The Misremembered Man

by Christina McKenna

  “Stop that at once!” She slapped him across the face, grabbed him by the shoulder and trailed him to a bench set along the wall. He immediately scrambled up onto it.

  “Stand up!” They were at eye level. “Do you know why your sister is not here, Eighty-Six?”

  He shut his eyes tight. He did not want to say the word. But another blow to his cheek brought the answer she required.

  “Di…died, Sister.”

  “She died. That’s right: she died.” She spat the awful word into his face. “Your mother put the pair of you in a shopping bag and dumped you on our doorstep. Your sister was already dead. We saved you.” The boy was looking down at his feet, the tears falling freely now. “Only for us you would have died too, you ungrateful, greedy, thieving little devil.”

  She pulled him off the bench and flung him across the floor. He collided with the bucket, sending the water everywhere. He ended up sprawled on his knees in the dirty puddle, unable to right himself.

  “Now look what you’ve done.” She unhooked the strap at her side.

  He screamed and doubled up under the lashing leather, believing that the tighter he held himself, the less pain he’d feel, an instinctive yet useless tactic he’d used many times before.

  Then she stopped. He heard her rapid breathing and slowly uncurled himself into the full, throbbing aftermath. He retrieved the damp cloth and attempted to soak up the “sin” he’d just been found guilty of.

  “I’m not finished with you yet, Eighty-Six.” She hauled him to his feet again. “I’m waiting, Eighty-Six. Your mother put you here because what?”

  “Because she want…id, w-w-wantid you…y-y-y-you to make me…make me good, Sister?” His whole body shook as his words slid everywhere. He stopped and swallowed deeply.

  “And if you’re not good and you don’t do your work, what will happen?” Her face was a mask of disdain. Sweat misted her brow. She grinned, lips peeling back from dingy teeth.

  “God will puniss…punish me, and me ma…me mammy won’t come for me.”

  “Correct, little man.” She straightened up. “Now get to it or there’ll be no bed tonight and no breakfast in the morning.”

  She marched to the door, then halted. He set immediately to work, fearful she might come back to beat him again.

  “Eighty-Six, change the water when it gets dirty. Do you hear? If you can’t see to the bottom of the bucket it needs to be changed. You understand?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  And with that she left him in the joyless hall with the bucket, the brush and his small heart pounding, a trail of dread and danger battering in her wake.

  Two hours later, he was finished and lay in the darkness in the crowded dormitory, three rows, ninety-six beds in all. Ninety-six hungry boys, hungry for love and hungry for nourishment, and their sleep disrupted for lack of both. Ninety-six rejects with no gifts or grace, on whom a cloudless sun would never shine.

  They were all under ten years, yet none of them knew their age, or what birthdays meant, or what presents were for, or that Santa Claus came at Christmas. In their long years in the orphanage, they’d never been hugged, never been smiled at, never eaten meat or used a knife and fork; they did not know the pleasure of bathing in warm water, or the feel of cotton sheets against the skin.

  Their only crime was that their mothers had died, or been too poor to keep them, or too frightened to resist the forces of power and authority that deemed them unfit for the maternal role. Each child was paying for the “love” that had brought him into being: a love that in the “holy” eyes of the children’s “carers” was tainted, because it had come from lesser beings—poor people.

  Eighty-Six lay curled up tight like a tiny leveret in a tiny nest, his blanket pulled over his head. The aching in his back, his knees, his hands could not be eased. In his mind he was still down there in the deserted hall, scrubbing the unending floor. He could not sleep.

  All around him, his comrades writhed and moaned in their sleep, the thin blankets that covered them rising and falling to the fearful rhythms of their dream worlds. The wind whistled in the loose window frames. He lowered the cover and peeped out, suddenly afraid. Somewhere, a door was banging. He thought it might be the door of the outside shed where the cleaning things were kept.

  Immediately alert, he rose up on his elbows in a frisson of disquiet, straining hard to identify the sound and the direction from which it came. He remembered stowing the bucket and brush, but had he fastened the door again? He could not remember and, as his thoughts churned round and round, the consequences of his oversight took shape and struck him with a terrible force. There would be fifteen on the backside with the tooled belt. He would have to go down and bolt it.

  He flung back the blanket, straightened his sore legs and eased himself onto the floor. It was strictly forbidden for a child to leave his bed after 10 P.M. So he was committing one transgression to escape the consequences of having committed another.

  His sockless feet whispered across the cold cement as he made his way to the heavy door, past the rows of restive sleepers. Someone whimpered, a thin mournful note sliding out from under a cover as if to pull him back. He did not stop, but carried on, quietly heaved the door shut behind him and turned to face the darkness of the corridor.

  He could see the newels of the staircase in the pre-dawn light from the landing window. Conscious of the risk he was running, he made for it on tiptoe, groping at the helpless air; past the adjacent dormitory, past Mother Superior’s quarters, Master Keaney’s room. A floorboard creaked in betrayal and he stopped, frozen by the hideous notion that he’d been heard. He held his breath for a moment, his foot poised above the traitorous board. He heard the shed door slam again as if in warning, as if urging him on. He quickened his pace and flew soundlessly down the stairs, all dread falling behind him in his eagerness to be gone.

  Outside, the wind battled him for control of the raging door, like a demon in the face of an exorcising priest, his nightshirt by turns ballooning out and plastering itself against his body. He was too small and his strength too weak. His bare feet slithered out from under him on the slick grass. He fell on his belly and lay there, feeling the damp grass through his shirt, his cheek to the earth, hearing all the way down beneath, where, he was assured almost daily, hell’s fires raged at its baleful core.

  But he could not waste time and got up quickly. He pitted his painful back and all his weight against the door until eventually it yielded. The rusty bolt he hammered home with his little fist, the huge relief of his achievement at once releasing him to run back the way he had come.

  At the top of the stairs he faltered, lassoed by a dreadful sight. The door to Keaney’s room stood open. In the darkness he felt a presence and smelled the fetid breath. Fear flared and choked him. In his mind, a curtain fell and a light went out. He yelled silently for the mother he never knew and the God who never listened as a heavy hand gripped his shoulder and propelled him forcibly into the room.

  Chapter nine

  Dearest Lady…

  Dear Madam…

  My Dearest Lady…

  Dear Lady…

  Dear Miss…

  Jamie McCloone was in despair as to how to address the anonymous woman behind the ad. Having already used and discarded four pages on the salutation, he worried that the whole writing pad might be in the grate and up in smoke before he’d manage to get the first sentence down.

  He leaned back on the kitchen chair and sighed heavily. There was nothing else for it but to cycle down to Rose McFadden and ask her to write it for him. Because although Jamie’s handwriting was reasonably legible, he wasn’t so great at the spelling and punctuation and the like.

  Of course, this would mean that Rose would know his business. But since she was on intimate terms with his underwear anyway, sure what did it matter? And wasn’t it Rose who had suggested the idea to Paddy in the first place, after all? And, at the end of the day, Rose was a very decent woman and not one
to go spreading rumors or smearing gossip about—unlike Maisie Ryan and her sort.

  Rose understood at once. “No trouble at all,” she said. “You just sit yourself down there, Jamie, and we’ll see what we can do.”

  She pulled out a chair from the cluttered table, straightened and patted a plump cushion.

  The kitchen was hung about with the aromas of baking bread commingling with past and future meals: the breakfast fry-up, the lunchtime casserole, a pot of broth a-bubble on the stove. She appeared like a dust-blown mason in a quarry; flour coated her strong forearms and powdered her ginger hair, unwisely permed in a nimbus of loopy curls. Her cheeks were forever reddened from heightened blood pressure, broken veins, and the heat from oven and stovetop.

  She was an industrious housewife and capable cook, had conquered most recipes in her Raeburn Royal Cookbook with varying measures of success, could knit and sew, produce and fashion most things from instruction sheet or pattern.

  Every chair and window and surface in the house expressed Rose’s devotion to creative crafts and a liking for thrift-store tat. Drapes: swagged, tailed, pleated and flounced. Cushions: ruffled and ribbed. Antimacassars and runners: laced, crocheted, appliquéd, embroidered, tatted and frilled. Items of basketry: a bowl and matching stool wrought in a postnatal occupational therapy class when she’d felt depressed. A papier-mâché rooster made over six Friday nights at the local parish hall, whilst Paddy competed in the Duntybutt Championship Darts Tournament in Murphy’s pub. Items with shells and ideas from Portaluce beach: a wine-bottle lamp with a fringed shade; a postcard plate of a whale; a card table trimmed with cockles and scallops; a collage of a fish with milk-bottle-top gills, a Fanta cap eye and a seagull’s primary wing feather, stiffened with glue for a tail.

  “Ye know,” Rose told him, “I drew them ads to my Paddy’s attention for you. I sez: ‘Ye know poor Jamie could be doin’ with a woman about the place, to help him out now that Mick isn’t about no more, and here’s the very thing,’ sez I, and I showed him the paper and he sez: ‘Ye know, Rose, you’re right,’ sez he.”

  She won some space on the messy tabletop, pushed the rolling pin and mixing bowl to one side, wiped the area clean with a damp cloth. The plastic tablecloth showed a repeat pattern of piglets hopping over gates in a green field, their tails spaghetti twists against a blurred, blue sky.

  “God, that was very good of you, Rose.”

  Jamie settled himself, took the ballpoint from his inside pocket, fumbled out the notepad and envelopes from his string bag.

  “Now, Jamie, I’ll just get me glasses. I’m as blind as a mole without them, so a am.” She plucked the spectacles from the gaping lips of a china guppy on the mantelpiece, and held the ad at arm’s length, murmuring over the wording. “Oh, she sounds like a fine lady, right enough.”

  “Maybe she’s too fine, Rose, to be havin’ anything to do with the like of me.” Jamie was studying the plastic pigs in the plastic field, growing depressed at the thought of rejection before the project had even got underway.

  “Nonsense, Jamie! There’s many’s the woman would give their back teeth to have you as a husband. And I’m not just sayin’ that. It’s the God’s honest truth, so it is.”

  Jamie wondered what back teeth had to do with anything, but had the idea that Rose was paying him a compliment all the same. It was a rare thing to inspire, or indeed hear such praise from another, especially a woman. He was nonetheless confused, and had a vision of a half set of dentures that he’d found at the back of a drawer in Mick’s bedroom. He tried now to reconcile the set of yellowed grinders with the beauteous creature this woman might prove to be.

  After a minute or two he gave up, fondled his ear and fairly glowed with embarrassment. He wanted to thank Rose for the compliment but thought that if he did, it might seem as though he were agreeing with her. So instead he coughed and said, “aw, now,” looking away to the picture on the wood-chipped wall: an image of the Virgin Mary crushing a writhing serpent beneath her perfect, blessed feet.

  Rose took up the pen.

  “Now I’ll do a wee rough one, Jamie, first. Then you can copy it out—or if you like I can write it for you. Either way, it’s all right by me.”

  “Naw, Rose, if you write it, I’ll copy it out. Wouldn’t want to be puttin’ you to any more trouble than was called for, like.”

  “Good enough, Jamie, good enough.” Rose began to write. “Now, first after your address I’m gonna say ‘dear lady’.” Rose peered over her glasses. “’Cause y’know, Jamie, a woman always likes to be called a lady even if she isn’t one. Not that I’m sayin’ this lady you’re gonna meet isn’t gonna turn out to be a lady, ’cause I’m sure she will be, but y’know it’s always better to be on the safe side.”

  After several minutes of Rose writing—stopping every now and then to shoot a look heavenward for inspiration—and Jamie following the words that flowed from the pen in her exuberant hand, the task was done. Rose read it aloud to Jamie’s nodding approval. When she’d finished he scratched his head in amazement.

  “That’s the best I ever heard, Rose! Just the thing, so it is. God, but you’re powerful good at the writin’. Y’know I’d a been sittin’ at the table from now to Christmas, begod, tryin’ to get the like a that writ.”

  “Deed ye might-a been, Jamie.”

  Rose beamed and handed the page over. “Well, it’s great that you like it, and if there’s anything you want added or changed just let me know and I’ll do it.” And she stood up. “Now, Jamie, I’ll get us a wee cuppa tea while you’re at the copyin’ out-a it, so I will.”

  “Good enough, Rose.”

  “Oh, and Jamie, it might be an idea to give your hands a wee rub before you start, because you don’t want to be soilin’ the page, mightn’t look so good.”

  Jamie looked at his hands, ingrained as they were with several days’ dirt from cowshed and barn, conceded that Rose was right, and immediately set to with soap and brush at the kitchen sink. When he finally got round to the writing task, he applied himself with great deliberation and care.

  The Farmhouse

  Duntybutt

  Tailorstown

  Dear Lady,

  I saw your advertmint in the Mid Ulster Vindicator of 14th day of July, 1974 and was immediately taken by it, because I think you and me have a lot in common and for this reason would maybe get on well together.

  I will now tell you a bit about myself so you can decide for yourself.

  I am a forty one year old farmer and I live two miles from the town of Tailorstown in the townland of Duntybutt. My farm is not too big, but not too wee either. I have ten or so acres where I grow spuds and some corn.

  I have some animals, one pig, two Ayrshire cows, five sheep which I graze on the Slievegerrin mountains along with the goat and some hens for eggs and the like.

  I like cooking and reading just like you and I like music especially cawntry and western stuff. I can play the accordion well and sometimes play it in the public house of an evening. I like going out for the evening to the public house for music and conversation.

  I also have a nice garden to the front of the house and I ride a bike and drive the tractor but not the car. I would be very pleased if you wrote back to me and told me a little bit about yourself. You could also ask me any questions you like for I don’t want to be writing too much about myself just yet.

  I look forward to hearing from you soon.

  Yours sincerely

  James Kevin Barry Michael McCloone.

  The complicated task finally finished, Rose poured more tea for Jamie, and pushed a plate of drop scones lathered with butter and jam in his direction.

  “Well done, Jamie! I’ll just run me eye over it to make sure all’s in order.”

  She replaced her bifocals and held the page up to the light for inspection. He hoped she’d find no mistakes.

  “No, that’s fine, Jamie. That’s very good writin’ too. Well done. Happy enough with it yourself, are
you?” She folded the page into a neat rectangle and slipped it into the envelope which Jamie had already addressed.

  “Aye, but a was just thinkin’, Rose,” Jamie glanced at one of Rose’s artistic endeavors on the far wall; a collage of Christ with macaroni hair, a vermicelli beard and petit pois eyes, out of which the Savior cried copious pearl barley tears. “Well, what a was just thinkin’ was, what if she turned out to be a Protestant, Rose? What would a body do then?”

  “That’s nonsense, Jamie,” said Rose. “What does it matter what she is, so long as she has a good heart and can bake a bun or two and keep a nice tidy house?”

  In Rose McFadden’s world, a woman’s true worth could only be measured by the texture of her pastry, the whiteness of her wash, a sock heel turned on four needles without a pucker. But Jamie, half listening, was imagining all sorts of unfortunate scenarios and thinking up any number of unfounded reasons for the failure of this venture.

  There was a silence, while Rose sipped her tea. Her china mug showed a garish Giant’s Causeway with a seagull a-flap above it. The amateur artist had rendered the bird’s bill too big and given it a paint-dot eye that had missed its mark.

  They sat in the warmth of the kitchen vapors, the broth bubbling contentedly, a light rain brushing the window panes like blown sand; each thinking their own thoughts. Jamie was envying Paddy all this domestic harmony. Rose was thinking: Another half hour and I’ll add the chopped swede and pearl barley to that drop o’ soup.

  She thought also that Jamie would need to clean himself up quite a bit before meeting this woman, but she could help there, and she thought also that it was time he bought himself a decent outfit. With a good scrub and a proper suit he could look quite respectable, she decided, and not one to be ignored by a far-sighted woman with an eye to the future.