Solace (23 page)

‘Communist, yeah.’ Mark pushed at the post with one hand; it seemed secure. ‘Heavy work,’ he said.

‘Mmm.’ Tom scratched his head. ‘Them posts aren’t from Poland anyway.’

‘No,’ Mark said uncertainly.

‘Matt Francis gave them all to me for fifty euro there, a few summers gone by.’

‘I remember.’

‘They were pegging them out ’ithin at the station.’ Tom took up the pointed iron bar he used to make holes for the posts. He aimed it at a new spot and broke ground. ‘Ah,
old Mattie Francis looked after me, though,’ he said. ‘I’ve been using these sleepers for fencing ever since. This is the last of them.’ He gestured back to the pile on the
transport box. ‘Don’t know what I’m going to do the next time.’

Mark made no effort to reply.

‘Hardly go to Poland,’ Tom said then. ‘Hardly go over to the Reds for a few posts of timber.’ Mark saw that he was quietly laughing. He let himself laugh, too, at the
sight of it.

‘Hardly,’ he said, and he tucked Aoife’s blanket more tightly around her legs.

‘None of those boys would give me too much of a bargain, now, I think,’ Tom said. ‘I see them in the bank of a Friday evening lodging more money into it than the whole town put
together. Clever as fuck, them boys. You ever see them in there?’

‘Who?’

‘Them Polish lads. In the bank. Jesus, they do be lodging thousands. Thousands. Every week.’

‘I doubt that,’ Mark said, and he handed his father the shovel. ‘I doubt they’re all doing that well.’

‘Ha?’ Tom stuck the shovel into the ground. ‘Sure when do you ever see them? You don’t see them working fifteen hours of the day above at the piggery. Or beyond where
Corrigan is building all the houses. I’m telling you. They’re making serious money,’ he said. ‘Serious.’

‘Fifteen hours a day, though.’

‘Ha?’

‘Who’d want to do that sort of work even if it was well paid? Which I guarantee you it’s not. Not a chance.’

Tom looked hard at Mark and nodded, once to him and once towards the pushchair. ‘She’ll get a cold out here,’ he said.

‘She’s all right,’ said Mark. ‘Well wrapped up.’

‘It’s colder than you’d think.’

‘I’m going to drop her back up to Mam now anyway,’ Mark said. ‘Do you want a hand with the fencing?’

Tom turned back to the shovel. ‘Whatever you think yourself,’ he said. ‘It’d be no harm to get as far as the lower bank before dark. This day won’t be long more in
it. Midwinter’s day, is that right?’

As Mark took the handles of the pushchair, Maura’s car appeared at the gate. She blew the horn once and kept going in the direction of Longford. She had told Mark at breakfast that she was
doing the last of her shopping today.

‘That’s that,’ Tom said. ‘Go on up to the house with the child. I’ll manage.’

‘If Mam’s back early, I’ll come down to you.’

‘Early? We’ll hardly see her again till tonight.’

‘Take it easy with that sledge, won’t you?’ Mark said. His father waved him off.

Mark had stayed in the house with Aoife all afternoon. She had been cranky, and when he had put her down for a nap she had slept for only a few minutes; he had allowed her to
sleep too late that morning. He had sat with her in front of the television, and stood with her at the window, and when she would not settle, he decided to take her for a drive in the car. That
sometimes worked, sometimes helped her to sleep. As he drove, he did not think about where he was going. It was only when he hit the outskirts of Longford and the traffic began to crawl that he
realized he was headed for the town. He kept driving. She was quiet in the back of the car, and he wanted to keep her that way.

The evening was darkening fast and as if to speed the darkness in, to smooth its way, rain was beginning to fall in a steady drizzle. He parked on Ballymahon Street, competing for the spot with
another driver – another father, he could see from the brood in the back. He met the man’s stare but did not react; there was no need. He was the one with a baby carrier strapped in the
back, even if the man in the other car could not see this.

He was not sure he had bundled Aoife up warmly enough. But it would have to do. There was a thick blanket on the pushchair anyway. He unstrapped her from one seat, lifted her out and strapped
her into another. Some of the people who passed gave him a glance – looked at him, then down to the pushchair. Most paid him no attention at all.

At Killashee Street, he met Gary McGrath. They had been classmates in St Mel’s, the boys’ college at the edge of town. McGrath had done his apprenticeship as an electrician straight
after school, had started his own business at the age of twenty or twenty-one. He looked much the same as he had in Mel’s, except that his hairline had begun to recede. He grinned when he saw
Mark and clapped him on the arm.

‘Caser,’ he said, using Mark’s old nickname. He gestured to the pushchair, his eyebrows raised. ‘So it’s true?’

‘Yeah.’ Mark nodded, trying to look casual. ‘Sure you know the way.’ What way? he thought. What did that even mean?

‘Let’s have a look, so,’ McGrath said, and he bent down to the baby. ‘Oh, hello.’

‘Is she awake?’ Mark asked, though he knew she was. He had checked on her not two seconds previously. What was this, was he trying to look to McGrath as though he was barely even
aware of what his own baby daughter was doing in the pushchair? As though he didn’t care?

‘God, she’s lovely, man,’ said McGrath, still bent down over Aoife. ‘She’s a beaut. How old?’

‘Seven months now,’ said Mark. And then he felt it. He was proud. He was as proud as he had ever been. This was what he had wanted. To stand on a street corner with Gary McGrath, or
anyone from Mel’s, or anyone from around, and show them his baby daughter. He was surprised at this. He had never felt like this in Dublin. He should have come into Longford sooner, he
thought. He should have raced down here with the Moses basket the minute she was born.

‘A beaut,’ McGrath said again, straightening up. ‘Jesus, you’re a dark horse, aren’t you?’

‘Ah.’ Mark shrugged. He wondered how much McGrath knew – about Joanne, about how soon they had got pregnant, about everything. He felt himself wanting to tell him, to fill him
in. They used to be the best of friends. He wished he had kept in touch with him more. He would like nothing better now than to go somewhere with McGrath for a pint, to watch the old easy
understanding on McGrath’s face, the slow nod, hear the stories spilling out of him, too.

‘Do you have time for a pint?’ McGrath said.

‘No, no,’ Mark said. ‘I just can’t, I mean, now.’

‘Sure, sure,’ McGrath said quickly.

‘With the baby and everything.’

‘Ah, you’re dead right,’ McGrath said. ‘And, anyway, I’m meant to be fucking shopping. I have the whole rake of them at home to buy for yet.’ He laughed.
‘It’s an awful fucking nuisance, Christmas, isn’t it?’

‘Disaster.’

‘But if you’re around later, we’ll be up in the Rising Sun for the dinner, myself and a few of the lads. Sure drop in if you’re done with your shopping.’

‘Will do.’

‘Your messages,’ McGrath said, with a laugh.

‘Yeah.’ Mark laughed back, and they shook hands as they parted.

On Main Street he met his mother coming out of the entrance to the shopping centre. She was tired, he could see, and she was carrying too many bags. He took some of them from
her and packed them under the pushchair. She had been to her usual spots: Kenny’s for jumpers for himself and his father, the bookstore, the shop that sold candles and ornaments and other
kinds of crap.

‘Are you sure you want to have her out in this cold?’ his mother said.

‘She’s all right,’ said Mark. ‘Sure you can throw one of those Kenny’s jumpers you’re after buying across the pushchair if it gets any colder.’

‘Don’t you be so bloody smart,’ his mother said, but she took his arm, and she was laughing. ‘Come over with me to one of these shops across the street,’ she said.
‘There’s a few things I was looking at as a present for Joanne.’

‘You don’t need to get Joanne anything,’ Mark said, but he was already crossing the street behind her.

‘Of course I have to get her something.’

‘Why?’ he said sharply.

‘Because,’ she said, in an imitation of his sharpness, as they reached the shop door. She looked down pointedly to the pushchair. ‘And that’s the end of it.’

The shop was narrow and brightly lit, clothes lining each wall and splitting the walkway between the walls. It was busy, women looking intently through the racks, touching things, pulling things
away from the rails. His mother did not hesitate: she headed straight for the middle aisle. The clothes looked all right, Mark noticed, with some relief. They seemed, at least, to be in the colours
Joanne preferred to wear: browns and greens and greys, nothing too colourful, nothing too sweet.

He looked for somewhere to put the pushchair; it would not fit between the aisles. There were already two parked by the counter.

‘Leave her by the door there,’ his mother said, looking back to him. ‘She’s asleep, isn’t she?’

Mark nodded.

‘She’ll be all right.’

‘I’ll keep an eye on her,’ the woman behind the counter said.

‘Thanks,’ Mark said, and his mother beckoned him over to look at a shirt she had taken from the rack. It was pink, probably the one colour in the shop that he could not see Joanne
wearing. ‘It’s grand,’ he said.

‘Really?’ his mother replied, grimacing, and put the shirt back on the rail. ‘I don’t know if it’s the right colour for her, really.’

Then why did you show it to me? he wanted to say, but he left it. It was becoming clear to him what was going to happen. This was a woman shopping, and a woman shopping meant looking at things
you had no intention of buying, things you didn’t even like, just for the pleasure of looking at them and pawing them and putting them back.

‘Sorry,’ Mark said, as he jostled a woman going through the rack behind him.

‘Hello, Mark,’ she said, and he turned almost in fright. It took him a moment to recognize her. Pamela Doherty. She’d been on his school bus, and when she stepped on in the
morning, every boy down the back took a good look at her: some of the girls, too. Every morning her brown hair would be damp and loose. She had been friendlier, more easy-going than a girl that
good-looking should, by rights, have been. She was still good-looking, but harder-looking, too; there was something forced to what prettiness was still there. She was groomed. Tanned in the middle
of December. Wearing a suit you’d wear if you worked in a bank.

‘Pamela,’ he said, and nodded with a breath of a laugh. ‘How’s things?’

‘Not too bad,’ she said, and he noticed her accent – Edgeworthstown pure and undiluted, the bit of a rush on the last word. ‘What are you up to, these days?’

‘Ah.’ He shrugged, and gestured back to his mother. ‘Helping out with the Christmas shopping, you know.’

‘Good man yourself.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m working in the bank,’ she said, and he congratulated himself silently on having got it right. ‘Pain-in-the-arse work but it pays the bills.’

‘Lot to be said for that.’

‘Sure is. And you’re in Dublin, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘At Trinity, isn’t it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Lecturing?’

He hesitated a moment. It was always the same dilemma, when someone from home asked him what he did; whether to clarify for them the difference between being a lecturer and being a teaching
assistant – which felt, most of the time, like being a jumped-up grinds tutor, only on less pay. He nodded. ‘Yeah. Lecturing. Pain-in-the-arse work too.’

‘But, wow,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. ‘That beats anything that’s going on around here. A lecturer at Trinity. I mean, fair play.’

He shrugged. He could feel himself flushing. He glanced down at the thing she had in her hands. It looked like a piece of underwear, silk, a slip or a top or something that made him think of
what she must look like naked, what she must have looked like naked back in the school-bus days, at sixteen. He felt as though the walls of the place were closing in on top of him.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘good to see you anyway.’

‘Yeah.’ She smiled. ‘Might see you around over Christmas. You be in Valentine’s on Stephen’s night?’

‘I’d say so, yeah.’ Mark heard in his voice a local lad’s confidence that he did not have.

‘See you so.’ Pamela winked at him, as he nodded a goodbye.

His mother was down at the back of the shop now; she could not have heard the exchange. Still, she glanced at him quizzically as he joined her. ‘Who was that one?’

‘She used to go on my bus,’ Mark said. ‘Doherty. You don’t know them.’

‘I do know them,’ his mother said, and craned her neck to get a better look.

Mark took an intense interest in the blouse his mother had in her hand. ‘That one’s nice.’

‘I don’t know,’ his mother said. ‘It seems a bit skimpy to me.’

‘Whatever you think.’

‘What about this?’

It was a cardigan in dark grey; long, plain. Joanne would wear it. He touched it. The wool was soft and smooth. ‘Looks nice,’ he said.

‘It’d want to, for the price of it.’ She showed him the tag and he did the taken-aback look he knew she was expecting. ‘Cashmere,’ she said.
‘Still.’

‘It’s too much,’ he said. ‘That blouse you had a minute ago would do fine.’

‘Would it?’ She did the uncertainty dance now, with her mouth and her eyes, looking between this rail and the other one, sizing each piece up, frowning, chewing her lip. ‘Which
of them do you think she’d get more wear out of ?’ she said.

Mark tried to picture Joanne, first in the blouse, then in the cardigan. The blouse would be sexier. But the cardigan was something she’d come in and put on in the evenings, something
she’d wrap around herself. Then again, that would mean the cardigan would be covered, soon enough, in baby puke. Just as he was about to say this to his mother, he heard Aoife’s cries.
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, and as he pushed his way up the shop, past what seemed like thirty women, the baby’s cries grew louder and more urgent than seemed
possible: had she not just woken up? Had she actually been awake, crying, all that time, and he had not heard her? He made his way through, and every woman seemed to glance at him disapprovingly as
he passed. Except Pamela Doherty. What was on her face was not disapproval but disbelief, and laughing disbelief at that.