by Tyler, Anne
“Do you know, when I was a lad your age we used to go over there and play too. Your Uncle Barry, now, he was a great climber, there was nothing he couldn’t get right up on, and there were more bits of wall then than now.”
Michael was interested.
“And then your Aunt Nuala; my heavens wouldn’t those little Australian boys and girls be surprised to know that their Mother Superior used to climb trees like a boy? She used to tie her skirts up around her waist and climb with Barry.”
“What did you do, Daddy?”
“Sure I was only like poor Eddie, looking at them,” John sighed. “They usually wanted me to go away, if I remember rightly.”
Michael took this as a criticism of the twins’ own attitude to their younger brother.
“I’m sure you were fine when you were young, Dad. But God, you couldn’t have Eddie hanging around with you, I mean really and truly.”
“Oh I know that, I’m not disputing it, Eddie would have your heart scalded. But I was only talking about the old days across there … and the kind of things we used to do …”
He talked on gently, his voice low enough that it wouldn’t wake Kate and have her storming out onto the landing. Yet raised enough for Michael to think it was a normal conversation and that these were normal times.
John dug deep into his memory of games played, and accidents averted, of guards on bicycles, of two young bullocks that ran wild, away from someone’s secure field up the hill. He talked until he saw the lids begin to droop on his son’s thin white face, and knew that sleep was going to come at last, that Michael wouldn’t wake Dara and sit all night watching in helpless despair as this stranger walked through what they still wanted to think their home.
That night old Mr. Slattery couldn’t sleep and he came down to get himself some warm milk. He dozed off at the kitchen table as the milk boiled and didn’t smell the burning until Fergus appeared, wild-eyed with shock.
“Don’t put me away, don’t put me in the county home,” wept the old man. “I’ll take milk to bed in a flask. I’ll never try to boil it again. Please.”
Fergus had been filling the blackened saucepan with water and opening the windows.
“Are you going mad altogether, Father? Would I put you in the county home? Would I?”
“If I were mad altogether you’d have to,” Mr. Slattery said reasonably.
“Yes, but you’re not, and even if you were I don’t think I would.”
“Why not? It would be the right thing to do, we’ve often advised clients ourselves.”
“You’re not a client. You’re my father.”
“You’ve got to get on with your own life.”
“But I do get on with my own life, for God’s sake. I was out getting on with it this evening and I’d only just gotten to bed. That’s why it was my nose that caught the milk, not Miss Purcell’s.”
“I’m a burden, I don’t do much work in the office.”
“You’re not a burden, we don’t have much work in the office.”
“I’ve let the place run down, why else didn’t we get the business for Fernscourt?”
“Oh is that what’s worrying you? I’ll tell you why. Your man O’Neill is in business in a big way over there, really big, owns at least half a dozen restaurants or bars or whatever they are. He has other business too, he pays accountants and lawyers big fees. Now he’s opening here, the big lawyers look up a map … Ireland they say, Ireland, where’s that? Then they find it. What’s the capital they say, what’s the capital? Then someone tells them and they get Dublin solicitors. That’s all.”
“You make it sound so simple. I suppose it will be good when he arrives, this American. He’s given work in the place already.”
“Here’s some fresh milk.” Fergus had boiled another saucepan. “We’ll tell Miss Purcell that I was drunk and burned the arse out of the saucepan. The American? It has to be good for the place. I suppose the poor devil will be full of nonsense and trying to hunt and shoot and fish. We’ll have great sport with him. Imagine worrying about the American! It’ll be the best sport we ever had. I can’t wait for him to arrive.”
That night Sergeant Sheehan found somebody lying in a very awkward position, legs splayed, head lolling, and stretched right across the footbridge at the end of the town. Sergeant Sheehan was a thickset man who used to be a great hurler in his day, a man with ferocious eyebrows which made him look very frightening when he had to. But he was running to fat now, with slow and undemanding life in a country town. He felt his uniform was constantly tight around his neck, and rolls of fat gathered when he buttoned his top collar.
He loosened the collar now by opening several buttons, and looked at the sleeping woman. It was Miss Barry, the canon’s housekeeper. A fine place for her to have passed out and to be snoring at 1 A.M. Sergeant Sheehan went back to the station to think the matter over, having tidied her legs into a more respectable position. He wasn’t quite sure what his next move would be. To wake the canon with such bad news would be unwise. To allow Miss Barry to be found by someone else, asleep and obviously the worse for wear, would hardly be wise either. To wake Miss Barry might be the least wise course of all. What a pity Mrs. Whelan wasn’t around. He walked up Bridge Street. There was still a light on.
He tapped gently. She came to the door fully dressed.
“Do you ever sleep, Sheila?” he asked, full of relief to see her.
“Not so much these days. Telegrams come in at funny times too. They don’t know what time we wake or sleep,” she said.
He told her; she pondered. She decided it was best left, even another three or four hours would mean she had slept the worst off. Had she anything to support her head? No, but the sergeant would arrange it.
“I get up early,” Mrs. Whelan said. “I could throw some water over her at around six, and then we could pretend she had been out early to pick mushrooms for His Reverence’s breakfast and fallen into the river.”
This way face was saved. He couldn’t thank her enough. Mrs. Whelan said they would speak no more of it; she was flattered to be asked for her advice. She would sleep now for a couple of hours.
It was years since Patrick O’Neill had stayed up all night. He tried to think back. In the 1930s during the Depression often, very often, hardly a week went by when nights were not spent hauling boxes and crates, doing favors here, moving goods that had to be out of warehouses there. Counting, taking note, proving himself reliable. Telling Italians and fellows with long Polish names that they could always rely on Patrick O’Neill. He used to say his own name with pride to these men, roll it around as if it were an incantation. He spoke of himself in the third person to these business associates in the early days: “Patrick O’Neill won’t let you down. You can always rely on Patrick O’Neill.”
They could rely on him and his truck at first, and then on his fleet of truck drivers who didn’t ask questions but just shifted what had to be shifted.
And then Patrick O’Neill’s name was over neighborhood bars. He was one of the first to welcome the end of Prohibition, just as he had enjoyed the income and lifestyle which Prohibition had created for him, and those Italians and Poles who had given him early jobs were not forgotten. When life became less risky Patrick O’Neill invited them and their wives to his bar-restaurants and treated them with respect. Flowers for the wives, discreet smiles when they brought girlfriends instead. They appreciated it; they sent him custom. But it had meant a lot of staying up all night. There had been the night when he had gone through the books over and over again. It was dawn when he had to admit that it was a fellow Irishman who had been cheating him. He called to Tom Brady’s house at seven, shirt open and eyes red.
Tom Brady realized what had happened and tried to run.
“Mrs. Brady,” Patrick O’Neill had said quietly, “take the children out, maybe for the day. To family perhaps? Don’t let them come back before nightfall. Oh and move any really good ornaments and pieces from your front parlor.”
“This isn’t a movie, Patrick,” Tom started to bluster.
“Sure it isn’t, otherwise you’d be dead on your floor for what you’ve done to me.”
Tom Brady’s wife gasped.
“Take the children,” Tom had said, “and do what he says. He’s not going to kill me.”
Patrick beat him with a violence he didn’t even know he possessed. With every blow he grunted and spat out more rage. This was for the false smiles and the drinks after a day spent cheating. This was for letting Patrick fire an innocent Italian two months back. This was for the sleazy shabby way the goods were stolen, taking them out in trash cans and coming back later to root among the garbage and remove the good bottles of liquor. This was for taking a bonus last Christmas, and this, the hardest blow of all, had been for being an Irishman and doing it all to another Irishman. He had been up all that night all right. And on the night he had met Kathleen.
He had never intended to marry, or fall in love. There wouldn’t be time. Work was scarce first and then it was too plentiful, and then came responsibility and long hours. There wouldn’t be time for a wife and family. But Kathleen had looked so lovely and she was so lively then, eyes dancing, long fair hair swept up into a top knot of some sort. She had been so excited about his bars and restaurants, and so enthusiastic. She said over and over that America was so alive and so full of hope she pitied anyone who lived anywhere else.
“Except Ireland, of course,” Patrick had said.
“Particularly Ireland.” She had tossed her curls.
It was the one thing they differed on. Huge in ways, and yet it never mattered all that much, because he knew that when he was ready to go back—“to go back” was how he put it, though he himself had never seen Ireland—Kathleen would come too. He wasn’t to know that as her health deteriorated she would become less and less interested in any scheme, be it in New York or in Ireland. Kathleen, who used to sit on the tables in a new bar holding swaths of material up to the light at the window to see which would make the classiest curtains, lost her involvement in anything except the big white house in New Jersey, and in the latter years even that couldn’t hold her frail attention.
He hadn’t spent any night awake over Kathleen’s illness; there was not one night when he knew she wouldn’t get better. He was never given any bad diagnosis, or expectation or time when her illness would run its course. Possibly, the last time he had stayed up all night without going to bed or lying down was the night Kerry was born. In 1947. The child had been born at home and the doctors told Patrick it was going to be long and hard, even though Kathleen was still young and strong in those days. He had spent all night pacing, trying to read, doing anything to distract himself from the cries upstairs. It had been a clear bright dawn when he held his son in his arms and rocked him. Kerry’s tiny, scrunched-up face was so touching, Patrick had swallowed hard and swore that no harm would come to this boy, and that he would go back and walk in his rightful place in Ireland with head held high.
As he clutched the little bundle to him he felt tears in his eyes and wondered how his own father, Michael O’Neill—amiable, drunken, good-for-nothing Michael O’Neill—felt when he had held Patrick in his arms. Did he not wish too that he could take his son back to Mountfern? No, Patrick’s father must have felt no such thing. At the age of twenty Michael O’Neill, his parents, brothers and sisters, had left Mountfern because there was no work and his father had been thrown out on the road. He never went back, nor had he ever thought it possible. He had sung songs about Ireland, and told tales, and filled young Patrick with a hatred of this Fern family whom he had never met.
Patrick was eight when he heard that the Ferns’ house had been burned down. The news came by letter. It was too late to be any good to any of the O’Neills then. There was no O’Neill around to watch the flames lick through the windows of this house, the house which had held the family and brought them down.
Patrick O’Neill touched the moss-covered stones almost religiously; he leaned against the ivy-covered walls and walked by the moonlight into a room which still had its walls. To his surprise there were orange boxes as furniture, and toy tea-sets. Some local children had obviously been playing there. He smiled at the jam jars full of wild flowers. He wondered who the children were. Certainly they wouldn’t have been allowed in the door during the Ferns’ time. He would love to see their faces when they heard his plans for the old ruin.
Mrs. Whelan was the first to see him. She had just delivered a dripping Miss Barry back to the presbytery while Father Hogan and Canon Moran clucked sympathetically at the mishap that caused their housekeeper to fall into the river. Mrs. Whelan had even provided some mushrooms as a kind of proof that the bewildered woman had been on an errand for her employers. Just as she was walking back to her post office, she saw a man in a crumpled suit, tie loosened, walk up Bridge Street toward a hired car. It could be no one else.
Patrick O’Neill stood handsome and pale in his unaccustomed dark suit. Big and broad-shouldered with a head of dark brown curly hair, he was a man who normally wore tan or beige jackets. Few people in the States ever remembered seeing him in dark colors. Even if there had been a formal occasion he had worn a green tuxedo in deference to his national origins.
His enemies in business had often said that he had the thickset looks of an Irish paddy who should still be shoveling dirt. This pleased Patrick rather than otherwise; he said he was glad to wear the signs of his forefathers so openly, and to be living proof that they had to work hard and that they survived. But he didn’t have the pugilistic face of a man who would like to have a fight, he had no boxer’s scowl, nor the low forehead of a man who found it hard to cope with whatever life dealt him. His face was broad and open, his eyes blue and twinkling. From his eyes lines came out like a star, meaning that they often looked as if he was smiling even when he was far from it.
He was more attractive and younger than Sheila had expected. But then, what should she have expected, just seeing telegrams and telex messages pile up for him? He looked as if he could do with a welcome.
She crossed the street. “And you’re very welcome to these parts, Mr. O’Neill,” she said warmly.
Patrick looked at her gratefully. “How did you know it was me, did you know my people?”
“Who else would it be, Mr. O’Neill? And I have a foot of telegrams and messages for you up at the post office. Would you like a cup of tea and I’ll give them to you?”
“Now that’s what I call efficiency.” He threw back his head and laughed.
Mrs. Whelan led him through the post office to her room behind. She put him sitting down beside a pile of communications and put on the kettle. She said no more till she placed a cup of tea beside each of them, and some buttered soda bread. Yes, a very handsome man, she thought, he was going to cause a bit of a stir. Mrs. Whelan smiled to herself, thinking of all the excitement there would be.
Patrick read the telegrams from Gerry Power, the man who had replaced Tom Brady as his second in command all those years ago. He read the telegrams from Rachel too quickly, and put them into a different pocket. He felt the heat coming back into his body with the strong tea and the thick buttered bread. She was a gracious woman, this Mrs. Whelan. No curiosity about him, no need to talk and chatter like so many women, telling you their business and wanting to know yours. If they were all going to be like this in Mountfern, he had made the best move in his life.
Despite the hard, silent disapproving face of Gerry Power.
Despite the hurt, bewildered eyes of Rachel Fine.
Despite the confused chirrupings of little Grace.
And the stern scornful look of Kerry, the tall golden-haired son. The boy he had promised to take back home. The boy who said so little to him these days that Patrick had no idea what he was thinking about, at all.
Fergus wondered what it would be like to be a solicitor in a big place where you had no idea what the day would bring. In other places he supposed he could
stand on his own doorstep and stretch without four passers-by asking him had he a bad back like his father, and sending messages in to Miss Purcell or advising him on the rather glum-looking window boxes. Still he wouldn’t change it. And he could escape and get on with his life a bit, as he had told his father last night, if he went twenty-five miles to a dance organized by a rugby club. There were grand girls there who wouldn’t expect to be taken to Meagher’s jewelry shop next morning if a kiss and a cuddle had been part of the night’s entertainment.
He saw Kate Ryan walking up River Road and turning into Bridge Street. She waved.
“Are you out with your stopwatch in case I’m a second late?”
“Just waiting for the bells to ring for mass. If there had been one peal you’d have been fired. No, I was having a good stretch actually.”
“Don’t you look like a young Greek god. Did you have a good time in Ballykane last night?”
His arms dropped to his sides mid-stretch. “How did you know where I was …?”
“I was there myself dancing away beside you. You never saw me?”
“No you weren’t, don’t be ridiculous, who said it to you?”
“Jack Coyne. Some fellow couldn’t start his car and rang Jack at all hours in the morning to go and pick him up.”
“God, you can’t do much in this place, can you? And there was I thinking it wasn’t such a bad place. No surprises.”
“It isn’t a bad place. Do you want surprises?”
They were walking companionably in to start the day’s work as the church bells began to peal at ten to nine to let the devout know it was time to put on the hats and pick up the missals for daily mass. The early devout would already have attended seven o’clock mass, said this morning by a perplexed Father Hogan, whose mind was as much on the dripping and drunken housekeeper as it was on the liturgy.
“No I don’t want surprises,” Fergus said. “In the last few hours I’ve found my father nearly burning the house down, and now you tell me Jack Coyne has the entire details of my little escapade last night.”
