Malarky (12 page)

After that visit, Jimmy sent an angry letter.

Only to me now. Nothing to his father. In the letter he told me I was a terrible parent. He did not say I was a terrible mother, only a terrible parent. It suggested plurality that I was only terrible when considered alongside my husband.

That evening I mentioned the contents of the letter to my husband.

—Would you be bothered if someone said you were a terrible parent?

—I would not. I would not at all, for I've given my children everything. He went on to say that it would bother him more if they had criticisms of how he was around the farm. With his family he was certain he had done his best. But he was not as interested in his children the way he was about the farm. Always something to do and always a need to experiment he'd remarked before turning off the light.

—If he's studying in Dublin, why's he here every weekend?

Because I never replied to the letter, Jimmy started coming home more often, which delighted me, but truly perplexed his father. I could see him ripening towards something unpleasant. If Jimmy was here, he was not.

Finally it wasn't long and he said that was it. We, for he included me, would provide no more money for Jimmy to study. He had written and posted him a letter.

Jimmy said nothing of his father's letter. I said nothing outright about the letter. I did say he wasn't to worry that I was hatching alternatives. He shook his head and said no, he'd have to do it alone, he'd have to do it his own way and he wouldn't take a penny of our money now. Jimmy stopped visiting the next months. He was busy he said making plans.

Come here to me would ya. He cut him off because of the cattle prices. He used the man visiting us, but the truth was he was sunk by the cattle prices. Once he wrote the letter, he sat more and more inside in the chair and ruminated on what had been lost. I had to wrestle the financial reins from him, he was sinking the lot of us. That was when I firmly sat on the horse plan. I'd heard the talk of it about how the EEC grant could be got off them.

—We need a horse, I said one night when Himself sat, like an odour, dour in the chair, staring into the fire. Everyone's keepin' a pony and a horse. We'll have a grant off them. A bit of feed down. There's nothin' to it. Little work in them, only trim their hair. I'm going to find out. Talk to people, see how we get the grant.

—Very good, Himself, resigned. It's up to you. He was heading out. This was unusual he hadn't been heading out at night so much. He'd sat in worrying of late. He'd sat in worrying me.

I don't think he heard me at all.

I don't think he heard me say we're getting a horse.

I could tell when he was worrying. He sat in the chair with a vacant look about him and his knees go slack when he thinks. Down the well thinkin' it was. No use to anyone thinkin'. I made myself busy when he got this way and hoped the phone would ring, so he'd look up and ask who was that? He worried me much more quiet than ranting, you'd never know what he was thinkin' when he was quiet.

Increasingly around that time he was more and more that way. Gone quiet. Gone thinking. Gone Gone.

Joanie said men who went that way, thinkin' should be careful. They often kill themselves she said. I would phone her and say oh God he's thinkin'. Tell him not to go thinkin' that
way she urged me, tell him it's no good to anyone. I couldn't tell her what I thought he was thinkin'. I couldn't tell her what I was thinkin'. Well now Joanie I am thinkin' of plunging my two hands into the same hot water. She would have had a Mass said for me. Even now I couldn't say it to her.

Joanie said I wasn't to worry about Himself if he headed out. If he sat in thinkin' then I was to worry. Then I was to phone her. She'd call up and force him to have a conversation, that 'ud lift him outta the chair.

Bina said whatever happened I should trail him. Don't let him outta your sight, she said. Whatever he's up to you've to follow him and find out do ya hear? I told her about Red the Twit. I told her what she said.

—Well now, she said, I never heard a stronger case for following someone in me life. I'd nearly follow him for you.

—Or I could do likewise, I said, without suggesting what likewise might be.

—You could, she said. You could indeed. I never heard a better case for doing likewise in all my life. I'd nearly do likewise meself.

—Have you ever done likewise? I asked her.

But she'd to up and go because she'd to get to Ballina and she'd to call into the Co-op and she might even need the vet to call out to that cow. That cow. She's the eyes torn outta me head
lookin' at
her, she said. Only I've no one else to be
lookin' at, I'd
be demented.

She left, pulling the coat around her, urging me, that she'd never heard a better case of doing anything in her life.

I was not absolutely certain her anything was my anything.

But eventually later on when the time came and I told Bina what I'd done, she almost took a stroke.

Her anything was not my anything.

There came a moment when I gave up on my husband.

When I decided I was no longer married to him mentally and it was time to do my own thing.

I lost all hope when he told me he'd be home late and not to save any dinner for him. If I could no longer be certain he'd come in from the fields to my table, I had lost it all. There was nothing left for me to read.