by Roddy Doyle
—If there’s anything left, she said.—It might be earlier. The raffle’s at four, I believe.
I looked at her. She’d stepped in properly. Both of her feet were in my house.
—Why do you do it? I asked.
She put the key in her jacket pocket.
—You were a rebel once, I said.—And now you’re baking cakes, for the church.
She stared at me.
—You were a rebel yourself, she said.—And now you go around to the back of a priest’s house, to collect your wages.
I smiled.
—Fair enough.
She didn’t smile back.
—I’m not who you think I am, she said.
—Okay.
—I’m not.
—Yeah.
—You can come to the house to collect the key.
—Tonight?
—If it suits you.
—It does, I said.—It suits me.
—Good, she said.—Fine.
—I’m your boyfriend again, am I?
—You’re the scut.
She was who I’d thought she was. And she was letting me know it.
She left the door open. I went out onto the street, to gawk after her. She walked away like a young one. There was an arse under the skirt; the hill did nothing to slow her down. I stayed there for ages, long after she’d gone. The sun moved. The grass grew.
I’d changed the world. I miss you. I’d said it, and all the mistakes were nothing and I was back where I’d been when I was happy and hanging onto the side of a slow train. You’re the scut. She was Miss O’Shea.
—What was he like?
—My husband?
—Yeah.
This was in her kitchen, later. She was feeding me. She looked at me wolfing what was on the plate.
—What’s this called, by the way?
—Lasagne, she said.
—It’s good.
—Thank you.
—No problem, I said.—So, what was he like?
—He had manners.
I looked up. It wasn’t Miss O’Shea who was staring at the floor. It was the other woman, and she was missing her husband.
—He was a good man, she said.
—Was he?
—Yes, she said.—He was. He had great integrity.
She looked at me now.
—But no sense of humour.
—None?
—Whatsoever.
—You bought no cakes.
—What?
I nodded at the table.
—You were at the cake sale all afternoon, I said.—But you bought nothing.
—What makes you think that?
—There’s nothing on the table.
—There’s more to the house than the table, she said.
She was Miss O’Shea.
—Maybe I’m keeping the cakes for those that might be worthy of them.
—Griddle cakes, I said.
—What are they?
—They’re the only cakes I ever gave a fuck about.
—Is that right now?
—It was a long time ago, I said.—The first time I ate them, I thought they were worth dying for.
—Ah, now.
—I meant the right to make them and eat them, I said.—The freedom. They came from one part of the world, and I thought that was important.
—And is it still important?
—This is some fuckin’ conversation.
—Is it?
I gave her the answer she wanted.
—Yes, I said.—It’s still important.
—Life goes on as normal, the big man with the beard had told me.
—Stay healthy, say nothing. You’ll know, when the time comes.
As we sat that day on the blanket beside the sea.
—We’ll get good mileage out of you, don’t worry.
—I’m not going to be a fuckin’ mascot, I said.
He looked genuinely upset.
—No, he said.—Henry. A chara. Don’t misunderstand.
He grabbed my arms.
—I’m a fool, he said.—An amadán.
He rubbed my sleeves, consoling me.
—This is a big day for us, he said.—Hey, boys?
The boys nodded - a big, big day.
—To be meeting Henry Smart, he said.—Ach, you’re the reason we’re here. Why we are what we are.
More nods and grunts.
—I want to fight, I said.
—Yes.
—I can.
—We see that, he said.—But we have to be a wee bit strategic. It’s not an even fight.
—It never has been, I said.
—Aye, he said.—And it was even worse in your day. They still had the Empire. They ruled the waves.
I nodded.
And he nodded.
—After what those fuckin’ bastards did, I said.—In Talbot Street and the other places.
—Aye, he said.—We’re forgetting none of that, don’t worry.
He let go of my arms.
—I’ll tell you what it is now, he said.—Why we’re here. Why you’re here.
He took a gulp of the sea air.
—Religion, he said.
—Fuck religion.
His mouth tightened. He was wondering if I was worth it.
He took a breath.
—Our religion, he said.—Our own religion.
—Martyrs.
—Aye.
—And victims, I said.
—You know the score. And prophets.
—Prophets?
—You’re the prophet, he said.—Don’t be modest.
—How am I a prophet? I haven’t opened my mouth in sixty years.
—That doesn’t matter, he said.—All the better.
—How come?
—It’ll be fresh news and sixty years old, he said.—You were there.
I said nothing.
—In the Mansion House. You voted for the Republic. And the Declaration of Independence.
The mouth stayed shut.
—You’re more than a prophet, Henry, he said.—You’re our direct line. To God.
He smiled. He laughed.
I went to the jacks, came back, sat down beside her. I hoped she’d lean my way, that my arm would go around her and I’d get to call her Miss.
—What’s this? I said.
The telly was on. Black and white.
—A film, she said.
—What film? I said.
—The Quiet Man.
—It’s supposed to be in colour.
—Is it now?
—Technicolor.
—Well, she said.—There’s not much we can do about that.
It was shite in any colour. We sat and watched the whole thing and nothing in it made her move nearer to me. And nothing in it moved us to share a knowing look. Wayne and Maureen on the bike, a saddle each and no machine-gun on the handlebars. No sign of an ambush or a shoot-out. It was like nothing or nowhere we’d lived through, together or alone. It was exactly as I’d read it in the script, before the plane touched down in Shannon in 1951. The Quiet Man and the Provisional I.R.A. - the two faces of Ireland, and they were both invented by me.
I stretched when the film was over. I sent my arms out far, and they came back empty.
—What did you make of that? I asked.
—It was lovely, she said.
—Lovely?
—Yes.
—What was lovely about it?
—Everything.
She wasn’t Miss O’Shea.
I opened the school gate. I looked after the leaks and breakages. I watched the school grow older. The damp stains crept down the walls outside, and moss crawled up to meet them. The shine went off the floors. Paint cracked and flaked. Small cracks that were no one’s fault appeared in window corners. I watched, and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t keep up.The new damage had brought new life to old damage. The Talbot Street wounds had joined the bullet holes and the scars and
hollows left by torture, and years of lying in ditches and falling under trains. I was an old man with an older life to drag around. All movement was difficult. My days were numbered.
But I couldn’t show that. I was the sleeper, the walking relic. The teachers, the ones on the inside, genuflected when I passed. But they aged too. Hair changed colour and fell out. Some left, to take control of the big schools being built in a hurry in the new suburbs to the west. Strickland avoided me, but when he couldn’t, when there was no quick way past me, he talked about retirement - his - and looked over my shoulder to the place where it was waiting for him. His shoulders collapsed inside the suit he’d worn the first day he’d walked into his brand new school. The boys in the yard got bigger. They were the first generation of the well-fed. Even the runts were huge.
The nightmares got worse. There’d been none in the early months, immediately after the bomb. The pain had been welcome. I could take it all; I was alive. For a year, more, the dreams stayed away. But then they came and hauled me out of sleep, and didn’t let go till I had to sleep again. Sleep - the terror was tucked in behind its thin, breathing wall. My eyes would close, and the hands were there, at my mouth, pulling it open, tearing it from my face. Pulling out the cry before I could let it into the air.
—Is that you?
It was dark. Pitch dark.
—Was that you?
It was the woman, Missis O’Kelly. I knew where I was and where I’d fallen asleep.
—Did you make that noise? she asked.
—I must have.
—It sounded like you were being strangled.
A car went past. I could make out curtains, a wardrobe.
—I was, I said.
I wasn’t convinced I was awake. The dreams had become more real than the waking hours. They never gave up. I felt my face for the blood. I was still gasping, appalled; my chest wasn’t there. I was up on an elbow. I didn’t want to lie back down.
—Do me a favour, I said.—Turn on the light.
I felt her shift in the bed, and she groaned as she leaned to get to the light switch beside her. The room was there now, and I lay back.
—Sorry about this.
I closed my eyes. Shame pushed at the lids.
I felt her hand on my forehead. It wasn’t a shock; it wasn’t unwanted. Still, I moved from under it. It was too like the hands in the dream - the dreams - shrapnel that became iron fingers at my face and mouth, pinned me down and held and pulled till I dried and crumbled, but never enough to fall away from under the fingers.
—A nightmare? she said.
—Yeah.
—You’re alright now.
I said nothing, but I nodded.
—The bomb, she said.
It was the first time she’d mentioned the bomb.
—Yeah, I said.—The bomb.
—You poor thing.
Still, I kept my eyes closed. I wanted the light on but I didn’t want to see her looking at me.
—Would you like some water?
—No.
—I knew it was you.
I kept my eyes shut.
—When I saw it all in the paper.
Something had happened. She wasn’t interested in hiding any more. But I was: I couldn’t look at her.
—I knew all along, she said.
A finger poked my shoulder.
—I knew.
The time had come.
—Of course you fuckin’ knew, I said.—You knew it was me when I was cutting your fuckin’ grass. How many other Henry Smarts were you going to confuse me with, for fuck sake?
—Stop that.
—You knew—
I counted back the years, to the time I’d arrived.
—More than twenty fuckin’ years ago. And now you tell me you knew.
—Stop.
—For fuck sake.
It was strange, letting go of the temper with my eyes clamped shut. Shouting at someone I wouldn’t look at.
—All these fuckin’ years!
I was shouting straight at the wall and the bedroom window.
—More than forty, I said.—Jesus Christ, I’m seventy-four!
—You’re a teenager, she said.—Compared to me.
She’d always been older than me. She’d been my teacher, the lady up at the blackboard. I did the sums now. I was in bed with a woman of almost ninety.
I laughed. I still hadn’t opened my eyes. I burst my shite laughing. I heard her laughing too.
And I looked at her.
—You’re well preserved.
—I always was, she said.—Not like you.
—True, I said.—Why did you pretend?
—I wasn’t pretending, she said.—I was never pretending.
—You knew it was me.
—But it wasn’t me.
I said nothing. I was wearing her husband’s pyjamas.
We got up. I put the leg on. We went downstairs. I counted the steps. I looked at the streetlight, the way it coloured the ceiling in the hall. She bullied the kettle. We sat at the table.
—Well, she said.
—Well.
—Will I start?
—Go on.
—You remember, she said.—When you went under the train.
—Funny enough, I do.
—That train never stopped. It went on and on, you remember yourself the way they could be. And I couldn’t jump. Poor Séamus Louis had nearly gone under it with you. We couldn’t jump. A day and a night and another day. I never knew the name of the town where we finally got down off that blessed train. It wasn’t really a town. I don’t think it was ever a town. I can still see it. And feel it. The dirt all around us. And poor Séamus.
—What about Saoirse?
—Ah, she was grand. It was Séamus I was worried about.
She looked at me.
—Do you know about them?
—No.
—Oh God. This is terrible.
—They’re dead.
—No, she said.—Yes. Poor Séamus is dead. He died. Not then.
It wasn’t news; I’d known it, carried it.
—A year later, or so, she said.
—How?
—Everything, Henry. And nothing. A cold he couldn’t shake, God love him. Because he’d nothing left in him to shake. He just died.
—And Saoirse?
—She’s in America, Henry. I think.
—You said you had a daughter.
—That’s her.
—She’s mine too.
—I know. I should have told you. Sooner.
—But I was your fuckin’ gardener.
—And not a very good one, faith. I had to spend the rest of the week getting rid of the weeds you’d missed.
—That’s a fuckin’ lie.
—It is not, she said.—I haven’t heard a thing from Saoirse in years. I don’t know where she is.
—She’d be fifty-something.
—She would.
—But she’s alive.
—I think so. She never took to my husband. She couldn’t like him. It was hard. And she said all along you were alive.
—Well, she was right.
—Yes. I have an address but I don’t think she’s there now.
—Where?
—Chicago. She phoned me once, in 1964. But not since.
—I was here in 1964.
—I know.
—I was out there, cutting your grass.
—I know that, she said.—And I’m sorry. As sorry as I can be. But listen to me, Henry. We’ll have to stop this upstairs-downstairs business if we’re going to get anywhere.
—What the fuck is upstairs-downstairs business?
—It’s a programme on the television, she said.—The masters and the servants. It’s very good.
—She’s alive.
—I’d say so.
—You’d say so?
—She’s like me, she said.—I saw that the minute she left. She stood up without creaking and went ba
ck to the kettle, and kept talking while she worked.
—She’s a survivor.
—We all are.
—Except Séamus.
I cried.
She held my head against her old stomach. I cried into her dressing gown.
—I loved him.
—I know.
—I loved him.
—I know, I know. And you saved him.
—He died.
—Yes, she said.—But he saw you saving his life. Not many fathers get to do that.
—That’s just sentimental shite, I said.—That’s all that is.
—I know, she said.
She let go of my head.
—It was a long time ago.
—D’you have a photograph? I asked.
—No, she said.—I’ve nothing.
She went back across to the kettle and the breadboard.
—There was nothing, she said.—No keepsake. Just himself and the clothes he was in. And they were too worn to take off.
—Where?
—Kansas, she said.—Looking for you.
—I was in Kansas.
—It’s big.
—It fuckin’ is.
—He died on the side of the road, she said.—I’m ashamed to say that.
She sighed.
—But there you have it.
She put a teapot on the table, beside me.
—I don’t drink tea, I said.
—Who said it’s for you?
She walked back to the counter.
—I’ve only the instant coffee.
—What about the percolator over there?
I’d noticed it before, a big old silver American one.
—Too much effort, she said.—The instant will have to do you.
—Grand, I said.—You were looking for me.
—I was, of course. For years.
—I heard stories, I said.—And Wanted posters. Dark Rosaleen. Lady O’Shea.
—I knew you’d see them.
—I saw them alright. Too late.
—I heard about you too, Henry. I knew it was you. One-Leg O’Glick.
—We must have been close to each other.
—We must have been.
She was sitting now, beside me. Holding my arm.
—But then it stopped, she said.
—I knew he was dead. I felt it.
—I came home, she said.—I thought you would too.
—I did.
—Eventually.
—I thought you were dead.
—Our lives could have been very different.
—Yeah.
—But I have to tell you, Henry.
She patted my arm.
—I’ve no regrets.