by Colm Toibin
Soon, she learned that her mother, while making the farm over to Bill, had set aside a field and convinced Bill to construct goalposts at each end so that John could play hurling there. John rounded up enough locals to form a team and they found other teams to play against so that almost every evening there were games or practice sessions. Even spectators came, including Frances and Jim one evening, but the old woman herself was too frail to walk up the lane to see John playing.
Frances realized how deeply content she was that John had a large set of friends now and something to do in the evenings so that he would not, as she put it, get fed up listening to her.
FRANCES, while visiting her mother, watched one evening as John came in from a game. He was rushing to go back out again, with just time for a shower and a change of clothes. He barely looked at his grandmother.
‘John, sit down and talk to us,’ Frances said.
‘I have to go, Mammy, the others are waiting.’
He brusquely nodded to his grandmother as he left the room. When Frances looked across at her, she saw that the old woman was smiling.
‘He’ll be back later,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fast asleep when he comes in.’
She purred, as though the thought gave her great satisfaction.
BY THE TIME he returned home in late August, John had grown taller and fitter. He began to play hurling with his school team, where the talents he had developed over the summer as a midfielder were quickly recognized.
Frances had dutifully gone to watch her other children playing sport, anxiously waiting for the event to be over so she could go home. None of them ever excelled, or cared very much, but John that winter and spring trained every evening and played whenever he could with a view to making the county minor team.
John stood out on the pitch because he appeared never to run or tackle, but instead waited, remained apart. His father, who became excited about very little, could not be contained when John, unmarked, would find the ball coming his way and make a solo run to score a point, brushing off tackles with real bravery and skill, or, judging distances accurately, would lob the ball in a deliberate arc towards the mouth of the goal. It was clear to Frances that the spectators around her noticed him as much as his parents did. Although he was not selected for the minor team that season, he was told that he was being watched with keen interest by the selectors.
IN MAY, as the school year was coming to an end, John remarked casually that he, along with several of his friends, had filled in an application form for a job in the strawberry factory in the town for the summer months. However, Frances had put no further thought into it until he asked her one day for a lift into the town for an interview.
‘How long will the job last?’ she asked.
‘All summer,’ he said. ‘Or at least until August.’
‘What’s your grandmother going to do?’ Frances asked. ‘Only yesterday she was on the phone saying how much she was looking forward to June and your coming to stay. We were there two weeks ago and you heard her yourself.’
‘Why don’t we wait and see if I get the job?’
‘Why do you want to do the interview if you know you can’t take the job?’
‘Who says I can’t take the job?’
‘She’s old, John, she’s not going to last. Just do one more summer with her and I’ll make sure that you won’t have to do another if you don’t want to.’
‘Who says I don’t want to?’
She sighed.
‘God help the woman who marries you.’
*
JOHN ARRANGED for one of his friends to take him into the town for the interview, and a week later a note came from the manager of the factory saying that he could start in the second week of June. John left the letter on the breakfast table for them all to read. When Frances looked at it, she did not speak. She waited until he came back from school.
‘You can’t go to her every summer and then when she’s old and weak, decide you have better things to do.’
‘I haven’t decided that.’
‘I have decided you are going and that’s it. As soon as you get your holidays you are going to Williamstown, so you can start getting ready.’
‘What am I going to tell the team?’
‘That you’ll be back in September.’
‘If I stayed, I could get on the minor team.’
‘You can hurl all summer in the field your grandmother set aside for you. And keep in mind that it might be her last summer and she has been very good to you. So you can pack your bags now.’
For the next few days he did not speak to her, and thus she knew that he had accepted his fate and would go to Williamstown. Over the previous few months Frances had conspired with her mother to get John a provisional driving licence, finding his birth certificate and a photograph and forging his signature and then keeping the arrival of the licence a secret. John’s grandmother had paid Bill for the old car when he was buying a new one. She was going to give it to John for the summer and allow him and his siblings to use it thereafter.
John’s mood in the car was so downcast and sullen that Frances was tempted to tell him what was in store, but she resisted. He would never be as silent and withdrawn as this with anyone else, but she did not mind. Her job was to deposit him at Williamstown. She would be happy when she drove away, leaving him there for the summer.
HER MOTHER, she saw when she arrived, was walking with the help of a stick. Although she had had her hair done and was wearing a colourful dress, it was clear to Frances that she was ill. Her mother noticed Frances watching her and looked back defiantly, as though daring her to mention her health. All her energy was being used to surprise John, first with the driving licence and then with the keys of the car.
‘Bill says you can drive perfectly,’ she said. ‘So you can go all over the county now in this. It’s old, but it flies along.’
John said nothing, eyeing Frances and then his grandmother gravely.
‘Did you know about this?’ he asked Frances.
‘I’m the one who forged the signature,’ she said.
‘But I paid for it,’ his grandmother interrupted. ‘Make sure he knows that.’
By something in her voice and her face Frances could tell that she was in pain. She stood out of the way as John started the car and drove down the hill away from his grandmother’s house and turned and approached them again.
‘Oh, he’s a great driver,’ his grandmother said.
John took his bags from his mother’s car. As Frances left them, they were both still looking at John’s new acquisition. Frances loved John for not giving his grandmother the slightest hint of his unwillingness to stay with her all summer, but as she waved at him before she drove away, he gave her a look which suggested that he would not forgive her for a long time.
OVER THE next month she heard various reports about John’s driving, including his travelling the forty miles to the town for a hurling match and not calling to see his family. Despite his consistent play, she was told, he had still not been selected for the minor team. She was glad that he had turned up for the match and played, thus his failure to make the team could not be blamed on her.
It was a beautiful summer. Each year, she and a group of women from the golf club took one day out to go to Rosslare Strand for a long and leisurely lunch at Kelly’s Hotel after a morning’s golf. If the weather were good enough, they spent the afternoon on the beach.
They had finished the first course before she noticed John and her mother at a corner table in the hotel restaurant; they were sixty miles from home. John had his back to the room and Frances realized that her mother’s sight was too poor for her to be able to see them. Since none of her friends knew her mother, she decided not to mention their presence, to continue her own lunch without interrupting her son and his grandmother. Nonetheless, she could not, as the meal went on, help noticing that her mother’s voice was louder than any other in the restaurant. John’s voice was loud too, raise
d so that the old woman could hear him.
Her mother began to laugh as one or two of Frances’s party turned and looked at her. Frances watched as John stood up and, taking his white linen napkin in his hand, began playfully and lightly to brush against the old woman’s head with it, as though he were assaulting her, making her laugh until she began to cough loudly, unable seemingly to catch her breath. By the time John returned to his seat, her gasping for breath had made the whole restaurant pay attention and caused comment among Frances’s group.
On their way out John and his grandmother saw her, and as they approached she explained to her friends that, although she had seen them all along, she had decided to leave her party in peace for the meal. She noticed that a number of them seemed embarrassed at the comments they had made.
‘You were making so much noise,’ she said to them, ‘that I pretended I wasn’t related to you at all.’
‘We’re out on a spree, Frances,’ her mother said, and then greeted each person at the table as she was introduced to them. John nodded politely, but stood back and said nothing.
‘And so far from home,’ Frances said. ‘Are you thinking of getting the ferry?’
‘We’d be well able to,’ his mother said. ‘And why wouldn’t we be? He’s the best driver in Ireland.’
Frances took in her mother’s summer dress, all white with a pattern of roses, and her light pink cardigan. Her mother, she saw, was wearing make-up, but there was something strained about her appearance, emphasized now by her cheerfulness, manifested in the way her mouth hung open when she was not speaking and a sort of deadness in her eyes. There was a moment’s silence between them when her mother seemed aware that Frances was examining her face.
‘Well, it was a great surprise to see you,’ Frances said, quickly filling the silence.
‘We’ve been all over the country,’ her mother said. ‘And we’re going over to Kilmore Quay now. And with the help of God we’ll meet no one else we know. Isn’t that right, John? We were planning to have a day out to ourselves. But it’s nice to see you all the same, Frances.’
John glanced at his mother uncomfortably. It was clear that he wished his grandmother would stop talking. As she was turning to go, leaning heavily on her walking stick, the old woman addressed the table.
‘I hope now you are all as lucky as I am, having a grandson as handsome and helpful in your old age.’
Frances saw several of her friends looking at John, whose head was now bowed.
‘It must be the sea air has you in such good form,’ Frances said.
‘That’s right, Frances.’ Her mother turned back towards the table. ‘It’s the sea air. And a good driver. But don’t say anything else now, you’re only detaining us.’
She reached for John’s arm as she said a final goodbye to them; she leaned on him and on her stick as the two of them slowly left the hotel restaurant.
THE OLD WOMAN died in the winter, barely surviving Christmas and lingering into the New Year, trying bravely to eat and drink what she could before she sank too low to touch food. In the two or three weeks when it was known that she would not live long, her children, now in their fifties, came and went, and a local nurse, home from England, spent much of the day in the house.
Frances brought John to see her a few times in the company of one or other of his siblings. She thought as the days passed that he might like to spend time alone with his grandmother, but she did not want to spell this out in case he thought she was putting pressure on him. Instead, she tried to ensure that he could have time with her if he wanted. She was certain every time she came that the old woman was looking out for John, waiting for him, but she noticed too that John always waited until someone else was going into the sick room and that he held back as his grandmother’s eyes lit on him.
Her mother during those weeks was afraid. Despite her years of praying and her reading of theology, despite her age, she struggled now to add these extra days to her life. In her last week, she was alert and restless. She was never for one moment left alone.
She died late on a Friday evening, her breath coming in great gasps followed by unearthly silence until the gasping ended and the silence held. Those in the room were afraid to move, afraid to meet one another’s eyes. None of them wanted to break the spell. Frances watched quietly as her mother lay still, all the life gone out of her.
When she was washed and laid out, they discussed who among them was the least tired, who would be most able to keep vigil through the night with the old woman’s body, which would not be put into a coffin and brought to the church until Sunday.
On Saturday morning, Frances and her sisters and brothers decided that the grandchildren, some of whom were already arriving for the funeral, would sit with the body in the candlelit room for all of Saturday night and then on Sunday morning.
When John came to the house wearing a suit and tie, Frances went upstairs with him; she remained by the door as he blessed himself and knelt by his grandmother’s bed, touching her cold hands and her forehead as he stood up. Frances waited for him on the landing.
‘We’re all wrecked, John,’ she said. ‘We’re going to ask the children to sit with her tonight. I thought you’d like to do it as a way of saying goodbye to her.’
‘What about the others?’ John asked.
‘Some of them will sit with her too, but none of them was as close to her as you were.’
He said nothing for a moment. They began to walk down the stairs together.
‘Sit with her?’ he asked.
‘It’s only one night, John.’
‘Have I not done enough?’ he asked as they reached the hallway.
Frances thought he was going to cry.
‘You were very close,’ she said.
‘Have I not done enough?’ he asked again. ‘Will you answer me that?’
He turned and walked out onto the road. Frances thought, as she watched him through the window, that he was about to burst into tears and wished to be away from her and from the people who were calling to express their condolences. But when she was able to see his face clearly as he stood outside, she noticed a new toughness in him, a look of pure determination. She decided that she would not argue with him or approach him again until the funeral was over.
She remained at the window observing him as he shook hands with one of the neighbours; the expression on his face was serious and formal like an adult’s. She had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. Upstairs, the old woman who had wanted him so badly from the day he was born lay dead. Frances did not know whether her going was the lifting of a burden for John or a loss which he could not contemplate. The more she looked at him the more she realized that at this moment she did not herself know the difference. Suddenly John glanced at the window and saw her watching him. He shrugged as if to say that he would give nothing away, she could look at him as long as she liked.
A Long Winter
1
EVEN AS the days grew darker, the wind was mild. Miquel watched from the bedroom window as his father and Jordi walked along the lane which ran from the lower fields up to the barn. They were both in shirtsleeves as though it were a summer’s day.
‘We’ll have no winter this year,’ his father had said over dinner the previous evening, ‘the priests have announced it as our reward for constant prayer and kindness to our neighbours.’
Miquel had managed a laugh to please his father, a role normally played by Jordi. But Jordi and their mother had remained silent. Jordi seldom spoke now and responded with hardly even a gesture if anyone said a word to him. On Saturday he would be taken to La Seu for a special haircut and be gone by Tuesday to do his military service. He would be away for two years.
A week earlier, when the final summons arrived, Jordi had asked Miquel what it was like, travelling by lorry to Lérida, being handed a uniform, spending the night in a barracks like a prisoner, eating their food, and travelling by train to Zaragoza or Madrid or Valladolid, wherever they
decided to billet you.
‘You’ve just described it,’ Miquel said.
‘Yes, but what’s it like?’ Jordi asked.
Miquel shrugged and held Jordi’s gaze; there was nothing to be said about it. It was not worth remembering or commenting on. Without realizing, he had let his mind wander over certain details from his own two years in uniform, but he stopped himself suddenly when he saw that Jordi had become frightened.
Jordi, who seemed to spend most of his last days at home petting his dog Clua or playing with him, had not spoken to Miquel since then but he did not seem angry with him or in a sulk with him; rather, he understood that since they could not speak easily about the ordeal ahead of him, then they had better not speak at all. Even in the bedroom they shared, as they undressed or prepared to turn off the light, neither of them said a word. Miquel was deeply aware that the other single bed in the small room would soon be empty. He supposed that his mother would strip the sheets from it and leave the mattress bare during his brother’s absence.
More than with fear or hunger or constant discomfort, he associated his years of military service with dreams of home. In the early months, as he received useless training under the punishing sun, he wondered why he had never viewed his life with his family in the village as precious and fragile. He dreamed of cold dawns, being woken by his father to get up and come with him in the jeep to the uplands where the flocks of sheep were summering. He dreamed about Jordi, who loved his sleep, deciding whether or not he would come with them. He dreamed about his own bed, the familiar room, the sounds of night and morning, the scops owl near the window in summer, the creaking of the floorboards as his mother moved in the night, the bringing of the flocks down to the barns in the winter, the narrow street of the village full of their cries.
Every day he had planned his return, longed for it in detail, lived in the ordinary future where the smallest domestic detail – the sound of a jeep starting up, a chainsaw, a hunter’s gun or a dog’s bark – would signify that he had returned, that he had survived. He had imagined this homecoming in all its satisfying comfort and freedom so closely that he had put no thought into how soon Jordi’s turn would come, how soon his brother would have to submit himself to the humiliation of the haircut and the standing in the cold waiting for the lorry to take him to Lérida. Miquel knew how bad it would be for his brother, and it was as though some more vulnerable and innocent part of him were going to have the haircut, leaving an empty bed behind.