Malarky (14 page)

Her phrase not doing anyone any harm bothered her. She thinks of Patsy's son.

Jimmy, still in his pyjamas, thanks her without thanking her with the following exclamation as he lifted the teapot.

—He's a lunatic these days isn't he?

Her reply, crisp and cutting: I don't want to hear of you near Patsy's son. Do you hear me now? He's only a young fella. D'ya hear? —Don't believe young makes him innocent, Jimmy says it matter of fact. I won't go near him, but I can't stop him coming to me. And he'll come, surely he will.

—Well then that's different, she says, but I don't want you near him, if you follow me.

—I do, he says. I was never interested in him, he wouldn't leave me alone, he was always following me about.

She smiles at her son, believing his every word. Sure who wouldn't follow him about. But she has a headache thinking of the reason why he has come home and how long is he staying and how will she keep the two of them from killing each other?

—Be careful what you wish for, she'll tell her husband a few weeks later as she is pulling the switch on the lamp. Look at the mess you've put us in.

He's seething, he's silent. Jimmy has not moved an inch towards farming. Jimmy is in his room much of the day reading books or at the table taking tea or into Ballina with her on occasion. Her husband's strangely quiet. She has no idea what he's up to. But he's cat like, an intention in mind, that's impossible to read.

A constant boxing match between the two men evolves, that she's forced to divert and referee. She establishes an excellent system of feeding the pair. As one is in the other is out and she structures their lives so they won't meet each other more than twice a day. Her entire life revolves around keeping these two apart. Everything else has been suspended.

The girls in her gang are back visiting her again.

The girls are asking questions about Jimmy.

They want to know why he's come back.

Jimmy knew exactly when he was going.

He stayed with us for nine whole weeks and never made mention of an intention to leave. Over two months! You can imagine what this did to my husband. Jimmy came home to torture him, it was as simple as that. His parting gift. He came for revenge and he got it. And I can't say the man didn't get what was coming to him. I, unfortunately, only got what was coming to me once he was gone. I hadn't fathomed what I deserved 'til it descended on me and I am getting every millimeter of it as I tell you this story.

I had two separate strategies for dealing with the two of them. Carefully I directed one away from the other, looping
them past each other like a piece of wool on and off needles. I trained my eye close on any sign Jimmy was near Patsy's son. I even examined the back and front of his trousers for evidence. Once I sniffed his socks, and after thought it ridiculous. I trailed that young man everywhere. Where I went, he went. The girls in my gang were delighted to have him laughing among them for he was great company. Sometimes they asked him how long he was staying. That was what we all longed to know. Just a short while, I told them. He has plans. I prayed he'd go, that the questions might stop.

A few weeks after he came home I knew we had a problem, so I drove him to Ballina to the dole office. I had to get the car away from his father, and told him to go in and sign on, that he may as well have the few pound he was entitled to. If his father had known he would have been ripping. The collection of the dole each week provided me with another industrial challenge with the two of them. It had to be picked up on a Tuesday at Foxford Post Office, not the local one which had shut down to a few days a week despite the Conserve Our Rural Post Office Protest I went to. I was almost tempted to reignite a new protest to have the Post Office reopen again on a Tuesday so Jimmy could get his dole without all this inconvenience. Listen I wanted to tell those poxy An Post'rs, do you've any idea the pressure you are putting me under closing on a Tuesday. I've two grown men to co-ordinate here. It's like trying to make sure a tank doesn't run over an insect.

There were impossible Tuesdays. I could not get Himself to surrender the car and we'd have to walk the four and a half miles back the road to the post office. It was a long walk when it was a windy rainy day, I tell ya, the two of us calling conversation above the bluster, trying to make out the other's face, as the hair was blown from our heads. Now and again someone would stop and offer us a lift, but sure we couldn't
risk it, word would travel . . . I gave her and the young fella a lift into Foxford . . . and word would get back to him.

Not at all we'd laugh to the driver. Sure we're out for a walk,
this is
our exercise of the day. And they'd pass on and we'd stare lovingly at the departing back of the car and long to run and hop up on the bumper like sprightly eight-year-olds.

If I knew then what I know now I would have enjoyed those walks and discussions. I would have poured all my questions into them, I would have cleared up every small aspect of my son that was a mystery. Even the elements he might not surrender.

Other days to temper Himself, I would accompany my husband to the cattle auction. I think he liked company in the car and the way I was willing to disappear into Ballina to do the shopping, have my bowl of soup in the window of the place he'd urged me to frequent and the very window where Red the Twit had spotted and sought me out, while he would mingle with the men buying and selling their bullocks and heifers and what have you, even though he only came away with more depressing news about the prices.

All the way home I would see the effect the prices were having on him and I mustered a great deal of sympathy towards my husband because it was certainly wearing him down and the situation with Jimmy and all its silence drained him too, yet he was clever my husband, knew better than to trouble me with it.

See, I had had to leave the kitchen table now. The kitchen table was no longer the place where my assumptions could be made and weighed. I had to be out in the world with my husband in order to read him and know about him. Our whole world was suffering from daily interruptions that were very
hard when I look back on it, they were awful hard. They finished off the lot of us.

Grief wants to know if I ever knew why Jimmy came home the way he did.

—Honestly I do not. I have no absolutes. I can tell you what I suspect.

—Yes what is that?

—I suspect he came home because he was furious with his small bit of money being stopped. But that wasn't all of it. I think mebbe he came home because he knew he was never coming back.

—On account of him joining the army?

—I think it has little to do with the army and more to do with America. Maybe when he went there he knew he might never return.

—There's lots of young people come back these days though.

—There is. But you don't know my son. Look at the way he left sure!

—How did he leave remind me?

He upped and left like that with little warning. Came in the night before and asked could he pack a clean towel from the bathroom for the flight?

—What flight? says I.

—I am going to America tomorrow, he says, I've signed up for the army, I've been accepted and will go to a military training camp before they ship me out someplace.

I had to sit down.

—Come again I said.

He repeated what he'd said.

—How will you manage your lunch? I asked him. I'll have to make you sandwiches for the plane.

He smiled at me I always remember that smile. I wanted to whack him with a hard stick and tell him straight. For the love of God stop springing these things on me. Mainly I wondered what a military camp was, I hadn't a clue.