by Maeve Binchy
‘Vincent doesn’t even know,’ Brendan had said.
Nothing would dissuade him. Brendan hadn’t known that he possessed such strength. For four days the battle went on.
His mother would come and sit on his bed with cups of drinking chocolate. ‘All boys go through a period like this, a time of wanting to be on their own, to be away from the family apron strings. I’ve suggested to your father that you go on a little holiday over to Vincent, maybe that will get it all out of your system.’
Brendan had refused. It would have been dishonest. Because once he went he would not come back.
His father made overtures too. ‘Listen, boy, perhaps I was a bit harsh the other night saying you were only going to try and inherit that heap of old stones, I didn’t mean that to sound so blunt. But you know the way it will look. You can see how people will look at it.’
Brendan couldn’t, not then, not now.
But he would never forget the look on Vincent’s face when he arrived up the road.
He had walked all the way from the town. Vincent was standing with the old dog, Shep, at the kitchen door. He shaded his eyes from the evening light as Brendan got nearer, and he could make out the shape in the sunset.
‘Well now,’ he said.
Brendan had said nothing. He had carried a small grip bag with him, all his possessions for a new life.
‘It’s yourself,’ Vincent had said. ‘Come on in.’
At no time that evening did he ask why Brendan had come or how long he was staying. He never inquired whether they knew his whereabouts back in London, or if the visit had official approval.
Vincent’s view was that all this would emerge as time went by, and slowly over the weeks and months it did.
Days came and went. There was never a harsh word between the two Doyles, uncle and nephew. In fact there were very few words at all. When Brendan thought he might go to a dance nearby, Vincent said he thought that would be a great thing altogether. He had never been great shakes at the dancing himself but he heard that it was great exercise. He went to the tin on the dresser where the money was and handed Brendan forty pounds to kit himself out.
From time to time Brendan helped himself from the tin. He had asked in the beginning, but Vincent had put a stop to that, saying the money was there for the both of them, and to take what he needed.
Things had been getting expensive, and from time to time Brendan went and did an evening’s work in a bar for an extra few pounds to add to the till. If Vincent knew about it he never acknowledged it, either to protest or to praise.
Brendan grinned to himself, thinking how differently things would have been run back in Rosemary Drive.
He didn’t miss them; he wondered could he ever have loved them, even a little bit? And if he hadn’t loved them did that make him unnatural? Everything he read had love in it, and all the films were about love, and anything you heard of in the papers seemed to be done for love or because someone loved and that love wasn’t returned. Maybe he was an odd man out, not loving.
Vincent must have been like that too, that’s why he never wrote letters or talked to people intensely. That’s why he liked this life here in the hills and among the stony roads and peaceful skies.
It was a bit unnatural, Brendan told himself, to become twenty-two all by yourself, without acknowledging it to another soul. If he told Vincent, his uncle would look at him thoughtfully and say ‘Is that a fact?’ He would offer no congratulations nor suggest a celebratory pint.
Vincent was out walking the land. He would be back in by lunch. They would have that bacon cold, and plenty of tomatoes. They would eat hot potatoes with it because a dinner in the middle of the day without a few big floury potatoes would be no use to anyone. They never ate mutton or lamb. It wasn’t out of a sense of delicacy to the sheep that were their living, it was that they had no big freezer like some of their neighbours who would kill a sheep each season. And they couldn’t bear to pay the prices in the butcher’s shop for animals that they had sold for a greatly smaller sum than would warrant such a cost by the time they got to the butcher’s cold store.
Johnny Riordan the postman drove up in his little van.
‘There’s a rake of letters for you, Brendan, it must be your birthday,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Yes it is.’ Brendan had grown as taciturn as his uncle.
‘Good man, will you buy us a pint later?’
‘I might do that.’
The card from his father was one with a funny cat on it. Quite unsuitable from an estranged father. The word ‘Father’ was written neatly. No love, no best wishes. Well, that was all right. He sent an automatic card to Father with just ‘Brendan’ on it each year too.
Mother’s was more flowery, and said she could hardly believe she had such a grown-up son, and wondered whether he had any girlfriends and would they ever see him married.
Helen’s card was full of peace and blessings. She wrote a note about the Sisters and the hostel they were going to open and the funds that were needed and how two of the Sisters were going to play the guitar busking at Piccadilly station and how the community was very divided about this and whether it was the right way to go. Helen always wrote with a cast of thousands assuming he knew all these people and remembered their names and cared about their doings. At the end she wrote, ‘Please take Anna’s letter seriously.’
He had opened them in the right order. He opened Anna’s slowly. Perhaps it was going to tell him some bad news, Father had cancer, or Mother was going to have an operation? His face curled into a look of scorn when he saw all the business about the anniversary. Nothing had changed, simply nothing, they had got trapped in a time warp, stuck in a world of tinsel-covered cards, meaningless rituals. He felt even more annoyed about the whole thing because of Sister Helen’s pious instruction to take Anna’s letter seriously. Talk about passing the buck.
He felt edgy and restless as he always did when drawn into family affairs. He got up and went outside. He would walk up the hills a bit. There was a wall he wanted to look at. It might need a bit more work than just rearranging the stones like they did so often.
He came across Vincent with a sheep that had got stuck in the gate. The animal was frightened and kicking and pulling so that it was almost impossible to release her.
‘You came at a good time,’ Vincent said, and together they eased the anxious sheep out. She bleated frantically and looked at them with her silly face.
‘What’s wrong with her at all, is she hurt?’ Brendan asked.
‘No. Not a scratch on her.’
‘Then what’s all that caterwauling out of her?’
Vincent looked long at the distressed sheep. ‘That’s the one that lay on its lamb. Crushed the little thing to death,’ he said.
‘Stupid thicko sheep,’ Brendan said. ‘Sits on her own perfectly good lamb, then gets stuck in a gate, that’s what gives sheep a bad name.’
The ewe looked at him trustingly and gave a great baaa into the air.
‘She doesn’t know I’m insulting her,’ Brendan said.
‘Divil a bit she’d care. She’s looking for the lamb.’
‘Doesn’t she know she suffocated it?’
‘Not at all. How would she know that?’ Vincent said.
Companionably the two men walked back towards the house to make their lunch.
Vincent’s eyes fell on the envelopes and cards.
‘Well now, it’s your birthday,’ he said. ‘Imagine that.’
‘Yes.’ Brendan sounded grumpy.
His uncle looked at him for a while.
‘It’s good of them to remember you, it would be scant remembering you’d get if you had to rely on me.’
‘I don’t worry about remembering … not that sort.’ He was still bad-tempered as he washed the potatoes at the sink and put them into the big saucepan of water.
‘Will I put them up on the mantelpiece for you?’
Vincent had never said anything like that.
‘No, no. I wouldn’t like that.’
‘All right so.’ His uncle collected them neatly and left them in a little pile. He saw Anna’s long typed letter but made no comment. During the meal he waited for the boy to speak.
‘Anna has this notion I should go over to England and play games for some silver wedding celebrations. Silver,’ he scoffed at the word.
‘That’s how many?’ Vincent asked.
‘Twenty-five glorious years.’
‘Are they that long married? Lord Lord.’
‘You weren’t at the wedding yourself?’
‘God Brendan, what would take me to a wedding, I ask you?’
‘They want me to go over. I’m not going next or near it.’
‘Well, we all do what we want to do.’
Brendan thought about that for a long time.
‘I suppose we do in the end,’ he said.
They lit their cigarettes to smoke while they drank their big mugs of tea.
‘And they don’t want me there, I’d only be an embarrassment. Mother would have to be explaining me to people, and why I didn’t do this or look like that, and Father would be quizzing me, asking me questions.’
‘Well, you said you weren’t going so what’s the worry about it?’
‘It’s not till October,’ Brendan said.
‘October, is that a fact?’ Vincent looked puzzled.
‘I know, isn’t it just like them to be setting it all up now?’
They left it for a while but his face was troubled, and his uncle knew he would speak of it again.
‘In a way, of course, once in a few years isn’t much to go over. In a way of looking at it, it mightn’t be much to give them.’
‘It’s your own decision, lad.’
‘You wouldn’t point me one way or the other, I suppose?’
‘Indeed I would not.’
‘It might be too expensive for us to afford the fare.’ Brendan looked up at the biscuit tin, maybe this was an out.
‘There’s always the money for the fare, you know that.’
He did know it. He had just been hoping that they could use it as an excuse. Even to themselves.
‘And I would only be one of a crowd, if I were to go it would be better to go on my own some time.’
‘Whatever you say yourself.’
Outside they heard a bleating. The sheep with the foolish face, the one that had suffocated her lamb was still looking for it. She had come towards the house hoping that it might have strayed in there. Vincent and Brendan looked out the kitchen window. The sheep still called out.
‘She’d have been a hopeless mother to it even if it had lived,’ Brendan said.
‘She doesn’t know that, she’s just living by some kind of instinct. She’d like to see it for a bit. To know that it’s all right, sort of.’
It was one of the longest speeches his uncle had ever made. He looked at his uncle and reached out to touch him. He put his arm gently around the older man’s shoulder, feeling moved to the heart by the kindness and generosity of spirit.
‘I’ll go off into the town now, Vincent,’ he said, taking his arm away. ‘I’ll write a couple of letters maybe and maybe work pulling a few pints tonight.’
‘There’s enough in the biscuit tin,’ Vincent said gently.
‘There is, I know. I know.’
He went out into the yard and passed the lonely ewe still calling for her lost lamb and started up the old car to drive to the town. He would go back for their silver anniversary. It was only a little time out of this life. The life he wanted. He could give a little time to show them he was all right and that he was part of the family.
3
HELEN
THE OLD MAN looked at Helen hopefully. He saw a girl in her twenties with a grey jumper and skirt. Her hair was tied back in a black ribbon but it looked as if any moment it might all escape and fall wild and curly around her shoulders. She had dark blue restless eyes and freckles on her nose. She carried a black plastic shopping bag which she was swinging backwards and forwards.
‘Miss,’ said the old drunk, ‘can you do me a favour?’
Helen stopped at once, as he had known she would. There were passers-by who went on passing by and those who stopped. Years of observation had taught him to tell one sort from the other.
‘Of course, what can I do?’ she asked him.
He almost stepped back. Her smile was too ready, too willing. Usually people muttered that they didn’t have change or that they were in a hurry. Even if they did seem about to help a wino they didn’t show such eagerness.
‘I don’t want any money,’ he said.
‘Of course not,’ Helen said as if it was the last thing that a man with a coat tied with string and an empty ginger-wine bottle in his hand would want.
‘I just want you to go in there and get me another bottle. The bastards say they won’t serve me. They say I’m not to come into the shop. Now if I were to give you two pounds into your hand, then you could go in and get it for me.’
From his grizzled face with its wild hair above and its stubble below his small sharp eyes shone with the brilliance of the plan.
Helen bit her lower lip and looked at him hard. He was from Ireland of course, they all were, or else Scotland. The Welsh drunks seemed to stay in their valleys, and the English didn’t get drunk in such numbers or so publicly. It was a mystery.
‘I think you’ve had enough.’
‘How would you know whether I’ve had enough or not? That’s not what we were debating. That, as it happens, was not the point at issue.’
Helen was moved, he spoke so well, he had such phrases … the point at issue. How could a man who spoke like that have let himself go so far and turn into an outcast?
Immediately she felt guilty about the thought. That was the way Grandmother O’Hagan would talk. And Helen would immediately disagree with her. Here she was at twenty-one thinking almost the same thing.
‘It’s not good for you,’ she said, and added spiritedly, ‘I said I’d do you a favour, it’s not a favour giving you more alcohol, it’s a downright disservice.’
The drunk liked such niceties and definitions, he was ready to parry with her.
‘But there is no question of your giving me alcohol, my dear lady,’ he said triumphantly. ‘That was never part of our agreement. You are to act as my agent in purchasing the alcohol.’ He beamed at his victory.
‘No, it’s only going to kill you.’
‘I can easily get it elsewhere. I have two pounds and I will get it elsewhere. What we are now discussing is your word given and then broken. You said you would do me a favour, now you say you will not.’
Helen stormed into the small grocery-cum-off-licence.
‘A bottle of cider,’ she asked, eyes flashing.
‘What kind?’
‘I don’t know. Any kind. That one.’ She pointed to a fancy bottle. Outside, the drunk knocked on the window and shook his head of shaggy hair, trying to point to a different brand.
‘You’re not buying it for that wino?’ asked the young man.
‘No, it’s for myself,’ Helen said guiltily and obviously falsely. The drunk man was pointing feverishly at some brand.
‘Listen, don’t give it to him, lady … I beg you.’
‘Are you going to sell me this bottle of cider or are you not?’ Helen could be authoritative in short bursts.
‘Two pounds eighty,’ the man said. Helen slapped the money, her money, down on the counter, and in an equally bad temper the bottle was shoved into a plastic bag for her.
‘Now,’ Helen said. ‘Did I or did I not do what you asked me?’
‘You did not, that’s only rat’s piss, that stuff, fancy bottles for the carriage trade. I’m not drinking that.’
‘Well don’t then.’ There were tears starting in her eyes.
‘And what’s more I’m not spending my good money on it.’
‘Have it as a present.’ She was wear
y.
‘Oh high and mighty, Lady Muck,’ he said. He had a good quarter of it drunk from the neck by this stage. He was holding it still by its plastic carrier bag.
Helen didn’t like the look of his face, the man was working himself up into some kind of temper, or even fit. She looked at him alarmed, and saw a huge amount of the despised cider vanishing down his throat.
‘The urine of rodents,’ he shouted. ‘Bottled by these creeps of shopkeepers and dignified with the name of alcohol.’
He banged on the window again loudly. ‘Come out, you cheat and rogue, come out here and justify this garbage.’
There were vegetable boxes piled neatly with apples and oranges, with potatoes loose and mushrooms in baskets. The man with the near-empty cider bottle began to turn them over on to the street systematically.
The staff ran from the shop; two of them held him, another went for the law.
‘Thank you very much,’ said the boy who had served Helen. ‘That was a very nice day’s work.’
‘You wouldn’t bloody listen to me,’ shouted the man, who had foam flecks at the side of his mouth by now.
‘Her sort don’t listen to anyone, mate,’ said the irate shopkeeper who was trying to immobilize him.
Helen moved from the scene awkwardly. She walked away almost sideways as if she were trying not to turn her back on the chaos and distress she had created. But then this happened so often.
It was always happening, Helen found, everywhere she went.
Back in the convent she wouldn’t say anything to Sister Brigid about it. It would be so easily misunderstood. The sisters wouldn’t grasp that it would all have happened anyway. The man might have got even more violent and upset if nobody had bought him the drink. He might have broken the window or hurt someone. But Helen wouldn’t tell the upsetting tale. Brigid would be bound to look at her sadly and wonder why trouble seemed to follow Helen Doyle wherever she went.
It might even put further away the day when they would allow Helen to take her vows and become a member of the Community rather than just a hanger-on. How much did she have to prove? Why did Sister Brigid keep putting off the time when Helen should be considered seriously as one of their Community? She worked as hard as any of them, she had been with them for three years and still there was this feeling that it was somehow a passing whim.
