Who was he shouting at now? Mrs Lynch and the girls were at his house so it could only be Patrick. Nervously he went to knock, maybe the distraction would stop the shouting, but the door was off the latch and pushed in when he knocked. The scene in the narrow hallway made him want to run home. Patrick was lying on his back on the ground and Joe Lynch was about to hit him with a hurley he had raised over his head. The noise of Liam opening the door caused Joe to turn around and face him.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he roared at Liam. ‘Get the fuck out of my house now!’ His face was swollen and had cuts and gashes in various stages of healing as if he’d been in several fights; his clothes were dishevelled and filthy. He stank of stale porter and his greasy grey hair hung down over his collar, but the top of his head was shiny and bald.
Patrick took the opportunity to get up and grabbed the hurley from his father’s hands.
‘Jesus Christ, you little fu...’ he screamed in rage, bearing down once more on Patrick. He was not a big man, but he was wiry and strong and now he had Patrick by the throat against the wall. Liam acted without thinking. He picked up the hurley that Patrick had dropped and hit Joe Lynch as hard as he could on the head with it, just like Daddy had shown him when he wanted to get mileage out of the ball if he got a puck out in a match. The metal strip that banded the bottom of the stick caught on some skin and immediately blood pumped from his head. Joe registered shock and then slumped lifeless to the ground, the blood stain growing quickly on the threadbare carpet.
Both boys looked in stunned silence for what seemed like ages and then looked at each other.
‘Is...is he dead?’ Liam whispered.
‘I don’t know. I hope so, because if he’s not, we will be when he wakes up,’ Patrick replied, still in shock.
‘What are we going to do? What if your mam comes back?’ Liam was trying to think straight.
‘We should get a doctor. Do you know a doctor?’ Patrick asked.
‘How would I know a doctor? I know Dr Wells has a surgery up the road, but I only went to him once. We haven’t money for doctors and anyway we’re never really sick.’ Liam was starting to panic. ‘What about an ambulance?’
‘How do you get them to come? Doesn’t the doctor call them? We could get the guards.’ Patrick didn’t sound sure.
‘The guards,’ Liam was terrified, ‘but what if they think it was me, and he is dead then...’ The panic was rising.
‘Okay, okay. No guards. Let me think,’ he paused. ‘Father Aquinas. He’ll know what to do. He came back to your house after the funeral, but he’s saying late Mass this evening so he’s above in the monastery,’ Patrick sounded confident, and Liam agreed. The priest had been kind to them in the past so he might help them now. And he was good in a crisis, look how he handled Mrs Kinsella today. The other alternative was to run and get Mrs Lynch, but then she’d want to know what happened and everything...no, Father Aquinas was a better option. They ran out of the house and closed the front door, leaving Joe Lynch on the ground, possibly alive but also very possibly dead.
They ran up the hill and battered the door of the monastery. Father Xavier, principal of the secondary, opened it and looked in disgust at the two dishevelled boys before him. Everyone said he was horrible.
‘What on earth do you mean banging on the door like that..?’ he began indignantly, glaring at the pair in front of him. He was one of the priests that only liked the rich fellas.
‘We need to talk to Father Aquinas, please Father. It’s an emergency,’ Liam panted.
‘Father Aquinas is at prayer and cannot be disturbed,’ he answered imperiously and went to close the door. Patrick quickly placed his foot in the door to stop him. Father Xavier looked in horror at the audacity of the gesture and spoke coldly. ‘Remove your foot immediately or I will call the guards.’
As Patrick went to remove his foot, they heard the voice of Father Aquinas behind Father Xavier.
‘What’s going on?’ He opened the door wider. ‘Patrick? Liam? What in the name of the Lord is happening?’
‘These boys were attempting to force their way in here, Father Aquinas...’ Father Xavier began, his voice dripping contempt.
‘Thank you, Father Xavier, I’m sure they’re sorry for disturbing you. I’ll deal with this.’ He ushered them away from the door and followed them outside. He stared at the two of them for a moment and then said curtly, ‘Over there,’ indicating a bench in the monastery gardens, far enough away from the door so as not to be heard.
They blurted out the entire story, words tumbling over each other, finishing each other’s sentences, and eventually they stopped.
‘Are you telling me that your father is lying in your house in a pool of blood and that Liam Tobin is the cause?’
‘Yes, Father,’ they chorused miserably.
‘Right.’ He strode off in the direction of the gate, the boys following behind, jogging behind him to keep up until they reached the Lynches’ door.
Father Aquinas pushed the front door open with the two boys behind him. The hallway was empty. The hurley lay abandoned on the floor and the large bloodstain was darkening to black on the cheap old carpet.
‘Well, he’s not dead anyway. If someone had discovered him, the place would be swarming with guards by now,’ the priest said with a relieved sigh. ‘We better find him, though. He can’t have got far.’
They continued down the hill to the river until they spotted him on a bench beside the quay wall, holding something up to his head. As usual, Father Aquinas was right. Joe Lynch was sitting still, looking into the murky waters of the River Lee.
‘Stay here and keep quiet,’ the priest instructed Liam and Patrick. As he approached him, they ducked down behind a post-box just feet away from where they could see and hear everything.
‘Good evening, Mr Lynch,’ the priest greeted him as if it were perfectly normal for a bleeding drunk and a priest to have a chat. ‘That looks nasty, what happened to you?’
Even in this condition Joe Lynch was more reverential than he was with non-clergy members.
‘Hello, Father, I em...I...’ Patrick and Liam looked at each other. Maybe he forgot?
‘Well, you know what might just be the thing for that now? A medicinal drop of whiskey. You just rest yourself there, and I’ll be back in a moment.’
Joe Lynch did as he was told and stayed on the bench. The boys watched on in amazement as Father Aquinas, a pioneer of total abstinence, walked regally across the road, his soutane flapping around his ankles, to the Swan Bar and Lounge. He emerged moments later carrying a brown paper bag, which he brought back to the bench. Opening the bottle, he handed it to Joe.
‘Now then, that might take the edge off that pain and sure please God you’ll be feeling better in the morning.’
Leaving Joe Lynch a full bottle of the strongest whiskey money could buy, he walked back up the hill, gesturing that the boys should follow him. Once they were around the corner, he stopped, ‘Now, Patrick, go home and clean the carpet as best you can. Liam, you go home to your mother, she has enough to contend with at the moment. If anyone asks, just say you were with Patrick, which is the truth. Hopefully, if he drinks the full bottle, which I’m sure he will, your father won’t remember a thing about tonight or where he got the cut from by tomorrow. I know I don’t need to tell ye, but this never happened, all right? Now, goodnight to ye.’
He walked away from them, never once reprimanding them for their actions or mentioning the fact that their predicament meant he didn’t turn up for evening Mass.
‘Will it work, do you think?’ Liam asked Patrick.
‘I’d say so; he doesn’t usually have enough money for that much drink so it will probably make him forget everything. I hope it does, anyway, though what we’ll have to put up with all that inside him, I don’t want to think about.’
Liam thought before he spoke, ‘Is he often like that, y’know, the way he was earlier?’
&
nbsp; ‘Yeah. It’s not too bad if it’s me, or even Mam. It’s when Connie gets upset, that’s the worst. He wakes the baby with his roaring, but Connie is so scared of him. I hate him, I really do. I know it’s a sin and everything, but a bit of me was disappointed that he didn’t die tonight. I know we’d have been in desperate trouble and everything but at least he’d be gone and my Mam and me and the girls would have some peace for once.’
Liam didn’t know what to say. He’d give anything to have his father back and Patrick wanted his dead. Life seemed so unfair, that someone as nice as Daddy would be lying in the cold ground and someone as horrible and awful as Joe Lynch was walking around, not a bother on him, making people miserable.
Patrick went on, ‘It’s not fair, you know? You had a really nice Dad, one who didn’t drink or anything and he died, and my auld fella is a bastard and he’s still going strong.’
Liam looked at his friend. He didn’t usually curse, so to hear him using that word about his father was a shock. Still though, he echoed Liam’s own thoughts. And he was definitely right about Daddy. They walked back up the hill, going over everything that had happened.
‘Father Aquinas was great, wasn’t he?’ Liam said. ‘I hope he doesn’t get in trouble for not saying Mass.’
‘Yeah, especially if that long string of misery Xavier had to do it. He gives me the creeps. He’s always watching everything, y’know? He and Father Aquinas are as different as two people could be. Imagine we used to be so scared of him when we were small lads doing the communion. If someone would have told me that he would actually go into the pub and buy a bottle of whiskey for my da, just so that he’d forget what we did, I’d have said they were cracked.’ They were still marvelling at it as they walked in companionable silence back up the hill.
What a day, Liam thought. In a way, the madness with Joe Lynch took his mind off the fact that they had buried Daddy today—for a while, anyway. Eventually, they came to the corner. Liam’s house was at the end of the terrace, that’s why their yard was a bit bigger than the others on the terrace. Patrick’s was halfway up on the other side.
‘Night, Liam, and thanks…y’know, for everything. I’m glad you didn’t kill him for your sake, but the fact that you hit him with a hurley to save me…well, thanks.’ Patrick was kicking the kerb, eyes downward, clearly uncomfortable.
‘No bother, you’d have done the same for me. Night.’ Liam smiled as he opened the front door and leaned back against it. It felt good to have a best friend even if everything else was horrible.
Liam heard murmured conversation in the kitchen but decided to go up to bed. He hadn’t the energy for conversation; he just wanted his home to feel like home again. He doubted that it ever could be now that Daddy was never coming back to it. Did everything happen today? The funeral. Mrs Kinsella turning up. Hitting Joe Lynch with a hurley and leaving him for dead. And then Father Aquinas sorting it all out. Questions tumbled over themselves in his mind. He wished he could just switch it off like a radio, but it seemed like today was neverending. As he went up the stairs, Mammy opened the door into the kitchen.
‘Ah, Liam love, I was getting worried. I kept you some dinner.’
Liam sighed inwardly and came back down. He wasn’t hungry, but Mammy would only fret if he didn’t eat. Everyone but Mrs Lynch was gone. Patrick’s little sister was asleep on the chair by the stove with a coat over her, and the baby slept in a crib that Liam recognised as being from their attic. They were so young; Liam hated the thought of Joe Lynch hurting them.
‘I was with Patrick,’ he answered. He hated lying by omission, but Father Aquinas had told him to, so he felt it was probably all right this once.
‘Kate wanted to see you before she left, but she couldn’t find you. You look exhausted, pet,’ Mammy said wearily, placing a plate of food in front of him.
He began eating, tasting nothing. He’d totally forgotten about Kate. ‘Where’s Con?’ he asked.
‘He’s staying with your Uncle Willy for a while. It’s closer to his work so it’s easier.’
Liam knew the real reason Con wasn’t living at home anymore. The same reason Kate was gone back to England. He wanted to shout at them that what happened wasn’t Mammy’s fault. She loved Daddy with all her heart and she knew that he would never even look at another woman. She would give anything to have him here tonight, drinking cocoa and talking, but she would never have that again. He wished more than anything that he could make it better, but there was nothing he or anyone else could do.
Chapter 9
Liam walked in through the huge gates of St Bart’s College on that first morning feeling like a fraud. He half-expected someone to tap him on the shoulder and ask him what on earth he thought he was doing. Patrick was to meet him at the bottom of the road, but he sent a young fella off the street with a message to say he had to go in earlier for some reason so he’d see Liam there.
Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and the accents he heard were not like anything he was used to around his street. Mammy had said a lot of boys from the country, who had plans to join the priesthood, go to St Bart’s—it being a seminary. She was so busy fussing over him that morning he couldn’t wait to get out the door. Ever since she heard about the scholarship, she had been like a hen with an egg. Nothing would do but getting him a brand new uniform in town, a fountain pen, even a real leather satchel. He would never forget the look on her face when he told her the news. It was the first time she smiled in weeks but then almost immediately she broke down in tears, saying how proud Daddy would have been of him. She hugged him until he feared he’d suffocate and told him over and over how wonderful she thought he was.
She had a small sum, given to her by the factory as a gesture of goodwill after Daddy’s death, and she decided to spend it on getting Liam kitted out for school. He tried to tell her that because he was a scholarship boy there were uniforms available, ones other fellas were finished with, just like the books, but she vehemently refused to even entertain the idea. He was going to force the point but when he raised it, she got all emotional and started crying again.
‘Your father would have been so proud, Liam, so proud of you going off to the seminary. And without a word from anyone, you just went off and did it all by yourself. The least he would want is for me to spend a few bob on kitting you out properly so you’ll be the match of anyone going in there.’
He didn’t bother trying to explain that he couldn’t care less about new clothes and that no matter what she did, he would still remain a scholarship boy and therefore not the match of everyone. He thanked God once again for the opportunity and even more for allowing him to have the opportunity with Patrick. He wished he was beside him now as he made his way to the big hall where he had sorted books on the day his father’s body had come home from England.
That was two months earlier, but it felt much longer. He still cried most nights in bed, but he was at last accepting the reality that Daddy was never coming home. Now, when he woke, he knew he was dead and it was just him and Mammy. Kate was still in England and had written to say she was doing a line with an English lad. Mammy worried that he was a Protestant, but she didn’t dare ask. Things were very prickly with her and Kate and her infrequent letters home were factual but lacked any real affection for their mother. They were addressed to both Mammy and Liam. He hated reading them because of the look that came over Mammy’s face when she read about Kate’s new life in England. Con was still living with Uncle Willy. He’d got him a job in the new tyre factory, and he was spending all his spare time with Hilda. He came up for his tea every Friday, and he talked mostly to Liam about matches and things like that. He answered Mammy when she asked him questions but that was all. He said he was thinking of going to England with Hilda once she finished her bookkeeping exams. Kate said there was loads of money to be made over there and loads of craic to be had as well. In the past, he knew Mammy would have expressed horror and outrage that he would consider going
somewhere with a girl and not so much as an engagement ring between them, but she didn’t say such things now. It was as if she was grateful he called at all, and she didn’t dare give him an excuse to stop. Liam tried to talk to Con, to persuade him to be nicer to their mother, but he said he was so angry with her that he couldn’t forgive her. The best he could do was turn up for his tea every Friday and count the minutes till he could go. He didn’t actually say the last bit, but Liam knew it was what he felt.
The twins were both in the Civil Service now, both having passed the exams with flying colours, of course. They were offered positions in Cork but refused them at the last minute choosing instead to take jobs in Dublin. They were living in digs with a Mrs Finnegan in a place called Gardiner Street. They loved it. Molly was in the Department of the Taoiseach, and she said Mr Lynch was a gentleman, and even though he was very busy running the country, he had a word for everyone. The twins wrote to say that the Taoiseach remembered Daddy from his hurling days, and he sought Molly out when she started working to say he was sorry for her loss. Mammy and Daddy had great time for Jack Lynch, being a local man and a hurler, so that letter had cheered up Mammy a bit.
Annie worked in the Department of Justice and to hear her you’d swear it was she who was writing the new Criminal Justice Bill. She’d sicken you with the name dropping as if she mixed with barristers and solicitors her whole life. Mammy read their letters over and over, not because she was that interested in the Probation Act or what heads of state were visiting, but for a trace of affection from either of her daughters—some inkling that they were softening in their attitude towards her. There never was one, or an invitation to visit. Liam knew Mammy would have loved a trip to Dublin, or even to England to visit Kate, but such a trip was never suggested.
As they sat each night with a cup of tea or cocoa after dinner, his mother confided to Liam her hopes that one Friday Con would bring Hilda home, so that she could meet her properly. They met during the funeral, of course, but it wasn’t the same thing—that whole time was a blur. Liam suggested this to him, but he just said she worked late on Fridays. Liam was going to say it didn’t have to be a Friday, but he knew Con wouldn’t bring her home, not with things the way they were. Liam wondered if there was any way to encourage his siblings not to lay the blame for their father’s death on their mother, but he couldn’t think of anything. Daddy would have said that time is a great healer, so maybe it was just a case of waiting, but he hated the fact that Mammy felt so isolated and rejected, especially since it wasn’t her fault at all. Liam had to try, not for the first time, to quell the murderous thoughts he had about Mrs Kinsella. If this was anyone’s fault, then it was hers.
Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars Page 84