by Tony Black
“How long is it since your last confession, child?” he said again. Marti thought he would be in terrible trouble if he was caught going to the church and eating the little biscuit when he wasn’t supposed to even go inside, so he told the very old man a lie, “It was a long time ago.”
“All right so,” said the man, “and have ye done any bold things since then?”
“I have.” He heard his voice starting to crack when he spoke and he knew it was the sadness inside him. He knew he had done bold things because Aunt Catrin had said he was forever acting the giddy goat. Bringing the guards to the door was bold beyond belief and shouldn’t he be ashamed of the life of him when it was a sick mother he had in need of the love and comfort of her only son.
“What have ye done?” Marti didn’t know what to say and it was a very long time before the old man spoke again. “Have ye cursed?”
“I have,” said Marti.
“Uh-uh, and have ye been a bold boy for yeer mammy and daddy?”
Marti dropped his head so low that his chin rested on his chest and made it hard for him to speak properly. “I have.”
“What have ye done, child?”
Marti knew he had done lots of bold things lately but he didn’t care about the fire or the bike or the fighting or even bringing guards to the door. He only cared about the worst thing of all, the thing that made him fill with tears whenever he thought of it. “I have stolen money and made Mam come to Ireland and leave Dad behind in Australia.”
“Now, now … how did ye manage that, child?” The man’s voice had changed and he didn’t sound like the brothers at all now, thought Marti.
“I just did it. I am very bold … I took the money from Mam’s purse when she had the Black Dog and now I’ve no dad and I’m sad too.”
Marti started sobbing into his chest and he knew he was going to be the very worst of all the boys. He would look whiter than any of them and he would be kneeling at the prayers for longer than any other boy. He felt sad and he felt unhappy but he didn’t care about the white face or the prayers; he only cared about what he had done to his mam, and his dad, who he hadn’t seen for a very long time and who was all alone now.
The very old man on the other side of the little wooden box leaned forward and spoke in a whisper, “I’m sure your father, even though ye are separated by distance, still loves you a great deal.”
Marti felt the wetness in his eyes start to overflow and run down his cheeks. “I love him too,” he said. “C-can you give God a message, to tell Dad I love him, so he can come to Ireland and make Mam laugh and chase away the Black Dog, so she doesn’t need to go in the Cabbage Farm and leave me with Aunt Catrin?”
The man went very quiet and Marti wondered had he said something that you shouldn’t say in the church. There was no noise for a long time and then the very old man moved. There was a rustle noise like a curtain makes when it’s pulled and then he let out a long breath and said, “I shall pray for ye, my child. Go away and say three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers. God is great. God forgives ye.” Marti saw the very old man make the signs that were the cross before the little door and then he told Marti to go back and join the class of boys.
When Marti went out the light in the church hurt his eyes and then another boy went inside and Brother Declan moved his hand at a row of boys where Marti was to go and sit down. All the boys in the row were saying the Hail Marys and the Our Fathers. Some said the prayers in the Irish and some said them in English and Marti had to listen to the ones who said them in English and try to copy them.
When Marti was halfway through there was a hand placed on his shoulder and a voice said, “Driscol?” It was Brother Michael, and he looked very confused and maybe a bit angry too, thought Marti. “What are ye doing in here, Driscol?” he said.
“I was told by Brother Declan, Brother.”
“Ye were told, have ye taken the Mass?”
“I have, Brother,” said Marti.
“Ye have. Oh Lord.” Brother Michael’s big old grey eyebrows were forced so far to the top of his head that they looked like they might disappear entirely. Then he made the signs that were the cross himself and called over to Brother Declan, who was still at the little wooden box and pointing to boys to go and sit down.
“Yes, Brother,” said Brother Declan.
“Was it ye who told this boy to take the Mass today?” said Brother Michael.
“This boy, yes it was. I hope ye have confessed to the trying time you gave us all this morning, Driscol.”
“The confession too!” said Brother Michael, and then there was a great sigh and a look upwards and he made the signs that were the cross again, very quickly. “Brother Declan, this boy is from an agnostic family. Ye are only after making a heathen take the Holy Sacrament.”
“Oh,” said Brother Declan.
“Oh. Yes, oh,” said Brother Michael. “I will have a fine time explaining this to his mother, will I not. It’s wasted at Saint Joseph’s ye are, Brother Declan, shouldn’t ye be on the missions in Africa!”
23
In the middle of Kilmora the water fountain and the cross stood where they had always been. All of the village’s roads and streets ran into or around the two granite landmarks and if there was a manoeuvre or an errand to be performed it would be done in full view of them or not at all. Joey remembered the dread and fear he had felt passing by them in his final days in Kilmora. There was always a group of crones in shawls and headscarves, clucking away like proud hens, at their vantage point. The group of them would gather to pass judgement on the village’s affairs and Joey knew himself and Shauna were never far from their lips.
As he approached Joey saw the water fountain and the cross had only one slender figure to keep them company. He recognised the man with his head turned close to his shoulder in an unnatural pose, trying to focus on him. When Joey put down his bag and stood before the man he thought it was as if the old raw order of the place had been defeated by this one slight figure alone.
“Joey Driscol, ye old dog,” said the man. “Sure I thought it was yourself.” It was Old Nelson with the one eye from Gleesons Bakery.
“God above, tis yourself,” said Joey.
“The very same. How are ye?”
“Ah well, I could complain, but sure who would listen?”
“You look well enough.” Old Nelson ran his one eye over the length of Joey, his teeth like tiny fossils stuck out from his wide grin. “Back from Australia, are ye?”
“I am so.”
Old Nelson’s look suddenly changed. “Ah sure, will be the sad business of yeer father brings ye back, is it?”
“My father … God no. What sad business is this?”
Old Nelson’s one eye widened and the black patch on his other twitched upwards. “Ah … well, eh … I only hear he isn’t keeping so well these days.”
“Oh,” said Joey. Talk of his father’s health, sick or otherwise, held no interest for him. Old Nelson seemed to sense Joey’s unease and quickly changed subject. “Are ye still with the books?”
“The books … God no.”
“I don’t believe it. Always with the books ye were, a terror for the books ye were. There goes Joey Driscol with another book, tis some library he must have in that head of his, I used to say at Gleesons.”
“Ah, tis a long time since I picked up a book.” Joey could still remember the power of books Old Nelson had handed him in his days at Gleesons Bakery, the heavy linen covers and the yellowed pages that he had thought smelled of knowledge. He had loved the books. There were no books in his father’s home and the ones Old Nelson shared with him made him feel special. Joey didn’t think he had even said goodbye to Old Nelson before he left for Australia with Shauna, it all happened so fast. To see the old man now made Joey wish he had said goodbye and thanked him for the books but it also made him feel like he had let him down badly.
“Tis a shame … and the studies will be by with as well, I suppose,” said Old Nelson.
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“Before they got started, they were over.” Joey realised Old Nelson knew nothing about Trinity. “… Didn’t the Bishop say it would only give me notions. I don’t think they wanted the likes of me cluttering up the place.”
Old Nelson shook his head. “Tis a terrible shame – doesn’t life have a way of wringing the passions out of a man … and others yet simply walk away from theirs.”
Joey tried to look at Old Nelson but his gaze dropped. He had no response for him. “And you? Still with Gleesons, I suppose,” he said.
“Ah no, I’m long passed my working days, but sure wasn’t it a changed place entirely since it was sold to the Yanks. Tis process this and process that. They make them wash their hands a dozen times a day in there now … and wear a hairnet, would ye believe it? I bet ye never would.”
“So it’s sold,” said Joey. He knew he would need to find work soon and if there were new owners about the place his long walk away in shame might be forgotten entirely. “Do they need men?”
“Ah tis desperate for more they are, sure they run the place on teenagers and old women since the likes of ye took off for foreign shores.” Old Nelson pushed back his hat.
“Sounds like there’s been some mighty changes about the place,” said Joey. “I like the sound of my chances.”
“Ah tis changed days indeed, Joey … way better than when Gleeson himself run it to impress the Bishop, the gicker-licker that he was. There’s none of that now. The bakery is very egalitarian in its desperation for good workers.”
Old Nelson tipped his hat again and got into a stride. “I’ll leave ye to it, Joey,” he said, “sure, I bet ye have a power of things to do about the place. Good luck and God bless ye.”
Old Nelson doddered as he went. He was an old man but a happy one, thought Joey, happier now than the days when he stoked the ovens at Gleesons Bakery. It was quite a turnaround – wasn’t Kilmora shaping up to be full of surprises, he thought.
He crossed the road to a building with a guesthouse sign swinging out front. The owner, Mrs O’Shea, was eighty if she was a day and walked with a stick about the place. Her hair was a white cloud that floated above her head and she spoke with a soft voice, giggling like a schoolgirl when Joey made attempts at humour. She had moved from Mayo to be near her sister, who had packed up and retired to Kilmora after just one weekend’s visit. Joey knew neither of them but thought Mrs O’Shea was a real improvement on the folk he remembered from when he was last in the place.
“So, do ye have any room at the inn?” he said.
“Ah, sure there is room but no inn,” said Mrs O’Shea, and there was a giggle from her.
“Ah that’s fine … sure, I have no plans to drink on this visit.”
“Is it the one room, or a double?”
Joey fidgeted and looked at his shoes. “Ah, just the one.” Jaysus, wouldn’t the tongues wag at that, he thought. He was glad Mrs O’Shea was a stranger with no call to ask where his wife was.
When he dropped off his bags in the tidy little room Joey knew he had no time to spend admiring the comforts of the place. He quickly walked back downstairs, where Mrs O’Shea was padding about with her walking stick by the front door. “Back out so soon? I think there’s a spit of rain coming,” she said. “Will ye take an umbrella?”
“Thanks,” said Joey. He gave her the best yard-wide smile he could muster. “You’re too kind, really ye are.”
The rain started as soon as he stepped out of the door and he raised the umbrella and huddled beneath, pulling it down to hide his face whenever anyone approached. Wasn’t it a terrible reddener to be back in Kilmora, he thought. Memories jumped out at him with every step. They weren’t all bad memories, some were good ones. In happier times he could have seen himself walking the streets with Marti, pointing out where he learned to go a bike, where he got his first comic, the trees he climbed as a boy and still had his name carved in them.
There were trees he had carved Shauna’s name in too, alongside his own, and Joey remembered them yet, where they were and when he had hacked away at their bark with a penknife. He could remember the places he and Shauna had gone to be alone as youngsters, the parks and the benches, where they had laughed and joked and kissed into the night. He could hear Shauna’s voice calling him across the street, could see her waving to him, full of smiles for him, her long black hair flowing behind her.
The first time he asked her to come out with him Joey had ran up the main street of Kilmora looking for people to tell. He was full of handshakes and hearty smiles for everyone he met and told them all his news: he would be stepping out with the girl of his dreams. He couldn’t have been happier if it was a movie star. A young child with golden pigtails in her hair had pointed at Joey and he looked to hear her ask her mother who that man was, the one who loves everyone, she had said. She looked lovely when she said it, all smiles herself. She had got it right as well. Wasn’t the world a grand place, he thought.
On the night of their first date, Shauna had done most of the talking. He was so nervous he didn’t know what to say. They had walked around Kilmora, sitting under bus shelters when the rain came down, and after a while she took his hand. It was the greatest feeling, thought Joey. Her hand felt so soft next to his that had been toughened by carrying the coarse and heavy sacks of flower around Gleesons. He felt like a giant with her, and walking through the village he hoped there would be lifter boys galore spotting him just striding about with Shauna, the pair of them hand in hand.
He felt so proud that he didn’t want the night to end, even though he knew it had to. They went to get chips for the road home and giggled at a drunk old woman who filled the chipper with songs from Ireland’s sad history. She carried a rose she had plucked from a garden and when she saw Shauna with Joey she stopped singing and approached them. The old woman handed the rose over to Shauna and touched the side of her face, then she said, “You can tell when they’re in love, really in love, so ye can.”
Joey had felt embarrassed and looked away, but Shauna thought it was all so sad.
“She looked close to tears, didn’t ye think?” said Shauna when the old woman went.
“She looked fluthered.”
“Ah go way, Joey, she was sweet … when she spoke it was like she was thinking of a lost love.” Shauna brought the rose up to her nose and smiled behind it at Joey. “Or maybe she was thinking her time for love was by.”
Shauna had laughed and Joey wondered why she never thought the old woman was being a silly drunk or having a cod with them. She carried the rose all the way home, laughing and smiling, and said she would put it away, pressed in a book and keep it forever. Joey had wondered why she would want to bother with it but later he tried to imagine it was all really true and that Shauna believed it. Later yet, years even, when Shauna had shown him the rose again and asked did he remember, it had only made him sad to look that far back and think about the way they once were.
They’d had some happy times together, sure they had, but hadn’t there been bitter times as well. The image he had of Shauna smiling behind the rose suddenly went. This was Kilmora, the place they had gone to the other side of the world to be away from. The place that had broken her. No matter how many good memories they had together there would always be the bad ones to blacken them all. Joey still had a picture in his mind from the time they were the talk of the place and Shauna couldn’t go out without crying in the street. He remembered when they were right outside the butcher’s shop, people lined up inside for the weekly cuts, old women in shawls and headscarves pointing and shaking heads at the pair of them. Emmet Driscol’s boy brought down a peg or two, they were saying, and his wild lass too; hadn’t they got what they deserved. It was lovely hurdling the job they had done on the pair of them, was it not, thought Joey.
How on God’s green earth could Shauna ever come back to this place? Were things so bad in Australia? Joey couldn’t focus his mind, his thoughts were everywhere. The time had come to confront his wife, t
o get to the bottom of this, find the truth and ask what he had ever done to deserve her taking his boy from him and making him come back to this place.
Joey lowered the umbrella, bared his face to the rain, and stared ahead at a house made of stone.
24
When Brother Michael took Marti home and banged on the door of the house made of stones all piled up on top of each other right to the roof nobody answered for a very long time and Marti wondered where was Mam, or Aunt Catrin even. Brother Michael said this was no use entirely and it was a journey for nothing through sheets of rain they had had, and then there was the sound of the key going in the door. When Mam opened up she was still wearing the baggy jamas and when they went inside there was no fire going and it was so cold Marti could see Brother Michael’s breath whenever he said a word.
“Tis like an icebox in here, Mrs Driscol. Have ye no housecoat?” he said. Mam shook her head and took one of the brother’s cigarettes. “Okay so,” he said, “we will have to get this fire lit I think. Marti, ye can pull out the grate there, save me old legs, which are a terrible affliction I have these later years.”
They got the fire started while Mam watched the rain out the window. She stared and stared like she was expecting a visitor and smoked her cigarette down to a tiny stump that looked like it might burn her fingers. When the fire was high enough Brother Michael told Marti to put on a clod of peat and then another, and soon the whole room was filled with the lovely smell of burning peat that would nip the eyes and make them water.
They sat in silence and stared at the fire for a while and Brother Michael said it was a rare and roaring fire which was a blessing indeed. Marti wondered when the brother would tell Mam about the Mass and the confession, but he didn’t look like he was going to tell her at all when all he would talk about was the fire and the grand heat it had brought to the place. Mam said nothing either and Marti knew it was the Black Dog keeping her quiet. Mam could spend days and days saying very little, but wasn’t it worse when she said nothing at all.