Bend for Home, The Page 8

  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.

  Chapter 14

  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 (née 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.

  BOOK III

  Out the Lines

  Chapter 15

  My brother Tony was getting married in Brighton. My father and mother done out in their fineries left for London via Holyhead where they would stop in Pimlico with Aunt Bridgie.

  They were gone a long time. I had the world to myself. I ate my breakfast with Una, said goodbye to her at Con Reilly’s gate then stowed my bag behind the Town Hall and headed off on a long mitching tour of various places in and around Cavan, sometimes heading out the now defunct railway line on a cabby car that we arm-wrestled through the Loreto woods and on to Butlersbridge.

  The cabby car, known as the up-and-downer or back-breaker, which used bring the railway-menders up the line, now sat in a shed at the disused station in Swellan. We lifted the cabby car onto the tracks, about five of us, and sat up. This was the Swellan gang. In the old days to join them you had to lie on the sleepers and let the Dublin train race over you. Now the trains were gone and only the cabby car remained. But the line was still intact. Snowball Walsh put on a railwayman’s cap belonging to his father. With the first push of the hand-bar the cabby car took. We headed down the line singing Davy Crockett.

  We cut timber for an old lady that lived along the line and she in turn gave us buttermilk. Her false teeth sat steeping in a bowl on the window. We brought her coal leavings from the station in the cabby car and sat around her sooty hearth. Swallows leapt out of the eaves.

  You don’t like the school, she said, and her whiskers silvered.

  No, ma’am.

  I never liked it either. She drank her mug and clasped her knees. And I don’t like the town. I’m content here.

  She appraised us. What’s your name?

  Healy.

  And yours?

  Hickey.

  Do you see this eye? she said and she pointed at one brown iris. We inspected the pupil. I was cutting a bush, she continued, and a branch spun back on me and the thorns shot into the socket. So now I can’t see on my left side. That eye, she said, has its back to the world.

  She leaned forward and sighed.

  But there was no pain, she added, no pain.

  That’s good, said Ollie Smith.

  Now, any day you don’t want to go to school you come out here, she said, and I’ll find things for you to do.

  She waved us away. We headed on to the next house, cranking the bars that turned the wheels along railway lines that had lost their sheen. Two white-haired brothers lived in a granite house with a stave of aerials shooting from the roof. Inside, Burl Ives was singing. They gave us various jobs. We watered the potatoes. We herded cattle from one field to another, filled old baths with water and stacked turf. The brothers mended radios in the kitchen and let us listen in on things from abroad. The table and floor were stacked with blue batteries.

  The men ate cold pork with their hands and explained that they had been reared in the two drawers of the dresser.

  Ernie was reared in that drawer, and I was reared in this, said one brother. Isn’t that right, Ernie?

  That’s right, Walter, said Ernie, but don’t be a silly-billy now.

  They oiled the cabby car and gave us crab apples.

  How far are you going today? Walter asked us.

  We don’t know, I said.

  Well you could go on that thing, if you were fit for it, to Clones, he explained.

  Could you?

  You could. You could. As a matter of fact, on a good day you might reach the sea. Isn’t that right, Ernie?

  That’s right, said Ernie. Then he laid a damp hand on my arm. Did I see you talking to Mrs White down the line?

  Yes, I said.

  How does she do it? he said to himself. How does she do it? That’s what I’d like to know. Then he spun on his foot and looked towards Mrs White’s. Was there any mention of us?

  No, I said.

  No, Ernie repeated. Nothing?

  She didn’t mention you.

  I suppose she didn’t. He stood on the sleepers and contemplated her house. I suppose she didn’t.

  The brothers gave us a push and we headed for Butlersbridge via Loreto. Each time we took the cabby car we ventured further. We sailed along to Kansas City, taking in Delaware along the way. We hit Tombstone. And Black Creek. And passed old railway houses and dilapidated farms. Your arms grew tired on the slopes. Snowball Walsh gave the orders. We pushed and pulled till we reached the crest, the last few inches were hell, then getting to the top we cheered and took off at a nice hectic rate past old crossings and hoardings, singing Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier. White numbers tacked to trees flew by. We sat in a ditch eating wild strawberries and blowing cotton
.

  When we arrived to a bridge over which a road passed we pulled up smartly, then came to a stop under the cold damp arches. We listened for the approach of a car. We put our ears to the granite walls and heard rain steeping. Then, if there was nothing coming, we struck out into country and spread our wings.

  *

  Other times with the Cavan town crowd I’d go down to the haunted house at the nun’s lake. It was called Lavell’s. There was a noose still hanging in the barn, the skulls of cattle were thrown across the grounds and a small harmonium sat in a sunny room on the first storey. We sank onto the old rusty beds and unravelled fishing lines.

  There were apple trees out the back and cutlery still in the kitchen drawers. There was a dresser of blue plates with an alarm clock tilted back on one leg. We washed the cutlery and old plates in the lake and set out places on the kitchen table. We lit rushes with petrol and sat them in large fruit cans. Then we ate our sandwiches.

  The last man who’d lived there had killed himself. We frightened ourselves with stories about him. There were three suits hanging in the wardrobe, a case packed for going away and a hatbox filled with old bills. Someone had been in the First World War. His letters were stowed in an oilskin bag. We searched the rooms for a gun. We tapped the walls for hidden passages. Through the grounds elderly cows with large horns wandered. They fed unceasingly. The noise of their eating filled the dark house.

  One day a farmer found us sitting in the barn taking turns with catapults to shoot down jam jars. In the orchard we had a fire burning rubbish.

  I saw the smoke, he said.

  Good day, I said.

  Good day yourself, he answered. So what are you doing here?