When the postman handed me two letters in the summer of 1993 and one of them was a blue airmail from America my heart nearly stopped. At last, at last I had my news from the long-lost Joe Loughrey! Time did a painful little fold and I was sixteen again and desperate to hear that I hadn’t been wiped from his memory. I settled down with a mug of tea and a homily to myself not to get too worked up, when I saw that it was from San Francisco and addressed to John Johns. It could only be from Father Pat O’Connell. What had made me dream I was worth remembering?
The other letter was from Omagh, from the convent. Serena had passed her 11+ and was being invited along for an interview to see if she was the right kind of material for the nuns. Sister Pious’s signature leapt off the page and punched me in the gut! Could she dream she was writing to the class of ’82’s famously failed virgin? That Serena was starting out on the road I had slipped off, coupled with such a fresh jolt from the past, made me think about how deep I had buried the life I once wanted.
The life of a teacher coming back to my nice clean, rose-scented home, the two perfect children I had always imagined would be enough, a fine upstanding doctor on my arm. I could have sworn I once thought of those things as ambitious? I left both of the letters on the table and went outside. Cows don’t feed themselves, y’know?
When John came home I handed them to him. He was delighted by Serena’s chance at the grammar school and he called her over for a hug. She was all blushes and giggles, still just a little girl whose knee socks didn’t quite reach her knees any more. She wrapped her arms around his neck. He was the best dada in the whole townland and she was the best girl in the whole wide world and I was the most jealous mammy on the entire concrete floor.
He was less than delighted with the contents of the other letter. A pained look travelled across his face as if he had just been handed bad news. I never got to read it because, after he’d torn open the envelope and read it once, John Johns put it straight in the range where it flared brilliantly purple for a second and then curled up and died.
Bridie meets my eye from her chair where she’s in danger of being swallowed by a blanket she’s been crocheting since Christmas. Don’t ask, she mouths, as if I would ever dare! My super-sharp brain allows me to understand that the father had reached out for the son although the son was too upset to let him try but I said nothing.
The timing couldn’t have been worse for daddies with dog collars popping out of the woodwork. One Bishop Eamonn Casey had just been splattered all over the news because it turned out he had had an affair and fathered a son with an American woman. Irish Catholics, high on the list being Mammy, didn’t know what to think or what bit of the scandal was worse. Was it that he’d had the sex, that he’d wanted the child adopted or that he’d robbed some diocesan funds to pay for the cover-up?
Sadie Rattigan was convinced it was a British government conspiracy to destroy the unshakeable faith of Ireland and get us all to run to the other side. It was their way to maintain a Protestant majority and keep the union, Yes Siree Bob! She couldn’t be swayed until she saw it on The Late Late Show, heard it from the tongue of Saint Gay Byrne as he interviewed the ‘hussy’ Annie Murphy, so it had to be true. She marched on Johns Farm to vent her anger in front of Bridie who had always been part of the rot.
She roared across the plate of Blue Ribands that everyone knew that priests were just men too, everyone knew they had their fun, but no one had the right to let on. If that hussy had just kept her mouth shut, like most women who had enticed men of the cloth to give in to their MUCKY ways, it would be business as usual instead of this devastation of the Church’s power. Bridie nodded and said, is that so? I’d never been gladder that John wasn’t in the room. He might have picked Sadie’s head off her shoulders like a wild strawberry and popped it in his mouth.
I’d half a mind to tell her that her local hero Father O’Brien, the man she lived to worship with her dusters and mops, had played his own part in covering up another fallen soldier of God. My old friend Father Martin O’Hara had been passed along and hidden in several parishes thanks to his inability to say no to hussies but he’d served me well when I’d needed a scapegoat.
In another week, another letter landed. It was when I saw the postmark read Donegal that I slipped the envelope into my apron pocket before John Johns came back for the mid-morning tea. I had no big idea what I’d do with it but Father Pat O’Connell had done me a favour once. He had come into The Hill and chastised my mother when she was at the height of her powers. He had told me that I wasn’t what he expected and I’d felt special for five minutes which was better than nothing.
The letter got hotter and hotter where it lay in my apron but I kept it there until John and me were alone in the bedroom. I delivered the lines I’d been rehearsing for hours.
– This came for you today.
– Why have you brought that up here? I’ve no interest in it and you know it!
– Why don’t you just read it? It’s been posted in Donegal.
There was no range up here so he’d hardly stomp the whole way to the kitchen to make a point and sure enough he didn’t. Though his face was like thunder, he read it from top to bottom and turned away from me to put it on the bedside table. His big back was hunched and I was suddenly sorry for getting involved.
– He’s not well …
– Who?
– Don’t be coy, Mary. It doesn’t suit you.
– What does he want?
– He wants to set things right with his long-lost son!
– I think you should go. You only get one father in this life.
Serena picked that moment to shout out goodnight to us and he raised an eyebrow at me. Her Dada hung in the air, a mosquito.
– What about you, Mary? Are you feeling confessional?
– No, I’m not!
– What a surprise! I don’t care anyway; Serena’s always been my girl. Maybe you’re right? Maybe I should go?
– Maybe you should.
When we lay down together he kept a space between us. What was in his mind and why couldn’t I just ask him? I was glad when he spoke because it was the kind of night Granny Moo might appear but, just as I thought I saw her forming in the corner, he broke the spell.
– I’ll go tomorrow as it’s Saturday and get it out of the way. Don’t tell Bridie, okay?
– Okay.
It didn’t even take the whole day for him to realise he had made a mistake. He’d spun some yarn about looking at machinery in Ballybofey and Bridie had nodded, unaware. He’d smiled at me when he left; we had a secret after a fashion. But when he came home after a very few hours only a blind man wouldn’t be able to see it hadn’t gone well. The children cleared out of his path when he stormed through the kitchen and up the stairs to get changed and he slammed through the half-door and stayed out in the back fields until it was nearly dark.
The boys went out after him to see if he wanted any help but he sent them home and they trailed in, a bit gloomy because Daddy wasn’t acting like himself. Much later, Serena went out to ask him to come in: it was time for cocoa and stories. He didn’t come in with her so I knew it was bad. I had to go myself.
I followed the sound of the sledgehammer to find him stripped to his vest though it was chilly and getting dark. He was pounding in fence poles, swinging the sledgehammer wildly and bringing it down with such force that I could hear the wood nearly splintering in two with every blow.
– John?
– Ah, here she is! My darling wife!
– What happened?
– The priest says I’m a bastard! Isn’t that funny, Mary? But guess what? I’m a bastard for ruining you, not because he took an unorthodox route to fatherhood himself!
– I don’t understand …
He decided to inform me. Father Pat O’Connell was holed up in a luxury Catholic Church house called Killhatch to recover from an operation on his bowel, suspected cancer. It started out well enough, two men having a standard Irish conversation: the price of this and that compared to America, the shocking amount of rain that had fallen just that afternoon, the change in the times since his day. John was feeling happy – imagine that, Mary, happy after all these years of being the most famous bastard in Carncloon? Hundreds of auld bitches just like Sadie Rattigan whispering about him in the streets and snorting when he was safely past without contaminating them with the sins of his father? He’d thought the old man might want to reach out, that he might want to apologise for leaving his son so exposed. He’d dreamed that the shaming of Bishop Casey would give him food for thought.
I nodded and nodded. I knew just the sort of behaviour that my mother and her Catholic cronies were capable of. I would have tried to stammer out that I didn’t want to be tarred with her brush but there wasn’t a lot of gaps. John was beating out his explanations in time with the sledgehammer: whump, whump, whump.
Father Pat O’Connell hadn’t really wanted to see him at all, hadn’t actually wanted to spend time with his son. He’d wanted to tell John Johns what a mistake he’d made. He should never have married me. ME! It had been playing on his mind for years and he wanted to put it on record that I should not have been married off when I was only a child. He’d met me once: I’d seemed a very sweet, innocent young girl and I should have been given the chance to get on with my life.
I had the look of a girl who might do something with my brains, certainly I was too good to be stuck on a farm. It had been good enough for Bridie – she’d had no options – but me, me, I had come across as having potential. John should have seen his way to being the bigger man, maybe even just taking on the baby and rearing it with his mother’s help?
Father Pat had seen things like that happening in San Francisco – he’d played his part in it himself, ‘encouraging’ good local families to set things straight in God’s eyes, but now he’s not so sure that was the way forward. Maybe the Church should focus more on forgiveness? After all, everyone makes mistakes, he’d made a few himself. His first mistake, John, was practically snarling. He’d had to tolerate being the butt of a lot of jokes as a boy because of Father Pat’s human failings and there he sat telling John what to do, preaching to him, not trying to heal the pain of the years.
I saw how hurt he was, how angry and I knew it was my fault. If I’d kept my mouth shut I would have saved him more upset. He stopped hammering; a fine sheen of sweat had gathered on his face and his arms, soaking a dark V at his neck. It was my chance to say that I was happy enough, that I had had no big plans to change the world bar being a teacher and I got to teach my own children every day. It wasn’t a terrible life. I loved them so much. I loved Bridie … I …
– Do you know what Pat O’Connell’s parting shot was?
– No.
– He said I had had no right to put you in a cage! Is that how you see this situation, Mary? Like you’re some sort of prisoner?
– I just wanted to travel, to fly … I …
– Ah, so you are a sorry little songbird I tied to the bed?
– That’s not fair!
– That’s all you have for me? After all these years? It’s not fair? Go away, Mary, looking at you makes me weary! I’ve been stuck with you and your bloody nonsense for years but somehow I’m the bad guy. Some nights, I feel that you couldn’t be more mine and the next day you’re gone again. It’s a shame Joe Loughrey didn’t come back to claim you in time. He would have saved us both a lot of pain.
I turned for home. The hatred on his face burned into my back as I went. I was watching my feet moving through the long grass, seeing the tiny grey moths rise up when I disturbed them. The bats would start to fly soon; the sound of them gathering on the big sycamores at the entrance to the river field was my signal to boil the milk for the cocoa.
I had to stop by the corner of the milk house. A great ache was spreading across my chest. I wished I’d kept my nose out of his business. I had felt stuck down here on Johns Farm but now I understood that he was just as stuck as I was. He hadn’t mentioned Catherine. He was prepared to forgive her everything but it was her who trashed his heart. It was her who’d cut him loose and he’d settled for second best with me because I was on the doorstop. I didn’t make him do it. He didn’t care enough to save himself. I hadn’t been brave enough to make it stop. We’d buried each other. So why did I suddenly feel very much alive?
The yellow glow from the windows was darkened now and again by the shadows of my children running about inside, safe and warm. He had given me that roof and that life and I had rewarded him with silence. That’s when I realised that Pat O’Connell didn’t know that Serena wasn’t John Johns’s daughter. He thought John was the one to get me pregnant and the one to do the decent thing and marry me quickly before too much time passed. He would never know that John had stepped up and done a brave thing, foolhardy as it was. Not many men would take on another man’s child; not many men could have made her feel so loved.
He hadn’t disowned Serena just to save his own skin. He hadn’t ratted on me as the silly girl I was who got herself into trouble. He had kept my secret even though it had earnt him a sermon from his father. He could have leapt off the hook. Why would he take the blame for me? I was hardly worth it. I would never understand what made him tick.
I was back at my post at the range when he finally came in. The waynes all ran to him, nearly knocking him off his feet. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Daddy, will you read me this? Daddy, will you take me with you tomorrow? Daddy, Serena called me a gobshite! I did not, Dada! Bridie meets my eyes and laughs at my happy houseful and all I can do is smile back. She would have loved a pile of waynes of her own under her feet.
My mind drifts back to her two boys and my two brothers under the earth at St Bede’s. What a waste of beautiful flesh and blood. The sad smile that the memory brings is caught on my lips by John Johns but he is not about to give me another inch. I’ve had miles already. He scowls his way past, trailing the children in his wake, without a word.
He’ll be biding his time until they don’t need a mother stationed at the range from 6am until 10pm every day. Then he’ll be able to let me go. I’ll be set free but where will I fly? The very thought of it makes roots grow out of my feet through the concrete in front of the range, through the hundreds of feet of good clay and still further into the granite bedrock.
This is my life, I thought: children, farming, Carncloon, the five hills I feel I can touch. Even the Troubles – the rattle of Saracens and the Chinooks chopping across the cloud-filled blue skies – flowed in my veins. The joys of Bridie, Eileen, Kathleen, Bernie, Matthew; the sorrows of Daddy and Mammy. The sights and sounds of Lizzie Magee. The taste of John Johns.
This is my life and only a fool would keep running away from it. What I needed was a way back, a crosspiece, something to yoke me and their father together more securely so that I could stay on Johns Farm. Something that no man, priest or not, could put asunder.