by Tony Black
He walked through Gleesons and there was the smell of bread baking and the sound of the tin trays being tapped into the ovens with long wooden poles. The place seemed familiar enough but hadn’t it changed entirely. There were no windows being opened for the men to spit out the white flour below and there was no swearing and cursing heard like there was in the old days when the men burnt themselves on the ovens and started calling for a spanner to take them apart.
When he got outside Joey loosened his tie and lit a cigarette. It felt good taking a smoke and being away from the place, but wasn’t Monday week very close altogether. He stared at the big building and remembered the faces that would flood out covered in flour on a Friday night, blue mouldy for a pint, and screaming to get down the dancing for a chase of the old skirt. Joey never went down the dancing because he always had Shauna waiting for him on the Friday night and there would be whoops and whistles from the men when they saw her. When he remembered her waiting to meet him, his heart kicked inside his chest. There was no way she would be waiting to meet him now, wasn’t that a certainty. Hadn’t she taken it into her head to blame him for all the ills of the world.
It was a saddener to think about the things Shauna had said. He knew she wasn’t happy – she hadn’t been happy for a long time – but wasn’t that the trouble? If Shauna could get over the abortion, stop blaming herself for what they had both done together, then surely she could be happy. She had been happy once since, when Marti was born. With a babe to mind she was steady, she knew she had to keep it together, for didn’t a child need its mother there every second of the day. But Marti had grown now, he didn’t need his mother as much as he once had and the space he left was soon taken by the Black Dog.
Joey didn’t want to think about any of these things. He didn’t want to think about Shauna and the Black Dog that had followed them around since they had got rid of a life, a life they had created together, but he couldn’t stop. It was like the abortion had been locked away in a box and now Shauna had forced in the key and opened it all back up.
He had thought it would be best to run away from it all, to start again in Australia, where nobody knew either of them, or what they had done. They had started again and Joey had never mentioned a word to anyone about the abortion, not even Shauna, and now here she was saying he had been wrong to do it. She had carried all the shame, that’s what she had said, but worst yet wasn’t he a bad father. That’s what she had said, more or less, that he was playing out his own father’s mistakes on Marti.
Joey drew hard on his cigarette, took the smoke deep into his lungs. If there had been poison gas to hand he would have done the same. To say he had been a bad father was like a knife going in him. Hadn’t he only ever tried to give Marti his best, always. The thought that he had been a bad father to the boy was harder to think about than any of the rest because he didn’t know why.
He reached inside his pocket for Shauna’s diary. He still felt a twinge of guilt for reading her private thoughts, but he had to know what she meant. If there was a chance he could find a clue to what he had done, he was going to read.
So, Dr Cohn, what do you know about children? As much as me? I bet you don’t. I live with three children. One is a spirit that I take with me everywhere, she is a little girl, she looks like me sometimes, but other times she shows up in the faces of all little girls. She’s forever smiling, forever happy, forever my little girl. I call her Alannah, my darling angel. I know I will never see her properly, never touch her, or hold her, put her hair into bunches, or even talk with her about dolls and dresses or other little girls’ things. But she doesn’t seem to mind. She seems to know I love her and that’s enough for me.
Joey put down the diary. His throat was dry and stiff. He had to suck on his bottom lip to stop it quivering. He had sometimes thought about the child, but he had always forced himself to stop. Shauna hadn’t. She had thought about the child every day of her life and she had never told him once. No wonder she was hurting, he thought. Why did he never see it? Why did he never open his eyes? He picked up the diary again.
The other two are not so easy for me to write about. My son, Marti, is only eight, but he knows something is wrong at home. He can be such a happy boy, playing like all boys do, but he can turn to sadness, so quickly. He doesn’t know why things aren’t right between Joey and me, and sometimes he blames himself, thinks he’s the problem. He can’t feel like this, I can’t have him growing up feeling like this. I know he cries in bed at night when Joey and me fight and it breaks my heart. Joey tries so hard to show his love for Marti, but I think he might be better without it. We’re tearing the boy apart.
What did she mean? How could Marti be better without his father’s love, thought Joey. There had been fights, for sure there had, but never around Marti. He knew Marti sensed his parents’ troubles, but he was only a lad and Joey loved him. He never tired of showing him – surely that was enough. When he read the next entry, he froze.
My third child, Dr Cohn, is Joey. Joey is hurting, I know it, but he won’t admit it to anyone, not even himself. I have tried to reach him but he pushes me away. For more than ten years I have tried and failed. I don’t think anyone but Joey can help himself now. Somewhere inside him he is still a child, running scared from his father, from the lashings and the harsh words, from the shame of never measuring up to the high and mighty Emmet Driscol and the shame of the sin that hurt us all. But he cannot see any of it, he is blinded with a kind of rage. A rage at his father, a rage at the world and a rage at himself. Joey may have failed in his father’s eyes, but never in mine. He gave up on himself but I never did, I just can’t do anything for him, my love for him isn’t enough and Marti is hurting as well.
The writing in Shauna’s diary was suddenly changed, fat spots of rain were falling on the pages, making the words blur and ink smears run down the page. Joey tucked the diary back in his shirt and looked down at his shoes. Black dots were welling on the leather. He started to walk into the downpour. There was only one place left to go now, one place which might hold some answers.
The road to his father’s home was winding and potholed. Branches of trees hung over the way, creating a dark arbour, and the wind picked up, whistling shards of rain into him like tiny darts. When he saw the house in the distance, it had changed entirely. Where every other house in Kilmora had been spruced up, painted and turned into a tourist attraction, Emmet Driscol’s home had gone to ruin. Slates were missing on the roof and long grass and weeds sprouted around the timber staves of the fence. There was grey paint peeling from the door, showing the black beneath, and the lion’s head door knock was covered with a slimy-looking verdigris.
“Jaysus, they’ve let the place go a bit,” he said to himself.
Joey scraped the gate along the ground and it caught on an uneven flagstone, forcing him to squeeze into the gap. At the door he knocked three times, his heart speeding up with every rap of his knuckles. He wondered what he would say to his father and mother. Would they even recognise him after all these years? If they did, would they let him in?
He remembered his father’s words the night he told them Shauna had had an abortion. He raged at him and called him a murdering bastard, who would be damned straight to Hell. He had said he never wanted Joey to darken his door again and it made him smirk because he thought that it was something only people said in the films. When his father saw the smirk he raised his hand, but Joey grabbed it. He stepped up to him and looked in his eyes – he felt his father reading his thoughts – then Joey spoke in a whisper, told his father the days of laying into him were long by.
Joey grabbed for the door knock and the noise was like thunder in the heavens, then the door started to creak, and was slowly opened.
“Hello, Mam,” said Joey. His voice was soft.
Peggy Driscol stared out wide-eyed, with a look that said she had seen death wakened, and then she made the sign of the cross and motioned her son in. The house smelt stale and damp like somethi
ng was rotting away beneath the floor, thought Joey, and when he looked down he saw the carpet was worn away and the boards were exposed beneath. It was the same carpet he remembered from when he was a boy, and his eyes jumped to see it still in place. When they went through to the front room Peggy sat down and sighed out, then said she didn’t know what to say. She looked older than Joey remembered her. Her hair was iron grey now and there were hollows in her cheeks, but her eyes still danced with a look of intelligence.
“Well, it has been a long time, has it not,” said Joey.
“It has,” said his mother, touching her quivering lips, “that it has.”
He thought she seemed more gentle than he remembered, but then wasn’t she very frail. “Are ye well, Mam?”
“I have no complaints … yeer father is not a well man,” she said.
“I heard.”
“Oh, ye would have. He is not a well man but still a known man in Kilmora.” The words seemed to give her strength and the old composure was back with her once more. She straightened her back where she sat, and Joey saw there was still a power of pride left in her.
“Where is he?” said Joey.
“He’s through in bed,” said Peggy, “tis a terrible strain for him to move about now … It’s his heart, ye know. He is very weak.”
“Mam …” said Joey, then broke off.
“Ye will want to see him, I suppose.”
“Is he fit for visitors?”
“Go on through – haven’t I just brung him his soup. Ye know where the room is.”
Joey stood up. His knees were weak when he tried to walk. Why would he ever want to be there? There was nothing his father could say that would change how he felt, surely. Didn’t Shauna, who knew him better than anyone, better than even he knew himself, see the damage this man had done? He didn’t want to feel like this. He knew his bitterness had hurt more than himself. It was that thought alone which made him turn the handle and face his father.
“Joey … Is it yeerself?” said Emmet. He was pale and old, his skin grey from the weeks spent indoors. There was none of the terror left in his eyes at all. Joey stared at him and found the image hard to take in. Had this pathetic man blighted his childhood, and still blighted his life yet? How could he feel so much hatred for him? Any hatred he had felt was for another man, surely.
“Joey, come away in.” Emmet held out a hand to his son and motioned to his bedside. The hand looked feeble, bony and arthritic, the fingertips purple where his weak heart had failed to pump enough blood to keep the circulation going. Joey stared at his father’s hand and wondered could it really be the same hand that had gripped a hurley in the All-Ireland and made grown men tremble? He stared and stared at his father. He wanted to find the words to say how he felt. How he felt when he was whipped as a boy and how he felt as a man when his own father turned his back on him in his hour of greatest need. But he couldn’t find any words. All he could find was a mix of hurts and anger rolled into an almighty bolus of hatred.
“I’m glad ye came,” said Emmet. His voice trembled over his dry lips. “I had hoped ye would.”
Joey nodded but there were still no words found in him. His voice was somewhere else, hidden in the depths of him. To sound a breath even was beyond him. It felt as though he had not yet learned to make a noise, never mind learned the power of speech.
Emmet gripped his hand and seemed to speak for him. “I know why ye came, son. It wasn’t for me, sure – I don’t deserve any visitors. Yeer sisters and brothers have all stayed away. I don’t fault them for that … they have their own lives now. But you were different, sure. I hoped ye would come.”
Why was he different? Why was it him sat there and not Megan or Clancy or any of the others? Emmet had fathered six children. The idea that Joey had been singled out for his father’s scorn hit him like a bolt in the belly.
“Why?” said Joey. The word scalded his heart, nearly choked him on the way out. It was only one word, one small word, sure, but didn’t it mean the entire universe to Joey Driscol.
“Ye were the firstborn, son, and I was hard on ye.” Emmet spluttered when he spoke. His dark eyes were blood red and circled in black. “I learnt to be a mite gentler on the others, but the habit with ye was hard to break.”
“Why?” said Joey. Didn’t it always come back to the same question for him.
“I had such high hopes for ye, my first boy. I wanted you to be my boy but weren’t ye always yeer own man. I thought I could win ye round by being hard on ye … It was what I knew. I got what I wanted by being hard – a hard player I was. I thought ye needed the same.”
“You were wrong.”
“I know it. I know it now … son. I see it now, I do. I see what I did was wrong.”
“Why didn’t ye see it then?” Joey spoke through his teeth, his jaw clamped tight. “That was when I needed you to see it.”
“I saw what was in ye and it wasn’t the same as what was in me, Joey. I wanted to change it, I wanted to make ye more like me.”
“I could never be like you.” Joey spat out the words. He wanted to look at his father when he said them but he couldn’t face him.
“You are better off being nothing like me,” said Emmet. “Didn’t my flower bloom only briefly.”
“None of us missed it, and sure all of us would have been glad to.”
“I know it. Now the Good Lord is close to his harvesting it feels like I finally understand. I know why you’re here and the others are not.” Emmet brought his hands up to his face, tried to cover the tears in his eyes. “You are a very different man to me, different entirely. I tried to shape ye the only way I knew how, but I was wrong. Ye cannot mould a child, tis wrong to try. The best ye can do is live yeer own life well and hope the child follows your example.”
Joey looked at his father and thought he understood something of him. He saw he was sorry; he didn’t need to hear the word even. In his own way Joey knew he had tried to do the same with Marti, that’s what Shauna meant with the suffocating. He had suffocated the boy with love in just the way Emmet had starved him of it. It couldn’t work. It was as wrong to try and mould Marti into the man he never became as much as it was for Emmet to have tried to mould him.
“Joey, son, ye have a good head on them shoulders. I always knew that – didn’t it only confuse me though. I never knew what to do with ye … me a muck savage, how could I?” Emmet began to sob, streaks of tears rolled down his cheeks and held like icicles to his face.
“Don’t, Da,” said Joey. “Just don’t. Isn’t it too late for that now.”
“No, son, ye don’t understand. I knew when ye left for Australia I had ruined ye … ruined ye I had. Sending you out to Gleesons when you could have been in pinstripes. When you left, it was too much, too much entirely for me to think of what could have been.”
“Da, stop now …”
“I was a coward, Joey. Was my hurt pride only sent ye away, pushed ye away like I always did … and why? Because the tongues were at the wagging in Kilmora. I thought they were laughing at the mighty Emmet Driscol. Jaysus, son, I’m sorry. I was a fool then but aren’t we always learning, right to the end, so we are. That’s why it’s never too late, son, it can’t ever be too late to change, to say yeer sorry. Can it?”
Joey looked at his father in the bed before him. He was exhausted now, the effort shown in his face shocked Joey. His father was wasting away. And wasn’t that what he had done with most of his life – just wasted it away. He could see that playing in the All-Ireland meant nothing to his father now that he was dying, alone, without his family.
“Dad, it’s all right,” said Joey.
“Don’t make my mistakes son, please,” said Emmet.
“No, Da … I won’t do that.”
Joey removed his father’s hand from his and left the bedside. When he closed the door his mother stood up. “What is it?” she said.
“I’ve made some terrible mistakes, Ma,” he said. “Some terrible mistakes.�
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28
The rain lashed down on Marti, soaking his hair so much that it stuck to his head. There were great drops of it hanging off his nose and his eyelashes even and sometimes the drops would run down his back and the shivers would start. It was freezing cold and dark out and Marti wondered where his dad could be. He would never go back to Australia, surely. Aunt Catrin said if Dad would only up and take himself away back to Australia, wouldn’t that be a blessed release for everyone and wasn’t that what was needed, especially for Mam, who was buckling under the strain of it all, so she was.
Marti started to cry when he thought about Dad going away back to Australia. He didn’t want him to leave. He wanted him to stay and tell the funny stories that made Mam laugh and chased away the Black Dog like before. It wasn’t fair that Mam was sick and in need of the love and comfort of her only son like Aunt Catrin said. He didn’t want her to be sick and he didn’t want Dad to go away again. He wanted to be just like all the other boys who had a mam and a dad and didn’t need to worry about the Black Dog or one of them being taken away or told to leave.
Marti didn’t think his dad was ever going to come back and he didn’t know what to do or where to go. He knew Aunt Catrin would be mad angry at him for being so wet and staying out so late and he knew Mam would be making a holy show if he went home. He stared up at the night sky and watched the rain falling in the moonlight and he wished it would rain and rain until the whole place was one big river and he was swept away somewhere else. When Marti looked up at the rain falling he heard someone shouting at him and when he looked to see who it was, he saw the very old lady with hair the colour of snowflakes.
She called him over to the guesthouse and said was it grim death he was after, for standing in the downpour was a sure way to find it, was it not. The old lady took Marti inside and made him sit by the fire, where the peat was burning away and making little crackle noises. She said her name was Mrs O’Shea, and Marti thought she was a very nice old lady.
