerability when faced with the screaming foreign world; for the innocent reproach of my bouncingly lively, too young son. How could the wretched worm know I was doing this absurd backward pilgrimage? - athing I swore I was much too cynical to contemplate; where every landmark was as if I had seen it, and yet not seen it, before: that was the funny thing, that we never saw, noticeably, a single detatched thing, so engrossed were we with our idiotic selves; and smote me with a new, old, faintly reminiscent thud. And the boy: I was either passionately kissing with guilt, furiously killing with irritation; or quietly cruising in some dim private region, ou tof reach of his relentlessly plebian questions. And underneath all this play acting, though I had washed my hands of God this long time, and was absolutely fed up with His cheating games, and underhand tricks on me, I kept saying: 'God, God, God.'
     Whatever posessed me to think that a vague idealistic hunch, derived straight from my father's folies, would bring me sublime peace, and over the mountain fulfilment? When all that meets the eye on arrival is the ugliest town in the island, scarred on the coast with Nature's red brown gashes, from the steaming with chesty dust, iron mines. From the distance it is recognized by the permanent film of dust always resting above it. And we wondered why the place wasn't popular. Then the hypnotized staring when you venture out, making you feel like a blown up deformity from the northernmost pole; which indeed, perhaps you think, you are. To make it more delectable still, I am put in La stessa camera, our old room, and I remembered every detail, since before Colm. There is an aspidistra pushed aside on the tiles, before-the-flood stag coat-hangers; and not an apology of hot water or bath to be had.
     And the din; that is the best part to me, more the better, and less I understand the more sympathetic: from the clanging of the imperious church bells in the early morning, to the rising cackle of the market, right under our window, from seven onwards. By night time there is such a steady crescendo of piercingly conflicting sounds that to me it was as lullabying as the gentle lapping of waves; and the hotel is not even on the sea. In my turn, I could not help being amazed by the round plump bottoms precariously balanced on the long lean shanks; and topped by the soft, melting, seductive girl's film-star faces; these were the boys. And the men, the same thing hardened into sculptured shape; hewn hacked features, sun-drenched and toasted, and baked beautiful fiery black; and a lot of hair all over the place. And the women, mostly preserved in moth balls, and taken out for an airing once a years; more so than in Wales, if that is creditable. Only harridans visible roaring round the streets in wrinkled cotton stockings, rope shoes, and patched sackcloth.
     I registered, with true distatst, that I still had the doubtful capacity for attracting the blackest, lowest, vermin among them, that obviously nobody else would dream of speaking to. They infallibly clustered and clung to me, like homing pigeons, alternatively sickening me with oily compliments or cheating me out of my few incomprehensible liras. Since I knew that all it took to exert this fatal fascination was an artificial blonde head, a pink, superficially baby - though let me reassure you quickly this was far from the case - face, and a body that bulged in and out, more or less, in the right places; I was not unduly flattered.
     There was a man, when Dylan and I were here, who I thought posessed the ideal qualities: solidity, latent strength, tough as a rock, yet soft spoken, instinctively sensitive, and unembarrassed with learning; in short, the perfect leaning post. And a beauty of his own. I had saved up this man, The Church, for years, as something unique, an invaluable refuge, next to whom I could live happily for the rest of my years. So of course I was bound to prove this optimistic contention, with the easily conjecturable answer that, quite simply, his belly had got that much bigger, and his hair that much thinner; and those two insignificant trifles were sadly sufficient to break up the magic picture. He was as kind and good as ever, but leagues of country away, and once, as everybody knows, that unreasonable spell is broken, as soon flog a dead horse as try to revive it. However, he appeared satified with my dying-duck-in-a-thunderstorm airs and graces, and with no more palaver, gave me an unmistakable indication, with a fork over his shoulder, directed towards the bedroom door. Unaccountably this friendly invitation reduced me to a flood of tears again, as I contemplated how low was I fallen; and anxiously conjectured how much my compliance or refusal would affect the size of my bill. Still I held out with dolorous excuses, for the time being, and was grateful for Colm in my large bed.
     With no exaggeration, the only respite in these first freezing, milestone days, was the hour when finally we were allowed to go to bed; and I could dive into my Woman and forget briefly where I was. How I dreadedfinishing her. Like an over-hibernated squirrel, I went on distractedly chewing my nuts, and praying for one crack of spring; but none came. And my heart was strangling itself, in tightening knots, watching that child in a million; and that is not mother's milk talk, I promise, and can be corroborated by outsiders; Colm Thomas, lost, transplanted, his five years of magnified clarity in his tiny constricted puddle, pitted valiantly against the unspeakable barriers and horrors of the unknown. No language, no contact, but he is undeterred, uses all the wiles at his disposal, which are legion, and gets just where he wants to get: installed firmly, as the little favourite, deep in the sentimental Italian bosom. But the imitation tart's life, without the legitimacy of a man, is no good to him, or me.
     Buckets of squalor, and fecklessness: half the morning in and out of bed, all cluttered up with demolished trays of undrinkable tea, leaden bread, sour butter, and Colm's inevitable aranciata: fizzy orangeade: the only thing he would drink, except for beer; and spaghetti, the only thing he would eat, without fail at every meal, while pathetically pleading for his precious Weetabix; not exactly a balanced diet. Then a short stroll before lunch, in a biting east wind, with Colm saying all the time: 'Come on, let's go home,' and as soon as I got back: 'Come on, let's go out,' not understanding that we had no home, and nowhere to go. After two days he was asking to go back to Laugharne; and how I sympathized! But what mother does not know the rock-bottom tyranny of these blackmailing cries; and is not torn asunder with loathing and love: with loathing well in the forefront. Till the object falls asleep eventually, like a conclave, a drove, an ecstacy of angels, and the mother: she has not got a hope in hell from the start; is overcome with guilt and remorse.
     Anybody who thinks there is any vague chance of adult exchange with a child is up the spout; and would be much less disappointed if they recognized the chasm unbridgeably dividing them. The cord that binds a mother to her child is not love in the sophistocated give and take sense: it is an organic, vegetable, all-giving function from the mother with no dotted-line returns, to which the child responds with the impersonality and egotism of a plant to the sun, as their natural and necessary birthright, in their smugly dominant kingdoms. So that if, at odd times, unsolicited, comes surprisingly an affectionate gesture, an amazing 'thank you', accept it serenely as a stray but exceptional dispensation, no more than that.
     And so it goes on; and so it does for me; only I have no privacy in which to conduct these subterranean wars. I am constantly on parade, as bad almost as Royalty, minus their prestige and protection; so my first thought is a school for Colm, and that will be the devil's own to do; and a room for me, far away and alone, with radiogram, to practise my nonsense. It is hardly conceivable that I have not heard a single note of music, good or bad, and I do not mind which, so long as I hear it,as a breathing part of the day; that is to say pretty nearly all day long.
     How I longed, and longed, and longed, for my incomparable sister Brigit, as I always did when I was in a really tight spot, and tried to imagine how she would have risen above this situation; because rise she would have, surely. She has that so rare universal quality, wonderfully devoid of pettiness or envy, yet never verging on sanctimoniousness; a vast acceptance and tolerance of every aberration of human nature. More than that, a