“I’ll be entertaining you tonight while you enjoy your pints.” Now that he’d gained their attention, he started with a reliable joke. “There’s such a chill out, it brings to mind a tale of a terrible snowstorm. The drifts were so high one night, a priest and a nun found themselves stuck in a church alone. When the sister complained of being cold, the kindly father searched about and fetched her a blanket. Again and again this happened, but the heap of blankets failed to help. At last, desperately freezing, the sister insisted the Lord would surely forgive them for acting as a married couple to keep warm for a single night. Full of joy, the father agreed. ‘Aye,’ he cried, ‘from now on, you’ll fetch the blankets on your own!’ ”
Shan paused to read the audience. Only tepid smiles, but not to fret. Experience had taught him to skip to his impressions, normally the second part of his act.
From endless practice, he proceeded to reshape his voice into a colorful range of characters. Fists on his hips, he transformed into a harping Irish mother. A lick of the lips and he was a whistling Yankee, his new favorite for many a reason. With shoulders hunched, he became a dumber-than-ox Englishman.
Still, for all of this, he earned only a sprinkling of snickers.
His palms slickened with sweat. Insulting the Brits usually endeared even the hardest Irish crowd. Since late January, when the War of Independence began, sentiments against the Crown had ratcheted to a higher level—if that were even possible. Perhaps this explained why Shan sensed a swelling desire in the room to take aim at a target. And that was just what he’d become if he didn’t switch course. A silly song would hopefully do.
In the warbling style of folk singer Eugene Fitzpatrick, he belted out “’Twas Sure I Fell in Love When I Fell into Me Ale.” Nerves magnified cracks in Shan’s voice, a growing curse of his age, and he found relief at finishing the tune—though none from the room’s intensity.
The few sounds from the audience came from an old man being repeatedly woken by his own nasally snores, and from a lady giggling at a far table, where a scruffy man in a flannel shirt tickled her sides. She wore a dress as bold as her red lips, the sort of woman who, according to Uncle Will, charged for the pleasure of her company. When she leaned forward, her bosoms rose in large white mounds, resembling loaves from the baker.
Shan fought the urge to stare. He mined his memory for material and remembered Murphy, a made-up fool of a drunk. If nothing else, the tales could fill enough time to secure a free supper, his personal reward from the pubs.
His stomach growled as he launched into a story. He was halfway through when a burly man pushed back from his table and shot to his feet.
“What’s that you’re sayin’ about me, boy?”
“Ah, Murphy,” hollered an older man. “The lad wasn’t talking about you. Sit down on your arse.”
Murphy swayed, as if riding the internal waves of his liquor.
Shan forced a swallow. “Did I say ‘Murphy,’ sir? What I meant, of course, was ‘Mickey.’ My apologies for the error.”
The man held a stern face but slowly reclaimed his seat. Shan sighed to himself before praying to the good Lord that no one in the room was a Mickey.
“Now, then,” he tried again. “I believe I was describing the day Mickey awoke covered in mud and feathers, head to toe.”
No one spoke out, a fortunate thing. Shan was about to continue when, once more, his belly grumbled. This time it brought a hunger so strong it jellied his knees. He tightened his legs to keep his balance, but the shift of weight caused a loud crack beneath his boots. Before he could adjust, the crate gave way and he landed hard on his rear. Laughter broke out in the room. He hurried to rise from the wooden floor, brushing grime and spilled ale from his clothes.
“What’s that you were singing about?” a man called to him. “Something about fallin’, was it?” The laughter spread, but Shan didn’t rejoice. Embarrassment and anger formed a bitter reply on his tongue. The words churned and expanded, preparing to spew free. Just in time, he gulped them down, remembering Uncle Will.
Shan dared to look over. Beside the bar, his uncle and the pub owner were engaged in a chat. A welcome discovery, until Shan noted the sharpness of their eyes. Uncle Will shook something—a coin—in his right fist. The owner stood a good foot shorter, but in the manner of one not intimidated by height. As if to prove as much, he crossed his arms and jutted his chin. The challenge wasn’t missed by Uncle Will, whose clenched jaw signaled a rage in the making.
Shan bristled, a reflex. His body was well aware of where those rages led. The scars on his neck and hip throbbed as a reminder, urging him to take cover. Alas, he had no choice. The last thing an orphan needed was for his only relative to be carted off and locked in a cell.
“You heard me, all right,” Uncle Will said as Shan approached to intervene. “I called you a cheatin’ bastard, because that’s what ye are. The deal was for a shilling, not a goddamn sixpence.”
The owner’s nostrils flared as if swiped with smelling salts. “You’re lucky to get that much. The boy would bring in a crowd, ye said. Would make me more money, ye said.”
“And he bloody would have, if this place weren’t such a hellhole. I’ve taken a shite in privies better than this.”
“Uncle Will, please,” Shan implored. But his uncle ignored him and spat at the owner, who burst into a fit.
“That’s it! Get out. Right this minute, or I’ll thump ye in the—”
The threat stopped short. Uncle Will’s knuckles made sure of it by plowing into the man’s face.
Shan reached for his uncle to coax him away but a bartender and another man moved in, pushing Shan aside. A whirl of punches flew. Barstools toppled and a pint glass shattered.
Two hands grasped Shan’s shoulders. He started to wrench free, but a woman’s voice entered his ear. “Shh, ’twill be all right,” she said, drawing him away from the scuffle and shards. She was the lady with red lips and loaves for a chest.
The owner swung hard at Uncle Will’s gut before ordering his helpers to put the rubbish where it belonged. Dutifully the men dragged Uncle Will, short of breath and doubled over, out to the street.
Shan just stood there, already dreading the long walk home. He wasn’t dim enough to think a free bowl of corned beef remained an option. Around him, people returned to their lives as if nothing had happened.
Except for the woman. She swept passed Shan, picked up the dropped coin, and tenderly curled it into his hand. “You’ve got real talent, sweet lad. Don’t let it go to waste.” She gave him a smile that seemed heavy to wear before returning to the man in flannel, a fresh giggle in her voice.
That was when it dawned on Shan that he wasn’t the only actor in the room.
2
Murmurs drifted up from the alley. They lured Shan to the window of his uncle’s one-room flat, as they often did this time of night. Every sound was amplified in those dark, empty hours before Dublin settled in for sleep. Or most of it, rather. A few times a week the husband next door would drink through wages meant for food and rent, and he’d stumble home bellowing songs, promptly cut short by his wife’s furious shrills.
Then there were the rats. They’d scratch and scamper well into dawn, between the walls, in nooks and crannies. They were nomads on a constant hunt for food, shelter, and safety. Same as Shan and Uncle Will. And those in the alley below.
The pane too dingy for a decent view, Shan tugged the window upward. Cold air shot through his thinning cotton shirt. The paraffin lamp flickered on the table by the bed. He rubbed his arms against the chill. His wool coat and sweater sagged on a rope strung over the coal stove. The garments, damp after his walk from the pub, released a musty smell.
Shan gazed down the back side of the building, a shabby stack of four bricked floors. A web of laundry linked them to the next set of flats. Each line drooped vacantly in the rain but for one. A widow from the second story had a habit of leaving her sheets out on rainy days, which was most of the year in
Ireland. She would drape them like a canopy, attracting a small herd of vagrants, mainly young, from the shadows.
Shan would hear tenants in the halls and stairwell exchanging their disapproval, blaming the widow’s friendship with the landlord—on the word “friendship” they would raise a brow—for leaving them unable to state a complaint. “We’re doing these children no favors,” they would say, “by encouraging a life on the streets. Many are there by choice, you know. They’ll be tinkers and knackers for good, expecting the government to support them forever.”
Their expressions matched the harshness of their words. But Shan was a listener, a studier of more than pitches and accents. And what he heard, as faint as a whisper, was the truth behind their unease: the fear, and the guilt.
No man wants a daily reminder of the hardships that in a blink could be his own, nor to carry the shame of being unable, or unwilling, to help those in need. Such burdens were easier to discard when not planted outside your window.
All the same, Shan couldn’t help but look.
Beneath a roof of linen, the strangers huddled around a fire set in a metal barrel. They held their gloved hands over flames that glowed orange across their faces. All appeared to be boys, Shan’s age or older. Orphanages favored infants and toddlers, as did parents willing to adopt—unless they were seeking free labor. The overflow went to local churches, where girls were given priority for meals and beds. Even in the house of the Almighty, beggars had a pecking order.
Already Shan knew this. He also knew very little prevented him from standing in that queue. The money left from his parents—no doubt the reason his mam’s brother first took him in—had been spent long ago. And when it came to the government’s weekly charitable dole, the few extra shillings his uncle received for fostering Shan hardly made him essential, as Uncle Will told him on a regular basis. One wrong step and he’d be out on the street, his future far more grim. Sure, he could read and write at a level beyond his age, but now, without schooling, without parents . . .
At the thought of them, Shan felt the weight of their absence, as heavy as stone on his chest. More and more they were fading from his mind. Like people he’d only imagined.
He closed his eyes now and strained to summon his mam: her long auburn curls, her angelic skin. He could almost smell her talcum powder, a sweet lavender scent, and hear the rhythmic creak of her rocker. In their old house in Dunmore, on the coast of County Waterford, she would sway there for hours and read her books—a love she passed down to Shan—and she would send him a wink as he played on the floor with his jacks and marbles and wooden train.
Meanwhile in the evenings, his father—a doctor with silvered temples and a forehead lined with wisdom—would flip through articles in the Irish Independent and puff on a hand-carved pipe—
Well. Not his father precisely. Rather, the man Shan had known as his da. Back before the façade had been yanked clean away with the discovery of a letter.
“Jaysus, Mary, Mother o’ God. Are you heatin’ the bloody neighborhood?”
Shan twisted around to find his uncle glaring from the doorway. “Sorry, Uncle Will,” he spouted, and rushed to shut the window. He braced for a verbal lashing, not unlike those he’d received from his teachers, back before his performing schedule replaced schooling altogether.
But Uncle Will simply tossed a paper sack onto the kitchen table. “Open it,” he said with a trace of a slur.
Shan held in place, knowing better than to trust a glimmer of his uncle’s kindness. Same as the fairies from his childhood tales, it could vanish as quick as a snap.
“Go on,” Uncle Will said. “Eat.”
Shan had briefly forgotten how famished he was. He hurried to the table and emptied a U-shaped sausage from the bag. Half as thick as his wrist, it had a greasy sheen and light black crust. One flight up, the butcher’s wife must have retired for the night, unable to stop her husband from trading the last of their supper for a jelly jar of moonshine.
It was one of Uncle Will’s rare talents, brewing the concoction himself with ingredients bought with the dole. He called the drink “liquid gold.” To be used only for bartering, he’d said.
From the current reddening of his eyes, however, it was clear yet again that no rules applied to Uncle Will. Not that this concerned Shan. His sole interest lay with the meat before him, worlds better than the weak broth he’d expected. Only from his proper upbringing did he find the willpower to fetch a plate, utensils, and a glass of water.
As Uncle Will hung his cap and coat over the stove, Shan took a seat at the table. To savor every ounce of flavor, he sliced up small bites and forced himself to chew slowly.
“Would you look at yourself.” Uncle Will reclined in the chair across from him. He mockingly waved around a match and hand-rolled cigarette. “Eatin’ like British royalty, ye are.”
Shan kept his gaze low. Mealtime together was like wading through a swamp: one wrong step could pull you under.
Fortunately a distraction arrived in the form of a cry. The new tenants upstairs had a newborn girl who wailed, according to her mam, whenever hungry or tired or just plain fussy.
“They’d better shut that gob of hers,” Uncle Will muttered. His eyelids sagged as he lit his cigarette, the first deep puff triggering a hacking fit. The cough came from years of factory jobs, every sort imaginable, made worse by his frequent smoking. Shan was to warn him against the habit—Doc O’Halloran had instructed as much during his last visit to the flat.
Before Shan could do so, the coughing subsided. He held out his glass of water, but Uncle Will waved it off, wanting only a draw from his cigarette. The tip glowed orange, like the flames in the alley, and he exhaled a swirl of gray.
As Shan continued to eat, his uncle slogged from the table and dropped onto their creaky bed. The lit cigarette dangled from his lips as he started to doze off.
A fire would do them no favors. Nor, for that matter, would more dirt on their coverlet.
Shan hastened over to crush out the cigarette in an ashtray made of a tin can. Then he yanked off his uncle’s crusty boots. He cringed from the odor, as ripe as sewage on a summer day. Through the ceiling, the baby’s crying grew.
Anxious to finish his meal, Shan went to close the privacy curtain. It was a quilt turned rattier from hot scrubs in the sink, his endless fight against fleas.
“Come back,” Uncle Will mumbled, suddenly roused. He waggled a hand in sloppy movements.
Shan inched forward, but stayed out of reach. He’d first learned his lesson the day he delivered broth to help his uncle’s cold; when Uncle Will burned his tongue, he’d flung the soup at Shan’s legs to show it had been too hot. “Yes, sir?”
“A song. I be wantin’ a song.”
“What sort of—”
“Anything, for Christ’s sake. Just drown out that goddamn babe.”
Until his parents died, Shan had barely known his uncle, making the man’s requests that much harder to fill. A funny tune could amuse him to the point of hearty laughter, but only if the mood was right. Tonight, Shan’s gut said to go with a gentler choice, a song praising Ireland for its soft rolling hills and stony strength.
Halfway through the first verse, his uncle cut in.
“Not that. Another.”
“I . . . yes, sir . . .”
Taking a guess, Shan switched to a tune about seeing a girl on the banks of the river Shannon, but again the man interrupted. “Anything ye haven’t bloody sang a hundred times already.”
Just as panic loomed from coming up blank, Shan recalled an old favorite from his mam: a Gaelic lullaby she would sing at bedtime. If he gave it much thought, the lyrics would escape him. He simply opened his mouth, and as if by magic, the song flowed out, transporting Shan to a happier time, a better place.
He was so lost in the moment he didn’t spare a glance at his uncle until the last note. Only then did he catch the upward curve of the man’s mouth, a wisp of a smile. Even the infant upstairs had gon
e quiet.
“Our gram,” Uncle Will said. “She’d sing that to us as children. And your mother, och, she’d ask for it over and over, she would.” A mix of care and sadness enwrapped his voice, and he released a sigh that seemed to have been held for years.
Shan stared, motionless, shocked by the stranger before him, nearly as much as by the mention of his mam. It was a topic Uncle Will never broached on his own. Silently Shan pleaded with him to continue. But the man said nothing else, and his eyes began to close.
A wave of questions surged in Shan’s mind. There could be consequences to voicing them, as proven just weeks ago, the day he found the letter.
He had been sweeping the floor mindlessly when he knocked over the books inherited from his mam, stacked in the corner. A folded paper slipped from the depths of Sense and Sensibility. A novel for ladies, it was among the few Shan had yet to read, despite its being his mam’s favorite. He otherwise would have much earlier found the missive penned by an American sailor.
My dearest Moira,
If my letters have managed to reach you, I can only assume you no longer wish to hear from me. Whether you’ve moved on with another beau or simply don’t feel the same as I do for you, perhaps I’ll never know.
Nevertheless, let me express once more that I miss you beyond words—the beauty of your hair and eyes, the softness of your skin. I shall continue to pray that one day soon I will receive word in return. Until then, sweet Moira, please know I love you with all of my heart.
John
Shan’s urgency to learn more had led him to ask the sole living person he knew with ties to his mam. Uncle Will, taken by surprise after indulging at a pub, replied in stammering bits: damning the Yank sailor who’d taken advantage of his sister, just a poor teenage girl with no sense to know better.
Uncle Will had paced as he spoke, the speed increasing with his words. “Off on a church mission, she was, making the state he’d left her in all the more unholy. You can’t tell me the shock of it didn’t have a hand in our parents’ demise—God rest their souls. If the good doctor hadn’t found it in his heart to marry Moira, hiding the shame of it all, our family name would surely have been tarnished till the end of time!”
The Edge of Lost Page 2
