I felt ridiculous when I finally walked into the kitchen the next morning still dressed like a French Fancy. John Johns wasn’t there, thank God. Bridie was bustling about asking me if I’d slept alright and saying that I mustn’t worry. Everything would be grand given enough time. Sit down and she’d get me a cup of tea. Would I take a drop scone? A pancake? Don’t worry, they’re not home-made! Would I like an egg? No, I wouldn’t like an egg.
– Mrs Johns, I need to borrow some shoes to go home in.
– Oh, there’s no need, Mary, your father’ll be along today. And for heaven’s sake call me Bridie!
– Oh, well, that’s okay then …
– Yes, yes, that’s okay. D’you know, I think I will make you that egg anyway, you must be starvin’.
I was starving. I ate the egg after I’d picked a fleck of blood out of it, and two slices of shop bread with a big mug of tea, and I felt better. It’s hard to beat a boilie was one of Auntie Eileen’s favourite jokes. I must wash my face before Daddy comes to get me. Bridie is pottering about, washing up her few auld cups and such, so I wait for him outside in the scent from Bridie’s much-tended roses.
The countryside is so beautiful viewed from the stoop at Johns Farm. From the river valley I can see the purple hills of Shanagh Bog which wraps around the middle of Aghabovey, the roundest of the five hills. To the left of the bog are the swathes of pines planted by the Forestry Commission. Combover Hill is art, the Forestry only planted half of it, and the border is a widely exaggerated ‘S’ shape that sweeps its dense green in a wave to meet the purple bog and the rushes on the other side. It’s called Comber Forest but it’s been Combover as long as I can remember. Its light and dark emeralds sit at a respectful distance from the hill field which is behind the red of the roofs on the milk house and the big two-storey barn where the hay is kept.
The other two-storey barn is attached to the house and it’s where the cows are wintered – as a result the cow muck has to be wheelbarrowed to the midden past the front door, not something which helps the smells about the place. All of the buildings and the little house have been whitewashed recently; some of the whitewash still speckles the grass along the edges. The river carries the sounds of other lives from the road which is two fields from the far bank. In the soft light of morning it looks benign, even homely.
He comes about midday. I hear the noise of the tractor on the lane and Brandy barking right up until he recognises who it is. Will I be in trouble if I get any grease or dirt on the pink suit? Daddy’s tractor isn’t the cleanest and Mammy always wants to keep things good or to pass them on with some strange alteration. She might even have plans to take it back to Harper’s and get her money back? She’d like that, sticking it to a Protestant business. I suppose Daddy’s thought of it and he’ll have a bag or old coat for me to sit on.
I’m already outside when he arrives, waving and waving like I haven’t seen him in a lifetime. I’m showing far too many teeth but I can’t stop. He waves back, just the once, and looks away as he turns round on the narrow street. I’m just about to tell him that I’m ready, so Bridie won’t start fussing and making tea, when I see he has a suitcase with him. It’s an ancient brown leather thing that’s been sitting around the house for years.
– Frank, will you take tea?
– No thanks, Bridie, I must be getting on. I’ve a lot of ground to cover today.
– Daddy? What’s in the case?
– Did yous hear the terrible news from last night?
– No, Frank, what happened?
– Daddy? What’s in the case?
– Podgie McCourt’s son is dead, shot through the head in front of his mother!
– Oh, God save us! God save us all! Mind, he was often warned not to sell An Phoblacht, but Lord alive, his poor family!
They both try to ignore the fact that despite Sean McCourt’s execution I’ve started crying again … for myself. We all know what’s in the case. My stupid life, or what’s left of it.
– Daddy?
– I must be going, Mary.
He swings himself into the tractor and fires it up and I feel a kind of river running through my head. I’m so tired. I run to him and start to plead.
– Please, Daddy! Take me home, please. I want to go home. Daddy, please, please don’t leave me here, please don’t do this, please stop, please stop …
Then he looks at me, crying and begging and trying to stay his arm. We’ve been here before. We’ve been here before and we probably both thought that that was the worst thing that could ever take place between us. We only recovered because we pretended that it didn’t happen. We never mentioned it again. The wet little bodies of the kittens were still lying between us. How heavy they had been when they were dead! Twice the weight of when they were skipping about. But now we were standing over something that could never be forgotten. There wasn’t a carpet big enough to sweep this under.
– Mary, don’t take on … this is the way it has to be!
– You lousy bastard. You rotten lousy cowardly bastard! I hate you for this! I hate you! And I hate you for the last time, too! I’ll never forgive you, never!
– You’d better run on, Frank, you can do no good here, says Bridie.
– Aye, run on, Frank, run, run, run, run! It’s all you’ve ever done!
I don’t know how I got the words out. I felt like someone had tied a rope around my neck and was pulling, pulling, pulling. He gripped his pipe tight in his teeth as he slammed the tractor door shut and started back up the hill. Bridie helps me off my knees. She manhandles me into the Lower Room and lifts my legs off the floor. I sleep but today is not a good day to sleep because I am already dog-tired. Today is the kind of day when bad dreams just let themselves in and smash the one or two good memories you have hidden to smithereens.
When I jolted awake later that afternoon the suitcase was standing by my bed. I’d never had a suitcase before. I’d never been anywhere except Gortnahook. I had to open it. Inside was my toiletry bag and my clothes in their various shades of navy and white. I took them all out and put them on the bed. There was a brand-new towel, bath-size, and two brand-new flannels. What a treat! I put my unopened Camay soap on top of them and my toothbrush. Blue Ted was lying face down in the bottom.
I dearly wanted to scrub myself clean but there was no running water at Johns Farm, and no bath. How would I wash? Where would I launder my clothes? What would I do with myself all day without school for a whole term? How would I read a book in a house with no electricity?
I stripped off and changed into my jeans, a T-shirt and boots. An ex-bride, I balled up the itchy pink suit and the stupid pink slippers and wrapped the white tights round them to make sure they’d never escape, then I closed the case and slid it under the bed. I hung up my things on the wire hangers in the wardrobe and shoved Blue Ted to the back of the shelf. Unless he had a ticket to America stitched inside his belly, he’d be no use to me in the days to come.
Joe hadn’t even tried to find me. How did he feel knowing that I had been with someone else, someone that I had to admit didn’t force me? How had I gone from being his back to being nothing so quickly?
Bridie was waiting for me, wringing her hands, just outside the door. She was still crying. What a sweetheart! I had so often thought it would be lovely to have a mammy like her and now I did. I hugged her close and told her that it would all be okay. Not to cry. I called her Bridie to her face for the first time. Bridie, put the kettle on and make us both a nice cup of good strong tea.
She was right: I would be grand, given time. I knew I had to be punished. Tramps have to pay. Auntie Eileen was still paying. I could go home sometime, not like Sean McCourt who only sold a Gaelic newspaper, the printed voice of Sinn Féin. He was never going home. Try as I might, I still felt sorrier for myself than him. I was a hateful girl.
Bridie must have sent word with Daddy that she needed a lift to the wake and by the by Auntie Eileen trundled down the hill and on to the street. We made tea and none of us mentioned yesterday’s wedding, the bump, the fact that I had a face the size of a football, that I had left home without even knowing it. I wanted to bring all of those things out and lay them on the table right beside the biscuits but I was too ashamed. I hoped Daddy wouldn’t tell his sister what I’d roared after him. I hoped nobody would ever be told that I’d behaved so badly on the day another family would be waking their murdered son.
They were discussing the horror ahead of them. Bridie was worried she wouldn’t be able to look his poor mother in the face. She was bringing four rounds of ham sandwiches: good ham off the bone not washings. Auntie Eileen had two dozen scones, a box of teabags and an emergency bottle of Lourdes water. They were part of the advance army of women who would show up to try and console Mrs McCourt. The remains were being released from Omagh Hospital to O’Carolan and would be back in the front room by night-time.
As they wittered on about washing teacups and boiling water, Auntie Eileen asked if I was alright and I said, yeah, I’m grand and she seemed pleased enough though I’d never seen such a strained smile. She hates wakes, especially the wakes of young men. She wants no reminding of her lost husband, Nicky D’Angelo. She still longs for him. She’s always been furious that there was hardly a mark on him after he crashed his motorbike. He looked as if he was sleeping. His lips still sang to her. His eyes shone behind the dead lids. She won’t have that problem tonight. The violence that has taken Sean McCourt will be on full display.
It was a given that I would not be going with them. I was to be hidden away, me and my bump of shame. I was too scared to go anyway, afraid of what I might have to see and hear.
They were gone for hours, hours I spent watching the dust motes spin in the last of the light from the kitchen window. That’s how John Johns found me when he came home, staring into the middle distance. Bridie had left his dinner in the oven – brown fish and spuds. I was to fetch it out and put it on the table for him and not to forget the butter from the cold press and the coleslaw. Only the coleslaw wasn’t burnt. When he ducked to get in through the door he looked put out, like he had forgotten that I now occupied the Lower Room. We stared at each other, perfect strangers. We didn’t even manage a hello.
He sat down at the table, leaving his long legs stretched into the room. As he reached down to the enamel bucket for a mug of water, I got his dinner and put it on the oilcloth in front of him. He looked at it and then back at me and I’d no idea what to do next. A giddy part of me wanted to say bon appétit just for a laugh but I wasn’t sure what would happen if I dared to open my mouth. Something was bubbling inside. Instead I stood there twisting the tea towel around and around my fists, astonished that the thousand songbirds in the trees outside hadn’t held their beaks to hear what our first conversation would be.
He kept his eyes down and I held my breath. We needed to know where the border was drawn between what had happened and how it was going to be now that we found ourselves stuck in the same spill of treacle. He finally looked my way – what did he see? A girl left alone to keep house – his house – but he couldn’t stop himself for long from looking at the bump. The bump was always going to be hard to negotiate. He cleared his throat and asked if there was any butter. It was such a polite request, softly made. I’d forgotten it! If I’d committed such a crime at The Hill I’d likely have a clout round the ear by now. I should have tried harder on the first day of being someone’s wife.
The reality that he could ask me to fetch and carry for him just like I’d been made to fetch and carry for her all my life made me bold. I didn’t have much more to lose by letting him see he hadn’t got a bargain.
– I’m not going to be your wife! I’m not, you can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do, you can’t. If you come anywhere near me, I’ll tell Daddy … or … or … Eileen or the priest! I will!
– I have no intention of coming anywhere near you! You’re hardly more than a child! Anyway, I’m not in the market for a wife. My mother’s fond of you – you’ll be company for her when I’m out and a bit of help around the place. So you need have no fears, Mary darlin’; as of this minute, you’ve never been safer! I have no interest whatsoever in you, although it’s nearly funny you’re so ready to defend your honour? Shame you weren’t so sensible with Doctor Loughrey’s boy?
Why did he have to mention Joe? Why did he drag him into the room and remind me that I’d thrown away my chance of being free of Carncloon one day? Why had I been foolish enough to forget that Joe was the best match I could ever hope for? I imagined him being pushed on to the aeroplane by Dr and Mrs Darling, protesting, begging to be allowed to come home and hear me out. He said he loved me and I still believed he was telling the truth as I stood crying in front of my brand-spanking-new husband.
– You can’t speak to me like that! You don’t know what went on between Joe and me, you don’t know, you could never understand … anything!
– I don’t want to know! I never want to know. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to see you more than is absolutely necessary to keep Bridie happy. I don’t care what you think of me, Mary. I don’t care what any single idiot from Carncloon thinks. What you have to realise is that it’s done. You and me are done, a done deal.
With that he barged past me, got the butter out and cut great slices of it to try and make his dinner easier to eat. I didn’t like the way he was clenching his jaw. I ran to the Lower Room and sat on the torn horsehair chair shaking like a leaf. I thought he was supposed to be a quiet man? Seems he had plenty to say when he was in a mood. I shouldn’t have pushed him because now I knew he hated me.
I had been right. I was little more than a bauble for his mother. As long as I gave him no trouble, we would get along just fine. I would stay down here, untouched, and he would stay in the Upper Room, untouched. The problem was that we had to stay together.
Of course, he didn’t want me! Me? He never could have wanted me in a million years. His soul still ached for the golden Catherine. I was just a stupid lacklustre girl and he would never have to stoop to wanting a stupid lacklustre girl. My vanity embarrassed me. I’d never felt such humiliation – even being dissected in the parochial house hadn’t been this bad. I was an idiot and I burned with the shame of letting him see that for a good two minutes I’d thought of myself as someone worth having.
I heard him in the washroom at the back. He had to go to the McCourts’ house, respects had to be paid. The half-door swung shut and the lights of the tractor swept around the little room before he headed up the hill and left me all alone again. Around this time up at The Hill, Daddy, Mammy, Matthew and me would be saying a few decades of the rosary and a Prayer for Peace before she makes the last hot drink of the day. Will they miss me? Will they wonder how I’m doing? I can live without the prayers but I venture up into the empty kitchen and put the small milk pan on the yellow range. When it hit the boil I poured equal measures of sugar and Camp Coffee into it. It’s the only way it can be swallowed.
That night when I lay in the pitch-dark it floated down into me and took up residence in my chest. Daddy had given me away and now here I was, all by myself. There was someone living inside me and I still felt alone. She – I knew she was a girl – had been with me for nearly three months and she was no company at all. John Johns’s words hit me like stones again and again until I felt bruised. He didn’t want to know me, he didn’t want to hear me, he didn’t want to lay eyes or hands on me. He had managed to make me feel less than nothing. He’d outdone Mammy’s lifetime work in five minutes. That was good going. He had nothing to lose by marrying me because the amazing Catherine had his heart in her back pocket and he hadn’t stopped to consider that he had ruined my chances of landing Joe Loughrey.
How do you turn back time? Or at least fold it so you can shout out some warning to the poor crayturs who don’t know that when they walk past a particular bush on a particular day things will never be the same again? How do you get to just be someone’s girlfriend again and stand about giggling and eating sweets? The rug that was your life could be whipped from under your feet and you’d be left standing in the same spot, totally different backdrop. For me it was Johns Farm; for the poor McCourts it was six foot of freshly dug clay. The thoughts ran around and around until I was dizzy watching them. There was no way out.
The next morning, I was altered. I was a bad rooster who had flown up out of the pen one time too many and now I was hobbled. Even the lowest branch would prove too high. I made a promise to myself that I would take John Johns at his word. It worked for my father: say nothing, show nothing, do nothing, feel nothing, be nothing. John would never hear another word from my lips, he would never catch me alone again. He might tell me some more truths. I’d had enough of them from Mammy to last me.
I started that very day telling myself the story of how badly I had been treated; mine was a sad story and I would make sure I never forgot that. I had the foundations dug and the rocks lined up to make a start on my House of Pity when our Protestant neighbour Arthur Rowley rocked up with a few cans of beer to toast our happiness and to celebrate the birth of a son for Prince Charles and Princess Diana over in England. I was fetched up out of the Lower Room and Bridie slammed the door double-quick time behind me. Farce or not, no one was to see my lofty bed standing as evidence that I was not married in any real sense.
Arthur had to fall back on us to wet Prince William’s head because he hadn’t been able to get into Carncloon and the craic in the Protestant bars. An RUC roadblock had stopped him at the crossroads. The local Orange Order were having a practice march because they hadn’t quite got the hang of walking up and down with banners after two hundred and thirteen years and the whole town was on lockdown.
Cheers, we all said as we pulled the rings on the cans of Harp, and I hoped against hope Mammy couldn’t hear us wishing the best of health to the next in line for the throne and face of the ‘English Crown forces’ that haunted her every waking hour.
The atmosphere had changed as soon as the door knocked; we all pulled our public faces on and made out that we were living in a happy home. Here’s to you young wans, may your children be many and your worries be few, says Arthur, all sombre. John was friendly and nice and took Arthur’s wish for our fertile future in good humour though he was careful not to catch my eye when I choked.