Finally they managed to stand him up. His hair was plastered to his face with tears, snot hung from his nose and his brown shiny suit was clogged with damp earth. His shape could be seen outlined in the soil like a diagram at the scene of a crime. He shrugged them off, arms flailing wildly for a moment so that I thought he might topple backwards into the grave, then balanced himself and staggered past me. The reek of spirits made me catch my breath. We watched him totter out to the road and get into a car with a blonde woman at the wheel. She gunned the engine and they drove off. He had appeared from nowhere and vanished back there. In my grandmother’s house afterwards my mother plied Mrs Donavan with cold meats and imprecations against the intruder.
‘Bad cess to him anyway. To think me own brother would make a show of me like that and after all I did for him. And that ould one he was with must be the gay divorcée he’s hitched to. She’s an ould lush too from what I hear. May the devil take them.’
Mrs Donavan munched thoughtfully, wisely keeping quiet. This was the only clue I was given that I’d just met my uncle John-Jo. I sidled up to my father who was washing his mud-caked hands in a bowl.
‘I gather that was John-Jo,’ I whispered.
He glanced back to my mother, frowning. ‘Don’t be mentioning him now, he’s a persona non grata if ever there was one. God knows what stone he crawled out from under but I’ll tell you something, his liver must be well pickled.’
Biddy, the last in the family, lived in Southend. She and my mother exchanged letters a couple of times a year. Biddy had also had an illegitimate child who had been adopted in Cork before she set sail for England. She had trained as a secretary and married Roy, a native Southender who had his own electrical business. Roy found favour with my mother because he was a Catholic – albeit an English one and therefore not one hundred per cent the real article – and extremely oily in his manner towards her. She viewed this as his natural gentlemanly quality but I think the man was terrified of her. They had one son, Danny and a daughter, May who were the only cousins I had met, three times in all. Relations with Biddy were the warmest, although in comparison to other families they bordered on deep frozen. Southend was just twenty-five miles away but it might as well have been hundreds; there were only three personal contacts that I could remember, once when we went to the coast for the day, once when they visited the city to see the Tower of London and the last, catastrophic meeting at May’s wedding which had severed all communication from 1968 to the present time.
I was thrilled when we received the silver embossed wedding invitation; this was the kind of occasion proper families gathered for. It would be satisfying to be part of the usual run of things. I’d be able to mention it at school and add that May and her husband were going to Majorca for their honeymoon.
‘Eoh,’ my mother said in her mock posh voice when she read it over Saturday breakfast, ‘how grand. Sounds too good for the likes of us!’ She shoved it to my father, leaving a marmalade trail on the edge. He held it away from himself, looking nervy. ‘Good enough for May, I suppose.’
I waited on tenterhooks to see if we would be going. My mother, I knew, had views about Biddy being a social climber. She and Roy had a thirties-style semi-detached with a long garden and had themselves been on a package holiday to the Costa del Sol the previous year. We’d had a postcard with an x marking their hotel room and my mother had said she didn’t know what all this malarkey about the Costapacket meant, wasn’t Ireland good enough for a holiday for people who didn’t have their ould snouts stuck in the air? Ireland at least had proper toilets; in them ould continental places they wee-weed in the gutters.
My father passed the invite to me, saying nothing; he was always content to maintain the line of least resistance.
‘Oh look,’ I said lightly, pointing to the little note Biddy had included. ‘A Monsignor is going to conduct the service, someone Roy knew at school.’ I reckoned that the odds were for us going as soon as I’d read that. A Monsignor was high up in the church’s chain of command and clergy groupie that she was, my mother would hardly be able to resist the lure of being able to fawn around him.
‘Let me see,’ she said, whipping it from my hand. ‘“Monsignor Curran will say the mass at St Thomas’s and come to the reception”. Well, crikey O’Reilly! They must have a hot-line to the Vatican; I suppose a plain ould priest wouldn’t be good enough for the likes of Biddy. ’Tis a pity she doesn’t give me back the tenner I lent her before she throws money away on a swank reception.’
This was another bone of contention; my mother had sent Biddy a ten pound note when she’d first got a room in Kilburn and was hard up. Maybe Biddy had thought it was a gift; whatever the reason, she’d never paid it back. I poured more tea while my mother read the bit about the Monsignor again; she would be picturing his red biretta and the sash at his waist, seeing herself beside him in a group photo that she’d be able to prop on the mantelpiece when the parish priest called.
‘I’m surprised the reception’s at the house,’ she said. ‘I’d have thought they’d be booking the Grand Hotel at least.’
‘Ah well now, they’re not millionaires,’ my father pointed out.
‘The way Biddy goes on, you’d think Roy was Jean Paul Getty. Well, I suppose we’d better go; she is me youngest sister and me mother would want it.’
I swallowed a laugh with my toast and wondered if I’d be able to get a candy-striped jacket from C&A, like the one Herman of Herman and The Hermits had been wearing on Top of the Pops.
My mother dragged my father to Oxford Street on four successive Saturdays before the wedding, trying to find an outfit that wasn’t too tight, too long, too garish or too finicky round the neck. Buying clothes for a sixteen-and-a-half stone woman wasn’t easy; my father returned from the first three trips looking grey and years older. At a low ebb he handed me twenty pounds and I zipped to Ilford and bought my candy-striped jacket with purple trousers to match. Finally my mother came home with a two-piece flowery outfit in rayon, covered in a pattern of orange, pink and yellow blossoms.
Our car was in the garage, having dramatically failed its MOT, so we were travelling by train from Liverpool Street. My mother struggled into her corset and the flowery two-piece, smoothed on her orange face powder and stuck her teeth in. She resembled a moving garden border. Her whiter-than-white dentures sparkled in the middle of her face. Her complexion was startling; orange and rosy, her blood pushed upwards by the constraining corset. I was told that I looked like something out of a circus and I sat at the other end of the platform, plotting how I would lose myself at the reception and stay as far away from her as possible.
The train was late. My mother paced up and down, muttering that she should have bought shoes in a broader fitting and swinging her handbag impatiently. My father concentrated on the timetable and chatted to the ticket inspector about how well the flowering tubs were doing.
On the train, sitting down, the corset pinched even tighter and my mother squirmed around trying to get comfortable. I hid behind my book, but just after Romford we had to move seats because my mother alleged that an ould one sitting further up the carriage and done up like a dog’s dinner was ogling my father.
‘Brazen as brass with a skirt up to her ass and ye a man in yeer fifties,’ she said as we relocated.
‘Sure, she was only looking down the carriage. The woman’s probably short-sighted,’ my father said wearily.
‘I saw her fluttering her eyelashes and smiling at ye,’ my mother stated. ‘That hair came out of a bottle as sure as eggs is eggs. That one’s out for what she can get, I’m telling ye. What would ye know, sure, ye’re an innocent? All ye’re ever thinking about is yeer geraniums.’
I studied my father with his grey suit, thinning hair and faraway eyes, trying and failing to see him as a desirable sexpot. Could this be a man who wandered through life scattering alluring hormones, unaware that libidinous women were panting after him, driven crazy at the sight of his St Vincent de Paul b
adge? Having dealt with the brazen as brass threat my mother settled back, snaffled liquorice allsorts from her bag and gave a running commentary on the state of the back gardens we passed.
At the reception I found Danny, who was a year younger than me but interested in my clothes and the latest news from swinging London. He seemed to think that I spent all my time on Carnaby Street and the King’s Road and I played up to this, fabricating a hectic social life. From the corner of my eye I could see that my mother had cornered the Monsignor and was demanding his attention like an eager puppy. She seized his ring and kissed it and would probably have fallen to her knees if there hadn’t been such a crush.
Biddy’s house was affluent; she had leather furniture and a TV built into a special case. A woman dressed in a maid’s outfit was handing around plates of little biscuits on doily-coated trays. Biddy herself looked younger than her years; like Nellie she was trim and her hair had brunette tints. She was wearing a plain blue shift dress and a string of pearls; I thought she resembled Jackie Kennedy. On the wall in the wide hallway there were photos of her and Roy with their faces grinning through cut-out matadors’ shapes, a souvenir of their Spanish trip. Once again, I found myself wishing that I had a different mother. Biddy would have done nicely; she seemed organized and jolly and was polite to the Monsignor without any Uriah Heep behaviour. I didn’t think she would make allegations about strangers on public transport. When I asked, Danny assured me that she never went to second-hand shops.
Danny wanted to show me his dog, which had been banished to the shed outside while the reception was on. We had to move past my mother on our way out. Biddy was talking to her, patting her arm confidingly.
‘Oh, there’s nothing like extra weight to make a woman look older,’ she was saying. ‘I go to a health place to keep trim and I watch my diet. If you like I’ll give you my tips sheet. I know it’s a struggle in middle age.’
My mother was looking ill-tempered and puffy but the Monsignor was standing nearby so I was confident that she would stay on her best behaviour. Danny and I took the dog out for a walk, eating our vol-au-vents and thin prawn sandwiches as we went along. I thought, here I am, out with my cousin on a fine day and I had a warm feeling of sheer normality. This was a scene that matched the stories I’d grown up on; ones that featured confident middle-class children with comfortable houses and mothers healthily free of neuroses, mothers who were caring in a low-key way, efficient and calm, dedicated to keeping their houses spotless and capable of rustling up a picnic or arranging an outing at the drop of a hat. Most importantly of all, mothers who fitted in and didn’t draw attention to themselves. My deep-seated conviction that this should have been my birthright expanded in the July sun and by the time we turned back into Danny’s street I was day-dreaming a plan which would have me moving to Southend and taking up residence in the spare room next to May’s.
I was hurtled back to reality by Danny shaking my arm and pointing. Outside his house stood my parents, my father clutching his trilby to his chest, my mother wagging a finger at Biddy who was gripping the gate with rigid knuckles. As we drew nearer my mother’s voice rang strongly, ricocheting around the quiet suburban street.
‘… ye can stuff yeer ould wedding and yeer ould trifles, ye tight-fisted jade. I’m a martyr to me nerves but I tried to lend a Christian hand and what thanks did I get? I wouldn’t come back here if ye begged me on bended knees, so I wouldn’t!’
I froze against a fence a few doors away, Danny beside me, the dog growling softly. Curtains were twitching and a door behind us creaked open an inch. Roy was silhouetted in the shaded hallway of the house, his hands clasped before his face, two forefingers pressed to his lips.
‘Kitty, I’m sure we can sort things out if you’ll just step back in,’ Biddy said softly.
‘Oh, I’m not staying here to be insulted like a slip of a kitchen girl. I know when I’m not good enough. I was good enough for a tenner when ye didn’t have a penny to yeer name, though! The likes of ye always have money. Come on!’ She pushed my father and beckoned to me.
I looked away as I passed Biddy and followed them along the street. We left behind us a heavy silence that I can still hear along the years.
The station was a hot fifteen minutes’ walk. My mother sped ahead, puffing, my father a couple of steps behind her. No words were exchanged. At the station she disappeared to the Ladies. I found that I was shivering.
‘What was that about?’ I asked my father.
He shook his head. ‘Some sort of set-to in the kitchen. Your mother went to help Biddy and after ten minutes she came driving through saying she’d been accused of ruining the trifles.’
‘How?’
‘God knows, son, God knows. Just keep your head down till it blows over.’
When my mother came back I could tell she’d taken off her corset and stuffed it in her bag; her flesh was now free-moving, her skirt straining at the zip. She bought me a chocolate bar I didn’t want from a machine and handed it to me saying, ‘Take warning from what happened back there; yeer own flesh and blood can turn on ye.’
At that moment I hated her passionately. I wanted her to die, I wanted to cut her suffocating presence out of my life. Just standing there, looming broadly in front of me, she blocked my light.
The chocolate melted in my pocket on the journey back, staining my jacket. I hadn’t said goodbye to Danny and that was the last time I saw him. He died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage in his late twenties. There were no more letters or Christmas cards exchanged between Tottenham and Southend.
FIVE
My brother arrived, looking tanned but tired, three days after I’d called him. He had hired his own car at the airport and I heard him drive in fast through the gate, scattering hens before him.
‘It’s Mr time-means-money,’ my father said, rolling a cigarette. This was how he always referred to my brother, although never in front of him. My mother didn’t like the nickname and would tut crossly. I wondered what they called me in my absence and whether my brother knew.
We shook hands as he took a case from the car boot.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
‘About the same. They’re doing a biopsy today and should be able to tell us something definite after that. Dad’s inside.’
He yawned. ‘I’m jet-lagged. Need a hot bath.’
He and my father nodded a greeting to each other and my brother handed him a pack of duty-free tobacco. My father gave me a sly look; I always refused to provide him with tobacco because it had dire effects on his chest.
It was agreed that my brother and I would go to the hospital during the afternoon, leaving my father the evening visit for himself. After Dermot had bathed and had a bite to eat we set off in his car.
‘They should never have moved back here,’ he said, lighting up a long slim cigarette. ‘She’s never been happy.’
‘Where would she be happy? Have you ever known her happy?’
I genuinely wanted to discover if he had; I harboured an idea that because he had grown up with a younger mother she might also have been a different one, a slimmer, carefree zestful woman.
There was a silence. ‘She was better in London, had more to distract her.’
‘She was the one who pushed to live here.’
‘She likes the going but not the getting there. She’s always been subject to peculiar moods. I remember her crying for no reason. Did you know her grandfather committed suicide?’
I looked at him through the coiling blue cigarette smoke. ‘No. Which grandfather?’
‘Her father’s father. He drowned himself in one of the Dublin canals.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘She told me once. He was an oddball, took himself off to live like a hermit, built himself a shack they called a “cuddy” in the glens near the house. He’d pop up now and again for a shave and a good feed, then go back to his solitary life. One of his brothers was the same and ended his days in the loony bin. She said
she reckoned her family had melancholy blood and it was coming out in her.’
Rain was sweeping in across the fields. I rubbed a patch of condensation on my window. ‘Blood will out’ had always been one of her favourite sayings. Had she spent much of her life terrified of the potential for disaster that flowed in her veins? Maybe she had taken all those medicines as a preventive, holding fate at bay.
Dermot opened his window and threw his cigarette butt out. ‘She had a theory that her brother Jack had topped himself in London, or maybe jumped overboard during the night-crossing. He took nothing with him when he left home.’
‘Was he depressed?’
‘His wife – what’s her name?’
‘Nancy.’
‘That’s right. Nancy said he hadn’t slept for weeks before he took off. That’s a sign of depression, isn’t it?’
‘Can be.’ Unexpected layers were being revealed. All those times I’d looked out for Jack and he may have been fish-food years ago.
Dermot switched to talking about his bank and I watched the rain drowning the land. As we drew up at the hospital I decided to snatch a rare chance for information.
‘Did she ever tell you what happened to the trifles at May’s wedding?’ I asked him.
He stared. ‘What trifles?’
‘Nothing. I thought you might know why she’d quarrelled with Biddy.’
‘No, she never said.’
She was lying back on the pillow with her eyes closed, a hand tucked under her chin. I shook her arm gently and she looked up.
‘Ah, Dermot,’ she said, ‘I knew ye’d come, I knew it.’
‘Sure I did. How’re you doing?’
‘Oh, not good. They took a bit of me liver away this morning. I’m terrible sore.’
‘Still, they need to find out what’s wrong.’
‘That’s what Rory said, that’s why he put me in here.’
‘I’ve brought some yogurt,’ I told her.
She nodded. ‘I’ve no appetite.’
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