Bend for Home, The Read online

  The first time I heard about sex I was up a STOP sign pole where Town Hall Street entered Farnham Street. Whoever was standing at the bottom of the pole carefully explained that babies came out through their mother’s bellybutton. When I heard that I climbed down very slowly.

  I used stand for hours in the library on Saturday mornings, looking at the nudes in tall books on classical art, then take home the The Lives of the Martyrs to read. Lust and pain were regular bedfellows.

  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.

  Chapter 12

  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 cus
tomer.

  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.

  Chapter 13

  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 hi
m. 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.

  I made my communion. I delivered soda farls and brown bread round the town. I made my confirmation. And the top of my arm was peppered with shots against diseases that were rampant at the time. Mother, with a dust-cloth tied round her head like a scarf, cleans the ashes out of the grate.

  The town crier rang his bell for the last time and Tommy Reilly of the Regal turned off the water supply at the reservoir up in Tullymongan. We lined up in Burke’s garden below the glasshouse, bent over and John Burke shot a pellet at your bum from an air gun. I get all my front teeth out because one of them is bad and in goes my first plate at twelve.

  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.