When John Johns had finally trained me how to look after his farm to his high standards, he went back to the building sites full-time. I was happy to work hard, it let me sleep soundly, and John was pleased he had scored a strong, biddable girl to leave in charge while he earned some decent money.
Every morning, rain or shine but mostly rain, I would walk the Friesians – my Ladies, their udders trailing on the ground – up from the river field to the parlour at The Hill where I would clean them down and set the milking machines on them. The black and white of their hides brushing against the bridal high heads of wild angelica lulled me with its sweet scent. I patted their silky auld haunches and thanked them for their company. Sometimes I whispered a line or two from a book or told them a story about Serena or Bridie because I had no one else to tell.
I lugged hay bales and cut the twine with a penknife that John had given me for the job. I broke the ice on the big water tubs where the cows drank and cleaned the crow, pigeon and rook muck out of their feeders in the summer. In the winter I cleaned the cow muck out of the byre and wheelbarrowed it to the midden. I’d asked John if we could move the midden further away from the street to help the smell about the place. He’d said fine, it’s you will have to travel further. I remembered that when I thought my arms were being pulled out of my shoulders. I had no one to blame but myself.
After plenty of those days I dreamt that I would beg my mother if I could have a bath, a long, hot soak in a tub where the water came out of the tap instead of a boiled saucepan. But I kept my dreams to myself and got out the ancient wooden nailbrush and scrubbed the orange cowshit from under my nails. I often wondered how Lizzie was doing in London in that same moment. Was she thinking of me?
Indoors, Serena was centre stage at mealtimes where we taught her to count and started her on her letters. I bathed her in the old Belfast sink and John read the bedtime story. I stayed by the door so that I could close it when he left and we all pretended it was so that Bridie could hear about Cinderella and Snow White and Rapunzel from the comfort of her chair by the fire.
He had collected up every picture book about every princess he could find. I chewed my lip as he named them all, got her to repeat the colours of their dresses and eyes and hair. She had to try to count the wheels on the carriages and the legs on the horses. Sometimes the horses ended up with six legs because she was so busy showing off she forgot to stop. He’d catch my eye and laugh and I’d smile without baring any teeth and pray it would soon be over and her and me would be alone again.
I stayed mute through the rescues by the handsome, heroic men and the happily-ever-afters. Every night, Serena picked a different one to be when she grew up. I nodded at her while wishing they’d rot inside their glass coffins and wither in their ivory towers. I was heartily sick of all the silky-maned little waifs. I kept a close watch on Serena’s eyelashes and willed them to flutter shut.
When he left the Lower Room he said goodnight and I said the same and I never followed him back to the kitchen, summer or winter. Sometimes I heard him and Bridie talking low in front of the range, oftentimes not. In that way, we got through the long and short evenings well enough. I’d stopped bothering to think about when it would end, about when I’d start up my own life again. I knew it would be one day.
It was Serena who John Johns was worried about, and her alone, when he decided to go back to England for a year. The money was good and, as things were hotting up between the RUC and the local boys, it was a sensible time to get out. Talks of raids and beatings and days without news of whether a son or brother was safe or not did the rounds. It made Bridie shake in her shoes and reach for her rosary beads.
The letter asking him to be foreman on a job had arrived on a Friday and by the Monday John had made his decision. He apologised to me because he knew it would be hard on Serena, she wouldn’t be able to understand why he’d gone but he would be in touch with her as soon as he could. It’s best to do these things without much warning, Mary. I said yes, yes of course. I’d had enough plasters ripped off to know he was right.
In the space of a few days he had organised Arthur Rowley to help me with the morning milking a few days a week, Matthew could be relied on for heavy work and I would do everything else. Bridie would look after my daughter. Eileen would do the shopping and collect the Family Allowance at the post office. Don’t forget your father is only up the lane, too, said John Johns and I tried not to laugh. Daddy wasn’t exactly my friend in need. Was there anything I wanted to ask? Was there anything I wanted to know? There wasn’t so I just nodded and chewed my lip.
It was a rotten, foggy day, biting cold in the early January of 1985, when he left. I’d had Matthew take Serena over to Auntie Eileen’s for the morning so she wouldn’t see his bag all packed and ready by the door. It wasn’t three months since the IRA had bombed the Grand in Brighton trying to do for Margaret Thatcher so it would be no picnic being an Irishman in England.
He didn’t look back at me or his weeping mother, bereft where she stood on the street. As soon as he was out of sight a weight lifted off my shoulders and settled itself neatly on my heart. I put my arm around Bridie and told her we’d both be okay and she cried harder.
Serena was a different kettle of fish. A monster who could not be placated and no amount of cajoling and pleading with her helped for nearly a fortnight. She stood at the half-door every day until she nearly fell with tiredness, her little face pinched and white until she was thrown down with a fever. That seemed to burn her back to life and she emerged quieter and rather forlorn, but at least back with us.
After three weeks a huge parcel landed from England; it was addressed to his mother and in it was a teddy bear bigger than Serena and a letter saying he was alright and would send money soon. I didn’t get a mention. Serena called the bear Bosco and set about covering him in leaves and muck and snot and food because she wouldn’t leave him out of her hand even for a minute.
She marched up and down outside the kitchen window talking to him while Bridie burned the dinner and I washed the clothes and fed the cows and every other bloody animal with a mouth, and I worried that they were both lonely.
The radio brought us all the bad news we could ever need at home and abroad. There was an IRA mortar attack on an RUC base in Newry, County Down in February and nine RUC officers were killed and thirty-seven wounded. In May four more were killed in County Armagh by a remote-controlled IRA bomb and so every Catholic family would suffer a bit more low-level intimidation every day.
The little house wilted around us. I had always loved the bones of John’s Farm, the place I ran to when my mother hit the roof and every child under it, but John’s absence drew up to the table every time we sat down and made us weary, watchful. The talk was of him, our ears were peeled for news of further bombs on the mainland, any incidents that might make life even harder for an Irish boy who stuck out of the crowd.
Every two weeks, Matthew would come and get us in the car and we’d all go up to The Hill to speak to John when he rang from the hall of his digs on the payphone. He had written to explain that everyone could hear him so he would be keeping things brief – and this from a man whose brief was truly brief. It didn’t suit my mother one little bit to have Poor Bridie Johns as a regular visitor but we all had to make do and mend so that we could hear his voice. I nodded at my father if he was in the house and he nodded back.
My mother eyeballed me every time a phone call came through but he spoke mostly to his mammy and then to Serena and – surprise, surprise – he would run out of ten-pence pieces as soon as it was my turn. We had the same conversation twice a month, my husband and me.
– Mary.
– John.
– Do you need anything?
– No.
– Does Serena need anything?
– No.
– There’s the pips now …
– Bye.
The days, the weeks, the months flew in. Every day was pretty much like the last and the seasons came and went with only the bloom on the hawthorns in June a real highlight. Its pink and white flowers filling the air with heavy musk was so welcome. I walked out to the forest with Bridie and Serena, making sure I kept a wide berth of Brooky Hay down in its secret hollow, my auld kissing place.
John was still in London when Margaret Thatcher signed the Anglo-Irish agreement with Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald of Fine Gael in November to support cross-border co-operation between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Bridie and me had to park ourselves in front of the wireless for the translation. It meant that the politicians in Dublin would have a say in how to promote power-sharing in the Six Counties. This’ll see some feathers flying, says Bridie.
Every Unionist MP in ParleyMint resigned in December because it gave the Republic a role in governance for the first time ever while Nationalist party Fianna Fáil’s leader Charles Haughey said it officially recognised Britain’s jurisdiction in Northern Ireland. All in all, the whole place was torn up, with MPs baying at the moon, and thousands of people from both sides of the divide took to the streets for rallies and strikes and petition-signings and good-auld fist-fights, which was reported as ‘civil disobedience’ – the same dog only washed.
The Provos killed two more RUC officers in Ballygawley, County Tyrone and totally flattened the barracks by planting a bomb right inside it. Bridie and me listened to the wireless; she sighed and rolled her eyes as I tried to keep up with the marbles being thrown underfoot by the SDLP, the UUP, the DUP, Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party. It didn’t take too many minutes to figure out who was at the front, shouting the loudest. It was everyone’s favourite Man of God, the Reverend Ian Paisley, and the Democratic Unionist Party.
The walls of Johns Farm stayed put, the red tin roof stayed on and Bridie and me gave up on the wireless because it made our heads ache, relying instead on any pundits who stopped by for tea to fill us in on the latest screaming match. None of them could see a way out or through it, bad things happen when the Northern Irish are invited to ‘talk’, we were better suited to roaring and shouting and banging our fists on tables: that way none of us could be heard, nothing could be resolved and we could all accuse each other of collusion.
John had stayed away the whole year and would probably have gone again if it had not been for his reunion with Serena. We knew the date – December 23rd, he wanted to be home for her third birthday – but we didn’t tell her: she would be up to high doh with excitement and probably down with a temperature before we got the pan on!
I had a kind of strange fear in the pit of my stomach. When he was back I would have to watch myself – my daddy’s only advice: watch yourself, watch yourself. I’d have to share Serena with him again after she’d come back to me body and soul. I’d have to take advice on what to do with Johns Farm. I was a good farmer now, in tune with the herd, my Ladies, who walked to me like lambs as soon as I opened the river-field gate. I’d pulled calves from them, wormed them, dosed them for liver fluke. They got better care than I gave myself: more love. My plan was to present myself as a girl who had done a lot of growing up in his absence.
I washed my hair when Bridie was asleep and brushed it until it shone. I studied myself in the mirror as I put lipstick on, wiped it off, put it on again. I looked and felt ridiculous either way. John Johns would never care what I looked like and still I wished my hands weren’t red and raw. Had he discovered the whereabouts of the beautiful Catherine and sweet-talked his way back into her heart? Maybe she had kissed him? Maybe he had wrapped his big blunt fingers around her wrist and pulled her close? Would she still love how red his lips were?
Somewhere towards four o’clock he walked around the corner of the barn as if he had never been away. He was leaner and browner and his hair was long, down to his shoulders, and I stood looking at him on the street like a mug.
– Hello, Mary.
– John.
Thank God, at that moment Serena came bowling out of the house screaming for him. There was no shyness, no disbelief; she launched at him like she would never let him go as the string of gold tinsel she’d been playing with haloed around their heads in the wind. He hugged her to him and they danced about, only stopping long enough to let Bridie into the embrace. None of them thought to ask me in, though John caught my eye for a second before I flinched. The frown said it all: he still couldn’t stand me, I was a cross to bear, a bundle of nerves called Mary.
I stood aside and watched as an acid loneliness threatened to burn a hole from my stomach to my throat, a bystander. One day I’d be part of a family of my own making; it was only ever a question of biding time. For now, I was once again second on Serena’s list and Dada was home for good.
John Johns had made a pile of money in England, by working all the hours and practically starving himself. I heard him now and again laughing with Bridie as I skulked about. He had finally cured himself of egg and chips by eating it every bloody day for weeks at a time! He told her about the craic in Cricklewood – it was more Irish than Ireland – everybody shot to their feet for the Irish national anthem when the pubs closed and a hat was passed to collect funds for ‘the cause’ – Ireland couldn’t be set free for free! Any poor unfortunate English boys who didn’t want to donate would like as not get a good thumping as ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ died away. I thought to myself, so we go over there and beat up lads because they come over here and beat up lads? It was a pot and kettle situation.
Now he was back, he had two things on his mind: food and a better house for Serena and Bridie. That’s how he announced it. I didn’t figure in the plans, presumably because I wasn’t young, I wasn’t old and he felt no responsibility for me so I could fend for myself. Serena had all but abandoned me to stick close to his legs anywhere he went; she was not going to risk letting him out of her sight again. I missed her and tried to block out how much I wanted another child. It was my every waking thought. But it takes a husband to give you a baby and all I had was John Johns.
Auntie Eileen had asked me if ‘things’ were alright and I had nodded and said sure. She was likely at a loss as to how I’d got myself knocked up so easy when I shouldn’t have and now that I was safely married to a stud there was no sign of another bump in the road.
He had a plan to sell off the herd for now; they were bringing in nothing anyway. He was thinking of switching from milk to beef; he might even squeeze a new huge barn for bullocks alongside Matthew’s chicken house up at The Hill if Frank was amenable. My heart broke. He was selling my Ladies?
Then I heard the second part of the grand plan. He was going to make the barn part of the house. THE BARN? He had seen something along this line in England and it didn’t seem to bother him that we would all be the laughing stock of the town. This was the kind of scandal that would be broadcast to all and sundry; my mother’s head might well pop clean off her neck when she’d done sending up novenas for the return of his common sense.
Roll up! Roll up! Meet the Johns family: Poor Bridie, the Tramp Rattigan, her little bastard and the priest’s son all living in a barn, happily ever after. I was so angry I didn’t speak when he mentioned it first. If it wasn’t for the blissful thought that I was about to be returned to a house with running water and electricity and a FLUSHING TOILET, I might have huffed and puffed until the next Christmas. We would all have to live in a big caravan while the renovation took place. Great, it would be like Bundoran without the candyfloss! I was still stewing when he spoke.
– Do you have anything to say about these plans, Mary?
– It’s your house not mine!
– You may have noticed that you live here too?
– That doesn’t make it my house!
– Well now! I’m sorry I tried to drag you back to life and all its tedious details! Will you miss carrying water from the well, tell me?
– No.
– Will you miss the Tin House?
– No!
– Well then, the loss of both those joys should allow for one tiny smile to ease itself on to those lips, eh?
– Ah, leave her alone, John! says Bridie. You know the girl has never been able to speak up for herself!
I wanted to speak, I was desperate to speak, but I couldn’t start now because I was upset about the lovely placid old dolls I’d been tending for a year being sent away and Johns Farm being ripped apart. John Johns was watching me, willing me to give an opinion on proceedings.
My entire world had shrunk to the walls and high ditches of Johns Farm and I didn’t know how to voice how important that was for me, how it suddenly seemed to be all I wanted and I didn’t want it to be touched, not now, not ever. The farm was my cocoon, perfect and cosy. I didn’t want it disturbed.
– It’s okay, Bridie, I’m just too tired to think.
John snorted and flipped all the magazines and drawings he’d made on the floor. He slammed up and out of the room, banging his bedroom door so hard it nearly came off the hinges. Poor auld Brandy dog was whining and shaking and turning circles. Bridie looked shocked as he smashed about, shouting.
– Mary’s tired, Mary’s tired, Mary’s tired, MARY’S ALWAYS BLOODY TIRED!
I heard some books hit the wall and I worried for their spines but he wore himself out soon enough. The night ended as they all did, with milky coffee and broken biscuits and no further discussion. Tomorrow, we’d all let on nothing had been said or done or thrown. It was hard to beat the normality of a good Catholic family life.
We spent Christmas Day 1985 in front of the range, just the four of us. Serena got some books and colouring pens and a horrible thing, a Cabbage Patch doll; its little sealed-up lips and dimple made me feel claustrophobic but it was what she wanted so Dada had wrapped it up. When we sang ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ for her she spun like a top in a red velvet dress that Bridie had sewn. John Johns’s voice was deep and crisp and even and it resonated through the concrete to my toes, making them curl up in my winter boots.
I cooked the dinner and everything turned out gorgeous. Even the Christmas pudding was worth floating in a pint of cream. Bridie announced she was retiring from the job of head chef. Lizzie Magee, home for the season, came up at night-time to have a drink and I watched her gassing with Bridie and John and not noticing that I couldn’t join in. I poured beer for them and made turkey sandwiches and they hardly looked up from Serena, who was lying on her stomach drawing pictures of mammies and daddies in the heat from the fire.
Daddy came down on Boxing Day night to thrash out the plans for the new barn at The Hill; it would be built by February or March and we would start on the house as soon as the better weather of spring arrived. He stayed for a round of cards: him, Matthew, Bridie and John played Strip Jack ’til bedtime for pennies. I made biscuits on a whim because I wanted to keep away from the table and the talk. I came out with shortbread dusted with cinnamon that were cool enough to have with the tea before they left. The label on Daddy’s vest was sticking out and I tucked it in, resting my fingers lightly on his neck for a moment. He didn’t even jump but turned round and gave me a smile worth a million pounds.
– My mother always made shortbread biscuits, he says. Just like yours.
I made a cake with ‘3’ written on it in pink icing on December 30th and John beat me to helping Serena blow out her birthday candles. I made a wish anyway. I wished I could fly, but not because I wanted to go anywhere else. I just wanted to know if they’d look up at me if I took off and did a few circuits of the kitchen ceiling at Johns Farm; there was no guarantee.
The foundations for the new barn were dug just after New Year, 1986. They were still full of icy water when my twentieth birthday came and went on February 20th unmarked bar a card and sweets from Auntie Eileen and a card with a £20-note from Kathleen: a pound for every year, she wrote in it, kiss, kiss. I took myself off for a walk to Brooky Hay the day the Ladies were walked from the river field for the last time. They had to climb to The Hill to be loaded up in trailers and taken to the mart. When I got back, the whole street was pitted with hoof marks but there was no other trace of them. I should have had the courage to say goodbye.
A storm of activity blew us towards April. I cooked for the men who were laying blocks; John just gave me the number of mouths as he dropped off the groceries. I stretched spuds and meat the length of the table and he hardly acknowledged that I was in the room. I was an apron and gloves, nothing more.
Often, Bridie and me would have to do with fried eggs on toast if too many men showed up with big appetites. Serena knew what side her bread was buttered! She had her dinner straight off Dada’s plate, robbing his carrots and peas as he laughed at her antics and hugged her on his knee. The resentment wrapped itself around my neck like a thick wool sock coated with Vicks.
By the by, the shed was up, the beef cows bought and life resumed its slower pace for a solitary week before it was time to flit out of Johns Farm by travelling a full two hundred yards: the caravan was coming! Moving day was set and Bridie and me had to pack up all our worldly possessions in readiness. I pulled out my suitcase and shoved the pink wedding suit and plastic shoes into a rubbish bag without a second glance. Joe Loughrey’s face materialised in front of my eyes but I shut them quickly and locked him out. Had he forgotten about me overnight or had it taken him a week or two? It didn’t matter now. There was an ocean between us.
Serena laid claim to Blue Ted when he was fetched out of the gloom at the back of the wardrobe shelf; she put him in Bosco’s lap and wheeled them both off in her pram. Toys shouldn’t be left all alone, she said to me, cross as you please. Bad Mammy! I watched her straight little back and dancing ponytail skip away from me through the light at the half-door. She was more like John Johns with every day that passed.
When Bridie went to pack up the jams and pickles from the scullery, she says to me, you can pack John’s room, as if it was nothing.
– I’m not sure that’s a great idea, Bridie. Surely John wouldn’t want me in there poking about? You know what he’s like?
– I do, pet, I do, but there’s a pile of stuff in there and I’m not able for it – so you’d better have a go. When he lands back tonight with the caravan it’ll be late and he wants an early start tomorrow when Matthew and a few of the other lads show up to set the wheels in motion.
I let myself into the room and spotted the one thing out of place straight away. He’d left a book open on the bed. Helmut Newton, said the cover. I’d not seen it before. How had I missed it after all my poking about? The photographs inside were very saucy: all made-up nudey-rudey women and bare bottoms. It roasted my face to look at them and I did look at every single one of them, pored over them ’til I had them by rote.
To darling John, love always, Catherine. The same neat hand I’d seen printed on the inside of so many of the books I’d borrowed signed herself off with a few kisses.
What kind of a tramp must this Catherine be to give a boy a book of photographs like that? She was worldly, she was sophisticated; not like me, the farmer’s daughter who lived at the bottom of the hill she was born on. She was golden-haired and golden-limbed. She was still in his life.
I ran for my empty boxes and packed up all of the books, slamming Catherine the T.R.A.M.P. right at the bottom so she couldn’t be seen. I packed his clothes, shoes and coats, his radio and alarm clock. I stripped his bed, pulling the sheets and blankets off it and dragging them all to the floor in a high pile. I kicked them in their soft guts over and over again ’til I was totally out of puff. Then I folded them neat as pie and carried them to the kitchen, a portrait of calm. Bridie said, do you want tea? You look done in! I said, sure, I’ll take tea.
What’s another year to someone who’s getting used to being alone, wails Johnny Logan from the wireless for the millionth time, what’s another year to someone who’s lost everything that he owns? If I have to listen to that Eurovision shite just once more I’m going to throw the batteries over the hedge.
The sound of the tractor towing the caravan comes to me on the river and I know I won’t have long to gaze my last at the little house as it stands, my oubliette of four years. The picture of the Sacred Heart left a paler cream rectangle and the old black-framed mirror is already sitting out on the street bouncing the light back too brightly. All that remains is the kettle as the yellow range will be kept stoked until we get the gas cylinder hooked up to the two-ring cooker.
Mammy, look, a house on wheels! says Serena.
Bridie and her and me run on to the street to see the spectacle of it being towed down the hill. The caravan brushes against the greenery and snags on a low branch on one of the big sycamores and then it’s parked. It’s a mint-green Clubman that’s seen better days but for Serena it’s paradise. She’s never seen pink frilly curtains before, didn’t know that kitchens could be so uncluttered, had no idea that benches could double up as beds. She holds up Blue Ted and Bosco against the back window and John kisses them both through the panes to make her scream with laughter. The track of his lips is still on the glass when I go to drag her away. I am left out of all their games.
We were over four months in the caravan in all; Bridie was on one bunk, Serena and me on the other. John slept in his brass bed in the milk house which made Serena giddy with joy. She wanted to sleep outside with him but he wouldn’t let her because of the rats. To her, he said, little girls can’t sleep outside in case their hair goes straight. Well! He created a monster: after fruit loaf and milky tea, straight hair was everything she wanted. I often had to go and lift her out of his bed when she was dead to the world. He kissed her dangling feet by way of goodnight and I wiped them on my side.
One night, he must have been so tired, working on the farm and building the house, that he fell asleep and when I went to collect her, they were wrapped around each other, Chicken Licken and her falling sky lying open and the yellow glow of the Tilley lamp making the whole scene look like a life I might have wanted at some stage. I should have let her alone, but I couldn’t sleep without the warm smell of her beside me, so I slid her out and tiptoed back to Bridie, taking care not to look at the shape of John Johns’s red lips when he slept.
I’m not yours, I said to his dreaming face once more for my own sanity, and you’re not mine. Those red lips were sneaking past my defences, had made a few appearances in my secret dreams where they got all mixed up with nudey-rudey photos and the thought of him putting his mouth on the sophisticated Catherine. Now he was stuck back here building a better house for my daughter and for his mother and I would get to live in it too if I didn’t annoy him. There was no denying that he was decent in many ways. I had to keep an eye on my anger. It was in danger of petering out if I didn’t keep it fuelled.
I blame the whole caravan-living thing. It was playing havoc with my nerves. We had all had to get closer. Without rooms to run to, we sat around together at night. I cooked outside in the log store on the two-ring gas stove, churning out great piles of stew or chicken soup with spuds which we ate with spoons from tin bowls. We felt we could nearly touch the stars, they were so close in the low dark sky. We drank hot chocolate on the steps of the caravan after John cut a steel drum in half and used it to light a fire. The smoke kept the midges from eating us alive.
Serena loved it: having Bridie, me and her dada all on call at once was her greatest delight. Matthew started coming over more regularly and the other lads who were knocking down and putting up walls stayed for a few beers in the evening. The days were stretching into summer and there were more hours to get through all the work of the farm. Along with the light, there was no doubting it: the place had become jolly. I wanted to laugh too, wanted to throw myself into the joy of watching the amber sparks of the wood burning in the silvery-blue of the flames. But my laughs were stuck in my feet and by the time they climbed to my mouth it was too late.
Seeing John among his friends joshing and joking was unsettling. A lot of them had been in England with him and the tales they’d spun and heard in pubs were often repeated. Bridie had a few favourites she asked for every night and she laughed like she’d never heard the punchline before. They tried to include me but I would blush and stammer and clam up if a question came my way. The looks on their faces assured me they thought John had married an idiot out of the goodness of his heart when he could have had his pick, and they were right. The man himself answered for me so I could blend back into the whitewashed walls.
I was more shocked than any of them when one night I finally joined in. I don’t know what came over me, a sort of dander maybe? It was really late, Serena and Bridie were both asleep. We’d had the usual rounds of yarns and discussions and enough drink had been taken for them all to get a bit sentimental. There were loads of things in London they missed: the buildings, the parks, the great Irish bars. None of them made a single mention of women although I knew England had them, too. The money was so good, the work maybe not so hard as they thought at the time. They kept going until they were convinced it was a great country altogether, better than here most days. At least there the police didn’t have guns. I might as well have fired a shot above their heads when I piped up.
– Will you go back, do you think?
– We’re just talking, Mary! Talking too much maybe!
– I’d like to know. Are you thinking of going back across the water for any reason? Any reason at all?
– No, I’m not going back. I’ve done my time there.
With that, I’d bid them all goodnight where they sat with their mouths open. When I closed the door on the caravan they all burst out laughing. I heard them ribbing John Johns about the auld ball and chain and he must have taken it in good humour because he didn’t answer.
He seemed to have a new-found lightness all round and he had nearly turned me inside out when I caught him bathing in the river a few days earlier.
Serena was snoozing with Bridie under the big yellow tarpaulin John had strung between the milk house and the barn. I took the opportunity to stroll down to the river to cool off. I rolled up my trousers and waded in, delighted with the relief, scooping the water in chilly handfuls up my arms and over the back of my sunburnt neck.
I looked up at the pure-blue sky and saw the white trails of two aeroplanes, heading out from Belfast over the west coast to America. Would I ever get there? Would I ever get anywhere? Would I ever see more than a mile of the Atlantic where it gouged the Donegal coast?
John had stood up right beside me, buck naked but for a smile, and scared the bejesus out of me! I had run for the bank and hauled myself out after screaming like a girl. I’d never seen a naked man before in the flesh. He had laughed: laughed and laughed, not even trying to cover … his … himself up. Oh, he was brazen! In the end he lifted up his arms like a man about to ascend into Heaven.
– Can you see what you do to me, Mrs Johns, even at this temperature?
I had run through the rushes barefoot, my face on fire and other bits of me not much cooler, the sound of his pleasure ringing in my ears.
I had never thought of what I did once a week on a Wednesday as self-abuse. Wednesday was bingo night and John would run Bridie into the town and go for a jar while she gossiped and struggled to get a line or a full house for a fiver. With the house empty and my baba fast asleep, I would have a proper strip wash at the sink. When I was clean, I rinsed the rough facecloth out for the last time and pressed it over my face to block out the light. I would lean my weight against the locked door and wedge my feet on either side of the blocks that held the big Belfast sink up in the air, to keep from sliding on the lino.
Memories intruded: a really deep kiss I’d shared with Joe Loughrey, one from the early days when we couldn’t get enough of each other. The look on Jacques Bernier’s face when he had picked the flake of tobacco from his tongue, the thought of where that tongue had just been.
If I was extra tired, or lonely or sad, I couldn’t stop John Johns’s face floating past, his eyebrows knitted together, his lips burning red but still with nothing to say. Those nights I juddered to my feet and vowed I’d never do it again. It was a sin, anyway. But far from any of it making it better, far from it being a release, I might as well have been throwing paraffin at a fire instead of sand. The heat raged higher and hotter and harder inside me every time I strove to damp it out.
The blotches on my chest and neck would just have time to go down before they got home, she reeking of fag smoke and mint imperials, he with beer on his breath and a look in his eye I couldn’t meet.