Where Old Ghosts Meet (8 page)

Nora winced. She'd rather not think about the cod's cheeks and tongue, but the crispy brown tidbits of salty pork skin that had been rendered down and set aside looked good. “You call these scruncheons?”

“Yes, it's just a bit of fat-back pork.” Peg held up a thick lardy slab to demonstrate.

Nora reached for a scruncheon and popped it into her mouth. “Mmm.” She licked the fat off her fingertips. “In Ireland we call this crackling. We have it with roast pork but it's fresh, not salty.”

The fat bubbled as Peg continued to pat and turn the cod tongues. “The small ones is best. They got to be fried right out until they're golden and a little crisp.”

I bet they do, Nora thought, trying to suppress the queasy feeling in her stomach. The smell of cooking had whetted her appetite but the very thought of cod tongues made her shudder. Texture was what was bothering her: soft, slithery, pockets of flesh that need to be “fried right out.”

“Just a few for me. I'm not very hungry.”

Peg was picking them off the pan and dividing them equally between two plates. “Not everyone likes the tongues, or the cheeks for that matter. But it's nice to have a taste of Newfoundland food now you're here. But no matter, if you don't like them, you can lay them to one side.” She then heaped a spoonful of mashed potatoes and a sprinkling of scruncheons on the plates and dinner was ready. “Now sit over to the table.” She handed Nora a plate.

Nora contemplated the food. There were six tongues to be eaten. She nibbled on a few scruncheons, swallowed several forkfuls of mashed potatoes, and then told herself that the scruncheons should be saved to help get the tongues down. She had to admit they looked tasty enough and smelled good. If only she didn't know what they were, hadn't seen them. She cut one in half. Something soft and jellylike appeared in the middle. She put a scruncheon on top and swallowed it whole, washing it down with a mouthful of water.

“So now tell me, Nora, you say you work in Montreal?” Peg was busy with her food now.

“I'm a teacher. High school English. I'm hoping to save some money while I'm in Canada and then go back to study for a master's degree in England. There's some interesting work being done there on teaching methods and the different ways people learn.”

Peg swallowed and looked at Nora. “Is that right?” It was not a question, just a registering of interest. She turned back to her food. “And do you have a young man, Nora?”

“No.”

The clipped nature of the reply was not lost on Peg.

“No, no, I don't,” Nora repeated in a softer voice, regretting her abruptness. “Not at the moment.”

Peg laid down her knife and fork and was about to say something else when Nora cut her off.

“I was engaged to be married but we broke it off in the spring. Well, he broke it off. He found someone else. I suppose it wasn't to be.” She threw a weak smile in Peg's direction.

“I'm sorry to hear that, Nora.”

“It's okay now.” She touched her ring finger, remembering the beautiful solitaire and how it had sparkled in the candlelight on that magical night when he had asked her to marry him. It had been a big surprise but not near as big as the surprise of finding him with someone else. Startled by the intensity of the memory, she sat upright, quickly hiding her hands below the table top. “That's part of the reason I came to Newfoundland. It was a diversion, something new to focus on over the summer. I suppose it beats having to plan a wedding.” A wan smile played briefly at the corners of her mouth. “I work with a woman from St John's and she encouraged me to come here. ‘Go on, girl,' she said to me. ‘You can stay with Mom and Dad. They'll take you around and show you where to go to find your grandfather, if he's still to be found. My dear, they'd love that. Go on, no sense hangin' about all summer lookin' like you fished all day and caught nothin'.'” Nora laughed as she recounted her friend's enthusiasm. She had been like a mother to her, helping her over the hump. “So here I am.”

“Well I'm very glad about that. There'll be others, Nora, you'll see. One of these days I'll be comin' over to Ireland to dance at your wedding.” They laughed. “You never know!” she warned. “Now, what about the rest of the family? Tell me about them.”

“There are two of us, two girls. I'm the eldest. I had a brother Joe but he drowned when he was ten years old. He was the youngest.” She swallowed the other half of the tongue and followed it rapidly with a scoop of scruncheons which she chewed on and savoured hugely. She wondered whether to go into any more detail. It was likely her father Peg wanted to hear about. She paused for a minute, collecting her thoughts, allowing herself to slip into that cool dispassionate place reserved for him. Finally she set down her knife and fork, fiddled about with them for a minute until she had them placed in a perfect V shape on her plate and then took a deep breath.

“We called him ‘The Da,' my father, that is. He wasn't a ‘Daddy' sort of person somehow, not like other people's fathers, a bit distant, I suppose. He was an intelligent man, intellectual really, but he had no idea how to cope with the practicalities of life. Money meant nothing to him. He'd forget to pay bills, spend lavishly on things we didn't need and then become depressed when everything got out of hand. Yet he worked with money. He was a bank manager.” Nora stared at the food on her plate, almost untouched. She picked up her knife and fork and scooped up a small mound of mashed potato. It was halfway to her mouth when she changed her mind, put it back down and pushed the plate away.

“He hated his job,” she said. “‘Drudgery,' he called it. But he stuck with it because it was permanent and came with a pension. Security, that's what he worked for all his life but in actual fact, what we had was just the opposite.” She thought about her father for a moment. “I believe he loved us and truly cared for us but he had no idea of our individual hopes and dreams, no sense of what made us happy or sad, what our ambitions were or what we worried about at night when we lay in bed.” She paused before continuing. “I think that he somehow believed that if he could just hold on tightly to the reins and never let go, not for any reason, that everything would be all right and he'd manage to keep it all together.”

Nora forced herself to eat some more mashed potato but she had lost all interest in her food. Suddenly she shocked herself by voicing quite coolly the very thought that was foremost in her mind at that moment. “Being abandoned by his father as a little boy must have affected him deeply.”

She closed her eyes, imagining his shame, his confusion, his anxiety, hearing the cruel taunts of small boys: “Would ye look at Molloy beyond, his oul' fella's fecked off to America.” “Yea, my daddy says he's off with Buffalo Bill chasin' after them injuns, learnin' how to be quick on the draw. Bang, bang. Ooooooooo. Bang, bang. I'd say now, there'll be a couple a scalps in the post from America this Christmas. What do ye say, fellas? Oooooooo … ooooo.” “Nice to have somethin' from Santy Christmas mornin', any oul' thing at all! Eh, Eamon?”

Anger swept over Nora, tangling up her thoughts, snatching at her breath, making it impossible for her to continue. She didn't look at the woman to her left but instead examined the white knuckles of her clenched fists. A voice inside her raged. The selfish, cowardly bastard. How could he do such a thing? How could anyone leave that poor woman and her child in that damp miserable place, in the wilds of bloody nowhere, with nobody to care for them, nobody to protect them, and when the Black and Tan hooligans came and ransacked their little home and burned it to the ground … where was he? Off gallivanting in God knows where, buying bloody fancy hats for strange women. She squeezed her eyes shut, not fully understanding where this sudden fury had come from and at the same time desperate to keep the words that bubbled up inside her from breaking out and finding a voice. But in truth she knew that this would not happen. The words would remain unspoken, contained. The Molloys knew all about staying quiet, knew all about keeping a lid on things. It was a way of life with them.

So Nora and Peg sat together in the gathering dusk, still and quiet, two women in a haze of memory, each seeing a different side of the same man. Finally, when the silence became unbearable, Nora allowed her old voice to emerge from its silent corner.

“His father, my grandfather, to us he was just ‘the Da's da,' nothing more, no real name, no face, no identity. Can you believe, Peg, I never in my life set eyes on his wife, my grandmother? I never went to her home and she never set foot in ours, and I don't know why.”

For a moment Nora held Peg's eyes but then she looked away, unwilling to confront the other persona of Matt Molloy that hovered close by.

“Everything went wrong for him, girl, everything. It wasn't his fault.” Peg's chin came up ever so slightly. She still didn't look at Nora but instead turned to look beyond the horizon where her memories lay, secure and intact. “I'll tell you the truth of what I know, Nora, but first I must make us some tea.”

7

Evening
was drawing in and already the table by the window was in shadow. Beyond the dark headland the sky was awash with a deep purplish mauve. Tinged with touches of pale peach and backlit by the golden light of sunset, it was surreal in its beauty. A car passed along the road, the headlights sweeping the ceiling and walls. The two women sipped tea and were silent for a moment until the hum of the engine faded away.

“Years ago, Nora, people expected life to go on as usual. On the island, soon as a youngster was old enough, it was expected that he'd go in the boats with his father. I don't know how it was in Ireland then, but according to Matt, it was pretty much that way for him. He had one plan for his life but his mother had another.”

“You're cut out for the priests, son, hand-picked by God Almighty.” His mother gripped his arm tightly. “What else would you be doing, with all those brains God gave you? Shovelling cow dung below in the byre for the rest of your life? Anyone who flies in the face of God,” she whispered urgently, “will have no luck. You mark my words.”

“There's other ways to use brains.” He wished she'd let go of his arm so he could leave. Instead he said tentatively, “I could be a teacher or maybe work with The Gaelic League.”

“Ah, catch on to yerself.”

He heard the first note of irritation in her voice.

“The Gaelic League, now there's a bunch of dreamers if there ever was one, just what you need, the poet fella, Yeats, and her ladyship from Sligo. What's her name? Gregory, Lady Gregory. Thinkin' they can solve the problems of the poor people of Ireland by writin' poetry and puttin' on plays above in Dublin. Makin' us the laughin' stock of the world, that's all they're doin'. Yes, Lady Muck herself, grand company for a young fella like you. Don't you go lettin' anyone in the town hear you sayin' the like of that.”

“But Doctor Sommerton tells me there's talk now of expanding the university above in Dublin, to make more spaces for Catholic young fellas like me. He says I should apply.”

“I might have known.”The grip tightened on his arm. “He's the one has been puttin' them daft notions in your head again. Where, in the name of God, does the doctor think the money is comin' from for them grand ideas? The pair of you, dreamin' just like the rest of them oul' eejits up in Dublin! If you listen to the likes of them, you'll be runnin' around with the backside out of yer pants for the rest of yer life and not a penny in your pocket.”

“But there are the scholarships.”

“But nothin'.” She shook his arm, her bright, terrified eyes burrowing right into his brain. “Here's reality, son. I'm here workin' my back off day and night tryin' to keep our end up, to give you a chance, and your father, six feet under, watchin' and waitin' of me to slip up. There was another dreamer. Out day and night with the Fenians, and got himself killed for his trouble: another smart one!”

“We did all right, Mammy.” He didn't want her to be angry. Talk about his father always took her down that road.

“Yes, and no thanks to you,” she shot back, “with your head stuck in them books all day.”

“I thought you wanted me at the books, that you wanted me top of the class. That's why I tried–”

“Look, Mattie.” Her tone softened again. “Think of your mammy for a change. Don't I need you up there puttin' in the good word for me with Almighty God, prayin' for me immortal soul? You could have your own parish one day, like Father Walsh. Who knows? Ye might even become a bishop! That would make them all sit up. I'd be able to hold me head high in the town for a change. The bishop's mother, they'd call me. Now, Mattie, I want you to put together all those oul' books of poetry and plays and the like the doctor's been feedin' you and take them back to him this very day, and I want no more talk about scholarships and the Gaelic League. Get along with you now, there's a good lad. And Matt, that oul' book he gave you for getting the exams, put that right on the top so he knows once and for all, we want no more interfering in our business.”

A single tea leaf drifted around in Nora's mug. She watched its progress for a while. It was going nowhere; it had reached the end of its useful life. She picked it out with a spoon and set it aside. “His situation wasn't that unusual,” she said casually. “In fact, his son, my father, followed a similar route. Many did.”

“Yes, girl, I know and it was the same here in Newfoundland. Our smartest young fellas were picked out by the bishop and coaxed away to the priests. Just like where you come from; it was a way to get an education, and for some it worked out grand, but, my dear, there's a lot of them young men should never have darkened the door of a seminary.”