All We Shall Know, page 14
Imagine my mother’s face, Pat said, as he drove me home, if I arrived on with you now. It was probably she put the brick through your window, you know. Hey. Will we go for one spin down through the village, for the gallery? Just so everyone knows we’re on good terms? So smartarses know to watch their fuckin jaws?
And I said, No, and he said that was fair enough, and he drew his car along by Daddy’s outside wall and stopped there. I won’t drive in, he said. And I don’t know how it took me so long to figure this out, but I saw then, maybe because we were out of the sun’s glare, in the shade of the willow that sentries the lawn, the slight dilation of his pupils, and the shrill light in his irises, and the slight yellowness of the sclera of his eyes, and the mad weave of bloody lines at their edges. I said, Pat, are you on something? And he looked at me in silence and he opened his mouth, and there was a lie on his lips, I knew, and he seemed to think better of the lie and so he closed his mouth again and he looked away from me and he said nothing for a minute, then he whispered: Yokes the doctor gave me. My nerves came at me a bit. I couldn’t sleep or eat for a good long while. I took my father’s gun one day and walked along the river path down towards Ballyartella and the time got away on me and when they saw the gun gone and me gone too they panicked and my father ran the whole way down and when he met me at the end of Stack’s Lane at the bend of the river he could hardly breathe and I had the gun loaded but I was only hoping for a shot at a duck, that’s all, but my father took the gun off of me and he took the cartridges out and fucked them into the river and he started crying and saying, Jesus, son, Jesus, son, there’s no woman worth that, and it gave me an awful hop to see him that upset and so I went to the doctor to please him, really. To please them all. The way they wouldn’t be worrying about me and fucking mithering non-stop.
I thought of Paddy and his envelope of cash, and his plans for my exile. All fathers are the same in extremes, all parents. They’ll do anything they can to save their young from pain.
My father met me at the door and he said, Well? How’s the boy? The boy, he always called Pat. I’d forgotten that. He hasn’t called him that in years. I know how fond he always was of Pat; he never could disguise it. They often stood together at the school wall to watch a match in the hurling field. I wouldn’t please the fuckers hand over a fiver to go into an underage match, Daddy would say, and Pat would agree, and they’d both come home half blind from squinting across the distance to the field and they’d often be sunburnt from standing in the open when they could have sat in the cool shade of the stand. They footed turf together in Cloughjordan bog and bagged it and drew it home on a borrowed trailer and divided it equally between our houses. They each agreed with everything the other said on hurling, and cars, and politics, and which fella was stone useless and which fella would be the saving of us all, and it was hard sometimes to figure out what they were talking about, but they always seemed relaxed together, and words flowed back and forth between them easily. Pat is a man that’s liked by men and so is my father.
He’s fine, Dad, I said. There’s no fear of him.
And how’s his parents, and the girl, Fidelma? Did she have a child, ever?
And I said she did, a little boy, remember? They went to Canada shortly after he was born?
And Dad inspected the ceiling as though scanning the whiteness there for some clue as to the whereabouts of the memories of these things, and he said, Oh, yes, of course, I have it now. And how is she getting on over there?
And I lost my temper then, suddenly, with no sign given to me beforehand of its imminent departure, and I shouted, Jesus Christ, Dad, for fuck’s sake, how the fuck would I know how she is? Do you think she fucking rings me and tells me or writes to me or something? That family think I’m shit, Dad, and they always did. And I stood fuming, waiting for the cooling, breathing deeply in and out.
And my father took his glasses off and wiped them on his sleeve and said, I was only asking, the way anyone would. Go easy now, lovey, don’t be vexed. Please don’t be vexed, now. Come in and sit down and I’ll make you a bit to eat.
Week Thirty-seven
MARY CROTHERY HAS been sour with me the last few days. She won’t sit across from me at meals the way she always does, but takes the place at the far end of the table, facing Daddy, as far from me as she can get. She won’t meet my eye. Even going through her word cards and our stack of Dr Seusses she hasn’t once laughed, and her reading is mechanical and clipped. When stuck on a word she stays silent and downcast; instead of laughing or rolling her eyes heavenward she looks sullenly at the page and purses her lips. Today I felt my patience stretching to its last. I tried to push away my rising anger, to keep my temper even. Mary, love, I said, why are you so cross with me?
I’m not one bit cross, miss. Not one bit.
Why won’t you talk to me, then?
Amn’t I talking now? What more do you want from me?
I want to know what happened to make you so cross with me.
The way you drove past me the other day, she said, and she stopped and bit her lower lip and I felt a burning in my stomach and the echo of a distant pain behind my heart. With your husband. The very same as if I wasn’t there. The very same as if I was a stranger. But I have no right in the whole wide world to be one bit cross over that. And you’re still married to that man and he has his rights as well. I just never thought in a millen years you’d turn away from me so fast. We was going for our walk to see the horse and the day was so lovely and I was so happy and the very minute he arrived you was gone from me, and I seen the look he gave me driving past, and the look you gave me wasn’t far behind. And Mary squeezed her eyes tight shut and put her hand across her mouth when she saw me start to cry, and she put her other hand out and squeezed my wrist, and from behind her hand she said, Oh, miss, I don’t know what come over me. I don’t know why I got so wicked. And you so good to me always. I think it’s just the way I was so jealous when I seen you driving off for a spin in the car with your husband. What I wouldn’t have gave for it to of been Buzzy drove in the gate, and brang me off to try and woo me back.
The weather broke today. It shook and bellowed and lightning sheeted across the sky as a low pressure front came crashing in from the ocean like a barbarous horde and slew the tyrannous high. Daddy and Mary and I stood close together and looked up at the sky from the patio door like people seeing the aurora borealis for the first time, like people not used to rain. There was a sharp metallic smell in the air and the soil blackened and turned to mud beneath the pounding rain and the flowers cowered in their beds and the branches of trees waved in the sudden wind as if rejoicing. Mary Crothery counted aloud the seconds between flashes and peals, and blessed herself at every rolling boom. She held her hand out from the doorway to feel the giant drops. The world will be washed away, she said.
The rain has stopped falling now and has started its journey skyward again in ghostly wisps. Mary asked me this evening, as I sat in the soaked garden sweating in the cloying air, if I still thought Pat was any way good-looking. I said I’d never really found him unattractive, it was just that we were so wrapped in one another for so long it was as though we stopped seeing one another as separate people, so being hard on each other became like being hard on ourselves: when I was really unhappy with myself I told him I hated him; I blamed him for things that weren’t his fault.
What kinds of things? Mary Crothery wanted to know.
All kinds, I told her. A cracked glass. A late taxi. A rainy day. A dead baby.
She said, Oh, Lord, miss, you guv him hell.
I said, I did, and he was well able to give it right back.
Mary said, Traveller girls marry young as a rule. Most keeps their mouths shut, though. I seen women getting thrown around the place, bate black and blue. I seen more girls and women stone mad for their men, though, acting like they were gods. I seen a woman one time whose man was killed in a car crash lay herself along the mound of his grave and it took seven or eight people a good few hours to move her off of it. And still she went back every day and lay down alongside that mound of earth and for all I know she’s still doing it. She was a cousin of Buzzy’s through marriage. He was real good to her at the time. Helped her out no end. Buzzy never seen no one stuck.
His family nearly killed you, Mary, I said, and she turned her head sharply away from me and looked affronted, insulted almost by the existence of this truth.
He’d of had nothing to do with that. Buzzy knew I done what I had to do. Buzzy knew me. That’s all over other things. Tarmacaddanin and roofing and all that. Rackets all the men do be at. I was only an excuse to be fighting. Buzzy had a great heart underneath.
Underneath what? I asked her.
You know. All the oul shaping men must do. All the oul walking around like peacocks.
I went to Portiuncula again today, on my own. I left when Dad was gone to Mass and Mary had her physiotherapy appointment. I dropped her at the clinic and asked was she okay to walk back home. The sky was a lighter grey, tinged with sickly yellow, and seemed wrung out, but still there was a hint of wetness in the breeze. There’s fear of me, she said, and that’s a fact. There’s no one going to touch me on the street. Our enemies are all far away. I feel that in my bones and in my heart. It’s the way I have a taste of the vision, don’t forget. And she smiled at me and pulled her hood up over her head. I hadn’t thought of violence, only rain.
The nurse smiled at me, the same one as last time, warmer now, it seemed. The size of me, maybe, the nearness of the end, or the beginning. But I haven’t prepared for a beginning, only for an end. Does she know this? The ultrasound technician held my eye while she smoothed the gel onto my bare distended skin and smiled as well, and there was some kind of light of knowing in her eyes, some ghost of wryness in the upturn of her lips. I wonder if she somehow knows my secret too. I feel no worry. What if she does? What if they all do? It doesn’t seem to matter. These people know their jobs and anything else they know doesn’t matter. The baby’s heartbeat pounded through the amplifier, and I asked the girl was it meant to be so fast.
Oh, yes, she said, and she flicked a strand of blonde hair that had escaped her ponytail back from her face. It’s completely normal. Look, it’s like he’s waving, or dancing even, the way his legs are going! And she put a hand on my forearm and squeezed lightly while we watched my baby raise his arms and lower them in turn, and straighten out the slope of his back and settle again into a curve, and kick first one leg up and then the other. Here was the product of my madness, the corporeal evidence of my degeneration, kicking his legs for me and this pretty girl, whose gloved hand was still lightly on my arm, and we laughed at the little interloper on the screen, and the sunlight shone through the leaves of a tree outside and dappled the white wall behind the machine where my baby danced and danced.
My father was sitting in the kitchen at the table drinking tea when I got home. Is Mary not with you? he said.
No. She had her physiotherapy appointment. For her shoulder and her arm.
Oh, he said. Gor, ye should have let me know and I’d have collected her.
And I didn’t know why we hadn’t done that. I was so caught up in making sure no one came with me to the hospital. A low pounding began inside me, like my heartbeat was being amplified by the same machine that had amplified my baby’s, but only in my ears, and my brain sensed panic and dumbly dumped a barrow of adrenalin into my stomach in case I needed to run, to flee something, or to fight.
I’m surprised at you, Melody, my father said, letting her off around the town on her own. There could be anyone lying in wait for her. They could be back to finish the job.
I said, Jesus, Dad, you go look for her then, drive down to the clinic and around the town, and he whitened suddenly and stood so fast his chair flew back and he banged against the table so his mug shook and tea slopped out of it and he was gone past me, and I was behind him saying, Wait, Dad, wait for me, I’ll go with you.
We found her on the Ashdown Road, halfway down the far side of the Long Hill, a half-mile from the halting site that used to be her home. She was walking slowly with her hood pulled up still despite the heat, and her shoulders were hunched as though she was trying to make herself smaller, to hide herself. Daddy drew along beside her and drove at her walking pace and I lowered my window and said, Mary, and I said it again, and she kept walking and didn’t turn her head, and I shouted this time, MARY!
And at last she turned, and seemed shocked to see us there, like kerb-crawlers looking to do business, and she said, What? I’m only going for a look.
A look at what?
Daddy was leaning out over his steering wheel and he was saying, Come on, sweetheart, and we’ll give you a spin. Is it down to the site you’re going?
And Mary stopped walking and said, Go way, will ye, and leave me be. I’m only going for a look to see who’s there and I’ll be back in a little while. Go on, she said, louder now, I’m grand now, I’m the finest evermore.
The finest evermore, she said. She got that from my father. It sounded lovely from her lips, like some sweet tribute to him. A part of me is jealous she’s so cracked about my father, and all of me is jealous he’s so cracked in return. But I can’t begrudge her.
Mary Crothery had met someone from the depleted halting site at the waiting room in the hospital, a distant cousin, sufficiently far out to not have had to flee with all the rest. The bays left empty by the exodus of Crotherys and Toppys were being filled by new people, some of whom had never before set foot in Ireland. And still they went around calling themselves Irish, Mary said. And the English accents of them, you wouldn’t believe. You could hardly make out one thing they were saying. Some of the Toppys were back as well, the distant cousin said, and everyone was glad of that because Mick Toppy’d keep them all in line, they knew, and no fight could be fought in his presence that wasn’t directed by him or that wasn’t involving him, but still and all everything was tense and dark about the place, and the small boys even weren’t inclined to play outside, but stayed inside their wagons, peeping out.
Mary Crothery stood in the kitchen and told us all this, and the sun was setting behind her and reddening the sky above Ton Tenna, and the crows were processing home in a straggled weary line, and she looked at me and said: It’s Martin Toppy’s going fighting for us, miss. The boy you know whose book you gave me to mind. And my hands went of their own accord and joined themselves across my womb and Mary Crothery’s eyes followed them down, and a light of knowing flashed there for a moment and was gone, and the hard and heavy silence was softened by my father saying gently, Ah, boys, ah, boys.
Mick Toppy has claim to be king of all Travellers, you know. His father is buried beyond in Loughrea in County Galway and it says on his gravestone: Here Lies Michael Toppy the King of All Travellers. I seen it with my own two eyes the time we buried an aunt of Mommy’s up there. There was a line of people waiting to pay tribute at his grave, and he years dead at this stage, and to kiss the headstone and all. There was women bowing before the dead man, and children crying that never once laid eyes on him. The thought the Travellers had a king one time that now was dead was enough sadness to bring their tears. Anyway, anyhow, that’s what it is now and that’s what it’s going to be. The grandson of a king is going fighting for us, and no one knows yet who the Folans will send.
And Mary laid her hands palms upwards on her knees and she folded herself forward and laid her forehead on her palms, and a keening wail came from her, and my father stood from his garden chair and said, Ah, now, ah, now, and Mary straightened herself and looked at us through eyes half blind from tears and said, What will I do? What will I do if it’s Buzzy they send?
Week Thirty-eight
MORE ROLLED IN overnight, vans and wagons full of dark-faced men and brass-blonde women. They filled the space at the front end of the site that Mary’s family had left empty. They parked against the end wall at the back in spaces cleared of scrap and horseboxes on Mary’s father’s orders, transmitted from their hiding place in the north.
Martin Toppy’s regal father welcomes their leaders with over-long handshakes, clasps of arms and touched foreheads. Women step from wagon to wagon without touching the ground; doors are slammed quickly behind them. Children press their faces against nets of brilliant white, laundered for the trip so as not to be a show opposite the Irish people. Curtains stay drawn. Days and nights pass. Still their champion hasn’t been seen.
They park close together, leaving gaps just wide enough for a person to walk between each vehicle. As more and more arrive they puddle and thicken; a coagulation of metal and flesh, a dark blockage at the gate of the meadow that rolls up to the site’s back wall, where horses graze and a stable was promised once, years ago, by a council candidate who ferried Travellers in and out of town to register and then to vote, and their hundred or so votes swung the day for him, and yet no stable was ever built.
And now they’ve overflowed the site and started to fill the meadow, and a suited woman with a clipboard held fast to her chest and two luminous-vested men from the council came and remonstrated, and then the guards arrived, and families moved out for show, and returned in darkness, and filled their unofficial berths again. The Folans won’t come until the day itself, and no firm day or place for the fight has been agreed. And my baby is hopping inside me, and we’ve seen the perfect shape of his hand against my skin.
Mary Crothery has been told to stay away from the site in a missive from Mommy relayed through a text from Margaret or Bridget or both of them. We park every day across from the entrance and keep watch, and Daddy hums and twitches with nerves and shifts in his seat and asks us have we not seen enough, and Mary sits low in the back of Daddy’s car with her hood up and her hair tied back, peeping, saying, Wan minute, sir, wan minute more, I’m begging you. And all the minutes turn to hours, and it seems they know we’re watching, and have tacitly accepted our presence there, as outliers of the tribe, maybe, and Martin Toppy’s father has once or twice stood still and looked across, and has met my eye, and nodded, only barely. Oh, Jesus, miss, he seen you, Mary said, and now it’s not as scary as it was; there’s no one in there not related to Mary, and something of this fight involves her honour, and nothing of it’s very clear except the fact of it; it’s all boiled down to this slow simmer, the ordered chaos of this coming together, this wait, this nothing-time before the sport. And every day my heart beats harder in my chest whenever Mary Crothery meets my eye. She knows, I know. What she calls her taste of a vision is really a keen intuition, a knowing without conscious thought, a springing to her mind of truths, ushered in there by the tiniest of signals and signs. That she ascribes the provenance of this knowing to a magical force only serves to fasten what she sees as the truth of things harder in her mind; knowledge sent from another realm is incontrovertible, and could not be otherwise. To deny it is to deny God, and the souls of all the faithful departed.
