by Anne Griffin
‘But it’s not yours, Daddy,’ she said. A whisper in my ear, it was. Plain and simple. Her words had drifted up to me on the breeze that curved the grass in my direction.
‘It’s not theirs either, as it goes,’ I replied. But, it was no use. My daughter, as always, knew right from wrong.
‘But it still has one last job to do,’ came her final words on the matter. She smiled then rose and moved on, far down deep into the valley, until I could not see her any more.
Chapter Four
8.35 p.m.
Third Toast: to Noreen
Bottle of stout
There’s just me and Svetlana alone again. She’s taking the glasses out of the dishwasher. The clinking breaks the silence of us. Emily has gone to sort out proceedings below at the dinner. I’m getting a bit peckish myself.
‘Any chance of a toasted special, Svetlana?’
‘A toasted what?’
‘Special?’
She looks at me like I’ve just asked for it in Irish. ‘They’ll know what it is in the kitchen.’
‘I check,’ she says, looking a little bothered by it all and leaving through the bar door.
It’s back to just me and my reflection. Really, I wish it wasn’t there. Reminding me this night’s not even half over. Giving me that ‘Do you really think you’re up to this, Big Man?’ stare. I ignore him. What the feck does he know anyway?
‘They say yes, but twenty minutes.’ Svetlana returns to lay her elbows on the counter in front of me, like she’s worked here for years. ‘They do dinner now so very busy. OK? I order?’
‘Order away. And while you’re at it, I’ll have another of your finest bottles of stout.’
Stout of course always reminds me of Tony but it was my father who got me drinking the stuff in the first place. He wasn’t a big drinker, mind. The odd time he’d bring home a bottle if he felt his day deserved it. Even more rare was the occasion of a drink taken in a bar. Never this one, of course, even if it had been operating back then, my father would never have crossed its threshold. Hartigan’s, that was his watering hole.
‘I think we deserve it, son,’ he’d say, leading me over the bridge on the days the market had gone well. No further incentive was needed. I’d be by his side, smiling, working up a grand thirst.
‘This here beauty, son, always remember she’s fool’s gold.’
He’d watch the stout settle in the glass, eyeing it like a heifer that’s known for kicking. Putting off that first taste a little longer, he’d take out his pipe from his pocket and begin to pack the tobacco good and tight, his thumb pressing down into the bowl. And after, when he’d finally drink the first sip, he’d let out a sigh as if he’d battled winter winds all day and now stood at a blazing fire.
‘If ever you have money, son,’ he’d continue, ‘don’t indulge this jezebel. She’ll empty your pockets and make a drunken fool of you.’ He’d light up then and pull away at his pipe until a scattered orange glow peeped out from the darkness and he’d pap, pap, pap away for the duration.
Sermon over, I’d be free to drink in peace and watch Mrs Hartigan and whichever daughter might be around work at some pace, quenching the many thirsts of the winners and losers of the day. We didn’t talk with any of them. I loved to listen to their conversations, though. That’s what the old lad was at too – eavesdropping, picking up information we might somehow turn to our advantage. That’s how, years later, we came across the first piece of land we ever bought. But when the chat could offer nothing, my eye wandered, falling often on the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, thick as ropes.
‘Are ya done?’ my father would ask, after a bit. Then we’d tip our caps to our hostess and leave.
’Course, my father trusted no one beyond his own. Blood, that’s where it was at for him. (How he ever got a wife was a mystery.) His mistrust followed him to the market and there he’d haggle his way to the best deal any farmer could hope for:
‘Do you think I’m a fool, man?’ My head bowed with the embarrassment of him, sometimes. But when his brusqueness pushed up his earnings, I paid attention. A master in manipulation. I watched his facial expressions and listened for his silences, counting the seconds until he spoke again. Learning his phrases, his hand gestures, his stance. I had it all by heart. By the time my turn came, I was ready. There were many who hated to see me coming but could not deny the quality I brought. Cows and sheep reared on the finest grain and grass. Tended closely. Ailments nipped in the bud before they had time to take hold. I stood at the stall gate knowing none other around had finer. I expected a good price and held my ground until it came. But there were times when even the best of what I had to offer fetched poor prices. I couldn’t always fight the economic tide, try though I might. I was as much a victim to its whims as the next man. But unlike him I would rise earlier, watch longer and pounce quicker.
Fool that I was.
This pint here, son, is for your Auntie Noreen. If it wasn’t for her I don’t think your grandfather Michael would have accepted me like he did. And it was her who solved another part of the mystery of the coin. But, above all, it is because of how much your mother loved and struggled with her. Noreen was a woman forever on your mother’s conscience.
I met Noreen and the rest of the in-laws not long after Sadie and me started stepping out. We were only a couple of months together when we boarded the bus that bumped us northwest to Annamoe in Donegal. Your grandfather Michael met us, a man taller than de Valera and broader than Churchill. Sadie hugged him like he was a big cuddly teddy bear, becoming lost in his coat folds, with only her shoes as evidence that he hadn’t swallowed her whole. When they finally separated, she held on to him with one hand and with the other reached behind to pull me forward and make the introductions. I shook his hand firmly, meeting his unsmiling eye.
‘Mr McDonagh,’ I said.
No words were offered in return. He simply nodded, then released my grip. The jig was up, I was convinced. He knew, as all fathers did, the thoughts that raced through my head about his daughter. I silently pleaded for mercy with promises of never thinking those things again. So distracted was I that I did not see his hand reach across to take my suitcase that I gripped in terror. His arm tugged and his eyebrow raised but still I didn’t let it go. We must have looked ridiculous, me most of all, stood there in this tug of war.
‘Maurice! Daddy just wants to take the case. Would you not let it go?’ Sadie’s words eventually made it through to my panicked brain.
‘The case? Yes. Right,’ I said, looking down at it. And yet, there it remained, still firmly stuck to my sweaty palm. ‘I’ll put it in the trap. Where are we?’ I strode off to God knows where with a foolish determination a man could only pity. I can still feel the trickle of sweat at my neck as I realised I hadn’t a clue what I was at, at all.
‘Maurice!’
I stopped, closed my eyes, steadied myself and turned. Sadie had a look as bewildered as my poor head, pointing to her right, and to a car. A car! I ask you? No one owned a car in those days. But there it was nevertheless, spotlessly clean, no hint that it lived in the countryside, with himself standing at its open boot like a bored taxi man waiting for his passengers to finally say their goodbyes and get the hell in.
‘Even better,’ I commended, like a man in the know, on top of things. I laid the case safely and finally inside, not daring even a glance in his direction.
‘Sadie, you can take the front. Maurice, you’re in the back – I hope you like dogs.’
I shared the journey to their home with Dinky, the sheep-dog, a temperament as good as Gearstick’s, who looked embarrassed on my behalf. I searched his one silver and one brown eye for help but he offered me nothing. Thankfully the reception at the house could not have been more different. Your granny hugged me like I was a hero. Laughed and smiled, perhaps knowing, by some Irish mother sixth sense, what had happened earlier and meaning to make up for it.
As we sat in the sitting room, Michael directed no
conversation to me, only his daughter, enquired after her health and her job. She enthused away, delighting him with her replies. In an effort to build a bridge between the two men in her life, she spoke of my family, having met them by that stage, of course.
Actually, my mother had shown very little interest in meeting her when I first suggested it. My father, on the other hand, had been quite enthusiastic and insisted on coming for us in the trap. Sadie sat up front with him. Their chat, the whole way back out to the house made me proud. My sisters had the house gleaming. And the smell of freshly baked bread was inspired. They fluttered around your mother like she was a film star, admiring her summer coat, blue I think it was, and her dress and her pearls.
‘Ach, would you go on,’ she said, ‘these aren’t the real thing. My Aunt Maura gave them to me when I left home. She’s comfortable mind, but the money wouldn’t stretch to the real thing. But they do the job, don’t they? I only wear them on good occasions.’
Jenny and May laughed at the honour. And I was sure a flicker of a smile passed my mother’s lips as she bent to put another log in the range, holding its door with her apron. She said very little to Sadie, but she seemed to stay with the conversation, nevertheless, frowning and smiling at the appropriate times. We sat at the table, laid out with the best tablecloth and the willow china and my parents’ wedding cutlery. The soda bread and tea tasted better than ever I remembered. Plates with ham and tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs and scallions, beetroot and cheese were passed up and down with laughter and enthusiasm. We finished our meal with a choice of apple tart or Madeira cake. Sadie tried both. Tittering away, as her slender fingers worked the silver-plated fork delicately, taking tiny forkfuls until her plate was empty. After, we decided to take a stroll up the road. And as my sisters began to clear up, Sadie stalled our departure, attempting to help but they shooed her out the door, laughing.
‘They’re a pair,’ she said smiling, linking my arm, as we made our way on to the main road.
‘They’re not the worst, I suppose.’
‘What are you like? Could a man want for better sisters?’
‘I’d happily swap the armchairs for their bed.’
‘What you need is an extension, a little bedroom of your own out the back. You could work wonders.’
‘Is that right? Got your eye on the place already?’
‘You should be so lucky.’
‘Anyhow, they’re heading soon. Bristol. We have a cousin there works in the Cadbury’s factory.’
‘Lucky them.’
‘May’s to go first and Jenny not long after.’
‘I’ve never been to England.’
‘It’s Mam I worry about. It’ll only be me left, other than Dad of course.’
On our return, the goodbyes were exchanged with wide smiles and firm handshakes. Except for Mam. Although she raised her hand politely to shake Sadie’s, she quickly lay back against the chair’s headrest and became lost in her own world, almost ignoring her. Jenny and May distracted Sadie by making a fuss about wrapping a couple of slices of cake in a tea towel for her to bring home. They stood in the doorway then with my father, waving, as we set off in the trap under the summer-evening light.
When I returned, I found my mother alone, still in her chair. I stalled a little, wondering what to do. But eventually I felt the bravery.
‘Well, Mam, what do you think?’
‘Tony would have loved her, son.’
I stood beside her, my back to the range, leaning against the tea towel rail.
‘He’d have loved her,’ she repeated.
Her hand surprised me and patted mine gently and quickly.
‘I hope so, Mam.’
Silence fell, as we both, no doubt, thought of him.
‘Was he sweet on anyone, Maurice, before he died? Was there anyone who’d turned his head?’ she asked after a bit.
‘He never said a word to me,’ I replied, ‘but I always thought him and Kitty Moran would’ve made a great pair, though.’
‘A nice family, the Morans. Wouldn’t that have been a good one now? Them married. The little blondie babies they might have had.’ Her voice shook ever so slightly.
‘Ah, Mam, stop now. This isn’t doing you any good.’
‘I know, son. I know, but sometimes…’ she stopped and her eyes began to wander around the room, ‘do you think he ever got to kiss a girl?’
‘Mam!’
‘I’d just like to think, he knew what that felt like before he went, that’s all. It’s a bit of magic, isn’t it?’ Quickly and shyly she smiled in my direction, before returning her gaze to her hands in her lap. I was stumped, unable to think of how to reply. Tony had missed out on so much and at that moment I felt the guilt of my love for Sadie deeply. If I could’ve sacrificed a slice of it for him, I would’ve. I bent low on my hunkers and put my hands on my mother’s as the clock ticked from the corner.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ she said after a bit. ‘It’s time for my bed, anyway.’
She removed her hands from my cocoon, leaving one to rest for a second on mine before getting up.
I sat in her seat, gathering up the warmth she had left, and watched her disappear through the door, her walk more noticeably stooped in recent months. I wondered how hard it was for her seeing one son pass life’s milestones, while her other, cold in the ground, never got the chance. I felt a bit put out, if I’m honest, about how she was that evening. There I was, loyal and hardworking, had just brought home the best-looking woman this side of the Irish Sea, who was delightful and clever, but her conversation was all about Tony. ’Course I felt the guilt of that thought as soon as it entered my head. I sat arguing with it for a while before shrugging it away in disgust at myself, at my mother and at the world.
It wasn’t until after the wedding, when Sadie moved in, and the lower room became ours, what with my sisters gone by then, that Sadie began to see how Tony’s loss lingered in everything we did in the place. It clung in the very air, his name an afterthought of every sentence we spoke, until the day my mother died and she took its potency with her. We were left with a sorrow for her passing and Tony’s and my father’s that felt normal, if you understand me – it was sorrow, simple uncomplicated sorrow.
I was proud on that first visit to Donegal to hear Sadie speak of my family and our lives as if we were special. Her efforts to impress her father seemed to be having little effect, however. And to be truthful, I couldn’t stand all that praise for much longer. In an attempt to distract her, I asked of her sister, Noreen.
‘Noreen not about so, out on the town, what?’
Now here’s the issue I had with all of what was to follow: had a sister of mine been mentally unwell, I think I would’ve found the time to tell your mother before she waded in and made a complete fool of herself in front of my parents. I’d told her about Tony after all and she knew to tread lightly. But no, in her wisdom, she had told me nothing about Noreen. My foolish, innocent question hung there, like a grenade with the pin pulled out. I saw the panic. Michael looked at me like I was some new specimen of gobshite. Sadie couldn’t even turn her head but stared at the tea in her cup, her hands gripping the saucer in her lap. While her mother glared at her daughter, wondering how she had brought such a man into their home.
‘I told you, Maurice, I did! I told you our Noreen was a wee bit soft,’ she whispered, as soon as her parents left the room. Embarrassed by the whole affair, they’d gone to gather their coats and things for the afternoon visit to Saint Catherine’s where your Auntie Noreen was living, apparently. I was livid.
‘Yes, but I thought you meant sensitive, you know touchy. And what’s more, you didn’t tell me she lived in the local asylum!’ That bit, a little louder than I’d intended.
‘Would you keep your voice down.’ Her hands flapped at me as she looked anxiously towards the half-open door. ‘I thought I had. Honestly!’ she continued, whispering again. ‘And in fairness, that only happened recently, just before I met you,
in fact. I’ve only been getting my own head around it. Mammy just couldn’t cope any more. What with her hitting and all. And with Daddy out working and me away, well, they’d no choice.’
‘What’s wrong with her anyway – what do they call it?’ I asked, my exasperation and voice mellowing on hearing what the family had been through.
‘Melancholy, they say. And don’t ask me what it means. All I know is she gets very down and can lash out when things aren’t going her way. She was lovely as a wee one, a really cute little sister. I wish there was a picture to show you but we only have this family one. She’s thirteen there,’ she said, crossing the room and taking down a photo that sat on the mantelpiece. She studied it as if she’d not seen it in a long time, handing it to me. ‘You can see it in her, can’t you? The distractedness, the not all thereness.’
‘So when did she start being like that? Did she go to school?’
‘For a year or so. But she used to get so upset at the others. If they’d use her pencil or rubber, she just couldn’t take it. That was enough. They knew then she was easy prey. Cruel, they were. Threw stuff at her in the playground or on the way home just to rise her. She’d be raging, crying and shouting. It was too much for her and me, to tell you the truth. The day Mammy and Daddy decided they wouldn’t send her there any more was the happiest day of my life. Isn’t that just an awful thing to say? But I couldn’t have been more relieved. Not having to defend her and protect her any more. I could just … be free of her.’
Those final words were said so quietly that I almost missed them. A small little whimper escaped between the fingers she’d raised to her lips. I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her to me and kissed her head. The sound of her parents’ preparations in the distance moved towards us at a steady pace. Sadie ran from the room, out through the adjoining kitchen and the back door. I rose to follow but wasn’t quick enough.