Oh, I didn’t expect this. She says it like it still hurts. A girl her age shouldn’t even know that word. I assumed Peggy would have been popular anywhere she went. Thanks be to God that she has been given a new start.

  ‘Nobody should call you that, Peggy. Sure it isn’t your fault what happened to your mammy and daddy.’

  I reach out, tilting her face to me.

  ‘I told my teacher they’re working in Áras an Uachtaráin. Just so you know.’

  I take this to mean she wants me to spread the rumour on her behalf. I nod, and hope that she believes me. Those awful brats. I’ve half a mind to ring her old school. I squeeze her arm and try to get her mind off it.

  ‘Would Anna normally make Brigid’s Crosses with you?’

  I ask, but Peggy doesn’t look up at me again. She is focused on bending the reeds as evenly as she can.

  ‘No, Anna can’t make them. She hasn’t the patience for anything like this. None of them at home would.’

  I wonder what things Anna has patience for at home. Whether she is the closest to Peggy, or whether it’s one of the boys. I carry a hot, heavy teapot to the table and sit with her, sorting the reeds by size. She admires the crocheted tea cosy in the shape of a hen. I tell her that I made it, that I can teach her how to do it one day. But she seems more interested in the woolly hen.

  ‘I love all animals. I’m going to be a vet when I’m older.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll make a brilliant vet, Peggy.’

  And I wonder where she got the patience from, if not from Anna or the two lads. I’m not being nosy, I only want to find out more about the family.

  ‘So who used you make Brigid’s Crosses with before, if it wasn’t Anna?’

  ‘Lillian.’

  Hold on now. Nobody has mentioned any Lillian to me before. Peggy sighs.

  ‘Is that your friend from home?’

  I ask, and immediately regret asking. Ballycrea is her home now, I shouldn’t be putting other ideas in her head. I’m sure it’s been hard enough to get her to settle here, without me reminding her of the home and all of the people she has left behind.

  ‘Lillian was Jack’s girl. She used look after me all the time.’

  Now there’s a bit of gossip. Jack has left a girl behind in their old village. What happened there, I wonder? And has Tom mentioned anything to Bill? I don’t know why I never considered that they might have left women behind them. Sure they’re good-looking lads. It just seems like they are an isolated unit, the four of them, with no ties to anyone else. I’ll have to tell Ciara.

  ‘We used make them every year at her house, on the first day of spring.’

  Maybe I shouldn’t encourage her to keep talking about this woman. Especially if she is Jack’s ex-girlfriend. Peggy needs to be present where she is, not half here and half there.

  ‘What are you giving up for Lent, Peggy?’

  It’s easy to change the subject with a child. She starts listing all the sweets she is going to give up. Lent is more than a month away, but she doesn’t question it. I pour a cup of tea for her.

  ‘Lillian used always say she was giving up sugar, but then she would take sugar in her tea on Sundays and eat fruitcake with it. Are you allowed to break Lent on Sundays?’

  ‘I’m sure even Holy God takes a little break on Sundays.’

  I’m not sure what else to tell her. If this Lillian was breaking Lent, I don’t want to tell Peggy that she was wrong. I wonder if it was a bad end between herself and Jack. Maybe she could come and visit, or maybe we could arrange for Peggy to talk to her on the telephone. Or maybe that’s all totally inappropriate. I’ll have to ask Ciara what she thinks.

  ‘That’s what Lillian would say! But Jack would never laugh because her daddy never laughed, and he wanted her daddy to like him.’

  ‘Hurry up and finish that cross now, like a good girl.’

  There’s no taking Lillian out of her head. Once the first cross is finished, I hold it up to the kitchen window, to the sunlight, and pretend to inspect it.

  ‘Peggy, this is perfect! Oh, it’s so neat, you’ll have to do me a few more.’

  She smiles and keeps going. I ask her to tell me the story of St Brigid, and help her where she leaves gaps. But she knows the story very well. She is a smart girl.

  When she has a few crosses made, I tell her to put on her coat, and wrap one of my scarves around her. Holding her hand, we walk down to Mrs Deer’s house. Every year I bring her in a cross, which she keeps in the rafters. Living all on her own, Mrs Deer’s house is dark and quiet, and I can sense that Peggy is half afraid to go in. I am so glad to have found a child to deliver crosses to the elderly with me, because every year, I fear that somebody will suddenly deem me elderly, and have a child drop a cross into my house.

  We stand at Mrs Deer’s door while she praises the cross from the threshold. Her warped posture and sparse hair scares Peggy. It isn’t fair really; Mrs Deer is a lovely woman. Peggy holds my hand tighter until we leave her door.

  ‘She’s a very nice person, she’s just very old.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  I laugh, and don’t scold her for being cheeky.

  ‘She’s as old as the hills.’

  I say, when we are far enough from the house that we won’t be heard.

  When Peggy was scared, she held onto my hand tight. She needed to be looked after, and she wanted me to do it. Thrilling heartbreak. She chose me, but she isn’t mine at all. She’s only the sister of somebody I barely know. I wonder if I will spend my whole life trying to mother things that don’t need me.

  Still, I bring her down to Ciara’s door to give in a cross, and we spend an hour with the puppies. I keep the neatest cross for myself and show it off to Anna, and to Tom and Bill when they come in. Anna fidgets, and for a moment I wonder if I have crossed a line by spending the afternoon looking after Peggy. I hope she won’t feel like I’m trying to step on her territory. I’ve to keep Anna sweet if I want to spend time with Peggy.

  But things seem alright when we all sit down together for cake and a pot of tea. I’m just dying to ask them about Lillian, but I let her go unmentioned for now. To hear Peggy’s laughing fill up the house is so sweet. And it’s good to have new friends. To eat warm fruitcake with them on the first evening of spring.

  Jack

  ‘Well, Mammy, I didn’t know what to think!’

  Anna says, facing our only framed photograph of Mammy and Daddy. She is telling them about her day, the Brigid’s Cross that Peggy brought home and the fruitcake she had with Betty Nevan. Not in prayer, or even in a conscious way. It was like she just thought of something that Mammy would have found entertaining and started talking to the photograph. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, really. Sure don’t I spend every minute talking to you?

  But there’s something about the way that she does it. Losing herself to these conversations. Pausing as though she can actually hear Mammy responding. I wonder sometimes if she sees Mammy before her, wiping down the side and sweeping the floor. It makes me uncomfortable. Once more, I feel consumed with the want to put a stop to Anna. It builds up from the pit of my stomach until I am close to trembling.

  I sit up. Moving to stand. To strike her. With one blow, surely I could end her. One fine crack of my knuckles against her delicate little jaw. A tooth in the sink, marbled drool and blood. A mess I would happily clean up. But then as I close my eyes, I see you, sudden and gentle and good. This fleeting thought of you is all that stops me from catching and throttling her. The flashing promise of meeting you in heaven. The most rational feeling I have had in months – the strongest feeling I have had in months – stopped by something brutally irrational.

  If heaven is there, I’m sure, it’s nothing but a disappointing party full of the plainest people I know. And yet I am doing all that I can to get there, back to you. So before I do something I will regret, I get up and leave the house, and take myself down to evening Mass.

  Before all this, it wasn’t often I’d find myself pulled down to the church more than once a week. Now, I find it’s one of the few places I can go to escape from everything. There’s something about the routine of it, of being spoken at without the expectation to answer with an original remark. The anonymity of worship, melting my thoughts away. Converting them into a manageable cluster within me, that I can put aside for a little while.

  What’s more, today the first day of the month came to me again. I pretended not to feel each second of it grinding against me, but it was there, undeniably. Cruel. Sure what else am I to do but go down to the church, saying prayers I know by heart but don’t understand. Talking to a god who may or may not even be there. Cruel alright.

  ’Tis all cruel like, but here is the true cruelty: whatever I feel about it, and however it has damaged me, I must carry on believing in God. That He is good, and that He loves us and is merciful. Because if there is no God, then you’re not safe in Heaven. You aren’t anywhere at all. You would really be gone, and I would be talking to myself. So I’ve to keep on praying, believing in Heaven and its many beasts.

  It’s a dark evening. Aren’t they all dark evenings? I go down through the town on my own. A bit of quiet, thanks be to God. Already, I have my hands thrown into a lazy prayer at my crotch. And for now, I am nothing but a man walking down to Mass. It’s alright. It’s nice to just be a passerby, without thoughts or a history. Just somebody walking past somebody else. The black night reaching its arms out, every star a wild eye pointed down at me. The light of them swallowing my shadow, until I am entirely alone.

  The steep stone steps up to the church. The burning just beginning to bloom at the bottom of my lungs as I reach the top. And as I enter the church I have to wonder, why don’t I have any original ways of processing my feelings? Why do I always turn to prayer? Perhaps it’s a custom ingrained too deep in me to ignore. Perhaps it’s something to do with being under the surveillance of Himself; old ‘holy God’, and feeling I have to share everything with him. Whatever the reason, I’m here now. Take a seat, Jacky.

  ’Tis a rare thing now that I get a moment to myself. Ah darling, tell me, are you sitting with me? Tell me why you never sit with me. For months now I have been waiting for some sort of sign that you are here. The cold of your ghost. A hallucination. A delusion. Anything just to keep me going. I search and search for a sight of you, for the smell of your hair, the smell of your sweat. For anything. Going mad with the vision of you before me would be far better than going mad without you here at all. My angel, torn from my side.

  Often, like right now, I fake the feeling of your hands on my shoulders, the click-clacking of your shoes on the ground. I might as well fake that you are here with me, since you don’t seem to be calling down on your own. If I could only reach up to the awful, endless navy sky and tear through it. To put my wondering to rest. To reveal Heaven, or its absence.

  I have to laugh at myself. Heading down to Mass, on a Monday, on my own. Imagine. If the boys could see me now. The church is quiet. A good handful here. Enough people to fit into the hand of God, I suppose, if your scale of Him is the same as mine.

  Out comes Father O’Brien to kick us all off. I must say I’m dreading the vernacular Mass. ’Tis better in Latin, when none of us know what the priest would be saying. I fear that soon, I will be the only one who doesn’t understand.

  When he starts to sing, I am lifted.

  ‘A Thiarna Dean Trocaire.’

  Now that’s something new. I never once heard an Irish song in Mass. It seems Father O’Brien is trying to get ahead of the game. And we respond, exact mimics of every crack in his voice. I fall into it all. Sitting, standing, kneeling. Something about it is so wonderfully automatic. And while the people around me are no doubt receiving immense comfort and joy from the experience, I am almost moved to tears by the emptiness of it all. I don’t understand it, I don’t know if I ever will. And that is fine. A palatable way to feel nothing at all. Something I can cope with. Something that means so little to me and yet I know so well. Nothing, everything. How sweet it is. A Chriost Dean Trocaire. I have found my flow state.

  Lillian, if you’re anywhere, you’re probably not here. Do you know what, I really hope you’re not here. I don’t want you ever coming to a place as dreary, as empty as this, watching as I find semblances of comfort in nothing. Communion commences, and I find I want to take the chalice and bite it. I want to put my teeth through the eucharist. I want to hurt god and his son the way that they have hurt me. A thiarna dean trocaire, you merciless fucker.

  Leaving, walking home, I catch a glimpse of something glorious in the night. My heart, at once soaring and plummeting, when I lose my breath at the sight of Teresa Doyle, emptying the bins beside her father’s pub. I walk faster, hoping she hasn’t seen me. It isn’t that I don’t want to talk to her, it’s just she would be too much right now. I’m supposed to be missing you, I can’t handle the creeping interest I have in Teresa.

  ‘Goodnight, Jack.’

  She calls after me. As I ignore her, I feel the sort of shame I often felt after making love, or shouting at Anna, or doing anything to express myself. It’s embarrassing, to embrace the feelings so intensely.

  At home, Peggy sleepily strokes the chicken, Anna is boiling eggs. Tom sits up against the wall, and I sit in alongside him. I let my head fall on his shoulder, and he welcomes me. No questions. No worries. This unusual proximity is no hassle to him at all. Just a brother minding his brother. I let myself relax, and smell the tobacco off him, and remember a time when I smelled like that. Maybe I’ll take up the smoking again. Maybe that would put me back in touch with who I once was. It might at least take the edge off evenings like these.

  I’m alright, amn’t I? I’ve my brother and a familiar smell. I’ve a place to put my head down. It’s more than I had back in the church. It’s more than some people have in their whole life.

  ‘Roll me a fag there, will you?’

  I ask, lifting my head just long enough to see the hair in his nostril twitch, and he puts on a stern face and shakes his head.

  ‘Not a hope. You’ve fine clean lungs now.’

  And while I drop a big, heavy sigh on his shoulder, I feel such great love in his denial. He’s looking out for me. For a moment, he puts his arm around me, squeezing and slapping my shoulder, reassuring me.

  ‘You’re alright, boy.’

  I suppose he knows where I’ve been tonight. He doesn’t bother plastering on a smile, but he is here for me now. From this angle, he is the spit of Daddy. In more than many ways, he is just like Daddy. I suppose, in many ways, he is my daddy now.

  ‘I’m alright.’

  And I let myself sink further into his shoulder, forgetting the cigarette and the embarrassment I felt walking home. Forgetting the sting of your absence, and the sting of Teresa’s presence. Feeling only the fire before us and his rough geansaí on my cheek. If Tom wants to look after me, I’ll let him.

  Tom

  Picking stones from Bill’s front field, I cannot help but think of Daddy. He used to have me picking stones from dawn on Saturdays. I’d leave his land without even the dust that would one day form a stone. Spotless clay, sparkling crops. He would sit Jack up in the cart and let him do the ploughing. Even though I was older. Even though I wanted to do it.

  ‘Jack wouldn’t pick half as many stones as you, Tommy.’

  He used to always say. That was it then; I wasn’t allowed to argue with that. It always seemed stupid to me that a buck of my size would be reduced to the childish labour of picking stones, while a little rake like Jack was allowed to command the plough. I wonder did Jack realise how much it bothered me. I wonder did Daddy.

  I see the back of the postman, Rob Keating, as a flash of colour cycling away up the hill.

  ‘You’ve a delivery here, Bill!’

  Betty calls out to us from the house. It’s a glittering sort of day. Normally, Bill wouldn’t stop for the post, but today he seems excited. As though receiving post is a new and radical concept. He drops his pick and motions for me to follow.

  A crate up on the table, stuffed with newspaper. Bill beaming at it. Obviously it is something he has been expecting. I feel wrong watching, as though his wonderful crate is private and should be enjoyed when I am gone home. Perhaps I should offer to leave.

  But Betty pulls out a chair for me. She puts the water on and makes us all coffee. Bill takes off his coat, sweating in the cold.

  ‘Bill, will you leave those boots at the door and don’t be walking dirt into my house!’

  Her shrill voice. I kick off my own boots before she starts at me. Bill uses a bar to pull the lid off the crate. We are faced with clothes, jars of tea, marmalade and lemon curd, and three pieces of a glowing fruit that I have never seen before.

  ‘This is what James sent over!’

  Betty peers over his shoulder into the box, from Bill’s brother in Northampton, reaching in to feel the fabric of the clothes that have come. She reads the note to herself, and then a portion out loud to us, which says,

  ‘The peppers may be on the turn now, though hopefully the airmail was quick enough that you’ll get to taste them. In any case, they are filled with seeds which you should try to cultivate.’

  ‘You can’t get these in the shops at all.’

  Bill says, and I never saw him happier, or prouder, as he reaches into the crate for one of the peppers. Feeling, for a moment, connected to his brother, all the way in England. And I suddenly feel inferior to this foreign food, and I aspire to be it. Isn’t that sad?

  ‘Peppers,’ he says, taking one in his hand and turning it over. ‘’Tis veg.’

 

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