A Week in Winter (6 page)

‘I did. I ran away as you said.’

‘And you’re not going to tell?’ Rigger looked like a child.

‘I don’t
have
to tell, Rigger. Mr Malone will know.’

‘Oh my God, it’s
Mister
Malone this,
Mister
Malone that. Would you hear yourself?’ Rigger was full of scorn. ‘Aren’t you big enough and old enough to be your own master instead of yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, to him?’

‘They’ll find you even if I were struck dumb and never spoke again,’ Nasey said.

‘Just shut your mouth, Rigger, and listen carefully,’ Nuala spoke suddenly.

He looked at her in shock. Her face was hard and unforgiving. He had never known her raise her voice to him like this before.

‘We’re going to get you out of Dublin tonight. And you’re not coming back.’

‘What?’

‘There’s a truck driver taking his lorry back to Stoneybridge tonight. You’ll go with him. He will take you to Stone House.’

‘What’s Stone House? Is it a school?’ Rigger was frightened.

‘It’s where your mother worked when she was young. It’s where she left from to have you, all those years ago. With all the pleasure and pride that was to bring her.’ Never had Nasey sounded so bitter.

Rigger tried to speak but his uncle wouldn’t let him say a word. ‘Get your things together, give me your phone, tell nobody where you’re going. You’ll be in Stoneybridge by the time they open up Malone’s in the morning.’

‘But you said that the Guards would find me anyway.’

‘Not if you’re not here, they can’t. Not if no one knows where you are.’

‘Mam, is that right?’

‘Chicky is doing me this one favour. She suggested the driver. She’ll keep you for a week to see how it goes. If you get up to any of your old tricks, she’ll call the Guards down there and they’ll have you back here and behind bars before you know what’s happened.’

‘Mam!’

‘Don’t “Mam” me. I was never a proper mother to you. It was only pretending to be a family, that’s all it was, and it stops tonight.’

‘Nasey?’

‘What?’

‘Will you get into any trouble?’ Rigger asked. It was the first hint that he might care for anyone other than himself.

‘I don’t know. That remains to be seen. I’ll tell Mr Malone that I’m very sorry about it, about getting him to let you all work in the yard. Which I am – very, very sorry indeed.’

‘He won’t sack you, will he?’

‘Who knows? I hope not. Years of work. One mistake.’

‘And the other lads . . .’

‘As you said, they threw you out, ran off on you. They’re not thinking about you. You don’t have to think about them.’

‘But if they’re caught?’

‘They will be, but you will be far away, starting a new job.’ Nasey was calm and cold.

Things happened quickly then. Rigger’s bag was packed in silence. The man with the empty lorry arrived. The wordless driver just indicated the front seat. There would be little conversation on the road across Ireland.

His mother turned away as he tried to say goodbye. Rigger’s eyes filled with tears.

‘I’m sorry, Mam,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Nuala said.

And then he was gone. He had no idea a journey could take so long. He also had no idea what lay ahead. He had been given very firm instructions to discuss nothing with his driver. He looked out the window as they passed the small dark fields on either side. How did people
live
in places like this? Sometimes there were dead rabbits and foxes on the road. He would like to have asked why these animals went out into the traffic but conversation seemed to be forbidden so instead, he listened to endless country and western songs all about losers and drunkards and people who had been betrayed.

By the time they got to Stoneybridge, Rigger felt lower than he had ever felt in his life.

The driver left him at the gate of Stone House. His mother had worked here.
Lived
here. No wonder she had never come back. He wondered had she relations around the place? Did his father live here? Married to someone else, maybe?

Rigger asked himself why had he never asked or wanted to know? What on earth was he going to do here until things died down in Dublin, if they ever would?

He went and knocked at the door. A woman with short curly hair answered immediately and placed her finger on her lips.

‘Come in quietly and don’t wake Miss Queenie,’ she said in a low voice with a slight American accent.

Who
were
these people called Chicky and Queenie?

What was he doing in this cold barn of a place? He went into a shabby kitchen with a broken range where a small kitten sat in front, warming itself. It was white with a tiny little triangular black tail and little black ears. Seeing him, it mewed piteously.

Rigger picked it up and stroked its head. ‘What’s its name?’

‘It only arrived today, like yourself. It came in an hour ago.’

‘Will it stay?’ he asked.

‘It depends.’ Chicky Starr was giving nothing away.

Rigger looked her in the eye for the first time. ‘Depends on what?’ he asked.

‘If it’s willing to work hard, catch mice, if it’s no trouble and behaves nicely to Miss Queenie. That sort of thing.’

‘I see,’ Rigger said. And he did. ‘What will I do first?’ he asked.

‘I think you should have some breakfast,’ she said.

And so it began. His new life.

It was a mad notion, turning this house into a hotel. What kind of people did they think would come here, to this place? Still, it was the only game in town.

It was Miss Queenie who had brought the kitten into the household. The last of a litter born in one of the farm cottages down the hill, its survival had been in doubt until Miss Queenie had settled the matter by putting the tiny creature into her pocket and bringing it home. She held it in the palm of her hand and talked to it soothingly as the kitten gazed solemnly at her with its enormous grey-green eyes; she had decided, she told Rigger, to call it Gloria. He realised quickly that Miss Queenie was like something from an old black and white movie; she liked to keep to the traditions of the house as it had been, with a little gong rung to signal mealtimes and proper table settings. She never went out without a smart hat and gloves.

She seemed to think Rigger was a friend, and a very helpful person who had turned up at the right time when they needed him. She told him long, confused tales about people called Beatrice and Jessica and others long dead. She was totally harmless, but possibly not playing with the full deck.

Mindful of Chicky’s advice, Rigger realised the importance of being nice to Miss Queenie. He made her a mug of tea every morning and served it in what was called the morning room. At the same time, he fed Gloria.

Miss Queenie knew that you shouldn’t give cats saucers of milk, just lots of water and a little pouch of kitten food; certainly Gloria seemed to be thriving on it. She slept most of the day, and for sure was not a kitten of great brains: she seemed to have bouts of huge anxiety because she kept thinking that her tail was another animal following her. Miss Queenie said Gloria wasn’t to be blamed for this entirely. After all, her tail
was
a different colour. Miss Queenie had made up a little cat bed in the corner of the kitchen by the range. As Gloria slept, Miss Queenie would watch her happily for hours.

Chicky was less forthcoming. She worked very hard and expected him to do the same. She had little time for small talk.

There was so much to do in the place.

He dug the wild, unkempt gardens of Stone House until his back ached and his face was roughened by the constant sea spray. The soil was hard and stony and the briars and the brambles were enormous. Even though he tried to protect himself he was covered with scratches and cuts. He liked it best when Gloria decided to keep him company, her triangular little black tail held high in the air as she sniffed at the ground where he dug. She pounced on leaves and chewed on twigs and more than once avoided being decapitated only by a whisker as Rigger dug through the brambles. Her curiosity was infinite and insatiable; she explored tirelessly as he worked on. And as he paused, leaning on his spade, she would solemnly roll on to her back and gaze at him upside down.

On the days when the Atlantic storms battered the house and the rain came in horizontally, there were old lofts to be cleared out, furniture to be shifted, woodwork to be painted. The old outhouses were dealt with by a couple of builders who were kept busy hacking out and making good. Rigger worked for them, carrying bricks and stones and wooden planks. He chopped wood for the fires and cleaned the grates out every morning, then poured fresh water and breakfast for Gloria and made tea for Miss Queenie.

She was a nice old thing, away with the fairies, of course, but no harm in her. She was interested in everything and would tell him long stories about the past when her sisters were alive. They would have loved a tennis court, but there was never the money to make one.

‘Your mother was wonderful when she was here. We really missed her when she left,’ Miss Queenie would say. ‘Nobody could make potato cakes like Nuala could.’

This was news to Rigger. He didn’t ever remember potato cakes at home.

Rigger had a bedroom behind the kitchen where he slept, exhausted, for seven hours a night. On a Saturday, Chicky gave him his bus fare, the price of a cinema ticket and a burger in the next town.

Nobody ever spoke of why he was there, or the fact that he was in hiding. There was little time to make friends around the place and that was good too, as far as Rigger was concerned. The fewer people who knew about him the better.

And then he heard the news he had been waiting to hear.

Nasey phoned him with the details. Two youths had been arrested for the theft of meat from the butcher’s shop. They had been before the court and had been given six-month sentences.

The Guards had watched Nuala’s house for several weeks, and when there was no sign of Rigger, and nobody knew where he had gone, the matter was dropped.

‘How did they catch them?’ Rigger asked in a whisper.

‘Someone pointed the Guards in the area of the Mountainview Estates and there they were, as bold as brass, going from door to door selling the meat.’

Rigger knew that the ‘someone’ must have been Nasey, but he said nothing. ‘And your own job, Nasey?’

‘Is still there. Mr Malone sometimes sympathises with me on the fact that you ran away. He even told me that you might be better off out of Dublin.’

‘I see.’

‘And maybe he’s right, Rigger.’

‘Thank you again, Nasey. And about my mam?’

‘She’s still in a bit of shock, you know. She had been so looking forward to you getting back from that school, counting the days, in fact. She had such plans for you, and now it’s all over.’

‘Ah no, it’s not all over. Not for ever, it’s not. I can come back now that the others are off the streets, can’t I?’

‘No, Rigger, those fellows have friends. They’re in a gang. I wouldn’t advise you coming back here for a good while.’

‘But I can’t stay here for ever,’ Rigger wailed.

‘You have to stay for a fair bit more,’ Nasey warned.

‘I miss my mam writing to me like she did up in the school.’

‘I wouldn’t say she’s up to writing to you. Not yet, anyway. You could always write to her yourself, of course,’ Nasey said.

‘I could, I suppose . . .’

‘Good, good.’ Nasey was gone.

Maybe Miss Queenie would help him write to his mother.

She was indeed a great help, telling him things that might interest Nuala: how this garage had been sold, the O’Haras’ new houses – which were going to make them millionaires – had now lost all their value and were like white elephants with no buyers. Father Johnson had a new curate who was doing most of the work in the parish.

Rigger didn’t know whether his mother found any of this interesting as she never wrote back.

‘Why do you think she doesn’t write back to me?’ he asked Miss Queenie.

The old lady had no idea. Her pale blue eyes were troubled and sad on his behalf as she stroked Gloria on her knee. It was strange, she said, Nuala had been so proud of him and even sent pictures of his christening and his First Communion. Maybe Chicky would know.

Nervously he asked Chicky, who said crisply that he must have an over-sunny view of life if he believed that his mother had got over everything.

‘It wasn’t easy for her to ring me in the middle of the night. We hadn’t seen each other for twenty years, and she had to tell me that I was the only person on earth who could help her. She can’t have liked doing that. I would have hated it.’

‘Yes, I know, but could you tell her I’ve changed?’ he begged.

‘I have told her.’

‘And why doesn’t she write back to me, then?’

‘Because she thinks it’s all
her
fault. She doesn’t really want to get involved with you again. I’m sorry to be so hard, but you did ask.’

‘Yes, I did.’ He was very shaken.

By now Rigger had actually become interested in this whole mad plan to turn the old house into a smart guest house. The rough work and clearing of the ground had all been done; it was time for rebuilding. Real contractors would be brought in on the job. He looked on in amazement as the plans for bathrooms and central heating were laid out on the kitchen table as Gloria batted them from one side to the other. He knew there were meetings with bankers and insurance brokers, that designers were planned in the future.

He was unprepared for Chicky to change his terms of employment.

‘You’ve been here six months and you’ve been a great help, Rigger,’ she said one evening when Miss Queenie had gone to bed. He was very pleased with the compliment. There hadn’t been many of those coming his way. Rigger waited to hear what would come next.

‘When the builders move in properly in a few weeks, I’ll need help to get Miss Queenie to and from Dr Dai’s and the health clinic. Can you drive?’

‘Yes, I can drive,’ Rigger said.

‘But do you have a licence? Did you do a driving test or anything?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Rigger admitted.