Amongst Women (18 page)

‘So the nest is clear at last,’ Maggie said when everything was arranged. ‘All the birds have flown. It’s sort of sad to think of it after all the years’; but Sheila was too upset to respond. Then she rang Sean Flynn who said he would leave work and come over to meet them in the canteen. Such is the primacy of the idea of the family that everyone was able to leave work at once without incurring displeasure. In fact their superiors thought the sisters’ involvement was admirable. Sheila won much sympathy and received many offers of help. ‘You can make up the old work any time,’ they said.

Mona was already with Michael when Sheila returned to the canteen. Soon after, Sean Flynn joined the little group. He was smiling complaisantly, glad to be part of the family drama.

‘He’ll be met at Euston in the morning,’ Sheila announced.

‘Will we all put him on the boat then?’ Mona asked importantly.

‘Some of us will have to anyhow,’ Sheila said and then turned to Michael. ‘You didn’t make much of a go of it after us taking you home and everything.’

‘I did my best,’ he said.

‘I doubt it was very much. How did we manage when we were your age?’

‘The whole lot of you were there then.’

‘He fell at the last hurdle,’ Sean Flynn said and laughed.

Sheila met his laughter with a withering stare. He might be allowed through her into the family but it did not mean that he belonged. No outsider was allowed to laugh at anything so sacrosanct as the family.

There was not much time. The boat sailed at eight-forty. They left the table to go to the early boat train. At the harbour Sheila took charge as usual. She bought the ticket, gave him money for the journey and forced her way on board the boat where she found a purser who promised to look after Michael and to put him on the London train. By the time the boat reached Holyhead everyone he met was helpful once the story was known: it was as if everybody at one time or another had run away from home themselves or had wanted to run away.

The three of them watched the boat for a long time after it left the harbour. There were tears in the girls’ eyes and Sean Flynn put his arm round Sheila’s shoulders as they turned away from the sea and the granite wall with the small mica glints.

‘We’ve all gone now,’ Sheila said between low sobs.

‘It had to happen some time or other though maybe it could have happened in a better way,’ Mona said.

‘Maybe there’s no good way,’ a scolding note had come into Sheila’s voice.

Wisely, Sean Flynn was silent.

Around the same time that the boat was sailing for Holyhead Moran was kneeling to say the Rosary.

‘It doesn’t look as if he’ll come now,’ Rose said anxiously. She had kept his dinner warm for him in the slow oven though the food was already tasteless. ‘He must have gone to the girls again,’ Rose continued nervously. ‘He was always a great one to look for sympathy. We’ll probably hear from them tomorrow. Perhaps they’ll bring him back at the weekend.’

‘I’m afraid he’ll have to change his tune if he intends to stay here again.’

‘I don’t know what came over him. He told me he was sorry this morning. He was going to apologize this evening.’

‘We better say the Rosary in the name of God.’

Moran took out his beads and rattled them impatiently. The light was dimming between the big trees but the stone wall along McCabe’s still stood out pale and solid. Moran had to recite the Third Decade because of the boy’s absence. Afterwards he sat morosely in the chair, not wishing to speak at all, just watching the light disappear. Rose turned on the lights and drew the curtains and started to make tea. Moran went to switch on the radio. Music played. He stood listening to it for a while, his hand on the knob and then, as abruptly, turned it off again. As soon as he had taken the tea and bread he stopped to loosen his boot laces.

‘He’s gone,’ he brooded. ‘They’re all gone now.’

‘Maybe he’ll be back no later than tomorrow,’ Rose tried to soothe.

‘Who wants him back? Who wants any of them back? They’re all gone now and who cares anyhow!’

Mona and Sheila dithered about whether to write or telegram the news home. They decided against the telegram because of its alarmist associations and wrote a short note saying that Michael had gone to London and they would be down at the weekend to tell them about the whole business. They came together on the train.

Usually Moran was on the platform to meet the train and if he was in good humour he often made little jokes as soon as he met them but this Friday night there was no sight of him even after the platform emptied. Finally they found him sitting in the car outside the station.

‘We thought you hadn’t come,’ Mona said nervously but he didn’t answer. He started the car and drove studiously out of the town.

‘Michael went to London,’ Sheila blurted out against the silence. ‘We tried to get him to come home but this time it was no use. There was no talking to him. He’d made up his mind to go. It wasn’t like the last time at all.’

‘Where did he get the fare then?’ Moran asked tersely.

‘We gave him the fare. We had to. He threatened to go without it and he’d give Luke’s name in London if he got caught.’

‘He might find it wasn’t that easy if he got caught.’

‘Anyhow he was going to go and we felt we had to give him the fare. We rang Maggie so that he’d be met on the other side.’

‘I suppose he has my name well blackened.’

‘He said there was a fight. He said he was afraid of the gun.’ It was Sheila’s turn to attack, tired of deflecting Moran’s aggression.

‘I knew I’d be blackened. I’d never harm any member of the family. Anything I ever did was done for what I thought was in the best interests of those concerned. Sometimes what I did might have been misguided but it was always meant for the best.’ Whenever Moran turned moralistic the girls knew that some resolution had been reached.

The headlights were already lighting up the dark yew at the gate. Rose was so nervous that she did not come out to meet them at the door. They found her deep within the kitchen, pretending that she had not heard the car’s return. As she quickly dried her hands and ran towards them, her excess of gladness and affection masked an anxiety that had gnawed at her since Michael first ran away.

‘He went to London. They had to give him the money,’ Moran announced to Rose. The two girls were able to drop their apprehensiveness for the first time since they left Dublin and they embraced Rose wholeheartedly.

‘We had to give him the money,’ Mona said. ‘We couldn’t make him come home.’

‘Poor Michael,’ Rose said. ‘He thinks the streets of London are paved with gold and that there are girls falling out of houses everywhere.’

‘He’ll get his eyes opened,’ Moran said.

In that one exchange the facts of his going were glossed over and instantly everyone made haste to return to the everyday. Rose made a big fry for tea as if it were a special Sunday. She kept chatting and laughing all through the meal and afterwards relayed fresh scraps of news as she washed up with the girls – new dresses and styles worn to Mass by those who had come home from England or America and how they had thought the scissors were lost and they would have to buy a new pair, but only the day before yesterday she came on them in an old boot of Daddy’s; they must have fallen into the boot …

‘There are none more blind than those who will not see,’ Moran said humorously.

‘Now Daddy. You know I looked day and night,’ Rose protested while joining in the laughter.

‘There are none more blind,’ Moran repeated and laughed even louder. They were relieved. His mood was clearing. As soon as they had the dishes dried, the room tidied, Moran suggested that they say the Rosary and they all knelt. At the very end he offered a special prayer for Michael and all absent members of the family and that no harm come to them in London. For the rest of the evening they played cards. In the silence of the card-playing, with only the sound of the trees stirring around the house outside in the darkness, Sheila more mused than asked, ‘I wonder what they all are doing in London at this very minute.’

‘They are probably sitting in a room just like we are,’ Rose said gently to turn aside any unease the question could bring.

‘Hearts were led,’ Moran said vigorously. ‘Let nobody fall asleep yet.’

‘Don’t worry, Daddy,’ Mona said emotionally as she stooped to kiss him good night. ‘Michael will be all right.’

‘Fear not for me but for yourselves and for your children.’ Moran quoted ambiguously in the same half-playful mood he had assumed all evening.

‘Maggie will look after him,’ Sheila chose to ignore the quotation.

‘It would have been better if he’d had the manners to learn his lesson here,’ Moran pronounced the words slowly, this time unmistakably in his own voice. ‘Now he’ll have to learn his lesson from the world. The world will not care much about him.’

‘Good night, Daddy,’ Sheila kissed him.

‘God bless you,’ Moran responded. Then both girls went to kiss Rose.

Next day was a Saturday. By the time the girls got up Rose had the fire long lit, the grey cat stretching in front of the stove.

‘I thought she wasn’t let in,’ Mona asked as she stooped to stroke the cat. She was fond of all animals.

‘She wasn’t,’ Rose said. ‘Then Michael started to let her in. Now, sometimes, we leave her be. She feels she has rights.’

The room was warm and comfortable. They could have anything they wanted for breakfast, even grilled lamb chops, but they had orange juice, hot porridge, tea and toast. Moran came in from outside and sat by the fire and had tea. He was in marvellous good humour and started to tease them about their long sleep. They had come home expecting trouble and recrimination but found instead this pleasant warmth and good humour. They were ashamed of their fear. Their hearts were eager to respond to the warmth of the house. They would have been content with far less than what they were now being given. Mona wiped a clearing on the windowpane to look out on the dear fields and trees and the view that framed them against the far sky.

Then Mona noticed the corner of a new shed that a neighbour had built which intruded on the view. When Sheila came to the window she was outraged. ‘I’m used to it now,’ Rose said. ‘It doesn’t matter all that much.’ Though Moran resented the shed he pretended to be in favour of it in order to provoke the girls more. Afterwards they walked with the old sheepdog in the fields to get a better view of the offence.

Their strong need of each other drew them together, the absence of the others. In the evening they all went into town to do some shopping. Moran sat in the car while Rose and the two girls went off together. Rose knew many people in the town and she stopped to greet them. By comparison the girls were stiff and awkward with people, unsure how to act.

‘Daddy doesn’t like to see me talking to too many people. He thinks it’s a waste of time but the time is often wasted anyhow,’ Rose confessed to them, as if she were slightly delinquent, while hurrying back to the waiting car. ‘You know Daddy hates to be left waiting too long.’

The car was parked past the post office along the railings of the sunken tennis courts and he sat looking out at the people that passed by without acknowledging them or being acknowledged. He had to shake himself out of his lethargy when he saw Rose and the girls approach.

‘You must have bought the town,’ he said when they opened the car door.

‘We hadn’t the time,’ Rose said. ‘Or the money.’

‘I’m sure you bought lots anyhow.’ He hadn’t grown impatient waiting. He started the car at once and drove home.

They put more wood on the fire, made tea, said the Rosary, played cards until they kissed good night, the whole world shut away outside. Moran could not have been more charming during the whole weekend. He did not need to be very charming. They had learned to accept him in all his humours: they were grateful for anything short of his worst moods, inordinately grateful for the slightest goodwill, what they barely would have accepted from an equal.

‘I’m thankful for all you did for Michael,’ he surprised them by saying as they waited in the car outside the railway station the next evening.

‘We’re sorry we couldn’t get him to come home,’ Mona mumbled.

‘I know you did your best. That’s all anybody in the family can do.’

On the platform he kissed them as the train drew in. They told him they would be down again before very long. The two sisters were silent as the train crossed the Shannon, travelling through fields. As the train was pulling into Dromod, the small platform black with people like themselves returning to Dublin at the end of the weekend, Mona said in an emotional voice, ‘No matter what they say, Daddy can be wonderful.’

Sheila nodded her head in vigorous agreement, ‘When Daddy’s nice he’s just great. He’s like no other person,’ and even the small white stones under the lights on the station platform took on a special glow.

Moran went out to the road and closed the iron gates under the yew after returning with the car from the station. He listened for the noise of the diesel train crossing the Plains behind the house but it had already passed. The light was beginning to fail but he did not want to go into the house. In a methodical way he set out to walk his land, field by blind field. He had not grown up on these fields but they felt to him as if he had. He had bought them with the money he had been given on leaving the army. The small pension wasn’t enough to live on but with working the fields he had turned it into a living. He’d be his own man here, he had thought, and for the first time in his life he’d be away from people. Now he went from field to field, no longer kept as well as they once were, the hedges ragged, stones fallen from the walls, but he hardly needed the fields any more. It did not take much to keep Rose and himself.

It was like grasping water to think how quickly the years had passed here. They were nearly gone. It was in the nature of things and yet it brought a sense of betrayal and anger, of never having understood anything much. Instead of using the fields, he sometimes felt as if the fields had used him. Soon they would be using someone else in his place. It was unlikely to be either of his sons. He tried to imagine someone running the place after he was gone and could not. He continued walking the fields like a man trying to see.