Bend for Home, The (6 page)

Night-crossing,
I said.

To
Night-crossing,
he said.

We touched glasses.

It starts with two lads leaving Ireland on the Holyhead boat.

Sounds good.

The dancing began and I forgot all about the play I’d never written. A week later I was sitting in Ward’s Irish house when Dermot Burke, my next-door neighbour in Cavan, and now by another coincidence my next-door neighbour in Piccadilly, came in with a smile on his face and a copy of the
Anglo-Celt.
He clamped it down on the bar.

Look, says he.

And there I was on the front page with a cigarette in my mouth over a small headline that read:
CAVAN AUTHOR FINDS
FAME
. Oh Burke brought that copy of the
Anglo-Celt
everywhere, into every company I found myself in; he produced it out of his
pocket as we sat with friends, he had it photostated and posted it around.

He’d set me questions about the plot, and the more he asked the more I had to invent.

In time I invented a producer from ITV, a Mr Evans, if you don’t mind, who lived in Hammersmith. Apparently I saw him from time to time. He went over the shots and camera angles with me. I even eventually set a date when it would be broadcast to the nation – November 10th, let’s say. In fact I began to believe in it myself. I believed the script existed. The more of the story I invented, the more real it became.

Then I’d suddenly wake out of a dream terror-stricken by my duplicity. Slowly I tried to extricate myself from the lie. There were problems with production monies, I said. There were production difficulties. Something had gone wrong down the line. The date for the broadcast came and went. No one mentioned it.

But in fact I had set myself a duty. Everything I write now is an attempt to make up for that terrible lie. Had I not lied I might never have tried my hand at fiction. The truth is the lie you once told returning to haunt you.

I came into the outpatients alone. I handed in the card from the doctor to the nurse. Names were called, we moved on a seat, one by one, all sorry folk – ladies from the county with shopping bags, sombre pallid townsfolk, startled children on the laps of their mothers, pregnant women.

What are you in for? my neighbour asked. But before I could reply my name was called.

The young intern placed me in a bed behind a screen. Outside I heard them speaking of how serious things looked. I was terrified. He returned.

Are you not undressed yet? he asked me.

Then he went off again. I took off my shirt and trousers, then my underpants. A nurse looked in. I got into the bed and pulled the sheet to my chin. An Indian doctor stood at the bottom of the bed with my card in his hand. He read it and looked at me and handed it to the intern. He in turn read it. The doctor disappeared.

The intern lifted the sheet and tapped my stomach.

Any pain? he asked.

No.

He tapped again and pressed.

Now?

No.

Then where is it?

Down there, I said, pointing.

Here?

He sank his fingers into the flesh above my groin.

Is it the bladder as well? he asked.

I don’t know.

We’ll have an X-ray taken, he said, as soon as possible.

He looked into my eyes and shone a light into the whites. The doctor returned with a chart.

He’s a remarkable good colour, the intern said. Take a look here, Dr Rao.

The doctor entered the cubicle and smiled at me. He looked into my eyes. He read the chart. He pulled back an eyelid and shone his beam.

He has complained of his bladder, said the intern, but I can find nothing wrong with his liver.

The two of them looked at me.

You have been very sick, said Dr Rao.

My heart took a turn.

Is your mother with you?

No, I said.

Goodness. You came here alone? he asked astonished.

I did.

You are a very brave man, said the Doctor. Isn’t he?

Yes, said the intern.

But someone should have come with you, the doctor continued, and he looked at the intern with dismay and shook his head as if my mother and father were totally irresponsible.

Tch, he said. Tch, tsh. Have you brought your pyjamas?

I have.

Tell me now where is the pain?

I pointed at my penis.

In your willy? he asked aghast.

Yes, I said.

Goodness, he said.

They consulted the chart again, then viewed me with disbelief.

I don’t understand, he said. It is
Brendan Heaney
?

My name is Dermot Healy, I said quickly.

They retired. I lay there wondering what would happen next. Dr Rao returned smiling.

So you’re for circumcision?

I am.

We thought you were someone else, he explained. Get into your pyjamas and I’ll take you upstairs.

As I crossed the room in my pyjamas I saw Brendan Heaney enter with his father and mother. They were helping him. His skin was bright yellow and he was in carpet slippers. With my clothes under my arm I took the lift to the second floor. Forty years later I was mistaken
for another Heaney, when a man stopped me up in Sligo town and took my hand and said,
You’re made. You can laugh at them now.
Then he congratulated me on winning the Nobel Prize.

Father A. B. McGrath walked down the ward. Then he saw me in the bed.

What has you here? he asked.

They took a bit of my mickey off, I said.

Not before time, he replied. This is a choirboy of mine, he explained to the nurse. He sat on the bed. So why did they do that to you?

It started to itch.

Did it?

My foreskin was too long.

I see.

So they cut it off.

The same, he said, happened to Jesus.

Una and two of her girlfriends came to call. They sat around the bed, whispering and joking and enthralled by what had happened me. The thought that I might have lost such an extraordinary organ made me an object of great interest.

Are you in pain? the Keogan girl asked.

A little.

Can we see it? said Doreen Smith.

No.

Can you go to the toilet?

Yes.

How do you go to the toilet?

Carefully, I said.

This made them laugh. A few days later I was let go and ordered to return in a week to have the stitches out. Each day I painfully urinated and grew terrified of having the doctors near me again. By the time a week had gone by I did not have the courage to return to the outpatients.

On the appointed day I walked out to Swellan lake, returned and said it was done.

Now that I’d told the lie I didn’t know what to do. The next morning when I woke the stitches were still there, a purple hem round my flittered foreskin. The next morning they were there again. I began to fear that the stitches might be there for all time.

I stopped outside the hospital but could not bring myself to go in. The window of the operating room on the second floor was ajar. I could see Surgeon Moloney in a blue plastic hat washing his hands. A nurse with a tray of implements passed by. Steam pumped out of the down-pipe.

I ran home.

That night in the bedroom I took a scissors and patiently snipped each stitch, then gently drew them out. I could feel the pain in the soles of my feet. I thought when I had finished that the head might fall off. But it didn’t. It was a delicate intimate affair, and when it was over, it brought me immense relief. But with each hint of an erection I held my breath and tried to think of other things.

Slowly it came back to itself. Dirty thoughts no longer made me flinch. When I went jiving at the record hops Una’s friends would laugh, but I’d keep my head aloft, as if I didn’t see them.

The courting began next a haycock in the field. It was mild enough to begin with. Then the eldest amongst us held one of the girls down in the hay.

He shouted at us to look.

A sort of sexual frenzy gripped everyone. The girls laughed and fought. I trailed my fingers across the girl’s knickers. He let go her hands. She put her arms around me and kissed me. Then we got up
and walked shamefaced back to town. A few days later I was in the garden at the back of the Breifne with my mother.

I told her I had something to tell her. We walked through the wild rhubarb. I struggled to tell her the guilt that was nagging at me. My sin I felt was awesome.

I touched a girl, I said.

Think, said she, if that had been your sister.

So, we parted. I was forgiven somewhat. But this led to frightening invasions of my private life. She went through my diary where all sexual acts were written in code. She demanded to know the meaning of them all. And of course I didn’t tell her, but I knew by the look she gave me that she knew.

That talk in the garden had its apotheosis the first time I saw my sister Una kiss a boyfriend. I wanted to run a mile. All my guilt surfaced. I could tell what that man wanted. All my insane longings were being perpetuated through him. The embarrassment I felt was like a sickness. I’m not the better of it yet, as they say.

Aunty Maisie slept at the front of the house on Main Street, below a grey print of Our Lady of the Flowers. She got up at twelve each day, turned on the radio and sauntered po in hand to the bathroom with a distracted air. She’d touch the curtains in the corridor and check each room to make sure lights were switched off. Then she broke open blood-red wax seals on bills from confectionery companies and cursed in dismay. Then she took a leisurely breakfast of tea and warm buttered brown bread. She sat watching the reflection of the girls speeding past in the mirror and smoked an Afton in the dark. No daylight reached into the private room.

Is everything all right, Miss Slacke? asked Katie German.

Yes, Katie.

Would you like something else?

No, thank you.

She’d bring in her dishes to the scullery and run a scalding tap over them. She might even dry a few from the tearoom that sat on the draining board. Then, as the time got closer to the beginning of her shift in the shop, her demeanour would change. Her cheeks blazed with disdain. Her eyes hardened at the thought of all the responsibilities ahead. She’d whack the table.

Have they nothing to do, she’d say as she disparaged her customers, but feed their faces? The cursed whores!

Slinging hash, by God!

Then she’d cast aspersions on some item in the kitchen, wring out a dishcloth angrily and pass up the entry with her head down. She’d refresh her hair and face in the hall stand mirror, go up to her room to get the cash box and at one o’clock relieve my mother.

The two ladies never spoke at the changing of the guard except to point out orders that had come in.

Mrs Smith wants a cherry cake at five, my mother would say.

Does she, the faggot.

And the man from the sugar company called.

What was he calling for? He wants a kick up the hole.

They’ll hear you in the tearoom.

Let them, she’d shriek.

Have it your own way, my mother would say.

Maisie would slap her fist into her hand.

I could do that to them! she’d say savagely.

I’m going in now.

Go on, she’d say, who’s keeping you?

She’d turn and find a customer at her back. A vague smile would ghost across her lips.

Yes? she’d enquire. Yes, what can I get you?

My mother, who’d been up at eight to let in the girls, would flee to the kitchen to help. It was dinner hour, the busiest part of the day. Bachelor bank clerks, clerks from the County Council, the girls from the tax office, vets, apprentices from the shoe shops, young grocers, old drapers, men from the hardware department in Provider’s, coal men from Fegan’s, country women who left their shopping behind the counter, road men, men from the Guinness lorries, all would file past.

Good afternoon, Miss Slacke.

Good day, Mr Igo.

As each customer entered Aunt Maisie rang a bell at the end of the counter to alert the girls within. This gave a piercing sound in the small dining room, and pressing hard down with her thumb, she always rang longer than anyone.

Does she think we’re fucking deaf? Mary Kate would ask.

It would ring again for good luck.

The bitch, said Mary Kate, you’d swear she heard me.

Maisie, between customers, made cakeboxes or filled bags of tea, oft times chewing a jelly baby. It was a trial for her to go on her hunkers but this she did each day. The fresh buns were moved to the front of the display. Yesterday’s were moved to the back so that she could pick them first.

Then at half past one the door to the shop flew open and in came the convent schoolchildren. Despite the Breifne being up-market it kept some of the cheapest sweets in town courtesy of Uncle Seamus. But the main requirement was a penny slice of Chester cake. This was a heavy slab of cake mixed from the trimmings of Swiss rolls, Madeiras, butter
sponges – anything that came to hand. Then it was topped with a coat of chocolate and a splash of hundreds and thousands.

A Chester bun, Mrs.

A flash bar.

A macaroon.

Take your turn, Maisie would snarl.

She took the penny before she handed across the item. The crowd of children would grow. Behind them patiently stood the bankers in their suits and raincoats waiting to pay for their lunch while Maisie opened jars of gobstoppers, handed out bags of broken buns, picked out pink chewing gum or cut ice cream for threepenny wafers. At last she’d reach the bankers and the clerks. With a polite nod she accepted their bill, scrutinized it carefully, then called for what was owing in a sweet voice, and paid out the change, coin by reluctant coin.

After two-thirty all went quiet. My mother sat down to her dinner, then she’d prop her feet on the ledge above the fireplace. This was to get the circulation going. My mother had trouble with her feet. A few times a month she went off to have her corns paired, her toes done. She’d dip her feet in methylated spirits and wipe them clean with cotton wool.

In the afternoon a different type of customer appeared in the shop. Country women came for buns. The genteel wives of professional men bought meringues and eclairs. Secretaries bought snacks. Drunks fell into the tearoom for fries. The dummy arrived. Orders came in for birthday cakes. Special consideration was given to wedding cakes. The mother and the bride-to-be would be taken aside to the little room off the shop.

Here the gold wedding-cake stand was shown. Maisie would be at her most persuasive.

It’s always such a difficult time, she’d say.

Sizes and numbers of tiers were discussed. Out came the top ornaments – gold braids, dwarf brides and grooms in silver, bunches of plastic flowers, a couple on a swing.

Then the order book came down off the nail. The mother would look at the prices while the bride-to-be stood apart from the transaction, awed by the costs and what was in store. As customers waited
outside in the shop for service, Maisie, unmoved by their impatience, went through the costs of a wedding cake again for the benefit of the mother of the bride-to-be.

A bargain was struck. The advance was handed over.

Maisie with a false smile approached the next customer.

Yes? she enquired, as she put the pile of notes carefully away, and what can I do for you?

A few weeks later my sisters and I would walk down Main Street carrying the three tiers of the wedding cake to the hotel. The wedding-cake stand, the prized piece of equipment in the Breifne, worth oh hundreds, came on its own later.

Maisie was relieved at four o’clock.

The rutting season has started again! barked Maisie. There’s a Madeline Slowey for a wedding cake.

Good, said my mother.

Another one, Maisie would reply, ready to breed!

Have you seen Una?

I have seen nothing of your offspring.

And she’d stamp out through the side door and up the entry swinging her elbows with her head down. Maisie in the far past had been let down in love, got engaged and seen the engagement broken, and never kept company again. She’d sit in the dining room till six in a blue daze, contemplating her dinner, contemplating her reflection, a fork lifted in midair or tucked against her cheek as she pondered easy tasks and quiet memories, she’d drift away, but sometimes the wrong thought would strike, she’d slap down the the fork or knife, slap the table, and curse indignantly.

The girls held their breath.

Some strange guilt would propel Maisie into the kitchen to pounce on any misdemeanour. She’d rage a moment by the geyser. Lament the waste of oil. The cost of tea. The cost of coal. Were the fires stacked with slack?
And
that
fucker
the
accountant!
God
in
heaven!
What
are
we
to
do!
What
are
we
to
do!
Taxes!
Taxes!
The
wages!
The
wages!
Her terror was of huge electricity bills. As she raced through the public dining room she’d attack the switches and plunge the place into darkness despite the single customer having a fry in the corner.
The thought of having to return to the shop would drive her mad.

But the last shift from six to seven-thirty was a quiet time.

Mrs English came for cheesecakes. Mrs Burke for scones. Mrs McCarren for puff pastry. Apple tarts dusted with sugar went away for high tea out Farnham way. Like my mother before her, Maisie would sit making tea bags.
Tea
bags!
Tea
bags!
She’d tear the top off the tea chest. A spoon and a half of tea. Open the bag. Empty the spoon. Lift a half spoon. Empty it. Fold the bag. Drop it into the biscuit tin. Fill another bag with a spoon and a half. Into the biscuit tin. When the tin was full she’d ring the bell twice, to call one of the girls to the shop.

Go careful with these, she’d say.

Yes, Miss Slacke.

We are not a charity.

Yes, Miss Slacke.

And
bring
me
out
the
empty
bags!

Out came the empty bags. She sat down again by the tea chest. It started all over.

She’d slide the window back and peer out onto the street. She’d make cakeboxes. They arrived flat, you bent them at the joins, undid the flaps, tucked the flaps into openings, brought down the top and there you had it. At seven-thirty she’d close the door of the shop without looking out onto the street, turn down the lights and sit a while by the till in the dark. My mother would be hanging washing out on the line. Upstairs Maisie went with the takings to her room. Another smoke. Listen to the radio. Down for tea.

Are you coming, Winnie? she’d ask graciously.

Let me get my coat.

And the two were off to the pictures.

After the pictures Maisie would laboriously count the takings out onto her bed. Cash was prepared in piles. Next day the pound notes would be carried down to the Allied Irish Bank to meet cheques drawn out for the flour men, the sweet travellers, the Tayto man, the Jacob’s traveller, the Yeast Company, the Afton man, the John Player man, the ESB –
the
cursed
ESB!
– the sugar company. A cheque was made out to them, sent away in the post or given to the traveller, and the appropriate sum was delivered to the bank to meet the cheque. She kept no deposit or current accounts but retained all cash in a
green locker under her dressing table. Her bedroom was her vault. She made up the girls’ wages there. Filled bags with pennies, half-crowns, tanners, farthings, halfpenny pieces, threepenny pieces, shillings, and had them sent over the road to the Hibernian Bank in the morning in exchange for notes.

When all was accounted for she’d smoke a cigarette, part the curtains slightly and look down through a crack in the blind at Main Street. Years before, from this same window she’d seen the policeman she’d been engaged to pass down the far side of the street with his new bride and she’d broken into tears. Now she just stared a moment, then looked away. All this time the radio was playing. She’d walk down her stairs, up the three steps and across the landing to make one last visit to the throne room. Her step was off cue. She’d burp loudly. On the return journey she’d switch off the light on the landing. I’d sometimes hear her like a nocturnal animal passing through the house checking for lights. I’d hear her step on the loose board below the altar. A hand would slip in through my bedroom door and slip the switch.

Lights! Lights! Illuminations!
We
want
no
illuminations!
The boiler! The single-bar electric fire in the shop! The water heater! She checked them all.

Only the radio was immune.

She’d sit by the mirror and wait on the National Anthem. Then by the light from her room she’d make her way across the sitting room and turn off the radio. Main Street went quiet.