Bend for Home, The (18 page)

Are you all right? they said.

I got in anyway and we had apple tart and biscuits the Holy Boys had raided from the pantry.

Went off to the
Ceili Mor
. The boys made a big circle round the women during singing and we all made our way up the hall. The
Runai
gives off and the
Uachtarain
. The Donegals from Scotland got out together to do a rowdy set.

We danced till 10 and photographs were taken. After the
Ceili Mor
we sat looking out to sea and talking. About where we were from and what we’d do. And giving over addresses. People were arranging to meet there again the following summer. And then we went home. We threw our wet clothes onto the Holy Boys and woke them up. Great laugh. Stole out onto the landing and tied Charlie’s bedroom door to the handle of the bathroom.

Woke first thing to hear Charlie banging on his door. Fierce cant. Left Rannafast at 2 o’clock on the buses. Said goodbye to all the crew in Cavan town, and met Dermot.

And he said: Sheila is going out with someone else these days.

Is that so? I said.

I just thought you’d like to know.

I stepped up on the weigh scale at Burke’s and saw I’d lost a half a
stone. Rang the bell and my mother, in her blue housecoat, answered the door.

You’re welcome, she said. Say something in Irish for me.

Nil aon tintain mar do thintain fein,
I said.

Is it something nice? she asked.

It is.

Good, so tell me what does it mean.

There’s no fireside like your own fireside, I said.

Oh if only it was true for you, she said.

So I told them all that had happened in Rannafast. When I came to the storyteller my mother looked aghast.

Nail varnish, she said, where in heaven’s name did the cur get that?

I don’t know.

That’s your Irish for you now, Winnie, said Maisie and she chuckled. We don’t know the half of it.

But nail varnish, repeated my mother, nail varnish of all things. And tell me this, why did he not finish the story?

Maybe, said I, there’s no ending.

She gave me a sharp look. You cur, she said, you made it up.

I did, I said, laughing.

When I come in to the Central my hands start to shake. Sheila is at a table with some girls. She looks straight at me. I walk by her in the same way she’d walk by me and play a record, a record I don’t know though I spent time over it as if I did, then sit at a table with my back to her. Of all things – Frank Sinatra. This goes on a long time. I feel a gom. I can hear them between tunes laughing and talking.

I don’t know what to do and I don’t know how long I can keep this up then suddenly I feel her behind me.

I turn. She stands there at my side with her arms behind her back.

So who did you go with in
Ran-na-Feirste
? she asks.

No one, I say.

That’s not what I heard.

Well, you heard wrong.

Oh yeh?

Yeh, I say, and you – you went out with Jim.

She measures me. Who told you that?

Never mind.

Well I wouldn’t have done that if you’d been faithful.

But I was faithful.

Blah!

Suddenly she leans in over the table, lifts a pepper pot and shakes it into my face.

What the fuck, I say.

Don’t you sit all high and mighty with your back to me, she says. I start sneezing. She marches out the door followed by the girls. Adel Murphy who works behind the counter goes by laughing. My eyes water. A few minutes later Sheila is back, alone.

I’m sorry for going out with Jim, she says, sitting down.

OK, I said.

And you, did you go with anyone in Donegal?

Not at all, I said.

Are you sure?

I am.

I heard you did.

Don’t believe it, I said.

I don’t know what to believe. I get tired thinking about it. All I know is that I’m stuck with you, for my sins.

It could be worse, I say laughing and hoping she’d laugh too.

She smiles at least.

Are you still going to marry me? she asks.

Yes, I say.

Crossed over the fence from the Royal School into Breifne Park and got in for nothing to the pitch to see the match between Donegal and Down. Lift money and head to the Congo for a few stout, then on to the pictures where I’ve a date with Sheila. But she doesn’t come.

At half-time I get Mary to ring Sheila’s house. Mary hands the phone on to me.

What’s wrong? I demand.

There’s no use in being cross with me, Sheila says.

I waited on you.

They won’t let me out.

Oh.

You see, she says, this is how things are with me because of going out with you.

Will you be at the dance?

I don’t know. Look I have to go now. Someone is coming.

OK.

So I sat with Mary at the pictures, then went off to the dance in the Sports Centre. But Sheila doesn’t appear. So I moved Rose Reilly and slept with Dermot who tells me again that Jim and Sheila are still going out together.

Today couldn’t get rid of the feeling that something was wrong. I paced the town. The street did not know me. The Breifne did not
feel like home. I tried to stop the feeling but it got worse – so I went up to the bed and lay in it, falling in and out of sleep and each time waking with a worse sin on my mind, not sins I could place but some sort of dark insanity that makes people fail to know you – they think, who’s that fucker coming? – thoughts raced past then revisited but made no sense, none at all, twitchings, not that I could remember anyway. So I went to the pictures alone. Rose sat down beside me.

Do you mind? she asks.

Not at all, I say.

Sheila was sitting two rows in front of me with her father, the bank manager. I watched her head tilt against the screen. One of the twins shouted for silence. When the lights came on at the end she turned in the aisle and looked at me. Her father prodded her forward. They go by like eternity.

Isn’t that your girlfriend? asked Rose.

She used to be, I said.

The look she gave me! said Rose.

Today told Sheila that Rose only happened to be sitting next to me last night at the pictures.

And you didn’t go with her?

No.

You swear?

I do.

We went up to the Castle in the shed with Noel’s wireless, fags and cider. We said we’d start all over from the beginning again. Fuck the brother, I said. Listened to Radio Luxembourg and sang. Then the galvanize began thundering. It was Andy and the boys throwing spuds and stones onto the loft. After a while they stopped.

She told me her family wanted her to have nothing to do with me.

Will you run away with me? I asked.

When? she asked.

Tomorrow night, I said.

Tomorrow night?

Yeh.

Are you sure?

Yes.

Where are we going?

I don’t know.

I packed a bag and dropped onto the kitchen roof round 3, then went by Provider’s onto Main Street. Stood in Fox’s shoe shop opposite the bank and looked up at her room. It was in darkness. Half 3 came and went. Then maybe round 4 the light went on in the second storey for a second. I stood well in. I thought I saw her head, as I’d seen it before, tilted. The light went off. I waited, but the front door didn’t open. So I started to bark like a dog. Mrs Reilly from next door looked out her window astounded.

I gave up and went home, put everything back in the drawers and lay in the bed seeing behind my closed eyelids the bank in the light of the streetlamp. It seemed to be forty storeys high.

What happened you last night? I asked Sheila.

You mean you came?

Yes, I did, I said bitterly.

I didn’t think you would.

Why?

You’re always saying these things.

Well, I meant it.

And where would we go?

Anywhere, I said. She tucked her arm in mine. Did you not hear me barking? I asked.

Barking? she said, and she started to laugh.

Yes, barking, I said serious-like. Did you?

No, Dermot, I didn’t hear you barking.

All right, I said, that’s enough.

Her family are at a do in Dublin so myself and Sheila go to see
Gone with the Wind
. We had ice-cream cones and a great long court during the Civil War, then we strolled over the Gallows Hill. The sky was night-blue. The gypsies sitting around a camp fire on the Fair Green called out to us through the smoke, wondering who we were.

We talked about running away again.

I don’t know, she said. Have you any money?

Not a hate. A few bob maybe. But there’d be no problem getting a job.

Don’t you want to finish college?

No.

How can you be so sure? She went on ahead of me, stopped and seemed to be by herself. I feel lonely thinking about it, she said. You’ll have to give me time to think.

The best thing to do, I said, is not to think at all.

It’s easy for you to talk like that.

What do you mean?

You don’t seem to care.

I care about you.

Do you know what I think – I think you’re out of your head.

We could be in England this time tomorrow night.

Oh God, she said, don’t rush me.

We climbed down into the nun’s meadow. A snipe skirted the lake. A mist travelled over from the green lake.

I’ll race you to that fence, she said.

You want to race?

Yes, I do, she said and she took off.

I threw myself on the floor of my mother’s bedroom and said I didn’t want to go back to college.

And what do you want to do?

I want to be a writer.

Will you get up out of that, she said, and don’t be making a show of yourself.

She went back to
Woman’s Own
. I went back to Luxembourg.

After getting home from Trim with Harry, I hitched out to Annagh Lake for a swim to clear the wool oil off my skin. I swam out beyond the reeds, turned around, did a few strokes and went for bottom but there was nothing there. Next thing I was underwater trying to yell. I went straight down thrashing. And still there was no bottom. The light crashed overhead and turned black. Then I touched something with my hand. It was Pat Gaffey swimming past underwater. I grabbed his togs. He pulled away, taking me with him. When we surfaced he took off his goggles and shook his head.

That’s not funny, he said.

I was drowning, I said.

He undid my arms from round his waist and swam away. He thought I’d just been playing. The rest were there swimming as usual. No one had seen what had happened. I tiptoed in, searching ahead for ground before I put my foot down. This shaking went through me so I sat in the shallows in my togs till I got back to myself. I tried to undress but couldn’t get my togs down, so I pulled my trousers over them and hitched home. The house felt stone cold. There was no one in the Breifne, the women had gone walking round the Triangle, the girls had gone to the country for the half-day, I was back to high D, it was all made up again, it was making up time again, the radio was playing by itself, and in the kitchen all I heard was this constant whispering, and loud noises in my eardrums that I’d heard somewhere before but couldn’t place, buffetings and asides, even in the garden where I sat on the blue seat my father made under the ivy there was the same dangerous overlapping, the same uncertainty, too many I persons, the hatred-voice, and I ran back through the house and out to the front door as if I was being chased, and stood under the Breifne canopies looking up Main Street, then it passed, and I went in.

I hung around the town waiting for Sheila to appear, but there was no sign of her so eventually myself and Dermot and Mac head off for a drink in Stick Donoghue’s. I have 13/-. We’re drinking Smithwick’s Number 1. We meet men from Kilnaleck and women
from Killeshandra. I get very drunk. Then meet one of Sheila’s brother’s crowd on the street.

Why the fuck did yous gang up on me? I say.

Fuck off, Healy, he says.

I’ll break your face, I said, you cunt.

We made a run at each other. I bled his mouth and he kicked me between the legs, then he spat blood into my face. He tore the shirt off me. The others pulled us apart and then the lads took me to the Ulster Arms and washed me down in the toilet, and Dermot brought me a shirt from his house. I paid for a feed in McGinty’s but couldn’t eat it. Started shouting in the street. Up the Half Acre, I roared, and all that ever sailed in her. The mother met me at the door.

You’re drunk, she said.

I’m not.

Tomorrow, she says, you get a Pioneer pin. Do you hear me?

I hear you.

God in heaven, she said, what’s to become of me? And she started to cry.

I’m sorry Mother, I said. I’m sorry.

We knelt in the dining room and said the rosary. Opened the window and vomited into the yard. When I went to bed I saw the toe of his boot had missed my balls by a fraction.

Listened to
Pick of the Pops
with Sheila, she lay with her head in my lap.

You know what I could do?

What.

I could go ahead of us and get a job. Then you could come and join me. How about that?

OK, she said. If that’s what you want.

I love Sheila. Let them do what they like whoever they are.

Up at break of dawn and on the road with Harry Ross to Athlone, where we dropped off over 50 bales. Ate a dinner of leg-a-lamb looking down on the river Shannon.

In the Central Café I tell Sheila how much she hurt me when she went off with someone else. Got a load off my chest and feel in Great Humour. Went to the pictures and did not expect her to come, but she does. Love her.

What’s going on over there? said George O’Rourke, and he shone his torch on us.

Was in the Central with Uncle Seamus’s kids. Talking to Sheila and lift letter out of her cardigan pocket without her seeing me. Find out from it when I read it at home that she went with a fellow from Ardee when I was in Rannafast. Ar –
fucking
– dee, no less. Oh he wants to meet her again somewhere down the line. I get mad. Very mad. Ar –
fucking
– dee. I read the letter over and over till it sickened me.

Then the bell rang and Sheila’s at the door.

Are you coming to the hop in the Sports Centre? she says.

So I gave her the letter. She touched her cardigan pocket, glanced at the sheet of paper and looked at me.

Dermot, she said.

I said nothing. We start off up Main Street. She cries her head off.

Dermot, she said again, say something. Give off to me but don’t stay quiet.

We keep going.

But you’re no better than me, she says, can’t you see that? You’re no better than me.

At the door of the Centre we parted. She stands underneath the stage, her eyes running. The lads have
poitín
in the jacks. Mal Elliot is half shot and Dermot is half cut. The drink goes to my head and so I only dance Sheila a couple of times. She holds me closer than ever before.

Are you still mad?

No.

We dance to Buddy Holly.

I’m going on, I said, in the next few days.

You’re running away?

Yes.

For ever?

Yes.

Oh.

You can come after me if you want to.

Do you mean it? she asks.

I do, I say.

On the way home I rang Ollie and he told me to come on ahead to his brother’s pub in Parnell Street and we’d take it from there.

I have a job in Dublin starting tomorrow, I told Mammy.

Have you?

In Ollie’s pub, I said.

If you want to go I can’t stop you.

It’ll only be for a few days.

Yes, she said. I suppose you want some money.

No, I said, I’ve saved what Harry gave me.