The Collected Stories (61 page)

‘He’s paid to do that and he was nearly late. I saw it all from the car,’ Fonsie asserted. ‘It was no mystery from the car. Several times I thought you were going to drop the coffin. It was more like a crowd of apes staggering up a hill with something they had just looted. The whole lot of you could have come right out of the Dark Ages, without even a dab of make-up. I thought a standard of living had replaced the struggle for survival ages ago.’

‘I have to say I found the whole ceremony moving, but once is more than enough to go through that experience,’ John said carefully. ‘I think of Peter making those small animals out of matchsticks in the long nights on the bog. Some people pay money for that kind of work. Peter just did it out of some need.’

Philly either didn’t hear or ignored what John said.

‘It’s a godsend they don’t let you out often,’ Fonsie said. ‘People that exhibit in museums are a different kettle. Peter was just killing the nights on the bloody bog.’

‘I’ll never forget the boredom of those summers, watching Peter foot turf, making grabs at the butterflies that tossed about over the sedge. Once you closed your hand they always escaped,’ John said as if something long buried in him was drawn out. ‘I think he was making things out of matchsticks even then but we hardly noticed.’

‘Peter never wanted us. Mother just forced us on him. He wasn’t able to turn us away,’ Fonsie said, the talk growing more and more rambling and at odds.

‘He didn’t turn us away, whether he wanted to or not,’ Philly asserted truculently. ‘I heard Mother say time and time again that we’d never have got through some of the winters but for those long summers on the bog.’

‘She’d have to say that since she took us there.’

‘It’s over now. With Peter it’s all finished. One of the things that made the last days bearable for me was that everything we were doing was being done for the last time,’ John said with such uncharacteristic volubility that the two brothers just stared.

‘I’ll say amen to that,’ Fonsie said.

‘It’s far from over but we better have a last round for the road first.’ Philly drained his glass and rose, and again John covered his three-quarter-full glass with his palm. ‘As far as I can make out nothing is ever over.’

‘Those two are tanks for drink, but they don’t seem to have been pulling lately,’ a drinker at the counter remarked to his companion as Philly passed by shakily with the pair of pints. ‘The pale one not drinking looks like a brother as well. There must have been a family do.’

‘You’d wonder where that wheelchair brother puts all that drink,’ the other changed.

‘He puts it where we all put it. You don’t need legs, for God’s sake, to take drink. Drink only gets down as far as your flute.’

‘Gloria is far from over,’ Philly said as he put the two pints down on the table. ‘Nothing is ever over. I’m going to take up in Peter’s place.’

‘You can’t be that drunk,’ Fonsie said dismissively.

‘I’m not sober but I was never more certain of anything in my born life.’

‘Didn’t the lawyer say it’d go to Mother? What’ll she do but sell?’

‘I’m not sure she’ll want to sell. She grew up there. It was in her family for generations.’

‘I’m sure. I can tell you that now.’

‘Well, it’s even simpler, then. I’ll buy the place off Mother,’ Philly announced so decisively that Fonsie found himself looking at John.

‘I’m out of this,’ John said. ‘What people do is their own business. All I ask is to be let go about my own life.’

‘I’ve enough money to buy the place. You heard what the lawyer said it was worth. I’ll give Mother its price and she can do with it what she likes.’

‘We’re sick these several years hearing about all you can buy,’ Fonsie said angrily.

‘Well, I’ll go where people will not be sick, where there’ll be no upcasting,’ Philly said equally heatedly.

‘What’ll you do there?’ John asked out of a desire to calm the heated talk.

‘He’ll grow onions.’ Fonsie shook with laughter.

‘I can’t be going out to the oil fields for ever. It’ll be a place to come home to. You saw how the little iron cross in the circle over the grave was eaten with rust. I’m going to have marble put up. Jim Cullen is going to look after Peter’s cattle till I get back in six months and everything will be settled then.’

‘You might even get married there,’ Fonsie said sarcastically.

‘It’s unlikely but stranger things have happened, and I’ll definitely be buried there. Mother will want to be buried there some day.’

‘She’ll be buried with our father out in Glasnevin.’

‘I doubt that. Even the fish go back to where they came from. I’d say she’s had more than enough of our poor father in one life to be going on with. John here has a family, but it’s about time you gave where you’re going yourself some thought,’ Philly spoke directly to Fonsie.

‘If I were to go I’d want to go where there was people and a bit of life about, not on some God-forsaken hill out in the bog with a crow or a sheep or a bloody rabbit.’

‘There’s no
if
in this business, it’s just
when.
I’m sorry to have to
say it, but it betrays a great lack of maturity on your part,’ Philly said with drunken severity.

‘You can plant maturity out there in the bog, for all I care, and may it grow into an ornament.’

‘We better be going,’ John said.

Philly rose and took Fonsie into his arms. In spite of his unsteadiness he carried him easily out to the car. Fonsie was close to tears. He had always thought he could never lose Philly. The burly block of exasperation would always come and go from the oil fields. Now he would go out to bloody Gloria Bog instead. As he was put in the car, his tears turned to rage.

‘Yes, you’ll be a big shot down there at last,’ he said. ‘They’ll be made up. They’ll be getting a Christmas present. They’ll be getting one great big lump of a Christmas present.’

‘Look,’ John said soothingly. ‘Mother will be waiting. She’ll want to hear everything. And I have another home I have to go to yet.’

‘I followed it all on the clock,’ the mother said. ‘I knew the Mass for Peter was starting at eleven and I put the big alarm clock on the table. At twenty past twelve I could see the coffin going through the cattle gate at the foot of Killeelan.’

‘They were like a crowd of apes carrying the coffin up the hill. I could see it all from the car. Several times they had to put up hands as if the coffin was going to fall off the shoulders and roll back down the hill.’

‘Once it did fall off. Old Johnny Whelan’s coffin rolled halfway down the hill and broke open. They had to tie the boards together with the ropes they use for lowering into the grave. Some said the Whelans were drunk, others said they were too weak with hunger to carry the coffin. The Whelans were never liked. They are all in America now.’

‘Anyhow, we buried poor Peter,’ Philly said, as if it was at last a fact.