A short story of loss and marriage

RadioScope: I'm Walking on the Air, Francis MacManus Short Story Competition, RTÉ Radio One, Wednesday, September 19th, 8

RadioScope:I'm Walking on the Air, Francis MacManus Short Story Competition, RTÉ Radio One, Wednesday, September 19th, 8.45pm

The short story is bedevilled by the reverent tones in which it is too often written and read. So thank heavens, and their craft, for Mairide Woods, who wrote I'm Walking on the Air and Maria McDermottroe who read it on RTÉ Radio One.

The story not only held my attention effortlessly - it also gave me more insights into subtleties of loss and marriage than anyone can reasonably expect to get in 15 minutes. And it did all this without a shred of piousness.

It was broadcast as one of the best entries in last year's Francis MacManus Short Story Competition.

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The story could well have been reverent and pious and not very interesting as it concerns the relationship between a woman (the narrator) and her husband following the death of a son with spina bifida.

Indeed, if I had known beforehand what the story was about, I might not have stayed around to listen. But Woods's narrator has about her the no-nonsense and attractive strength of one who, for years, has got on with what needs to be done for a son with a serious disability.

It is typical of her that when, due to a comical mishap in the concert hall in which the story is set, the narrator discovers her leg is bleeding with a silver hinge stuck in the flesh, she impatiently pulls it out and bleeds on the blue velvet of the furniture.

In her reading, McDermottroe conveys this strength perfectly, but she also conveys the fact that the woman is in terrible emotional pain and that her marriage may be disintegrating.

That emotional pain arises in many respects from her husband's way of grieving.

He has retreated into his study and into the avoidance of social events. She misses the emotional warmth she once had with him and the emotional engagement with their son.

Woods uses the details of human interaction to convey the gulf that has opened up between her and her husband.

A fat woman gets into the seat beside her and she is forced to sit closer to her husband - closer, she tells us, than he would normally like.

And she recalls the roses he brought her when she gave birth to a son who, neither of them knew, was disabled. The roses, she says, lasted for only the briefest time. It is as if the roses represent the warmth and romance that had begun to seep out of their marriage.

She also misses the whole world that arose out of her son's needs - the hospital appointments and the many other routines built around his disability.

Long-term carers suffer two losses eventually - the loss of the person being cared for and the loss of contact with the people and places involved in the caring.

There is humour in the story too, often conveyed suddenly in short phrases thanks to McDermottroe's ability to make the briefest of pauses speak volumes.

At the end of the story there is a sort of redemption but you doubt if it really represents a happy ending.

You can listen again to this wonderful combination of writer and reader by going to www.rte.ie/

radio1/francismacmanus/ and clicking on the link to the 2007 series.

If we still kept to the traditions of the Shakespearian stage, when parts were often written for specific actors, we could look forward to more from Woods and McDermottroe.

Shakespeare or no Shakespeare, let's hope it happens.

Review by counsellor Padraig O'Morain