The Spinning Heart (3 page)

JOSEPH BURKE
was my father’s name too. Second sons were named for their fathers in those days as a rule. Second sons got a name and first sons got everything else. My father made us all afraid of dishonesty. The devil loves lies, he always said. The devil loves liars. It wasn’t from me that Pokey learned deceit. He never paid in those boys’ stamps. Imagine that. I used to have that done every year before January would be out. The Revenue Commissioners are roaring for VAT, the sub-contractors are arriving to the door with invoices every day. Honest men, who know only work, white with the shock of the sudden stop that everything is after coming to. When I think about it, what people must be thinking and saying, I can hear my heart beat in my chest. I can
feel a hardness, a tight pressure. I think of a hose with too great a flow through it, stretched and strained. Sweat starts to sting my forehead. Eileen says nothing. What’s there to say? Her silence comforts me. If she blamed me, she’d say it. Who’s to blame when a child turns rotten?

That’s the thing though. Did he turn bad or did he start out that way? Either way it’s my fault. There’s no getting away from it. I’m the boy’s father. His nature and his nurture were both down to me, when all is said and done. He got no badness from his mother, that’s for certain. Eamonn and Pokey were always mad about each other as small boys. How’s it they ended up so different? I did my damnedest not to make fish of one and flesh of the other; I counted out seconds in my head of time in my lap, the number of times I lifted each one up, the number of times I smiled at each one. Pokey had an unbelievable eye, though, to see a slight so small there was nearly none at all: he noticed every time I looked at Eamonn, patted his head, squeezed his little fat leg. He had a ledger inside in his head on which every single move I made was entered, and it never, ever balanced in his favour. I started resenting him, and nearly hated him. I did hate him. God forgive me, I should confess
that
. Imagine poor old John Cotter, how he’d stutter out my penance and redden every time I met him after. I’d nearly have to travel in to the Cistercians in the city, where my face would not be known or seen again. Or those Franciscan lads in Moyross: they’d have me right with God in no time. They’d never have me right with myself, though.

I haven’t said a word yet to Eamonn about Pokey lighting out for the continent. He doesn’t know about the big huge loan from Anglo, the Revenue, the lads’ stamps, their redundancy, anything. I’m afraid of upsetting him. I’m ashamed opposite my own son to tell of his brother’s badness. Eamonn teaches in the
city. They’re all pure stone mad about him in there: the other teachers, the young lads, his wife’s people. Jesus, what if I hadn’t him? I’ll have to tell him soon. The next time he calls with Yvonne and the children, he’ll ask as he always does, is Pokey coming, and I won’t be able to lie to the boy. I hope I don’t start to cry like a fool. My tear bags are fierce close to my eyes these days. That Bobby Mahon and my Eamonn are very alike in ways. They’re both men you’d be proud of, who you’d be embarrassed opposite, having to tell of the failings of other men and feeling as though those failings are your own.

And there’s no one can say the whole fiasco with the business wasn’t my fault, that’s for certain. It was I handed over all to Pokey. I only kept our house and my pension. But there were seven years there where you could build houses out of cardboard and masking tape and they’d be sold off of the plans. People queued all night to buy boxes of houses all crammed together like kennels. Pokey cleaned up. He paid me a dividend and I fattened on it. We should have known it would all end in tears. Around here, it all started with tears: that boy of the Cunliffes getting shot in his own yard by the guards, and his land going to his auntie, who shared it out among us like the Roman soldiers with Our Lord’s purple robe. That was no way for good times to start.

Lily

WHEN I WAS
inside in the hospital having my fifth child, a nosy bitch of a midwife asked me to know who was the father. I told her by accident. They had me drugged up to my eyeballs. The auld hag must have fattened on my answer. Bernie came down to my house a few weeks later. It must have taken that long for the whispers to reach his hairy ears. He charged in here like a bull. I remember smiling at him like a fool; I actually thought he’d come for a look at his child. He said nothing, only punched me straight into my face. Then he drew back his big fist and punched me again, right into my mouth. You stupid bitch, he said, you stupid, stupid bitch, I should kill you. My lip split open and pumped blood. My front tooth came out. Then he threw a twenty-pound note at me and charged back out. My eye swelled and closed and turned black. He never called to me again.

I met Jim Gildea the sergeant a few days later, in the Unthanks’ bakery. He looked down at me as I waited for my sliced pan and
he flinched; my face was still in ribbons. He didn’t want to ask me and I didn’t want him to. What happened you, Lily? I fell, Jim. I could see the relief on his face, and the knowing in his eyes of my lie. He was grateful for my lie; he’d think of it again.

THERE ARE
rakes of men around here that have called to me. I’ve had years of eyes at my door. Eyes that can’t meet mine, full of hunger when they arrive and full of guilt as they leave. Eyes full of laughter, thinking I’m only a joke; eyes full of tears. I’ve seen eyes full of hate, and I never knew why those men hated me. I’d never blame a man for calling to me. Men have to do what they have to do. Nature overpowers them. Some of the old farmers were lovely, once you got over the smell. They had a smell you could nearly talk yourself into liking. I even bathed one or two of them – they loved it – like big auld babas, splashing around and grinning up at me with their soft gums and their hard dicks. Cow shit is nowhere near as bad as dog shit, or human shit. A fella called to my door one time, hardly able to stand up for drink, with a toughie English accent and shit all over the tail of his shirt. He must have wiped his arse with it, in some dirty toilet. I ran him. I’d never be
that
stuck.

I was only about eleven when men started looking at me. There was something about me that they couldn’t stop looking at. I grew up early. But lots of young girls grew up early in them days. There was something more about me that drew men’s eyes. It was years and years before I knew what the word for that thing was. I was
wanton
. I had a wanton look about me. Do I still? I don’t know in the hell. Hardly, I’d say. A young fella that I met on a lane in the forestry one summer’s day told it to me years ago. I was looking for burdock; he was striding along with his white
legs sticking out from his baggy short pants and a little knapsack on his narrow back. I had my eldest fella, John-John, with me; he was only small, whining and snotting along beside me, trying to copy the song I was singing and making me laugh. His father was a real gas card, too. I heard one time that he came a cropper beyond in Liverpool, off of a motorbike. There were too many years gone by for me to care.

I brought the skinny townie back to the cottage with the promise of a bag of mixed herbs from my little garden. He leapt on me the minute I had John-John put away into the back room to play with his toys. The babies were sound asleep. Christ, you’re
wanton
, he gasped, as he finished, not even a minute later. I’m what, now? Then he told me what it meant, slowly and kindly, like I was a simple child. He called again from time to time over the years. I think I made him feel bigger and smarter than he was. He always took away a bag of herbs or a jar of preserves with him.
That’s
what he was leaving the money for, in his own mind.

I ONLY EVER
refused men who really and truly disgusted me. Men who you knew would prefer to force you even if you were willing. I only refused a good man once, because I knew his goodness well and was afraid of blackening his mind against himself. He had himself beaten out of shape. He didn’t know himself. He was trying to be cold and unfeeling and bad, but he wasn’t able to be that way; he was full of kindness that he thought was weakness. That’s the way he was reared. He was pouring drink into himself, hoping he’d wake up different. He tried it on with me outside the Frolics bar below in Carney. I’d cycled out that far and was waiting for an offer of a spin home in a farmer’s car. A ride for a ride; it’s nearly biblical. I knew if I went with him it’d be
the sorriest thing he ever did. I knew he was stone cracked about his wife. She was expecting at the time. I very nearly let him do it to me. I really wanted to. A few years later I’d have done it out of spite. But I pushed him off of me and belted him into the balls. I used to see him coming from Mass for years and years after that, with his wife and his two boys and his little girl. I don’t think he knew me. I don’t think he really saw me that time in Carney.

THERE’S PLENTY
calls me a witch. It doesn’t bother me. I haven’t aged well; I look a lot older than I am. I have rheumatoid arthritis. It pains me everywhere. It has me curled over, balled up, all smallness and sharp edges. I’m like a cut cat half the time. Men never call here any more. My children never call to me, even. They’re pure solid ashamed of me, after all I done for them. My daughters are beyond in England. My second fella, Hughie, is married to a strap of a wan that looks at me like she scraped me off of the sole of her shoe. They had a little girl I only seen once. Lord, my heart aches just to hold that child, blood of my blood. Millicent, they called her. Milly and Lily. Wouldn’t it be lovely? My third boy is a solicitor in the city and my John-John is knocking around, never too far away, nor never too near.

He took a woeful set against me altogether, my John-John. The others just don’t bother with me, but John-John arrives down the very odd time, roaring and shouting out of him, crying and shaking. He’s gone to be a terror for the drink, anyway. His looks are leaving him; his face is getting puffed out and pasty-looking. It breaks my heart to see his lovely strong features crumbling away. I stand in the doorway and pull my cardigan tight around me. He shoves in past me sometimes, and takes what money does be in my jar on the top shelf over the fireplace. He doesn’t know
I leave that money there especially for him. I expected too much from him; I know that. My John-John, my little man. I destroyed the boy by seeing too early the man inside in him. I think he thought he had to hate me to save himself.

I DO SEE
that boy of the Mahons nearly every day, passing down the road to his father’s house. I hear the spinning heart on their gate, creaking slowly around. The sound floats up along the road to me, waved along by the leaves of the trees. It puts me in mind of my own dry joints; my burning hip, my creaking knees. He’s beautiful, that boy, tall and fair-haired, like his mother. His auld father is a horrible yoke. He got all his mother’s goodness, that boy. He got no part of his father that I can see. Maybe there’s something inside in him that he got from his father, but he keeps it well hid. He always salutes me as he passes; he waves and smiles and calls me by my name. Oh, he’s solid gorgeous, so he is. I’d have married a boy like that if I hadn’t been so busy going around being
wanton
, so determined not ever to be bound to a man.

I remember his mother well. She used to give me the time of day, not like a lot more around here who had themselves elevated in their own minds to heights far, far above me. A few of them are starting to fall from their heights, now. I see them in the village, shaking their heads at each other in disbelief, blaming everyone else. I don’t know what she died of. I was fierce sad when I heard it. That boy was grown up at the time, but he came walking up the road looking like a small child, as pale as a ghost, with his eyes hollowed out from crying. He came into my kitchen that day and drank a sup of tea. Thanks Lily, thanks Lily, he kept saying. He’d fallen out with his mother, I knew that, but I didn’t say anything to him, only that she was gone home now and he’d see her again
some day. He was weak from sadness and regret, which is the most horrible feeling of all. I kissed him on the cheek before he left. I wished blessings for him, the poor love. He married a lovely girl after.

THERE’S SOMETHING
unspeakable about the attraction between a man and a woman. It can’t ever be explained. How is it that I could be so foolish for a big, fat mongrel of a man like Bernie McDermott? He did something to me whenever I saw him that made me weak in my body and mind. I wanted to please him more than I wanted to mind my children. I think if he’d asked me to throw one of them over the bridge and into the rushing weir, I’d nearly have done it. Except if it was John-John. I knew my last child was his from the first moment I felt him inside in me. He gave me hell from the start. I was up before the sun every morning, retching and crying and gasping for breath. I could hardly walk for nine months with the pains he caused me. My other children were pure solid neglected. Only for John-John they’d have melted away from the hunger and the dirt. Bernie McDermott never even noticed until I was the size of a house. Are you fuckin expecting? says he. I am, Bernie, says I. Fuck me, I thought you were just getting fat. How’ll you figure out which of your mountain men is the daddy? Says I, it’s you Bernie. Me? Ha ha ha! If you fell into a bed of nettles, how would you know which one stung you? I was with no one only you for near a year, I told him. He punched me into the stomach then, and pulled over the dresser in temper. All my crockery was smashed, and my lovely Child of Prague my mother gave me. John-John ran from the back room to protect me and Bernie McDermott slapped him right back across the floor and in through the door again. He
came here no more bar the time he called to make ribbons of my face over naming him inside in the hospital.

They’re big farmers, the McDermotts. Imagine if they knew there’s a solicitor inside in the city, the son of a whore, who’s kin of theirs. It’d frighten the life out of them to think of him with his brains
and
badness! He got the brains from me. I gave him the money to go in every day to the university. I got him all his books and the trendy clothes young fellas need to fit in. The day of his graduation, I stood outside the big building, squinting in through the glass, trying to see could I see him. Each student was gave two tickets for the ceremony. He gave them to his girlfriend and her mother. All I wanted was one look at him in his gown, with his scroll. One photograph would have done me, of him with his arm around me. I’d have had it blown up and framed and hung it in the porch, right in front of people’s faces as they walked in. I was foolish to let pride into my heart. I still paid for him to finish off his studying above in Dublin, though. The little strap of a girlfriend and the auld mother who was never let see me was brought to
that
graduation too.