The tip of Mr Horan’s cane moved in a straight line, horizontally, up and down, dividing Nebraska from South Dakota, Oregon from Idaho. It rapped the dates of admission to the Union, it traced the course of the long Mississippi, it touched the Rockies. You listened because you had to, stifling yawns of tedium, thankfully forgetting what the Louisiana Purchase was. The scissor-tailed flycatcher was the state bird of Oklahoma, the peony was the flower of Indiana. It was in Milwaukee that Donoghue became a candy king.
The tattered schoolroom cane picking out the facts had failed to create much of a reality. Bat Quinn’s second-hand information didn’t inspire Fina as it did John Michael. But America lived for both of them on the screen high up above the bar of the half-and-half or the one in John Michael’s kitchen. For two years before she died his mother had to be helped to go to bed and as often as she could Fina assisted. Afterwards she sat with John Michael in the kitchen, with tea and pink Mikado biscuits and the sound turned low. They watched America, they heard its voices. Its ballgame heroes battled, rigid in their padding and their helmets. Steam swirled above the night-time gratings of its city streets. Legs wide, eyes dead, its gangsters splayed their fingers on precinct walls.
Fina liked it when the doormen greeted the yellow cabs, and the quick talk in the skyscraper lifts, and Christmas in the stores. She liked the lone driver on the highway, music on his radio, the wayside gas station he drew up at, its attendant swatting flies. She liked the boy who drilled for oil too near the old-time ranch, everything changing because the gush of oil was what mattered now, the boy in the end a bigtime millionaire. College days, Thanksgiving, Robert E. Lee: she liked all that. ‘You want to?’ John Michael would whisper and Fina always nodded, never hesitating.
I got work in a laundry, the next letter said, slow in coming. Bat Quinn wagged his head in admiration when he heard. There were big bucks in the laundry business, no doubt about it. The President’s shirts would have to go to a laundry, and Bat Quinn twisted round on his barstool, exclaiming loudly that John Michael Gallagher was in charge of the shirts of the President of the United States. ‘I’ll tell you a thing, girl, you hit it lucky with John Michael Gallagher.’
Fina put all that in a letter, making a joke of it, as they would have in the past. It was a long letter, with bits of news saved up from the period when they’d been out of touch: O’Brien’s bread van breaking down, the boats unable to go out for four days, the widow dancing at Martin Shaul’s wake. She wondered if John Michael had an accent now, like Bat Quinn said Matt Cready acquired.
A Christmas card came in January and a fortnight later a letter with an address, 2a Beaver Street, a room that was big enough for both of them. I painted it out, John Michael wrote. I cleaned the windows. Ninety-one days had passed and the ones that were passing now had begun to lengthen. In Kinard a week ago Fina had chosen the material for her dress. She kept telling herself it wouldn’t be all that long before the first banns were called.
The morning the letter about the room came there was an iciness in the air when she walked on the strand, thinking about the banns and thinking about Beaver Street. She imagined a fire escape zig-zagging on an outside wall, a big metal structure she had seen in a film, windows opening on to it. She imagined a poor neighbourhood because that was what John Michael could afford, spindly trees struggling to grow along a sidewalk. She wouldn’t object to a poor neighbourhood, she knew he’d done his best.
The strand was empty that morning. The fishing boats were still out, there had been no one on the pier when she went by it. New shells were embedded in the clean, damp sand where she walked, washed by the waves that lapped softly over them. Once upon a time, so the story was told in the village, a woman had walked all the way to Galway, going after the man she loved. Missing John Michael more than ever, even though the time was shortening with every day, Fina understood that now. Slowly, she made her way back to the village, the room he had found for them more vivid in her consciousness than anything she saw.
*
She knew when her father called her. She had heard the ringing of the telephone above the clatter of voices in the bar, and her father’s surprise when he responded. ‘Well, b’the holy farmer! How are you at all?’ She pushed the glass she’d just filled across the counter. ‘Wait’ll I get Fina for you,’ she heard her father say, and when she picked the receiver up John Michael’s voice was there at once.
‘Hullo, Fina.’
He didn’t sound distant, only unusual, because in all the time of their friendship they had never spoken on the telephone to one another.
‘John Michael!’
‘Did you get my letter, Fina? About the room?’
‘I got it yesterday.’
‘Are you OK, Fina?’
‘Oh, I am, I am. Are you, yourself?’ There wouldn’t be telephone calls, he’d said before he went, and she agreed: telephone calls would eat up what he earned. But hearing his voice was worth every penny they’d lose.
‘I’m good, Fina.’
‘It’s great to hear you.’
‘Listen, Fina, there’s a thing we have to think about.’ He paused for a second or two. ‘A difficulty about May, Fina.’
‘Difficulty?’
‘About coming back.’
He paused again, and then he had to repeat some of what he said because she couldn’t follow it. It was why he had phoned. Because he knew it would sound complicated, but actually it wasn’t: it was best he didn’t come back in May for the wedding. It was best because once you’d got to where he was now, once you’d got into steady work, it wasn’t easy to come and go. He shouldn’t be working at all, he said. Like hawks, he said they were.
‘You understand, Fina?’
She nodded in the darkened shop, where the telephone was. There was a smell ofbacon, and of stout and spirits drifting in from the other side of the half-and-half. The deep-freeze began to sound, registering its periodic intake of electricity. Chef Soups, a point-of-sale inducement read, close enough to discern, the rest of its message lost in the gloom.
‘If I was to come over I wouldn’t get back in again.’
It would be better to be married in America. It would be better if she came over and he stayed where he was. He asked her if she understood and she felt as if she were stumbling about, in some kind of a dream without sense in it, but even so she said she understood.
‘I think of you all the time, John Michael. I love you.’
‘It’s the same way with me. We’ll work something out. Only it’s different than we thought.’
‘Different?’
‘All the time you’re thinking would you be sent back.’
‘We’ll be married in America, John Michael.’
‘I think of you too, Fina. I love you too.’
They would work something out, he said again, and then there was the click of the receiver replaced. Fina wondered where he was, in what kind of room, and if he was still standing as she was, beside the telephone. Once there had been voices in the background. It would be half past four, still daylight there, and she wondered if he was at work in the laundry and if he’d taken a risk, using the phone like that.
‘How’s John Michael Gallagher?’ Bat Quinn asked, slouched in his corner, on the stool that over the years had become his own. In the dimly illuminated bar the expression on his face was as lost as the words on the Chef point-of-sale had been, but Fina could guess at what was there – the small eyes would be reflecting his excitement because all those miles away John Michael Gallagher had touched success.
‘He’s doing well, girl. Isn’t it grand for the pair of ye?’
By the door of the bar there was a game of twenty-one. The men John Michael had fished with were silent, as they often were. Fina’s father washed glasses at the sink.
‘He can’t come back for the wedding,’ Fina said to Bat Quinn. She moved closer to him, drawn to him because with his knowledge of America he would know about the anxiety that was worrying John M
ichael.
‘It’s understandable,’ Bat Quinn said.
The porter he was drinking was drained away, the glass edged toward her on the scrubbed surface of the bar. Fina refilled it and scooped up the coins that had been counted out.
‘It’s never as easy as they think,’ Bat Quinn said.
Chance had always played a part, ever since the Famine years, that first great exodus from the land, the ships called coffin ships. As often as the good side of it was there, so were misfortune and desperation and failure.
‘Never was easy, never will be, girl.’
‘Will they take it back?’ Fina’s mother wondered about the wedding-dress material. All but the yard she had begun to cut the arms out of was untouched. Scally wouldn’t return the full price because what was left would have to be sold as a remnant. You couldn’t expect the full price from a draper like Scally, but an agreement might be reached to make up for the disappointment. Fina’s mother had sat for a while not saying anything when she heard the news, and then she sighed and cheered up, for that was her way. She’d assumed at first that she’d finish the dress anyway, that Fina would need it when she married John Michael in America. But Fina explained it wouldn’t be that kind of wedding now.
‘They gave an amnesty a while back,’ Fina’s father said. He remembered a figure, something like a hundred and twenty thousand Irish immigrants outside the system in New York. But it could be a while before there’d be an amnesty again. ‘Go easy now, Fina,’ he advised, not elaborating on that. ‘John Michael’ll fix something,’ her mother said.
Ten days later John Michael phoned again. He’d thought more about it, he said; and listening to him, Fina realized he wasn’t just talking about not coming home for the wedding.
‘Don’t you want me?’ she asked, meaning to add something to that, to ask if he’d changed his mind about her coming over. But she left it as she’d said it, and John Michael reassured her. It was just that he was wondering would it be too much for them, the uncertainty there’d be, the hole-in-corner existence; too much for any wife, was what he was wondering. It was all right for some young fellow on his own, who could scuttle around, dodging the bit of trouble. If she was there with him now she’d see what he meant, and Fina imagined that, being with him in the room with the clean windows and the freshly painted walls, all of it ready for her.
‘I’ll come back,’ John Michael said.
‘But you said –’
‘I’ll come back altogether. I’ll come back and we’ll stay where we are.’
She couldn’t say anything. She tried to, but the words kept becoming muddled before she got them out. John Michael said:
‘I love you, Fina. Isn’t it that that matters? The two of us loving one another?’
It was, she agreed. Of course it was.
‘I’ll work out the time I’m taken on for.’
They said goodbye. It was a shock for her, he said, and he was sorry. But it was better, no way it wasn’t better. Again he said he loved her, and then the line went dead.
It would be his uncle’s farm. She guessed that; it hadn’t been said. They’d pull the place together; his uncle would stay there with them until he died. John Michael would rather that than going on with the fishing. He’d prefer it to being beholden in the half-and-half.
‘There’s the odd one comes back all right,’ Bat Quinn said, having listened to Fina’s side of the telephone conversation.
Fina nodded, not saying anything, and that same week she went out to the farm. She took the Kinard bus and walked the last two miles from where it dropped her off. Sheepdogs barked when she turned in to the yard, but the barking was ignored by John Michael’s uncle, as if it didn’t matter to him that someone had come, as if all curiosity about visitors had long ago expired. Grass grew through the cobbles, a solitary hen pecked at the edge of a dung pile.
‘I was wondering how you were,’ Fina said in the kitchen, and the haggard countenance that the farm had defeated was lifted from a perusal of Ireland’s Own. Boiled potatoes had been tumbled out on to a newspaper, the skins of those eaten in a pile, peas left in a tin. A plate with a knife and fork on it was pushed to one side.
‘Sit down, Fina,’ the old man invited. ‘Wait till I make a cup of tea.’
Life seemed to return to him while he half filled a kettle and put it on a ring of his electric stove. He spooned tea into an unheated pot and set out cups and saucers, and milk in a milking can. He offered bread but Fina shook her head. He took a heel of butter from a safe on the dresser.
‘John Michael went over,’ he said.
‘Yes, he did. A while back.’
‘He’s settled so.’
‘He hasn’t the right papers,’ Fina said.
She watched while the butter was spread on a slice of bread, and sugar sprinkled over it. It wouldn’t take long to set the kitchen to rights. It wouldn’t take long to paint over the dingy ceiling, to take up the linoleum from the floor and burn it, to wash every cup and knife and fork, to scrub the grease from the wooden tabletop, to fix the taps that were hanging from the wall, to replace the filthy armchair.
‘You were never here before,’ the old man said, and led her upstairs to dank bedrooms, an image of Our Lady on the wall opposite each bed. A forgotten cat rushed, hissing, from a windowsill. Electric wire hung crookedly from a fallen-in ceiling, mould was grey on the faded flowers of wallpaper. Downstairs, ivy crept over panes of glass.
A digger would take out those rocks, Fina thought, surveying the fields. Half a day it would take with a digger. John Michael’s uncle said they’d be welcome if it was something they’d consider. When the wedding would be over, he said, when they’d have gathered themselves together.
‘It’s different why you’d go into exile these days,’ Bat Quinn said in the half-and-half. ‘A different approach you’d have to it.’
You made a choice for yourself now. The way the country was doing well, you could stay where you were or you could travel off. A different thing altogether from the old days, when you had no choice at all.
‘Yes,’ Fina said.
*
I went over to see the farm, she wrote. No way we wouldn’t be able to get it up and going. He’d be no trouble to us. Her mother finished the wedding dress. Fina imagined John Michael, any day now, walking in with the red holdall they’d bought together in Kinard. They’d bought her own at the same time, the same colour and size. She imagined going back with him to Scally’s and explaining to Scally that they wouldn’t want it now. John Michael would be better at that than she’d be.
Fina’s feelings bewildered her. She kept hoping that out of the blue the phone would ring and John Michael would say it was all right, that he’d wangled a work permit, that the boss he was working for had put a word in, that there’d been a further amnesty. But then another while would pass and there’d be no hope at all. John Michael would walk in and she’d be shy of him, the way she’d never been. She imagined herself on the farm as she used to imagine herself in the room John Michael had described, the silence of the fields instead of the noise on the streets and the yellow cabs flashing by. When she wondered if she still loved John Michael, she told herself not to be a fool. He was right when he said that it was loving one another that mattered. But then the confusion began again.
No phone call came. We’ll sort things out when I’m back, another letter said. We’ll have it done before the wedding. The banns had long ago been called. The half-and-half would be closed for the day. People had been invited to the house. If she had a number, she would telephone herself, Fina thought, not that she’d say anything about how she felt. She woke up in the middle of one night feeling afraid. In the dark she knew she didn’t love John Michael.
It’s only I’m ruining everything for you, she wrote when there was hardly time for him to receive the letter before he’d have to set out. I have it on my mind, John Michael. Alone on the strand, she had decided on that way of putting things. Five days late
r, two before he was due back, John Michael phoned. He’d got her letter, he said, and then he said he loved her.
‘I always will, Fina.’
He could tell: she heard it in his voice. Always quick on the uptake, always receptive of her emotions, even in a letter, even on the long-distance telephone, he knew more than she did herself.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ she said.
‘You’re uncertain.’
She began to say it wasn’t that, but she stumbled and hesitated. She wanted to cry.
‘You have to be guided by yourself, Fina. You’re doubtful about the wedding.’
She said what she had in her letter, that she was ruining things for him. ‘It wouldn’t be right to wait until you got here.’
‘Better to wait all the same,’ he said. ‘It’s not long.’
‘I don’t want you to come.’
‘You don’t love me, Fina?’
He asked that again when she didn’t reply.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
*
John Michael did not come back. For Fina, the pain lasted for the empty weeks that followed the day that had been set for the wedding, and then for all the summer. September was balmy, thirty days of a clear blue sky, the days gently slipping away as they shortened. In October a year had passed since the death of John Michael’s mother. By October John Michael’s scant letters didn’t come any more.
‘I’d say he’d walk in in the time ahead,’ Bat Quinn said on a night his intake had exceeded what he allowed himself. Squinting blearily up at Fina, he added, as if the two observations somehow belonged together: ‘Haven’t you the delicate way with you, pouring that stout, girl?’
A Bit on the Side Page 14