“You never know, do you? Ah, no, I’m grand. Everyone’s being lovely; they’re bringing me cups of tea and letting me have a smoke break whenever I need one. I’m better off here. Where are you? Are you not in work?”
“Taking a few days off.”
“That’s good, Francis. You work too hard, sure. Do something nice for yourself. Bring Holly somewhere.”
I said, “Actually, while I’ve got the free time, I’d love a chance to have a chat with Ma. On our own, without Da around. Is there a good time of day for that? Like, does he go out to the shops, or to the pub?”
“Most days he does, yeah. But . . .” I could hear the effort she was putting into trying to focus. “He was having a terrible time with his back, yesterday. Today as well, I’d say. He could hardly get out of the bed. When his back does be at him, he mostly just has a sleep.” Translation: some doctor gave him the good pills, Da topped up with floorboard vodka, he was out for the foreseeable. “Mammy’ll be there all day, till Shay gets home anyway, in case he needs anything. Call over to her; she’ll be delighted to see you.”
I said, “I’ll do that. You tell that Gav to take good care of you, OK?”
“He’s been brilliant, so he has, I don’t know what I’d do without him . . . Come here, d’you want to call round to us this evening? Have a bit of dinner with us, maybe?”
Fish and chips with pity sauce: sounded tasty. “I’ve got plans,” I said. “But thanks, hon. Maybe some other time. You’d better get back to work before someone’s highlights turn green.”
Jackie tried obligingly to laugh, but it fell flat. “Yeah, I probably had. Mind yourself, Francis. Say howya to Mammy for me.” And she was gone, back into the fog of hair-dryer noise and chatter and cups of sweet tea.
Jackie was right: when I rang the buzzer, Ma came down to the hall door. She looked exhausted too, and she had lost weight since Saturday: at least one belly was missing. She eyed me for a moment, deciding which way to go. Then she snapped, “Your da’s asleep. Come on into the kitchen and don’t be making noise.” She turned around and stumped painfully back up the stairs. Her hair needed setting.
The flat stank of spilled booze, air freshener and silver polish. The Kevin shrine was even more depressing by daylight; the flowers were half dead, the Mass cards had fallen over and the electric candles were starting to fade and flicker. Faint, satisfied snores were trickling through the bedroom door.
Ma had every bit of silver she owned spread out on the kitchen table: cutlery, brooches, photo frames, mysterious pseudo-ornamental tat that had clearly spent a long time on the regift merry-go-round before falling off here. I thought of Holly, puffy with tears and rubbing furiously away at her dollhouse furniture. “Here,” I said, picking up the polishing cloth. “I’ll give you a hand.”
“You’ll only make a bags of it. The great clumsy hands on you.”
“Let me have a go. You can tell me where I’m going wrong.”
Ma shot me a suspicious look, but that offer was too good to pass up. “Might as well make yourself useful, I suppose. You’ll have a cup of tea.”
It wasn’t a question. I pulled up a chair and got started on the cutlery, while Ma bustled in cupboards. The conversation I wanted would have worked best as a confidential mother-and-daughter chat; since I didn’t have the equipment for that, a little joint housework would at least steer us towards the right vibe. If she hadn’t been doing the silver, I would have found something else to clean.
Ma said, by way of an opening salvo, “You went off very sudden, Monday night.”
“I had to go. How’ve you been getting on?”
“How d’you expect? If you wanted to know, you’d have been here.”
“I can’t imagine what this has been like for you,” I said, which may be part of the formula but was probably true. “Is there anything I can do?”
She threw tea bags into the pot. “We’re grand, thanks very much. The neighbors’ve been great: brought us enough dinners for a fortnight, and Marie Dwyer’s letting me keep them in her chest freezer. We’ve lived without your help this long, we’ll survive a bit longer.”
“I know, Mammy. If you think of anything, though, you just let me know. OK? Anything at all.”
Ma spun round and pointed the teapot at me. “I’ll tell you what you can do. You can get a hold of your friend, him, what’s-his-name with the jaw, and you can tell him to send your brother home. I can’t get onto the funeral home about the arrangements, I can’t go to Father Vincent about the Mass, I can’t tell anyone when I’ll be burying my own son, because some young fella with a face like Popeye on him won’t tell me when he’ll be releasing the body—that’s what he called it. The brass neck of him. Like our Kevin’s his property.”
“I know,” I said. “And I promise you I’ll do my best. But he’s not trying to make your life any more difficult. He’s just doing his job, as fast as he can.”
“His job’s his problem, not mine. If he keeps us waiting any longer it’ll have to be a closed casket. Did you think of that?”
I could have told her the casket would probably have to be closed anyway, but we had already taken this line of conversation about as far as I felt like going. I said, “I hear you’ve met Holly.”
A lesser woman would have looked guilty, even just a flicker, but not my ma. Her chins shot out. “And about time! That child would’ve been married and giving me great-grandchildren before you’d have lifted a finger to bring her here. Were you hoping if you waited long enough I’d die before you had to introduce us?”
The thought had crossed my mind. “She’s pretty fond of you,” I said. “What do you think of her?”
“The image of her mammy. Lovely girls, the pair of them. Better than you deserve.”
“You’ve met Olivia?” I tipped my hat to Liv, mentally. She had skated around that one very prettily.
“Twice, only. She dropped Holly and Jackie down to us. Was a Liberties girl not good enough for you?”
“You know me, Ma. Always getting above myself.”
“And look where that got you. Are the two of yous divorced now, or are yous only separated?”
“Divorced. A couple of years back.”
“Hmf.” Ma’s mouth pursed up tight. “I never divorced your da.”
Which was unanswerable on so many levels. “True enough,” I said.
“Now you can’t take Communion.”
I knew better than to rise to that, but no one can get to you quite like family. “Ma. Even if I wanted to take Communion, and I don’t, the divorce wouldn’t be a problem. I can divorce myself into a coma for all the Church cares, as long as I don’t shag anyone who’s not Olivia. The problem would be the lovely ladies I’ve ridden since the divorce.”
“Don’t be dirty,” Ma snapped. “I’m not a smart-arse like you, I don’t know all the ins and outs, but I know this much: Father Vincent wouldn’t give you Communion. In the church where you were baptized.” She jabbed a triumphant finger at me. Apparently this counted as a win.
I reminded myself that I needed a chat more than I needed the last word. I said meekly, “You’re probably right.”
“I am, of course.”
“At least I’m not raising Holly to be a heathen too. She goes to Mass.”
I thought the mention of Holly would smooth Ma down again, but this time it just put her back up further; you never can tell. “She might as well be a heathen, for all the good it’s done me. I missed her First Communion! My first granddaughter!”
“Ma, she’s your third granddaughter. Carmel’s got two girls older than her.”
“The first one with our name. And the last, by the looks of it. I don’t know what Shay’s playing at, at all—he could have a dozen girls on the go and we’d never know, he’s never brought one to meet us in his life, I swear to God I’m ready to give up on him altogether. Your da and meself thought Kevin would be the one who . . .”
She bit down on her lips and upped the volume on the
tea-making clatter, bashing cups onto saucers and biscuits onto a plate. After a while she said, “And now I suppose that’s the last we’ll see of Holly.”
“Here,” I said, holding up a fork. “Is that clean enough?”
Ma threw it a half glance. “It is not. Get between the prongs.” She brought the tea things over to the table, poured me a cup and pushed milk and sugar towards me. She said, “I’m after buying Holly her Christmas presents. Lovely little velvet dress, I got her.”
“That’s a couple of weeks away,” I said. “Let’s see how we go.”
Ma gave me a sideways look that told me nothing, but she left it. She found another cloth, sat down opposite me and picked up something silver that could have been a bottle stopper. “Drink that tea,” she said.
The tea was strong enough to reach out of the pot and give you a punch. Everyone was out at work and the street was very quiet, just the soft even pattering of the rain and the far-off rush of traffic. Ma worked her way through various undefined silver widgets; I finished the cutlery and moved on to a photo frame—it was covered in fancy flowers that I would never get clean to Ma’s standards, but at least I knew what it was. When the room felt like it had settled enough, I said, “Tell me something. Is it true Da was doing a line with Theresa Daly, before you came on the scene?”
Ma’s head snapped up and she stared at me. Her face didn’t change, but an awful lot of things were zipping across her eyes. “Where’d you hear that?” she demanded.
“So he was with her.”
“Your da’s a fecking eejit. You knew that already, or you’re as bad.”
“I did, yeah. I just didn’t know that was one of the specific ways he was a fecking eejit.”
“She was always trouble, that one. Always drawing attention to herself, wiggling down the road, screaming and carrying on with her friends.”
“And Da fell for it.”
“They all fell for it! The fellas are stupid; they go mad for all that. Your da, and Matt Daly, and half the fellas in the Liberties, all hanging out of Tessie O’Byrne’s arse. She lapped it up: kept three or four of them dangling at once, broke it off with them every other week when they weren’t giving her enough attention. They just came crawling back for more.”
“We don’t know what’s good for us,” I said. “Specially when we’re young. Da would’ve been only a young fella back then, wouldn’t he?”
Ma sniffed. “Old enough to know better. I was three years younger, sure, and I could’ve told him it would end in tears.”
I said, “You’d already spotted him, yeah?”
“I had, yeah. God, yeah. You wouldn’t think . . .” Her fingers had slowed on the widget. “You wouldn’t think it now, but he was only gorgeous, your da was, back then. A load of curly hair on him, and those blue eyes, and the laugh; he’d a great laugh.”
We both glanced involuntarily out the kitchen door, towards the bedroom. Ma said, and you could still hear that the name used to taste like superfancy ice cream in her mouth, “Jimmy Mackey could’ve had his pick of any girl around.”
I gave her a little smile. “And he didn’t go straight for you?”
“I was a child, sure. I was fifteen when he started chasing after Tessie O’Byrne, and I wasn’t like these young ones nowadays that look twenty before they’re twelve; I’d no figure on me, no makeup, I hadn’t a clue . . . I used to try and catch his eye when I’d see him on my way to work in the morning, but he’d never look twice. He was mad on Tessie. And she liked him best of the lot.”
I had never heard any of this before, and I was willing to bet that Jackie hadn’t either, or she would have passed it on. Ma isn’t the let’s-all-share-our-feelings type; if I had asked her about this story a week earlier or later, I would have got nowhere. Kevin had left her fractured and peeled raw. You use what you’ve got. “So why did they break up?” I asked.
Ma’s mouth pursed up. “If you want to do that silver, do it properly. Get into the cracks. There’s no point if I’ll have to do the lot again after you.”
I said, “Sorry,” and upped the display of elbow grease. After a moment she said, “I’m not saying your da was a holy innocent. Tessie O’Byrne never had a bit of shame, but there was the pair of them in it.”
I waited, rubbing away. Ma caught my wrist and pulled it towards her to check the shine on the frame; then she gave a grudging little nod and let go. “That’s better. Things weren’t the same, back then. We had a bit of decency about us; we weren’t riding all round us just because that’s what they did on the telly.”
I inquired, “Da rode Tessie O’Byrne on the telly?”
That got me a clout on the arm. “No! Amn’t I telling you, if you’ll only listen to me? They were always wild, the pair of them. Made each other worse. One day in summer your da borrowed a car off a friend of his and drove Tessie down to Powerscourt on a Sunday afternoon, to see the waterfall. Only the car broke down, on the way back.”
Or that had been Da’s story. Ma was giving me a meaningful look. “And?” I asked.
“And they stayed there! Overnight! We’d no mobile phones back then; they couldn’t ring for a mechanic, or even to let anyone know what was after happening. They tried walking for a bit, but they were out in a lane in the middle of Wicklow, sure, and it was getting dark. They stayed in the car, and the next morning they got a jump start off a farmer going past. By the time they got home, everyone thought they were after eloping.”
She tilted the silver widget to the light, to check that the finish was perfect and to stretch the pause—Ma always did have a taste for drama. “Well. Your da always said to me he slept in the front seat and Tessie slept in the back. I wouldn’t know, sure. But that’s not what the Place thought.”
I said, “I bet it wasn’t.”
“Girls didn’t stay out with fellas, back then. Only slappers did that. I’d never known a girl who did the bold thing before she was married.”
“I’d have thought the two of them would’ve had to get married, after that. To preserve her reputation.”
Ma’s face closed over. She said, with a sniff in her voice, “I’d say your da would’ve done it, he was that mental about her, the fecking eejit. But he wasn’t good enough for the O’Byrnes—they always did have notions of themselves. Tessie’s da and her uncles bet the living shite out of him; I saw him the day after, I hardly recognized him. They told him not to be going near her again. Said he’d done enough damage.”
I said, “And he did what he was told.” I liked that, a lot. It felt reassuring. Matt Daly and his buddies could have beaten me to within an inch of my life, and the second I got out of the hospital I would have headed for Rosie as fast as I could limp.
Ma said, prim and satisfied, “He hadn’t got much choice. Tessie’s da had always let her away with murder, so he had—and look where that got him—but after that he’d hardly let her go out the door, only to go to work and he walked her there himself. I wouldn’t blame him; everyone was talking about it. The little gurriers were calling things after her on the street, all the aul’ ones were waiting for her to turn up in trouble, half her friends weren’t allowed speak to her in case she turned them into hoors as well; Father Hanratty gave a homily about loose women weakening the country, and that wasn’t what the men died for in 1916. No names, mind you, but everyone knew who he meant. That put a stop to Tessie’s gallop.”
Straight across almost half a century, I could feel the feeding frenzy: the whirling hysteria of it, the double-speed pump of adrenaline as the Place smelled blood and went into attack mode. Those weeks had quite probably sown the crazy seeds in Tessie Daly’s mind. “It’d do that, all right,” I said.
“And serve her right! Taught her what was what. She liked messing about with the fellas, but she didn’t want the name for it, did she?” Ma was sitting up straight, with her virtuous face on her. “She started going with Matt Daly straight after—he’d been making goo-goo eyes at her for years, but she’d never paid him an
y notice. Not till he came in useful. He was a decent fella, Matt was; Tessie’s da didn’t mind her going with him. It was the only way she was allowed out the door.”
I said, “And that’s what Da has against Matt Daly? He nicked his girl?”
“That was most of it. Sure, they never liked each other to start with.” She lined up the silver gizmo with three more like it, flicked a minute speck of something off the side, picked out a twee little Christmas-tree ornament from the to-do pile. “Matt was always jealous of your da. Your da was a million miles better-looking than Matt, so he was, and he was popular—not just with the girls, the fellas thought he was great as well, a great laugh . . . Matt was a boring little bollix. No go in him.”
Her voice was layered with old things, triumph and bitterness and spite twisted together. I said, “So when Matt was the one who got the girl, he rubbed it in?”
“That wasn’t enough for him. Your da was after applying to Guinness’s, as a driver. He’d been told the job was as good as his, as soon as the next driver retired. But Matt Daly’d been working there a few years, and his da before him; he knew people. After all that with Tessie, Matt went to his foreman and told him Jimmy Mackey wasn’t the kind of fella they wanted at Guinness’s. There were twenty lads applying for every job. They didn’t need anyone that might bring trouble.”
“So Da ended up doing the plastering.” No humor intended.
“That was my uncle Joe got him the apprenticeship. We got engaged not long after that whole carry-on with Tessie. Your da needed a trade, if we were going to be having a family.”
I said, “You were a fast worker.”
“I saw my chance and I took it. I was seventeen by then; old enough to make the boys look. Your da was . . .” Ma’s lips vanished, and she twisted her cloth tighter into the crannies of the ornament. “I knew he was still mad into Tessie,” she said after a moment, and there was a defiant spark in her voice that gave me a hair’s-breadth glimpse of a girl with her chin out, watching wild Jimmy Mackey from this kitchen window and thinking Mine. “But I didn’t mind that. I thought I’d change that, once I got my hands on him. I never wanted a lot; I wasn’t one of those ones that think they’ll be film stars in Hollywood. I never had notions. All I wanted was a little house of my own and a few childer, and Jimmy Mackey.”