The Journey Home

by Dermot Bolger

  The old man was staring after the departing car.

  ‘The bastard went five pence over,’ he said.

  When the time came the hospital could not send an ambulance for him because of the shortages. The doctor himself paid for the taxi. I helped him down the stairs. He grumbled about the bother of going in when he would probably be sent back home that evening or the next morning. His pneumonia was no better. It was too soon to resume the treatment. I was unable to speak. I helped him negotiate each step until we were out on the concrete path. A few neighbours called across gardens to him. He raised his hand weakly to them. On the street outside I paused in case he wished to look back for a final time at the house he had spent forty years working to pay for. A green expanse of fields turning slowly under concrete. He pulled at me to get him into the taxi.

  ‘The meter’s running,’ he said.

  Perhaps to look back would have been to admit that he was leaving for ever. She sat beside him in the back while I sat beside the driver. He kept his head turned deliberately towards the driver’s neck. None of us spoke. The pretence had gone too far for us to keep the terror out of our voices.

  I had begun to think of the cancer as a human thing. Like some torturer in a prison camp saying: I will not break him yet, I will give him some relief today; or else, I will turn up the pain and see how long he will last. In my mind I started to address it on those daily visits to the hospital where my father lay drugged with painkillers. Don’t do this, I would say, have you no mercy? Can you not wait a while? Or else Now please, take him while he’s sleeping. Spare him any more pain. Sometimes he woke convinced he was back at home and only gradually realized, with intense disappointment, where he was. I questioned him now more and more about the past. Often he would stare back blankly at me as though already parts of his mind were dead. There was something I desperately needed to know now while he might still answer me, and yet I couldn’t get clear what it was in my mind.

  The Tuesday before he died I had been sitting there for ten minutes before he twisted suddenly in the bed. He called out, half a shout, half a mumble.

  ‘Son!’

  I leaned over him.

  ‘Huh. What…oh good Jesus.’ His voice grew more indistinct. ‘Is that you Francy?’

  I gripped his hand.

  ‘It’s me, da,’ I said.

  He was silent for a moment and I thought he had drifted back to sleep.

  ‘Is that you, Francy?’ he asked suddenly again.

  ‘I’m here, da,’ I said. ‘Feel my hand.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ he mumbled. ‘I was dreaming I was home.’

  ‘Soon, da.’

  ‘This place, Francy?’ his voice was scared. ‘Will I ever get out?’

  ‘You will, da,’ I said, with sudden intense conviction. ‘We’ve the garden to do, together, eh. When you’re a bit stronger. We’ll dig it again, put down potato beds, have it like it first was, eh, da. Right.’

  He twisted his head away from me to stare at the ceiling. His breath came with difficulty.

  ‘I…all sorts of things. Dreamt I was home. You know…the feel of a room. Never liked that house, son, all the years I never told your mother that. Only liked the garden cause it was long. Felt free out there. Felt…’

  He went silent and then whispered.

  ‘Francy?’

  I had to lean over him to listen. It felt strange hearing him speak for so long after all the years of silence I had known. His voice was muffled, drugged. Even though he looked at me I still wasn’t sure if he knew I was there.

  ‘They all went,’ he whispered. ‘Killed me to see them go. Boston, Leeds, London. Nine in my family, one left on the farm…the others scattered. That’s why I kept coming back, to try to keep a hold of something. Before you were born. Every year put potatoes down in the garden, got the boat, sent the money-order on Fridays, hoped to get holidays in time to harvest them. Your cousin Ned from Kerry, he went when he was eighteen. I loved that lad, used to spend hours with him out in the fields. Meself and your ma brought him to Dublin once, showed him all around. I met him when he came over to London but I could see he didn’t want to know me there. When you’ve looked up to someone you don’t want to see him in digs like your digs, doing work like your work. I kept thinking what if it was my son…over in this place…nothing Irish about him. That’s when I came home for good, went to work for that bastard Plunkett. Then we had you…Early sixties, seemed so different then, like the lives of you and Sean and Colm and the girls would be able to stay…in your own place. Seemed like I was building something…for you. I don’t feel good son…like I want to sleep for ever, but can’t with the pain.’

  ‘That’s just the treatment, da,’ I said. ‘You’ll see. We’ve the garden to do. Like we promised. You and me…together, da. I swear.’

  He turned his eyes towards me with difficulty.

  ‘You wouldn’t lie to me, son.’

  ‘I’ve started it,’ I said desperately. ‘Sean is helping me in the evenings. We’ll have it dug and all, ready for you to start the sowing when the treatment’s over. Used your old spade and the new rake you bought the year before last.’

  He stared up at me. His voice was flat, emotionless.

  ‘That spade broke, son. Lisa was playing with it, when you were away living in your flat.’

  His eyes turned back to stare blindly up.

  When I arrived on the last evening I knew by his breathing and his face, stretched as though the bones were straining to break through, that this was the end. My mother was due in an hour after she had finished cleaning in Plunkett Undertakers. I phoned there and asked for her. There was no phone in our house and I had never spoken to her on one before. Her voice sounded so different, so scared at being called to it, that I could hardly speak. I just told her to come at once and bring the children. Then I went back. He was still asleep but woke after a time. He called my name when he saw me and began to mutter something but found it too much effort to continue. He was very weak but relaxed, obviously the drugs had done their work and he was in no pain.

  Once we had been so close. I remembered the long garden being dug, him working between the rucks of potato beds while I sat on the ridge, proud to be allowed up so late to watch him. I would gather the weeds he pulled and bring them over to the unlit bonfire in the corner. And then when it was almost completely dark he would send me up for the can of paraffin. I would hold the handle while he unscrewed the lid and poured the liquid over the weeds and shreds of clipped hedge, and I’d hold his hand thrilled as we watched it burn together. I think he always wanted it dark for that moment, to banish the city with its terraces of houses, and just have himself and his son standing among the grass and trees in the hypnotic light which seemed to close us in and cut us off from everything.

  Then in adolescence the world beyond the garden and that terrace had begun to claim me and I was lost to him. Once it was his stories that had fascinated me, now it was music, clothes, films he could not comprehend. He would stand in my bedroom examining a record sleeve, his face troubled and then angry. For years we had hardly spoken and now I wanted all those stories back, wanted all the years that were lost to me.

  We were both strangely at peace for that half hour we spent alone while he drifted in and out of consciousness. Once he woke and looked not at me but beyond my shoulder. His eyes grew blue and for an instant vivid with recognition. I cannot swear what I heard but it seemed that he whispered the names of his parents. Then his eyes faded again but his face relaxed into a smile. I did not question him and he did not speak.

  It was only when my family arrived that the horror began. While I had been there alone it was possible for us both to pretend that it was just one more visit. Now as the curtains were pulled and chairs arranged around the bed there was nowhere left for that unmentionable fear to hide. My mother tried to say a few words to him but was unable to continue. She sat stiffly, her fingers clasping the handles of her bag as though they were rosa
ry beads. My two younger sisters fidgeted, both bewildered and frightened by the silence, still with no real idea of what was happening. One clutched an exercise book in her hands.

  He began to pluck at the sheets, desperate now to rise from the bed. His eyes were pleading with me and when I lowered my face I could hear his hoarse whisper: I know I’m dying son and I don’t want to. At that moment he was a man of the country; he knew that hospital beds were for death. All he wanted was to be up, to be out in the air for one last time. I could see him visibly fighting to hold on. He stopped trying to speak after a time and just stared back at us as though defying death to take him. My sisters had stopped twisting. The word death had become flesh in their nine- and ten-year-old vocabularies. They held each other’s hands, both crying silently. His brother arrived from the far side of the city and I let him in to take my chair. My father recognized him. When he tried to say his name it was more like a gasp for breath. I could see him trying to tell his brother something, trying to pronounce their parent’s names. I knew by my uncle’s face that he could not understand him.

  Then I had to leave. I couldn’t bear to be a part of that vigil any more. I walked out into the corridor and down the steps to the courtyard. I found a cigarette and lit it. How often had I walked out into the night air? Felt it blow about me after the heat of some room? I had never realized how precious such a simple thing was before. If I had been stronger I could have pulled him from that bed, carried him down the corridor and out on to the damp grass to die beneath the clouds. Instead he was caged behind those curtains, chained to drips and meters that could not save him, and all I could do was stand and experience the cold nocturnal breeze, the lights filtering out over the loose gravel, and inhale the rough taste of tobacco. I smoked it for him, knowing by some instinct that when its light had burnt out his life would have gone. When it had burnt down I cradled the tip between my palms till the wind had blown each loose red worm of ash away. My uncle’s hand was on my shoulder. It felt for a moment like my father’s. Then I realized I had no recollection of him ever touching me except on those nights years before, walking up from the garden. I patted it to thank him for telling me, then walked out into the darkness of the grounds and cried.

  They drove through the night without speaking. Beyond Dowra he pulled in and they dressed in silence. Katie had lost a runner and his shirt was so badly torn that he bundled it up and stuck it into a ditch. It was vital to put as many miles as possible between them and the woman by morning, yet no matter how far they drove the car it would still leave a trail to wherever it stopped. He asked Katie to lie in the back and try to sleep and, to his surprise, she did so without arguing. Hano found it hard to keep his own eyes open. He was terrified the car’s other headlight would go and they would have to abandon it on a main road. Before dawn he wanted to find a bog track and if possible leave it where it might go undiscovered for days. Although there was little light yet, a white mist covered the fields they passed. He felt his tiredness lift as the light began to sketch out his surroundings. The speedometer had jammed, there were no cars on the road and he kept his foot down.

  As he took a steep bend he saw the milk container parked in the centre of the road. He was about to swerve past when the light of an oncoming car blinded him. He applied the brakes and eased himself against the seat as the car skidded, very slowly it seemed in his mind, into the back of the container. He remembered thinking how remarkably calm he felt, how detached from the scene, as the container grew and grew until with a shuddering halt he was thrown against the windscreen. Falling back, he saw how the top of the bonnet had caught the rim of the lorry and prevented it from bursting through the windscreen to decapitate him.

  ‘Katie?’

  He closed his eyes, afraid to whisper her name. In reply her hand pressed against his shoulder. Neither moved until the door beside him was pulled open. A rough pair of hands lifted him from the seat and was slapping him on the back.

  ‘A grand piece of driving, young fellow! Mighty entirely! Eased it into the back of the van like you were patting a woman’s arse. Oh sorry miss, didn’t see you there.’

  Katie had climbed out over the seat to stand beside him. He looked at the three men who had run from the house that the truck was parked outside. Electric light came through the trees from a milking shed. One of them stood back to obscure the number plates of the vehicle. They were watching him to see if he would cause trouble. For now their own fear about the truck being illegally parked outweighed their suspicions about him being in such a car, with a torn shirt and a girl wearing one shoe.

  ‘That’s a fierce amount of damage for one wee collision,’ the man blocking the number plates said. ‘The oul speeding is a terrible habit.’

  ‘Will it still go?’ Hano asked.

  ‘Ah sure why wouldn’t it?’ the driver of the lorry replied. ‘ ’twas hardly a touch at all. Not if you’d seen the mighty crashes we’ve had on this corner. Do you see that ditch over there? Three lads killed last year after a disco in Boyle. Straight over, never a chance, cut out stiff by the firemen. And a head-on collision the year before. They had to cut the woman out—were still wiping the blood off the road a week later. Yours is hardly a crash at all. Sure this is the best spot in the whole of Roscommon for the crashes. Queen Maeve’s country you know?’

  The man listed the accidents with pride in his voice. His two companions nodded and added case histories of their own. Hano still felt strangely calm but a delayed shaking was starting in his legs. The men pushed the car back to survey the damage. A young child with an overcoat over his pyjamas came out of the house and was sent back for water.

  ‘The old tank is leaking,’ the lorry driver said, squatting down. ‘But we’ll give you enough water to get to the nearest town anyway. Do you know where you are at all?’

  When Hano said he didn’t nobody offered him the information. The bonnet had been twisted so much that it refused to stay down and the men had to tie it with twine. They stood back now, taking in his appearance, confident there would be no trouble. He could hear them making jokes about Katie’s one shoe.

  ‘A good trick that. Stop the heifer running away,’ the youngest mumbled and they laughed.

  To his surprise, the engine, after coughing a few times, started. The steering pulled badly to the left but he could drive it. Katie sat in the back as he pulled away, her face pale in the light. Dawn had come and the flat, poor fields stretched out for miles around them, broken by stone walls and whin bushes. The bonnet tugged against the twine until he was frightened it would come through the glass. After a mile he stopped and threw it into a ditch that was already strewn with rubbish. His major problem now was the oil shooting up on to the windscreen. He tried to clear it with the wipers but only succeeded in blurring the whole surface. His body shook so much that it became almost impossible to drive. Everything seemed heightened, as though occurring in borrowed time. He saw a small boreen leading off into the bog and chanced turning down it. A narrow ridge of grass grew between the two brown grooves worn down by tyre tracks. The boreen wound upwards for over a mile, narrowing until it petered out near a small lake. He stopped and turned the engine off. Behind him he heard Katie crying softly. In his efforts to keep the car on the track he had blacked her from his mind. He turned to console her.

  ‘I never liked those runners anyway. We’ll buy you a pair of shoes next time.’

  She sat up and tried to laugh, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper like a child. There was a half-stripped turf bank by the water’s edge and when he scaled it the whole of the desolate mountainside stretched out before him, ascending gradually to a barren peak. The morning light seemed solid as crystal. He heard Katie climb out of the car from which steam was hissing angrily. There was only him and this infinite world of brown water and scraggly bushes twisted by the wind. Far off, white dots of sheep stood out like dandruff. The ridge behind hid the blue ribbon of main road. Sentinel stacks of turf were parked like motionless rob
ots about the landscape. He had left behind the suburbs and torn headlong back into a world as alien to him as to any creature from space, all green flesh and gadgets, exploring this nightmare terrain. He felt Katie’s hand against his jacket and looked down at her holding her single shoe in one hand.

  ‘I’m sorry Hano,’ she said. ‘I brought you nowhere.’

  ‘That was Shay’s favourite word,’ he said. ‘Where he said we came from in the first place. That woman saw you with me Katie. They’ll be looking out for you now as well.’

  At least Katie had some right to imagine she could go back. She had known a house, parents, a neighbour who might have offered shelter. He knew it wasn’t just stubbornness that had made him choose this desolation to hide in, instead of trying to reach the anonymity of England. He’d been like that boy again, hitching down roads in search of a place that didn’t exist. Ever since his father’s death the old myth had gnawed at him, the idea of some sort of lost homeland he could belong to. He’d stored up the handful of stories from the hospital. The day Master Brady closed the polling station at five to nine when the two big farmers, too mean to let their men off earlier, brought them down in wagons to vote for their cousin. The calf his father had dug out of a snow-drift and carried home at dawn across the fields, proud of his strength. Children stealing a saucepan to try to make toffee in the wood behind the farmhouse.

  Now he remembered his cousins again, the rutted farmyard where he had felt as lost as if he had landed on the set of a film in the Russian outback. The only time he’d seemed at home was with that old woman in the caravan, but it hadn’t been the forest or the village that had claimed him, but the woman herself, who was more an outsider than he was even now. Would he ever feel that warm again? He closed his eyes and saw metal bars, a concrete corridor, steel stairs rising to a set of doors.

  Two birds were circling high over the bog, even their names unknown to Hano. He was no prodigal returning home. A fugitive with a few pounds left and a girl with one shoe, an intruder in a landscape he could never call his own. How could he be sure that the police were not closing in even now? How long before a helicopter circled this shelterless hillside? Katie was silent beside him. He wondered whether she was thinking the same thoughts as him.