‘Agh, that’s better.’
He rests the glass on his thigh with one hand and makes a gap in the blind with the other. The weather has turned, and there’s a light drizzle over the lamp heads. A few souls hurry by in the yellow light of the wet street. He releases the blind and sits back. His father had never said it out straight to him, but he always knew when Con had been snooping about. He’d say, ‘There must be a very large mouse in my shop because this looks remarkably crooked to me,’ holding out a roll of cloth to one of his pals, or, ‘They’re some people around here who have no worries about the cost of things to those that feed them,’ or, when they were alone and he had a few drinks, he’d call him a useless robbing thief just like his trollop of a mother. But still he’d never accuse him directly. That would be to admit to the other thing. Con takes a drink from the glass.
The thing in the back room stopped just after Con’s thirteenth birthday. Father Murphy from Henrietta Street called one day and asked his father to teach tailoring to disadvantaged boys twice a week. On those days, Con took a half day from school to look after the shop. There wasn’t much time for sums. By seventeen, he was more or less keeping the place going although his father always began each new suit which Con would then take over, with his father stepping in again at the last to check his work and complete the finishing touches. And it was his father who mostly dealt with the customers, right up to when he got too sick. Sometimes, the two of them would eat together in the small kitchen his father had built onto the rear. Con would make a pot of tea and lay out ham salad sandwiches from Byrne’s Grocers across the way. There’d be a bit of chat about the world outside – the latest GAA scores, Bank of Ireland’s new Prize Bonds, Dev’s return to power – but mostly they carried on in difficult silence.
First it was the heart, then the liver. In his final year, his father could do nothing for himself. The doctor occasionally called around, a community nurse once a month, but mostly Con nursed him through days and nights of feeding, medicine, bedpans, washing, changing. And Con watched as the strength of the man deserted the still broad body first and only towards the end the mind. Once, as he was fixing him up in bed, his father grabbed his wrist and looked at him straight. It had been years since he had met those grey eyes. Con pulled his arm away.
The business was in trouble by then. His father ranted to his priest friends about the ‘hood-nosed foreigners in Clanbrassil Street sweating him out of it with their cheap suits’. But Con knew times were changing – Nancy Murphy’s best friend’s boyfriend who worked in the Bank told her it was no longer the thing to have your suits made when you could buy them off the hanger in one of those fancy new shops on Henry Street. In that last year of his father’s life, Con had half-baked notions of selling up and finding work as a bookkeeper. He would have liked that – left alone with his numbers where no one would bother him much. But when it came to it, he could never bring himself to let go of the place, to allow it to become someone else’s. Too much had happened here.
Con’s glass is empty. He gets up and walks to the counter where he has left the bottle of Jameson. The shears are once more cold in his hand when he picks them up. Back in the chair with his glass full, Con runs his thumb gently down the blade edge. Still sharp. His eyes are heavy now. Tomorrow, he thinks. The day after tomorrow. The day after that. He finishes the whiskey and puts the glass down beside the leg of the chair. His head drops, lifts, drops. The shears fall from his lap and slide onto the floor.
Notes on the Authors
KEVIN BARRY is the author of the story collection There Are Little Kingdoms, which won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and the novel City of Bohane. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Best European Fiction, Phoenix Best Irish Stories and many other journals. He also writes plays and screenplays. He lives in County Sligo.
DERMOT BOLGER is a novelist, poet and publisher, whose ten novels include The Family on Paradise Pier (the story in this anthology is based on the later life of its central character), The Journey Home, The Woman’s Daughter and A Second Life. His plays include The Parting Glass (2010) and his recently published Ballymun Trilogy.
AIFRIC CAMPBELL is the author of two novels, The Semantics of Murder and The Loss Adjustor. She was born in Dublin, studied in Sweden and now lives in the UK. Her forthcoming novel, Dead Cat Bounce, is inspired by her former career in investment banking.
EMMA DONOGHUE was born in Dublin. Her books include the novels Stir Fry, Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter and Room, which was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize and became an international best-seller. She has also written literary history and has edited collections of fiction. She lives in Canada with her family.
GERARD DONOVAN’s novels are Schopenhauer’s Telescope (2003), winner of the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, Doctor Salt (2004) and Julius Winsome (2006). A story collection, Country of the Grand, followed in 2008. He is a lecturer at the University of Plymouth in Devon, England. ‘Festus’ is from a novel-in-progress.
RODDY DOYLE is the author of nine novels, including The Commitments, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, which won the Booker Prize, and The Dead Republic. He has written several books for children as well as pieces for stage, screen and television. His most recent book is Bullfighting, a collection of stories.
CHRISTINE DWYER HICKEY has published five novels, the latest of which is Last Train from Liguria. She has twice won the Listowel Writers’ Week short-story competition and has also been a winner in the Observer/Penguin competition. Her stories have appeared in numerous anthologies. Her first collection is due to be published in 2011.
RICHARD FORD was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1944, of Irish grandparents (Gibsons, Parkers and Carrolls), who emigrated from County Cavan to America in the 1890s. His fiction includes the novels A Piece of My Heart, The Ultimate Good Luck, The Sportswriter and Independence Day and three collections of stories: Rock Springs, Women With Men and A Multitude of Sins. He is Adjunct Professor at the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College, Dublin.
ÓRFHLAITH FOYLE was born in Nigeria to Irish parents and is currently based in Galway. Her first novel, Belios, and a collection of her short fiction and poetry, Revenge, were both published in 2005. Her first full collection, Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma, was published in 2009. She is working on her second novel.
ANTHONY GLAVIN is the author of Nighthawk Alley, a novel, and two short-story collections, One for Sorrow and The Draughtsman and the Unicorn. He served as editor of ‘New Irish Writing’ in the Irish Press from 1986 to 1988 and is a commissioning editor for New Island Books.
JULIA KELLY’S debut novel With My Lazy Eye won the Newcomer of the Year Award at the 2008 Irish Book Awards. She lives in Bray, County Wicklow, where she is completing her second novel.
COLUM MCCANN is the author of two collections of short stories and five novels, including Dancer and Zoli and the 2009 US National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin. He lives in New York with his wife and three children and teaches in the Hunter College MFA programme.
VIV MCDADE was born in Belfast, grew up in Africa and now lives in Dublin. She is an English literature and psychology graduate, with an M.Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. She has worked in education and commerce. Her stories have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies and have been read on radio.
BELINDA MCKEON was born in County Longford in 1979. She is an arts journalist with the Irish Times and also a playwright. Her debut novel, Solace, will be published in 2011.
EOIN MCNAMEE was born in County Down. His first book, The Last of Deeds, was shortlisted for the 1989 Irish Times/Aer Lingus Award. He was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship of the Irish Arts Council in 1990. Resurrection Man (1994) was adapted by Eoin for film, while The Blue Tango was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Eoin’s other novels include The Ultras and 12:23. His latest novel, Orchid Blue, was published in 2010.
REBECCA MILLER is the author of the short-story collection Personal Velocity, the novel The P
rivate Lives of Pippa Lee, and the films Personal Velocity, Angela and The Ballad of Jack and Rose. She is working on a novel.
MARY MORRISSY is the author of a collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye, and two novels, Mother of Pearl and The Pretender. She has been a Lannan Literary Award winner, and her novels have been shortlisted for the Whitbread (now Costa) Award and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. She is currently at work on a second collection of stories.
PETER MURPHY’s first novel John the Revelator was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Book Awards. He is a member of the spoken-word/music ensemble the Revelator Orchestra, whose debut album The Sounds of John the Revelator has been described as ‘a neat piece of work that somehow combines the weirdness of Poe with the coolness of the Beats over a soundtrack that might’ve been created by the Velvet Underground … if they’d had Irish accents.’
PHILIP O’CEALLAIGH’s collections, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse (2006) and The Pleasant Light of Day (2009), were shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. He edited Sharp Sticks, Driven Nails (2010) and has been a recipient of the Rooney Prize. His screenplay adaptation of his story, A Very Unsettled Summer, is to be filmed.
JOSEPH O’NEILL was born in Cork in 1964, grew up in the Netherlands and lives in New York City. He is the author of three novels, most recently Netherland, which received the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and of a family history, Blood-Dark Track.
GLENN PATTERSON is from Belfast. He is the author of seven novels and two works of non-fiction. A new novel, The Mill for Grinding Old People Young, will be published soon. Among his awards have been the Rooney Prize and the Betty Trask Award.
ANGELA POWER was born near Killeagh, County Cork, and lives in Dublin. Her work, until now, has only been read by family, close friends and the People’s College Creative Writing class of 2009–10. ‘Five Entries from a Fictional Diary’, part of a work in progress, is written through the voice of a newly married woman whose first husband was killed in the Second World War and who has returned from London to live in the rural Ireland of the 1940s.
KEVIN POWER was born in Dublin in 1981. He is the recipient of a Hennessy Award for Emerging Fiction and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 2009. His first novel, Bad Day in Blackrock, is published by Pocket Books.
COLM TÓIBÍN was born in County Wexford in 1955. He is the author of six novels, including The Master and Brooklyn, and two collections of stories, Mothers and Sons and The Empty Family. He is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University.
WILLIAM TREVOR was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928. He has won the Whitbread Prize three times and the Hawthornden Award once and has been nominated five times for the Booker Prize, most recently for his novel Love and Summer (2009). His Collected Stories, volumes 1 and 2, were published in 2009.
ELAINE WALSH was born in Carlow and is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. She lives in Dublin, where she works as a lawyer. She began writing short stories after attending a creative-writing workshop with Claire Keegan. This is her first published work of fiction. She is currently working on new short stories.
About the Author
Joseph O’Connor’s books include a collection of short stories, True Believers, and the novels Cowboys and Indians, Star of the Sea, and Redemption Falls. In 2009 he was Harman Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Baruch College, City University of New York. His most recent novel Ghost Light was chosen as Dublin’s ‘One City One Book’ novel for 2011.
Also available from Faber
THE FABER BOOK OF BEST NEW IRISH SHORT STORIES 2004–5
THE FABER BOOK OF BEST NEW IRISH SHORT STORIES 2006–7
Copyright
First published in 2011
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
This anthology © Joseph O’Connor, 2011
All the stories are printed here for the first time © 2011 in the names of the individual authors
The right of Joseph O’Connor to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–25528–3
Joseph O'Connor, New Irish Short Stories
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