Why did he ask me to help him, of all men in Ballycrea? I don’t want to ask that, either. I don’t want to ask him anything at all, in case I offend him and he changes his mind and sends me home. I stand stiff, still and silent. There is still some colour in the sky. The sticky evening light, clinging to me. Honey on my coat, light that will stay with me all night. A sure sign of spring. Bill stands against the fog. His silhouette the shape of a prayer.
‘Was it Ballygarron ye said ye came from?’
Bill asks, as he heaves up a plank. I take its weight from him.
‘Miltown. We were all born there.’
I am almost alarmed at how naturally I have taken to lying. I hardly know Bill at all, and yet I know I should not be lying to him.
‘My father’s cousins were in Miltown until 1934. Long gone now.’
A stone in my throat. He is coming too close to my story. How do I remain grateful while telling him to mind his own business? He goes on.
‘They had the same idea as yourselves, I suppose. And who have ye left there now?’
‘Nobody, really. Our parents are both dead.’
He softens. He understands.
‘God rest them.’
It feels like he is about to ask more. Like he wants to make me feel comfortable, and so wants me to talk about my parents. Nothing would make me less comfortable.
It’s a funny thing, because if Bill was to ask me what made Daddy and Mammy so special, I wouldn’t know what to tell him. I don’t have a definite reason, or any particular examples. Really, they were just people, probably no better than anybody else. But there was a short time where they were perfect. Better than anybody had ever been. Before I grew up, I suppose, and realised that even parents are people. Capable of sin and disappointment.
Oh, but there was a time when Daddy’s warm hands were always open, and he had the answer for every question. Always making me laugh, always teaching me something, making me better. There was a time, however distant it now seems, when Mammy smelled of baking, and was never too busy for me. When she was the light I looked to, never dimming. Sweet patience and relief, she took all my trouble off me.
And while that time came to a crashing halt, it’s how I choose to remember them both. When I felt like I belonged to them both, in a way I’ve only ever felt with my family. I don’t know what it is, but we are all linked together in a way that can never be undone. That’s all a bit much to be telling Bill Nevan, I suppose. And maybe he senses that I am on the verge of divulging something to him, because he takes the conversation away from all I am thinking.
‘It must be hard on your sister, always with you two lads.’
Of course, this is in reference to her little display this evening. But he is gracious enough not to mention it directly. I never consideredwhether Anna finds it hard to be with me and Jack all the time. Sure isn’t it hard on me, with the three of them always depending on me? Isn’t it hard on all of us, always surrounding each other?
‘Well, she has Peggy.’
He shakes his head, as though I’m wrong for saying this. As though I haven’t a notion what I’m talking about.
‘A child isn’t proper company for her. I’m sure herself and Betty will take to each other.’
It’s as though he knows how well Anna takes to a bit of female company. As though the Nevans know exactly what we need.
Anna
INSIDE, THE NIGHT LOOKS SOclose. The sun is about to drop. The very last of its light is pointed at Betty’s kitchen counter. There lies the knife and the fish. For now separate things.
‘Well, what do you make of Ballycrea so far?’
She asks me, and now that I’m close to her, in her home, I smell her. Talc and perfume, Imperial Leather. Something I didn’t expect when I saw her singing by the fireplace in John Moore’s front room. Her purple apron, dotted with little lavender flowers. The rose colour has not yet gone from her cheeks, I don’t know if it ever will, and her speaking voice isn’t too far from her singing voice. It’s like everything she says is a line from a song she knows by heart, she sounds so assured. I am, in part, afraid of her.
‘Yeah, it’s nice. Different from home like, but it’s nice.’
I hope that she won’t ask me how it is different from home, because I don’t have any examples except for the constant reek of fish and the pairs of women who stare at me in town. But she doesn’t ask. Instead, she smiles and moves us on without a word. Taking the fish in her hand, undisturbed by its staring eyes, its gaping mouth, or the odour that fills her kitchen, masking her scent.
‘Alright, ’tis this way, look.’
She holds the fish out towards me and begins running the knife alongits belly. Up and down. Without leaving a scratch. The lightest noise of the blade against the scales, hardly heard over my trembling breath.
The lustre of its flesh in the last light of the day. Slowly, she drags the knife, demonstrating something unnamed. We are too close, this feels too much.
