Araby

by GRETTA MULROONEY

  I nodded, grinning. ‘I’ll make sure I find out the score at the end.’

  ‘And ask about any incidents or injuries. We’ll need a watertight story.’

  We arrived back as the cup was being presented to the Kilkenny team and the runner-up shield to The Chuchulains. Father Corcoran boomed through the loudspeaker that anyone hosting a player for the night should report to the school hall to pick up their guest. Our man turned out to be one Kevin Mullen, a lumbering, shy youth of twenty who had collected most of the soft mud from the playing field on his body. We ferried him home, trying hard to make conversation, but his vocabulary consisted of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ with the odd ‘that’s right’ thrown in for excitement. A fetid, sweaty reek filled the back of the car.

  As he ploughed his way to our bathroom with his bag, my mother watched clods of earth littering her newly-washed floors.

  ‘Lord God,’ she muttered as the lock rasped on the bathroom door, ‘I didn’t know he was going to bring half the pitch back with him.’

  ‘Conditions were soft,’ my father offered with a smirk.

  The evening was a long, painful nightmare. My mother went into social overdrive in an effort to draw Kevin out, talking ten to the dozen, laughing heartily at her own witticisms and pressing huge quantities of food on him. She had inserted her teeth for the occasion, but shrinkage in her gums meant that they slipped now and again, making a clicking noise. She would cover her mouth with her napkin to reinsert them, shoving upwards with a grimace and continuing to talk at her frozen guest. It hardly seemed possible that he could become more withdrawn, but he did; his head tucked into his shoulders, he adopted a blank expression and, losing the power of speech completely, made strangled noises in his throat.

  He escaped to bed at half-nine when my father took pity on him, saying he must be exhausted after the journey and the game. I had never seen such gratitude in a man’s eyes; he was up the stairs in a flash.

  ‘Well,’ my mother said, flushed with her efforts, ‘can you beat that! What kind of a gom is he at all?’

  ‘Ah, he’s just shy,’ my father told her.

  ‘Shy! Ignorant, ye mean. To think of the trouble I went to getting the place ready and not a civil word out of him. Anyone would think we were torturing him.’

  In the morning, when my father went to call him, he’d fled. We heard later that he’d been waiting for the coach outside the church two hours early, at seven o’clock.

  I touched the bronze hurler’s knee, wondering if Kevin Mullen occasionally regaled his children with the story of the mad house he escaped from in London.

  Biddy’s flight was announced. As she came through the arrivals’ door I saw that she’d hardly changed. She was a little stouter, but her hair was carefully dyed and her make-up skilful. She was a well-preserved woman, I thought. I waved to her as she looked through the crowd and wondered how I should greet an aunt I’d last seen over twenty years ago and who I’d parted from under a cloud. A handshake? A nod? A pat on the arm? She solved the problem for me by reaching up and tapping my cheek with her gloved hand.

  ‘Aren’t you tall, like your father,’ she said.

  ‘Hallo, Biddy. How was your flight?’

  ‘Hot and crowded. How’s Kitty?’

  I told her about the deterioration as we headed for the car.

  ‘Was it all very sudden, Rory?’

  ‘Yes, and the cancer’s moved fast.’

  ‘It does, often. It did with Roy.’

  I looked down at her. ‘Roy’s dead?’

  ‘Oh yes, eight years ago. Bowel cancer.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’

  ‘I’ve only May left now, and she’s emigrated to Florida with her family.’

  ‘You live alone?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve the house up for sale at the moment, it’s too big for me. I don’t know why I’ve stayed so long. Memories, I suppose.’

  She looked around as we drove away from the airport, exclaiming about how much things had changed.

  ‘How long is it since you’ve been in Ireland?’

  ‘Oh, God, I can hardly remember; must be forty years. Roy would never come over; he thought if you were English you got shot as soon as you set foot here. After he died I thought about a visit, but I don’t know … it’s hard when you’ve been away so long.’

  ‘Mum and Dad have been back ten years.’

  ‘Ah, that’s why she didn’t reply to my letter.’

  ‘You wrote to her?’

  ‘One Christmas, about seven years ago. I sent it to Tottenham. Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘No, go ahead.’

  She lit up. ‘I didn’t know if I was a fool, writing. Roy was dead, and Danny. I was thinking that life’s short and it was daft that my own sister wasn’t talking to me, or vice versa, whichever it was; I was never sure.’

  ‘You must have been very disappointed when she didn’t reply.’

  ‘I was and I wasn’t. Kitty was never predictable.’ She touched my arm. ‘I don’t mean that as any offence, now. It’s just her nature.’

  ‘I know.’ If they had still been in Tottenham, would she have responded, I wondered? There was no knowing.

  ‘You might get a shock when you see her,’ I warned. ‘She’s very shrunken and pale.’

  ‘I’ve seen it with Roy. I don’t think there’ll be any surprises.’

  I changed gear, slowing down for the turn in the road.

  ‘That’s the cottage, you can just see the light. I was sorry to hear about Danny.’

  ‘How did you know about him?’

  ‘Nellie wrote and told us.’

  ‘Ah. I still miss Danny. The hurt never goes.’

  As I stopped the car she touched her lips nervously.

  ‘She does know I’m coming?’

  ‘I told her. But she’s not always with it, she might have forgotten. She wanted you to come though, that’s what she said.’

  My mother was taking sips of warm milk from a spoon as we arrived. My father held the spoon to her mouth, saying, ‘There you go, now, that’s great, down the hatch.’

  Biddy hung back, waiting by the fire until they’d finished. He came out to her, limping from the aches in his legs.

  ‘Biddy,’ he said, ‘you were good to come all this way.’

  She took his hand. ‘She’s the only sister I have left. It’s good to see you, Dan, it’s been too long.’

  ‘Ah well … you’re here now. Will you go in and see her?’

  ‘I’ll take Biddy in,’ I said, seeing that he was swaying.

  My mother’s eyes were closed and her breath sounded hoarse. The room was warm and scented with the tall cinna-mon-fragranced candle I’d bought. Biddy sat on a chair by the bed, shrugging her coat off.

  ‘Kitty? Can you hear me, Kitty?’

  My mother opened her eyes and focused as Biddy said her name again. She tightened her rosary beads in her hand, pulling at the edge of the pillow. A little of the milk had dripped onto it.

  ‘I’m sad for Danny,’ she said with difficulty, straining to project her voice, ‘your loss.’

  ‘It seems a long time ago now.’

  ‘Where was he buried?’

  ‘In Southend. With his books.’ She looked at me. ‘He taught English.’

  My mother looked at me. ‘Is Dermot on his way?’

  ‘He’s catching a plane tonight. He’ll be here tomorrow.’

  She gave a slight nod. ‘I’m awful tired,’ she said.

  Biddy stood. ‘We’ll let you sleep. I’ll see you again later.’

  We sat by the fire, talking quietly, Biddy and my father puffing away. Biddy still worked part time as a secretary, in the same job she’d had for years. She belonged to a widows’ club; they went on social outings and holidays together. Back in July they’d been to Madeira for two weeks. She was saving up for a second trip to Florida next year. I watched and listened, noticing her pale nail varnish. She was like many other carefully maintained English wi
dows of her age. Sometimes they came to me for treatment after breaking bones or having hip replacements. They filled their days with part-time jobs, social outings, shopping, trips to see relatives. Biddy had successfully reinvented the penniless girl with a thick brogue who had left Ireland and her illegitimate offspring. I wondered how she and my mother could have turned out so different; then I thought of Dermot and nodded to myself.

  TEN

  That night my mother was less restless, but my father was up just as much, wakeful with his own relentless pain. I slept lightly, on the edge of fleeting, confused dreams that incorporated the sounds of his tea-brewing, his coughing and the rustling of his newspaper. Now and again I would open my eyes and stare into the darkness, making out shapes around me.

  The spare room where I was staying was crammed with the things they had little use for but wouldn’t get rid of. Some of the knick-knacks were reminders of the beardy fella days; a cuckoo clock, a pair of wooden butter shapers, several snuff boxes and a variety of chipped china jugs. A hat stand was jammed by the small window, blocking the light. On the walls around my bed hung several of Miss Diamond’s artistic efforts, the picture of the holy family bought in Martha and Mary, a plaque of St Peter’s that I had brought back from Rome, the old sepia-tinted photo of Dev that had been with them for ever and a brass shield with the Keenan coat of arms. My mother had always been a sucker for details of family lineage; like a lot of other Irish people she was convinced that we could trace our line to the High Kings of Ireland, who must have been an enormously prolific crew if they had as many direct descendants as were claimed.

  The room smelled of mildew and the mattress held a dampness that the heat of my body never entirely subdued. My father had had a couple of odd-jobmen in tinkering with the back wall, but apart from drinking pints of tea and eating them out of biscuits these specialists hadn’t effected any cure; dark patches of moisture still traced their way along the plaster like spreading stains. My parents had always seemed untroubled by the fabric of their houses. In Tottenham, a chunk of plaster had fallen from the kitchen ceiling and lain in the corner for five years before they thought of clearing it away and perhaps having the bulge above their heads looked at. When he heard talk of damp-proofing or double glazing my father laughed and said didn’t all houses have damp, they were built on earth, and didn’t all buildings need to breathe. My mother agreed, especially on the subject of double glazing, which she thought extremely unhealthy; she believed that air trapped in a house went stagnant and caused blood to go septic.

  When I woke fully at seven I smelled the bacon my father was frying and my stomach turned over. I reached around the hat stand and opened the window for a few gulps of air. The day was dank and filled with low cloud; down in the hollow where Biddy was staying at the Kelly’s B & B it would be misty.

  My father was sitting with a cat on his lap and eating bacon trapped between two thick slices of bread. The cat was sniffing eagerly and was rewarded with a sliver of rind.

  ‘She had a better night,’ he confirmed. ‘I wouldn’t mind having a kip when I’ve finished this though, the missed sleep’s catching up on me.’

  ‘Go ahead. I’ll fetch Biddy about ten. Dermot will be here sometime this afternoon.’

  ‘Imagine, a house full. I can’t get used to it not being the two of us. Just about now I’d take her in a cup of tea and tell her what the weather’s like. She’s always dreaded these kinds of days when it’s hard to work outside.’

  ‘What would she do?’

  ‘Oh, listen to the wireless, do a bit of baking, doze, batter me into taking her to Fermoy. Write a few letters, maybe. She likes them old chat shows on TV.’ He shook his head. ‘At least with me around she couldn’t be up to moving a wall or rearranging the chimney stack.’

  ‘Do you remember the day in Tottenham when she dug a pond out the back?’

  ‘Oh Lord, don’t be reminding me. An unholy mess that was! It took me a month to get the ground flat again.’

  We were talking about her as if she’d already gone. In a way she had, edging her way from our lives, backing out of a door that was still open just a crack. Perhaps it was best to anticipate like this, gradually adjusting.

  My father creaked his way to my still-warm bed. I looked in on my mother and saw that she was sleeping. Her face looked now like a little bird’s, her cheeks shrunk away from her nose, throwing it into sharp relief. A song came into my head, one that I’d heard my grandmother sing:

  Oh her cheeks were like apples

  Her hair spun with gold

  And I followed her home

  Feeling aisy and bold.

  When the nurse arrived I left her to see to my mother while I cleared up. In the kitchen I had to be careful not to fall into any of the traps my mother had laid for non-vigilant helpers. For reasons best known to herself she liked to swap things from their original containers into ones of her choice; for example, washing-up liquid was often to be found in a bottle labelled floor polish while bleach lurked in the washing-up liquid container. The floor polish might well have been poured into an old milk carton. So it went on; the permutations were endless and followed no discernible pattern. You had to stay alert with all senses sharp if you didn’t want to be caught out. I had once scooped what I took to be pale margarine into a saucepan; when I turned back I saw that it was foaming. My mother had transferred a solid soap for woollens into the margarine tub. I never found the margarine; I settled for corn oil, remembering this time to sniff the attractive golden liquid before pouring, to check that it wasn’t really all-purpose lubricant or bath fragrance. This morning I noticed that the white sugar my father heaped in his tea was stored in a jar marked Sea Salt. That was a particularly subtle move on her part as the two substances looked alike. I started to laugh uncontrollably, tears spilling down my cheeks, until my breaths turned to hiccups. I leaned gasping against the sink and it crossed my mind that never again in the course of my life would I meet anyone quite like her. At one time, I would have seized on that passing thought with relish. Now I knew that I would feel the lack of those very things that had maddened me. I stuck my head under the cold tap and gulped water.

  The nurse looked at me kindly as she was closing her bag. I suppose she thought that I had been sobbing with grief. How could I have even started to explain? She touched my upper arm.

  ‘Hardly any time now, I’d say. I don’t like to be too definite but …’

  ‘I know. My brother’s on his way back.’

  ‘Lots of people have been asking after your mother as I do my rounds.’

  ‘We’ve had phone calls too, and people have called in.’

  A woman I didn’t know had dropped off a casserole. I assumed that most of these enquiries came from members of the church congregation; I was beginning to understand how an approaching death brought with it certain social niceties; neighbours knew the custom and relied on it.

  When the nurse had gone the house was hushed, with an expectant air. I was reminded of mornings when I was little; my father would have gone off to work and I’d rattle around downstairs, waiting for my mother to get up. Sometimes she’d appear humming lightly, hurrying me into my clothes before we set off to the shops, stopping for sticky cakes in the tea-room and calling in to see a couple of her church cronies. Those were the best days, snug and easy. But if she’d lain in bed for a long time, she would thump heavily down the stairs and then I knew it was best to stay out of her way because nothing would be right and she might weep: she might bewail ever having come to England, ever having met my father. Her distress would fill me with a hammering panic, my throat growing salty. At times I crept away behind the back of a chair and cried, my nose becoming hot and blocked. Then my cheeks would feel like sandpaper and redden where I’d scratched them. I would stay in my tartan dressing-gown because I didn’t know where my clothes were kept, doing jigsaws and counting on my brightiy-coloured abacus. She would heave herself from the sofa to open a tin of beans or spaghetti fo
r my lunch. In the late afternoon she’d help me dress, saying that I was a poor, thin creature; sure a strong gust of wind would blow me away. I would be swept up and clasped strongly to her chest as I tried to avoid being caught in the eye by the medals she wore or impaled on the sharp pin of one of her brooches.

  I walked softly to her room. She was still deep in sleep. I crossed to the other side of the double bed and carefully lay down beside her, facing in towards her. Her mouth was so compressed that her lips had almost disappeared. I put a hand on her shoulder and laid my head on my hand. Sometimes, when I’d called up the stairs to her on good mornings, she’d shouted to me to come and join her in her parlour and I’d climbed, my tartan dressing-gown tassels swinging. Then she would throw back the covers and I’d tumble into the warm nest beside her, burrowing my cheek against her fat arm.

  ‘Oh!’ she’d say with a mock scream, ‘yeer feet are like little cold mice,’ and I’d run them up and down her legs, pretending to be a scuttling rodent.

  We’d play ‘I spy’ for a while, then she’d plump up the pillows and give me a song, maybe ‘The Grey Sheep’; that was one she’d often sung in the big houses where she worked. She’d launch into it during the early-morning hours, to get her spirits up while she was raking fires:

  Oh I wish I was out with my sweetheart

  On the peak of a mountain so high,

  With no house or abode next or near us,

  But the snow coming down from the sky;

  My arms wrapped around him so tightly

  That he never need fear for the cold

  And I’d kiss him far into the night-time

  With kisses worth silver and gold.

  That was the verse I asked for; the bows on her nightdress would quiver as her bosom rose and fell. I’d get her to repeat it, sitting up in the bed and dramatizing as she sang, making a mountain peak with my hands, fluttering my fingertips to indicate falling snow, wrapping my arms around my body and kissing the air with puckered lips.

  ‘Come on,’ she’d say finally, shifting out of bed and causing the mattress to rise several inches, ‘ye’ve me worn out with yeer shenanigans, it’s time to shake the sauce bottle.’