‘Oh dear, and you from the heart of Dublin city afraid of a little mouse, doesn’t that beat all? Well, Mrs Kinsella, I’m afraid my husband is busy today and when he comes home, we are going to visit family so he won’t be available to catch your mouse for you then either. I’ll tell you what though; I have a fine trap inside. I’ll get Liam to set it for you and when you hear the snap sure pop back, he’ll empty it out for you. The thing is you need to be very clean in your housekeeping to keep them out. They’ll get in anywhere so the trick is not to leave anything for them to eat.’
Liam was confused. Daddy would set a trap in one second, and she never said anything about them going out tonight. Daddy wouldn’t mind a bit, he was always helping people; he was great at fixing things. He even found an old bike in the river a few months ago, the wheels buckled and everything, but he fixed it up and painted it dark blue and Liam and Con used it all the time. Daddy told Mammy when she was grumbling about him going in next door again that even though Jerome Moriarty was the landlord, he lived in England somewhere so he couldn’t do anything, so she was a woman on her own and needed someone like Daddy next door, who was able to do things.
He ran down the hall just in time to avoid being caught eavesdropping. His mother opened the door and called him.
‘Liam, would you get the mousetrap from the pantry and a small bit of fat off the bacon in the larder please. I want you to set the trap for poor Mrs Kinsella here. She is terrorised by a furry friend in her kitchen press.’ Mammy was smiling but not her normal smile; it was extra bright and smiley.
The women waited in silence until Liam appeared. ‘Oh well, if you’re sure, but I’m happy to wait for Seán if it’s more convenient,’ Mrs Kinsella said as Liam appeared with the trap and the bacon rind.
‘No, no, it’s no problem. Liam here is well able to do it, and my husband is a very busy man.’ Liam was confused, his mother didn’t usually use that kind of voice and she usually called Daddy Seán when she was talking about him. Not all this ‘my husband’ stuff.
Next door was the same size as theirs but only had two people living there so it seemed much less cluttered. He followed her into the kitchen and noticed she was wearing perfume, she smelled nice, like flowers. She quickly moved a bottle of stout off the kitchen table and put it in a press and the pint glass that was beside it. It was weird that she was going to drink a bottle of stout, only men did that. Women didn’t really drink at all, Liam thought, Mammy was a pioneer of total abstinence and went to meetings about it and everything. But maybe Mrs Kinsella was thirsty.
‘Which press has the mouse in it?’ he asked.
‘Er, that one,’ she replied, pointing to the one she had just opened to put the stout in.
‘But you just opened that one.’ Liam didn’t understand how come she opened it if she was scared of the mouse.
‘Em, well, em, I forgot, can you just put the trap in that one please, Liam?’ She seemed a bit flustered, she must be really scared, he thought, to be so upset. He felt quite brave and manly setting the trap and placing it in the press.
‘Do you want me to wait in case it snaps straight away?’ He had spotted a bottle of lemonade in the larder so she might offer him a drink if he stayed.
‘No, no thanks, Liam. Maybe it will take ages, so maybe your daddy could look in when he comes home.’ She stopped and smiled at him. ‘You look like him. I suppose everyone tells you that. I bet he looked just like you when he was small, with your brown curls and big brown eyes.’ She smiled and rubbed his hair.
Liam could feel his cheeks reddening at her touch, ‘Er, yeah, Mammy says I’ve his big feet, too,’ he blurted, suddenly anxious to get away.
He let himself in to the kitchen as Mammy was getting out the ingredients for a cake.
‘Well, did you set it?’ she asked.
Liam was going to tell her about the stout and what she said about him looking like Daddy but something stopped him and decided he better not.
‘I did. She said it might take ages so not to wait. She said maybe Daddy could look in when he comes home.’ Liam went back to his lessons at the other end of the table but was sure he heard Mammy utter under her breath, ‘Over my dead body, he will.’
Chapter 4
Con was on the ground with John-Joe Murphy underneath him, and Con was battering him, even though John-Joe was bigger. Liam stood by, unsure of what to do. If Mammy found out they were fighting in the street and everyone was watching them, she’d murder them but John-Joe was teasing Con and Liam about Daddy going away to England, saying that he was gone over to Mrs Kinsella. They were walking across the road at the monastery gates and John-Joe asked how the new Mammy was. Con gave Liam the bread he was carrying back from the shop and squared up to John-Joe, sure everyone knew he was a thick as a ditch and dared him to say it again.
John-Joe smirked back at the shower of eejits he hung around with and said, ‘Say what? That your auld fella and Mrs Kinsella were at it and now he’s gone running off to England after her?’
Another fella jumped in and now there were two of them on Con. Liam had no choice, he had to join in—he couldn’t let his brother try to fight them on his own. Liam jumped on the back of Tommy O’Leary and stuck his fingers in his eyes as hard as he could. Suddenly, all of John-Joe’s gang were in the fight and legs, arms, and punches were flying. Over the din of boys yelling, he heard a voice he recognised.
‘Stop that fighting this instant!’ The loud, booming voice of Father Aquinas. He picked up John-Joe by the scruff of the neck and gave him a thump in the back, sending him flying. There was a general scatter of the others until eventually the only ones left were himself and Con. All the boys knew Father Aquinas was the boxing champion in the seminary when he was young and more than a match for John-Joe and his gang. None of them wanted the priest at their door complaining to their parents about their sons brawling in the street so they made themselves scarce quickly.
‘Well, isn’t this a nice state of affairs and your mother doing her best to cope, I’m sure Seán Tobin wouldn’t be one bit pleased to hear his boys were fighting out in the street like common hooligans.’ He sighed and pulled a bleeding Con to his feet. ‘Ye better come in to the monastery, clean yourselves up and not go home to your mother in that condition,’ he said wearily but not unkindly. Con went to protest that he was fine but one look from Liam told him he better not go home looking like that.
Father Aquinas always taught in the junior school, but he was an ever present force around the neighbourhood, if he gave you an instruction, you didn’t question it. He always looked the same, Liam saw him around the school all the time even though he was in sixth class now and Father Aquinas still taught first class. His eyebrows were just as bushy as when Liam made his communion but the bit of hair he had left was now totally white. He was tall and muscular, built like a rugby player, he ran the school boxing club though hurling was his passion. He was still as terrifying as he was when they were seven however, so it was with a heavy heart Liam followed his brother behind the priest and into the monastery.
It smelled exactly as it had when he was last in there, five years earlier, preparing for his communion. Their shoes squeaked on the highly polished floor and the priest led them down a warren of corridors without a word towards what must be the kitchen. The large room had a huge black stove at one end and a long often-scrubbed wooden table running its length with a bench on either side. The shelves that lined the walls bore the weight of stacks of white table ware on top and pots and pans beneath. The whole room smelled of baking and heat and plenty.
It was deserted, so the priest indicated they should sit and he went to a sink and filled a basin with water. Looking under the enormous sink, he produced a clean white cloth and a bottle of Dettol and deposited them on the table beside them.
‘Now then, you’re the worst, Con, so let’s have a look at you first,’ the priest began.
‘Honestly, Father, I’m grand, I’ll j
ust clean myself up there and...’ Con was anxious to get away.
Father Aquinas held Con by the chin as he protested, turning his head to examine the cut over his eye.
‘Your poor mother has enough on her plate at the moment without you coming home looking like you’ve done ten rounds with Sugar Ray Robinson. Now hold still, this is going to sting.’ He dapped the cut with the wet cloth dipped in Dettol and Con winced as the disinfectant entered the wound. The priest did the same for his burst lip and told him to hold the cloth up to it to stop the bleeding. He then turned his attention to Con’s hand where the fingers were swelling quickly. Con’s eyes were blackening already, and his nose was swelling up, all that Liam could think was that Mammy was going to have a fit when she saw the state of them.
‘How’d that happen?’ the priest asked.
‘Tommy O’Leary stood on it, Father,’ Con managed to say, despite the cloth at his mouth. Liam could tell he hated the priest fussing over him like this. Con was sixteen and out working, he resented being spoken to like a schoolboy. Ignoring his protests, Father Aquinas lifted his hand and tried to bend the fingers. Con let out a shriek of pain.
‘Broken,’ the priest said matter-of-factly. ‘You’ll have to go down and get it seen in the hospital.’
He took some powders out of a jar and mixed them with water and handed it to Con. ‘That will take the edge off the pain till you get to the hospital or if Sister Julia comes back. She’s a dab hand with strapping the broken fingers—we’d be lost without her on the sidelines at the underage hurling matches, I can tell you.’
‘Now, Mr Tobin Junior, let’s see what you’ve managed to do to yourself, shall we?’ he said, turning his attention to Liam. His knees were cut and bleeding and his arm had a big bite mark where one of John-Joe’s gang had bitten him and drawn blood. Again the priest cleaned the cuts with the disinfectant and Liam tried not to react but it really hurt.
Once they were cleaned up, the priest brought the basin back to the sink, rinsed it, and replaced the Dettol. He then went about getting two big cups of tea and took an apple tart out of a larder. He cut two huge slices and placed them in front of the boys along with the tea.
They were taken aback, unsure what to do.
‘Well, do ye want it or don’t ye?’ Father Aquinas asked. ‘You’ll be ages below waiting to get that plastered up so you better eat something or you’ll keel over. Maybe Sister Julia will be back, she was visiting her family today and if so there’ll be no need of the hospital, but if she doesn’t, I’ll ask Father Joseph to bring you down in the car. I’ll phone the convent there and see, and I’ll send someone down with a message to your mother in case she’s worried.’
‘Seriously, Father, there’s no need. Thanks for everything...’Con went to stand up but his legs seemed to go from under him.
‘Con Tobin, you could never be told, could you? You’re concussed, so just sit down and eat the cake and drink the tea and stop making this more difficult, will you?’
Con sat back down and gingerly took a bite of the tart. Father Aquinas went out to make the phone call and the brothers were alone. The tart was delicious, and they wolfed it down followed by the hot, sweet milky tea. Mammy didn’t bake anymore, not since everything happened, so they hadn’t had anything nice in ages.
Once they had finished, they sat quietly, afraid to talk in case someone came in. Eventually, Liam asked, ‘Is your hand fierce sore, Con?’
Before Con had a chance to reply, Father Aquinas came back, ‘Good news, Sister Julia will be up in a few minutes. She’ll get you right in no time.’ He noted the thunderous look on Con’s face, a mixture of pain and fury.
‘You’ll have to learn not to react, Con, you know that, don’t you? You’re too big now for that kind of stupid schoolboy scrapping. You have to be the man of the house until your father comes home, and you aren’t helping your mother by carrying on like that in the street. And drawing young Liam into it as well, he could have got a right battering, sure that big gom John-Joe Murphy would make two of him, he’s only twelve. Your mother has enough to contend with without having her youngest in the hospital and you hauled off by the guards for brawling.’
Liam willed Con just to nod and say nothing but he knew his brother of old.
‘He said something about my father, and I couldn’t let it go,’ Con muttered.
Father Aquinas sighed and walked over to the big window that overlooked the gardens of the monastery. He put his hands in the pockets of his soutane and thought for a moment.
‘Do you know what people are saying, Liam?’ the priest asked with his back to them.
Liam was embarrassed. Of course he knew, he’d overheard enough the night it all happened to know, and even if he didn’t, he heard it every day in school. The Tobins were the talk of the place.
‘Yes, Father, I do,’ he replied.
The priest turned back to them and sat opposite the brothers at the big table.
‘Listen to me now,’ he began. ‘I know what people are saying, that Mrs Kinsella that lived next door had something to do with your father, something improper.’
Liam was trying so hard not to cry. Everyone was talking about them; even the priests had heard it in the monastery.
‘And they’re putting two and two together and making ten because she is gone and your father had to go to England looking for work. People are saying they ran off together.’
Con and Liam sat wordlessly. ‘Isn’t that what ye are hearing?’ the priest asked.
Liam nodded, Con glowered.
‘Now, you know I can’t tell you anything I have heard in confidence in my role as a priest, don’t you?’ Again they nodded, unsure where he was going.
‘But I will tell you this. I know, not guess or hope, but know for a sure and certain fact, that your father has nothing to do with Mrs Kinsella, now or at any time in the past, beyond being a good neighbour. I’ve known Seán Tobin a long time, since he was a small boy up here like ye were once, and I know he’s as honest as the day is long. He is devoted to your mother and to all of ye and he would never do anything to hurt ye.
‘Now, ye need to speak to your mother about this, tell her what’s been happening and she’ll tell you the same thing. That it is all rumours and gossip and that Seán never looked at that woman in that way. It’s not going to stop the gossips, they have nothing better to do with their time, but I want you two to know that when your father told you that it wasn’t true, he was being honest with you all, and with your mother, no matter what anyone else says. The fact that the dockyard closed and so many men were out of work meant that your father couldn’t get a job here. Plenty of men would just go on the dole, and raise their family on a pittance, but Seán Tobin wants better for his children, so he’s gone to get work over in England and he’ll be back to you all as soon as he can. Mrs Kinsella is somewhere else entirely and that is the truth. Now, in the meantime, he’d want his boys to be good. So no more of this scrapping, do ye hear me? Just ignore them, you know the truth and that’s all that matters.’
Liam looked into the eyes of the big priest for the first time in his life. All of a sudden, he didn’t seem so scary; he seemed nice, and kind. There was no way he could raise the issue with Mammy, she hardly spoke to them these days and spent all her time cleaning the house and going over to the church. She never mentioned Daddy or Mrs Kinsella or the situation at all. Liam had a lot of questions and no one to ask. Kate was just like Mammy, and she was cross with it, so she just told Liam to buzz off any time he asked them anything, and Con was as much in the dark as he was. He deliberated; maybe he should ask the priest about the terrible night.
As he considered it, a nun entered the kitchen.
‘Ah, Sister Julia, the very person. We’ve a young man here with a suspected broken finger, maybe two of them, would you take a look at it and see if we can just strap it or does he need to go to the hospital?’
The youngish nun with tanned
skin smiled at them, ‘Well, you two have been in the wars and no mistake! Now, let’s have a look, don’t worry, I’m a nurse,’ she reassured Con.
‘Sister Julia is home from the missions in Ghana where the nearest hospital to them is about two hundred miles away, so she’s able to do nearly everything,’ Father Aquinas said.
‘I’m visiting the convent below, but my brother is Father Matthew, do ye remember him? He used to play the organ at Mass before the arthritis got too bad.’
Liam had no idea who she was on about but nodded politely, still trying to imagine nuns and priests having brothers and sisters. Con looked nervous.
She took his hand and examined it gently, pressing softly on the swelling. He winced.
‘Good lad, Con, is it? I’m sure you got worse on the hurling pitch! That’s sore, I can tell but you’re lucky, it’s a clean break so I’d say I’ll just strap it up and no moving it for a week or two and you’ll be good as new. My things are below in the infirmary so I’ll take him down there. Father, we’ll be back in a few minutes.’ And with that, she ushered Con out of the room leaving Liam alone with Father Aquinas.
Without really preparing it, he blurted out.
‘Father, how come Mrs Kinsella came and told Mammy that Daddy wanted to go away with her so, that she and Daddy were...?’ He reddened with embarrassment but how else was he going to find out? One of the boys at school told him months ago how babies were made and at the start, he didn’t believe him, it seemed so ridiculous. There was no way his parents ever did that, but then he asked Daddy. They were walking home from a match after winning and they were splitting a bag of chips between them to celebrate. Liam asked him straight out if what the boys in school had said was true. Daddy stopped and sat down on a bench beside the river and told him all about it. He explained it was a very special and lovely thing between two people who were married and there was nothing bad about it, but he still found the whole thing perplexing, and he looked at everyone he met who had children in a whole new light. Was everyone in the world doing that mad thing with their private parts? It seemed unbelievable but apparently they were. He was sure of one thing; he’d never do it with anyone in his whole life.
Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars Page 79
