Fortunes of the Heart (28 page)

“Can I come in?” Danny said after their first greeting had
calmed down.

Kate pulled the door almost closed behind her.

“Dadda isn’t quite the man he was, Danny. He’s sixty, going
on sixty-one. He never really recovered from that melancholia and this last
year, one morning when he woke his hands trembled something dreadful. They
still do and he’s not too steady on his feet. He’s still sharp as a tack
though.”

“What does the doctor say it is?”

Kate laughed. “You know your father, he won’t hear of seeing
a doctor. Would you stay out here for a minute while I tell your Dadda? I
wouldn’t want to risk shocking him with you just walking in.”

“That I will, Mammy. Take your time. I won’t run away.”

Kate went straight into the kitchen with the intention of
speaking to her husband. But Pearce was dozing noisily in his chair. His
steel-framed reading glasses had slipped halfway down his pinched beak of a
nose. Taking her courage in both hands, Kate leant forward and gently tapped
his
cardiganed
sleeve. It was her third attempt which
finally aroused him when, with a start, he looked up into her eyes.

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong? I was sleeping, woman.
Can’t a body even get to sleep in peace here?”

Ignoring this petulant complaint, Kate leant further forward
and whispered into his ear: “Now just keep calm, Pearce. It’s nothing for you
to get alarmed about. But ... well ... the thing is ... you’ve got a visitor.”

At this startling news, he immediately struggled to sit more
upright in his chair. He frowned in perplexity.

“A visitor? For me? Who would want to visit me? Humph. The
only person who ever comes to visit me is that old Granny
Gorbals
,
and even that is because she’s looking for a free tea and pancakes. Yes, funny
thing that, now I come to think of it. She always, but always, comes on your
baking days. Yes, that’s the only ...”

Kate laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Now, Pearce, you know that’s not true. A real faithful
friend and visitor, is Granny
Gorbals
.”

Pearce opened his mouth to protest, but, for once, mindful
of Danny Boy still waiting out on the landing, Kate was too quick for her
husband.

“No doubt about it, Pearce. You do have a visitor and
believe it or not, it’s your long lost son. There now. What do you think of
that? Danny Boy is out there on the other side of the door, waiting to greet
you after all these years.”

For a second, Kate thought he was about to explode, so
sudden was the rush of colour to his now normally pallid face. Then, just as
suddenly, as if all the fight had gone out of him, he exhaled a long, whistling
sigh of defeat. Then, looking at his wife, and in a voice drained of all
emotion, he said: “Well then, if Daniel has now condescended to visit us, after
all these years, you had best show him in.”

Kate felt a measure of relief at Pearce’s quick and
apparently ready acceptance of the fact of Daniel’s return.

She smiled with gratitude and happiness.

“That’s the ticket, Pearce. Just one thing ... let me comb
your hair again, give your face a bit dab with a wet flannel and then I’ll look
out a clean fresh cardigan for you. Must have you looking smart to greet your
only son, eh?”

By way of reply, Pearce’s face at once suffused with rage.

“No need to put on the Lord Provost’s Show for that scum:
Let the bastard see me as I am. Let my errant son see exactly what he has
wrought with all his crazy shenanigans. So, just you keep your fussing,
housewifely hands off me.”

Pearce looked up in bewilderment and wonder at the handsome,
strapping young man before him, amazingly, an exact replica of what he himself
had been as a young blade. Kate, fervently taking in the scene, rather fancied
that for a moment she caught a fleeting glimmer of pride in her husband’s eyes.
He even went so far as to hold out a trembling right hand, which Daniel immediately
grasped and shook firmly in man-to-man fashion.

“Father, it’s me. I’ve come back to see you.”

Whether or not it was real emotion, or simply a cruel
side-effect of his illness, Pearce’s eyes filled with ready tears. It was a
moment before he could speak and even then, all he could manage was: “Daniel.
Daniel. My son, it’s been a long time.”

With these words, Kate knew that for the moment at least,
her son had been welcomed back, amazingly enough, into the bosom and to the
hearth and home of his own family.

Her face radiant with joy, she leant towards the two men and
rubbed her hands as if in anticipation of some rare treat.

“I know exactly what you two need right now. And that’s a
wee cup of tea. But laced with a spot of Granny’s best medicinal Irish whisky.”

The two men beamed and nodded their approval of this
excellent suggestion.

“I’ll just put the kettle on the hob. Then I’ll pop next
door and give Granny the great news, and at the same time borrow a wee dram of
her whisky. Good old Granny; always ready to help in an emergency.”

Kate charged out the door and ran into Granny’s single-end.
In the event, by the time she had related the exciting news to her old
neighbour, the decrepit old woman was herself in need of a reviving measure of
the health giving, golden water of life. That done, and with a quick hug and a
kiss for Hannah, Kate then beat a hasty retreat, with the half-empty whisky
bottle clutched in her trembling fingers.

As she re-entered the kitchen of her own home, Kate grinned
in delight and she felt her heart give a lurch of happiness at the scene which
confronted her. Her normally morose husband and her son were already deep in
conversation. As she bustled happily about, every inch the contented housewife
and proud mother, Kate happily and quite shamelessly eavesdropped on their
fascinating talk. True, it was her own Danny Boy who, totally unlike his
former, shy self, was doing most of the speechifying, but even Pearce was
taking an active interest in what was being said, and spurring his son on to
even greater heights of rhetoric with the occasional nod or grunt of assent,
amazement, or feigned disbelief. Right at that very moment, Danny Boy was deep
in some tale about the volcanic Mount Cameroon which he had seen when his ship
docked in the baking heat of
Tiko
wharf in West
Africa.

“And father. You should have seen the witch-doctors. All
dressed up like a dish of fish. And the drums from the workers’ camp on a
Saturday night. Enough to make your spine tingle and your hair stand on end.
Yes, it’s true, father. That part of Africa – they’re deeply into witch-craft
–what is it they call it, now? Voodoo, or some such name. No, I tell a lie.
It’s juju magic. And they even make sacrifices to appease the mountain, keep it
from erupting again. Honestly, what a place. I couldn’t begin to tell you of
its fascination – the scenery, the people, the climate.”

All the while her cocked ear was eavesdropping on this
entertaining travelogue, Kate was deliberately taking her time in preparing the
whisky-laced tea and in liberally spreading jam on some pieces of her
soda-bread. She frowned momentarily, when suddenly remembering Danny Boy’s
fondness for sliced ‘
clootie
’ dumpling, she berated
herself for having used up the last of it only the previous evening.

‘Oh, if only I had known in advance of his visit, what a
feast I would have prepared. It would have been a banquet to outdo any New Year
celebration. Ph. well, can’t be helped now.’

She smiled with delight as, bearing a loaded tray over to
her two men-folk, she heard Pearce say in a voice tinged with awe, wonder, and
incredulity: “Daniel. What a wonderful story. But surely it cannot be true? Do
people really live like that in this day and age?”

Danny Boy grinned from ear to ear then nodded, obviously
more than happy with the effect he was creating. “True? Yes, father, every
single word of it.”

Pearce adopted a skittish attitude as, reaching over and
giving a playful tweak to Daniel’s luxuriant, dark beard, he laughed.

“Go on with you, Daniel. It’s havers, all nonsense, my lad.
Begod
, if ever anyone kissed the Blarney Stone, ’tis surely
your good self, Daniel Robert Kinnon.”

By now fully entering into the spirit of the thing, Daniel
again grinned, a poignantly boyish grin, strangely at odds with his manly
physique and bearded face.

“No, Father. Blarney Stone be damned – if you’ll pardon my
French, Dadda. ’Tis the God’s honest truth. Oh, many the story could I tell
you. Like the time our Chief Steward got blind drunk in
Capetown
.
Then got himself robbed in a back alley, didn’t he? And arrived back on board
early next morning, wearing only a newspaper.”

Pearce laughed wildly at this and slapped his knee in
delight. As Kate handed round the tea and tasty bite, with her free hand she
patted the side of her husband’s face, so delighted was she to hear him laugh
again, after all these sad, lonely years.

Daniel, his mouth full of soda-bread, took a gulp of his tea
then, with twinkling eyes, he stared at both his parents with a speculative
look in his eyes.

“Yes, Dadda. Many a weird and funny tale could I tell, but
most of them, I think I’d better keep for a man-to-man only discussion.”

Here he cast a cheeky glance at his mother, who opened her
mouth to protest. But Daniel was too quick for her.

“Mammy. There is one story I know that you’d enjoy hearing.”

Kate put the empty tray down on the table.

“Oh, and what might that be?”

“Well, I mentioned our Chief Steward. On one of our trips,
that same fellow – we were outward bound from Liverpool to Southern Australia –
you’ll never guess what he did.”

Pearce, already agog, was hanging on every word, as he
silently shook his head and waited with what patience he could muster for his
son to go on. Daniel needed no further prompting.

“Again, the damned fellow got roaring drunk, spent the
crew’s food allocation money. No, not on drink for himself, although even that
would not have surprised us in the least.”

Pearce frowned and urged: “Then what? What did he do?”

Daniel shook his head with the remembrance of it.

“Instead of buying us a variety of foodstuffs with which to
keep body and soul together until our next port of call, he spent all the
money, yes, every last allocated farthing on a consignment of – of all things –
cases of dried apricots.”

Kate put a hand to her mouth to stifle her ready amusement.

“Oh no, Daniel. You’re joking.”

Again Daniel shook his head and then took another gulp of
his whisky tea.

“I wish I was joking, Mammy. For we had apricot pie, apricot
pudding, apricot flan, apricot stew, apricot
flambe
.
As if that hadn’t sickened us, we even had apricot cakes and bread. Not to
mention Irish stew a la apricot. There now, what do you make of that?”

Pearce and Kate both laughed. Pearce, with a look of pride
on his face at what a fine, upright, and entertaining young men his estranged
son had become, gently pushed at Daniel’s uniformed shoulder.

“Get away with you, Daniel. Blarney Stone talk that is, if
ever I heard it.”

Daniel laughed and crossed his heart in the way that small
children do when they went grown-up people to believe their stories.

“’Tis on my sacred word, Dadda. And believe me, if you’ve
never tested Irish stovies made from apricots, apricots and even more of the
damned things – then you can take it from me – you’ve missed absolutely
nothing.”

As Kate prepared a fresh brewing of tea, she gazed in
fascination at the two men in her life, now together and possibly for the first
time ever, not locked in either sullen silence, mutual dislike nor even angry
and heated exchange.

’Tis a miracle. And long may this happy truce continue, God
willing.

Chapter 19

With Mrs Delaney occupying the front room, Jenny had to join
Hannah in the
hurlie
bed to let Daniel sleep on the
sofa bed in the hall.

“It won’t be for too long, Jenny,” Daniel said. “I’ve only
got five days before I have to leave to get back to my ship in Liverpool.”

In the following days, both Daniel, the sailor home from the
high seas, and Pearce, his stay at home father, travelled the world together on
a crest of euphoria, as they visited strange, faraway places. Many a good laugh
they had together over Daniel’s remembered and re-enacted diverse exploits in
places as far removed as Cardiff and
Capetown
. Right
up until the very evening of the third day of Daniel’s visit, it seemed to Kate
that not only had virtually every country under the sun got a mention, but also
that Daniel and Pearce were getting on like a house on fire. The only country
not so far mentioned was Kate and Pearce’s own dear homeland, the Emerald Isle.
Although she herself had been well aware of this, she felt it only politic to
keep silence on the subject.

On the morning of the third day of Daniel’s visit, a
Thursday, almost as if the past few days of concord and strife-free pleasant
social intercourse had placed too great a strain on him, Pearce awoke in a foul
temper. Right from the word ‘go’ that morning, whatever Kate did, said, did not
do, or even suggested, was anathema to him. Strangely enough, it was left to
Daniel himself to calm down his father’s ruffled feathers. He did this by
sitting down opposite him when, with knees touching, they shared a pot of tea
together. Then Daniel went on to a further chat about some of the more amusing
of his sea-going adventures. At one point, the old man threw back his head, laughed,
and slapped his knee in delight.

“Daniel, I just don’t believe it. ’Tis a vivid imagination
you have, to be sure, boyo.”