The visit, p.10
The Visit, page 10
He shook his head again, still short-changed by what I was telling him. ‘This isn’t even Colm’s house to sell. That’s my father’s land. My father built those sheds and roofed this house. His grandfather built the walls outside. He farmed that land before Colm was born.’ He pointed out the door. ‘I’m the one who’s held on to what’s left.’
‘Your mother left it all to your brother, Patrick.’ It struck me that he and Rita shared the problem of living in a home that a piece of paper said wasn’t their own.
He scratched his chest as if a tide of insects was crawling over him. The other hand went to his back and he stood, and sank his hands into the bundle of wet clothes, then took them away and wiped his forehead and neck. ‘How is it I was never told this before?’
‘I don’t know. I know that there are men who can talk to solicitors and make wills appear and find brothers in England that didn’t want to be found.’ He looked at me and I knew he was listening as much as he ever would. ‘Casey wants this land and he told me that there’s no loyalty on Colm’s part. So, hear this if you hear nothing else. If you do anything at all, other than pack your bags with a smile and a thank-you, he’ll try have you sent to Senan’s. I’ve seen it done.’
The mention of the place brought an end to his itching and he looked at me but through me at the same time. I blinked the sweat from my eyes and as he came closer, I stood to meet him.
‘Don’t mention that place to me.’ He pointed a finger at my chest. ‘You of all people.’
I swallowed my shame, knowing that it would do him no good. The shame was all mine, not to be shared – or at least that was my excuse for never getting on my knees and telling Patrick, or anybody, what I did to his father. ‘Are you listening to me? Do you think you helped yourself by leaving that stag’s head on Casey’s tractor? Didn’t I bloody warn you? You might as well have wrapped it up and gifted it to him.’
‘It makes no difference whether I did it or didn’t do it. Do you not understand that?’
I said nothing and he didn’t come any further. His breathing slowed and he went to the dresser and put his head down.
‘Talk to your brother, Patrick. If he’s selling this place then you need to get a fair cut. You could get away from here and the likes of Casey with enough money.’
He righted a cup so its handle faced the same way as the others.
‘Talk to Colm, and do it soon. There’ll be no business done over the weekend, so if you’d like, I’ll go with you Monday morning. We could even try and meet him with the solicitor.’
He turned and stared over my shoulder and his vacant face reminded me of Sean after the sense had gone from him. I turned to the wall, to see what he’d been looking at. A family of four Hattens stared back, close to smiling, the young Patrick with his mother’s hands on his shoulders, Colm next to Sean and already nearly as tall as him. You could have given that family a million guesses and not once would they have landed on how it all turned out. I put a palm on the table, feeling as if I’d stood too quickly, then felt myself fall.
I was on my back when I returned from the faint. Patrick was crouching over me, splashing lukewarm water on my face, flicking it from his fingers like a priest offering a blessing. He pulled back when he saw me looking at him, then stood with his hand extended and I took it and he pulled me to my feet. I almost reached for the handkerchief but stopped myself, thinking he might recognise it.
‘You’re sick,’ he said.
‘It was just a faint. The heat.’ I brushed myself down and wiped my head with my hand. ‘Take my advice, Patrick.’
I paused at the threshold of the door like a man afraid of the light. He looked at me as if it was me that needed his help and not the other way around, and maybe he’s right – maybe I need his forgiveness as much as he needs anything thing from me. ‘Your father was a good man, Patrick. I’ll keep Casey at bay as long as I can. But it will be like holding back the tide.’
On my way to the car, I noticed things I hadn’t on my way in. A rectangle of soil, freshly raked and tidy as a newly filled grave. The screech in the gate, oiled into silence. The tubs of lime in the shed. He was a man cleaning the decks on a sinking ship.
Something lay in the dirt by the wall across the road. I recognised it as soon as I picked it up. One of my old shirts, freshly washed and freshly dirtied. I put it on the fence and looked at it in the rear-view as I drove towards town, drooping like the flag of some defeated army. I rolled down the windows and floored the accelerator, hoping the breeze would work like smelling salts.
14
He sat at the table for a long time after Field left, staring at the chipped and dented wooden surface, the burn marks of pots and pans through the years, the stray cuts of knives, the damage done by errant chisels and hammers. He went outside with a saucer of milk and the sky was red, as if the sun had died a bloody death and a gauze of pink clouds was soaking up the spill.
The door of the tool shed screeched a warning to the cat, some loose stones dragging along the concrete. He put the saucer down and sat against the wall, the milk halfway between his toes and the cat. A small pile of dirt, dust and dried cat shit was gathered against the far wall, swept in the morning’s flurry of work, like his mother and her duster – going from yard to barn to shed with the brush the same way she went room to room, clearing every surface of the day’s worth of dust, just in time for the arrival of more.
He rubbed the thumb of one hand against his middle finger and patted the ground with the other. The cat stopped short of him, then nosed the bowl and started drinking. ‘Well, Cat, Colm is after coming home to us. I’ll talk to him. That’s all that’s needed.’
It was nothing more than the latest case of the Hattens being judged in the harshest light. Running off to England was one thing, but abandoning a brother and selling off the family’s place in the world was another. It was Colm’s home too. Field was just another man who couldn’t be trusted.
‘Field is in a bad state, Cat. On his back like a dead man he was.’ He thought about what Field said about taking his share of money. More than he’d ever had in his pocket or might ever have again. Enough to take to England or America and do what with it? Fall in with crowds of drinkers, telling sad stories and singing about all they left behind, hiding in dark pockets of cities that didn’t want them. Sitting on trains or buses and seeing finely dressed women who they can dream about back in some boarding house of men snoring through the same dreams and waking to the same regrets. Christmas in some sad hall with priests and nuns doing their duty and feeding them whatever passed for food, soaked with watery gravy while they celebrated like it was Christ’s funeral. Every one of them, to a man, wishing they were back in front of their simple fire, with a candle burning in the window for nobody in particular.
The cat didn’t finish the milk. It looked to Patrick, bearded and wet-whiskered. Patrick smiled and pulled a head of rainbow trout from his inside pocket, wrapped in newspaper. He’d pulled as many bones from it as he could manage and eaten the rest for dinner, chopping it an inch further from the head than usual, thinking the cat would be glad of extra.
He spread the paper and tapped it. ‘Only caught yesterday. Sorry for not finding you a friend. I’m still looking.’
The cat came close, its paws rustling the newspaper. It leaned to the meat and Patrick smiled at the thought of it reading the headlines. The cat turned its head to the side, little blades of white fangs flashing while it worked on the fish with its back teeth.
He reached out and rubbed the animal from neck to tail in long, slow strokes. The cat didn’t shrink to Patrick’s touch and he put his head against the stone wall and decided that he’d face his brother after lunchtime tomorrow, reasoning that every living thing was more agreeable on a full stomach.
15
I came home to an empty house and went to the sitting room after hanging my tunic up and opening my shirt buttons. I opened the windows and sat in front of the television but didn’t turn it on. I bought it as an anniversary present last year. The gift for six years is supposed to be iron. It was second-hand, but came with Seamus Fortune’s word that it was good as new, though he changed the subject when I asked why it had been returned to him and why he was selling it so cheap. He’s opened it up three or four times since, examining the circuitry, tracing his thin fingers along green and yellow and red wires, moving an ear close while tinkering with resistors and capacitators with fine needles of tools pulled from his apron without looking, the whole complex assemblage looking like a bomb that could blow ourselves and Mrs Rattigan off the map. There’s surely some iron in there somewhere. We watch the news and turn it up whenever there’s music on and slap the side of it when the picture gets spotted with little black and white squares like an empty crossword. I should have known it didn’t stand a chance against Siobhán’s beloved books.
I heard her key in the door and Catriona’s voice repeating some words that were new to her. Sunset. Magazine. I met them in the hall and Siobhán’s face dropped when she saw me. Catriona wrapped her arms around my thigh.
‘Jim, you look like you were dragged through a hedge.’
‘Were you dragged through a hedge, Daddy?’ Catriona echoed the words into my stomach.
I put my hands on her shoulders and smiled at Siobhán, who came to me with a brown paper bag in her hand. She looked me up and down, then brushed the back of my trousers clean of the dust they’d lifted from Patrick’s floor. She softened, maybe sensing something of how glad I was to see the pair of them.
‘For your nephew,’ she teased, and I opened the bag to the latest issue of Conquest.
We ate dinner together, boiled potatoes and salmon, while Catriona fussed with her bit of mash and peas. Siobhán asked about Rita, and we decided to visit her after the big day.
We took tea and biscuits to the sitting room and then I was on my back again. Only this time as a man renewed, with Catriona held above me, moving her back and forth like she was floating or flying. It didn’t matter that my arms were so tired, I’d have held her there all night if she liked. How many years until she gets too heavy to lift? Siobhán was reading on the couch behind us and I looked at her upside down, stealing glances over the top of her book.
When it was time for Catriona’s bed, Siobhán knelt and kissed my forehead, her loose strand of hair tickling my cheek.
‘Go on away and play with your toy. I’ll bring her up.’
She’s right of course. It’s only a toy, with the new parts labelled – fuel tank, igniter, engine. I carved out ground plug connections, oxygen vent pipes and steam exhausts, and the genius it takes to design these things, let alone get them up in space, made me feel like a very simple man. The plan is to bring the rockets to the school after summer. They might give the children the same amount of wonder and hope as last October gave them fear. Youngsters not sleeping at night, afraid of Armageddon. Even myself and Siobhán lay awake, talking about it and putting our hopes in Kennedy’s hands. People in town blessed themselves when they said the word – nuclear – and summoned the memory of the innocent bombed down in Campile during the war, to caution against thinking we were immune from fallout. Harmless creamery workers blown up in broad daylight by the Luftwaffe.
Siobhán had carried on her reading in bed. I decided not to tell her about the faint.
‘Did I tell you the good news?’ I settled next to her.
She smiled and put the book face down. ‘Go on?’
‘We’re heading for a drive with her ladyship tomorrow. There’s one more day of fine weather promised.’
She put the book on the nightstand and turned off her light, then kissed me in the dark and pulled me closer and I felt that there’s nothing wrong at all with being a simple man.
16
Patrick walked into Gerry Foley’s, wearing his father’s only suit and a few drops of his mother’s old perfume. It had stood untouched on a shelf inside the front door since she died, next to a bottle of holy water brought back from Lourdes by some uncured pilgrim years ago, gifted with the direction to dab it on her husband’s failing head. She’d wet herself with the perfume before opening the door, the neck and both wrists for a rare visitor of merit. Nothing at all for a tinker or farmer.
Two bald men who had no business in a barbershop looked him up and down. He shut the door to the mid-morning sounds of the town. Foley was smoking while cutting a man’s grey hair. He glanced at Patrick, then to an empty chair next to a coat stand. Only after Patrick sat did the two bald men sitting next to the window nod by way of acknowledgement, before turning to one another and sharing a look of unspoken incomprehension over the new arrival.
‘I hear Kennedy’s going to be pucking with the Rackard brothers after he lands,’ said the older of the men after a silence, his hands clasped on the top of a walking stick between his thighs.
‘Someone’s pulling your leg.’ The younger man scratched his moustache.
‘I’m only saying what I’ve been told.’ The man rearranged his hands on his walking stick.
‘I’ll tell you something that I shouldn’t,’ the moustached man said, straightening and raising his voice for the benefit of his audience. ‘He’s landing over in O’Kennedy Park, by helicopter if you don’t mind. Then driving down to the quay. After that, it’s straight to Dunganstown. If you see him at O’Kennedy, they hold you there after he leaves. If you see him at the quay, you’ll be like sheep at a mart. And if you want to see him at Dunganstown, you’ve to be invited, or you’ll be looking over the wall while he has tea with the relatives.’
The older man repeated the words tea with the relatives, shaking his head as if the American President drinking tea on a farm in Dunganstown was some portent of the end.
Foley stopped cutting, and stood with his scissors dangling by his side and a cigarette hanging from his lips. ‘Not another word about it in here. I’m sick to death of it. If he comes in here, he’ll pay the same price as every man. It’d be more in Billy Rackard’s line to be out training.’
‘Has Rackard another season in him, Gerry?’ the man in the chair asked.
Foley exhaled smoke through his nostrils, into the face of his customer, and shook his head, straightening as if they had at last moved on to serious matters. Patrick listened to the men’s back and forth, studying their turns of phrase and mannerisms for some appropriate gesture or posture to adopt when meeting Colm.
‘Jesus, he better,’ Foley said. ‘Because he was carrying the rest of that shower last Sunday.’ He put his scissors in his shirt pocket and took a brush from the shelf by the mirror. He swept his customer’s forehead and neckline then patted his shoulder. ‘Now, Sir. That’ll keep you going.’
‘Grand job,’ the man said, brushing something unseen from his shoulders and trousers, then standing as if he didn’t quite trust his spine, taking a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping his nostrils which would also have benefited from a trim. From where he sat, Patrick could see the spindly lengths of nose hairs, dangling like flies’ legs from each dark hole.
He watched the transaction, having never had his hair cut by a barber, confirming that the exchange worked the same as in any shop. A figure quoted, a till opened, money transferred.
‘I’d say Rackard’s won his last All Ireland,’ the freshly trimmed customer ventured, as Foley handed him his change.
‘You might be right,’ Foley said and the man saluted the older men as he left, passing Patrick as if he wasn’t there. Patrick had half-listened to the match on the radio and struggled to raise much concern that Wexford fell short of the Leinster final. He played in school, wielding his hurley like a weapon, bruising shins, being knocked around the pitch by bigger shoulders, learning early that it wasn’t the game for him.
‘Now, Sir,’ Foley said, brushing the chair clean. ‘What can I do with the thatch?’
Patrick stood and the bald men eyed his dirty shoes and short trousers, the hem of one leg caught in the back of a thick and darned sock. He nodded at Foley on his way to the chair, then sat with his elbows on the armrests, smiling.
‘I’m on my way to a meeting.’
‘Not a scalping so,’ Foley said, pulling a scissors from blue water beneath the mirror. ‘It must be an important meeting if you’re in to get the hair cut special.’
‘The biggest yet,’ Patrick said. ‘The biggest yet.’ He pointed at a black and white Brylcreem poster on the wall, where a man in a suit wore a side parting, slicked back with smooth lines left by the sharp teeth of a comb. ‘Like that.’
He turned to the mirror and was repulsed by the sight of his reflection – skin freckled like the trout he shared with the cat, black spaces between yellowed teeth, and a suit as loose fitting as the cloak Foley draped over him, littered with grey blades of the previous customer’s hair. He imagined what his brother would think and pulled his elbows close to his body, regretting that he hadn’t waited for Field. He looked away from the mirror.
Foley dragged a comb through Patrick’s hair and shook his head. He took a cigarette from his top pocket and lit it, then pointed the comb at the picture on the wall.
‘You’ve hair like a wire brush, son. I can’t do that for you.’ Patrick kept his eyes on the picture. ‘Not to worry,’ Foley said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. ‘I’ll tidy things up all the same. You’ll look like a fine businessman,’ he said and winked in the mirror.
Patrick looked at his knees while Foley wordlessly sprayed and chopped and ran a blade around the edges of the back and sides, glad he’d been judged to be a customer not likely to make small talk. The radio was on low in the corner, and after falling quiet at first, watching on to see what Foley could make of his subject, the men resumed their chat, satisfied that Foley had things under control. They spoke in the whispered voices of schoolboys at the back of a classroom, about Dunganstown, speculating that Mary Ryan’s cottage had been plumbed and roofed using the state’s purse. Even a toilet was put inside in case Kennedy got caught short.
