I’ve lived through another autumn, a harsh winter, a spring that seemed to appear one day and be replaced overnight by summer. Mammy has soured every one of those seasons. I have evidence. The arthritic hip has been replaced and she makes the most of soaking up every spare moment I have by playing the patient. This morning she needs Deep Heat. Could I ‘just’ nip up and rub it in this very minute and she won’t bother me again for the rest of the day? Her neck is killing her!
– Where’s Daddy?
– What do you want with him?
– If he was there he could do it, surely?
– MARY RATTIGAN! Are you ever going to stop being MUCKY?
How did she ever get pregnant? Was she in fact the Virgin Mother? Daddy and her were two people who should not have met, never mind married, never mind having nine children, seven of whom lived. Would the little dead boys have made her happy?
Though I never knew them, I feel their absence myself. They pull at me like my own little Roisin-that-never-was – we have that in common, only that. How much worse must it be for her when they grew whole right under her heart? We didn’t have depression in my day, she says, we offered it up to Good Holy God. Was it their passing which set her in stone? Auntie Eileen doesn’t care.
– You don’t have to look after that fuckin’ rancid auld bitch, she says, just because you’re the only unfortunate on the doorstep! Oh no, no, no, no! She can go to Hell where she belongs!
She’s right. But you only get one mammy in this life, presumably because two would kill you, so I go while I still have strength enough to take her on, warts and all.
– I’m not being MUCKY! I’m being practical!
– Well, if you’re too busy doing whatever it is you think you’re doing then I’m sorry I bothered you! Truly! I’ll manage on my own!
– Jesus, Mammy! I’ll be there in five minutes!
Pick a saint, any saint, and she could try their patience. She doesn’t like that I’ve set myself up a little business; it smacks of pride, of a girl with ideas above her station. She is doing everything she can to tear me down from my pedestal. I get the range up to boil the kettle and make a pot of tea. I won’t rush myself to please her, No Siree Bob! I have postcards to read, three postcards that were lying on the mat inside the half-door this morning and each one is screaming to be read.
The first is from darling Kathleen. She’s been gone for five months already – took to travelling when she’d got in her thirty-five years of nursing in Derry. The second is from Lizzie Magee. She’s in Africa for the third time. She’s obsessed with the place. Poor Kenny McGuckin: he hates the heat. The rashes race from his toes to the top of his head.
The third is from him, the lost husband. The slope and loops of his handwriting scald me before I have the sense to stuff it into my pocket. So, he’s made his decision?
I hope today is not one of the days that Mammy wants to talk. My heart won’t take it. The blasted TV is to blame. It has cut more corners off my mother in a matter of months than a whole herd of Catholic clergy did in a lifetime. She’s been trapped in front it with her new hip and the overexposure has finally hit home. She has come to understand that everyone outside The Hill can talk and she doesn’t like being behind the times.
– I used to mazurka with Malachy McCullen! It was a great dance, very fast and you had to really move from corner to corner! Those were the days!
This is the kind of guileless opener offered by the woman who did not dance with my father in nearly fifty years of marriage, abandoning him to widows and aunts for the waltzes he loved at weddings because she thought taking to the floor was ‘nonsense, ridiculous nonsense’ and he was no less than an eejit? She always mouthed the word ‘eejit’ because he was, after all was said and done, her husband and deserving of a modicum of respect.
The mazurka is not the worst bomb Mammy’s dropped but somehow it’s the one that bounces around my head from corner to corner. Every time she wheels past me, in Malachy McCullen’s arms, her skirts are higher, her smile is wider and her hair, always rollered weekly into submission in my lifetime, is flying in damp ribbons.
I know Malachy McCullen. I still see him at the post office collecting his pension, smelling to high sheep heaven in a wet wool coat and barely able to push one foot in front of the other. His nose is long, the dark hairs racing each other to get out of it are long and his earlobes graze the collar on his coat. He looks like he’s melting. I offer her these details to verify we are talking about the Maestro of Mazurka.
– He was quite a dish back in the day! she says.
– Your mother wasn’t always your mother, sighs my father.
The walk to The Hill is a welcome buffer between me and his postcard. The hedges are alive with small birds; the many pigeons and rooks keep to the high branches of the trees and take off for a quick nervous circle as I pass by. The lush slopes of Dergmoy climb to meet the other hills. The stone walls are bleached white in the sunshine. I see that the pink rhododendron hedge over at Arthur Rowley’s farm is in full bloom as I get to the top and turn for the house where I was born and battered.
The whole place is taking on a disused air; the lack of children or the lack of love is dragging it down. It would be easy to think it had been abandoned, until the sound of the television carries down the hall. Mammy will stay put with her game-show hosts and quizmasters until she’s administered to.
I meet my father in the back pantry. He’s getting thinner and more precious with every day that passes. Two big sinews stick out on his neck and even one day’s silvery beard growth makes him look vulnerable, like a much older man. I want to reach out and pull him to me, to rock him like a baby, but he’d only die of embarrassment. Instead I offer him the Irish substitute for love.
– Tea?
– Aye, tea would be grand.
I make them both mugs of tea, lumps of scone bread that I bake myself and pile it high with my home-made jam. He likes to take his in the tick-tock of the kitchen so he doesn’t have to struggle out of his wellies.
– How’s the waynes?
– Grand, Daddy, they’re all grand.
– Good, good … ah … Mary?
– Yes?
– I heard at the mart that John’s about.
– Aye, I got a postcard off him just this morning.
– Is he … is he …
– He says he’ll call this way at some point.
– Good, good.
– There’s no need for you to tell Mammy?
– No need, no need at all.
She reaches for her tea in the Good Room without taking her eyes off the television and doesn’t burden me with thank yous.
– Ah, finally! I thought you were going to keep me waiting all day?
– Hello, Mammy!
While I’m rubbing in the Deep Heat, she has a sudden rush of blood to the head and lets slip a kind word before she can snatch it back.
– This jam isn’t terrible, she says.
My eyes fill up in spite of myself. Suddenly her papery skin is a reminder that even she will slip away from me one day and I know there will be more sadness to swallow. She’s a monster but she’s my monster. A whiff of sweat rises above the menthol cloud and I lunge at it like a drowning man for a twig. I ask her straight out if she was able to look after herself properly without my help. Well! I might as well have pulled the pin from a grenade. For a woman who was supposed to ease herself in and out of chairs for six weeks she was up and in my face before I had time to flinch.
– How dare you! I’m not going to take bloody insolence from YOU!
– I’m not being insolent! I’m being kind …
This truth took us both by surprise. She settled down and cleared her throat to nearly out-mazurka me for the second time in a week.
– I can’t manage the bath but I have a system.
– A system?
– Aye, a system. My own system!
– What kind of a system?
– Well … I stand at the sink … and I start with my hands and wash down as far as possible then I wash my feet and wash up as far as possible … and then when I’m done, I wash the possible.
– The poss—
– That’s right … with a flannel, so don’t you go getting sniffy with me! I’m clean because I make sure I’m clean inside and out! Which is more than can be said about you, Yes Siree Bob!