Bend for Home, The (7 page)

My father taught me handball by beating a sack ball against Provider’s wall.

Go for the butt, he said. Butts are the boy.

To butt a ball meant striking at the lowest part of the wall so that your opponent could not hit the return. The fist, my father reckoned, should not be used. You have no aim with the fist. The open hand was the instrument. I stood for hours practising. Then he taught me boxing. He made a punchball of rolled newspapers and hung it from a string in the shed. Dermot Kinane was there. He had the two of us punch the ball to and fro.

I made a number of elaborate ducks and pranced.

Stop ducking, he said. Put up your guard and jab.

So the next time the ball swung at me I tried to meet it. Instead it caught me in the face. Tears burst out of my eyes. I was mortified.

Meet it with your fist, he said, not your head.

Dermot smacked it hard again. I poked out. It caught my nose.

You’re looking at me, said my father. Look at the punchball. Stop looking at me.

I tried to forget he was there as I met the ball of
Anglo-Celts.
This time I drove the return perfectly. Proudly I looked over at my father. Dermot boxed it back. I turned and ducked.

Meet it, said my father, like a man, can’t you.

I stood there angry and ashamed. He turned away in dismay.

Years later I went for a walk with my son Dallan and his mother Anne-Marie along the Thames. There was a bright blue sky over London. Long dark barges plied the waters. Cranes were swinging.

We bought ice creams and listened to trains crashing overhead while we stood under a bridge in Pimlico. The London folk were lying out sunning themselves on high-rise balconies and on every available piece of greenery. Dallan ran ahead of us, waited till we caught up with him, then on again, happily. We walked through the park and
watched the smoke pour from the four huge chimneys of Battersea Power station.

Kites were plunging in the upper air. A brass band played on the park bandstand. We bought hamburgers off a stall. We walked by the houses of parliament. Then made our way to the new National Theatre complex. In one of the forecourts there was a giant inflatable for children to play on. I placed Dallan on board.

At first he leaped with the others in the middle. Then he moved towards us and made a number of special high leaps.

Stop looking at us, I shouted.

He jumped again, and this time he was closer to the edge.

Dal, stop looking at me! I shouted.

He jumped again, and coming down he hit the edge of the palliasse, fell three feet and struck his head off the concrete pavement. He sat up shocked and began to cry. I lifted him. After a while he quietened down. He watched over my shoulder at the other children jumping safe in the centre.

You should not have been looking at me, I said.

He didn’t say anything but stared at them. And I knew then that he too, like myself, was gripped by that awful condition of wanting to please.

They were all downstairs in the dining room. Facing us was the huge mirror which was nearly the width of an entire wall. That mirror had given my family and me a second identity.

We ate looking at ourselves in it. We were never fully ourselves, but always possessed by others. When someone entered the room we spoke to them though the mirror. The family, when they conversed, never had to look directly at each other. We all spoke through the mirror. We learned faithlessness and duplicity from an early age. Always there were two of you there: the one in whom consciousness rested and the other, the body, which somehow didn’t belong and was always at a certain remove.

This mirror and our use of it threw visitors off balance. They looked at you directly but you looked at them in the mirror. Even if the person was standing in front of you you looked over their shoulder. That warped perspective stayed with me for years.

This distance between my mind and my body has always remained and is insurmountable.

Anyway, this night some of the Fineas had come on a visit. Brian McHugh was there, Mr Dolan and Mrs Reilly. My mother asked after Brian Sheridan, who had been to primary school with her. They were led through the Breifne, then brought in for high tea and drinks to the dining room. We were scattered round the two white tables and the group of people and the tables were repeated again in the mirror.

There were two of everything – two Brian McHughs, two bottles of Paddy, two fathers, two mothers.

So then what happened? asked my father.

Well then, I said, we got onto the aeroplane.

Was it a big aeroplane? asked Brian McHugh.

It was a small aeroplane, I said and looked at my father.

That’s right, he agreed. And we took off from the Curragh.

We did, I said nodding at myself.

Were you not afraid? Mr Dolan the lorry-driver who’d driven Brian over, asked.

Not then, I replied.

Not till after, said my father, and he studied me in the mirror. Not till we came over the village of Finea.

Then what happened?

The young fellow had to get out onto a rope ladder.

That’s right, I agreed. The ladder was dangled out of the door of
the plane till it reached the ground. And it was an ojus height and then I had to climb down.

Carrying the bottles? asked Brian McHugh.

That’s right, I said. Carrying the bottles of Guinness.

And he got down without breaking one, laughed my father.

I nodded at myself. Everyone laughed.

Then I climbed back up and we flew back to …

To the Curragh, added my father.

To the Curragh, I said, and we came back home through Westmeath in Uncle Seamus’s sweet van.

Now for you, said Brian McHugh. That was some journey.

The Fineas leaned forward and laughed in the mirror. I caught the winks. More drinks were poured.

My father clapped my knee.

You’re a great traveller, he said proudly. The two of him rocked gently on the chair. My mother corrected her glasses. Aunty Maisie tapped ash, ever so carefully, into a blue ashtray.

On Saturday nights the shop closed at nine and everyone relaxed. Throughout the evening, Mrs Betty Ronaghan, a seamstress and a friend of the ladies, would tour the drapers of Upper Main Street, picking up a suit here, a hat there, all on loan, for the ladies to see, and with them folded over her arm she’d set off for the Breifne. The dresses were hung from the mirror, or over a chair, then off she’d head again for more style to John Brady, drapers, or to P. A. Smith, drapers, and across to Vera Brady’s Fashions to scrutinize the latest.

By the time Maisie and my mother had come in, Betty would have collected an assortment of new and old fashions. Then Una and Miriam would go into the kitchen and undress. In they came in wide polka-dot dresses, satin blouses, and jiving skirts. They walked on nyloned feet in front of the mirror.

My father and myself would give our opinion.

Do you like it, Dermot? Miriam would ask.

It’s very white.

Too white for me?

It makes your eyes look big.

Dear God, said my father.

Una’s dresses were strikingly floral. She kicked off various slip-ons and turned to the side.

Well?

A sight, said Maisie, for sore eyes.

Next my mother would appear in a hat decked out in feathers, or in some prim suit, with a shiny red handbag over her arm. She’d stand in her slip as Betty lowered another dress over her arms. Maisie tried on a jumper. Betty straightened the collar and pulled down the back.

Well, asked Maisie, do I look a tramp?

It suits you, Maisie, said my father.

You’d say that anyway.

My mother would bring in the bottle of port. My father pulled the top of a bottle of Guinness. Maisie threw coal on the fire. Seamus arrived with a naggin of whiskey. My father tapped a fag into the grate. My mother drank a glass of port and danced round the kitchen, then clapped her knees and pointed at Seamus as he began imitating a company sergeant in a prisoner-of-war camp in wartime England. Una beat cream. Miriam stood in the hall with her boyfriend, the showband singer, whom she would marry, and they’d head to the States together. Betty picked a darning needle out of her hat and put it between her teeth. She lifted a blouse to the light, found the seam that needed stitching and then fed a thread carefully through the eye of the needle.

It was again Thursday, half-day in Cavan town. The haranguing public were barred from the door. The ladies mellowed. It felt like a home again.

Soon after noon, all activity ceased. The town gave a sigh of relief.

Potato sacks were taken in, shop gates raised, grids pulled across displays; the restaurant closed; the bells on the doors of the grocers went quiet; Maisie emptied the till, and the shop went dark; Flood’s flowers were brought indoors and watered; today’s bread was put in behind yesterday’s; the shift changed in the barracks; the last cones were served in Katie Bannon’s; Hughie Smith, the county secretary of the GAA, stood on the steps of the courthouse, stroked the sparse down of grey hair on his chin, and headed in the direction of the White Star; the cobbler wet his thumb, cut a deck of cards and began a game of poker in the CYMS snooker hall; Mr Tom McKenna, in a large neat pinstripe suit, stepped carefully on stockinged feet into his window to undress a model; Maisie paused in the entry and, with one hand on her hip, sneezed; Hickey’s the butchers pulled in their awnings; the man left the caravan at the weighbridge; the bank manager’s wife stood estranged at her window looking down on the town; Mother hung out clothes to dry; a dog sprinted across Breifne Park; five labourers sat eating sandwiches and drinking milk in an Anglia on Main Street; a woman steered a pram down the town archway; Brother Cyril threw the
glantoir
for wiping the blackboard at someone; a traveller from Jacob’s Biscuits stood behind the faded curtains of the White Swan and wiped his glasses; Mrs Battle put away her camphor balls; Fox’s shoes and wellingtons and high-heels were taken indoors; Vera Brady’s Fashions was shut; business came to an end in the Central Café and Mrs McManus (
n
ée
Moloco) broke into raucous Italian; the post-office workers leaned against Whelan’s and watched with envy the town close down; Dinny Brennan dropped his ladder and tins of paint in Reilly’s yard and entered the Imperial; Hugh Gough served a bottle of stout to Phil Hill; Brother Cyril slowly
spat a green globule into his handkerchief; jackdaws alighted on Main Street; the miller Greene went home to Saint Felim’s like a snowman; the restaurant in the Breifne was swept out; rehearsals for the pantomime began in the side room of the Town Hall; the Labour Band gathered in a shed down the Market yard; Doonegan the sweep sent a brush sky-high up a chimney on River Street, while his two sons carted bags of soot to the mill wall; the cakes were taken in from the Breifne window; the drapery assistants streamed out of town towards home on their bikes; bags of seeds were carried to the back of the Market House, the huge gates closed; Miss Foster went into the darkness of the back room; the estate agent walked The Triangle; Flood’s hearse was hosed down; Clarence Frogman Henry sang on a radio down Abbey Street; clothes were hung out on the terraces of the Half Acre; Jack Flood took a fare to Killinkere; Bud McNamara, in blue overalls, crossed the Gallows Hill with his bag of tools; a dog in heat flew down Bridge Street; clouds gathered; Monty Montgomery locked his shed of eggs and went back to Farnham; blinds came down; young men climbed the stairs to the boxing club; the street sweeper paused at the Pound; Mr Corr the dentist sat in his own waiting room; Mrs McCusker switched off the hair-dryers in the Beauty Saloon; Benny Hannigan drove Phil Hill home to Latt in his hackney; the first copy of the weekly newspaper was coming off the reels in the
Anglo-Celt;
the workers from McCarren’s Bacon Factory walked back down River Street; lights went off in the car salerooms; Maisie carried the morning’s takings to her room; Reilly the barber brushed hair into a corner; a fire blazed at the back of ESB showrooms; butterflies flitted through the cabbages in Burke’s garden; hams went back into the fridge; Mr Donoghue, the scoutmaster, drank a cup of tea alone among the silent accordions in the scout den; Mother lay in bed with her feet propped up on a pillow for a few minutes, then was on the move again; Snowball Walsh got sick and was let go home; the Clones train came in; a lorry of Armagh apples passed south; Louie Blessing fed his pigs potato skins; the Cavan mineral lorry backed into the Farnham yard; Father McManus sat in his Ford reading his breviary; Johnny McDonagh, still tipsy and wild-eyed, emerged from Straw Lodge and went down the town roaring; Tommy Lauden, who sat all day watching the traffic from a well-polished knee-high stone by the
postbox, headed slowly up the steep Half Acre; a Batchelors pea can crashed onto the Dublin Road; some road men appeared; Mrs English went next door; the Miss Hickeys went upstairs; Dermot Morgan headed for the links; Dr Sullivan stopped off at the Abbey Bar; Barnie Buckley shoved a barrow of glowing coals down Tullymongan; a few souls prayed in the cathedral; crows rose in the Farnham Gardens; a man with migraine rang the bell of Burke’s the chemist; Johnny McDonagh reached Hourican’s; Surgeon Moloney went in the back way to Louie Blessing’s; Guard Gaffey came up Town Hall Street, crossed over at Jack Brady’s on Main Street and looked in at the shoes; a phone rang unanswered in McGinty’s; the Breifne girls got up on their bikes; Packie Clay went into the Hub Bar –
Johnny
McDonagh’s
outside,
he said; the sound of piano music came out of the Miss Powers’; a red hen flew out of the Pound Archway; a lorry from Monery left a stinking trail of animal effluent behind it in College Street; the sacristan trimmed the Cathedral lawn; Bill Anderson stepped out of the gates of the Royal School, lit a cigarette and steadied his hands; a rifle was discharged; some parties left Nee’s restaurant; the meringues cooled in the huge coke oven at the back of the Breifne; the girls from Woolworth’s changed from their shop coats into their own clothes and the manageress let them onto the street; my mother shot the bolt home in the yard gate; Lord Farnham went smartly into his solicitor’s; Miss Sheridan, the librarian, stamped the date of return into Walter Macken’s
God
Made
Sunday
; Skiddely Doonegan traipsed past; my mother did her toes; the bishop’s chauffeur collected his girl up Keadue Lane in the Bishop’s car; Mr P. A. Smith, draper, went quickly into Cooke’s; the vet took a call; a gypsy pony came down Cooke’s archway from the Fair Green and whinnied; there was a mongrel asleep outside Black’s, the printers; Con Reilly tapped a barrel; Mr McDonnell, the baker, called a Power’s; the coal men in Fegan’s washed themselves under a tap in the yard; the sky was grey, the wind ordinary; we heard the Dublin train; Bill Anderson sat down by the piano in the back room of the Railway Hotel and played the blues; Mrs Byrne told Stick Donoghue the news; the barman in the Congo ran cold water onto a cut in his finger; the deaf Smith lifted the back off a radio and looked in; Tom McCusker chalked a cue; Johnny McDonagh left town; Frank Conlon the antique dealer put
an armchair that needed upholstery into the back of his van and drove home to Billis; Elm Bank chickens chirped in boxes at the Bus Office; Frank Brady went into the bookies with a newspaper tucked into his pocket, shot back a shock of hair and put his glasses on.

So, what’s the story? he said.

Silence fell.

By three o’clock the streets were cleared. Only in the banks and the dimly lit solicitors’ offices or in the County Council offices did the working day continue as usual.

My mother put her legs up over the fire and slept. My father was in the garden. Maisie was in her room, smoking and listening to the radio. The Milseanacht Breifne, meaning the sweets of Breifne – and Breifne being the old tribal land of the Reillys – rested. I had the house and the town to myself.