—That’s a fuckin’ lie.
—It is not, she said.—I haven’t heard a thing from Saoirse in years. I don’t know where she is.
—She’d be fifty-something.
—She would.
—But she’s alive.
—I think so. She never took to my husband. She couldn’t like him. It was hard. And she said all along you were alive.
—Well, she was right.
—Yes. I have an address but I don’t think she’s there now.
—Where?
—Chicago. She phoned me once, in 1964. But not since.
—I was here in 1964.
—I know.
—I was out there, cutting your grass.
—I know that, she said.—And I’m sorry. As sorry as I can be. But listen to me, Henry. We’ll have to stop this upstairs-downstairs business if we’re going to get anywhere.
—What the fuck is upstairs-downstairs business?
—It’s a programme on the television, she said.—The masters and the servants. It’s very good.
—She’s alive.
—I’d say so.
—You’d say so?
—She’s like me, she said.—I saw that the minute she left. She stood up without creaking and went back to the kettle, and kept talking while she worked.
—She’s a survivor.
—We all are.
—Except Séamus.
I cried.
She held my head against her old stomach. I cried into her dressing gown.
—I loved him.
—I know.
—I loved him.
—I know, I know. And you saved him.
—He died.
—Yes, she said.—But he saw you saving his life. Not many fathers get to do that.
—That’s just sentimental shite, I said.—That’s all that is.
—I know, she said.
She let go of my head.
—It was a long time ago.
—D’you have a photograph? I asked.
—No, she said.—I’ve nothing.
She went back across to the kettle and the breadboard.
—There was nothing, she said.—No keepsake. Just himself and the clothes he was in. And they were too worn to take off.
—Where?
—Kansas, she said.—Looking for you.
—I was in Kansas.
—It’s big.
—It fuckin’ is.
—He died on the side of the road, she said.—I’m ashamed to say that.
She sighed.
—But there you have it.
She put a teapot on the table, beside me.
—I don’t drink tea, I said.
—Who said it’s for you?
She walked back to the counter.
—I’ve only the instant coffee.
—What about the percolator over there?
I’d noticed it before, a big old silver American one.
—Too much effort, she said.—The instant will have to do you.
—Grand, I said.—You were looking for me.
—I was, of course. For years.
—I heard stories, I said.—And Wanted posters. Dark Rosaleen. Lady O’Shea.
—I knew you’d see them.
—I saw them alright. Too late.
—I heard about you too, Henry. I knew it was you. One-Leg O’Glick.
—We must have been close to each other.
—We must have been.
She was sitting now, beside me. Holding my arm.
—But then it stopped, she said.
—I knew he was dead. I felt it.
—I came home, she said.—I thought you would too.
—I did.
—Eventually.
—I thought you were dead.
—Our lives could have been very different.
—Yeah.
—But I have to tell you, Henry.
She patted my arm.
—I’ve no regrets.
I let that settle.
—I married a good man, she said.
—You were already married to a good fuckin’ man.
—D’you know what, Henry Smart? she said.—In all the years I was married to him, he never said
Fuck
. Not once.
—That must have been nice, was it?
—Not even once.
—Listen, I said.—You knew what you were getting when you married me.
—That’s true.
—What was it like?
—What?
—Being married twice.
—It was very different, she said.—He was a different kind of man. And, I have to say, I became a different kind of woman.
—And no regrets.
—No.
She sighed.
—None.
—Go on, I said.—You’re lying.
—I’m not.
It was a new day outside. I could see the sun against the back wall, creeping down towards the flowerbeds. The grass looked cut and there were no weeds climbing out of the muck. She had a new gardener, the bitch.
—I was destroyed when I came home, she said.—I didn’t grieve till I got here. Not
here
. Home.
—It’s gone, I said.—The old house.
—I know that, she said.
—I went looking for it.
—And me in it?
—Yeah, I said.—In 1951.
—I was married in 1943.
—You’re a bigamist.
She laughed.
—I am, she said.—I’m a bigamist. Or I was. Did I stop being a bigamist when one of my husbands died?
—You’re not a widow now either.
—You might be right.
—I am fuckin’ right, I told her.—You’re married to me and I’m not dead.
—I can’t cope.
—You’ll be grand, I said.
—I stayed down home for a while, she said.—Then I came up to Dublin. This was at the start of the Emergency.
—The what?
—The war, she said.—The Second World War.
—I missed it, I told her.
She didn’t ask me what I meant. She was doing the talking. She’d moved up to Dublin with Saoirse, because Saoirse was going to the College of Art, all fees paid by her Uncle Ivan. They had a flat in Rathfarnham. She met her husband at a bus stop, in town.
—Was he younger than you? I asked.
The old eyes stared at me.
—It’s only a question, I said.
He was younger than her, but not that much younger. He was a bachelor and settled in his ways. Until he met her. He sat beside her on the bus and he was at the bus stop the next day, and the day after. And the next week, he was waiting at both bus stops, in the morning and the evening.
—I don’t know if I want to hear any of this, I told her.
She took him home and she gave him a fry and the ride of his life.
—The first one? I asked.—His first ride?
She nodded.
—He was very grateful.
—Did he pay you?
She slapped me. It didn’t hurt, but had some clout for a woman of her age.
He’d bought a new house in Ratheen, way off on the other side of the city. He’d bought the place but he hadn’t moved. It was too big and empty.
—So you married him.
—I loved him.
She looked at me staring at her.
—I did, she said.
We were sitting side by side. There was only a couple of inches between my eyes and hers.
He was handsome, shy, and a civil servant, in the Department of Agriculture. A big man in a big department. Her cousin Ivan was his boss for a while. The war was on and his work was vital; we were feeding England and we had to feed ourselves. He was sending cattle out onto the Irish Sea, to outrun the U-boats, to Holyhead and Liverpool. He’d come home late and he’d ride her for hours.
—Why are you telling me this?
—I want you to know, Henry, she said.—I don’t want you to cod yourself. I haven’t been waiting. I had a very good life. It wasn’t about sitting by the fire.
—Did you have any more kids?
—Will you do your sums, for God’s sake? It was more than thirty years ago. I was nearly sixty.
—Still riding.
—Yes.
—Good girl, I said.—Was there anyone else?
—What do you mean?
—Men, I said.—Or man.
—Between you and himself?
—Yeah.
—Of course there were.
—How many?
—Oh, stop that, she said.—Fine men, they all were.
—When?
—Stop it.
—I’d ride you now.
—What’s stopping you?
—My wooden leg, my bad back, the shrapnel in my chest.
—They’re just excuses.
—I know. You’re still the same woman.
—I am.
—What’re you looking at? I asked.
—Your forehead, she said.
—Are they still there?
She was looking for the pockmarks her nipples had dug, on the bed of stamps in 1916.
—No, she said.—There’s so many holes, sure. It’d be too hard to tell.
—They’re there alright.
—I left my glasses upstairs.
—I hear great things.
I’d seen him the odd time since I’d sat on the rug beside the sea, but he’d never stopped. He’d wave and keep pushing on, up the hill to the church and his house beside it. He was a walker. He knocked on the doors. He knew all the names, the holy communions and approaching deaths. He knew his parish. He didn’t drive unless he was leaving it.
I knew he was watching me. But I knew something else: he wasn’t the boss.
—Yes, he said.—Great things.
He sat there, looking at me over his glasses, pretending there was something more important than me in front of him.
I’d been summoned. Mister Strickland had given me the message.
—He’d like to see you now, he said.
—Grand.
—He stressed
now
.
Strickland knew his school was an I.R.A. cell, and he didn’t like it. It was the priest - the manager - who’d brought in the new teachers: whenever there’d been a vacancy, some young lad would arrive with top marks and a brand new briefcase. Most of them had been good and eager teachers. But Strickland began to realise it at the same time I did: they were Provos. He looked back - like I did - and realised what an eejit he’d been. He remembered tension in the staffroom some years back and, only now, he got it; the split, when the I.R.A. had divided into the Officials and the Provisionals. He remembered wondering where he was going to get a substitute at nine o’clock on a Monday morning, just before a call from the priest would save the day; there’d be a young lad on his way, to fill the gap.
I was in on it. That was what Strickland thought. And he was right - although I only found that out at the same time he did. But I couldn’t tell him. He wouldn’t have wanted to hear. He ran a very good school, not a hidey-hole for the I.R.A. And that could stay the story, if nothing was said. The Provisionals had never used the classrooms for recruiting. They didn’t need to. Once I started paying real attention to Ireland beyond the parish, I realised that it was 1920 again. Every stupid decision, every shooting, every rubber bullet - internment, Bloody Sunday, every strong rumour - British collusion in the planting of my bomb on Talbot Street and the other bombs that afternoon - all of these sent young men and women queuing up to join. Approval was in the air, everywhere. The British were back, on the telly every night, taking over the streets eighty miles up the road. There were dead bodies, there were refugees. Reprisal and counter-reprisal, terror and retaliation - it had gone on for three years, in my day. It went on for decades this time - and it was still my day. The priest behind the desk confirmed it.
—Great things, he said.
—Mister Strickland said you wanted me.
He looked at me over the specs.
—That’s right.
There’d been a shift in the balance. He could look over his glasses as much as he liked, but he still had to look up. He’d been patronising me for years. Not now, though. Not while the I.R.A. thought that I was their last man standing. And not while I was pumped full of the fact that I had a wife who loved me. A secret wife - an even better secret. I’d look at her smiling at the kitchen window as she watched me slide over the back wall into her garden, with the bike on my back, the handlebars digging into the old spine. (I wasn’t the gardener any more, so I had to sneak in as well as sneak out.) The fields behind the wall had filled up with new, still soft houses, their windows full of mammies and daddies walking angry babies back to sleep. I wasn’t getting any younger. But that, too, was a big part of the crack. I was much too old for any of this, and so was she. I’d burst into the kitchen, she’d put on the kettle and we’d go in to the couch and watch
The Late Late Show
, and fall asleep watching. But not always. Sometimes there was some life left by the time I fell into the kitchen. I’d fall into her arms or she’d let herself drop into mine and she’d kiss and our mouths would open and we’d laugh as our old breaths met and we’d look into each other’s eyes and try to see. And then we’d go in to the couch and the telly. On Saturday nights, and sometimes Wednesdays too.
I wasn’t taking shite from the priest.
—I haven’t seen much of you lately, Henry, he said.
—You’ve seen me, I said.
He dipped the head a bit more, so the glasses were well out of his way.
—It’s my busy time of the year.
—Grand.
It was Holy Communion and Confirmation time, the spring, and two years since the bomb.
—How have you been?
—Grand.
—Everything’s as it should be?
I remembered my manners.
—Yes, Father.
He looked at me.
—Be patient, he said.
He said it again.
—Be patient. You understand me?
—Yeah, I said.—I do.
—That’s the message, he said.—You know what it means.
—Yes, Father, I said.—Do you?
A finger shoved the glasses back up along his nose. He looked uncertain - the fucker looked beaten.
—Yes, he said.
—Grand, I said.—I’ll go out the back way.