When All Is Said

by Anne Griffin

  It’s been hard trying to hide my plans from you with you home so regular. But you’ve not asked, when you’ve seen the odd box here and there. I reckon you think it’s all her stuff, your mother’s. Maybe you didn’t want to think about that. Me, packing her away, getting rid of her like that. I left the packing of your room ’til I was sure there was no chance of another visit before now.

  Do you look forward to coming home, son? I’ll admit, the idea of having a living being in the house with me, as Gearstick wouldn’t grace me with his presence, is appealing. And each time, I swear to myself that this time will be different, that I’ll make the effort. That I’ll ask about your job and what you’re working on. And I promise myself I’ll listen to you with my whole body and every ounce of concentration in me. I’ll hang on your every word. And then I might even ask another question. But as soon as you walk in the door sure it’s like a bolt closes over my mouth. And in you come, all bags and bustle. Landing on the couch with a big grin on your face like you’ve just arrived from the Bahamas. You hand over the bottle of whiskey and sit forward, elbows on knees, hands together, looking about the place, then over at me and you say something like:

  ‘Well, what’s the news?’

  ‘Divil the bit now.’

  ‘Didn’t the lads get a thrashing in the finals, though? Some match. That full forward, Kirwan, is it? He’s some man to go.’

  ‘Not a bad team now.’

  ‘How’s the farm? Still buying and selling all ’round you?’

  ‘I’m not doing too bad.’

  ‘Did that business with the piece of land over in Lissman work out OK?’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘You remember the last time, your man was trying to push down the price.’

  ‘Oh, that. I sorted him.’

  ‘All well with the Bradys?’

  ‘Not a bother.’

  ‘I see Tommy Brady is off out in Australia?’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Saw it on Facebook. There’s a load of lads from around there now. A whole gang of them. Times have changed; it was the States in my day, now it’s Down Under.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the way of it.’

  I’d watch your fingertips bounce off each other.

  ‘Rosaleen and the children well?’ I’d manage.

  ‘Great. Adam’s gotten into the rugby big time. It’s getting popular in the States now. Plays every Wednesday and Saturday. Here, I have some pictures.’

  You tap at your phone, then come hunker beside me and slide your finger so I can see him in action, mid-flight, the picture of determination. There’s other photos too like that one of Caitríona and Rosaleen, sitting on your back porch eating ice creams. Caitríona’s eyes closed and tongue extended, laughing trying to reach the ice cream on her nose.

  ‘That was Labor Day,’ you say.

  I nod and smile. I’d like to sit over them a bit longer but I don’t like to take the phone. And when you’ve finished, you sit back down and look around again. And pull out a few more questions. When you start asking me about Lavin then I know we’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel.

  ‘Sure I might take a walk down the fields,’ you say, rising, no matter what time of night. When Gearstick was still around and it was bright, I’d watch you from the kitchen window. Gearstick racing along beside you, so excited at the speed and distance. You throwing a stick and him bounding off after it, happy to have time with a younger model. Poor old Gearstick, when I was out and about myself with him towards the end there, it was more him waiting for me.

  For the time you’d be around we’d have the dinners out. There’d always be a row, of course, over who pays for the dinner.

  ‘Dad, you paid the last time.’

  ‘I did in my eye.’

  ‘You did, do you not remember? Sure it was only yesterday and it was here for Christ’s sake. Here, I’ll ask the girl.’

  ‘You do that now and I’ll never go for another bite to eat with you.’

  ‘I’d just like to pay the once.’

  ‘Can’t you pay tomorrow?’

  ‘Until tomorrow comes and you’ll swear blind it’s your turn.’

  ‘Can a father not buy his son a dinner?’

  At teatime, though, we’d have the soup at home. I remember you bought some homemade stuff from SuperValu once. I ate it alright, but there’s nothing like the packet.

  You do a round of the house. Checking the rooms for damp and leaks and locks. I dread that. God love you but you never had the DIY gift. You spend the days mending things. I can never watch. There’s more cursing and fingers injured than in a county final. I have to get out and tend to whatever I can, even if it’s only my sanity, when I see you coming with my toolbox.

  ‘Where are you going with that yoke?’ I said, the first day I saw you with it, traipsing through the back door.

  ‘There’s a shelf in the bathroom that’s a bit loose.’

  ‘It’s been that way all its life.’

  ‘But we don’t want it falling on you.’

  ‘Do we not, now?’

  ‘While I’m here I may as well be useful.’

  ‘Is that what you call it?’ I said to myself, as you disappeared through the kitchen doorway.

  You like your lists, alright. You show me the list of all you’ve completed before you leave – so ‘my mind is at ease knowing they’re sorted,’ you say. And then there are the lists of jobs that I could ‘get one of the lads in to tackle’, like I haven’t been tackling them my whole life myself. But I bite my tongue. Later, when you’re back home, the phone calls come: have I got them done? How long did it take? Did it cost much? Sometimes things are done and sometimes I lie and let the broken whatever alone, until right before your next visit home. If I’m pressed for time then Francie is hauled in. It’s always amazing though, how, despite all of that mending, there’s another list assembled as soon as you walk through the door.

  Do you think things have gotten better between us as the years have gone on? I can’t tell any more.

  You never once mention your job, when you’re home. You just work away on your computer, ‘remote access’ you say. Do you remember when you got the Internet hooked up to the house?

  ‘What’s this?’ I kept asking.

  ‘Wait, Dad, wait,’ you said, stepping away from the flashing light on that box in the hall.

  Amazing stuff. The world right there with one tap of a button. I’m not as fast as you now, banging away on the keys all speedy, but I get there. I usually boil up the kettle for a cuppa and set myself up, glasses and all before I finally get online. But you’re all biz. Silent, save for the tapping. Hunched over, that serious clever head on you. I could watch you for hours from the armchair in the kitchen and you at the table, staring into the laptop like it has some kind of spell on you. I swear I can see the steam rising from your head, all those brain cells you must be burning up.

  Maybe, I’d have been happier if you’d been a gobshite. Chip off the old block. Then maybe I could’ve talked to you. Feck it, son, you really pulled the short straw with me. A cranky-arsed father who can’t read for shite.

  * * *

  Two years ago, my plan hatched, I made a list of all the things I needed to do. I began to sort them into stuff I could do that day, the next week, the next month, and so on, you get the picture. All that organising fuelled me, pumping me up so much that I nearly left the house in my pyjamas one morning. That would have been great now, wouldn’t it? Walking down Main Street in my Dunne’s best. It was only a matter of months after your mother’s funeral. Only for the mirror over the hall table, I would’ve done it, too. I halted my gallop long enough to go get dressed, then make a cup of tea and a half slice of toast at the kitchen table where I’d spread out my lists.

  My list for that day read:

  1. Estate agents

  2. Emily/coin

  I walked into the hotel an hour later. My hand in my pocket, turning the coin over and over. You se
e, despite Molly’s insistence I give the thing back six years earlier, I still hadn’t managed it. That day, however, I was determined to tick the box. But as I stepped into the foyer, I had the strongest urge to turn and run. A small part of me seemed unwilling to give the thing back at all. Somehow, it felt as much a part of me and my history as the abdicated King or Hugh Dollard or Thomas, for that matter. It had, after all, lived with me longer than any of them.

  ‘Are you wondering who that is?’ Emily’s question confused and startled me. I hadn’t realised that I’d stopped in front of that picture of Rainsford House of old, again – the one with the mystery man I still couldn’t place.

  I turned to look at her, resting my eyes on her profile for a moment, buying myself a little time before what was to come.

  ‘I know it’s one of your lot alright, a Dollard I mean, the nose and the long face,’ I said eventually, my finger gesturing lazily in its direction.

  ‘It’s Thomas’s father.’

  ‘Really? I always thought of Hugh Dollard as a heavier-set man, fuller in the face.’ She didn’t answer me but looked away from the picture quickly, like she regretted starting talking about it in the first place.

  ‘And to what do I owe the pleasure, Mr Hannigan? You don’t usually join us for breakfast or for anything for that matter,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘You’re looking well.’

  Emily pointed me in the direction of one of the seats in the foyer but I kept on to the bar. I made my way to a table far into the corner of the lounge. Well, I had to be careful, you never knew who might be about listening in, despite the early hour. I sat and rubbed a hand over my chin wondering where to start.

  ‘We have a bit of unfinished business, you and me,’ I said, ‘well, me and your family, I should say.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this. Are you finally calling in the loan?’ she asked, sitting opposite, looking fierce worried.

  ‘It’s nothing like that. No, this goes back even further.’

  I tried to order the words jumbling about in my head. But they scurried about like a pack of frightened sheep, not one of them brave enough to take the lead. I eyed the bottle of Bushmills on the shelf and wondered would it be rude to ask at this hour. But I thought better of it. I could hear my fingers drum the table and, in the distance, the pots and pans clattering in the kitchen behind the bar. The odd time a silhouette passed the frosted window of the door. I looked at Emily one last time as she shifted in her seat, her hands clasped together under her chin, leaning eagerly forward, elbows on the table, waiting for me to finally spit it out. In the end I simply reached into my pocket and set the coin free at last. King Edward VIII sat on the table in front of her.

  I watched and didn’t watch her, if you get me, kind of half-watched, glancing every now and again at her silence and her eyes as they darted between it and me. My hands did a merry dance between my pockets and the curve of the table. My lips pursed and started some mad airy whistling. I felt as much of a gibbering wreck as the day I stood in Berk’s line up when the coin first went missing. Emily finally picked it up and gave it a good once over.

  ‘But this, this…’

  Her eyes turned on mine.

  ‘Aye. It’s the original. The one Thomas lost.’

  ‘Oh dear God!’ She dropped it and it bounced under the table. Emily shot up to standing as if she’d touched a live cable. She kept staring at the spot where it had been and backed away. Her hand to her mouth, lost to me. I’d have happily left right there and then. Skipped out of the place never to see it again. But, you see, that’s the thing about here, isn’t it? This bloody place, it keeps reeling me back in and I keep letting it. After a bit she came forward a little, then backed away again. Her own private waltz.

  I reached to retrieve the coin. Not so swiftly as the first time a Dollard dropped it. I held on to the table with one hand and stretched my other under, my fingers wriggling about trying to locate it. I knew if I had to resort to kneeling, there was a danger of my never getting up again, at least not with any dignity. Arthritic knees. When I brushed against the metal, I grasped it and put it back, dead centre on the table.

  ‘It was me that took it. I’ve had it all these years. It wasn’t a deliberate plan to rob it, Emily.’ My eyes looked for her. ‘I didn’t even know what the bloody thing was or that it was valuable. It was simple, childish revenge, that’s all.’ I waited to see if she would offer me anything in reply but when she remained silent, I gave it another go. ‘He wasn’t the nicest of men, Thomas, back then…’

  I fingered the scar on my face; coughed, a bit ashamed of my childish attempt at an excuse; got up to go in around the bar to pour myself some water, the Bushmills still seeming a step too far. I gulped down the coldness of the liquid and, when there wasn’t a drop left, I made a slow return to my seat, peeking at her every second step or so, bringing two full glasses with me. I laid them down.

  But still, she didn’t budge.

  ‘Water,’ I commanded.

  She considered me for a second before making her way back. I watched her feet until they disappeared under the table as she sat. I admit I couldn’t hold her eye and looked off at the long window at the end of the room to see the beginnings of the town’s waking. Lavin standing at his open door raising a hand to the newspaper deliveryman’s truck that spluttered away down Main Street.

  ‘But all this time, Mr Hannigan,’ she began, calling me back, ‘all this time, with the hotel and me, you knew you had it and never said a thing.’ She kept up the staring, boring into me like I was some massive disappointment. I sipped at my water and found Lavin again, carting his papers into the shop. ‘And even when I told you the story of what that bloody thing has done to us, to Thomas, you never said a word? Not a word. Just let me blab on like a fool.’

  She looked away, unable to bear me.

  ‘Emily, I’ve never considered you a fool. I have nothing but the greatest of—’

  ‘But that’s what us Dollards have always been to you – fools, to be used for everything you could get your greedy hands on.’

  I stared at the table and felt my own anger rise. Greedy. I’d heard her alright – greedy. The coin looked small now. The thing that felt heavy in my hand for years was like a halfpenny shrinking away from danger. I tapped the base of the glass on the table. My foot began to keep pace as the water in my glass jumped and lapped at the sides. I thought of Tony, dying in his bed, hiding the coin under his sweat-soaked pillow. Tony’s funeral. My mother, my father, terrified of losing all they had. The beatings. And Molly and you. And Sadie. Oh God. Sadie. All I had lost came back at me. A big tsunami of hate and sorrow. How sorry I felt for myself. Out beyond in the foyer, I heard the voices of the reception staff, greeting their guests, giving instructions on how to get to the dining room for breakfast. The smell of fried bacon reached me. My stomach howled but I kept tapping. My dentures bit down on my lip holding it all in.

  ‘I mean, we’ve all nearly lost our minds because of this, because of you.’

  Emily shoved the coin in my direction. I watched its un-wantedness spin towards me and hit my elbow, ricocheting away from me before landing just on the edge of the table. The coinage that never fecking was – how much I really wished that were true right at that moment.

  I’m ashamed of what I did next, but I felt as mad as a raging bull. I took that bloody thing in my hand, bounced it once then threw it across the room, hitting the bar counter, propelling it back on to the hardwood floor.

  ‘You’ll forgive me, Emily,’ I shouted, heaving myself up to standing, my fist hitting the table, ‘if I was busy burying my wife and wasn’t thinking about the Dollards for once in my bloody life!’

  The words spat out of me as I leaned over the table right into her face. Blood pumping, veins straining, on the verge of some furious meltdown. Instead it was the tears that came. Big sobs of the stuff. I grasped hold of the sides of the table to stop myself falling. And I looked at her, through my welling eyes, a helpl
ess fool, my wall tumbling down.

  The door behind the bar opened.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Miss Bruton, but Kerrigan’s are on the phone looking for the order,’ a young one said. Kerrigan’s, my arse. The lie of this heroine, come to save her boss, waited for a response. My hands rose to my face wiping away what I could as I felt my head thump like someone was inside trying to fight his way out. Back I fell into the chair.

  ‘I’ll call them later, Donna,’ Emily said to the floor, not looking behind her to address the girl at all.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ young Donna asked quietly, looking at the back of her employer’s head, then at me.

  Emily also looked my way. Just like Molly, just like that last time I saw her. Beautiful, kind, wise eyes.

  ‘Everything’s fine here, Donna,’ Emily said, getting up and turning to the girl, picking up the coin on her way over to the bar, ‘nothing to worry about. You go on now. Hold any calls until I’m finished here.’

  She came back to me then, so quietly and laid the coin down in front of her and there was silence for a minute or two. A silence in which I closed my eyes as tight as I could manage, so there was just me and Sadie locked inside.

  ‘I’m sorry, about Sadie,’ I heard her say. Molly’s sweet voice. ‘I was there, at the funeral. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to intrude. I’m not the best at funerals but I sent a card.’

  I leaned into the support of my elbows on the table and thought of your mother. Thought of what she’d think of me now. About the show I was making of her. A sigh that seemed to come from the very feet of me washed up through my body, stilling the mad beats of my heart.