Malarky

by Anakana Schofield

  I had two separate strategies for dealing with the two of them. Carefully I directed one away from the other, looping them past each other like a piece of wool on and off needles. I trained my eye close on any sign Jimmy was near Patsy’s son. I even examined the back and front of his trousers for evidence. Once I sniffed his socks, and after thought it ridiculous. I trailed that young man everywhere. Where I went, he went. The girls in my gang were delighted to have him laughing among them for he was great company. Sometimes they asked him how long he was staying. That was what we all longed to know. Just a short while, I told them. He has plans. I prayed he’d go, that the questions might stop.

  A few weeks after he came home I knew we had a problem, so I drove him to Ballina to the dole office. I had to get the car away from his father, and told him to go in and sign on, that he may as well have the few pound he was entitled to. If his father had known he would have been ripping. The collection of the dole each week provided me with another industrial challenge with the two of them. It had to be picked up on a Tuesday at Foxford Post Office, not the local one which had shut down to a few days a week despite the Conserve Our Rural Post Office Protest I went to. I was almost tempted to reignite a new protest to have the Post Office reopen again on a Tuesday so Jimmy could get his dole without all this inconvenience. Listen I wanted to tell those poxy An Post’rs, do you’ve any idea the pressure you are putting me under closing on a Tuesday. I’ve two grown men to co-ordinate here. It’s like trying to make sure a tank doesn’t run over an insect.

  There were impossible Tuesdays. I could not get Himself to surrender the car and we’d have to walk the four and a half miles back the road to the post office. It was a long walk when it was a windy rainy day, I tell ya, the two of us calling conversation above the bluster, trying to make out the other’s face, as the hair was blown from our heads. Now and again someone would stop and offer us a lift, but sure we couldn’t risk it, word would travel . . . I gave her and the young fella a lift into Foxford . . . and word would get back to him.

  Not at all we’d laugh to the driver. Sure we’re out for a walk, this is our exercise of the day. And they’d pass on and we’d stare lovingly at the departing back of the car and long to run and hop up on the bumper like sprightly eight-year-olds.

  If I knew then what I know now I would have enjoyed those walks and discussions. I would have poured all my questions into them, I would have cleared up every small aspect of my son that was a mystery. Even the elements he might not surrender.

  Other days to temper Himself, I would accompany my husband to the cattle auction. I think he liked company in the car and the way I was willing to disappear into Ballina to do the shopping, have my bowl of soup in the window of the place he’d urged me to frequent and the very window where Red the Twit had spotted and sought me out, while he would mingle with the men buying and selling their bullocks and heifers and what have you, even though he only came away with more depressing news about the prices.

  All the way home I would see the effect the prices were having on him and I mustered a great deal of sympathy towards my husband because it was certainly wearing him down and the situation with Jimmy and all its silence drained him too, yet he was clever my husband, knew better than to trouble me with it.

  See, I had had to leave the kitchen table now. The kitchen table was no longer the place where my assumptions could be made and weighed. I had to be out in the world with my husband in order to read him and know about him. Our whole world was suffering from daily interruptions that were very hard when I look back on it, they were awful hard. They finished off the lot of us.

  Grief wants to know if I ever knew why Jimmy came home the way he did.

  —Honestly I do not. I have no absolutes. I can tell you what I suspect.

  —Yes what is that?

  —I suspect he came home because he was furious with his small bit of money being stopped. But that wasn’t all of it. I think mebbe he came home because he knew he was never coming back.

  —On account of him joining the army?

  —I think it has little to do with the army and more to do with America. Maybe when he went there he knew he might never return.

  —There’s lots of young people come back these days though.

  —There is. But you don’t know my son. Look at the way he left sure!

  —How did he leave remind me?

  He upped and left like that with little warning. Came in the night before and asked could he pack a clean towel from the bathroom for the flight?

  —What flight? says I.

  —I am going to America tomorrow, he says, I’ve signed up for the army, I’ve been accepted and will go to a military training camp before they ship me out someplace.

  I had to sit down.

  —Come again I said.

  He repeated what he’d said.

  —How will you manage your lunch? I asked him. I’ll have to make you sandwiches for the plane.

  He smiled at me I always remember that smile. I wanted to whack him with a hard stick and tell him straight. For the love of God stop springing these things on me. Mainly I wondered what a military camp was, I hadn’t a clue.

  One of the main ways I kept the two of them apart those last few weeks was to take Jimmy out on walks when I knew his father would be about the house mooching and so on. We had lovely walks the two of us. We’d comment on how much mist or snow was on Nephin. We’d look at the clouds and laugh that rain was on the way when it was actually falling on our heads. We’d joke about the drought in these parts. I took advantage of our solitude to instruct him. I had to instruct him on fellas. I was worried he’d ruin himself. Be careful if you choose a fella, I told him. Try to chose someone who won’t go stale easy. Men are very difficult as they age.

  He nodded at me as if we had an understanding.

  On one of the walks he asked me what I regretted about my life.

  —Very little. I said. Very little. I have had a reasonable life. I knew where the next meal was coming from and I’m grateful for that. There are some things I would like to understand but fear I will never get to the bottom of them. I believe your father may have been carrying on with another for a while.

  —Impossible, Jimmy said. No woman would have him.

  —You’d be surprised it seems. He pressed and pleaded for every detail and I spared him few.

  She had approached me, some kind of evangelical outpouring to do with God but basically she told me he had put his hands on her and she’d come to confess.

  —I don’t believe it.

  Jimmy was disappointed I had not sought to verify her story.

  —Go back and ask her how he met her? And then confront him with it.

  —He’s an old man sure what would be the point. You should know.

  Jimmy announced again it was impossible and that perhaps the woman had lost her mind.

  —Men always think women have lost their minds I told him, I’d be very careful assuming that.

  —You should not assume what she says is true because . . .

  —Because what?

  —Because no woman would go near him. I promise you that.

  —I went near him.

  —You didn’t know any different.

  After that conversation on that walk the two men ceased exchanging any words. Jimmy acted as if his father did not live there anymore and his father simply moved outta the way as soon as Jimmy entered. It was over for the two of them ever sitting at the table together. It was over for the three of us in fact.

  The day Jimmy shipped out, I am ashamed to say with so little notice, he caught Bus Eireann from in front of the Post Office to Ballina and would change to catch another to Limerick for Shannon. I wasn’t happy about it, as I was driving him to the bus I plagued him with questions.

  —What are you going to do?

  —Will you have a gun?

  —What if you die?

  —Then I’ll be dead.

  —It’s too fas
t, I told him, it’s too fast for us to be used to such information.

  —Us? He snorted.

  —I only came home while I was waiting on my papers, he admitted.

  —I wished you’d told me.

  —What difference would it have made?

  I handed him a milky way, a can of fanta and the paper. God bless, I said.

  And my son was gone. Swallowed into the dirty windows of Bus Eireann. Not a great departure. Not the departure he deserved.

  I returned to an empty house. My husband so accustomed to dodging Jimmy, up and gone about his day.

  He’d be home one more time, he said. One more time before they shipped him out.

  Episode 9

  Discretion. Our Woman settles on a slow cooker of mutiny.

  All everything she plots while making jam and cleaning cupboards. In every sweep of crumbs to the floor, she feels herself nearer to victory. A pony, a Connemara, the future, all in a pony. She continues to chime on about the pony to Himself. Her husband looks blank but curious. Who is it she’s talking to about this horse stuff?

  —Ah people who know about these things.

  —Right. He says.

  Whenever he says right he’s never listening. That’s a fact.

  She enjoys that he cannot imagine she can conceive of such an idea alone. Since Red The Twit there’s nothing she cannot conceive of. But he’s right! There must be a voice of authority! She couldn’t carry out or command such wisdom alone! And she has the precise pairing in this operation, for there is the overdue matter of her odyssey, once firm, recently derailed by the return home of the bickering boy and daddy. Finally she’s back, she’s up, she’s flying, well more a bit of a canter, but he must rely on her for information. Act like she knows what he does not. She’s watched men do this. Pretend they’ve knowledge they’ve no more a whiff of and then hold forth as if they have, while everybody believes them. Bang the hammer and everyone will hear the sound.

  Himself is a man who cannot resist prolonging a plan, because it delays a decision and affords rumination and speculation. And lately his life has been spent speculating on the cattle in that chair and her providing the cup of tea to assist him. Even in cutting off Jimmy, he did it slowly, working up to it like withdrawing blood, took his time, slowly pulling the plunger out, ’til bam, needle out, cheque stopped. Nothing to swab the sting. She’s diverted what she can to Jimmy. Few chunks from the ESB bill, but it’ll never cover what he needs. And even then he sent it back by return post. I have it sorted mam is all he’ll say. I don’t need it. I don’t need your pity is what he’s saying. Jimmy thought she should have overthrown his father. That’s a fact.

  And now with Jimmy gone, plucked from her by a bunch of men in green with their tongues out hungry for his blood – she was looking for someone to blame and her gaze settled itself back on Himself.

  The public library is the place Our Woman goes to find out about acquiring a horse, for it’s full of information and people looking for a chat. A picture of a toothless flour handed man in Iran, whose name she cannot pronounce, a man she cannot say hello to, interests her instead more than the horses. Each and every time she comes to Ballina library, she visits this book as if next time she opens it the man in the picture will talk to her.

  Not much to boast of this library, but like the train comfortable as long as you get a seat. Four hours can pass in the company of a sniffing farmer or a factory worker, in on her tea break, to borrow the novels everyone wants to read. Except Our Woman. Plagued with query she is, yet when she sinks herself into the chair, her anxiety settles until she departs. It’s regretful she ever has to leave the library at all, many’s the day she’d like to stay put and be allowed to mould away to her own finality.

  Officially she’s here on the strict business of horse related procurement and pony knowledge, but drifts to books on Middle Eastern architecture instead. Her brain snuggling them intention-less. Nestling for a place to rest. Other library patrons wonder about her chosen books too. Since this is rural Mayo, people huff-to-ya, puff to-ya and comment: that a good buk is it? Usually they announce on the weather. It’s gone very cold they might say, like this has happened in the past 10 minutes unbeknownst to you. Sometimes they extend a quip about what you’re holding. Very often they complain about the state of the country. These are the welcome interruptions of rural life. You wouldn’t want people to leave you alone entirely as you might forget you are alive. Somedays it could pass over you entirely. A woman, the cousin of a woman, she hasn’t seen for a long time, asks after her: you often meet people you haven’t seen for a long time at the library, like they’re hiding away in here from you. And the inquiry about what she’s reading or the coughing, the sniffing or throat clearing of some one beside her and the odd beam that escapes across the table of what they call in the news these days foreign nationals. Folk who have done her much less harm than her own husband has.

  One of her fleeting Ballyhaunis Bacon moments has just scraped by her, when the pork of her husband’s action clouts her forcefully out of nowhere and she finds brief comfort in the thought of him, entering the factory to have his flesh separated from his bones for betraying her the way he has. Stood in a queue is often when such thoughts slap her.

  It’s sleets through her and is gone. They go these moments.

  She reminds herself, she’s up beside him now. Awakened and sat at a more accurate breakfast table tho’ it’s uncomfortable on her elbows and conscience.

  Today, opposite her, as she admired the photographs in The Land and People of Syria in the Portrait of Nations series, (She’d already read Libya and Nigeria) a young man, with dark skin, snatched a repeated gander over at the spine of her book. Our Woman obliged him, lifting it up on the table, so he can catch the title. Approach, she willed him, go on and approach.

  —You’re reading this book? Have you been in my country?

  For two full hours, she had sat, desperate to go to the toilet, pondering that incontinence can visit women as they age with a sneeze and the state of Bina’s kidneys, but not daring to lift from the seat lest he venture her way. There will be murder at the house, she’ll never have the dinner made in time and Himself’ll be in, hungry, looking for it.

  She shook her head, no, noh she hasn’t. Closed the book, but hastily he dropped beside her, put his hand out to take it. Opened it to a map, his thumb – and she noted he has a perfect thumb, a young thumb with a clean nail, no nicks to his cuticle

  – pressed along a river as he recited guttery towns, until he finds the one he’s after.

  —This is where I was born, the young smile. He is handsome, his eyes are bright, he was not born here in Ballina that was all she cared about.

  —Is that right? She could hear the language of inquiry return.

  For someone to have been born inside the book she’s reading, that’s worthwhile. That these tiny mapped blotches have as much significance to Syria as Shraheen or Cloghans have to the entire island of Ireland. She’d looked at this book many times on the shelf, but never dared touch it. There was something about the word Syria, always uttered in hostility and it has brought something decidedly softer along to her today.

  She peered again at that depressed thumb, it’s tiny pouch of browned flesh spread on that page, now she’s interested.

  She cannot believe this. She watched the clock, counted the minutes to see how long would he stay beside her. How long could she keep him from his actual life?

  He was lost in his story as he traced it in the book. Though fascinated by the manner in which his hands navigate the page, she contemplated his face. He was youngish. She needed youth. Youth was her way to understanding. Unfamiliar youth. It was kneeling right beside her. Patience, quiet now, she told herself, take care not to scare the living daylights of him, aging lady.

  And on he talked.

  Comfortable he talked.

  He talked as if he’d needed a chat for an awful long time, the words queued up to discharge out
of him. Stunned into silence by his company. Company that couldn’t last.

  Within two months I had moved to Al-Qunaitara. It’s famous for its fruit trees. And he continues his thumb-tracing-trajectory. In my ninth year my father had some problems. At 11, my mother died. I was sent to live with my aunt in the North and he found the spot, his voice ceased and somehow he became aware of the fluorescent lights and the cramp in his knee from kneeling and she noticed he was wearing a security guard uniform. Can he take the seat beside her? She flipped pages back.

  —It’s the people I like, she offered, I like imagining their lives. The weather looks hot. She lifted pages rapidly back to a green shirted man near the front cover: what’s this bread he’s selling?

  The book rotated diagonal, but his head shook. I don’t know. Some kind of . . . maybe the man is Assyrian. She agreed he looks like an Assyrian, she’d have agreed he looked like a man in the Texaco ad if this fella’d stop here alongside her. I think this bread is from the West, he said. The equivalent of O’Hara’s fruitcake or a scone, she thought. (Hannah, a woman in her gang, cleans their machinery in the local bakery each night ’til 2am.)

  There was a lull between them now that demanded the question: Why did you come to Ireland? Or what are you doing here? But she won’t delve into that bucket and opted to let such wondering dissolve into the carpet, where she placed her gaze. They sat, examining pictures, silent, together.

  Something in the carpeting of small town libraries absorbed her questions and wondering. She can’t deliver them. She caught his eye instead, said nothing, let him turn the page and they continued examining pictures, not speaking. He could be good, she thought. Very good. But how were they to get from bread and bakeries and Assyrians to the place Red the Twit and her husband dived.