‘But I will some day, surely. Not to work but to visit. I’d love to see my nephews. They must be nearly left school by now. Tell me about them.’
He settled himself in his chair, his smile of interest and concern masking his rage.
‘They’ve left,’ she said gruffly.
‘Surely not? Hugh can only be barely sixteen?’
‘Headstrong, impatient, won’t wait, won’t get an education.’ She looked into the fire.
‘And what does James say about it?’
‘He’s hardly ever there to say anything. He’s not around much.’
Rosemary still looked into the fire.
Fergus poured them both a last drink, and moved to less troubled waters. He suggested that Rosemary take a silver cigarette box back with her as a memento. Awkwardly she accepted it, and before she went to bed she gave him what passed for a kiss on the cheek. A sort of lunge.
‘You’re not the worst, Fergus, even though you’re a bit of an eejit,’ she said, and her tones were those of love and praise, inasmuch as she could give either.
He lay awake for a long time and wondered about sheep’s eyes. What way did one sheep look at another that the world regarded as foolish?
Eddie Ryan asked Mr Williams the vicar if he could become a Protestant and be accepted into the Church of Ireland faith. Mr Williams listened to him gravely and said it was a very big step and perhaps he should think more about it, maybe even discuss it with his priest or his parents. Mr Williams was a kind man; never for a moment did he betray his knowledge of Eddie’s latest deed, which involved breaking the little shutter in the confessional, something that had never been done since the church was built and had hardly ever been done in Christendom according to Canon Moran and Father Hogan. Eddie explained that the church was empty at the time, and he wondered what it felt like to sit where the priest did, pushing the shutters back and forth to listen to the penitents. He got a bit excited and kept whizzing them to see which one would close quickest, and that was when one came away from its moorings entirely.
Jimbo Doyle had to be summoned, and it was all very serious and high level. Canon Moran said he couldn’t believe that the child would say the church was empty. Wasn’t our Blessed Lord in the church in the tabernacle, watching Eddie Ryan desecrate church property and disassemble the place where the holy sacrament of penance took place?
Father Hogan kept saying, ‘What Cromwell left undone Eddie Ryan will finish,’ and pretending to panic when he saw him coming near the church.
It would be easier for him to be a Protestant.
‘I have thought about it,’ he assured Mr Williams. ‘I’m dead certain. Would I need an admission card to start coming here on Sunday?’
‘Of course not, Eddie, but . . .’
‘And if there’s any questions, trouble like, you’ll tell them I asked to join. That it’s all above board. If they come hounding me?’
‘Who would come hounding you, Eddie?’
‘Almost everyone in the place, Mr Williams, you wouldn’t credit it. My mother said if she set eyes on me again today she wouldn’t be responsible for what she’d do. Sergeant Sheehan said he has a room in the barracks with a lock on it and he’s thinking of putting my name on it because it’s where I’ll end up. I couldn’t tell you what the priests are like, because we’re all meant to be . . . whatever it’s called these days, you know loving all other religions . . . so it wouldn’t do you any good to know what they’re like down at the presbytery just now.’
‘Life can be very difficult.’ Mr Williams was trying hard not to smile.
‘You wouldn’t know the half of it up here, with no flock so to speak of, and pots of money.’
The impoverished Mr Williams listened to this wryly.
‘I don’t have all that much, Eddie.’
‘I bet you have four pounds though,’ Eddie said.
‘Well I do, but I need it. I can’t give it to you, no matter how great your need.’
‘No, my need isn’t great. If I join your church I won’t have to pay it.’
‘How, exactly?’
‘I can say I’m a different faith, a different crowd altogether. I can’t be responsible for some sum of money they say I owe in the last faith. For repairs. I’d never make four pounds. Never.’
Mr Williams was very kind. He could see that Eddie Ryan was not trying to put a touch on him; the sum was too huge to be possible even for the wildly optimistic.
‘Why don’t you weed a few graves for me, Eddie, tidy up the graveyard? I could pay you say, five shillings. If you did a good job, then after several five-shilling days you could return to your old faith and pay your debts, and everyone would be happier.’
‘I thought you were supposed to be looking for converts, and snatching people away from the true faith.’
‘Oh no, we don’t do much snatching here, more patting people down; that’s what it seems to be about these days. Will I give you a sack for the grass and the weeds?’
Dara and Grace were in the graveyard looking after James Edward Gray. They had brought cowslips and primroses and had made an unsuccessful attempt to remove some of the moss and lichen from his stone with Vim. It had looked much better before their efforts, they realised. Maggie had been a bit funny about James Edward Gray, claiming that she found him and she was the one to look after him. Grace and Dara had agreed and gone to look for someone else who was pretty neglected. But Maggie had come after them in tears and said they could have James Edward Gray and keep him, she didn’t care. Then she had stormed off home. She had been a bit like that lately, maybe it was trouble at home.
Maggie’s elder sister Kitty was a bit bossy, and she had two sisters who were nursing in Wales. They could have lost their religion or not written home, or something. Mrs Daly was an awful one for doing the right thing and the trimmings on the Dalys’ rosary at night were as long as the rosary itself. Maggie must be getting some kind of trouble from her mother. That could be the only explanation of why she was so touchy these days.
Tommy Leonard came to collect Michael.
‘There’s no fish. What’s the point?’ Michael said.
‘There’s often no fish. As far as I’m concerned there’s nearly always no fish. What are you after, some kind of record catch?’
Tommy was indignant. He had spent half an hour explaining to his father why a boy of thirteen should be allowed to go and fish with his friend, and now Michael didn’t want to come.
‘It’s pointless, can’t see any reason to drag all that stuff miles up the bank and miles back,’ Michael said.
‘Lovely! When did this happen, this road to Damascus? Just when I was assuring my father that there was no better, healthier way of spending the afternoon.’
‘I don’t know,’ Michael said.
‘Listen, Michael, you are a pain, and a big pain. What is it? Why was fishing what we did yesterday, and suddenly today it’s what we don’t do? I don’t mind, I just want to know.’
Michael punched Tommy to show that there was no personal ill-will involved.
‘You know the way it is sometimes. There seems no point in anything. Anything at all,’ Michael said.
‘Do I know how it is? Of course I know how it is. I feel that way most of the time. But why today? Now I’ll have to go on my own or go back to the shop and say to my father he was right, I am a selfish pleasure-seeking lout . . .’
‘Oh all right, I’ll come with you.’
‘What about Dara and Grace and the others? Where are they? Did they all give up fishing too, suddenly? Did everybody except me?’ Tommy wondered.
‘Oh, who knows where they are? The Whites have gone to Dublin with their mother for the day; Dara and Grace are giggling somewhere, you can be sure of that.’
‘Where’s Maggie?’
‘I don’t know. I think she’s as browned off with all this giggling as we are. Come on then, Tommy, if we’re going to spend the day getting pneumonia for no fish, let’s go and catch it
.’
‘The sun is shining, you clown,’ Tommy said.
The sun had come out and Miss Hayes was planting some pansies that Kate Ryan had given her. Mrs Ryan was very good about all kinds of flowers and Miss Hayes had heard some disparaging remarks that Judy Byrne had made about the appearance of the gate lodge of the Grange. Miss Hayes was feeling personally slighted. She had called at Ryan’s merely for advice. Mrs Ryan had given her the pansies and got her a lift back too from a passing customer. It was too far to walk in the sun, she had said.
Olive Hayes watered them well in, just as she had been advised. She would make a macaroni cheese for the tea, that little Ryan girl was coming this evening. She and Grace O’Neill were very thick with each other. They never stopped talking and laughing. It would do your heart good to see them.
Grace and Dara left the graveyard hastily when they saw Eddie being instructed in the details of grave-tending.
‘It’s more than flesh and blood could bear, we’ll have to leave,’ Dara said as soon as she saw her small brother.
‘He’s not that bad,’ Grace laughed.
‘You don’t know how bad he is, he’ll probably dig up half the bodies in the graveyard. We’re well out of it before he gets at it.’
They scrambled to the wall where they had left their bicycles.
‘We’ll walk home through Coyne’s wood. That way we won’t get drawn into the fishing,’ Dara said.
‘Yes, sure. Or else we could just say that we’re not going fishing today.’ Everything was simple to Grace.
They wheeled their bikes through the woods which looked beautiful in the Easter sunshine. They heard pigeons and cuckoos, and small rabbits ran across their path as they walked.
‘It’s like fairyland here,’ Grace said happily.
‘Is your father glad he came?’ Dara asked.
‘Oh yes, of course he is. Why?’
‘He was in our pub the other night. I thought he looked kind of tired and upset.’
‘He gets upset over Kerry. Remember at Christmas I was telling you; and there’s been something on his mind at the moment. I don’t know what it is, he won’t tell me. That means it’s either about Kerry or about women.’
‘Women?’ Dara’s eyes were round.
‘Yes, women falling in love with him. You know, I told you yucky Marian Johnson has.’
‘Oh yes, but you wouldn’t mind that,’ Dara dismissed Marian.
‘And I think Miss Byrne, you know, the chiropractor.’
‘Physio.’
‘Yes, whatever. And there’s this woman in America.’ Grace looked troubled.
‘Lord, he does collect them,’ Dara said in mystification.
‘I know, he’s very old and everything, but he’s very nice,’ Grace said defensively. ‘And rich of course,’ she added, in order to be strictly fair.
‘Who’s the woman in America?’
‘A Mrs Fine.’
‘Do you think it’s serious? Isn’t she married to someone else, if she’s a missus?’
‘No, he’s dead or separated. There’s no Mister Fine around.’
‘Do you like her?’
‘She’s okay. I don’t want Father to marry anyone else. That’s all.’
‘I know, but maybe he’s not going to. Wouldn’t she be here or he be over there if they were getting married? After all they’re pretty old. They wouldn’t want to be wasting time.’
‘He calls her a lot. He called her twice on Christmas Day.’
‘Oh that means nothing. Mrs Whelan says people are always telephoning each other on Christmas Day and putting the heart across everyone else.’
‘I don’t know.’ Grace was doubtful. ‘I had this friend in the States, Brigid Anne Moriarty. Well, she told me that her mother said Father was going to marry again, that everybody knew it, that he had a lady friend he worked with, and that they were going to get married quietly in New York.’
‘How did Brigid Anne know all this, and you and Kerry didn’t?’
‘Who would tell us? Anyway I told Kerry this on the day of Mother’s funeral.’
‘You mean Brigid Anne knew your father had a lady friend before your mother died?’ Dara’s face was horrified.
‘But you see it wasn’t true; obviously it wasn’t. It was only a tale people told because Father was so well known amongst all these people, and because Mother was an invalid for so long.’
Grace looked wretched as she went over this. Impulsively Dara threw her arm around her friend’s shoulder.
‘Don’t worry about it, Grace, please. It’s not happened. It’s not going to happen. We can head off the awful Marians and awful Judys, and Mrs Fine can’t be any threat, otherwise she’d be here.’
‘Yes, I’m sure that’s right.’
‘So why are you still sad?’
‘Because I’m thinking about the day of the funeral and how upset Kerry was when I told him about what people were saying. But you’re right. It’s not going to happen: I won’t think about it any more.’
They came out of the wood and cycled to the lodge. Miss Hayes said that Mr O’Neill had been on the telephone to say he would not be back for tea. He had gone to Kerry’s school. The boys had spent some of the Easter holidays there to take part in the Easter vigil and church services. They were meant to be getting holidays in a week. But Kerry was coming back tonight.
All through their macaroni cheese they chattered excitedly about Kerry coming home. They cleared the table and washed the dishes with Miss Hayes. Dara marvelled at the peace and quiet in this house, no Carrie clattering pans in the kitchen, no bar on the other side of the green door, no Leopold howling, no Declan complaining that he was going to be the baby in this family until he was an old-age pensioner, no Eddie bringing some new doom and destruction down on them. No bustle. It must be lonely for Grace sometimes too, of course, so far from everyone.
They sat in Grace’s room, and Dara tried on all her clothes. The shoes were a little too small, which was a pity since Grace had so many she could have given Dara any amount without missing them.
‘Does your father ever fight with Michael?’ Grace said.
‘No, no he doesn’t.’
Grace sighed heavily. ‘No, I think it’s just my father and Kerry. It’s something in them that doesn’t mix.’
‘Of course Daddy gets very irate with Eddie, almost every day of our lives,’ Dara offered, in the hope of reassuring her friend.
‘Eddie’s different, as you said yourself.’
‘Yes,’ Dara agreed. ‘Eddie’s very different, nobody could mix with him.’
Dara cycled home and saw a man slipping into the Rosemarie hair salon, having looked up and down River Road nervously first. Could the unlikely rumour they had heard at school possibly be true? She must tell Grace tomorrow morning. She hoped Grace wouldn’t be lonely as she waited for Kerry and her father to come home.
Grace wished she had never told Kerry about that stupid thing that Brigid Anne had said, about the gossip that Father had some other lady in mind to marry. Obviously it hadn’t been true. It was nearly two years since Mother had died, and Father had no intention of marrying again. Father Devine had introduced him to several likely people, awful women from the parish, widows and terrible people. But Father used to laugh about them with her so Grace had no worries.
Kerry had a picture of Mother in his billfold, and also in the plastic folder at the back of his assignment book. Grace had seen him taking it out to look at it one day when he thought nobody was watching. And the picture of Mother that stood on the piano . . . Kerry was always adjusting it and making sure it stood right where it was best lit.
There was a portrait of Mother hanging in the hall. Mother had never liked it, she thought it made her look as if she had been dressed up to play the part of a fine lady. Father had laughed and told her that she was a fine lady. Kerry didn’t like that picture, he never stopped to look at it. Once Grace asked him why he didn’t like it, and he had said that Fathe
r had only dressed Mother up in jewellery and silks, and paid a society painter to do the portrait, to show what a big man he was. It had nothing to do with Mother herself.
Kerry had said that when things were his to do what he liked with, he would take the picture outside and burn it. Then Mother would know how well he had understood her. Kerry said some very odd things from time to time.
Grace wished she knew why her father had driven all the way up to his school to collect him. Perhaps it was a sign that Father was going to be warmer to Kerry, but somehow she didn’t think so.
Father Minehan was a fussy man. Anything that could be said directly and simply, he managed to dress up and obscure. Patrick had been fifteen minutes in the dean’s study and still didn’t know why he was being asked to take Kerry away. That very day.
‘So, when all aspects are considered, and taking everything into account, very often, the greater good is achieved by the simpler option,’ Father Minehan said.
Patrick looked at the priest with disgust. His blue eyes were hard and unsmiling.
‘Briefly, what did he do?’ he asked again, but his tone was more curt.
‘There are so many explanations and ways of looking at what we do and why we do it . . .’ Father Minehan was beginning again.
‘In two or three sentences, Father.’ Patrick had never been so ill-mannered to a man of the cloth. His old training made him feel a thrill of wrongdoing because he was interrupting a priest with a bark of command.
‘If it were as easy as that . . .’
‘It is as easy as that. I have driven for two hours to a school where I thought you were educating my son, a school to which I have given generous contributions I may add, and I hear, or think I hear that you want him to leave. Now. Why?’
Father Minehan was at a loss to answer a question so directly put. He remained silent.
‘Come on, Father, I can’t stay all week playing guessing games. What did he do?’
‘Let’s take it slowly, Mr O’Neill.’
‘Let’s take it at a nice brisk pace, Father Minehan. Did he bugger one of the other boys?’
‘Mr O’Neill, please!’