by Elske Rahill
It’s not everyone had the white sheet and pillowcase that was needed, so when little Sheila across the road went and burned herself so bad she died, it was Molly’s mam who brought over the white things to lay her out. Molly and her big sister Kat were told to make sandwiches – Mrs Keogh came up out of the shop with bread and ham and a lump of butter and told them to make lots and cut them small the way people would feel they could manage one – and the others were to mind the little ones and keep them all quiet on the street. There were candles fetched from the church for a loan, and a little bowl of holy water for her feet, and as it was a child’s death there was no shame in the women and the men both crying through the wake like she was their own. Mam and the other women were upstairs with the mother all night long, but Kat came down and said, ‘You don’t want to go up there, Molly; it’s not nice to see her poor neck and hands like that; no one will notice if you stay downstairs now and tend to the tea and sandwiches.’
The next day the coffin was carried out by all the men in the street; all those strong, hardworking men that there were then, backs cobbled and dirt tracks in their faces, their eyes crunched small with the sobbing and drinking that went on through the night. A terrifying thing for a child, to see big men weep like that.
There was a coming together at those times, but she gave no value to that at all. It could be such a stifling thing to be woven in, always accounting for yourself, that she didn’t even mind much her mam’s scorn or the cruel things her sisters said to her when she went off and married at the drop of a hat, Kat said, to the first fellow to sniff at you, for she felt like a great heavy thing had been lifted from her face and she could breathe light, cool air in a way she hadn’t known before. It was only after burying her little boy that Molly remembered her mam running over the road with the white things that time, and her face all stricken, and then the men carrying the little coffin out. Grown men, crying for the mother and for the little girl, and for each other.
In Soho, there wasn’t much in the way of neighbouring, so when she held her little boy then, and he lost right there in her arms, she didn’t think to go to the door and howl out the way they would have done at home. She only sat there with him on the clean floor for how long she’ll never know and the word she heard out of herself was just ‘Mam’ over and over. She heard herself say it so quiet and soft – ‘Mam Mam, Mam Mam Mam MamMamMamMamMam.’
She should have gone up that time, to see the burned girl laid out; she should have wept with the mothers instead of hanging back like that.
10
FREYA HAS BEEN COMING here with Jem since he was a baby. It’s quiet in the mornings, especially on a Monday, and if the red-haired manager is on, he usually clears her bill. He hated the college crèche, which smelled of cigarettes and nappies, so as soon as lectures finished, she would pick him up and come here to work. She used to sit for hours over one coffee and a glass of tap water, reading while Jem coloured.
Jem is sitting on his hands, looking at his orange juice and croissant, chin pocked with anxiety.
‘You’re not drinking your juice, Jem.’
His mouth shrinks into a frightened blank and he just looks up at her with those eyes, asking something of her; an assurance that isn’t hers to give. The man on the helpline told her it was better to arrange access on her terms. Otherwise, when it goes to court she won’t look reasonable. They could give Dermot overnights, every weekend even, ‘but children are very resilient,’ the man said, ‘and fathers are important.’ She thought Jem would feel more at home, meeting Dermot for the first time here. But it was a mistake. It will be an intrusion to have Dermot come in here. It will break something.
‘What’s my daddy like?’
‘Well…’ It’s only been five years since she’s seen him, but it’s hard to picture his face. Their affair didn’t last very long. Or at least it turned sour very quickly. She can remember the beginning – the thrill of being wanted. She was a virgin and it had seemed to her like a miracle, that someone would want her like that. She remembers trying to get to know him, to have conversations with him – the disappointment of that, the way he would veer off into monologues, the way he tried to talk in riddles, to make himself mysterious and complicated. It seems so stupid now. Her attraction to him was so ambivalent and their relationship so fraught that she thought this might be the intangible ‘love’ people talked about. She remembers the terror when he became angry, the hopelessness of trying to reason with him; how pathetic he was, stuttering and spitting, kicking the wall and pushing things over, and the strange relief then, when he hurt her or fucked her or both. She can remember his eyes when he was aroused or enraged. They gleamed and darted. But what is he like? How would he seem to a stranger, or to an anxious child?
‘Well, he has brown eyes, Jem.’
‘Like me?’
‘Well, different eyes to you, baby, you have my grandad’s eyes, but also brown. And he – well, he used to, work in a hotel, I don’t know if he still does… A porter, it’s called a night porter… guarding the doors at night.’
‘Is he nice?’
‘Yes, I think so, baby. He is very excited about meeting you. It’ll be alright, little man. It’s only for a few hours…’
But as soon as he walks in the door she remembers – a lean man with crisp clothing – and nothing fits right on him, she remembers that now, even tight-fitting clothes are too big and square on his shifty frame – long, bony hands; meticulously controlled movements. He stretches his neck like a hawk, surveying the tables, and she remembers his throat – the way he wagged his Adam’s apple to itch his throat. She reaches across the table and touches Jem’s shoulder, tugs him off his chair and up onto her knee and there must be some way out of this but now he’s approaching, and he’s touching the table with those long fingers, and she remembers now that W-shaped smile he made when trying to ingratiate himself, the upper lip too long and pronounced, like the beak of a parrot. Her coffee burns up into her throat. She should have stood up when she saw him, but now it’s too late. He is standing over them, too close.
‘Well, hello there!’
‘Hi, Dermot.’
‘Long time no see. So, this is Jem. Hey, Mister! This is my son, then.’
‘Yes. This is Jem.’
Jem puts his arms behind his head. His fingers grip Freya’s neck and he twists his face into her shoulder.
‘Are you going to say hello?’ says Dermot, crouching down beside the chair and squeezing the toe of Jem’s new light-up runners. ‘I don’t bite.’
Jem pulls Freya’s face towards him and whispers very quietly in her ear, ‘Is that him?’
‘Yes, baby.’
‘Right,’ says Dermot, standing up. At his hip, he is wearing a rectangular bag of black canvas, hanging on a long, thick strap across his chest. He tears open the Velcro flap and pulls out a thick wad of A4 pages. Freya expects him to sit across the table, but he slides into the chair next to them, and moves it close. He is heavily scented. Something with a urine tang; the cat-spray odour of a teenage boy.
‘I have some paperwork for you, actually,’ he says. ‘No big deal, just…’ He leafs through the pages until he finds a spot with a dotted line and an X in pencil. ‘It’s just two forms. It’s just confirming I’m a single parent, you know, for a tax break, and a lone parent allowance. We can sort out the access arrangements in due course.’ He taps the page, then pulls a pen from a special little pocket on his bag.
Jem has taken both of Freya’s hands and folded them across himself.
‘Right,’ says Freya, ‘I’ll read through them and get back to you.’
He smirks and shakes his head. ‘You haven’t changed, do you know that?’
He says it like a real question and Freya has no answer, so she says, ‘Okay.’
‘Right,’ says Dermot. He puts his hands under Jem’s arms and pulls at him. ‘Let’s you and me get out of here, buddy.’
‘Hang on,’ says Freya, ‘hang on a second
. Jem, do you want to finish your orange juice?’
Jem is standing between them now. He leans against her, his body pressed to hers and his mouth by her ear. ‘Where are we going?’
‘He wants to know where you’re going, Dermot.’
‘Wherever you want, mister!’ he says. ‘I thought you might like to come and see my place. I have an Xbox. Do you like Minecraft?’
Jem shrugs.
‘You can go on the back of my motorbike. I’ve got you a helmet and all. Have you ever been on a motorbike?’
Jem shakes his head.
‘No,’ says Freya. ‘He’s not going on a motorbike.’
Dermot rolls his eyes. ‘I’m joking.’ He winks at Jem, tousling his hair. ‘Can your mother not take a joke, no?’
Jem looks up at him, then back at Freya.
‘Well, I’ll see you in three hours, Jem,’ says Freya. Dermot is standing above her now, smiling that jagged smile. ‘So,’ she says, ‘I’ll see you back here at two?’
‘Ohhh,’ says Dermot, squeezing up his face in mock regret, ‘that wasn’t the plan now was it, Freya?’
‘I thought that was the plan.’
‘No. Sorreeee,’ he says in a singsong voice, cocking his head to one side. ‘You’re picking him up at my place. Around seven is fine. Come on, Mister. We’re going to have great fun, you and me.’
‘Where’s your place?’
‘I’ll text you.’
11
WHEN MOLLY OPENS THE front door, she is shocked to see how the years have wrung at Davitt Junior’s face, how downy and ashen his hair has gone. He’s her Aoife’s age, isn’t he? Not much older, anyway, for she remembers them playing together at ten or eleven – he red-nosed and fish-boned and dangly on the arms, and Aoife taller and stouter, the way girls can sprout up at that age quicker than boys.
‘Well, Davitt!’
‘Hello, Mrs Kearney, how are you?’
‘You’re very good to come, Davitt. You know I saw you through the window, standing on the step there, and I thought it could be your father.’
Molly’s fingers rush to her lips – stupid old halfwit why did she say such a thing?
Davitt Senior was a decent man, but he could be very harsh on the young fellow. She can remember calling to his office in Dalkey one day, when Young Davitt had just joined the practice and she could see by the look of the boy that he was swallowing down the tears. Molly had smiled at him, Well how are you getting on DJ? and the father whipped around in his fancy spinning chair, eyes all aflash – That boy is a bloody eejit Molly! I can tell you I don’t know what they taught him in his high-and-mighty university at all. I’m sick of the sight of him.
*
‘It’s not too much trouble for you, Davitt? Taking you out of the office…’
‘No no, Mrs Kearney!’ Davitt Junior shakes his head. There’s a sorry look about him, standing there on the doorstep with big shades blanking out his eyes; the sun coming in from behind to light the shiny head he has now, the halo of duckling fluff on it. ‘Delighted to get out to be honest!’ he says.
The father had a lot of hair, if Molly remembers rightly. Any time she saw him it was with a great crop on top.
‘You know you can always call me and I’ll come out to you… Never a problem at all, Mrs Kearney.’
He smiles at her like a boy, but no, there is a gauntness to him now certainly, furrows like claw marks down his cheeks. He thrusts one fist into his pocket and with the other he gives a little jiggle of his briefcase. He is wearing a fine-quality shirt buttoned tight at his hairless white wrists, and no tie and no jacket with it.
‘Well, come on in Davitt, I have the kettle on. Don’t you look the part in your shades? Everyone wears them now in the summer, don’t they? Used to be only crooks wore shades.’
‘Is that right?’
He steps into the hallway, takes off the sunglasses and folds them, looking at them quizzically, as though they belong to someone else.
‘They must be very useful, are they? That’s what my Freya says, that they’re very useful for driving on a bright day.’
‘Oh they are, yes. They are.’
*
Molly leads him into the good sitting room. It’s warm and smells fresh because she’s had the windows open since seven this morning, and then an hour ago she shut them and drew the heavy curtains closed, and put the heating on.
‘Sit down there, Davitt. Make yourself comfortable. Tea or coffee?’
‘Oh, tea please, Mrs Kearney. Thank you…’
‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
To save time and fuss, Molly has already scalded the teapot, and set the tray with two Delph cups in their saucers, and the milk and the sugar bowl and a plate of generously buttered Rich Tea biscuits. She has even filled the kettle already, so it’s only a matter of bringing it to the boil and pouring it into the pot. At the last moment, she adds some pink wafer-and-icing fingers to the biscuit plate.
When she enters the room, young Davitt is standing with his back to her, hands clasped at his flat bottom, looking at the snow scene that Dinny liked so much (they paid a lot for that, it seemed a lot at the time, anyway). After closing the curtains this morning, she switched on the little pipes of light that run along over each of the pieces in the room. It’s rare that she does that, and it’s nice to look at them all again, lit up like they deserve. Davitt turns away from the painting and hops to get the door for her. Still gangly in the legs, the way he was as a boy. ‘Stay where you are, Davitt,’ she says, nudging easily around the door with her hip and elbow and sliding herself in, still holding the tray steady. ‘I’m not such a helpless old biddy just yet! Sit down there, Davitt.’
There are some large envelope files of salmon pink and dirty yellow stacked on the coffee table, and Davitt moves them aside to make room for the tray. The couch and the matching armchairs are very low-set, and his sharp knees push up higher than the little coffee table. Molly takes the straight-backed armchair, which feels a little unseemly, because it makes her sit higher than him, but if she was to sit in the low chair she’d have trouble getting herself up out of it again. Davitt leans forward between his legs, and begins to pour the tea out before it’s had a chance to draw.
‘Oh, leave it a minute I think, Davitt…’
He nods and puts it back down in one little movement. ‘Pink wafers!’ he says, lifting one up and smiling at it. ‘It’s years since I’ve had a pink wafer. I’d forgotten they existed!’
He doesn’t take a bite, but holds the wafer like a cigar between two fingers. With the other hand, he pats the stack of files. ‘So I brought all the files pertaining to the will, Mrs Kearney.’
‘Did you? Lovely, thank you, Davitt.’
‘How is the family, Mrs Kearney?’
‘Wonderful Davitt – you’ve met my great-grandson, have you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Jem, such a character… a fine child. A really magnificent child. A little monkey. There he is on the cabinet there. That’s about a year ago now. He’s shot up since…’
‘He’s the eldest great-grandchild, is that right?’
‘Freya’s little one, yes. He’ll be six soon. You know Freya, do you? Eileen’s youngest.’
‘Yes…’ Davitt gives a queer little blink, as though something has splashed him in the eye. ‘So, tell me, Mrs Kearney, how can I help?’
He takes a bite of the biscuit, and she can see he is enjoying the light sugariness of it. He could use a little building up, poor man. The wife is a nothing cook; she remembers Mrs Dunlin telling her that. They melt in the mouth, those biscuits. The children go mad for them.
‘Well now, see what you think of this Davitt – you know Dinny and I worked very hard for a long time, before we really had a penny, and our three girls, well—’
‘Is there someone at the door, Mrs Kearney?’
‘Oh, well, there shouldn’t be, Davitt. Freya said she’ll be out all day with the little fellow, I don�
��t know what it is she said they were doing…’
‘I’m sure I heard something.’
‘My Aoife comes at twelve on a Monday after her beautician, and what time is it now?’ She glances at the big silent grandfather clock that Dinny put there to blunt the harshness of that corner. ‘Only half ten, is it?’
‘I thought I heard someone at the door. Would you like me to go and check just quickly?’
‘There you are, Mammy!’
Her eldest daughter is leaning heavily on the open door, one fist tight on the handle, the other bent in on her hip, and a frown on her of such stormy fury that Molly almost gasps.
‘Well, Fifi darling, you’re early!’
‘My ears were itching.’ Aoife purses her lips, all eyebrows and jowls. She is in one of her moods. She nods at Davitt. ‘Hello, Davitt.’
Her hair has been coloured since last week. It’s brushed neatly and the too-long fringe has been clipped up off her forehead, but the rest of it hangs down very straight either side of her face. It’s a new shade, far too dark and reddish for her daughter’s pale complexion. Best to allow the grey, sometimes. Her painted lips drag on her face.
Davitt lays the rest of his wafer on the tea-tray and puts his hands on the armrests to push himself up. ‘Aoife.’
‘Davitt. Sorry to disturb you, Mammy, my appointment was cancelled and I didn’t know you’d have a visitor.’
‘You forgot to ring the bell, darling.’
‘The bell.’ She rolls her eyes for Davitt’s benefit. ‘Yes, the bell, Mammy, the bell… Mammy likes us to announce ourselves, Davitt, she has a special ring she likes us to do. Isn’t that right, Mammy?’
Davitt is standing now, rubbing his palms on the front of his thighs. ‘How are you, Aoife? How is Brendan?’