The Misremembered Man (13 page)

“Ly-dee-a Devine, Ly-dee-a Devine.” Jamie said the name over and over to himself, not quite believing what he’d just read. He looked through the letter again, the episode in the barn all but forgotten. Suddenly a new, exciting pathway had opened up in his life. She had written back—that was the magical bit. She had acknowledged him. She had even admired his handwriting! All at once he felt invigorated. But he’d have to be very careful with his reply. Rose McFadden’s letter-writing skills would have to be called upon once more.

The rest of Jamie’s day was spent in a rapture of anticipation. His chores got done without his being conscious of doing them. His hangover lifted without his being conscious of its passing. He had no desire to eat, and remembered with a surge of joy that this was the first day of his diet. Well, wasn’t it just as well anyway? Now he had more to think about than food. The letter had transformed the predictable monotony of his day, had made him realize that the distance between himself and happiness was getting shorter; the “sunlit clearing” was within reach. He believed now that he could accomplish anything; could maybe scale tall trees without a handhold; could make the pig sing “Muirsheen Durkin” in a John McCormack voice; even pluck the sun out of the sky and make it spin.

As he floated away on all this fantasy, he decided that now would be the time to put Dr. Brewster’s advice into action. He’d mark the dawn of this new beginning by taking that wee break by the seaside the following week.

He found Rose McFadden busy in her kitchen as usual, spooning cake mixture into a bun tin; a tray of jam tarts stood ready for the oven. Paddy was seated in an armchair by the stove, the upper half of him obscured by a copy of the
Mid-Ulster Vindicator
. A kettle fizzled on the stove, and in the corner a wireless muttered at a reduced volume in anticipation of the evening news. Rose stopped her spooning and Paddy lowered the paper at the sound of Jamie’s knock.

“Ye know, me and my Paddy were just talkin’ about you, Jamie! Sit yourself down there.” She looked to her husband for confirmation. “Isn’t that right, Paddy?”

“Oh aye, that’s right,” Paddy confirmed.

“Sez I: ‘I wonder if Jamie ever got a letter back from that lady,’ and wasn’t it awful that that young eejit of a Sproule ruined the great night yous was havin’ at Slope’s? Paddy was tellin’ me that you hit him a dunder and you know, Jamie, if I’d been in your position I would a hit him a dunder meself ’cause y’know what they say: If a man keeps his tongue in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, he’ll never get his nose broke, and Paddy told me that the ruffian was gropin’ and pokin’ at you beforehand, so he got what was comin’ to him, so he did.”

Rose stopped to draw breath. She pulled on a set of self-crafted oven gloves, their mitts showing two whiskered cats with orange button-eyes and pairs of unevenly positioned fur ears. This minor defect was occasioned by the fact that, during their fashioning, Rose had been in post-operative recovery from a detached retina in her left eye, brought about when, in the January of the previous year, she’d hit herself a “dunder” while setting a mousetrap (with a lump of Killymacoo vintage cheddar) in a corner of a cupboard under the sink.

“Och now, these things happen,” she said, thinking of the Sproule incident, “and there’s not much a body can do about it, so there isn’t.”

Jamie lowered himself into the plump, cushioned chair at the pig-patterned table. Rose slid the trays of buns and tarts into the roasting oven, eased the door shut and set the timer.

“Now, that’s the thing.” She creaked to her feet, satisfied with another job well done. “And Paddy here sez to me when he came into me last night, he sez: ‘Jamie’s accordjin playing was partickirly good, terrible good, so it was.’ Isn’t that right, Paddy?”

“Aye, that’s right, Rose. That’s just what I was sayin’.” Paddy folded the paper and handed it to Jamie.

“Did y’hear about…did y’hear about poor Doris Crink? The post office was—”

“Was robbed yesterday.” Rose couldn’t abide her husband being the sole bearer of such earth-shattering news.

“God oh, I’ve got all me savin’s with Doris!”

Jamie grabbed the paper, shocked, and found the headline:
Tailorstown Post Office Raid
.
No suspects yet
. He read the accompanying report.

“Now Jamie, your money’s safe enough,” Paddy assured him, “because, because it sez there…it sez there that the…that the bugger—”

“That the bugger only got away with a fiver,” Rose called out. She lifted the teacups out of the cupboard. Every time she saw Jamie, the circuitry of her brain fizzled and crackled and sent out the three-letter command: tea. “Poor Doris didn’t need that,” she declared in a final curtain voice. “Must a been a terrible shock for the wee creatur.”

“Sez here a gun was used,” said Jamie, as he continued to peruse the article. He was relieved by the knowledge that his nest egg was safe. “Lord save us, but that must-a been an ordeal.”

“Aye, a terrible ordeal for any man, let alone…let alone a woman,” Paddy agreed. “But you know it coulda…it coulda been one a them watter-pistols. They say they can make them now to look like a…look like a…”

“A hammer?” Jamie offered.

“Naw, not a hammer…to look like…” Paddy couldn’t think straight. “Christ, what was it I was gonna say…to look like a…”

“A rifle?” put in Rose.

“Aye, but wee-er than that.”

“A gun?” shouted Jamie.

“Aye, that’s the very thing,” Paddy said relieved. “Aye, they say they can make them watter-pistols to look like a gun these days.”

“I don’t know what the world’s comin’ to,” said Rose. She poured the tea and handed the mugs round. “A wee rock bun, Jamie? Fresh made, so they are.” She pushed a plate under his nose. It was only at the sight of the buns that he realized he hadn’t eaten anything all day and was, as they say, as hungry as a homeless tapeworm.

Jamie pulled the letter from his pocket and placed it reverentially on the table.

“She’s a Ly-dee-a Devine, so she is.”

“Well, what d’you know? Isn’t that a good one. D’you see that, Paddy?”

Paddy couldn’t comment, since his dentures were struggling with an entire rock bun. So he nodded and raised an affirming hand instead.

Rose wiped her hands on her apron and fetched her glasses from the pouting lips of the guppy on the mantelpiece. Paddy understood that matchmaking was Rose’s terrain and decided to leave her to it. He got up.

“I’ll go on here and get this bit-a paintin’ finished,” he announced to the cuckoo clock above the stove, sensing his presence would not be missed.

“Yes, you do that Paddy,” said Rose, “and mind ye don’t dribble on me clematis!” she shouted after him as he retreated down the hallway to continue ruining the front door with a tin of Dublin Bay Green gloss.

“Are them the wee purple boys ye have climbin’ about the door, Rose?”

“They are indeed, Jamie, but Paddy would have an unsteady hand on him betimes when he’s doin’ an important job like paintin’, and ye know—”

“Oh, I know what you’re sayin’ right enough,” Jamie cut in, aware of Rose’s spectacular ability to wander off the point and eager to get her opinion on Miss Devine’s letter.

“God-blisses-an-save-us, what grand handwritin’, Jamie!” Rose read the letter, quietly nodding and sighing her approval, whilst Jamie slurped the tea and demolished his rock bun in two mouthfuls.

“Well!” Rose removed her glasses. “A very fine, well-rounded lady indeed, Jamie.” Since a depleted teacup and an empty side plate in front of a man signaled neglect on her part, she automatically replenished Jamie’s mug and pushed more buns toward him.

“But it looks like she’s a Protestant, Rose. That Sunday service bit.”

“Now, I saw that, Jamie, too meself, and that doesn’t matter atall as I told you before. We all worship the same God, do we not.”

She broke a rock bun into pieces and slipped morsels into her mouth. It was a mouth that rarely experienced any notable periods of respite between eating and speaking, and often—as now—engaged itself in both activities at the same time.

“And this religion thing: it’s only a wee blot on the horizon, if a body chooses to see it that way. And between you and me, Jamie,” she leaned conspiratorially toward him, “me and my Paddy have never had anything against the other sort. Truth be told, they’re more hardworkin’ and not as lazy as our own lot, who can stand about in a field for hours, scratchin’ their arses and not gettin’ nothing done. Now I’m not sayin’ you and my Paddy come into that caty-gory, but you know, Jamie, there’s many’s the one that does.”

“Aye, I s’ppose you’re right about that, Rose.”

“’Deed I am, Jamie, ’deed I am. God, I had an Uncle Eustace, but y’know he got called Useless for short, ’cause he set about so much he wore the arse outta all the trousers he had. Me mother, God rest her soul, was never done patchin’ and darnin’ and footerin’ for him. I wouldn’t a been surprised if he’d bedsores on him when he was a nipper. So ye know, a hardworkin’ Protestant woman isn’t to be sniffed at, because she could end up being more useful to you than a lazy oul’ clat of a Fenian, that would lie around all day with a fag in her gob, paintin’ her toenails. And you know just when I mention fags, most a them Protestant women neither smoke nor drink, because they’re so busy workin’, so they are—terrible well doing—and for that reason, Jamie, would be very easy to run.”

“God-oh,” was all Jamie could say, the thought of a Protestant wife becoming more attractive by the minute.

“Now, let’s look at all the good things about this lady.”

Rose spread the letter out in front of her and, using the fingers of her left hand as counters, rehearsed what she saw as Lydia Devine’s undoubted attributes.

“Now, Jamie, one: She’s around the same age as yourself, which means she’s sensible and not no fibberty-gibbit of a thing that would go turnin’ a man’s head with stuff not of a serious nature. And even though at that age she probably wouldn’t tear at the pluckin’, God-blisses-an-save-us—sure none of us would, because none of us is getting’ no younger, but that’s just the way of it, so it is.”

Jamie nodded and reached for another bun, his diet quite forgotten.

“Two: She’s got a good job, and God knows there’s few a them about these days, and she must like children because she wouldn’t be working with them if she didn’t like them, and I sez that’s always a good sign in a woman because it means that maybe you and she could start a family, might it not.” She took a long draught of tea.

Jamie’s eyes widened. He had never even thought of children, never mind envisioning the intimate process by which they came into being.

“Now don’t look so surprised, Jamie. You’re the forty-one yourself, a grown man, and if she’s about the same age as she sez here, well, she still has time. My cousin Martha give birth to triplets at the forty-two, eighteen months ago. And even though wee Mary has a squint, wee Molly a harelip, and wee Martin a head on him the size of a turnip, heaven’s-above, God musta been in a terrible hurry at the makin’ a them, but if you put all that aside there’s not a bother on them. Because you know a woman over the forty can expect a wee bit of retardment, because she mighta left things a bit late, like.”

Rose halted her racing discourse and reached for another bun.

“There’s them that sez it was a miracle they lived atall, atall, my Paddy included, but it was no miracle, sez I, because if a woman wants a child, it’ll come to her no matter the age, for God never closes one door but he bangs another one shut, if you unnerstand me, Jamie?”

Rose raised her Giant’s Causeway mug to her lips once more, while Jamie sat in embarrassment, not knowing what to say, letting his eyes drift between the gamboling pigs on the tablecloth and a set of ceramic geese flapping their way up the wood-chipped wall toward the ceiling.

“Now where was I?” She looked down at the page again, hooked the index finger of her right hand round the middle finger of her left and continued.

“Yes, number three. She likes animals—which is a terrible good sign altogether, because it means she wouldn’t be afeard of feedin’ a pig or milkin’ a cow or two if you were not able, for whatever reason, Jamie, to do it yourself. And I’m not sayin’ anything’s gonna happen you or the like—far be it from me to be sayin’ a thing like that—but you did have that lambago and maybe still have, truth be told.”

“Oh aye, I still have a wee touch of it now an’ again, Rose.”

“There you are then! If you couldn’t get outta the bed of a cold morning—and God knows they’ll be getting colder soon enough—sure wouldn’t she be there to take over for you and the like?” Rose was pleased; Jamie’s eager nodding to all she said meant that he’d understood her completely.

“That reminds me, Rose, just when you say it. I’ll be takin’ that wee day or two in Portaluce next Monday and Tuesday, with me back and all…”

“I unnerstand you completely, Jamie. You want my Paddy to feed the things, and that’s no bother atall, as you well know.”

“Well, y’know Dr. Brewster said that gettin’ away for a coupla days would take me outta meself. And now that I’m gonna be meetin’ this woman, I’m a bit un-aisey, so maybe it’d help me to get outta bit beforehand and meet some different people.”

“Now, Jamie, there’s no need for you to feel uneasy about meetin’ this lady ’cause truth be told she’ll maybe be as uneasy meetin’ you too, her being a lonely heart like yourself. Sure for all y’know, she’s maybe been sittin on her own lookin’ into the fire like yourself, talkin’ to nobody from one end-a the week to the other but a grumpy oul’ lump of a brother or mother or whatever, and a coupla cats.”

“Never thought a that, Rose, but when ye put it like that…”

Rose smiled broadly, thrilled that Jamie was appreciating her “agony aunt” wisdom.

“And may I say also, Jamie, I’m glad you’re gettin’ away with that back a yours, ’cause you said you were still gettin’ the odd wee touch of it, did ye not?”

“Aye, the odd wee touch of it now and again, Rose.”

“I know all about it, Jamie! Our Martha had a leg she couldn’t get rid of after the births of the wee ones. It blew up the size of a Mullingar heifer’s, so it did, and I went down and helped her out, because you know she couldn’t get about atall, atall. And it’s a terrible thing when a body is incapissitated in such a way. May your belly always be full and your bones enjoy their stretching, as me Great-grandmother Murphy used to say.”