Cheating at Canasta

  Katherine pulled back the curtains, settled her makeup, made the bed. Blame was there somewhere—in faulty recollection, in the carelessness of policemen, in a prosecution’s ill-founded confidence—yet its attribution was hardly a source of satisfaction. Chance and circumstance had brought about a nightmare, and left it to a judge’s invective to make a nonsense of it. He did so, but words were not enough: too much was left behind. No other man was ever charged, although of course there was another man.

  She banged the door behind her, as she’d been told to. They had not said goodbye, yet as she went downstairs, hearing again the muffled gabble of the racecourse commentator, she knew it was for the last time. The room was finished with. This afternoon she had felt that, even if it had not been said.

  She did not have coffee and walked by the Prince and Dog without noticing it. In her kitchen she would cook the food she’d bought and they would sit together and talk about the day. She would look across the table at the husband she loved and see a shadow there. They would speak of little things.

  She wandered, going nowhere, leaving the bustling street that was gracious also, walking by terraced houses, lace-curtained windows. Her afternoon lover would mend the marriage that had failed, would piece by piece repair the damage because damage was not destruction and was not meant to be. To quarrel often was not too terrible; nor, without love, to be unfaithful. They would agree that they were up to this, and friendly time would do the rest, not asked to do too much. ‘And she?’ his wife one day might wonder, and he would say his other woman was a footnote to what had happened in their marriage. Perhaps that, no more.

  Katherine came to the canal, where there were seats along the water. This evening she would lie, and they would speak again of little things. She would not say she was afraid, and nor would he. But fear was there, for her the nag of doubt, infecting him in ways she did not know about. She walked on past the seats, past children with a nurse. A barge with barrels went by, painted roses on its prow.

  A wasteland, it seemed like where she walked, made so not by itself but by her mood. She felt an anonymity, a solitude here where she did not belong, and something came with that which she could not identify. Oh, but it’s over, she told herself, as if in answer to this mild bewilderment, bewildering herself further and asking herself how she knew what she seemed to know. Thought was no good: all this was feeling. So, walking on, she did not think.

  She sensed, without a reason, the dispersal of restraint. And yes, of course, for all nine years there’d been restraint. There’d been no asking to be told, no asking for promises that the truth was what she heard. There’d been no asking about the girl, how she’d dressed, her voice, her face, and if she only sat there talking, no more than that. There’d been no asking if there had really been the usual misery on the Northern line, the waiting for a taxi in the rain. For all nine years, while work for both of them allowed restraint, there had been silence in their ordinary exchanges, in conversation, in making love, in weekend walks and summer trips abroad. For all nine years love had been there, and more than just a comforter, too intense for that. Was stealth an excitement still? That was not asked and Katherine, pausing to watch another barge approaching, knew it never would be now. The flat was entered and Sharon Ritchie lay suffocated on her sofa. Had she been the victim kind? That, too, was locked away.

  Katherine turned to walk back the way she’d come. It wouldn’t be a shock, or even a surprise. He expected no more of her than what she’d given him, and she would choose her moment to say that she must go. He would understand; she would not have to tell him. The best that love could do was not enough, and he would know that also.

  Men of Ireland

  The man came jauntily, the first of the foot passengers. Involuntarily he sniffed the air. My God! he said, not saying it aloud. My God, you can smell it all right. He hadn’t been in Ireland for twenty-three years.

  He went more cautiously when he reached the edge of the dock, being the first, not knowing where to go. ‘On there,’ an official looking after things said, gesturing over his shoulder with a raised thumb.

  ‘OK,’ the man said. ‘OK.’

  He went in this direction. The dock was different, not as he remembered it, and he wondered where the train came in. Not that he intended to take it, but it would give him his bearings. He could have asked the passengers who had come off the boat behind him but he was shy about that. He went more slowly and they began to pass him, some of them going in the same direction. Then he saw the train coming in. Dusty, it looked; beaten-up a bit, but as much of it as he could see was free of graffiti.

  He was a shabbily dressed man, almost everything he wore having been abandoned by someone else. He had acquired the garments over a period, knowing he intended to make this journey—the trousers of what had been a suit, brown pin-striped, worn shiny in the seat and at the knees, a jacket that had been navy-blue and was nondescript now, the khaki shirt he wore an item once of military attire. His shoes were good; in one of his pockets was an Old Carthusian tie, although he had not himself attended Charterhouse. His name was Donal Prunty. Once big, heavily made, he seemed much less so now, the features of a face that had been florid at that time pinched within the sag of flesh. His dark hair was roughly cut. He was fifty-two years old.

  The cars were coming off the boat now, beginning to wind their way around the new concrete buildings before passing through one of them—or so it seemed from where he stood. The road they were making for was what he wanted and he walked in that direction. Going over, the livestock lorry he’d been given a lift in had brought him nearly to the boat itself. Twenty-three years, he thought again, you’d never believe it.

  He’d been on the road for seven days, across the breadth of England, through Wales. The clothes had held up well; he’d kept himself shaven as best he could, the blades saved up from what they allowed you in the hostels. You could use a blade thirty or so times if you wanted to, until it got jagged. You’d have to watch whatever you’d acquired for the feet; most of all you had to keep an eye on that department. His shoes were the pair he’d taken off the drunk who’d been lying on the street behind the Cavendish Hotel. Everything else you could take was gone from him—wallet, watch, studs and cuffinks, any loose change, a fountain pen if there’d been one, car keys in case the car would be around with things left in it. The tie had been taken off but thrown back and he had acquired it after he’d unlaced the shoes.

  When he reached the road to Wexford the cars were on it already. Every minute or so another one would go past and the lorries were there, in more of a hurry. But neither car nor lorry stopped for him and he walked for a mile and then the greater part of another. Fewer passed him then, more travelling in the other direction, to catch the same boat going back to Fishguard. He caught up with a van parked in a lay-by, the driver eating crisps, a can of Pepsi-Cola on the dashboard in front of him, the window beside him wound down.

  ‘Would you have a lift?’ he asked him.

  ‘Where’re you heading?’

  ‘Mullinavat.’

  ‘I’m taking a rest.’

  ‘I’m not in a hurry. God knows, I’m not.’

  ‘I’d leave you to New Ross. Wait there till I’ll have finished the grub.’

  ‘D’you know beyond Mullinavat, over the Galloping Pass? A village by the name of Gleban?’

  ‘I never heard of that.’

  ‘There’s a big white church out the road, nothing only petrol and a half-and-half in Gleban. A priests’ seminary a half-mile the other way.’

  ‘I don’t know that place at all.’

  ‘I used be there one time. I don’t know would it be bigger now.’

  ‘It would surely. Isn’t everywhere these times? Get in and we’ll make it to Ross.’

  Prunty considered if he’d ask the van driver for money. He could leave it until they were getting near Ross in case the van would be pulled up as soon as money was mentioned and he’d be told to get out. Or maybe
it’d be better if he’d leave it until the van was drawn up at the turn to Mullinavat, where there’d be the parting of the ways. He remembered Ross, he remembered where the Mullinavat road was. What harm could it do, when he was as far as he could be taken, that he’d ask for the price of a slice of bread, the way any traveller would?

  Prunty thought about that while the van driver told him his mother was in care in Tagoat. He went to Tagoat on a Sunday, he said, and Prunty knew what the day was then, not that it made a difference. In a city you’d always know that one day of the week when it came round, but travelling you wouldn’t be bothered cluttering yourself with that type of thing.

  ‘She’s with a woman who’s on the level with her,’ the van driver said. ‘Not a home, nothing like that. I wouldn’t touch a home.’

  Prunty agreed that he was right. She’d been where she was a twelve-month, the van driver said, undisturbed in a room, every meal cooked while she’d wait for it. He wagged his head in wonder at these conditions. ‘The Queen of Sheba,’ he said.

  Prunty’s own mother was dead. She’d died eighteen months before he’d gone into exile, a day he hated remembering. Word came in at Cahill’s, nineteen seventy-nine, a wet winter day, February he thought it was.

  ‘You’ve only the one mother,’ he said. ‘I’m over for the same.’

  Prunty made the connection in the hope that such shared ground would assist in the matter of touching the van driver for a few coins.

  ‘In England, are you?’ the van driver enquired.

  ‘Oh, I am. A long time there.’

  ‘I was never there yet.’

  ‘I’m after coming off the ferry.’

  ‘You’re travelling light.’

  ‘I have other stuff at Gleban.’

  ‘Is your mother in a home there?’

  ‘I wouldn’t touch one, like yourself. She’s eighty-three years of age, and still abiding in the same house eight children was born in. Not a speck of dust in it, not an egg fried you wouldn’t offer up thanks for, two kinds of soda bread made every day.’

  The van driver said he got the picture. They passed the turn to Adamstown, the evening still fine, which Prunty was glad about. He had two children, the van driver said, who’d be able to tell him if Kilkenny won. Going down to Tagoat on a Sunday was the way of it when old age would be in charge, he said; you made the sacrifice. He crossed himself when they passed a church, and Prunty said to himself he’d nearly forgotten that.

  ‘You’d go through Wexford itself in the old days,’ he said.

  ‘You would all right.’

  ‘The country’s doing well.’

  ‘The Europeans give us the roads. Ah, but sure she’s doing well all the same.’

  ‘Were you always in Ross?’

  ‘Oh, I was.’

  ‘I cleared off when I had to. A while back.’

  ‘A lot went then.’

  Prunty said you’d never have believed it at the time. It would be happening all around you and you wouldn’t know the scale of the emigration. He was listened to without much interest. The conversation flagged and the van drew up when there’d been silence for a few miles. They were in a quiet street, deserted on a Sunday evening. Prunty was reluctant to get out.

  ‘You couldn’t see your way to a few bob?’

  The van driver leaned across to release the catch of the door. He pushed the door open.

  ‘Maybe a fifty if you’d have it handy,’ Prunty suggested, and the van driver said he never carried money with him in the van and Prunty knew it wasn’t true. He shook his head. He said: ‘Any loose change at all.’

  ‘I have to be getting on now. Take that left by the lamppost with the bin on it. D’you see it? Take it and keep going.’

  Prunty got out. He stood back while the door was banged shut from the inside. They said it because the mention of money made them think of being robbed. Even a young fellow like that, strong as a horse. Hold on to what you’d have: they were all like that.

  He watched the van driving away, the orange indicator light flicking on and off, the turn made to the right. He set off in the direction he’d been given and no car passed him until he left the town behind. None stopped for him then, the evening sun dazzling him on the open road. That was the first time he had begged in Ireland, he said to himself, and the thought stayed with him for a few miles, until he lay down at the edge of a field. The night would be fine except for the bit of dew that might come later on. It wasn’t difficult to tell.

  The old man was asleep, head slumped into his chest, its white hair mussed, one arm hanging loose. The doorbell hadn’t roused him, and Miss Brehany’s decision was that she had no option but to wake him since she had knocked twice and still he hadn’t heard. ‘Father Meade,’ she called softly, while the man who had come waited in the hall. She should have sent him away; she should have said come some time Father Meade would know to expect him; after his lunch when the day was warm he usually dropped off. ‘Miss Brehany,’ he said, sitting up.

  She described the man who had come to the door. She said she had asked for a name but that her enquiry had been passed by as if it hadn’t been heard. When she’d asked again she hadn’t understood the response. She watched the priest pushing himself to his feet, the palms of his hands pressed hard on the surface of his desk.

  ‘He’s wearing a collar and tie,’ she said.

  ‘Would that be Johnny Healy?’

  ‘It isn’t, Father. It’s a younger man than Johnny Healy.’

  ‘Bring him in, Rose, bring him in. And bring me in a glass of water, would you?’

  ‘I would of course.’

  Father Meade didn’t recognize the man who was brought to him, although he had known him once. He wasn’t of the parish, he said to himself, unless he’d come into it in recent years. But his housekeeper was right about the collar and tie, an addition to a man’s attire that in Father Meade’s long experience of such matters placed a man. The rest of his clothing, Rose Brehany might have added, wasn’t up to much.

  ‘Would you remember me, Father? Would you remember Donal Prunty?’

  Miss Brehany came in with the water and heard that asked and observed Father Meade’s slow nod, after a pause. She was thanked for the glass of water.

  ‘Are you Donal Prunty?’ Father Meade asked.

  ‘I served at the Mass for you, Father.’

  ‘You did, Donal, you did.’

  ‘It wasn’t yourself who buried my mother.’

  ‘Father Loughlin if it wasn’t myself. You went away, Donal.’

  ‘I did, all right. I was never back till now.’

  He was begging. Father Meade knew, you always could tell; it was one of the senses that developed in a priest. Not that a lot came begging in a scattered parish, not like you’d get in the towns.

  ‘Will we take a stroll in the garden, Donal?’

  ‘Whatever would be right for you, Father. Whatever.’

  Father Meade unlatched the french windows and went ahead of his visitor. ‘I’m fond of the garden,’ he said, not turning his head.

  ‘I’m on the streets, Father.’

  ‘In Dublin, is it?’

  ‘I went over to England, Father.’

  ‘I think I maybe heard.’

  ‘What work was there here, all the same?’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know. Nineteen-what would it have been?’

  ‘Nineteen eighty-one I went across.’

  ‘You had no luck there?’

  ‘I never had luck, Father.’

  The old man walked slowly, the arthritis he was afflicted with in the small bones of both his feet a nuisance today. The house in which he had lived since he’d left the presbytery was modest, but the garden was large, looked after by a man the parish paid for. House and garden were parish property, kept for purposes such as this, where old priests—more than one at the same time if that happened to be how things were—would have a home. Father Meade was fortunate in having it to himself, Miss Brehany coming e
very day.

  ‘Isn’t it grand, that creeper?’ He gestured across a strip of recently cut grass at Virginia creeper turning red on a high stone wall with broken glass in the cement at the top. Prunty had got into trouble. The recollection was vague at first, before more of it came back: stealing from farms at harvest time or the potato planting, when everyone would be in the fields. Always the same, except the time he was caught with the cancer box. As soon as his mother was buried he went off, and was in trouble again before he left the district a year or so later.

  ‘The Michaelmas daisy is a flower that’s a favourite of mine.’ Father Meade gestured again. ‘The way it cheers up the autumn.’

  ‘I know what you mean all right, Father.’

  They walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Father Meade asked: ‘Are you back home to stop, Donal?’

  ‘I don’t know am I. Is there much doing in Gleban?’

  ‘Ah, there is, there is. Well, look at it now, compared with when you took off. Sure, it’s a metropolis nearly.’ Father Meade laughed, then more seriously added: ‘We’ve the John Deere agency, and the estate on the Mullinavat road and another beyond the church. We have the Super-Valu and the Hardware Co-op and the bank sub-office two days in the week. We have Dolan’s garage and Linehan’s drapery and general goods, and changes made in Steacy’s. You’d go to Mullinavat for a doctor in the old days, even if you’d get one there. We have a young fellow coming out to us on a Tuesday for the last year and longer.’