Because time is an unfathomable thing I can\u2019t tell you how long I\u2019ve been here, basting in shame, under the mother\u2019s eaves for eight or maybe ten days? I am six or seven again and beholding to her. I know not to give cheek nor answer back.<\/p>\n
Monday to Thursday it\u2019s the dry end of a pork chop, a spoon of mushy peas and six or eight lukewarm oven chips on a faded plate in the left hand, a mug of milk in the other. The knife and fork, thin from the dent of wear, come in the cardigan pocket. She leaves the lot on the sideboard. It\u2019s mince and carrots with watery gravy on Fridays.<\/p>\n
A woman collects her pension, half-fills a string bag in Londis, that a jolly fucker, the mighty Mister Meehan,<\/i> she calls him, a retired public servant, delivers every Monday. On the cushy pension, the charity ringleader leaves the silver Passat ticking over at the front and knock- knocks himself in the back door, through the scullery, singing come down the mountain Katie Daly. <\/i>That\u2019s her name.<\/p>\n
She gets four chops, a few ounces of minced beef, six carrots, two tins of marrowfat peas, Lyon\u2019s tea, half a pound of Kerrygold butter, half a Brennan\u2019s loaf and four slices of Carroll\u2019s crumbled ham. She can\u2019t change the order. That would give the game away. A do-gooder widow brings the Tribune on Thursdays and a young lad from Statoil keeps the basket filled with briquettes. A nun-wannabe brings the newsletter and the host after mass. The Curate comes on first Fridays.<\/p>\n
\u2018A refugee, on me solemn oath, that\u2019s what you\u2019re like,\u2019 she said, just as I was thinking the same about her; housebound, Quasimodo, the pegs fucked, the breathing dodgy.<\/p>\n
\u2018But unlike you a mockeen, I want for nothing. Haven\u2019t I the pension, the heat, the groceries delivered, the Blessed Sacrament and the few pounds put aside for me funeral? What more would I want?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Can you not straighten up?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s the back and the bleddy arthritis, the ticker\u2019s not great either they tell me, wear and tear sure, the pipes are clogged, I take the pills when I think of them but the pills are a bad job, sure as long as I can feed and dress meself and potter around from here to the dresser and down to the room there, and will ya look at that dresser, will ya?\u2019<\/p>\n
She half-straightens and jerks the walking stick out from the right knee. I know the head wrecking shit that\u2019s coming, heard it a thousand times.<\/p>\n
\u2018He made it while I was carrying you, the crathur bocht<\/i>, cut the timbers, sawed, planed and sanded them abroad there in the shed, after a hard day\u2019s labour below at the Mill. He was never out of work, your father, never, and never beholding or owing a penny to anyone, and look at them lovely brass handles, isn\u2019t it nicer they\u2019re getting with the age, after fifty years?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Forty eight,\u2019 I say.<\/p>\n
\u2018No differ now.\u2019<\/p>\n
She aims the remote control. There\u2019s a cat-mad Mayo woman on Nationwide<\/i>. She turns down the volume for the commercials but stays watching. Not to have to look at me, I suppose.<\/p>\n
\u2018And she\u2019s gone, is she?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018She is.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I said it, didn\u2019t I, didn\u2019t I say it?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018You weren\u2019t the only one.\u2019<\/p>\n
We\u2019re talking now about the woman I shacked up with ten years ago, whatever misfortune was on me. She called her a second hand yoke, not to her face but under her breath, to me, that one time I brought her here. I came on my own after that, a few times a year and on Christmas Eve, which I know in all fairness wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say the bank took the house or that the second hand yoke had cleaned out the current account and drove the credit cards to the limit before shagging off to the Algarve with a chippie. I told her there might be lads looking for me.<\/p>\n
\u2018What? Are you in the IRA or at the drugs or what?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018A bit a property is all and a few block layers I couldn\u2019t pay before the Christmas.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Property he says.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I could do with a bed for a few nights,\u2019 I said to the floor.<\/p>\n
\u2018Property me arse, some use it is to you now, coming here to me with your scutterin\u2019 tail between your legs. The parlour will have to do, your own room wasn\u2019t aired in years and the back room is full of your father\u2019s stuff.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018What stuff?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The few chisels, hammers and the level, whatever he had left on the bench before he took bad like, you weren\u2019t around much then.\u2019<\/p>\n
The parlour smells of sealed up doors, dry rot and old soot. It\u2019s meanly decorated. I look along the faded pleats that fall down to puckered hems on the pelmetted velvet drapes. Brown and beige chevron, ugly as fuck and brown-gold wallpaper borders that damp-peel away from condensated corners. Memorial cards and church newsletters stand up between forgotten yellowed glassware.<\/p>\n
An altar insinuates itself on a shelf where pink and green plastic roses sprout out of the dust in a mock-crystal cruet. It\u2019s flanked by a crucifix and a photo globe from Knock shrine. White beads are strewn around a china blue Virgin Mary. She looks imploringly at the flies in the fluorescent tube that runs east-west along the stippled, smoky ceiling.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s black fur on the bathroom window and brown rust spots on the mirror. Her teeth are in the cheap cabinet, four tubes of Steredent, a few combs, rusted nail scissors stuck to the shelf, a disinfectant, Ponds cold cream and bars of Imperial Leather soap. I\u2019m trying to read the label on the Lipitor tablets when I hear her talking to the cat. Isn\u2019t that mental? Talking to a cat? And you should see him, pitch black, a bad-minded looking yoke. Is there anything as dark as the inside of a black cat I wonder?<\/p>\n
She softens biscuits in tea and slurps the lot up through thin bare gums. The black fur thing sits on the arm of her chair, the head rigid and ears twitchy, speckly grey marbles focus on me.<\/p>\n
\u2018Isn\u2019t that right Finn, aren\u2019t you the best puddy-duddy kitty in the whole wide world?\u2019<\/p>\n
She tickles him with twisted fingers. He pulls a neck out.<\/p>\n
\u2018How do they know you\u2019re here?\u2019 she asks, leaving the cup on the range, a dribble sizzles on the cast iron. She takes him into the hollow of her skirt and turns him over.<\/p>\n
\u2018Ah, it\u2019s a long story.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018We\u2019ve plenty time, we\u2019re going nowhere, isn\u2019t that right little Finn my best kitty?\u2019<\/p>\n
I see the tongs in the basket. I want to creel him, split his head open, separate the marbles by a distance, lamp the fucker, but she\u2019s saying, \u2018well, well, well,\u2019 waiting for an answer, rubbing the length of him.<\/p>\n
\u2018I sorta ran outa diesel.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Oh.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s a long story, I…\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Ran out of spondooliks did you? How did you get here then?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I got the bus.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018You got the bus?\u2019<\/p>\n
She does a pretend hysteric laugh, kneading him, me squirming, my throat restricting at the toothless grimace, the \u2018ha ha-ing\u2019 from lips stretched to the limit, the white haired bun on top of the small minded head, the feet tapping.<\/p>\n
I said I was being followed. She said the Lord between us and all harm, thanks be to the good Jesus your father isn\u2019t around to see this, blessed herself, head jerked me out of the room and turned the volume up.<\/p>\n
I knew they\u2019d see the jeep. You couldn\u2019t miss it. They\u2019d ask the quarehawk behind the counter where I went. That encounter with him was the limit, but in an odd sorta way, the face to face humiliation was a relief, upfront shame like, compared to the registered letters I couldn\u2019t open or the threatening phone calls I dodged. I left at least three mobiles in the jeep, flung there on the dash. They can ring away now.<\/p>\n
The fuel light was flashing since Aughrim and that thirsty bitch had no reserve, ten miles maybe, and me not knowing which direction to go. I nearly went into the church, nearly, but then I saw the auld lad bringing in the dog food, the bags of turf and kindling, getting ready to close. I filled her up.<\/p>\n
\u2018Them auld plastic yokes would let you down like a ton a bricks. Would you have another one we could try for the crack?\u2019 He threw the denied cards across the counter, one at a time, like a card dealer.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019ll call back tomorrow,\u2019 I said, shuffling in pockets, took out a few coins and the keys.<\/p>\n
\u2018You will in your hole call back tomorrow. I have the measure of you me bucko, now or never, as the song goes.\u2019 He cupped my keys in his palm, slid them crotch-wards, then to the left and into the drawer of the cash register.<\/p>\n
\u2018What the fuck?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Manners if you please?\u2019<\/p>\n
He gun-shaped the index finger and thumb.<\/p>\n
\u2018I know your type, got caught before with wan of ye, but only the wance, do you get me?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I swear I\u2019ll be back with the money.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Swear me arse. That\u2019s only shitehawkin talk.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Listen…\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Listen, nothing, I see the tax and insurance are out, but we\u2019ll say nothing about that.\u2019<\/p>\n
He took out a mobile.<\/p>\n
\u2018See that number, that\u2019s the brother-in-law, Quinlan, the Sergeant beyond in Gort, did you ever hear tell of him?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I have to go into Loughrea. . .\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Bus \u00c9ireann, your only man and there\u2019ll be one passing there in ten minutes.\u2019<\/p>\n
She came into the parlour, quiet as a sick child and sweaty, the hair loose, shone the torch on me, said something about a reel in her head. I said to drink water. I woke up to the screeching siren of the bastard of a cat, shrieking into the molasses darkness of the hallway outside the closed parlour door.<\/p>\n
A broken statue of a fucked up ballerina – that was the first thing that came into my head when I saw her, flung there on the floor; an upturned chair, a plastic bottle of holy water and the prayer book beside her. The right leg, half-bent, like it wanted to kneel, the left one stretched out.<\/p>\n
Her forehead was left fair and square on a brown tile. The right arm behind her back, like she was bowing to an audience, me at the kitchen table, looking down for ages, didn\u2019t touch her, no need. Fucking marble-eyes wouldn\u2019t shut up, circling her, whingeing, licking the empty saucer and looking around me.<\/p>\n
I smell talcum powder in her room, lily of the valley, moth balls, the whiff of old skin from the peeled back pink eiderdown, the light track of her on the striped flannel sheet, a bible on the locker, the wardrobe door locked. Two taps of the father\u2019s obliging chisel and out she pops. On the top shelf, his cap and pipe, a pouch of Condor tobacco, a black patent handbag with the deeds of the house and a wad of funeral money, just shy of four thousand euro, fair fucking play to her.<\/p>\n
I could get the bus to Dublin, the boat to Holyhead, make a fresh start, it\u2019s now or never as the song goes. Sure how could I go to her funeral? Wouldn\u2019t they hear the death notice on the radio? They could nab me at the rails or after the burial. I couldn\u2019t chance it.<\/p>\n
But what about the bastard of a cat, would he eat her?<\/p>\n
He\u2019s on top of the dresser, balled up near a rust coloured plastic pot, dodging me between leaves the father carved, after a hard day below at the Mill. I fill the sink to baptise him. I get the sweeping brush, no good; throw the tongs and a briquette after it, a dry geranium ball hits the floor, musty clay makes an ant line that stops at her head. A burst flower cluster spills red confetti into dead white hair.<\/p>\n
\u2018Come down here you black bastard, come down now and face the music.\u2019<\/p>\n
The scullery door opens. Oh can\u2019t you hear me calling Katie Daly<\/i>.<\/p>\n
I could walk out the front door and hop into the Volkswagen.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Mighty Mister Meehan, the very man, the most charitable man in the parish of Clonfert and by a long shot. Now, Mister Meehan, could I interest you in a cat at all, a black lad, the nicest cateen in the whole of Ireland? Isn\u2019t that right Finn? Come down here now til the nice man gets a look at ya…\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Because time is an unfathomable thing I can\u2019t tell you how long I\u2019ve been here, basting in shame, under the mother\u2019s eaves for eight or maybe ten days? I am six or seven again and beholding to her. I know not to give cheek nor answer back. Monday to Thursday it\u2019s the dry end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":4701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[321,320],"tags":[324],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n