AGNES WAS HAPPY BUT WORRIED as she returned the receiver to its cradle. She walked slowly into the kitchen and was about to tell Pierre to put the kettle on, but it was too late, he already had a pot of tea made. When she sat at the kitchen table, Pierre placed her mug and an ashtray in front of her. Agnes was in a slight daze, still trying to get it all straightened out in her head.
‘I take it that was Trevor?’ Pierre asked.
‘Yes. He has the boy!’ Agnes answered.
‘What boy?’
‘Cormac, young Cormac.’
‘Trevor has Cormac?’ Pierre was amazed.
Agnes snapped out of her daze and began to explain the situation to Pierre. ‘No, Dermot has the boy. He took him from Margaret O’Brien yesterday. He got on the ‘phone to Trevor, and said he’s coming over with the boy to stay with Trevor for a while.’
‘Why?’
‘He told Trevor that he had nowhere else to go – sure he could come here, for God’s sake,’ Agnes exclaimed.
Pierre didn’t answer. He knew that Dermot wouldn’t be coming here. He also knew that Agnes knew it. So he made no comment. Agnes looked over at the kitchen window. Outside she could see the swirling snow. It was a cold, nasty night.
‘Christ, I hope they’ll be all right travelling in that weather!’
* * *
It was a harrowing journey. The boat trip to Holyhead was wild and uncomfortable. The boat was packed with people returning from their Christmas trip home to the ‘old sod’. The train journey to Manchester felt like it was going to go on forever. They changed at Crewe from a chilly train into a freezing train.
On the way Dermot discovered a lot about his new-found son. For instance, he liked to talk. And questions – the kid loved questions. Not just ordinary questions, like how fast does the train go, but questions from left-field. Cormac asked Dermot three questions in succession that had no relation to each other. The first one was: ‘Is God in England?’ Dermot had little trouble in explaining to Cormac that God was everywhere, wherever you wanted him to be. Next came: ‘Why does Aunt Margaret shave under her arms?’ Dermot told him it was because she had to shave somewhere, and she didn’t have a beard. Dermot went into hysterics when Cormac replied, ‘Yes she does!’ Also, Cormac was not happy to be pawned off with simple answers. Which made his next question all the more difficult.
‘Who made you my Daddy?’
Dermot thought about this for a few moments. He looked out the window of the train into the dark English countryside as if searching for an answer.
‘I did!’ he finally said.
‘How?’
It’s always the one-syllable questions that are the most difficult. Dermot held up the index finger of each of his hands and held them about six inches apart. And he began to explain.
‘Let’s say this finger is a man and he has lots of love to give, and this finger over here is a woman and she has lots of love to give.’ Dermot now pushed the two fingers together. ‘So they get together and they give each other lots of love. But they soon find that they have too much love to give, so they need somebody to share it with. Along comes a little baby boy, and that boy is you.’ Dermot smiled as he said this last bit and poked his two fingers joined together into Cormac’s ribs. The boy laughed; it was the first time Dermot had heard the child laugh, ever. He liked the sound of it.
‘And did you have lots of love for my mammy?’ the boy asked.
Dermot looked into Cormac’s eyes. In them he could see Mary Carter, except without the pain.
‘Yes … I did.’ Dermot stood up. ‘I’m going to the toilet, you stay here and don’t move.’ Dermot walked the length of the carriage and locked himself in a little triangular-shaped toilet. Looking in the mirror he ran his fingers through his hair. He then sat on the toilet bowl and began to count his money, again. He had four hundred and ten pounds. If he could bum his accommodation off Trevor for just two or three weeks, and in the meantime get himself fixed up with a job, he would have enough to get a flat. After that he decided he would just take it day by day. When he came out of the toilet Dermot went to the buffet counter and bought two cups of Bovril and two bread rolls. He returned to the seat and virtually had to force-feed the boy the Bovril. When Cormac eventually finished his cup there came more questions.
‘Do I have to call you Daddy now?’
‘You don’t have to do anything. Do you want to call me Daddy?’
Cormac thought for a moment or two and then said, ‘No.’
‘All right then.’ But Dermot was disappointed. ‘Why don’t you call me Dermot until we get to know each other better and then if you want to you can call me Daddy, all right?’
‘Yes, that’s all right.’ The boy seemed satisfied.
The questions continued for the next forty-five minutes and Dermot was relieved when they eventually reached Manchester. They alighted from the train and walked down the platform. As the ticket checker was taking the tickets from them, Dermot was glancing around the crowd to see if he could spot Trevor. He very nearly didn’t recognise him.
‘Dermot! Over here, Dermo,’ came a voice from the crowd.
Dermot followed the direction of the voice with his eyes until they fell upon a handsome, robust young man with sandy blond hair, wearing a navy business suit. Dermot’s immediate thought was, what has happened to my scrawny little teenage brother? As the distance between the two men shortened, Trevor’s face lit up with a smile and Dermot was wrapped in a hug of genuine warmth and welcome, such as he hadn’t felt in a long time. He felt safe. The drive from the station to Altringham was one of rushed questions and half-answers, with both men eventually deciding they would wait till they got back to the house, as some of the answers were awkward for Dermot with the boy sitting in the back of the car. One tricky item that arose was when Dermot said to Trevor, ‘I don’t want you to tell Mammy I’m here. Or that I have the boy. I have to sort this out myself, Trevor.’
Trevor was perplexed and he hoped it didn’t show in his answer. ‘Mammy? Oh yeh, sure, Dermot. Whatever you say.’
Within forty minutes of leaving the station, Cormac was stripped, washed and tucked up in bed in the spare bedroom of Trevor’s home. Within one minute of being tucked up he was asleep. The boy was exhausted. Still, for five more minutes Dermot stood over the bed and stared at him. He tried to push to the back of his mind the enormity of the task he had undertaken: raising a child. He could barely look after himself. Dermot left the bedroom and went downstairs to the brightly-lit kitchen.
Maria was busying herself at the table preparing a place for Dermot and putting some food down on it.
‘Oh God, Maria, you shouldn’t have bothered cooking anything!’ Dermot said half-apologetically.
‘Nonsense, it’s just a cup of tea and a toasted sandwich. Sit down, Dermot. I’ve heard so much about you from Trevor. Prison life can’t be easy – it must be great to be out and about again.’
Dermot was taken aback by the openness and frankness of the girl. She had managed to convey in one sentence that she knew Dermot had been in prison for a long time and there was no need for him to tiptoe around the subject. He relaxed. He liked her, and he envied Trevor. The three of them sat at the kitchen table and Trevor opened up the conversation with, ‘So, bring me up to speed on what’s been happening.’
Between mouthfuls of toasted sandwich, and over four mugs of tea and uncountable cigarettes, Dermot relayed his experiences since he had left Mountjoy. He told them of his row with Mark. He tried to explain what he was trying to achieve in making these first few steps out of prison alone. He touched on the bitterness he felt against his mother, whom Trevor was tempted to defend, but catching a sideways glance from Maria, he let it go. Dermot told them of how he was drawn to the boy, and his realisation that the boy was his son. He even made them laugh when he described his collecting the boy from Margaret O’Brien’s. When he had finished, it dawned on Dermot that this was the longest conversation he had had with anyone in nearly seven years.
‘So what now, Dermot?’ Trevor asked.
‘I don’t know. Take it a day at a time, I suppose. Got to get a job, and try and get a place of my own, with the kid of course. God, I have to think about getting the kid into a school. But first things first.’ Dermot put his hand in his back pocket and withdrew his bundle of money. He peeled off five ten-pound notes and pushed them across the table to Trevor. Maria’s eyes lit up.
‘There’s the fifty quid you sent me, I really appreciated it. Thanks a lot, Trevor.’
‘No, no, that was a gift, Dermot, not a loan!’ Trevor pushed the money back.
‘I’d feel better if you took it, Trevor, I really would.’ Dermot pushed the money back to Trevor.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Trevor pushed the money back again.
Maria was following the money like a tennis ball. When Dermot eventually won the argument and Trevor took the money, Maria had it spent before he even got it into his pocket.
‘I’ll make more tea!’ Maria announced, and went to the sink to fill the kettle. The kitchen door creaked as it opened and there, standing in the doorway, wearing only one of Maria’s tee-shirts as a nightshirt, and rubbing his eyes, stood young Cormac. He was disorientated and a little frightened.
‘What are you doing down?’ Dermot asked.
The boy walked to Dermot and Dermot picked him up and sat him on his lap. Maria looked over her shoulder and smiled at the scene. It was nice to have a child in the house. Her smile died when the boy asked Dermot, ‘Dermot, where’s me mammy?’
Dermot became uncomfortable. He looked from Trevor to Maria and then back at the boy. The boy’s pale face was turned towards Dermot’s. He expected an answer.
‘Your mammy died, Cormac,’ Dermot answered, averting his eyes from the boy’s gaze.
‘What’s died, Dermot?’ the boy asked.
How do you explain ‘died’ to a child? Dermot thought. The quiet in the kitchen was broken by the clicking sound of Maria turning on the kettle. She leaned her back against the kitchen sink and crossed her arms as Dermot sat the boy up on the table facing him.
‘Died is like changing from what you are into something better, more beautiful.’ The boy’s face was puzzled. ‘Once upon a time,’ Dermot began, ‘there was a pond. And in this pond there lived many, many different things. Things like frogs, little fish, spiders, and right at the bottom of the pond lived lots and lots of grubs. Growing right out of the middle of the pond, from the bottom right through the water out into the sunny air, was a long blade of grass.’
Dermot could see he had the boy’s interest. So he went on: ‘Every now and then one of the grubs would climb up the blade of grass, right up to the top and out of the water, and would never be seen again! So, one day all the grubs got together and decided that one of them should go up the blade of grass, out of the water, see what was there, and come back and tell the rest of them, so that they would know.
‘One of the little grubs stepped forward and said that he would go. And all the other grubs clapped at his bravery. He set off on his journey, crawling up the blade of grass. He was so tiny that he didn’t even move the grass as he climbed along it. Halfway up, he looked down to see all his little friends staring up at him, eagerly waiting. He climbed some more. Just as he came to where the grass left the water, he turned to look at his friends one more time. They were waving and smiling and he waved back.
‘Then, taking a big breath, he climbed up the blade of grass out of the water. At first he felt no different, so he climbed on until he got right to the top of the blade of grass. Then, in the blazing sunshine, a wondrous thing happened. The little grub changed into a magnificent dragonfly. He was green and yellow and blue, and had four wings. At first he didn’t know what the wings were for, but when he flapped them he took off and began to fly. He flew around the pond, and frogs would look up and say, “Look at that beautiful dragonfly.”
‘But now he couldn’t get back into the pond to tell his friends. Still, he knew they would find out for themselves some day. So, flapping his wings he took off into the warm sunshine with a great big smile on his face.
‘So you see, Cormac, that’s what “died” is. Your mammy has become a dragonfly!’
When the story ended Cormac smiled. ‘Oh goodie!’ he exclaimed as he threw his arms around Dermot’s neck.
‘Now, son, it’s bed for you!’ and Dermot carried the boy back upstairs. Within minutes the boy was asleep again and Dermot returned to the kitchen. When he sat down he sensed the riveted attention of both Trevor and Maria. He looked from one to the other, eventually holding his arms in the air and asking, ‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘Where did you hear that story, Dermot?’ Trevor asked.
‘I just made it up. Why?’
Trevor didn’t answer. Instead he turned to Maria and said, ‘Maria, this is it – the real thing!’ But Maria was already on her way to the writing desk to get some paper. They asked Dermot to write the story out exactly as he had told it to young Cormac. An air of excitement filled the kitchen.