A Little Bit on the Side (17 page)

Slipping with Celia on to a seat at the very back of the nave, he watched and listened with detachment to a ritual which, although it had a faintly familiar feel to it, seemed to have changed a good deal from that mass on which he had turned his back so long ago.

‘Still all pray and display,’ he whispered to Celia, ‘but a touch less chilling and devoid of humanity than I remember it.’

On their return to the house after the interment, they found it transformed in their absence by Sorcha’s neighbours and Kevin’s wife who had stayed behind. In both rooms, now completely cleared of all trace of mourning, cloth-covered trestle tables had appeared laden with all the food and drink calculated to be necessary to take the mourners through the evening, and beyond into the following dawn, if that was wanted. The curtains were now drawn back, the house fully lit, and the front door left open for all who might wish to call.

For three or four hours they came to offer their sympathies, friends from the church, from the neighbouring streets and from the Anfield terraces: to enjoy a bite and a drink or two, and then move on to be replaced by others. But by ten-thirty or thereabouts there was only the family left, and Jimmy and Celia found themselves swept off by Seamus to a corner where Michael, Mary and the cousins were waiting.

‘Sit down now then the two of you,’ said Michael, ‘And tell us all about the desperate time you had up there on your Scottish island, and what you’ve been about since. But before you start …’

He walked from the table and returned with a bottle of Bushmills and some glasses, which he filled and passed around.

‘Now I know you take it neat Mary, but what about you Celia?’

Approving of her nodding acceptance, he handed her the whisky undiluted.

‘Sláinte,’ he said, raising his glass and taking a pull at the whisky before turning to Jimmy expectantly.

Then, for more than an hour, with diversions for laughter, argument, debate and near disbelief, Jimmy and Celia regaled them with a rambling account not only of the shambles on North Uist and their early days at Barton, but of old Tom Sutton’s undignified passing, of Jack’s fruit cage and barren ewes, and the finding of the Churchill book. It was the St Matthew’s graveside vigil at New Year’s Eve, however, that most caught the fancy of their audience and of Seamus in particular.

‘Now I’d have to be honest Celia, at risk of offending, and say that offhand I can’t think of many English customs that I’d be inclined to adopt, but by God I like the sound of that. There’s humanity and love for you, both for those who have gone and those left behind to mourn them.’

And the priests would be down on you like a ton of bricks for your paganism, thought Jimmy, but he said nothing.

‘Back home,’ said Michael, ‘we might perhaps have had a bit of music by now: a fiddle or a squeezebox to give us a bit of life, and it’s a devil of a disgrace that none of us was taught to play. But what about you Jim? Celia was telling me earlier how you gave them all a song at the New Year gathering. Do you know any of the old songs from home?’

‘I do, and I know the traditions, so you whet my whistle and pour me a Guinness, and I’ll give you your song.’

He was scarcely into the first verse of
Whisky You’re the Devil before
the rest of the room had joined with him and carried it though to the end, and from then on, with Seamus and Michael leading the way they drifted into a hazy, drink-fuelled evening that carried Jimmy back to that pre-war hoolie at the farm when he was tucked away to sleep at midnight and his father, uncle and neighbours carried it through to the dawn.

Reminiscences of the old times, laughter at Mary’s tales of her days in the convent school (less funny to her then than now she said), reflections on the changing way of things in Ireland, stories (some tall ones from Seamus, Jim was sure) from the life of the old man and a few more memories of Barton Hill were all punctuated by songs that Jim had absorbed at his father’s knee:
Rosin the Bow, Finnigan’s Wake
and
The Maid of the Sweet Brown Knowe.

In the momentary silence that followed the striking of midnight young Danny, the baby of the cousins, started up with that achingly beautiful song of separation
The Parting Glass.
He had a sweet tenor voice, and was left to a solo performance which was much applauded, but Michael clearly wasn’t ready for the song’s note of melancholy and finality just then: the evening was still young.

‘Ah come on now Sorcha, time for some tea and cake I think, and you Jimmy, did you know what a fine, sharp lad your father was when he was young. Did he ever tell you the story of his Puck Fair triumph?’

‘To be honest uncle, he wasn’t a great one at all for stories of the time before he left. Didn’t seem to want to talk about those days much.’

‘Well that’s probably as much our fault as his, but it’s water long under the bridge now, and any differences forgotten and forgiven, so fill your glasses and let me wind the clock back some sixty years or so.

I’d say Liam would have been about fifteen at the time, and making his first trip to the fair with a whole crowd of the boys. Now when the fair was on the town was so busy and lively that for most of the lads it was sleep when your could and where you could, but we were lucky with an aunty on my mother’s side just outside Killorglin who was glad to see us with the family news, and give us a bed on the floor for the night.

At the horse fair on the first day we always looked and lingered longingly, but it wasn’t often that anyone from home was able to buy. But this time it was different, as Jamey Brennan from the big house over the hill had joined us, and he was after a hunter. You’ll know what it was like in the country in those days with never a car to be seen apart from the RIC, so we all knew our horses, and were more than free with advice as Jamey worked his way through five or six of the sad looking nags brought to him by some of the knackers.

Then Jamey spots this handsome bay gelding standing a way off to the side: five years old he was told, which we all thought looked about right. For half-an-hour Jamey puts him through his paces, and then with a spit and a slap the deal was done. So we all set off for a jar to celebrate, and then stayed on at the fair for the rest of that day and the morning of the second.

We’d gone by train, but as Jamey was going to take the bay back at the walk, four of us decided to keep him company. That meant we’d a fair few miles to cover before we were home, and as the end of the day came on we stopped off at a farm by the way, with a neat little goirtin for the bay, a fine barn for us to bed down in for the night, and some milk, rashers and a couple of slices of pan from the house to keep us going.

By afternoon the next day we were back in Mill-street, and I can tell you the bay had been admired all along the way. Pleased as punch with himself and the bay Jamey was, and showed him off to all and sundry as we took a final jar before heading off, we back to the farm and Jamey up to the big house.

It was less than a week later when Jamey turns up at the farm in a state fit to top himself. Two days earlier, he said, he’d gone out to the stable to feed the bay only to find it missing. Worse than that, as though to mock poor Jamey, the maggots who took the bay had left in its place some poor spavined beast fit for nothing but the knacker’s yard. For a while Jamey thought it might be a joke, and that the bay would be returned, but now there seemed no hope of that.

So we all troop up to the big house with Jamey, and to be honest we couldn’t help a laugh or two ourselves when we saw the poor sad creature that stood looking at us as though all it wanted was to be put out of its misery.

As things were at the time no one was for calling in the RIC, and Jamey and the lads were going wild for something to do when young Liam spoke up.

“Why don’t we just turn him out, and follow him?”

“Dear God,” says Jamey, after a moment’s thought. “The boy’s right. Just look at the state of the beast — he can’t have come far.”

And that’s what we did. So the poor thing staggers out, moons around the yard for a while, and then stumbles off up the boreen that runs round the back of the hill. We follow, and from there he crawls along until we’re back on to the Killarney road, the way we’d come in, before turning off up a little bogway. By now the news had got round and we must have been a couple of dozen strong, and then one of them pipes up, “He’s on his way to the Kennedy place.”

Well the Kennedys were a poor feckless crowd for sure: no real harm in them, but just thick enough for such a stupid trick. And we’re barely in sight of the place when we hear one of the youngsters hollering out to his Da that a crowd of the lads were bringing him back his old nag.

Next thing we know there’s him at the door white as a sheet, and his wife clinging on to his arm and bawling her head off that he didn’t mean it, and that he and one of the boys had been out on the tear and were near-legless when they staggered back with the bay, and meant to take it back, but hadn’t the courage when sober. Kennedy, the while, just stands there with his mouth open, and finally waves his arm in the direction of a wreck of a cabin that stood just across the field, and there we found the bay.

Some of the boys were for giving him a good shal-lacking, but Jamey wouldn’t have it: said that the man looked worse than his beast, and had half the sense. The bay looked to be fine, so there we left Kennedy with his wife foul-mouthing him, the kids howling and the old mare looking fit to drop, while we, with your Da in triumph on the bay’s back, made our way back for a few jars on Jamey to celebrate. I’m surprised he never told you that Jim.’

‘It’s sad that you all came to fall out later,’ said Celia, who knew as much as Jimmy did about his father’s early days, ‘But that’s politics, and if you hadn’t I wouldn’t have Jimmy now nor the pleasure of your company.’

‘I’ll take a final drink to that,’ said Michael, ‘but sadly I’m not the man I was. There was a time when I’d have danced you through to the morning, but now I’m for my bed, and as the song says, goodnight and joy be with you all.’

With Michael gone most of the rest were more than ready to follow, but Celia, intrigued by the absence at any time of a reference to the one great issue that should have divorced Jimmy from the rest of his family (religion, the Catholic church and Jimmy’s standing with the Lord), took the opportunity to steal a few quiet words with Seamus before he went up to bed. She chose Seamus because of all the family he’d clearly taken something of a fancy to her, and from a few comments here and there seemed to be less imbued with unthinking respect for the faith than the others.

‘Uncle Seamus,’ she said, always careful to respect the old folk’s titles. ‘I hope you won’t mind me asking this, but the family all know about Jimmy’s break from his mother and the church all those years ago, and everyone saw him sitting apart with me at the back of the church and ignoring the mass. I can see you all still love him though, and can’t help wondering how everyone feels my Jimmy’s going to be placed when his own time comes.’

‘Well I know what the priest would say, but you’d have been best placed to ask Mary, for she don’t agree with the priest, and has it all nicely worked out. Jim had the sacraments of initiation when young, she says, he’s loved his Da and lived a decent life despite all the happened in the past, so when the great call comes, the good Lord will look into his heart, know that he repents, and in his infinite mercy He will understand. All will be well, and Jim will join us all with the blessed, says Mary. Don’t know about you though Celia.’

He gave her a wink and a kiss before leaving them to sleep out what was left of the night in a couple of armchairs, it being far too late to return to the hotel. As they settled down together in the darkness Celia heaved a long, exaggerated sigh of longing.

‘Oh Jimmy, did you ever hear anything like those lovely soft Irish brogues of your cousins. My God, but they’re sexy. Why on earth was I cursed to spend my days listening to sweet nothings from a Scouser. Oh I could …’
If Jimmy’s throw was blind, it was accurate, and the cushion silenced her mid-sentence.

‘God bless, please God, thanks be to God, God be praised.’ For three days, and the first time in more than thirty years, those phrases had punctuated the conversations with Jimmy and around him, and as he said his farewells, and shook hands with the elderly uncles and aunt so close now to the end of their lives, he struggled once again to understand just what the factors were that distinguished their irrational and lifelong acceptance of the faith from his rejection of it. They’d all endured the same steady drip, drip, drip of indoctrination when young, and yet a lifetime later they stood in opposite camps, and on each side the certainty was absolute. Religion meant everything to them, and nothing to him.

It wasn’t that the prospect of an afterlife didn’t have its appeal. There were many he would love to see again, but also quite a few he’d rather not, and here his thoughts turned to his mother. What would she be like ‘on the other side,’ the hard-hearted scolding bitch of his youth, or the benign, almost amiable old lady of the last few days? Would there be booze, or some celestial equivalent, and would Uncle Michael be allowed the pleasure of his still? Would there be football and sex, or just cerebral pleasures? He could think of a few of the faithful on the Anfield terraces who’d soon be bloody tired of that.

And they all seemed to be so happy to accept that at the end of the day it would all be sweetness and light, without getting into the detail, but then that’s where the devil is, isn’t it, in the detail. And it would go on, and on, and on, and on.

‘It takes it out of a man, this life everlasting.’ Now where the devil had he heard that?

Four weeks had elapsed since the meeting with Stevens, but Jack had heard nothing from Martindale, and he was starting to feel uneasy. Now, for the first time, he saw his objective as something more than the abstract intellectual challenge that his day-to-day investigation work presented, and as he dwelt on his prospects should things go wrong he began to falter, his usual assurance and decisiveness being replaced by increasing doubt and uncertainty as each day passed. Had he overplayed his hand with Stevens? Was his original analysis of the weakness of Martindale’s position valid? Had his certainty that Martindale would immediately be ready to stump up been misplaced?