Mothers and Sons (21 page)

‘I’m not coming in unless you promise that you’ll wash all that sand out of every orifice,’ Mick said.

‘I promise,’ Fergus said.

‘Immediately,’ Mick insisted.

‘OK.’

‘I’ll make breakfast,’ Mick said.

Fergus deliberately turned the hot-water tap on too high to see if this could restore him to the state of excitement he had been in. He washed and shaved and found fresh clothes. Quickly, he changed the sheets and the duvet on his bed. When he came downstairs the table was set; there was steaming tea and scrambled eggs and toast and orange juice. They ate and drank ravenously, without speaking.

‘I would have bought the morning papers,’ Mick said, ‘except I can barely see.’

Fergus wondered how quickly he could move Mick to the bedroom once breakfast was finished. He smiled at him and nodded in the direction of upstairs.

‘Are you ready so?’ he asked.

‘I am, I suppose, but I haven’t been converted or anything. Just once, OK?’

‘You said that before.’

‘I was drugged. I mean it this time.’

Mick took out a small plastic bag from his pocket and pushed back the tablecloth to the bare wood of the table. With his credit card he began to make two long orderly lines of cocaine. He took a fifty-euro note from his pocket.

‘Which of us goes first?’ he asked and grinned.

A Summer Job

S
HE CAME DOWN
from Williamstown, the old woman, when the baby was born, leaving a neighbouring girl in charge of the post office. She sat by Frances in the hospital, looking fondly at the child even when he was sleeping, and holding him tenderly when he was awake. She had not done this when any of her other grandchildren were born.

‘He is lovely, Frances,’ she said gravely.

The old woman was interested in politics and religion and fresh news. She loved meeting people who knew more than she did, and were better educated. She read biographies and theology. Her mother, Frances thought, was interested in most things, but not children, unless they were ill or had excelled in some subject, and certainly not babies. She had no idea why she stayed for four days.

Her mother, she knew, was careful with her own grown-up children, even Bill her youngest son, who still lived with her and ran the farm, asking them few questions, never interfering in their lives. Frances watched her now maintaining silence when the subject of a name for the baby arose, but she was aware that her mother was listening keenly, especially when Jim, Frances’s husband, was in the room.

Frances waited until late at night when her mother had gone before she discussed the baby’s name with Jim, who liked names that were ordinary and solid, like his own, names that would cause no comment now or in the future. Therefore, she was sure that when she suggested John as a name for the baby, Jim would agree.

Her mother was jubilant. Frances knew that her mother’s father had been called John, but it did not occur to her that she would now think the new baby was to be christened in his honour. It had nothing to do with him. She asked her mother not to talk to Jim about the name of the baby, and hoped that the old woman might soon stop saying how proud she was that the name was being carried on in the family in a time when the fashion was all for new names, including the names of film stars and pop stars.

‘The Irish names are the worst, Frances,’ her mother said. ‘You couldn’t even pronounce them.’

John was cradled even more warmly by her mother now that he had a name. She seemed happy to sit for hours saying nothing, rocking him or soothing him. Frances was glad when she could go home, and happy when her mother suggested that she herself might return to Williamstown to her small post office, her books, her daily
Irish Times
, her specially selected television and radio programmes and a few kindred spirits with whom she exchanged views about current events.

O
NCE
J
OHN
was home, the old woman began to pay more attention to his siblings’ birthdays, no longer merely sending a postal order and a birthday card, but, having arranged a
lift, coming personally the forty miles from Williamstown, staying for tea, bringing the postal order in her handbag. No matter whose birthday it was, however, all of the children knew that their grandmother had come to see John. The old woman, Frances saw, made sure not to try to lift him or cuddle him or demand his attention when he was busy playing or sitting in front of the television. She waited until he was tired or wanted something and then she made clear to him that she was watching out for him, she was on his side. By the time he was four or five, he was often speaking to her on the telephone, and was looking forward to her visits, keeping close to her once she came, showing her his schoolwork and his drawings and asking his parents’ leave to stay up late so he could fall asleep beside her on the sofa, his head in her lap.

Soon, once Bill was married and she was alone in the house, the old woman began to invite Frances and her family for Sunday lunch once a month. She made sure that her grandsons were not bored in the house, suggesting that Bill take them to hurling or football matches in the locality, or knowing what they and their sisters might want to watch on television. By the time John was seven or eight, his grandmother would send Bill down to collect him so that he could come on his own to stay on the Saturday night before the lunch. Within a short time, he had his own bedroom in his grandmother’s house, his own boots and duffle coat, pyjamas, books and comics.

Frances was not sure what age he was when he began to go to Williamstown for a month in the summer, but by the age of twelve he would stay in his grandmother’s house for the entire summer, helping Bill on the farm, working in the
post office and sitting with her at night, reading, or talking to her, or, with his grandmother’s full encouragement, going out with some local boys his own age.

‘Everyone likes John,’ her mother said to Frances. ‘Everyone he meets, young and old. He always has something interesting to say to everyone and he’s a great listener as well.’

F
RANCES OBSERVED
John move effortlessly through the world. There were never complaints about him, even from his sisters. He was quiet most of the time, he did his share of the housework and knew how to negotiate with his mother and father if he wanted money or permission to stay out late. He appeared to Frances self-contained, unlikely to make mistakes or misjudgements. He took most matters seriously. When, a few times, she tried to make light of his relationship with his grandmother and his special place in her house, he did not smile or acknowledge that she had spoken. Even when she made remarks about the more comic customers of his grandmother’s post office, people who did not seem to have changed since she had worked there thirty years earlier, John did not share her amusement.

In those years as soon as spring began her mother would telephone to say that she was already looking forward to the arrival of John.

T
HAT SUMMER
when Frances drove him to Williamstown, she went upstairs with him as soon as they had been met by
her mother. His bedroom, she saw, had new wallpaper and there was a new bed. On the chest of drawer lay a stack of shirts, all freshly ironed, a few pairs of jeans, shaving cream, a new fancy razor and special shampoo.

‘No wonder you come here,’ she said. ‘We don’t treat you properly at home. Ironed shirts! Done by your special girlfriend!’

As she laughed she did not notice that her mother was waiting outside the door. She realized, as they went downstairs, that both John and her mother wanted her to leave, both were careful not to respond to anything she said. They were almost hostile, as though she had left a gate open in a field, or given too much change to a customer. Neither of them came to the car with her as she departed.

Soon, she learned that her mother, while making the farm over to Bill, had set aside a field and convinced Bill to construct goalposts at each end so that John could play hurling there. John rounded up enough locals to form a team and they found other teams to play against so that almost every evening there were games or practice sessions. Even spectators came, including Frances and Jim one evening, but the old woman herself was too frail to walk up the lane to see John playing.

Frances realized how deeply content she was that John had a large set of friends now and something to do in the evenings so that he would not, as she put it, get fed up listening to her.

F
RANCES
, while visiting her mother, watched one evening as John came in from a game. He was rushing to go back
out again, with just time for a shower and a change of clothes. He barely looked at his grandmother.

‘John, sit down and talk to us,’ Frances said.

‘I have to go, Mammy, the others are waiting.’

He brusquely nodded to his grandmother as he left the room. When Frances looked across at her, she saw that the old woman was smiling.

‘He’ll be back later,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fast asleep when he comes in.’

She purred, as though the thought gave her great satisfaction.

B
Y THE TIME
he returned home in late August, John had grown taller and fitter. He began to play hurling with his school team, where the talents he had developed over the summer as a midfielder were quickly recognized.

Frances had dutifully gone to watch her other children playing sport, anxiously waiting for the event to be over so she could go home. None of them ever excelled, or cared very much, but John that winter and spring trained every evening and played whenever he could with a view to making the county minor team.

John stood out on the pitch because he appeared never to run or tackle, but instead waited, remained apart. His father, who became excited about very little, could not be contained when John, unmarked, would find the ball coming his way and make a solo run to score a point, brushing off tackles with real bravery and skill, or, judging distances accurately, would lob the ball in a deliberate arc towards the mouth of the goal. It was clear to Frances that the
spectators around her noticed him as much as his parents did. Although he was not selected for the minor team that season, he was told that he was being watched with keen interest by the selectors.

I
N
M
AY
, as the school year was coming to an end, John remarked casually that he, along with several of his friends, had filled in an application form for a job in the strawberry factory in the town for the summer months. However, Frances had put no further thought into it until he asked her one day for a lift into the town for an interview.

‘How long will the job last?’ she asked.

‘All summer,’ he said. ‘Or at least until August.’

‘What’s your grandmother going to do?’ Frances asked. ‘Only yesterday she was on the phone saying how much she was looking forward to June and your coming to stay. We were there two weeks ago and you heard her yourself.’

‘Why don’t we wait and see if I get the job?’

‘Why do you want to do the interview if you know you can’t take the job?’

‘Who says I can’t take the job?’

‘She’s old, John, she’s not going to last. Just do one more summer with her and I’ll make sure that you won’t have to do another if you don’t want to.’

‘Who says I don’t want to?’

She sighed.

‘God help the woman who marries you.’

*

J
OHN ARRANGED
for one of his friends to take him into the town for the interview, and a week later a note came from the manager of the factory saying that he could start in the second week of June. John left the letter on the breakfast table for them all to read. When Frances looked at it, she did not speak. She waited until he came back from school.

‘You can’t go to her every summer and then when she’s old and weak, decide you have better things to do.’

‘I haven’t decided that.’

‘I have decided you are going and that’s it. As soon as you get your holidays you are going to Williamstown, so you can start getting ready.’

‘What am I going to tell the team?’

‘That you’ll be back in September.’

‘If I stayed, I could get on the minor team.’

‘You can hurl all summer in the field your grandmother set aside for you. And keep in mind that it might be her last summer and she has been very good to you. So you can pack your bags now.’

For the next few days he did not speak to her, and thus she knew that he had accepted his fate and would go to Williamstown. Over the previous few months Frances had conspired with her mother to get John a provisional driving licence, finding his birth certificate and a photograph and forging his signature and then keeping the arrival of the licence a secret. John’s grandmother had paid Bill for the old car when he was buying a new one. She was going to give it to John for the summer and allow him and his siblings to use it thereafter.

John’s mood in the car was so downcast and sullen that Frances was tempted to tell him what was in store, but she
resisted. He would never be as silent and withdrawn as this with anyone else, but she did not mind. Her job was to deposit him at Williamstown. She would be happy when she drove away, leaving him there for the summer.

H
ER MOTHER
, she saw when she arrived, was walking with the help of a stick. Although she had had her hair done and was wearing a colourful dress, it was clear to Frances that she was ill. Her mother noticed Frances watching her and looked back defiantly, as though daring her to mention her health. All her energy was being used to surprise John, first with the driving licence and then with the keys of the car.

‘Bill says you can drive perfectly,’ she said. ‘So you can go all over the county now in this. It’s old, but it flies along.’

John said nothing, eyeing Frances and then his grandmother gravely.

‘Did you know about this?’ he asked Frances.

‘I’m the one who forged the signature,’ she said.

‘But I paid for it,’ his grandmother interrupted. ‘Make sure he knows that.’