‘Is he hurt?’ Aisling said.
‘It’s only a cut, I’ve been cleaning it, it was the mirror, the corner got him over the eye.’
‘Not Tony, the child, the Coghlan boy?’
‘He’s all right, they shouldn’t give kids bicycles, you know, silly kids who can’t ride them. …’
‘They shouldn’t give cars to drunks, either, silly drunks who can’t drive them.’
Tony tried to stand up.
‘Take that back.’
‘I will not, it’s the truth.’
Shay said, ‘Aisling, for God’s sake, the man’s hurt, stop picking on him.’
‘I was not drunk. I’d been asleep in Shay’s, I had nothing to drink today.’
‘It’s only nine forty-five, Tony, I wouldn’t go round boasting about that.’
‘He was trying to get back for Christmas Day with you and his mother, quit attacking him.’
‘Just tell me what injuries the Coghlan boy got.’
‘His leg is … well, I don’t know if it’s broken, they were getting Doctor Murphy when we left. …’
‘You left? You didn’t wait to see how the boy was?’
‘Look here, get this straight. Tony did not hit the boy. You can look at the front of the car, there isn’t a scratch. He swerved and braked in order to avoid him.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Outside Coghlan’s.’
‘Coming up the hill?’
‘Of course coming up the hill.’
‘But Coghlan’s is on the right, if the boy was at his own gate he was on the right, why was Tony on that side of the road?’
‘The child was all over the road. …’
‘It’s me that should get compensation, look at the cut on me.’ Tony had got up to examine his face in the mirror.
‘Does he need any stitches do you think?’
‘Was the child cut?’
‘Only his hands and his forehead, grazes like kids get falling off a bike.’
‘We’d better go down and see if he’s all right.’
‘Don’t be silly, going back would be admitting liability, you know, the way people take up things.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘We explained to Dinny Coghlan, that the child had been staggering on the bicycle but that we’d not make a fuss about it since no one was too badly damaged.’
‘And what did Dinny Coghlan say?’
‘What could he say? He was pleased to see the sense of it.’
‘The sense of it being that he works in Murray’s.’
‘Ash, what have you that sneer on your face for?’
‘If you’d run over the child backwards and forwards you’d have made poor Dinny see the sense of something … if the boy’s leg is twisted I suppose he’ll see the sense of it for the rest of his life.’
‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, the boy’s all right and so is Tony.’
‘So as I said, Happy Christmas Shay. Are you off now?’
‘I’ve no car. I came up with Tony in his to see him home right.’
‘Yes, for a man who was stone cold sober, it was nice that his friend should escort him back.’ Aisling’s face was cold. I’ll drive you home Shay, no, no, it’s no trouble. I’ll take my car. Ma-in-Law, why don’t you and Tony go on up to your house and I’ll come back when I’ve dropped Shay at his place?’
There seemed to be no fault in these arrangements, even though they pleased nobody.
Shay smelt of drink as he got into the car beside her. Pointedly Aisling wound down the window.
‘You can be a cold, catty bitch,’ Shay said.
‘Yes.’ Aisling concentrated on the road.
‘He’s the best in the world, Tony, you shouldn’t be picking on him.’
‘No.’
‘Seriously. There’s no reason for you and me to fall out. He’s the best pal I ever had. I like him, you like him, why do we have to have all these barneys over nothing at all?’
‘I don’t know,’ Aisling said.
‘Well, you’re very mute, you’re singing very low compared to up at the house.’
‘Oh Christ God, you are a stupid man.’
‘No no no, for the New Year, now will we agree to differ and not be doing each other down, not fighting like enemies?’ He looked at her, his big face foolish in the hope that she was going to shake hands and make friends. That the Christmas Spirit was going to soften her.
She stopped the car. They were nearly at the Fergusons’ garage, where Shay lived with his father, his uncle and aunt. A big untidy house sprawling behind the garage as if nobody gave any heed or care to it.
‘Tony is an alcoholic. He is drinking himself to death. He had almost eight months on the dry. Things weren’t perfect but they were a hell of a lot better than they are now. He was lonely for the fun and crack with you. What kind of a friend were you to him then? Did you ever come up to the house when he asked you? Did you ever go out fishing with him, or taking a spin down to the sea during the summer?’
‘It’s not that easy to get off just at a moment’s notice.’
‘It’s always easy to get off for a drink. But not for the best pal you ever had. You couldn’t go for a bit of a walk with him.’
‘I’d have felt silly.’
‘He felt silly, he felt silly ordering red lemonade, or ginger beer. He felt silly in the long nights when he hadn’t got you and the lads. But nobody would come and feel silly with him. That’s friendship.’
‘Ah, Tony’s not an alcoholic. He takes a bit much, don’t we all? He’ll cut down on it, in the New Year, we all will. And lose a bit of weight at the same time, two birds with one stone.’
‘Great, Shay. Great.’
‘I mean it.’
‘I know you do.’
‘Pals then?’ He held out a big hand before he got out of the car.
She drove home up the hill past Dinny Coghlan’s house. Doctor Murphy’s car was still outside the gate.
Mrs Murray had let Kathleen, the maid, go home for Christmas. ‘In the old days we always had a girl, it’s going to be hard coping,’ she complained. But Aisling could see that she was pleased to have Tony to fuss over. All the hard bit, the long cleaning and chopping of vegetables, had been done by Aisling, and she had drawn the turkey and made the stuffing. She had got a plum pudding from Mam, one of the seven that had been made in the square, and she told Mrs Murray that it was her own making. The Christmas table was set for the three of them; Aisling had arranged crackers crossed at each place. She had sliced the bread very thinly and she had prepared half grapefruits expertly and put a glacé cherry on top of each.
‘It’s very festive,’ said Tony, nodding towards the table.
‘I suppose it is.’ She didn’t even look up. They sat opposite each other at Mrs Murray’s well-banked fire. From the kitchen they could hear the clatter of dishes and the busy happy hum of preparations. There would have been no heart in the feast without the Prodigal’s return.
Aisling couldn’t think of one thing she wanted to say to Tony. She was weary of the time-filling tactics. The delaying moves which would put off his first drink of the day. Let him take it, let him swallow it. All she could do anyway was put it off by half an hour. She didn’t want to talk any more about young Lionel Coghlan; if it was a boy old enough to have a bike it must be Lionel, Matty was too small. Her words with Shay Ferguson would soon get back to him anyway, changed, bent and slanted. No point in telling him of the conversation now.
And what point in recriminations, or investigation into the row in Hanrahan’s? None of it would do any good.
‘I got you a Christmas present, but I lost it,’ he said.
‘That’s all right, Tony,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter. I’ve said I’m sorry.’
‘Okay.’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw him stand up and move to the sideboard.
‘Well, seeing the day that’s in i
t,’ he said, and poured a quarter of a tumbler of whisky out. His mother came into the room at that moment. She saw the whisky and gave one alarmed glance in Aisling’s direction.
Aisling shrugged. ‘Are you right, Mother-in-Law, will we sit down to the festive board?’ She sat down and they said grace. And Aisling thought of all the Christmases she had had not a mile away from here. When the gathering around the table had been as exciting as the presents earlier in the morning, when everyone was in good humour and Dad would tell jokes, and Mam would say thank God to have had so many blessings during the year. She always said that – except the year Sean had been killed.
Two years ago it had felt funny not to be having Christmas with the family, but she had cooked for all the Murrays and it had been such a flurry she had hardly noticed the time come and go. Last year Tony had come in drunk at ten p.m. and slept in the chair all night. He had been bad-tempered at his mother’s lunch, but at least Father John and Joannie were there to share the burden.
This is the way it’s going to be from now on. John won’t come home. Joannie won’t come back.
This is Christmas.
She smiled up at her mother-in-law and said that the turkey smelt smashing out in the kitchen; she was trying to finish her silly grapefruit so that they could carve it. And she held out her Waterford goblet while Tony filled it with wine.
Eileen said that they had a lot of blessings to thank the Lord for during the year. She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking to herself of the blessing that she alone knew. The fear that had been groundless. She thought of Sean and the shop. He had resigned himself to Eamonn now. He didn’t come home with his forehead bulging over some small confrontation. She thought of Maureen, who had been there this morning with the four children, the baby looking like a Christmas card with all his white fluffy wrappings, and Brendan Og turning into a lovely little boy. Eamonn was Eamonn, neither more nor less; at least the year had passed without his leaving the shop or abusing his father in public. Aisling, well she had her hands full with that Tony – and maybe she was exaggerating about the other business. Maybe she only meant that she hadn’t had any pleasure from sex – that would be a normal thing to happen. And Donal, God bless him, didn’t he look better this Christmas than any gone before? A grown-up man of twenty-two with a career and, as far as she could see, a girlfriend. It was Anna this and Anna that. And then Niamh, as pretty as Aisling without the striking hair, ten times more confident than Aisling at that age, happy as Larry now that she had her Tim back again. And she always included Elizabeth in her children; ten pages of a letter saying how happy she was and how their flat was like a little palace and it would always be a home for Uncle Sean and Aunt Eileen to visit though she could never make them a home as great as she had been given in Kilgarret. Wasn’t it a wonder that Violet’s child had turned out to be a closer friend than Violet had ever been?
Eileen thanked God for the blessings of the year.
They listened to the wireless after the meal, sitting around the fire eating the Christmas boxes of chocolates, some listening to the variety show, some doing the quiz in the paper.
Eileen dropped off now and then, after the big meal the heat of the room made her sleepy. Sean slept too, until the children laughed at him, with his glasses on, the paper clenched firmly in his hands and his mouth open giving loud snores.
‘What’s Christmas,’ he said crossly, ‘without a bit of a sleep?’
Mrs Murray’s eyes closed too. Aisling slipped out to the kitchen and did the washing-up. She set a tea tray too and cut some of the Christmas cake. Mrs Murray was going to send squares of it to Father John and to Joannie.
Could it be still only five o’clock? It felt like ten. She came in quietly, it was too soon to wake Mrs Murray. Let the woman sleep, she didn’t sleep much last night. Tony can’t have slept much either, in Fergusons’. His mouth was open, and he lay out in the chair by the fire. Aisling sat between them and looked at the flames making pictures and houses and palaces as she used to do when she was a child. A log fell out. It woke Tony. He reached out and poured himself a quarter glass of whisky. ‘What’s Christmas without a little drink?’ he said.
Mrs Murray thought the clock must be wrong; how could she have slept all that time? Heavens, she must do the washing-up, oh dear, weren’t they a marvellous pair, to do that, they shouldn’t have. No, really, they shouldn’t have done it.
A cup of tea was always nice after a big meal, the cake was moist, wasn’t it? Was it as good as last year? It was hard to remember last year’s but she thought this one was a bit dryer. Maybe not.
Tony was restless; he said he would prefer to spend the night in his own bed. ‘I’d like to go back to the bungalow, Ash,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to the races tomorrow I’ll have to have a good sleep. I like to be in my own bed, my own room.’
His mother looked stricken. ‘But that is your own room, your own bed, Tony, for years and years. If you can’t sleep here where can you sleep?’
Aisling said nothing.
‘Come on, Ash, you explain to her, I don’t sleep well, I get headaches.’
‘Not one night under your mother’s roof.’ Mrs Murray was becoming tremulous. ‘You were the Lord knows where last night, and now tonight you won’t even. …’
‘I was not the Lord knows where, I was you know where, Ash knows where, I was with the Fergusons. God all-bloody-mighty will you stop making it a mystery, as if I was in Mongolia? I sensibly didn’t drive home when I had a couple too many. Aren’t you always asking me to do that? Well, aren’t you?’ He looked more upset than Aisling had ever seen him.
‘Maybe tonight Tony’s right in a way, Mother-in-Law, that we should go back and sort ourselves out. Listen I’ll be up tomorrow to see you and thank you for a marvellous day. That was a feast, a feast is the only word for it. Wasn’t it Tony?’
‘Very good, grand, grand,’ Tony muttered.
‘So we’ll be off. It was a great Christmas, Mother,’ she said, kissing the thin, tense face.
Mrs Murray squeezed Aisling’s hand.
‘Well, if you think … I don’t know, rear a family and still it’s a lonely day.’
‘Well, they were fools not to be here for that spread, going to their monasteries and their house parties. Wait till I tell them what they missed.’
They waved goodbye and drove in silence through the dark wet countryside. One way back would pass the Coghlans’ cottage. Aisling decided not to take it. Tony’s face was set and hard.
The bungalow was cold and dark. She plugged in an electric fire and started to clear up some of the blood-stained table napkins which had been used by Shay for dabbing the wound.
‘Will I light a fire?’ she asked.
‘What for?’ he said.
‘It might be cheery, were you going to sit down? For the evening like?’
‘Ash will you stop interrogating me? It’s like living with a prison warder. Do I ask you all the time where you’re going, what you’re doing?’
‘I only asked you. …’
‘You only asked, you only asked. … I can’t bear this constant asking. I’m going out.’
‘But where on earth are you going? Listen, Tony, there’s drink here, plenty of it. Invite who you want in. Don’t go out on Christmas night, please. There’s nowhere open.’
‘There’s friends with houses open, friends who won’t nag, nag, question, question.’
‘Listen, Shay’s not at home, you know he said they were going up to Dublin tonight, you’re going to meet him at the races tomorrow. Won’t that do?’
Tony had his coat on.
‘Look, your eye has that terrible scab on it, if you knock it against anything it will open up and bleed, will you not have sense? I’ll light a fire and we’ll have a bottle of brandy. We’ll sit by the fire like the old times.’
‘What old times?’
‘When we got married first. It’s only a waste going out.’
‘I won’t be late, I
’ll be back tonight.’
‘But where …?’
Aisling went to bed eventually. It was cold, despite the electric fire. She wore a cardigan over her nightdress. She slipped into the small divan and took a book she had loved as a child, The Turf Cutter’s Donkey by Patricia Lynch. She read it slowly, like she and Elizabeth had done; she remembered explaining the bits that Elizabeth didn’t understand about cutting turf in the bogs. She thought of Elizabeth and Henry and their nice flat in London and Mr White going to stay with them. She remembered the way Henry had looked at Elizabeth during the wedding reception. Tony had never looked at her like that. Why had he wanted to marry her? Or anyone? Had his drinking pattern been started then, only she just didn’t see it? Why had she thought that he loved her? She had never thought that she loved him. Not like people love in books. Not like Elizabeth had loved Johnny, or even how Niamh was crazy about this medical student. She had never felt that for Tony. Maybe this was the punishment for marrying someone you didn’t love. But how the hell were you supposed to know in Kilgarret what was love and what wasn’t?
‘I must have been mad to marry him. Quite, quite mad,’ she said aloud. And somehow when she had said it, she felt a bit better. At least the situation had been defined. Aisling O’Connor married Tony Murray because she was quite mad.
Eileen was surprised that Aisling didn’t go to Leopardstown to the races.
‘You used to love going up there on St Stephen’s Day,’ she said, when Aisling came in to pick at bits of the cold turkey around lunchtime. ‘Leave that alone, there’ll be no lunch if you keep taking the best bits.’
‘I didn’t feel like it, Tony thinks I’m eyeing him and watching him … which I am, I suppose. He keeps saying “It’s only my second”, when it’s his seventh. I only annoy him and everyone else.’
‘But shouldn’t you be with him? Maureen told me she saw him this morning and he had a terrible cut on his eye. I’m not repeating things, now, to make trouble, it’s just because you brought the subject up.’
‘He braked hard in the car yesterday morning, just avoided killing young Lionel Coghlan, from what I can understand. The child was on a new bike. Lionel has bruises and two cracked ribs, Tony has a cut on his eyebrow which probably needs attention but he won’t go near a doctor or a hospital.’