I say, and surprise myself because I really mean it. Now it’s over,everything that just happened seems so much nicer than it was disgusting. And suddenly, a little bit more joy than the borders of my body can contain picks me up, and I float next to my brother. The colour of the sky is changing – mottled lemon, sugar and endless blue. And I feel myself change with it. Uncontrollably. For a moment, my feelings lift, and I am sweet and blue and endless.
‘It’s great to get out, isn’t it?’
It feels good to socialise in these small doses. To feel myself slowly beginning to enjoy people. I am learning. I am normal. Just like anybody else in the world, walking along with my brother. Tom tells me that Bill might have a bit more work for him, and I smile, I even squeal and squeeze his arm. And guess what? I am excited to try to cook fish. I think this evening was all I needed to feel real again.
—
Cold comes up through the cracks in the wooden floor. Peggy is the first to drift off, safe among us all. Then, there is a long while of silent thought for myself and the lads. Impossible to tell whether it’s hours or minutes passing us by, waiting to fall asleep or to see the sun heave itself up.
Sighing and grunting, and wondering if we should try to wake each other up to talk about things. I wonder about the Nevans, about Betty’s kitchen. Tea cosy and painted cups. Bursting dresser. Wooden crucifix over the door. I wonder when I’ll be called down again.
‘Goodnight Mammy. Goodnight Daddy.’
Betty
THE LITTLE RADIO ON BILL’Slocker mumbles out the news. Normally, I would be glad to listen, but after our evening with the O’Learys, I just need a bit of hush. The heel of the moon comes in and out of view over the hill. Bill keeps saying he’ll hang the new curtains, but I like being able to see the moon. Sure we’ve no neighbours, it’s grand. When the back of my foot touches our bedroom floor, I’m glad of the new slippers Bill bought me last week. I’m grateful for everything in our house. How warm and clean and proper it is. Oh, their dusty little cottage, so bare and cold. The food on their plates uncooked, the mood in the air so stale. It isn’t their fault. It isn’t my fault; but it lingers with me as though I should solve it.
‘God help us, you could have cut the tension with a knife.’
I say to Bill, layering on my night cream. He is sitting up in bed, listening to something about Fianna Fáil that I decide not to engage with tonight, but which he is intent on hearing. It’s as though the evening never touched him. Like it was never strange at all. Bill is never affected by things the way that I am.
I watch him in the mirror, looking for any signs that he is listening to me, or feeling what I’m feeling. But he is deep in the news. The little yellow light of my lamp falls on his left side. Bill is the lucky sort of manthat suits ageing. Deeply handsome. Without much to say about the O’Learys, it appears.
I bless myself.
‘Lord God, thank you for the abundance of food in our house. Thank you for our happy, healthy home. And please, God, look after myself and Bill tonight. And please look after the O’Learys as they settle into Ballycrea.’
I kick off my slippers and get into bed beside him.
‘Couldn’t have said it better myself.’
He blesses himself, counting my prayer as his.
‘Aren’t we lucky, Bill, that we have enough food to spare that I was able to show that young girl how to prepare a fish?’
It’s only when I see people with so little that I realise how much we have. I try so hard not to be too proud or boastful that all of my small luxuries end up going unnoticed.
I twist the front of my hair into rollers. Bill nods in agreement. Always so chatty when out and about, but so quiet when it’s just us at home. I think he likes to be able to switch off, without the pressure of keeping a conversation going.
‘Ah I felt for her this evening, Bill, I really did. It can’t be easy, looking after everybody with nobody looking after her.’
He isn’t convinced, I know by the way he shifts in the bed. But he says nothing, leaning over to switch off the radio.
‘Imagine being above in that house tonight. I’d hate it! I feel so sorry for her.’
‘It isn’t Anna I feel sorry for.’
He says quietly, turning his head in the yellow light. Looking at me as though I should have thought of this sooner. The child. The poor, gorgeous child, who only wanted somebody to act interested in her. So full of life, with so much to say and so many questions. It takesnothing at all to smile and nod along with a child. Why wouldn’t they do that for her? Yes, Bill is right; Anna isn’t the one I should be feeling sorry for at all.
‘Poor Peggy! What can we do for her, Bill?’
He opens his arms for me.
‘There’s nothing we can do for her. Only put manners on the rest of them, I suppose.’
I put myself under his chin, and I feel home again. A big sigh leaves me. The whole day leaves me. For a second, I wait for him to say that we can take Peggy in and look after her. Just a small second of foolishness, before I realise that Bill knows better than to suggest that. He probably knows that I’m thinking of it. Maybe in another world, we could do all that. In another world, I suppose, we might have had a child of our own. There might be a noise in the house besides the sound of my expiring. I pull myself from my thoughts.
‘You sort out the lads so, and I’ll take care of herself.’
