I climbed the hill the next day to meet my first three boys from the bus, leaving Daniel to sleep. John Johns was away early again to Omagh but he wouldn’t be too late as he couldn’t wait to see them either. All four of them would be at home – all of them together! – and my chest swelled at the thought of all the noise and bother that I would yearn to endure for another twenty years.
Marius and Eugene were coming back from Leeds after a week’s trip to see Serena in London, Shane was meeting them in Belfast. They had stayed with a pal in Derry overnight and they would take the same workers’ bus together that I had to the end of the Hill Road.
I stopped for a while at the turn in the lane, looking down at Johns Farm: the red tin roofs still on the big white barns; the river field full of buttercups; the prize Charolais grazing; Serena’s old pony, Bantree, standing stock-still. All of it framed in the greenest of green. John wouldn’t sell the little pony, although he cost a small fortune in vet’s fees and feed. Bantree was safe and sound and waiting for her anytime, his girl.
They came pushing and shoving and noisy along the lane just as I got past the big hayfield that ran along the side of the road. I got a smattering of kisses and hugs and far too many tickles to make me scream and threaten them with a good slap. That made them laugh; they’d never been smacked in their whole lives. Their beautiful faces were his, the big shoulders and long legs all his, and I loved them so, loved the perfection of them, I had to stop myself kissing them half to death. When we were in sight of the red roof on the milk house, Eugene took off and started running for the door with me among them, all of us like children.
It was a sight to see when all four of them collided on the street, hugging and shouting and ragging each other. Before he knew it, poor Daniel was lifted shoulder-high and run at some speed towards the river. He managed to wriggle free and I could see him pretending to throw punches and karate kicks before they all piled in on top of him again. All I could hear was laughter, even though every face was under someone else’s backside! I ran down to break them up, picking up a stray shoe here and there as they scattered and ran for the water. Buck naked to a man, they jumped in screaming.
I stayed a safe distance from the bank and soaked up their enjoyment and love. Shane climbed out and grabbed for his shirt to cover himself.
– Where’s Da? Did he say when he would be here?
– He’s at the mart, said he wouldn’t be too late.
We stayed down by the water for an hour or so, lying around, chatting about Serena mostly, how well she was doing, how happy. Marius said her paintings were great, huge monochrome flowers. Eugene said they were shite. The other two laughed along, the twins could argue over what way the world was turning. There was still no sign of a boyfriend to replace the last one but it wasn’t bothering Serena too much. She had sent me a present, they said, and so we headed up the river field through the delicate stalks of white cow parsley and purple heads of wild angelica.
Marius handed me a cardboard tube before he walked away with his holdall to the bedroom at the back of the barn he had shared with Eugene. I pulled out a heavy paper roll and unfurled it to see myself. She had drawn me with my back against the wall of Johns Farm but I was staring off to the side. It was a striking resemblance, right down to the nervous meeting of the tips of my fingers. I touched it and some of the charcoal came away. I would fade with time.
As the evening drew in, John didn’t appear so we ate without him. The boys were calling him but got no answer. I made them pasta with a tomato sauce from my own tomatoes which were sweeter than life itself. My developing set of green fingers cheered me, the beauty of my garden was just beginning to knit the break of Bridie.
We opened some wine and saved a glass for John; when he didn’t come we opened some more wine and saved him a glass from that. He was never late and it wasn’t long ’til we took ourselves out on the street to listen for his car. We were all beginning to fret so I occupied them with jobs: I had them check the gates, walk the fences and give the beasts an extra feed.
John Johns hadn’t come back by dusk; it was way past his time. I didn’t worry now that the days of the RUC on the prowl were long over; they were the PSNI now, the Police Service of Northern Ireland who were going to look after us without bias or bile. Daniel hung close to me as I moved around the kitchen. Shane was gassing with Serena on the phone; the twins were kicking a ball outside as it grew dark, their voices carrying high and happy, carefree. But something was niggling me, John Johns would have set out for home early, knowing the boys would be waiting.
After an age I heard a vehicle coming. The sound carried easily on the river, it was so still; and I knew it wasn’t him, his engine was different. I was standing at the end of the house waiting for whoever it was when a red tractor turned the bend. The boys were all around me before it came to a stop on the street. Wordy Clarke was behind the wheel so it wouldn’t be a long story. He got out and tipped his cap before he threw his fag over the hedge.
– Missus.
– Wordy.
– Himself’s had an accident.
– What kind of accident?
– Fall. Been took to Omagh.
– Wordy, HOW DID HE FALL?
– Off a baler, cab jolted.
– AND?
– He’s in Omagh.
– Jesus wept! Thanks, Wordy, you’re a star turn as always!
I roared at my waynes to get me the phone book as we all ran for the kitchen. My heart was in a panicky beat of worry as I dialled the number for the hospital. I got through to the men’s ward where no one seemed to know much. He wasn’t badly cut up but his back was bruised so he’d been sedated for now and they’d know more tomorrow. We had no car; it was at the mart. Rattling the nerves and doors at The Hill seemed too dramatic and Bernie would be fast asleep so Eileen was not an option. We decided John would have to keep for one night.
The boys were worried so I set about reassuring them. I reeled off one of my lists. Your father is made of strong stuff. He hates fuss of any kind. He heals fast, bouncing back from cuts that would have slowed a normal man down. He once gaffer-taped a wad of bandages around a sliced forearm that had to be stitched two days later; he could survive without us and anyway he was asleep. They sloped back to their film and I took a shaky cuppa out to drink under the stars. Wordy was still on the street, leaning against his tractor. Why?
– Wordy, was there something else?
– No.
– Well goodnight then, safe home!
With that he swung up into the cab and started away. Wordy was just one among many misfits that John had looked out for over the years; he was known as a bit simple even by people who knew his mother had taken too much drink through all four of her pregnancies. The Plough hung just above my head and I tracked my eye up to the North Star and hoped it could be seen in Omagh if anyone was gazing out of a hospital window.
During the night, after falling asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, I woke up with sweat running down my back and between my breasts and realised that I was on his side of the bed, tangled in a knot of sheets and worry. I was alone but I was not on my own. When I swung my legs out, Granny Moo was standing by the window, she was looking at the stars. I kept my eyes glued to her for as long as I could but with the first blink she was gone. That was the end of sleep. Rising at 5am, I went through several changes of clothes. I had a lot of stuff brought to me over the years. Posh stuff from all over the world from Lizzie Magee: perfume, high heels, leather handbags in every colour of the rainbow. I love buying clothes for you, Mary Rattigan, she says, I get to pretend that I’m thin and gorgeous. She’s a card!
The thought I had to fight most was the one where I knew it was important to me to look good when I went to the hospital; I wanted to look out-of-this-world. I hadn’t felt like this since I went to the school disco in the parish hall! I picked a sober black trouser suit from the Magee collection and a soft red jumper that I had to pull from its tissue paper. Red was still my colour and it gave me some sort of life as it bounced against the white of my skin. I wiped a lot of the make-up off and brushed my hair again.
– How do I look?
– Fine, Ma, just fine!
– And remember, do NOT tell your sister! Later is always time enough for lousy news! Especially when it’s Serena!
I smiled as all their eyes followed me to the hall. I had told them to get on with the feeding and milking while I went alone to find out how their father was. I stuffed a pair of dangerously high-heeled black boots in a bag while I rooted around for my wellies. The hall mirror let me know I didn’t look half bad for a hard-worked mother of five.
I set off early so that I could drop into Mammy’s and explain the situation. She was all questions and hand-wringing and Ave Marias and asking me about money, which I had plenty of, but the purse was still opened with a maximum of fuss.
The bus was set up exactly as it was in my time. The loud, pretty children sat at the back, safe in their numbers. The bespectacled and greasy few sat here and there in the middle of the bus and the workers sat at the front. The only thing that was different was the fact that the uniforms were mixed now – there no longer was a bus just for Catholics and another one just for Protestants. Public transport was shared since peace broke out: one giant leap for Northern Irish mankind.
As Carncloon rolled away I realised how much everything else had changed too. The same green fields, the same tumbledown stone walls and the same derelict cottages now had Dallas-style houses sitting back from the road with pillars at the gate. Some of them hadn’t even bothered to hang a curtain to hide the perfect cream interiors.
I walked into the hospital and found the ward, already feeling sick from the smell of disinfectant and what it was devised to mask. The Sister asked me to wait – my husband was in the bed that had the curtains round it, could I just wait a few minutes more so that the nursing staff could finish their jobs?
– Is he bad, y’know? Badly cut or what?
– You’d hardly know by looking at him that there was much wrong, God bless him anyhow!
It seemed hours until they drew the curtains and asked me to go on up. He was at the end of the ward, by the window.
– Mary! I thought you’d never come!
– I only heard last night, late last night at that, so I couldn’t make my way here.
I was startled by the big hand that he’d flung out for me before I realised it was for me to hold. I’d never held his hand in public. It was warm and dry and something deep inside me rattled, a feeling of … belonging.
– Well, you don’t look too bad. What have they said about you?
– Oh, Mary, I can’t move my legs! They’ve X-rayed and I might’ve broke my back but they don’t know if the spine is gone too ’til the swelling goes down! What’ll we do if I’m off my legs, Mary?
I snapped to. What was he saying? He couldn’t walk? I just sat there with my lip hangin’. Why had I just sailed in here unprepared? Sometimes my own stupidity took my breath away. A jagged cut ran from his wrist to his elbow. It looked raw and sore and I was moved to kiss it, leaving my lips on it while big salty tears ran silently down my face.
– We’ll manage, I managed to say at last. We’ll manage.
I sat with him for the next few hours while he slept. A nurse had given him something to make sure he lay still. I tried not to look at the shadows his eyelashes cast on his cheeks, at the thick dark hair of his arms and his big hands curled, helpless as a baby. I curled my own hand inside his but there was nothing, not even a flicker, and I had to push his fingers over mine to make him hold me. The callouses were starting to soften and he’d only been out of the fields a matter of hours.
The doctor came round in the afternoon and explained why John had to go to the Mater Hospital in Belfast. They had a specialist spine-injury unit there and my husband would receive the best of care, although it would be more of a journey for me to make when I wanted to visit. My top lip was stuck to my teeth and I kept licking its underside to set it free so that I could hold my mouth in a steady line.
He came to when they shifted him from the bed to the trolley. He didn’t speak but fixed me with a stare that made me feel as if I was being memorised. When I had turned from red to white and back again, he spoke.
– I know you won’t come.
– I will, I promise.
I stayed ’til he was transferred to the ambulance and I explained to the doctor that I couldn’t go with him because I had children and must be home. Children were always more important than husbands so they understood, though I could tell they thought I was a quare wan, letting an injured man go so far, so alone. I didn’t mention the cows, though their hooves were practically sticking out of my mouth. John Johns held my eyes the whole time because I couldn’t get close enough for him to hold anything else, and I looked back because I needed to prove that I could stand on my own two feet even though my legs were wobbling like jellies. They were not strong enough to let me jump in beside him, to console him, before it was too late.
As the doors of the ambulance closed I saw one big tear roll down his face before I was shut out completely. I waited as it left the car park and turned at the roundabout with a couple of warning whoops to take him to the other side of the Six Counties and all I felt was forsaken. He was lost to me for the sake of one step in the right direction.
I didn’t want to phone Serena and listen to her howling, she cried if I told her I’d just dug a thorn out of his finger. I didn’t want to go home and face our boys, and anyway there was only one bus, same as when I was at school. Instead I wandered into Omagh town and detoured past to the garden of remembrance for the bloody Real IRA bomb. It was still, just a sweet packet fluttered at the bottom of a bush. I thought again of the woman who had died when she was pregnant with twins. Her mammy, them and her little girl all gone in a flash.
At the time the loss of her and them seemed more terrible than everyone else’s loss, but now all five of them were just part of the Northern Irish dead: lives lost, lives never lived. We have a great word here for that kind of act, indiscriminate. How could anything, anything be worth parking a car loaded with explosives in a busy market town on a fair day? Twenty-nine families of both creeds would be asking that question for the rest of their time.
Was John’s ambulance on the motorway yet? The umbilical between it and me was tearing at my guts, one more inch and I’d unravel. I wandered around the shops looking at stuff that I’d never want, thoughts of John and his words, I know you won’t come, ricocheting around my head. I’m yours – that’s what I should have said while I still had the chance, damn being embarrassed, damn being scared. You were right, John, I couldn’t be more yours.
The Ulsterbus rolled in at six thirty to Carncloon. I changed to the other bus which was ticking over at the stop and waited for it to start its climb to The Hill. I didn’t get as far as home. The boys were all in Mammy’s. I could imagine the clack of the rosary beads for an occasion such as this. The Angelus bell still crowed three times a day for Sadie and her increasingly painful knees. Eugene speaks for them all.
– How is he?
– Well, he’s gone to Belfast, the Mater. He might have broken his back.
– Jesus, don’t soften it, Ma! says Eugene. What does that mean for him?
– They don’t know yet. There’s a chance that he’ll be okay but they have to wait and see if his spine is damaged too when the swelling goes down.
– What’ll we do now? When can we go and see him?
– We’ll go home for now and I’ll ring the Mater. Then we’ll know exactly when we can go and see him, alright?
They looked away, not sure what to feel or think, torn between being men and boys. They loved him so dearly, it was tattooed on them. Mammy could hang back no longer. She loved bad news more than altar wine, thrived on it.
– Oh, Mary! Will we see if Father O’Brien can offer up tonight’s Mass for him?
– Maybe we’ll just pin most of our hopes on the surgeons at the Mater, what about that for a radical idea?
– Well now, isn’t it just like you to be facetious at a time like this! There’s never any point in giving up on God, Mary, you’ll come to know that yet!
– Mammy, I’m tired, I’m stressed and so are my boys. I just want to get past you and your fu— effing rosary beads and into my own home so that I can phone the hospital, alright?
– Hmmm, well, I suppose it’ll have to be. But I’ve made stew, enough for all of you, so I don’t know what’s going to happen now …
Ah, I love Ireland. It’s the only country in the world where a plate of spuds and some overboiled beef brisket can compete for importance with any major life event. That a pot of stew might have to be put out to the hens was a moral dilemma no one could sanction.
– That’s very kind of you, the boys can wait here. I’m going to get changed and make my call and then I’ll be back. Does that suit?
– That suits, that suits, whatever suits you is best, Mary darlin’!
– Jesus!
– Don’t take the Lord’s name in —
– SHUT UP, MAMMY!
Everyone jumps, including Daddy who spills his tea. I fix my boys with a stare that says don’t question me or my decision or I may just explode and they all duly back off. As I walk away, I feel something hitting me and look back just in time to see Mammy recork her really big bottle of Holy Water from Lourdes. So, I’m blessed once more.
I walk on and down the long lane. The whitewashed wall that runs along the side of the orchard is ahead and to every side the animals are carrying on with their lives. I notice that the Charolais need to be moved to the next section of the hill field, because they have grazed it down to lime green, and bend double with a glancing pain in my stomach when I realise that I won’t be telling John, I’ll be doing it myself. I stumble on for the house. I’m glad for Bridie that she’s not here to suffer this.
The phone rings and it’s Auntie Eileen. Seems Mother Dear has been extremely busy spreading the bad news as far and as wide as she can in one short day and she’s not exactly been shaving the truth. I tell Eileen I can’t talk right now because there’s a lot of words I can’t force out of my mouth – broken, disabled, alone, love – and she says she understands.
I put the phone down and lift it quick before anyone else gets through. I’ve never rung a big hospital before and the many silences and clicks it takes to get through to the right ward stretch out the minutes before I speak to a nurse. My husband is comfortable, I cannot talk to him because he’s been sedated. We can visit any time we want but he may be missing from the bed a lot as he’s due for many more X-rays and other tests.
I mustn’t worry. They can work miracles these days. Miracles? Does she know she’s talking to a woman who’s just had Holy Water lobbed at her by a hyper-religious lunatic who wouldn’t be familiar with kindness or love or hope if it punched her in the face? I say thank you and I hang up, spinning around suddenly in the silence as if someone is standing between my shoulder blades. I cannot form a single thought except that on this day, of all days, I do not want to see Granny Moo.
I shove off my good clothes and pull on my ancient track bottoms and an old sweatshirt and wellies and run all the way back up the hill. The blisters on my heels don’t even slow me down. I want my lungs to burn. I want to feel the blood pump around my body, my body that could still move.
Perhaps I should have waited outside because bursting into a house completely out of puff and red in the face is not what people waiting for bad news necessarily want to see.
– What is it, Mary? Oh Good Holy God and His Blessed Mother, he’s dead! He’s dead! Isn’t he, Mary? Don’t lie to us! HE’S DEAD!
– He’s not dead, Mammy! Get a grip! He’s fine, comfortable, sedated, we can go and see him tomorrow. Daddy, can you get me a drink of water?
– Why were you runnin’?
– I don’t know, Daddy, I just took a fit of running!
– Oh.
– I’ll put the dinner out, says Mother Hen. That’s what we all need: a good home-cooked dinner to heat our gizzards!
Mammy’s loving the fact that she has a full house, that she can grumble about how unused she is to having to get a dinner up for seven people but how it’s all no trouble, really, no trouble. She wouldn’t have chosen to do anything else in the circumstances, though her hands are aching a bit from peeling all those spuds, but it was no trouble at all. The boys push the food into their mouths as silent as their grandfather while I bat answers back to my mother’s mundane questions.
– So, was Omagh busy?
– Average.
– Did you walk down to the Memorial Garden?
– Yes.
– Did you say a prayer?
– Why would I?
Daddy raises an eyebrow. The eyebrow said don’t push her, don’t start a row, don’t you think we’ve had enough of those over the years? I voted with my feet and said we needed to get going. Mammy – who in over two decades had hardly asked me if I was alright – started up in her best pretend-fret, would we be warm enough, would we be able to see our way, would we be able to cope down there all alone? She had the makings of a solution. As we all pushed to get past each other and out the back door, she showered us with Holy Water. We all stopped just long enough to realise that it wasn’t raining and then set off, covered in irritation.
Halfway down the hill, Eugene let rip an enormous fart to dispel the gloomy silence and, to be fair, he did make us all laugh.
– There’s nothing like a bit of home-cooked stew to heat your gizzards! he says.
We set off early the next morning. Daddy was going to drop us into Carncloon as a way of making the journey seem shorter and we would pick up the Belfast bus in Omagh. Watch yourself, he says, and I nod that I will. I sit with Daniel beside me, Marius and Eugene behind and Shane behind them, all my little ducks lined up. I couldn’t get my mind to stretch as far as the Mater, trying to imagine what I would see, what I would hear, what I would feel.
The bus steamed up with the wealth of early-morning breath mixed in with cold rubber. From habit I cleared a little sweaty patch in the window with my hand. And there he was. Joe Loughrey – sorry, Doctor Joseph Loughrey – instantly recognisable and standing on the pavement opposite, looking straight past me.
Jeepers! Why didn’t Lizzie Magee mention that he was as bald as an egg? I was looking at a face that I used to know better than my own. It was altered by a sort of sneer, as if he was a doctor who had had to deal with too much toe fungus or one haemorrhoid too far in his career. Mind, the face also used to have a fringe. The years in between melted like butter in a pan. I was sixteen again and listening to our friends slagging us as we went off for a snog in the bombed-out Long Lounge. I’d pinned so many hopes and dreams on him, thinking that we would make it out of Carncloon together, thinking that he would be the answer. Joe Loughrey, my magic-carpet ride that never got off the ground.
– Ma! Ma!
– What?
– You were off in your own little world again!
– Sorry, Daniel! I’m all at sixes and sevens!
– We’ll be in Belfast soon, you’ll feel better when you’ve seen Da for yourself?
– Yes, yes, I’ll feel better then.