The Misremembered Man

by Christina McKenna

  “Well, in that case you’ll need an antiseptic soap,” he said and went to a cabinet behind his desk. “There you go, James.”

  “Now remember,” he patted Jamie’s arm and smiled, “in two weeks’ time I’ll see you back here and you’ll be a new man.”

  After the door shut, the doctor stood a while, staring at the space Jamie had vacated.

  It saddened him that he could not give the farmer what he most wanted: roots, a base, a family. All those essentials had been denied to him in his early life. How was it possible to erect something solid and make a life when you’d been given no building blocks to start with?

  The medication he prescribed was not the answer; it simply made him forget what he never had. The only thing that would make James happy would be for his mother to appear. And there wasn’t much chance of that ever happening, conceded the doctor with a sigh.

  Before driving him back to the farm, Paddy insisted that Jamie have Rose make some supper for him.

  He was worried about his friend since he’d discovered that most of the food he’d brought him had lain in Jamie’s kitchen untouched. He had scraped it into the hog trough, tut-tutting at the waste—a wondrous mixture of his wife’s cookery. What a shame, Paddy had thought, about all those lovely things: the Irish stew, the marble cake, the devils on horseback, the pork cheeks in apple sauce, rhubarb pie, leek and sausage quiche, not to mention an assortment of buns and scones. Rose was fast running out of utensils and needed her plates and vessels back. They now sat chattering on the back seat of the Morris Minor, as the two friends bumped and jounced their way over the winding lane that led to the McFadden farmhouse.

  Rose’s attention was on a raging pan of potato bread, eggs and bacon. She had not seen Jamie since the hotel incident and was distressed at his appearance.

  “God, Jamie!” she cried in alarm. “You don’t look well atall.”

  Jamie stood in the doorway with his cap in his hands, miserable, for he was remembering with a painful clarity that it was Rose who had done everything to help him meet the mystery woman and how, in the end, all the effort had been wasted.

  There was nothing he could say, so he did something that he’d never done in front of any adult since his childhood. He broke down and wept freely.

  “Och now, Jamie, dear, dear, dear!”

  Rose rushed to him, took him by the arm and led him to the armchair.

  “Sit down there an’ I’ll make you a nice wee cup of tea.” She signaled to Paddy to put the kettle on, as she slid the sizzling skillet to one side of the stove.

  “You just feel a bit down after being to the doctor, Jamie,” she said with great understanding. “And goodness knows nobody likes goin’ to see a doctor, because God knows what they might hear.”

  She took a hankie from her apron pocket and handed it to Jamie. He wiped his eyes but could not meet hers, the shame of his tears forcing him into the darkest place imaginable. It was a place he did not feel he could escape from anymore. With every failure in his life, he had, inch by fearful inch, been pulled toward it. Now he felt he had no resistance left.

  “No, it’s not the doctor, Rose,” he said at last. “It’s everything. I don’t want to live anymore. I’m tired livin’. Nothin’ ever works out for me.”

  “Och now, Jamie, everything’s fixable, so it is.”

  She pulled up the embroidered footstool and sat down on the limestone peak of Mount Errigal, placing her hands on Jamie’s knees. Paddy could be heard in the scullery preparing the tea things.

  “Nothing’s ever as bad as it seems, Jamie. And everybody gets that old day-pression betimes. But sure we’ve God and the tablets, thank the heavens, so we have. I mind after I miscarried in nineteen and sixty-two I coulda kilt round me. My Paddy can tell you all about it because I nearly kilt him—couldn’t be lived with, so I couldn’t. Isn’t that right, Paddy?” Rose’s voice gained in volume as her husband came in bearing a clattering tray of cups and whatnot.

  “Aye, that’s right, Jamie. She was like the divil, so she was.”

  Rose passed Jamie a mug of tea, her cure for all ills.

  “Now you drink that up, Jamie, and you’ll feel a whole lot better. And y’know, Jamie, it’s not all lost with that lady. I’ve been puttin’ me thinkin’ hat to the grindstone—or whatever it is that they say—and maybe ye know that was the wrong number you dialed. You could a mixed up the numbers with the excitement and all, like. And who knows, God-blisses-an-save-us, maybe she had a whole clatter a men to look at, and misremembered you, Jamie. That’s just what you could be—the misremembered man—and she’s sittin’ at the phone waitin’ on you to ring, and wonderin’ what’s goin’ on.”

  “Aye, maybe. I don’t know, Rose.”

  “Paddy, bring in a plate a them coconut monkeys I made this mornin’ for Jamie here.”

  Rose turned her attention back to the problem at hand.

  “Now if you get me that wee number I’ll ring it and see what’s goin’ on. Because, Jamie, Miss Devine struck me as a fine lady and I don’t think she’d be doin’ anything to offend you. And you know what they say, Jamie. If you put a silk frock on a nanny goat it’d still be a goat. Now Lydeea wasn’t wearin’ a silk frock that day—to my mind it mighta been more of a glazed cotton, truth be told—but all-the-same you could put a glazed cotton frock on a nanny goat and it’d still be a nanny goat. But I could see that day, Jamie, that Lydeea’s no nanny goat. She’s a real lady.”

  “But, Rose, I couldn’t see her now with no hair.” Jamie started to cry again, thinking of the time it would take to grow back his comb-over. “She wouldn’t look at me like this.” He bit into his coconut monkey, which began to snow down his front.

  “Now, Jamie, it’s the heart that matters and not the head.” She patted his knees. “And anyway, a gallopin’ man on a blind horse wouldn’t notice anything wrong with your hair, and sure if the worse comes to the worse we can get you a new cap for the time being.”

  “And hair or no hair, Jamie,” she continued, “you’re a gift for any woman. Because, as my Great-aunt Brigid used to say, God rest her soul—I’m sure she’s outta purgatory be now, because she could be fearful crabbit betimes, like a weasel with toothache, God forgive me, but she’s been dead a long while so she’s maybe in heaven. Anyway, I’m goin’ off the point a wee bit, but what she used to say was that all any man needs is a clean shirt, a clean conscience and a pound or two in his pocket. And God save us, Jamie, but haven’t you all three a them? And isn’t it only the woman that’s missin’, so it is.” Rose took a mouthful of slaking tea. “And we’ll soon fix that, so we will. Now, have you got that wee phone number on you?”

  Jamie rummaged in his pocket, took out his wallet and handed it to her.

  “It’s in there somewhere, Rose. But I wouldn’t want you to be ringin’ her now.”

  Rose responded by pressing another coconut monkey on her guest.

  “No, Jamie,” she said, watching in satisfaction as he made short work of her baking. “I unnerstand you completely. I’ll ring her the morra or the day after, if that’s all right with you?”

  “Aye,” Jamie sighed.

  Rose found Lydia’s phone number in Jamie’s wallet, tucked in beside a square of worn linen edged with faded shamrocks. She wondered about its significance but knew not to pry. She handed back the wallet.

  “Now, Jamie, drink up your tea and then we’ll have some supper.” She emphasized her intentions with friendly slaps on Jamie’s knees. “And you’re in no state to be goin’ home to your own house tonight, so you’re stayin’ here with us. I’ll make up the spare room and I won’t hear a word of a ‘no’ from you. And another thing, Jamie, whenever you need a helpin’ hand, well, you know where they are?”

  She clapped her hands on his knees with a final flourish.

  “There they are there, Jamie: on the end of my arms, Jamie, and at the end of my Paddy’s, too.”

  Jamie dried his eyes. Rose got up and went to slide the skil
let of supper back onto the sizzling heat.

  As the juices from the frying began to flavor the air again, Jamie’s mood brightened accordingly. The concern that Rose and Paddy were, true to form, demonstrating, embraced him with a warmth he seldom experienced, and which for now served as a remedy to pull him back from the foul darkness that threatened to overwhelm him.

  Chapter thirty-one

  Eighty-Six sat on a wooden bench outside Mother Superior’s office, awaiting his summons. Five boys would be interviewed by the couple who had come to adopt. The boy nearest the door had been in already. There was a vacant space on the seat next to him. Eighty-Four, who was being seen at that moment, would shortly come to reclaim it. Eighty-Six would be next.

  They sat in a silent row looking out the window opposite, their bare feet planted on the cold stone floor. No one dared speak because Bartley, the mad bus driver, had been put in charge of them. The air crackled with his evil presence as he paced up and down the corridor, his hands balled into fists and crossed behind his back, his feet trailing on the concrete floor as he muttered to his demons. Sometimes he’d aim a kick at the bench, frustrated that the mute, stone-still boys were giving him no reason to lash out at them.

  All four continued to stare out the window, their eyes fixed on the falling snow, their minds closed boxes of agonizing thought. Would the couple in the nun’s office turn out to be good people or bad? Would they be released from this present hell or simply thrust into another version of it, ruled over by two adults instead of many? Should they pray to be left alone, or pray to be set free? Or might it just be possible that finally one of their number would find the paradise of a real “home” at last, in a warm house with kind people whose eyes smiled and whose voices soothed?

  A cloud of doubt hung over all of them, as dark and heavy as the sky beyond the windows. Each boy had his own way of dealing with what lay ahead.

  Ninety-One, the oldest of the group, gazed vacantly at the swirling snowflakes, his face empty of reflection, his mind shorn clean of prospect or expectation. Too many times he’d sat in this position, thinking the same thoughts. There had been too many bitter disappointments for him to think otherwise; his hopes and dreams lay about him like spectral bones in a graveyard.

  The boy beside Eighty-Six imagined that the woman in the nun’s office might be his long-lost elder sister—the one he spoke about so often—finally come to claim him.

  Eighty-nine, who had already been through the interview, knew with a painful certainty that he was not the fortunate one today. They had not detained him long enough, had shown so little interest in him. He sat now chewing his lip and trying to smother the genie of desire he had so foolishly let out of the bottle.

  Eighty-Six struggled to keep his mind on the beautiful possibility that these people might be good folk and that the choice might fall on him. Whenever he felt really anxious, as he did now, he strove to calm himself by drawing and coloring in the home of his dreams. From the posters and the tattered picture books he’d seen in Sister Veronica’s classroom, he had pieced together an image of what he thought a happy home might look like, and one which the couple in the head nun’s office could perhaps provide him with.

  He saw a whitewashed cottage roofed in thick, yellow thatch at the bottom of a winding lane. At the front of the house there was a porch with a green half-door, and a window on either side of it with red curtains, also rimmed in green. There was a black chimney pot on the right side of the roof, from which a plume of smoke curled up into a blue sky. Around the door grew bunches of pink roses, and on the front step sat a black dog—black to match the chimney pot.

  Eighty-Six now started to fill in the part he most enjoyed: the animals in the yard. First, the three orange hens with their red combs and freckled feathers. Then the trough beside the green-painted pump and—

  The door to Mother Superior’s room suddenly opened, cutting across the fantasy. Eighty-Four stood before him telling him he must go in. Before Eighty-Six had time to think, Bartley was grabbing him by the shoulder and thrusting him through the open door.

  “This is Eighty-Six,” Mother Vincent informed the couple. They sat on chairs to the left of her desk. He thought they looked out of place in the spartan room.

  “Take a seat, boy.”

  He struggled up onto the wooden chair he’d occupied only the day before. It was high and his feet barely grazed the floor. He tried not to look at the strangers, but sensed right away that they were not like the Fairleys.

  “How are you, lad?”

  It was the man who spoke first. Eighty-Six was obliged to look up.

  “Very well, thank you, sir.”

  The man and woman smiled: wide honest smiles, which amazed him. The only adult who had ever genuinely smiled at him was Mrs. Doyle in her potato field. He did not know how to respond. So instead he focused on the swirling snow beyond the window, now falling between the nun’s black shoulder and the woman’s floral one; between the darkness and the light.

  “This is Mr. and Mrs. Michael McCloone, Eighty-Six. If they like you, they might want you for their son. What do you say to that?”

  Plucking up courage in Mother Vincent’s intimidating presence, he managed to look at the woman, then the man, and back at the woman again. He could not believe what he was seeing; he thought that his mind was surely playing tricks on him. For in those moments he believed he was looking at his mother. She was wearing the same full-skirted floral dress that he’d always imagined: white with blue forget-me-nots. Her long wavy hair framed a beautiful face with blue eyes and a smiling mouth of even, white teeth. She wore white high heels and her lace-gloved hands were clutching a matching purse which rested in her lap.

  “I would like to be their son very much, Sister.” He looked pleadingly at the woman, wondering how he could transmit his eagerness and sincerity. His eyes met hers across the cold expanse and his lips moved in silent prayer: Oh please, God, please let her take me away from here, please!

  “What kind of farm work are you good at, lad?” The man spoke in a stern but soft voice.

  “I like everything, sir. I like gathering the taters and making the hay into stooks, but I like the animals best of all, sir.”

  “And which animals have you worked with?” the woman asked with a smile.

  The boy hung his head in shame. “I haven’t worked with any, Miss—but I work with them in me head. Sheeps and cows and hens and the like.”

  “What nonsense, Eighty-Six!” Mother Vincent snapped, then turned her attention to the couple. “You’ll have to excuse him. He’s a rather simple-minded boy, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, I disagree, Sister,” said Mrs. McCloone. “I think his answer shows that he has imagination.”

  The woman’s voice washed over him in one gloriously soothing wave. Eighty-Six was so grateful that he lifted his head and said “thank you” to the beautiful woman, the woman whom he wanted so desperately to be his mother.

  Mother Vincent glared at him, taken aback by this uncharacteristic show of politeness.

  “Indeed.” She kept her eyes on him. “And Mr. McCloone, what do you think?” The nun clearly hoped for a more level-headed response from the man.

  “Oh, I agree with Alice. This lad would like our farm. We’ve got four pigs, ten sheep, eight cows, a cat and a dog. How’s that, Eighty-Six? D’you think you could handle all that?”

  The man had beamed proudly as he listed off his livestock. He was nowhere as handsome as the woman, but his alert, brown eyes and narrow face held a friendly, genuine warmth.

  “Of course, I must warn you of the offenses this boy has committed whilst in our care,” the nun said sourly. “It would be dishonest of me to let him give the impression that he is some kind of saint.”

  She opened the register on her desk. Eighty-Six was convinced then that all was lost. He could not look at the couple but directed his gaze at the window, his eyes filling with tears. A silence ensued, as painful as held breath. He tried to ignore the
incriminating rustle as the nun briskly turned the pages.

  Outside, he could hear the shuffling of Bartley’s feet as he dragged them up and down the corridor. Beyond the window, the graceful snow continued to fall on the graceless grounds of the orphanage. And inside, like the snow, a sadness fell on him, damp, heavy, inescapable.

  A fat tear rolled down his cheek as the world clouded over. He stared down at his ruined hands and his blackened feet and waited patiently for his every sin to be driven out of hiding.

  He saw himself reach once more for the forbidden turnip in the sack, felt the tearing cough that had wrecked the solemnity of the morning Mass, heard again the china plate shatter on the Fairleys’ kitchen floor, woke once more in the sodden bed with his aching limbs and bloodstains, and relived again the punishment for each and every one of those infractions: in the pain of the sticks that beat him, the belts that flailed him, the hands that pushed him roughly into darkened rooms behind bolted doors.

  Then, through the agony of all this remembering, he heard a voice; it had the soft, gentle cadence of a woman’s voice. And it was throwing him a lifeline.

  “Oh, it won’t be necessary to tell us what the boy has done wrong, Sister. It’s in the past, isn’t it, and we all make mistakes, especially children.”

  Each silken word was weighted with a calm assurance. He clung to every one of them.

  Before the nun had time to speak, the woman opened her purse and went to Eighty-Six, holding a white handkerchief. It was edged with tiny green and silver shamrocks. He would always remember the shamrocks.

  “Now, now, don’t cry, dear.” As she bent over him in the faintly lisping dress, he caught the warm whisper of her scent and prayed that he’d be allowed to stay near such beauty forever.

  He dried his eyes quickly and handed the hankie back.