Rainsongs Page 12

  Well I’m not a poet, or even a writer, Colm. But I am a teacher and love reading. So if you think it might be any help I’d be happy to take a look at your poems.

  His thanks are noncommittal as he picks up his woollen hat, pulls it down over his ears and drains the dregs of his whiskey before making to leave.

  Has she embarrassed him? Why on earth did she say that? Hasn’t she enough to contend with? His cheeks are dark with stubble. He can’t have shaved for days.

  I’ll be off then, he says. It’s pretty mucky out there. I’ll drop by with that bag of coal tomorrow. If you’re not here I’ll leave it on the step.

  Friday

  1

  Her chest is tight as a drum. Her nose blocked. Everything aches, her head, her back, and her limbs. She’d intended to finish sorting Brendan’s study but feels too weak. This isn’t the time or place to get flu. Outside it’s blowing a gale. She goes to the bathroom to look for something to take. There’s a half bottle of Listerine, a packet of old razors and a rusty can of shaving foam in the cupboard. She finds some out-of-date aspirin and dissolves three in a tumbler of water, then gargles. There’s also a half-empty pot of Vicks. She scrapes out the remains of the sticky menthol salve with a teaspoon, puts it in a bowl and covers it with boiling water, then sits down at the kitchen table with a tea-towel over her head and inhales. She can feel the steamy eucalyptus penetrating her blocked tubes and congested nasal passages. She’s always been prone to chesty colds ever since she was a child when her mother insisted on inhalations of foul-smelling Friars’ Balsam and a Wright’s Coal Tar burner in the bedroom. Sickness has always been associated with these smells. She was off school for weeks, wheezing and coughing. She got behind and missed nearly all of Macbeth. In the end her mother had to call out Dr Simpson who came with his black bag and cold stethoscope, which he placed against her rattling little chest.

  She searches for a hot water bottle and then drags herself back to bed with a cup of tea. It’s too wet to go out, though she only has a tin of sardines and a can of tomato soup in the cupboard. Still, she’s not hungry. The only thing she wants to do is sleep but just as she’s dozing off there’s a knock at the door. Irritated she reaches for her fleece, half expecting it to be Eugene again about her field. But it’s Colm with the coal.

  Looks as though I’ve come at a bad time. Was just passing so thought I’d stop by with this, he says, dropping the heavy bag. You don’t look too grand if you don’t mind me saying so.

  No, I’m not too bright. In fact, I feel pretty awful. I can’t seem to get warm. I think I must have the flu. Not really very convenient up here.

  Do you have anything for it? A hot toddy, whiskey with honey and lemon, that usually does the trick.

  I did take some rather out-of-date aspirin I found in the cupboard. But there’s no whiskey left. I think we drank the last drop the other night and I certainly don’t have honey and lemon. It’s not quite the land of plenty up here, she says, trying to make light but ending up spluttering.

  Well I’ve a couple more things to do. Some deliveries to make and then I’m off down to Caherciveen. I’m going anyway, so it’ll be no bother to get you a drop of the hard stuff and some honey and lemon. Even if it doesn’t make you any better it’ll cheer you up. Is there anything else you need while I’m in there?

  She’s asleep when he lets himself in. Suddenly he’s standing at the end of her bed with a mug of hot whiskey.

  How you feeling? Get this down you and you’ll be grand in no time.

  She must look dreadful with her lank hair and red nose as she hauls herself from under the duvet. It feels odd having him in her bedroom. Not because he’s a young man and she hardly knows him but because her sleeping loft, with its tiny window, is so small. There’s just enough room for a double bed under the eaves, a chair, and a small chest of drawers. Colm’s big hands and feet fill the space like a giant’s in a Wendy house.

  It’s kind of you to take pity on me but there’s really no need, she says sitting up and taking the mug.

  Sure there’s no need, I know that. But I’m devious, Martha. You see there’s always a price, he grins a snag-toothed smile.

  And what might that be? she asks, blowing her nose into a balled Kleenex.

  Well you may have forgotten, Martha, but I haven’t. And you may not have meant it but I took you as being a woman of your word. I’d like you to look at my poems. I know you heard me sing the other night. Well that’s all fine and dandy like, and I love the craic, but my real work, well that’s my poetry. I really regret that I didn’t show my poems to Brendan. He was a good guy your husband. I learnt a lot talking to him. After he told me to send my stuff out I won a couple of small prizes in competitions and published in some magazines. One here and one in England. It’s not much but I’d really like to pull all that work into a collection. I’ve no idea whether the poems work together or if the prize—it wasn’t that much, so I won’t be running off to the Bahamas just yet—and the publications were just luck. I’d really appreciate your opinion. I don’t want you to be nice, mind. None of that Yeats’ bollocks about treading softly on my dreams. I want you to tell me what you really think. If I’ve got a chance of getting published.

  Colm, I’m flattered that you think my opinion is worth having. Look I’m not a professional writer, she says brushing back her greasy hair. And although Brendan wasn’t a poet he was an accomplished critic. I’m just a teacher. But I do read a good deal, so if you think it might be helpful I’d be honoured to look.

  Thanks a million, Martha. That’s really grand. I’ll drop them in when I’m next passing. And ring if you need anything. Anything at all.

  2

  She’s in her pyjamas heating up one of the tins of soup that Colm brought up, when Eugene calls her mobile. He wants her to join him for dinner. He is on his own and needs company. She tells him she’s not well and that she can’t. That at this very moment she’s standing in her pyjamas and fleece heating up a can of soup.

  I’ll come up and see you then. Bring you some smoked salmon or something.

  Honestly, Eugene I rather you didn’t. I look a wreck and feel lousy.

  She puts down the phone and goes next door, banks up the fire and has just settled down with her soup and a piece of toast when there’s a knock on the door. She throws off the tartan rug spread over her knees and goes to answer. Eugene is standing in the rain with a packet of smoked salmon in one hand, and a bottle of champagne in the other.

  Goodness Eugene. That was quick. I only put the phone down to you ten minutes ago. It’s like Clapham Junction here. I’m not well and no sooner has one person called than another is banging on my door. And I thought this was the middle of nowhere. Anyway as you can see I’m hardly at my elegant best, she says wiping her raw nose with a tissue. Well now you’re here you’d better come in but don’t blame me if you catch something. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. I know what you litigious lawyers are like. You’ll be suing me for giving you flu before I know it.

  He smiles weakly and shuts the door behind him, then takes the smoked salmon and champagne into the kitchen uncertain what to do with them.

  And fix yourself a whiskey if you intend to stay, she calls after him. There’s some on the side. I’ve just had a new bottle delivered for medicinal purposes but I’m not up to doing anything for anybody so you’ll have to pour your own.

  She can hear him opening and closing the cupboards looking for a glass before coming back into the sitting room with a large measure.

  Sit down Eugene if you must. What’s so urgent all of a sudden that you have to come over on an evening like this and see me?

  It’s a bigger question than she’d anticipated. He settles himself in the wing chair by the stove and sets about answering it. His life isn’t his own any more. The divorce from Bridget has been protracted. She’s fought over everything. His business assets, th
e house in Kinsale, even demanding to have the dogs.

  And she doesn’t like them, Martha. If they ever came into our room and slept on the bed she went mad.

  As he talks it seems, despite the gruff bravado, that what terrifies him most is being on his own, which is how Siobhán seems to have wheedled her way into his life. He needs someone to have dinner with him at the end of the day. To drink the other half of a bottle of Beaujolais and share his bed.

  You know Martha, you’re the sort of woman I should get involved with, he says without irony. Attractive, sensible, mature.

  She’s not sure whether or not she’s being insulted. She doesn’t feel very attractive with her running nose and blotchy skin. As to mature and sensible?

  I’m not young enough for you Eugene. You’d be bored in two minutes and besides you’d drive me mad. I’d end up wanting to kill you, she says sneezing.

  He smiles uncertain how to respond to her wry English humour. Not knowing whether she’s being serious or teasing him. As he sips his whiskey she can see, despite the weight he carries, something of the handsome man he once was. He is tall and before the good living and cigars took their toll was regarded as something of a catch. But his voice is without inflection, his sentences monotone, as if the whole process of making connection with another person is quite beyond him. She wonders whether he is autistic in some way for there appears to be a connective element missing in his makeup. She feels sorry for this wealthy man who seems to have no one else to talk to other than an English widow with flu, whom he barely knows and has never much liked.

  She’d learnt a little about his past from Brendan. From a prosperous family of four children, he was the youngest by a number of years and the only boy. His father, a bit of a wastrel and a gambler, had an eye for the women and was seldom home to mind the family business. Most of the time he could be found in the members’ enclosure on the race track at Listowel in his hallmark felt trilby. A pair of binoculars slung round his neck and a wad of cash in his back pocket. He studied the racing pages, knew the trainers and breeders and what to look for in a horse. And, it has to be said that, more often than not, he won. And when he did he was judicious enough to buy up land from his struggling neighbours. It didn’t make him popular and, on the occasions he lost, he’d return home and take it out on Eugene. The boy had always been withdrawn—his mother had died from breast cancer when he was three—and his shyness irritated the older man who needed only the slightest provocation to let rip. There were times when he took his belt to him in a drunken rage but the more Eugene cried, the more vicious his father became. As for Eugene’s sisters, they could do no wrong. His father got on better with women and all his sisters were pretty, which was what he expected of girls. They knew how to handle him. Flattered and cajoled him, twisting him round their little fingers. Eugene learnt to stay out of his way. His happiest times were spent at the family corn merchant where they also sold basic veterinary supplies. He liked to help the foreman, Patrick. He enjoyed the grassy smell of the cattle cake, the feel of the meal in the deep wooden bins, which he dug out with the big metal scoop. By the time he was eight he knew which liniment to suggest for horse sprains and the correct worming powder for farm dogs.

  Brendan and Eugene had met on the beach below his family house. At first, Eugene was hostile when he discovered Brendan and Michael playing there, telling them that it was his beach and that they weren’t allowed on it. But they took no notice. Brendan said it was silly, that no one could own a beach. Every day Eugene would show up and sit on the rocks to watch them play. At first he was moody and morose but slowly he started to chat. Then one afternoon he ran across the sands to retrieve a ball that Michael had just bowled to Brendan, before it was swept out to sea. For the rest of the holidays they played cricket together, collected bait in the rock pools, fished for mackerel and made fires in a circular hearth of stones to cook their catch.

  He and Brendan were both ten.

  After that they met only rarely. But when Brendan inherited the cottage he dropped Eugene a note to say he was in Ballinskelligs and that it would be good to catch up after all these years. He received a reply by return. Eugene insisting that he come and play a round of golf at his new hotel. Eugene, it seemed, had spent a decade in the States working for a big company and done pretty well for himself. As a young corporate lawyer he’d kept up his father’s old habit of buying parcels of land with any savings he amassed. Now he was back in Ireland for good, he told Brendan. Using his legal know-how in the property business. He’d bought the house by the pier which he’d extended and renovated, building a glass house with a vine, a conservatory, and a semi-tropical garden that ran down to the sea. He’d planted rare palms and orchids which, because it was sheltered, seemed to thrive. He had also acquired three hotels. Two with beautiful golf courses in outstanding beauty spots. And recently had invested heavily in the redevelopment of the Dublin docks.

  He was also, Brendan told Martha, as they drove from the ferry, on his second wife. A classic Irish beauty, with raven hair and milky skin, she had a passion for breeding horses which Eugene indulged. Feisty and wild, it seemed, she also had a passion for the grooms and stable boys. There were shouting matches, followed by long frosty silences in which Rory was banished to his room, crying at the chaos breaking out around him. He was too old, Eugene told Brendan, by the time he met Bridget, to have a child. He didn’t understand children. He never knew what to say. Whether to be strict or indulgent. In the end he felt humiliated by her increasingly erratic behaviour, her flagrant infidelities and threw her out. But she was determined not to go without a fuss. It cost him a fortune.

  It’s sad, Brendan said. I don’t think Eugene has ever been happy. He’s really a man of simple tastes but there’s something driven about him. As if he’s still trying to prove himself to his father.

  3

  I owe you an apology, Martha, Eugene announces, now well into his second glass of whiskey, and I’m not good at those. So please hear me out.

  She fears she’s in for a long evening. She just wants to go to bed.

  I should have come over for Brendan’s funeral, he continues. Sure I had a business meeting that day, but that was only an excuse. I didn’t feel comfortable. That’s the honest to God truth and that’s why I didn’t come. But I should have. I haven’t loved many people in my life, Martha, but I loved Brendan. He did something few others have done before or since. He made me feel I belonged. What’s more when we were boys he wanted to be my friend. We went fishing, played on the beach. I’d never done anything like that before. I’d always been on my own. Even though I had sisters. I was so much younger, just the runt at the end of the litter. Brendan gave me time. He never wanted anything in return. When he came back it would always be the same. A bit of craic, a round of golf. He may have sold pictures that looked like the scrapings of a builder’s yard but he knew what he was talking about, even if I wasn’t a very responsive pupil. And he never shoved it down my throat. I should have come to say goodbye. To pay my respects. He was my friend and I’m sorry for that.

  She’s uncertain how to respond but is touched that this gauche man should struggle to express his feelings for her husband.

  I’m sure he wouldn’t have held it against you, Eugene, I’m sure Brendan knew that you would have come if you could.

  That’s as maybe. But I should have been there.

  Saturday

  1

  When she opens the front door to go and get in her washing she finds a plastic carrier bag on her step. There’s a scrawled note shoved inside.

  Didn’t like to disturb you. Thought you might be sleeping. Hope you’re on the mend. Here’s the manuscript. Please take your time and let me know what you think. Honestly!

  Colm.

  She doesn’t read it immediately but goes into Brendan’s study and digs out the photo of Bruno she found a couple of days ago taken on the beach in the lig
ht of a dying sun. The corners have curled and there’s a scratch across the surface. Yet it has an alchemy of sorts, turning a single moment on an August evening all those years ago into something tangible. This is her saint’s bone. Her section of the True Cross. Bruno will stay forever young. Always her lovely boy. He’ll never get acne, never fail his exams or get arrested like her north London friends’ teenage sons for smoking dope or for coming out of the pub on a Saturday night and throwing up on the pavement. Never have an unsuitable girlfriend or forget to phone on her birthday or lie about where he’s been. Had this been Brendan’s private memento mori hidden at the bottom of his drawer? She remembers when she took the photo. She’d just called Bruno to get out of the sea and dress as they were leaving. Brendan was already folding the wet towels and rolling up the windbreak and Bruno had shouted: Just ten more minutes Mum. She’d been about to put her camera away but had turned to see him waving from the surf, his arms raised above his head in front of the low white sun like some feral boy.

  Some years ago, on a trip to Colorado, her friend Lindsay visited a Native American reserve and brought her back a dream catcher. Made of twigs and feathers the dream webs were woven by grandparents for their new-born grandchildren and hung above their cradles in order to give them peaceful dreams. Good dreams knew their way to the dreamer and made their way down through the feathers. The slightest movement indicated the passage of yet another benevolent dream. Bad dreams, however, got confused and trapped, evaporating at sunrise. If only the same was true of memories. If only she could hold on to what was good and let all the rest dissolve with the early morning mist.

  2

  When Paddy O’Connell returned from Dublin he’d been away for three Pucks. That’s how he measured it, by the number of fairs he’d missed. Dublin was strange to him at first. The Custom House, the Four Courts, the Old Parliament House and Rotunda. The complicated bus routes and up and down escalators. Even the food. It had been hard to leave home. He missed his brothers and sisters. When he picked up his battered suitcase to walk to Caherciveen and catch the bus, his da had stood in the bend of the road watching.