The morning I left, my mother cried when she packed my bag. I put my arms around her and kissed her. I squeezed her hands and said I would write a letter home every week. Cross my heart and hope to die. The bag was brown, with a glossy finish. A woman’s bag, with long, cushioned handles. Aunt Tess’s, which arrived in our house by way of Aunt Hannah. Some of my dead aunt’s things were sent to her sister. My mother pinned a Sacred Heart medal on the inside of the bag. She said the medal would forever protect me. Someone I was friendly with for a short time when I first moved to Dublin stole the bag.
My mother had washed two of my father’s blue Sunday shirts. They hung drying on the bar above the range that morning. Steam flowed around them, like steam on summer days rising from an American city grate. My mother clutched the shirts. Not dry enough yet, Jimmy, but they’ll be fine and dry in time for the train, Jimmy. Then she spent a long time ironing them. She steered the hissing iron into every corner. Her teardrops fell onto the shirts and the iron went back and forth over each teardrop until they all vanished. And I never once wore those shirts. With my first paycheck, I bought my own. Nor did I see my mother neatly fold the shirts and place them in my dead aunt’s bag. I didn’t because I was saying good-bye to Stephen and Anthony. I don’t remember that at all, but I do remember standing with Tess at the side of the house. We stood where I chopped and cut the wood and stared at the mountains, whose peaks were capped in snow, and my shoes sank into the thick patch of snow-covered sawdust.
—Stop crying, Tess, I pleaded. —Come to the train station with me. You promised last night you would. You gave your word, Tess—
—I can’t go, Jimmy. Hannah is going. I can’t—
—You promised me. Wipe your face, Tess. I want you to be the last person I see out the train window—
—I can’t, Jimmy. I don’t want you to go at all, but I know you have to—
—You’ll be gone soon, Tess, gone in a few months. But you promised!
—I know I did, Jimmy, but I don’t want any of us to go. I never ever wanted this day to come, never, Jimmy—
—But I’m so glad this day is here, Tess, I’m so glad—
She then ran around the back of the house. I ran after her and stood and held the barbed wire that she had slipped under, and I called after her to come back, but Tess was running in the snowy field. She ran around the cows. Her red hair and purple coat were flying around her.
My father’s cousin, Eddie, met me off the train and took me to the pub I was to work in. He introduced me to the owner, and the two older men I’d work with, who were going to train me. They were countrymen. They’d worked in the bar for forty years; they each shook hands with me, and told me to start the next morning. One of them said the apprenticeship was three years. I thanked them and said I’d see them in the morning. The cousin next drove me to a grocery on Lower Drumcondra Road. He told me to buy what food I needed and not to forget the fifty-pence pieces for the meter.
My father gave me twenty pounds. We were standing on the platform at Limerick Junction. Hannah was holding the sleeve of my jumper. I don’t recall what my father said when he handed me the money. He probably said, Good luck to you now. And he would have warned me to not forget to send the money back when I was on my feet, and he would have warned me not to forget to write to my mother when I arrived at the digs that evening and to post the letter tomorrow, because my mother would be anxious to hear from me. His reddened hand with the purple veins dipped into the coat pocket. With her free hand Hannah was pointing at the train. She was saying how much she’d like to take the train to Dublin with me. She’d take it and then take the next one back home. Then his fist came out and he slipped me the note. It was folded up in a small square. His sharp nails touched my palms and the corners of the square were sharp. I didn’t look but shoved the money down my left pants pocket. But I did look the moment I found a seat on the train. I flattened the note out on my left knee then lifted my face and waved and smiled through the window at Hannah, who was waving and smiling too. Her brown hair was tangled. She wore the bright red cardigan that my mother’s friend in England had posted, and seeing Hannah by herself on that platform made me mad all over again at Tess—but him waiting till the last moment to do that. The platform empty except for the three of us. My father turned from us and lit a Sweet Afton. Hannah tugged at my sleeve. Coleman Daly, the train guard, sauntered up, orange flag in hand, and said that if I didn’t get on, it would leave without me. Then he asked Hannah which of the two Dwyer girls she was. Hannah said her name. Coleman said she was a lovely girl, and one fine day she’d make a handsome man like her father frightfully happy. Hannah giggled, and Coleman looked at his watch and said that the train was going to boot it in the next three minutes. Hannah tugged harder on my sleeve. I was staring at the faces on the train. My father and Coleman were talking about last Saturday’s horse races. I turned from the train faces. Coleman shoved the flag into his back pocket, clapped his hands, and said it was a fierce cold day for a journey. Hannah piped up and said it was a lovely day to take the train. The smile appeared at the corner of my father’s mouth. I picked up the bag. The cushioned handles felt warm. Coleman was saying to my father that he fancied two, maybe even three horses in two or three races next Saturday. He was going to put a few pounds on a few of them. Coleman mentioned the horses’ names, and my father said to Coleman he couldn’t put a foot wrong there. I stepped closer to the train. Hannah gasped when I pushed her hand away.
The Sunday afternoon in late July when I first visited Una’s flat, that day in January already felt like years ago. And you never stood on the train platform with your sister and your father—but bright sunlight lit the snowy fields. Cattle crowded around troughs filled with silage and hay, and the pale, stern winter faces on the train stared out. And I was ashamed. Ashamed of my father. I could not see myself then. Could not see what I was or who I wasn’t—but ashamed of the cowshit underneath his nails, the ragged everyday coat and cap, and the hand slipping into the pocket at the last moment, for all those pale and stern winter faces to see. He taking his sweet time. He punishing you. That’s what he was doing—but it’s only now I know he knew that what I wanted was to get on the train and put him and home and all of them behind me for good.
The cousin next drove me to that flat on Botanic Avenue. He had secured it for me. The landlord was a close friend. A tiny second-floor flat that I immediately liked, a twenty-five-minute walk to my job. That tiny flat with the tiny fridge, a hot plate with two rings, the table and two chairs facing the only window. The shared shower and toilet on my floor. The black coin-box phone at the bottom of the stairs. Large water stains on two walls and the smell of mold. That window looked out onto a slate roof that was covered with fat green moss. Pressed against the edge of the roof were the tops of evergreens.
My father’s cousin and I sat on the edge of the single bed and smoked his cigarettes. He stared at the floor between his opened legs, fidgeted with his thinning brown fringe, and warned me to be fair and honest in my dealings with others, and to not ever be late for work, because if I was, or if I misbehaved in any way, it was a mark against him, and a mark against him was a mark against the union, and it nearly killed him and a few others to get the union going. I told him I’d be good, and I reached into my pocket and handed him the money for the flat—I’d counted the notes on the train, counted them about twenty times—and without looking up, he shoved the notes into the sports coat pocket then said my father was a great man, his most favorite cousin, who stood with him at Limerick Junction when he took the train to Dublin all those years ago. The two of them piked hay in the meadows, the women crossed the meadows and the ditches with bottles of tea, ham and tomato sandwiches, tin-can gallons of well water, the best water he ever tasted, no water anyplace in the world like it, not like the filthy city water, you’ve no idea whatsoever, young fellow, what might be floating in that, and my father and he cycled together to dan
ces and hurling matches, they acted in plays in the school hall, when it came to acting my father was hard to beat. And no one could read the horses like my father. Not one.
He looked up. He offered me another cigarette, held the match out, told me I looked clever enough, I was a fairly all-right-looking young fellow, but I wasn’t handsome the way my father was, I must look like the other side, who he didn’t know anything about, but I needed to look out for myself, because no one else would, and he reached into the coat pocket where he’d put the money and handed me twenty pounds—I don’t know if it was one of the notes I’d given him—and he leaned back and reached into his left pants pocket and handed me ten cigarettes and a box of matches. I took them and thanked him, and he was fidgeting again with his fringe when he said, —Don’t forget to tell your father the next time you see him how well we got along, and don’t forget to tell him I was mad asking for him, and don’t forget to tell him that I was good to his young fellow.
We stood up from the bed and walked down the narrow stairs. We shook hands on the front steps. I can’t remember what else we said. The exhaust of his small car made loud farting noises when it took off. And I felt great wonder sitting there by myself on the top step. Men walked past in overcoats, and workmen in anoraks and women hurried past with their plastic shopping bags. A group of teenagers shuffled past. They were laughing and smoking and they had cool haircuts and wore cool city clothes. A barking dog ran down the middle of the street. Someone far up the street shouted the dog’s name and cursed. And smoke from the chimneys was mixed in with the fog and was the color of mud in the beams of the streetlamps.
I got up from the step and went upstairs and took the food out of the bag and put it in the fridge. I pushed two fifty-pence pieces into the meter and turned the metal key. The fridge hummed to life. It took me five minutes to open up the stuck window. Cold air filled the room. I pulled out the chair and sat down at the table and opened the box of cigarettes Eddie gave me, lit one, and stared across the fat moss at the evergreens. I felt hungry, but I’d fry some eggs later. I’d need to write that letter to my mother, but that, too, could wait. Strange voices were trapped before the window for seconds. Those voices sounded thrilling. My first night without them, and I didn’t feel lonely.
And I never again saw or heard from Eddie. But his part was played. He did what a cousin from home had asked of him.
• • •
—I have a close relation for years in the civil service, Una said.
—I like the pub, I said. —People tell you strange things, and they sing. They sing the Dublin songs.
—You’ll get tired of all that, Jim. Mark my words, she said. —You like it now because it’s new, and you are new to the city. I know Daddy used to visit your house. He was so fond of your father, more than he was of most people, but Daddy visited more than your house. I think he visited houses to let people know he was available if they needed a handyman. It was the country way of doing business.
—I remember him very well, I said.
—I don’t think about him like I used to. I’m being honest, she said, and released her arms.
—He was very funny. When he came to the house he told jokes that my mother and father didn’t like to hear.
She made a quick knot on the strings, without looking down. She placed her right hand on her hip. —I might go and live in France or Germany. Do you know anyone who’s even gone there?
—Not a one, I said.
—I was very good at the French in school, if you don’t mind my saying so—
—I don’t—
—I was good at the Irish, too, but the nuns lashed the French verbs into me. My mother, mind you, wouldn’t like to hear me say that I was going anyplace. So you can’t repeat any of this to your mother or it’ll go straight back to mine.
—I won’t open my mouth to any of them.
She stood and crossed the room. An empty pram was bouncing along the footpath, and before Una reached the window the pram crashed into a lamppost and the children were laughing and screaming. She lowered the window and sat on the sill, her head bent. The light made her hair look more red than black. Her shadow fell along her bed. Then a cloud moved and her shadow vanished.
She came back from the window and picked up the ginger biscuit. She stared at it before putting it back on the edge of the plate. She touched her fingertips together then quickly folded her arms again, holding herself like she were cold, and she gazed down at me, her eyes blinking in a way that made me wonder if she had forgotten I was there. I coughed and covered my mouth. She slowly sat on the edge of the chair, again watching toward that window.
—I used to fill Daddy’s flask of tea and make his sandwiches before I got on the bus. I had the flask filled that morning. I had to throw the tea out four days after. It was still sitting there on the table. No one in the house would touch the flask. And Daddy knew people enjoyed his company. He could get a rise out of the stiffest of them.
—He did out of my father and mother, I said.
—That was Daddy’s way, she went on. —Get a rise out of them. You know he spent a half-hour before the mirror every morning, combing his hair, before going out to shovel concrete and fix things for people, many of them who never paid him, like the big farmers, the ones who could. But his work shirts and his pants had to be ironed. He demanded that. Every morning he’d ask me if he looked grand. He’d ask me when I handed him that flask of tea and the two sandwiches. I told him that he did look grand. Vain, that’s what Daddy was, but I liked that in him.
—He was on my mind, when I was walking up Drumcondra Road earlier, I said. —He was a fine builder. I heard it said many times at the creamery—
—A laborer is what he was, she said.
She looked at me. I looked away. Bus brakes screeched then hissed at the lights.
—But I am so happy you came by, she said. —When the bell rang I knew well it was you. My mother had been saying that you would stop by some Sunday, but when the bell rang, I opened the curtain and looked out but could not see who was down there, and then when I was going down the stairs I had that odd feeling I was who I was six or seven years ago. I didn’t like the feeling at all, and I sat on the stairs for a while and shut my eyes till it faded. Do you know what I mean, Jim?
—I’m starting to, Una.
—I had to wait for it to pass, she said. —But in my mind when I sat up from the step and went toward the door you looked different than you do. You look nice, and you’ll visit me again. I hope you will, but I know I have been talking and telling too much. It’s just that they are things you’d understand, being neighbors, being from there, our fathers being such good friends.
—I’ll visit you whenever you’d like, Una. I’ll ring the bell next Sunday.
—Do so, Jim. Please do. I’ll be looking forward to it all week. I’m fine, you know. I’m grand, but I never know what to do with myself on Sundays. During the week I have the work and I am so knackered when I get home that I eat a bite and fall into the bed and stay in it till I have to get up for work the next morning. I look at the telly, but there’s nothing much on it. Then on Sundays, I couldn’t be bothered with Mass, where everyone around me is a stranger. You are going to write to your mother now and tell her you saw me. Tell her the things we chatted about.
—I don’t have to tell her anything, Una. I don’t have to tell anyone anything.
—I’d like you didn’t say a word, Jim.
—I’ll say I never saw you, Una. I’ll make something up.
—Do so, Jim. I won’t say a word to my mother either. The less they know, the better. And take a few ginger biscuits with you. You didn’t even have one.
—I’m grand, I said.
—Oh, take a few, she said. —I brought them out especially for you.
She went to the cabinet, pulled out a plastic bag, and put six or seven biscu
its into it. I stood and thanked her when she handed me the bag. She folded her arms and smiled.
It was after three when I left her flat. The sun was shining. I crossed the bridge and walked up Lower Dorset Street. I stepped into a newsagent to buy a Sunday newspaper. I passed the North Circular Road and wandered into a pub between there and Eccles Street. The bartender handed me a Club Orange. I sat underneath a window, in a seat warmed by sunlight. No one sat around me, but a man was sitting on every barstool. They were watching the football match on the television, a dense cloud of cigarette smoke above them. I opened the newspaper but then folded it up.
In front of the pub was a bus stop. I considered taking a bus to the city center to see a film, but I’d seen every film that was showing. Many I’d seen twice. I’d do that, to pass the time, on days off, sit in the cinema all day, and there was nothing like it. You got to see and hear all the things you missed the first time around, and you got to escape the things that were in your head. Or I could buy a record. I had a list of them written down, along with a list of books, but the record shops and Eason’s were close to closing. A few friends I knew from the bar trade drank in a pub that was in walking distance. They were either there or in the games arcade next door, playing Space Invaders, pinball, poker, but I wasn’t in the mood for them, and game arcades bored me, and like everyone else, they would be watching that match. On my walk home, I’d stop at the Italian chipper and get something to eat. I’d chat with the young dark Italian woman. We didn’t understand a word we said to each other, but I enjoyed hearing the sounds of her words, and I enjoyed watching her, and smelling the frying cod and chips. She would not be watching that match.
The Visitors Page 4
