Araby

The day after my mother’s return from hospital was busy, with the nurse and doctor in attendance. Her morphine dosage was checked; she didn’t appear to have much pain and she lay quietly, letting them move swiftly around her.

The doctor accepted a cup of tea when he’d finished, following me into the kitchen.

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘this kind of thing isn’t new to you. You’re a physiotherapist, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right. I spent a bit of time on an oncology ward when I was training. I know roughly what to expect.’

‘No,’ Molloy corrected me. ‘You don’t know what to expect; she’s your mother and that makes it completely different.’

He sipped his tea. ‘If only she’d kept her appointments or let me in when I came to see her. Don’t get me wrong, I honestly don’t think I could have done anything that would have affected the course of events, but there’s always that element of doubt.’

When he’d gone I went out to clear leaves from the gutters, raking at them fiercely. I rammed them into a bin-bag, wishing that he’d kept his mouth shut. I was angry with her for playing games just when she shouldn’t have. All those years of trotting to the doctor’s when there was very little wrong and then keeping him at bay when there was every reason to see him. I worked up a sweat, going on to rake up all the leaves in the garden, picking up twigs and other debris.

A Test from God

A point would come, during each summer holiday near Bantry, when my mother and grandmother had a falling out. A coolness would set in for a couple of days. This falling out was sometimes over an incident, such as the time when my mother let the pig into the vegetable garden and it decimated the cabbages, but more often than not there was no apparent cause. I would know that the falling out was signalled when my grandmother headed off up the fields to see her neighbours, the Donavans. Then my mother would take me on a trip to Cork.

We would rise early and walk the three miles to Bantry to wait for the bus or the bone-shaker, as my mother called it. It was a low-slung vehicle with a long-lost suspension, driven by a distant cousin of hers, Denny Sullivan. Denny had thick pebble glasses, a fat upper lip and a permanently lop-sided grin. He wore wellingtons all year round.

My grandmother had told me that Denny was a bit gone in the head, that one of the fairies had sneaked into his cot when he was a baby and stolen some of his sense for the fairy king. Now and again, about three times a year, Denny would have one of his ‘episodes’ and take off with the bus. Ignoring his waiting passengers he accelerated past them and headed for Athlone. Apparently he liked the safe feeling of being in the very middle of Ireland. The police in Athlone knew him, and would ring the bus company in Bantry to tell them he was back. He would park overnight in the main street, buy himself chips, chocolate and Little Nora lemonade and sleep in the bus after feasting royally. The next day he drove home and carried on as normal, comforted by his trip to Ireland’s womb.

Although Denny spoke extremely slowly I found his rolling accent almost impenetrable, but my mother would chat away to him as he lazed his way to Cork at twenty miles an hour. He was fascinated by all things English and would ask her about London.

‘Tell me now, have ye been to see de Towerrr and Buckingham Palis?’

‘Oh, ages ago. The Queen was there when we went to the palace.’

‘Did ye see herrr?’

‘No, no. But the flag was up.’

‘And do ye have dem moving shtairrs, dem tings?’

‘Escalators. Oh, we do. We have loads of them in the Underground.’

‘And what’s dat?’

‘There’s trains that go under the ground all around London.’

‘Yerra Jaysus God! Arrre ye takin’ de mickey?’

‘Not at all. Sure it’s been there years.’

‘And tell me now, do ye have dem colourrred people in London, de ones wit de darrrk shkins?’

‘There’s people from India living a few doors away, sure.’

‘And would dere be an odourrr frrrom deirrr shkins now?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well now, tell me; do ye tink ’tis betterrr to live in London or New Yorrrk?’

That would have her flummoxed. ‘Well sure, I couldn’t be saying that because I haven’t been to New York.’

‘New Yorrrk is verrry big altogetherrr,’ Denny would remark sagely and my mother would nod, unable to argue with that.

He must have been terribly fired up by his conversation with her one year because to her horror, he turned up on the doorstep in Tottenham on a fine September morning, the sun glinting off his jam jar specs. He was still wearing his wellingtons. He had broken the habit of fifteen years and driven the bus to Ringaskiddy, where he had caught the ferry to Swansea. He announced that he wanted to get a job on de big rrred London buses and drrrive past de Towerrr and de Palis. In de meantime, did my mother have any Little Norrra limonade as he was terrrible parrrched and dey’d had divil a dhrop on de trrrain.

My mother took some extra tranquillizers and phoned the priest and my father at work. After a long talk with Denny, Father Corcoran managed to persuade him that London would be an awful place to live; if people here tried to drive buses wherever they liked they got arrested and – this proved to be the clincher – Little Nora lemonade was nowhere to be found in the length and breadth of England. Denny went back quite happily two days later, but it took my mother several months to get over the shock. She was circumspect in her conversations with him after that, taking care not to make London sound attractive.

During the summer of my twelfth year my mother and grandmother had words about who’d had the last of the bacon for breakfast on one Tuesday morning. My mother and I were therefore on Denny’s bus by ten, headed for Cork. My mother had noticed in the Cork Examiner that a new shop selling religious goods had opened by the quays; Martha and Mary it was called and there were special half-price opening offers. Denny had driven even more slowly than usual because of a suspect axle and we were thirsty when we arrived. My mother decided that we’d have a snack in Maggie Murphy’s, one of her preferred watering holes, before we started shopping.

Unfortunately, Maggie Murphy’s had changed hands, although it cunningly continued with the same name. The café was up a stairs above a bakery, and the first sign that all was not well was when my mother saw that the usual pristine white linen tablecloths had been replaced with stained red-checked gingham. We gave our order for cheese sandwiches and a pot of tea to a listless young girl.

‘Sorry,’ she said, not sounding at all sorry, ‘we’ve no cheese.’

‘How d’ye mean?’ my mother asked.

‘We’re out of cheese.’

‘How can ye be out of cheese? There’s a shop that sells it over the road.’

‘We don’t get it from there, we have it delivered and it hasn’t come.’

The girl tossed her long hair back and I saw my mother stiffen.

‘I’ve been coming here for ten years and I’ve never known ye to run out of cheese.’

‘I’ll have egg,’ I volunteered, wanting to deflect an argument.

My mother shot me a look. ‘Could ye not go and get cheese from over the road just this once? I’ve a hankering for cheese.’

‘No,’ said the girl simply.

My mother’s bosom juddered. ‘I see. That’s the way of things, is it? I’ll just have tea, so, and bring egg for me son.’

The girl scribbled disinterestedly on her pad and left us.

‘Oh, hold on!’ My mother winked at me and gestured.

The girl stopped in her tracks, sighed, blinked and sloped back.

‘Have ye a scone?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll have two of them with jam. I suppose ye have jam?’

‘Yes.’

My mother picked up the tablecloth after she’d gone and fingered the wood underneath. ‘Dirty,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘This ould place has gone downhill. Look at the sugar bowl, there’s crusty bits at the edges. I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring the milk bottle to the table.’

There were crusty bits around the sugar bowl at home but I forbore to mention this. I looked at the prints of the Blasket Islands on the walls.

‘I stopped her gallop though,’ my mother commented sotto voce. ‘Did you see the way I called her back? Barefaced young jade.’

After a long quarter of an hour during which my mother drummed her fingers on the table and pronounced that if this was the way Ireland was going, Dev might as well not have bothered arguing with John Bull, the girl slouched in with a tray.

‘Did ye have to go to India for the tea?’ my mother asked.

The girl didn’t answer, but shoved our food onto the table and left a bill by the milk. Her feet slip-slopped from her shoes as she vanished.

‘Look at the cut of her,’ my mother said, attacking a scone. ‘’Twould be a long day before you’d get a civil answer out of that one.’

‘Maybe her dog’s just died,’ I said.

My mother pulled a face as she bit into her scone. ‘This ould thing’s stale, I’d say they’ve had it a week. What’s the sandwich like?’

‘All right.’

‘Hmm. Let’s try the tea. That’s always been good here, strong enough to cut with a knife.’

It was thin and pale, a poor imitation of the brew she’d been anticipating.

‘Ye wouldn’t credit it, would ye?’ my mother asked. ‘’Tis like ould donkey’s wee-wee. That one did it on purpose. I could tell she was going to do the dirty.’ She picked up the bill. ‘The cheek of it! A pound for ould rubbish that wouldn’t satisfy a starving man and it was the last thing on this earth to eat! Finish up there, will ye, I want to get out of this hellhole.’

I gamely swallowed my dry sandwich, washing it down with gulps of the donkey’s wee-wee. As I finished, my mother grabbed the teapot and up-ended it, creating a lake on the table and floor. Then she took a spoon and scooped strawberry jam into the flood, smearing it in well. It looked like modern art, the kind of effort where the artist flings paint randomly at the canvas.

‘That’ll show them,’ she said, hoisting her bag.

The sullen girl appeared as she threw the money onto the sodden, jammy table.

‘Dreadfully sorry,’ my mother said in her pseudo upper-class accent, ‘we had a little accident, don’tcha kneow. I’m afraid yew’ve got some work to do, I hope yew don’t pass out with the shock.’

Martha and Mary improved my mother’s mood. She became positively gleeful when we stepped through the door. The counters and shelves were chock full of items to aid devotion, made by the needy and deserving; a heady combination. There were piles of framed holy pictures produced in a workshop for the blind, rosaries from an African cooperative, crucifixes in all sizes and three types of wood from a leper colony, prayer books sent from the Punjab, mass cards from secret Catholic groups in Poland, musical plastic holy water fonts made by polio victims and hymnals illustrated by paralysed artists who painted with their brushes in their mouths. She bought a picture of the holy family featuring a very plump baby Jesus, a holy water font that played ‘Silent Night’ when you dipped a finger in and a bottle of holy water blessed by the Bishop of Cork to go with it.

We sat down on a sun-warmed bench by the River Lee so that she could look again at her purchases. I had to hold the font while she poured some holy water in and tested it. The tinkling strains of the carol rang unseasonally forth.

‘That’s dotey,’ a wistful little voice said.

We looked around. A small girl with ginger hair tied in plaits, wearing a grubby blue-and-white dress with a sailor collar was standing by us.

‘D’ye like it?’ my mother asked, holding it near her.

‘Oh I do, I do,’ the little girl said. She had green eyes with brown flecks in them and a solemn expression. She peered more closely. ‘Is that Our Lady at the top there?’ she asked.

‘It is, God’s blessed mother.’

The girl pressed her hands together. ‘Isn’t she beeootiful,’ she said. ‘I never knew she was so beeootiful.’

‘Would ye like to take some holy water?’ my mother offered. ‘’Twill play the tune for ye.’

‘Can I? Can I really?’ She held out a hesitant finger.

‘Wisha ye can, of course, alannah. Isn’t it lovely to see a child wanting to offer praise to Our Lady? Won’t it warm the Virgin’s heart?’

My mother’s accent was becoming more pronounced. I looked at her curiously.

The girl carefully dipped a tiny finger into the font. ‘Silent Night’ played for her. Her hands flew dramatically to her cheeks. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, ‘’tis magic! Is it Our Lady doing that?’

My mother smiled indulgently. ‘Well now, maybe ’tis. Who can be the judge? What’s yeer name, acushla?’

‘Erin.’

‘Well, God save the heroes! Isn’t that lovely! The very name of Ireland itself! And where’s yeer mammy and daddy?’

Erin glanced down. ‘Me mammy’s dead. Me daddy’s gone to sell a horse. He’ll be back here for me at six o’clock.’

‘He’s left ye alone? How old are ye?’

‘I’m eight.’ She sat down beside my mother who shifted me along to make room. ‘Me daddy has to sell the horse, he’s done it before. Then he has to have a pint to set him up.’ She tapped my mother’s arm. ‘D’ye see that hotel across the road?’

‘I do, what of it?’

Erin laughed. ‘I went in there just now and had a bath, ’twas gorgeous. Lashings of hot water and big soft towels. I hardly ever get a bath on the road.’

‘Ye little divil ye,’ my mother laughed admiringly. ‘Are ye travellers then?’

‘We are. We travel all over the country.’

‘And good for ye!’ my mother approved. ‘Aren’t ye a great little character? And ye’re all alone ’til this evening?’

Erin nodded. ‘I get a biteen lonely sometimes.’

‘Are ye hungry?’

‘Starved. I’ve only had an apple today.’ Erin looked up at her. ‘Me daddy has no money ’til he sells the horse.’

‘Ye poor creature ye! Come and have a bite of lunch with me and me son. Rory, say hallo to the little girl.’

I nodded to Erin. I was stunned; in London I’d always been instructed never to go with strangers and here was my mother kidnapping a child. I nudged her.

‘What if the police stop us?’ I said.

‘What? Why would they do that?’

‘They might think we’re trying to take her away. Her father might be looking for her.’

‘Sure didn’t ye hear her say her daddy’s not coming back ’til six. This isn’t England, thank God, a poor child can trust people here. Poor motherless creature.’ She patted Erin’s hair. Erin smiled and I knew that my mother was putty in her hands. ‘Haven’t ye gorgeous hair,’ my mother told her, ‘real true red, not that ould carrotty colour some eejits get out of bottles.’

We set off to have lunch. Erin slipped her arm through my mother’s and I trailed after them, looking at the girl’s torn dress hem, bare legs and grimy sandals. I couldn’t understand this turn of events; my mother had always said to be wary of tinker children, they could be rough.

Erin ate her plate of fish and chips and asked for more. She devoured two large helpings of trifle and three glasses of milk. My mother watched her eating with relish.

‘Ye’ve a great appetite, I love to see a good appetite in a child. This fella here only picks at his food.’

Erin smiled at me. ‘Ye talk funny,’ she said to me, ‘not like yeer mammy at all.’

‘That’s because he was born in London, pet. He’s a little cockney sparrow. Where were ye born?’

‘In Tralee. That’s where me mammy died.’

‘Did ye never know her?’

‘No. She went to heaven when I was two weeks old.’

‘Ah, ye poor peteen.’ My mother’s eyes were glistening. ‘And yeer daddy’s raised ye?’

‘One of me aunties helps sometimes but I don’t like her, she’s horrible.’

‘How so?’

‘She never gives me enough to eat. Me belly rumbles at night.’

My mother gazed at Erin. ‘Oh, I know what that’s like, dotey, I know only too well. Have a bit of ice-cream now, do.’

While Erin went to the toilet, my mother settled the bill and shook her head.

‘That poor little girl,’ she said to me, ‘alone in the world with no mother.’

‘She’s got a father, she’s not alone,’ I said, churlishly.

‘Ah, that’s not the same thing at all. Ye wouldn’t understand. A girl needs a mother’s love. Ye can tell she’s missing it, she had the look of a lost child. What kind of father is he anyway, letting an infant that age roam the streets with no food? What if it poured with rain? Them travellers treat their children rough, they have to fend for themselves.’ She smiled. ‘Did ye hear her, having a bath in that hotel! Isn’t she a gutsy little article! Ah, wouldn’t I love to tuck her under me arm and carry her home with me!’

I was alarmed; she had an inspired look. I knew that she was capable of sudden, impulsive actions. I pictured Erin back at my grandmother’s, running up and down the glen with her pigtails flying, and then in Tottenham, flicking those green eyes at my father. He’d known my mother to come home with some unexpected acquisitions, but never an eight-year-old child.

Erin spent the rest of the day with us, as if we had been on her agenda all along. We went to a department store and bought her a pink and blue dress, matching cardigan and socks, shiny black shoes and white underwear. She allowed my mother to choose the clothes, nodding eagerly at whatever was suggested, then went off with her to the Ladies to put them on. She emerged holding my mother’s hand, her hair brushed out and held back with a blue ribbon they’d got at the ‘buttons and bows’ counter. My mother turned her around in front of a mirror.

‘Now,’ she said to me, ‘what d’ye think?’

‘Very nice.’ No second-hand shops for Erin, I was thinking dourly.

She nudged Erin. ‘Will ye listen to him! “Very nice”. What would ye do with boys! D’ye know that rhyme, pet; “What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and all things nice! What are little boys made of? Rats and snails and puppy dogs’ tails!” Have ye never heard it?’

Erin was chuckling. ‘No, I never did. ’Tis funny! Rats and snails and puppy dogs’ tails!’

‘I’m not a little boy, I’m eleven,’ I told her.

She pulled a face and moved in closer to my mother.

‘Don’t mind him, he’s just an ould grump,’ my mother told her. ‘Now, what’ll we do?’

‘Can we go to the pictures?’ Erin asked. ‘I’ve never been to the pictures in me life!’

‘We will so. Let’s see what’s on.’

I always had to argue mercilessly to get my mother to take me to see anything other than a biblical epic. She had once had a bad experience during Robin Hood when a boy behind us blew a loud blast on a whistle every time the Sheriff of Nottingham got a trouncing. But today anything seemed possible; off we hurried and got in to Greyfriars Bobby, a film I’d already seen with a friend in London. Erin sat on the edge of her seat, mouth open, transfixed. Whenever I looked at my mother she was watching Erin’s face or pressing more sweets on her.

We had to get Denny’s return bus at five. At half-four we left Erin back where she’d found us.

‘I had a grand time,’ she said, buttoning her cardigan. ‘The best time ever.’

‘Did ye, pet? Will ye always remember me?’

‘I will.’

‘Just tell yeer daddy ye met a kind lady who was yeer mammy for an afternoon.’

‘He’ll like me dress, I know he will.’

‘Don’t forget to say a prayer for me at night.’

‘I’ll say one every night, so I will, for ever.’

Erin waved at us until we turned the corner, her cardigan riding up with her outstretched arm. My mother was quiet on the way to the bus stop and didn’t have much to say to Denny as we rattled to Bantry. When my grandmother asked if we’d had a good day, she replied that God had sent her a test and she hoped she’d acquitted herself well.