—Mam. I’ve something to tell ya.
A silence brewed that she swiftly interrupted. It might be his moment, but it was her moment too and she was going to have it her way.
—I know you’ve something to say to me, she began briskly, I’ve been expecting it. Indeed I’ve been waiting for it. It isn’t blind I am. I’ve a good strong feeling I know what it is. So we can make this easy. I’ll give you my response right now plain and simple and there’ll be no need for you to say it at all.
He nodded. Nervously. Good she liked him nervous.
—Fellas do have companions, she started.
He nodded affirmatively. Ha! She was right on the track. She wasn’t born yesterday. She’d let him have it.
—Lookit, Gerry and Joseph back the road there.
Less certain. Another short nod.
—You’re going to make life very difficult for yourself if you continue with it. I imagine you’ll have no wife.
He agreed quietly and politely.
She delivered her verdict in sleek, clipped sentences, like ham coming off the slicing machine.
—It’s not that I didn’t wonder. I want one thing understood. I’ll say it the once and you won’t hear it from me again. If there’s no way round it, don’t bring it home to me here ever. I can’t have it across my door. It’d kill yer father. But what you do is your business, d’ya hear. You can come anytime. But just you. And if there’s any of the girls having weddings or the like, you’ll come with a girl. I don’t care where you find her. I don’t care if you’ve to pay her. But for your father’s sake, you’ll be alone or with a girl.
She paused, briefly trying not to think of two of them holding hands. The flatness of two fellas against each other or them rubbing each other made her fierce uncomfortable. She wondered could two of them be together without mebbe touching each other. Finally, after a long pause between them, her speaking.
—I’ll see you get a little extra in the will on account of you spending your life alone. I’ll keep an extra cow for a few years to prepare for it.
He stood, smiled, and embraced her. You’re remarkable.
She brushed him off, telling him, Go way outta that, put on the kettle and make yourself useful.
Later when she was within, adding turf to the fire, he called out from the kitchen, Mam, I’m off.
She knew it then, she knew she’d lost him, she’d lost him in a whole new way and she hadn’t been prepared for the foreignness of this feeling. It didn’t agree with her at all.
Of course she worried tall that it was off to Patsy’s boy he was. If there was a way to separate them, she’d build a wall for the sake of it. She’d to steady herself into the chair as it came back to her again. She pulled the cushion, the strange one with off-colour ducks on it that one of the girls had embroidered for her and now she couldn’t recall who and she wanted to recall who because she wanted her mind cleared of what was rolling in to remind her of that night. It was Jimmy. All Jimmy. She couldn’t blame the other boy for he was the younger. If she’d turned away she could have saved herself, but she did not. Every time she saw a cup or glass of orange squash, it would come back to her. She was in it now.
It’s the time of the day when you cannot be sure of what you’re seeing. You might see a neighbour, think him one man, and when he approaches find him to be another. I catch movement in the next field and wonder of it. No one would be in that field at this hour of the day, for my husband’s beyond in the house and won’t head out for another hour. Jimmy has the car. I pull close to see what’s the person at over there.
It’s a young fella alright, he’s against the far wall where the field dips in a funny old way. He’s at an angle, bent over a medium-sized boulder of stone that’s embedded into the land there, the grass below eaten right under it by the goats. Something there, he has, mebbe coats it is, rolled up between his ribs and the stone. I crouch low where a length of briars there will shield me and shuffle along. Fella, he’s more of a boy, for his head lifts up a few times, and I’d know that boy, it’s Patsy’s boy Martin, I’d nearly be sure. And I see the other boy with him, who’s less of a boy and more of a young fella and I know that young fella anywhere because he’s my Jimmy. Maybe Patsy’s boy is stuck? Wait now ’til we see.
I’ve to scout along the way, tucked right down for fear they’ll see me and panic, so I keep down ’til I can get a better view.
Then I see it, the bareness.
Was he going to the toilet? That would be unusual. Is that why his trousers are down? The Lord save us he’ll catch his death: He’s out in the rain with his trousers down. He’s up to something. I don’t like it. They’re up to something. Hard to see. I must see. I must be sure.
For once she’s glad of the brambles and the height of them, and that her husband never gets round to tearing them away. And God again there it is, there’s the head on the bundle of jumper, it’s Patsy’s Martin, the boy must be two years younger than Jimmy, is he in 8th class or 9th class? But now she’s his face directly in view, a face registering something, whatever Jimmy is doing, the boy doesn’t shout out. She wonders if the boy, has he fallen, is Jimmy helping him? So she’s back from the briars, skirts along the wall, returned to her other angle. She’s to understand why are their trousers down if the fella is just stuck. She considers interrupting, but the poor face on the younger boy would take a stroke. Whatever they’re at, it’s taking a while. There’s a bit rustling and rummaging, a slow maneuvering. Jimmy’s hugging him with one of his hands, but the other is missing. Wherever it is, it must be below the waist.
Until no. Now it’s clearer, she can see exactly what they’re at: Her Jimmy, the boy she raised so well, her quiet caring Jimmy moves up and down on his tiptoes and both hands are at the boy’s hips, bringing himself to and fro a small bit, like he’s hunting for something lost in there. One glimpse confirms it, swift but unmistakable. There it is, two sets of hips, firmly interlocked, there’s only one place her son can be, he is inside that boy.
The shock takes her to a squat.
A sunken squat.
An utter of shock.
Before she moves quietly off, she takes another look. She has to see it again.
They’re still at the same malarky. It’s her son, her boy, and he’s shaking himself stronger against that young fella. He cannot bury himself deep enough in him. Flagrant; he’s got him by the hips, rattling in and out of them, almost like he’s steering a wheelbarrow that’s stuck on a stone, going no place.
Jimmy brought Patsy’s boy Martin back and offered him orange squash. My hand shook making it. I watched the two of them go out, they passed the kitchen window but stopped too soon, forgetting that single pane at the end where I could still see all. Jimmy kissed him goodbye and the boy squeezed his fist into Jimmy’s groin and laughed. There I have told you now. You have heard it now.
Oh and Patsy.
—Martin visits Jimmy often you know. I gave her the hook.
—Oh sure he’s awful fond of Jimmy, says Patsy, I’m glad of it. He’ll never go anywhere unless Jimmy is down. Otherwise he’s inside all the time with a long face on him. Martin’s clever, does ever so well at school. And boys can be such messers.
Patsy’s husband, a broad-cheeked man, missing so much of his hair, nature only left a band that folds delicately across his head, entered at that point from the fields, his windburnt skin gave him a glow. He hadn’t the dour quietness of my husband, instead he’s delighted to see me, perches on the edge of a chair, stacked with towels, refusing to let his wife remove them for not at all, he’s on his way out, and how’s she getting on and before she can reply, he’s onto Jimmy. How’s Jimmy doing in Dublin?
—He’s down, I said.
—Tell him to come and see us, the father insisted. Sure Martin will be glad to see him. We’ll all be glad. He’s a great lad.
How intimately our boys get along. I believe I may have spotted my son inside your son yesterday. But no, he’s up and out
, he’s cows to move and I am all thanks for the tea, you’ll have another, no, you will and no, I must carry on.
I left carrying more weariness than that with which I’d arrived. Not only had my son taken advantage of a boy, but a quiet boy, with a face as long as a month of Sundays. All terrible, all told terrible. The only thing left was to be shut of Jimmy for no one would believe it. Only that I saw it, and I could barely believe it.
She cannot bear Jimmy to touch her. He has been up a hole that nothing should go up. Only down, down, down. He’s done for. He must be gone from this country, this country where there is no forgiveness for such a thing.
Episode 3
The gang do not tell Our Woman that three of them are heading to the protests in Shannon.
Bina surprised them all and during the peaceful protest pulled a hammer from her handbag, charged one of the planes and gave it a few digs.
Our Woman saw her on the news.
—She never said she was going to do that.
—She did not.
—We had no idea.
The girls discussed why Bina had not told them she planned to do this.
—You’d have stopped me, Bina said.
—We would, they said.
To Our Woman, who saw the story on the news and recognized the back of Bina’s coat as they took the hammer from her, they only said, We didn’t tell you because we thought it would upset you what with Jimmy and the like.
—Not at all, not at all, she said quietly.
New territory. The territory of not upsetting the widow.
Episode 4
Get out and about a bit, my husband urged me, go in to town, have a look at the shops. I lived alone then with my husband. If you’re wondering I have three children, though now I have only two and no husband neither. No matter who called in to me, the loneliness inside my kitchen and my weary head would not abate. It was strange that. Strange like someone had thrown a cup of tea at the curtains that obscured my brain.
You’ve had enough I could have sworn they said that one time in the hospital when the doctor gave me a jab, I was certain they were putting me down like you would an old donkey. You’ve had enough, we’re going to let you go. But the nurse, when I looked at her, her lips weren’t moving.
—Go into town and have a look at the shops. Have a bowl of soup some place. It’ll do ya good.
It was the second time my husband instructed me that day. The shops, to the male, ever the solution to the glowering female, but in this instance they were no use whatsoever for unbinding me from my misery.
I could barely make out the colour of things, once inside I couldn’t find my way back out to the door, I would stand and stare at pillows or lamps, immobile for so long, eventually people asked was I ok and three times offered me a drink of water and a chair. But I commend my husband, his words about the bowl of soup hung about me and didn’t I take his advice and step into a place I never normally woulda gone near. The sort of place you might peer at, but you’d never have need in this lifetime to go in.
On the outside it had the look more of a pub than say a café, but it was the bar of a small bed and breakfast-type hotel. The woman at the bar had hair you might see on a shop dummy. Cut the same way for so long it would never change its shape. She and the place kept the form of the 1970s even though they were long gone and everything around the building had changed. They were like a tribute to it. Would you believe me if I told you, they reminded me of my wedding cake, but I sat hidden away inside there and my husband was right, it was quiet and it did me good. It did me snug, if you see what I mean.
Unfortunately, it was the reason I was so easy to find when Red the Twit came for me.
Our Woman lies in bed. Her skin feels as though it has been lit, beginning at the tip of her little finger, but her husband’s refusal to add a spoon of gasoline means it will be a slow burn, raising every centimetre of her flesh, scorching her East to West.
She peels back through the conversation, the homily, delivered by Red the Twit earlier that day in the window of that place she entered to escape from the world. Her ear on the pillow, facing away from him, and tears dribble and drip while she thinks on it. She swallows repeatedly to avoid sniffing for she does not want the turn of him, the what’s wrong with ye? Or what are you sniffing about?
You don’t know me, but I must talk to you. The woman, Red’s, approach, inside that place she’d gone to sit and think, she remembers first. Taken unawares she was when Red struck, watching a woman through the window on the other side of the street with a collection box for The Hospice, entranced by how generous the stop of people was. Then she’d felt it. The grip of her arm: the battiness of Red’s first words: I have a confession but before I make it, you must pray with me. Chipped nails (could there be anything more common on a woman?) meshed with her forearm and she could feel the trace of the salt pot against her wrist – not even a wriggle – the woman had her tight. And she intoned, did Red, an adapted version of Grace, usually delivered before sprouts or spuds, for what I am about to say I ask the Lord’s forgiveness. Bless Philomena – she used Our Woman’s first name – for what she is about to hear O Lord, and then Our Woman became nervous, very, very, nervous.
Not able to peg this apparition opposite her as a simple head case, nor a case of mistaken identity, for the red-nailed twit has used her full name and there is only one person who could have told her. Only Our Woman’s husband calls her by her full name. Nobody since 1956 has used it, other than him. She’s been Phil, but today’s she’s Philomena. Philomena, Our Woman, who braces for the gush of what Red the Twit is about to sell her.
Red began the best way, describing her communion with God.
Hear me out, for you’ll hear how I was touched by the hand of God, and I am here because he sent me. It was an ordinary Thursday, I had caught the 7 o’clock train from Ballina to Dublin, you know the one that has you in town by 11, and you’ve just to jog down to Henry St and the Jervis Centre and you can have a lovely lunch or go and visit someone in the hospital and then back down the Quays to Heuston, the traffic is awful and the pollution catches you in the throat, but as soon as you’re on the train like you know, a cup of tea from the cart and all’s well like you know. On this day I have no idea why or what took me that bit further down to Capel Street, I always used to be afraid you know, I’d get mugged or beaten if I went that far down, but something pulled me there and I can tell ya, hand on my heart, I won’t tell you a lie, it was the hand of God. I was pushed by his palm. She paused, lifted the manky tea cup full of water, took a swig, and returned her hand to Our Woman’s forearm. Have you ever had that happen?
Our Woman confirms she has not.
Well please God you will. And I walked down there, imagine, I’d never put a foot on that street in all me life, and I passed the sofa shop, nothing, and I love sofas, but nothing and on a Polish food place, Polish Skelpi . . . you know phone card posters on the window do you know the place?
Our Woman confirms again she does not know the place with Polish phone cards. Nie do Polski Skelpi.
And on and on I walked for I was worried, the anxiety lifted in me as I passed Naughty Knickers, it almost had me off me feet and there was a good reason why but I had to go on and then, at the door, it came again, try as I might I could not go past, not able, would you believe my feet would not move, I swear to Jesus it was paralysis. I began to call out, my feet, my feet, my feet will not move and people stared and one woman asked: What’s wrong wit ye? But I turned to the building and saw the words Calvary Christian Centre and it was like walking inside the warmth of a hat, or the holy house on Achill. I was hot by the time I reached the door, my face flushed, I turned the handle and in I stepped. The first thing I remember is the blue door mat, blue what a strange colour for a door mat. I mean have you ever seen a blue door mat?
No, Our Woman confirmed, no blue doormat.
It was a small room, only a few wooden chairs and cheap carpet, but the bible was the
re and I sat into one of the wooden chairs and the voice came to me that I had to come and find you and admit. Taste and see that the Lord is good it said on the wall, and I realized the Lord was speaking to me of that what I had tasted and I must come and confess to you or I’d never be saved. And I can honestly say, and this I say for I hope it will make you feel better, I can honestly say that what I tasted did not taste good.
And she paused, which gave Our Woman opportunity to explore her face. For clues, for identity, for, well, anything. She was a woman hingeing her way towards her mid forties perhaps, she had years of advantage on Our Woman, but the smokes had crinkled her. Cheapened by a floral whiff and unfortunate nails and she must excuse herself a moment to have a cigarette outside, would she, Our Woman, join her?
No, no, Our Woman speaking, I’ll wait.
Our Woman remained at the table and thought, she thought hard. What news could this woman be bringing her? Why had she pinned her at this table?
And when she returned, her hand forced Our Woman’s forearm back to the table where she continued to pin her. She asked questions. Has she got a continental quilt or a clock radio? Our Woman admitted to neither. I’ve an electric blanket and a dring, dring wind up clock, why?
Well it’s just on this day that I am telling you about, the day that has forced me to come and find you, I had set out with the intention to buy both, probably at Argus for they’ve the best prices, do you’ve any idea how hard it was to find you, he doesn’t say much about you, he wouldn’t tell me anything when I told him I had to come, he said I was a messer and I wouldn’t do it and that you wouldn’t believe me. But you will believe me won’t you? You will or the good Lord would not have sent me to you.
For her own private reasons, Our Woman agreed yes, she would believe her. But, unusually for Our Woman, she interrupted. It wasn’t her usual polite interruption, which would’ve been I don’t mean to cut across you but, or Come here to me a minute there’s something I must ask you before I forget. Our Woman was direct.
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