Four Aprils old
His heart knows
Only joy
Proud and brave
He stands up straight
In uniform
My girl intent
Upon his lunchbox
Putting in
Taking out
Balancing . . .
Her eyelids not quite dry
I look at her
She looks at him
He waves at me
We spin in a ring of love
And recognise the day
Child of my child, I
scoop you up and hug you, breathe
you in and keep you.
My hands kneading dough
become your hands in cloudy
puffs of wheaten flour.
Four Aprils old
His heart knows
Only joy
Proud and brave
He stands up straight
In uniform
My girl intent
Upon his lunchbox
Putting in
Taking out
Balancing . . .
Her eyelids not quite dry
I look at her
She looks at him
He waves at me
We spin in a ring of love
And recognise the day
Of separation
Being, like Woody Allen, too hostile to drive, I left my son to the airport bus. He was twenty, the first child to cross the sea in any direction, and he was going to America for a year to work in a holiday camp for children. To the Catskill mountains he was going, near New York. I stood on the road until I couldn’t see the bus any more and then I went into town as though it was any old Saturday. At three o’clock, when I knew he’d be taking off, I sat down; I had discovered a new pain in a new place.
Later, I went into his room and looked at the empty bed. I changed the sheets and tidied and cleaned. And then I washed all his clothes and hung them out and took them in and aired and ironed them, and folded them, oh so neat.
Long days later he phoned. He wanted tea-bags, nothing else, just tea-bags, and would I send them? He was having a great time, he said, meeting people from all over the world and he loved the heat and the craic was great but he wanted tea-bags. He said the night he arrived he stood at a balcony window and looked out at New York and he couldn’t stop smiling to himself because he was really there. And the picture of his there, leaning out with hands on the railings and him smiling is still in my head like a lost photograph.
So I got the tea-bags and packed them up and sent them and waited to hear they had arrived. His siblings said it was great; they never had to answer the phone when he was away because I’d have broken bones trying to get there first.
The parcel arrived. He’d be happy now, I thought, and I pictured him in the camp, up in the Catskill mountains with a crowd of children all different colours like in a holy picture, and them all sitting round in a circle drinking tea.
One day in town I looked at a mannequin in a window, and whatever way the head of it was turned or the way I looked at it I got such a sharp, terrible pain. My feet didn’t know where they were and I put a hand to the wall to steady myself.
The months passed and the day came for his return. oh, such cleanings and washings – I had everybody working, and at last, at last, the car arrived and out he got – a stranger, older, tanned, dressed in shorts and sandals – in a place where even on the hottest of hot days the boys sweltered in jeans and runners. He looked like a visitor and for a short while seemed like one.
That was years ago and they have all left and returned many times. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I’m not.
Broadcast on Radio Ulster 2006.
ANDY
There was sleet falling. It fell straight down in the windless, chill air but the boys ignored it. They were standing outside the pub hoping someone would lend them money or bring them out a few beers. Barney Madden ran them out of it but they went back when he took himself home. Like he owned the place, Stevie said, fuck him, all he does is wash the glasses.
Andy felt the unhappiness grow in his chest again. It was heavy and he fought against it. No, he said to himself. No. He held his arms up and out in front of him and made soft, crooning, engine noises.
“Definitely getting a bike, so I am, and it won’t be long now. I’m still getting a couple of days on the boat with Dominic Byrne and he says he’ll have more work in the Summer and I’ll start saving then . . . “
Andy dropped his arms and sat on the wall.
“What do you say, Stevie Wonder?”
Stevie threw the butt of his cigarette on the ground and watched it roll into a puddle.
“I say you’re full of shite, Andy. I wish there was more than tobacco in that fag, that’s what I say . . . God, it’s freezing.”
They walked up and down, their fingers squeezed into the pockets of their jeans and their shoulders hunched and they thought about riding bikes on the straight, endless roads with the sun hot in the sky and their ipods loud in their ears.
“We’re never going to have them bikes,” Stevie said.
He nudged the rolled-up poster tucked under Andy’s arm.
“That’s as near a bike as we’ll ever get . . . cost a fuckin’ fortune even if you do have a job – most of them don’t hardly pay more than the dole. And you’ve got Lily and wee Grace. Have we any fags left?”
Andy lit a cigarette and dragged on it before passing it to Stevie. Stevie had a part-time job delivering newspapers to shops. Great, he said it was, getting up at three in the morning, the streets all dark and no traffic so you could hear the sea, and then the day to yourself. He wanted Andy to come too when the other helper was off, but Lily wouldn’t let him – said she’d be scared on her own at night, even though them birds were in the downstairs flat. She hated them birds; they were always laughing and talking so loud in the hall. Andy couldn’t imagine their lives – he looked at them like they were on television.
The sleet began to fall thicker and faster. There was no one they knew coming or going and Andy could feel the cold going into his bones.
“I’m off home,” he said. “It’s too fuckin’ cold to wait. See you later on, Stevie.”
He pulled the sleeves of his jacket down over his knuckles and curled himself around the poster. One of his runners was letting in and he tried to bend his foot away from the wet spot. He went up the shore road at a half-run and paused as usual to spit into the sea; it was only a habit now; he never waited to see how far it went.
He stood outside the flat for a minute staring up at the window, trying to guess if Lily and the baby were in or not. He opened the front door and listened. There wasn’t a sound, and then he heard a noise in the downstairs flat and the door swung open. Shite, Andy thought.
“Hi,” he said, moving towards the stairs, mopping at the wet hair on his forehead.
The girls stopped at the sight of him. Their faces were bright and their blonde curls bounced on their woolly scarves.
“Hello! Hi! There’s nobody up there.”
“We’ll make coffee for you if you like.”
“We’ll warm you up. You look like a wee icicle.”
Andy bolted for the stairs.
“No thanks,” he said. “They’ll be home soon . . . I’ll have to . . . “
He sniggered quietly to himself at the thought of what Lily might do if she came home and he was in there with them birds . . . they might have cooked him something and they’d have the heating on, probably had a big telly as well. Andy sighed, a long, painful sigh. He went into the kitchen and edged past the table to the kettle, batting the onions out of his way. They were strung from hooks in the ceiling. Lily had seen that once in a movie and insisted on stringing them up although she didn’t eat onions – didn’t cook anyway.
Water rattled into the kettle and Andy shivered with his hand on the cold tap. Maybe Lily would bring home something from the Chinese – she did that sometimes if her mother gave her some money.
The music filled the room
We pushed the table back
Stacked the chairs and
Formed a ring to watch
My daughter dance
Spangled eyes alight
With joy of movement
She whirled, birled
Arms and legs abandoned
And while she whirled she changed
Grew, evolved, emerged
A stranger unconnected
All her own self, on her own
Future firing headlong
Detached from my detaining hands
The beat drummed louder
Finished and the stranger sank
Triumphant, flushed and
Laughing, enjoying our applause
Turned to me for confirmation
My girl again
But never quite the same.
Small windows, deep-set
In a whitewashed wall
Cobbled, dung-splashed
Yard, fiery red-topped
Roosters
Pecked unwary legs
Crusty, griddled bread
Thick with yellow butter
Our towny tongues unsure
Of still-warm milk
Cool, beaten earthen floor
Rough on shoe-soft feet
At night the whisper
Wheeze of bellows
Turf smoke burning eyes
Murmured prayers before
The lamps, blood-red and
Phosphorescent blue
My mother’s mother nodded
Black-robed in the corner
Her father sang us songs
Threaded laces in his boots
And shooed us, lit by candles
To the quilted, feather bed.
A rattle of keys at the back door
We waited – wary
His face shut tight against us
Like a fist
Toed-in, he crouched over furtive whiskeys
Fingers curled
Over chin and cigarette
And we ghosted from the room
With nervous grins
But once he showed me Dickens
And Maurice Walsh
And he was The Small Dark Man
Alone in a house of women
Cut off by his country voice
From the town
Squeezing memories
From an old melodeon
Sometimes – surprised
His face would lift with love
And fall again
Now I surprise myself
Toed-in, crouched over flagrant whiskeys
Fingers curled over chin and cigarette
And I have to leave the room.
embookstuff 