by Maeve Binchy
“No. About you. Having to find out about me this way.”
“I know you were going to ring me. Benny told me that. She said you were about to phone.”
“I never lied to you, either, Mother. I wasn’t going to phone.”
“Not immediately, perhaps, but you would have sometime.”
“Do you still think any question must be answered?”
“Of course.”
“What’ll I do Mother, what on earth will I do when I get out of here?”
“You’ll come home to get well and then we’ll think of something else for you.”
“And Mother Clare?”
“Leave her to me.”
Jack came in the side door and found Aengus sitting in the cloakroom studying his glasses.
“Oh, Jesus, not again.”
“It’s not my fault, Jack, I don’t do anything, I swear I don’t. I just went past these fellows and one of them shouted, ‘Hey, speccy four-eyes,’ and I ignored them like you told me and then they came and took them off and stamped on them.”
“So, it’s my fault.” Jack looked at the glasses; they were beyond repair. Sometimes he had been able to fit the frames back and push in the lenses; not this time.
“Listen, Aengus, don’t make a big thing out of it. They’ve had enough here today.”
“Well, what will I say?” Aengus looked naked and defenseless without his spectacles. “I mean I can’t say I stamped on them myself.”
“No, I know. Listen, I’ll go in tomorrow and kick the shit of the fellows who did it.”
“No, no, Jack, please. That would make it worse.”
“Not if I beat them to a pulp it won’t. They won’t try anything again. They’d be afraid they’d have to deal with me again.”
“But they’ll know you won’t be there all the time.”
“I can be there at odd times. You know, just happen to be passing when they’re going out of school.”
“Wouldn’t they think I was a telltale?”
“Nope.” Jack was casual. “You’re smaller. You have to wear glasses to see, if they don’t respect that then you have to bring in reinforcements … that’s the system.”
There was no need for a gong in their household, Lilly Foley said that Holy Mother Church looked after all that for them. As soon as they heard the Angelus ring they gathered from all over the big house to the supper table. Jack’s father had asked him not to mention the accident in front of the younger children. He didn’t want to go into the fact that someone had died. His father looked pale, Jack thought, his eye slightly swollen; but maybe he wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been involved. Certainly none of his brothers saw anything amiss. Ronan was entertaining them; he was a good mimic and this time he was doing a fussy brother in the school trying to get everyone to sit still in the big hall for a lecture. Then he went on to a merciless performance as an inarticulate Garda, who had called to the school to deliver the annual lecture on road safety.
Ronan had picked the wrong day for this story.
Another time his father might have laughed or mildly remonstrated about the cruelty of the imitation. But today Dr. Foley’s face was gray and set.
“And whatever his accent or his defects, I don’t suppose one of those blockheads making a jeer of him listened to a word he was saying.” The voice was harsh.
“But, Daddy …” Ronan was bewildered.
“Oh, you can ‘But, Daddy’ at me all you like—it’s not going to bring you, or any of those amadans mocking the poor guard, back to life when they walk out under a ten-ton truck.”
There was a silence. Jack watched his brothers look at each other in alarm, and saw his mother frown slightly down the table at his father.
For no reason Jack remembered something that girl Benny had said earlier in the day. It was something about wishing she had the power to control conversations. If you could do that you could rule the world, she had laughed.
“You mean like Hitler?” he had teased her.
“I mean the reverse of Hitler. I mean sort of patting things down, not stirring them up.”
That was the moment when the fabulous Nan Mahon had flashed her eyes. Anyone could pat things down, she had said with a toss of all that blond curly hair. The point was to liven things up. She had looked straight at Jack when she said it.
Nan Mahon turned the key in number 23 Maple Gardens. She had no idea whether there would be anyone home yet. It was six-fifteen. Whoever came in first turned on the electric heater in the hall to take the chill off the house, and then lit the gas fire in the kitchen. They had all their meals at a big kitchen table; there was never any company, so it didn’t matter.
The hall was already slightly warm so somebody was home.
“Hallo,” Nan shouted.
Her father came out of the kitchen.
“That was a fine message you left. That was a great day’s work, frightening the bloody lives out of us.”
“What is it?”
“What is it? What is it? Meek as milk! God Almighty, Nan, I’ve been here for the past two hours without knowing hair nor hide of you.”
“I left a message. I said there had been an accident. I wouldn’t have, but the hospital said we had to. I left a message at the yard. I told Paul to tell you I was all right. Isn’t that what he said?”
“Who’d believe the daylight out of that fool, reading magazines with one hand, stuffing his face with another …”
“Well, you were out.” Nan had taken her coat off and was examining the mud stains. She hung it up carefully on a big wooden coat hanger and began to brush hard at the dried mud.
“Someone was killed, Nan. A boy died.”
“I know.” She spoke slowly. “We saw it.”
“And why didn’t you come straight home?”
“To an empty house?”
“It wouldn’t have been empty. I’d have come back. We’d have got your mother back out of that place.”
“I didn’t want to get her back, disturbing her when there was nothing she could do.”
“She’s worried sick too. You’d better ring her. She said she’d stay put in case you came by the hotel.”
“No, you’d better ring her. I didn’t get her worried.”
“I can’t understand why you’re being so callous …” He looked at her, bewildered.
Nan’s eyes were blazing. “You haven’t even begun to try to understand … you haven’t a notion what it was like, all the cars and the blood and the glass and the boy with the blanket over him, and a girl breaking her ribs, and all the hanging about and waiting … it was … it was … just awful.” He carne toward her, arms outstretched, but she avoided him.
“Oh, Nan, my poor baby,” he was saying.
“That is precisely why I didn’t want you to come to the hospital. I’m not anyone’s poor baby. I only had scratches. I didn’t want you making an exhibition of yourself. And of me.”
He flinched.
Nan continued. “And I didn’t ring Em because it’s hard enough to get a job in any place as a married woman without having hysterical daughters ringing up crying for Mamma. Em’s been working in that kip for six years, since I was twelve. And there have been days I’d have liked her at home when I had a headache or one of the nuns had roared at me at school. But I thought of her. You, you never give anyone a thought but yourself. You’d ring her if you couldn’t find your socks where you thought they should be.”
Brian Mahon’s hand was in a fist. He moved closer to where his daughter was starting again to brush the mud from the coat that hung on the side of the kitchen dresser.
“By God, you won’t speak to me like that. You may well be upset, but you’re not going to get away with treating me like dirt. Your own father out slaving day and night so that you’d have a College education. By God, you’re going to take that back or you’re going to get out of this house.”
Not a muscle of Nan’s face moved, her stroke never faltered as she brushed a
nd watched the flakes fall down on the newspaper she had spread beneath. She said nothing.
“Then you’ll not stay under my roof.”
“Oh, but I will,” said Nan. “For the moment anyway.”
Mother Francis had been putting off her visit to Mother Clare as long as possible. There had been a deliberately vague telephone call. But it became clear that she would soon have to go out in the rain and get a bus to their sister convent. She had sent Peggy home. It was not a visit she relished making.
Still, she thought, bracing her shoulders, if she had been a real mother she would have had to endure many such problems with a teenage daughter. As a schoolteacher she knew only too well the dance they led their parents. Natural mothers had to put up with a great deal. This was the very thought in her head as she turned the corner of the corridor and back into the waiting room and saw the weeping figure of a woman hunched over and hugging herself in grief.
Beside her stood a pleasant-looking, round, gray-haired woman, unsure of what to do, hesitating about whether to hush the weeping figure or let her cry.
“Frank,” the woman sobbed. “Frank, tell me it’s not true. Tell me it’s someone else, tell me it was just someone that looked like you.”
“They’re going to get the nurse again,” said her companion. “She was fine a minute ago. We have a taxi ordered. I was taking her home with me …”
“Was it her son …?” Mother Francis asked.
“Her only child.” The woman’s eyes were eager but anxious. “I’m her neighbor. She’s going to spend the night with me. I’ve sent my sister in to look after the other lads.”
“Lads?”
“She keeps students you see. This was her boy’s first day at College.”
The nun’s face was sad. Beside them, the anguished figure of Kit Hegarty rocked to and fro.
“You see Sister, Mother, I’m the worst one for her. I have everything. A husband, and a family, and Kit has nothing now. She doesn’t want to be with the likes of us. She doesn’t want anything nice and normal and safe. It’s only reminding her of what she hasn’t got.”
Mother Francis looked at the woman with appreciative eyes. “You’re obviously a very good friend Mrs.…?”
“Hayes, Ann Hayes.”
Mother Francis was kneeling down beside Frank Hegarty’s mother.
She reached out and held the woman’s hand. Kit looked up, startled.
“In a few days, when the funeral’s over, I want you to come and stay with me,” she said softly.
The ravaged face looked at her. “What do you mean? Who are you?”
“I’m someone like you. I’ve lost my child in a sense. I could tell you about it, maybe you could advise me. You see, I’m not a real mother. You are.”
“I was.” Kit smiled a terrible twisted grimace.
“No, you are, you still are, you’ll always be his mother, nobody can take that away from you. And all you gave him, all you did for him.”
“I didn’t give him much. I didn’t do much for him. I let him have that bike.” She clawed at Mother Francis’s hand as she spoke.
“But you had to. You had to give him freedom. That was the greatest gift, that was what he would have wanted most. You gave him the best he could want.”
Nobody had said anything like this to Kit all day. Somehow she managed to take a proper breath, not the little shallow gasps she had been giving up to now.
Mother Francis spoke again. “I live in the convent in Knockglen. It’s simple and peaceful. And you could spend a few days there. It’s different, you see, that’s the main thing. It wouldn’t have memories.”
“I couldn’t go. I can’t leave the house.”
“Not immediately, of course, but whenever you’re ready. Ann will look after things for a few days. Ann Hayes and her sister.”
Somehow her voice had a hypnotic effect. The woman had become less agitated.
“Why are you offering me this?”
“Because my heart goes out to you. And because my girl was hurt in the same crash … she’s going to be all right, but it’s a shock seeing her so pale in a hospital bed …”
“She’s going to be all right.” Kit’s voice was flat.
“Yes, I know. I know you would accept your son to have any injury if you thought he was going to come out.”
“Your girl, what do you mean …?”
“She was brought up in our convent. I love her every bit as much as if she were my natural daughter. But I’m no use as a mother. I’m not out in the world.”
Through her tears Kit managed something like a real smile.
“I will come, Mother. The convent in Knockglen. But how will I know you? Who will I ask for?”
“I’m afraid you won’t have any difficulty in remembering the name. Like your son, I was called after St. Francis.”
Mario looked at Fonsie’s yellow tie with disapproval.
“You’re going to frighten them away.”
“Don’t be an eejit Mario. This is the way people dress nowadays.”
“You no call me eejit. I know what eejit means.”
“It’s about the only word of English you do know.”
“You no speak to your uncle that way.”
“Listen, Mario, pass me those biscuit tins. If we put the player on top of something tinny it’ll sound a bit more like real music.”
“Eeet soun horrible, Fonsie. Who will come to hear things so very, very loud?” Mario put his hands on his ears.
“The kids will.”
“The kids have no money.”
“The old ones wouldn’t come in here in a fit anyway.”
The door opened and Sean Walsh walked in.
“Now do you see!” Fonsie cried.
At the very same moment Mario said, “Now, what did I tell you!”
Sean looked from one to the other with distaste. It was a place he rarely went, and now he had been twice in twenty-four hours; last night with Benny, and tonight because he was so late and fussed getting back from his useless journey to Dublin. He had not been able to buy himself provisions, both grocery shops were closed. Normally Sean Walsh divided his custom. One day he might patronize Hickey’s, beside Mr. Flood; other days he would go to Carroll’s, immediately next door to Hogan’s. It was as if he were preparing for the day he would be a big man himself in this town and wanted everyone on his side, wanted them all to think of him as a customer. If he had been a drinking man he would have had a half pint in every establishment. It was the way to get on. But tonight there had been no time to get the cheese or sardines or cold ham that made his evening meal; Sean never liked to cook in his bed-sit above the premises of Hogan’s lest the smell of food linger and be deemed offensive. He had thought that he might slip in for a quick snack that would keep body and soul together before he went back to his room to brood about the situation that he had handled so badly.
Now it appeared that Mario and his half-wit nephew were making fun of him.
“He’s old and he’s come in here two times,” Mario was saying.
“He’s not old, and the word is twice, you gobdaw,” the unappealing Fonsie said.
Sean wished that he had gone down to Birdie Mac’s and knocked on the door for a bar of KitKat, anything rather than face these two.
“Are you serving me food, or am I interrupting some kind of talent contest?”
“How old are you, Sean?” Fonsie said. Sean looked at him in disbelief. The huge spongy soles making him four or five inches taller than he really was, the hair slicked into waves with some filthy oil, his narrow tie and huge, mauve-colored jacket.
“Are you mad?”
“You tell how old you are.” Mario looked unexpectedly ferocious.
Sean felt the whole world had tilted. First Benny had turned her back on him in public and told him to go home without her after he had driven up especially to collect her. Now both men in the chipper. It was one of the rare occasions in his life when Sean Walsh spoke without calculatio
n.
“I’m twenty-five,” he said. “Since September.”
“There!” Fonsie was triumphant.
“Now!” Mario was equally sure he was right.
“What is this?” Sean looked angrily from one to the other.
“Mario thinks the place is for old people. I say it’s for young fellows like yourself and myself,” Fonsie said.
“Sean is not a fellow, he is a businessman.”
“Oh, jaysus, does it matter? He’s not on two sticks like most people in the town. What do you want Sean? Rock salmon or cod?”
Patsy had gone for a walk with Mossy Rooney.
He had waited wordlessly in the kitchen until the daughter of the house had been soothed and put to bed. Mossy, a little like Sean Walsh, would have wished that the kitchen and living quarters of the Hogan household were more separate. Then he would have been able to sit down at the table, loosen his shirt collar, his shoelaces, and read the evening paper until Patsy was ready. But the Hogans lived on top of you when you went to that house. There was the master, a man of importance in the town that you’d think would want a house properly run for himself. And the mistress, much older by all appearances than her husband, who fussed too much over that great big daughter.
There had been a great deal of fussing tonight. The doctor had come and given her two tablets to take, he had said there wasn’t a thing wrong with her that wouldn’t be wrong with any red-blooded girl who had seen a fatal accident. She was shocked and upset and what she needed most was to be allowed to rest, alone.
Mossy Rooney, a man who though he spoke little, noticed a lot, saw the look of relief pass over Benny Hogan’s face, as she was sent to bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of hot milk. He saw also the way the Hogans looked after her as she left the kitchen. He had seen that look on the faces of mother ducks when they took their little flocks down to the river for the first time.
If he had been walking out with any other girl in service in the town they could have stayed in on a wet night and talked by the kitchen range, but with the Hogans hovering around he had to bring Patsy out into the rain.
“Would you not like to take your ease indoors on a bad night like this?” Mrs. Hogan had said kindly.
