Foster (5 page)

It is not that evening or the following one but the evening after, on the Sunday, that I am taken home. After I came back from the well, soaked to the skin, the woman took one look at me and turned very still before she gathered me up and took me inside and made up my bed again. The following morning, I didn’t feel hot, but she kept me upstairs, bringing me hot drinks with lemon and cloves and honey, aspirin.

‘’Tis nothing but a chill, she has,’ I heard Kinsella say.

‘When I think of what could have happened.’

‘If you’ve said that once, you’ve said it a hundred times.’

‘But –’

‘Nothing happened, and the girl is grand. And that’s the end of it.’

I lie there with the hot-water bottle, listening to the rain and reading my books, following what happens more closely and making up something different to happen at the end of each, each time. I doze and have strange dreams: of the lost heifer panicking on the night strand, of bony, brown cows having no milk in their teats, of my mother climbing up and getting stuck in an apple tree. Then I wake and take the broth and whatever else I’m given.

On Sunday, I am allowed to get up, and we pack everything again, as before. Towards evening, we have supper, and wash and change into our good clothes. The sun has come out, is lingering in long, cool slants, and the yard is dry in places. Sooner than I would like, we are ready and in the car, turning down the lane, going up through the street of Gorey and on
back along the narrow roads through Carnew and Shillelagh.

‘That’s where Da lost the red heifer playing cards,’ I say.

‘Is that a fact?’ Kinsella says.

‘Wasn’t that some wager?’ says the woman.

‘It was some loss for him,’ says Kinsella.

We carry on through Parkbridge, over the hill where the old school stands, and on down towards our car-road. The gates in the lane are closed and Kinsella gets out to open them. He drives through, closes the gates behind him, and drives on very slowly to the house. I feel, now, that the woman is making up her mind as to whether or not she should say something but I don’t really know what it is, and she gives me no clue. The car stops in front of the house, the dogs bark, and my sisters race out. I see my mother looking out through the window, with what is now the second youngest in her arms.

Inside, the house feels damp and cold. The lino is all tracked over with dirty footprints.
Mammy stands there with my little brother, and looks at me.

‘You’ve grown,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘“Yes”, is it?’ she says, and raises her eyebrows.

She bids the Kinsellas good evening and tells them to sit down – if they can find a place to sit – and fills the kettle from the bucket under the kitchen table. We take playthings off the car seat under the window, and sit down. Mugs are taken off the dresser, a loaf of bread is sliced, butter and jam left out.

‘Oh, I brought you jam,’ the woman says. ‘Don’t let me forget to give it to you, Mary.’

‘I made this out of the rhubarb you sent down,’ Ma says. ‘That’s the last of it.’

‘I should have brought more,’ the woman says. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

‘Where’s the new addition?’ Kinsella asks.

‘Oh, he’s up in the room there. You’ll hear him soon enough.’

‘Is he sleeping through the night for you?’

‘On and off,’ Ma says. ‘The same child could crow at any hour.’

My sisters look at me as though I’m an English cousin, coming over to touch my dress, the buckles on my shoes. They seem different, thinner, and have nothing to say. We sit in to the table and eat the bread and drink the tea. When a cry is heard from upstairs, Ma gives my brother to Mrs Kinsella, and goes up to fetch the baby. The baby is pink and crying, his fists tight. He looks bigger than the last, stronger.

‘Isn’t there a fine child, God bless him,’ Kinsella says.

‘Isn’t he a dote,’ Mrs Kinsella says, holding on to the other.

Ma pours more tea for them all with one hand and sits down and takes her breast out for the baby. Her doing this in front of Kinsella makes me blush. Seeing me blush, Ma gives me a long, deep look.

‘No sign of himself?’ Kinsella says.

‘He went out there earlier, wherever he’s gone,’ Ma says.

A little bit of talk starts up then, rolls back and forth, bumping between them for a while. Soon after, a car is heard outside. Nothing more is said until my father appears, and throws his hat on the dresser.

‘Evening all,’ he says.

‘Dan,’ says Kinsella.

‘Ah there’s the prodigal child,’ he says. ‘You came back to us, did you?’

I say I did.

‘Did she give trouble?’

‘Trouble?’ Kinsella says. ‘Good as gold, she was, the same girl.’

‘Is that so?’ says Da, sitting down. ‘Well, isn’t that a relief.’

‘You’ll want to sit in,’ Mrs Kinsella says, ‘and get your supper.’

‘I had a liquid supper,’ Da says, ‘down in Parkbridge.’

Ma turns the baby to the other breast, and
changes the subject. ‘Have ye no news at all from down your way?’

‘Not a stem,’ says Kinsella. ‘It’s all quiet down with us.’

I sneeze then, and reach into my pocket for my handkerchief, and blow my nose.

‘Have you caught cold?’ Ma asks.

‘No,’ I say, hoarsely.

‘You haven’t?’

‘Nothing happened.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I didn’t catch cold,’ I say.

‘I see,’ she says, giving me another deep look.

‘The child’s been in the bed for the last couple of days,’ says Kinsella. ‘Didn’t she catch herself a wee chill.’

‘Aye,’ says Da. ‘You couldn’t mind them. You know yourself.’

‘Dan,’ Ma says, in a steel voice.

Mrs Kinsella looks uneasy, like she was the day of the gooseberries.

‘You know, I think it’s nearly time that we
were making tracks,’ Kinsella says. ‘It’s a long road home.’

‘Ah, what’s the big hurry?’ Ma says.

‘No hurry at all, Mary, just the usual. These cows don’t give you any opportunity to have a lie-in.’

He gets up then and takes my little brother from his wife and gives him to my father. My father takes the child and looks across at the baby suckling. I sneeze and blow my nose again.

‘That’s a right dose you came home with,’ Da says.

‘It’s nothing she hasn’t caught before and won’t catch again,’ Ma says. ‘Sure isn’t it going around?’

‘Are you ready for home?’ Kinsella asks.

Mrs Kinsella stands then and they say their good-byes and go outside. I follow them out to the car with my mother who still has the baby in her arms. Kinsella lifts out the box of jam, the four-stone sack of potatoes.

‘These are floury,’ he says. ‘Queens they are, Mary.’

We stand for a little while and then my mother thanks them, saying it was a lovely thing they did, to keep me.

‘No bother at all,’ says Kinsella.

‘The girl was welcome and is welcome again, any time,’ the woman says.

‘She’s a credit to you, Mary,’ Kinsella says. ‘You keep your head in the books,’ he says to me. ‘I want to see gold stars on them copy books next time I come up here.’ He gives me a kiss then and the woman hugs me and then I watch them getting into the car and feel the doors closing and a start when the engine turns and the car begins to move away. Kinsella seems more eager to leave than he was in coming here.

‘What happened at all?’ Ma says, now that the car is gone.

‘Nothing,’ I say.

‘Tell me.’

‘Nothing happened.’ This is my mother I am speaking to but I have learned enough, grown enough, to know that what happened is not something I need ever mention. It is my perfect opportunity to say nothing.

I hear the car braking on the gravel in the lane, the door opening, and then I am doing what I do best. It’s nothing I have to think about. I take off from standing and race on down the lane. My heart does not so much feel that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me. Several things flash through my mind: the boy in the wallpaper, the gooseberries, that moment when the bucket pulled me under, the lost heifer, the mattress weeping, the third light. I think of my summer, of now, mostly of now.

As I am rounding the bend, reaching the point where I daren’t look, I see him there, putting the clamp back down on the gate, closing
it. His eyes are down, and he seems to be looking at his hands, at what he is doing. My feet batter on along the rough gravel, along the strip of tatty grass in the middle of our lane. There is only one thing I care about now, and my feet are carrying me there. As soon as he sees me he stops and grows still. I do not hesitate but keep on running towards him and by the time I reach him the gate is open and I am smack against him and lifted into his arms. For a long stretch, he holds me tight. I feel the thumping of my heart, my breaths coming out then my heart and my breaths settling differently. At a point, which feels much later, a sudden gust blows through the trees and shakes big, fat raindrops over us. My eyes are closed and I can feel him, the heat of him coming through his good clothes. When I finally open my eyes and look over his shoulder, it is my father I see, coming along strong and steady, his walking stick in his hand. I hold on as though I’ll drown if I let go, and listen to the woman who seems,
in her throat, to be taking it in turns, sobbing and crying, as though she is crying not for one now, but for two. I daren’t keep my eyes open and yet I do, staring up the lane, past Kinsella’s shoulder, seeing what he can’t. If some part of me wants with all my heart to get down and tell the woman who has minded me so well that I will never, ever tell, something deeper keeps me there in Kinsella’s arms, holding on.

‘Daddy,’ I keep calling him, keep warning him. ‘Daddy.’

The author would like to thank Richard Ford for all his kindness; Declan Meade of
The
Stinging Fly
, and Redmond Doran of Davy Byrne’s pub who sponsored the award.

ANTARCTICA
WALK THE BLUE FIELDS