Malarky (31 page)

Did I think that the fact I kept their brother's death so quiet might have angered the girls? Grief carried on.

—They were angry long before he died. I left it at that.

She would never understand me that's why I had been sent to see her. They always want you to chat to people who don't understand you otherwise they'd have no job to do. I was sat here doing a favour and a service to this woman, so I was.

A short silence, that should have been a long silence, a very long one, that I should not have given into.

—Jimmy was everything to me and he left me with the decision about how to tell or say when he was or was not dead. He had told me earlier than the rest of you. We'd talked about it. And even after his death we talked about it. Take your time mam he'd said. I was visiting him up in the Blue House sure.

And it's out of me, and I am looking at it like it's someone else's washing on the line and I have done the very thing I vowed I wouldn't to Bina. I have alarmed Grief and it's a bad turn I have taken.

Sure enough Grief can't see me for a couple of weeks, but she wants me to meet someone else in Castlebar while she is gone and she'll be calling me with an appointment.

That extra appointment surged in me the need to inhabit the Blue House because I felt they were coming for me. Simply inhabit to not be here, to not listen to the details of the appointment. I had no strength for listening this day or any day. I wanted only to sit on the small Chinese footstool and talk to Jimmy. He never bothered me with these incessant questions. He only worried about me catching cold. I longed to be back talking to him no matter how uncomfortable the house.

There could be no telling me. He was dead and gone and I knew it. No matter what their mouths said back to me. I knew exactly where my son was. He was in the Blue House.

It was after that session with Grief that the woman came visiting me at the house. The Outreach Team woman she called herself. Nice enough she was, sporting an emphatic bobbed hairstyle, a shortish round woman. She was friendly and clapped her hands together a lot, as if to say come on now lads, sort it out. Except there were no lads anymore. She would be coming to see me once a week and I was to be going to another clinic every other week. She asked an awful lot of questions I became confused about what I was answering and answered yes to every single one so she would go home and leave me in peace.

This was a bad sign. When they're in your house, they're coming for ya, Bina said.

Bina instructed me firstly not to let her in, then said she'd better move in to be certain they did not take me away.

Be careful Phil, she said, they're comin' for ye.

When they came; I'd been expecting them. Knew how they'd look, knew I would know they'd come before they knocked on my door. And I did. The phone rang. Naturally the phone rang. The phone always rings. This is the problem with the phone. I nearly miss the days when we'd to go two and a half miles to the pub and wait out the evening for the pay phone to ring for us, for someone to call out is so and so here: a call from England. And everyone would push out of the way and let you through in a hurry, all hoping the voice would still be there on the line for ya. The miracle of telephony, none of us understanding how it all happened. Nor did we want to, we only wanted the voice to be there. And it was similar when they came to my door to tell me about Jimmy. I only hoped the miracle would be he was still there, but I had known for so much longer than they gave me credit for, that he was not.

It was in the hesitant way they unlatched the gate and closed it behind them as if they'd be staying a while. I had the door open for I would not let them rest their knuckles on it and enjoy that pause before it pulled back. I unlatched it only because if they hadn't delivered the news they'd retire to a local pub, and two and two would make eight and I wanted them gone from here with their blue and starched collars. Let it be in my ear canal rather than the entire village and mostly I wanted them gone.

—I know why you've come. I've been expecting you. Is it what I think it is? If it is just nod.

They commenced their emotionless speech delivered like they were brushing their teeth and avoiding the gums. She let them talk and at the end calmly nodded. She would not do what she'd heard the mother in Florida did, ran out to the garden threw herself to the ground, vomited, pulled at clumps of grass and roared. She would do none of it.

—Well you have him now, I said, you have taken all of him from me and now if you'll excuse me I have chores to attend to.

I closed the door on them and returned to my kitchen table. I lifted my pen and wrote the number + 1 on the bottom of the table mat. Then I rose and put the flat of my right hand onto the hot range and wanted it left there for the count of four. I wanted to tattoo this moment onto myself. I could not last 'til four.

Finally after so many months, after administering that burn to my hand I no longer felt numb.

In her mind it was old news, she reminded herself, for she'd known all this since that time Himself had taken her to the hospital. She was telling them all that time Jimmy was gone. She knew that they would take Jimmy from her. And they had done it. There was nothing new in this, she told herself. She would not allow for surprise.

What did surprise her was how angry she became at her husband, who by virtue of his own inconvenient death had absented himself from this final chapter. She longed for him to see the results of their enterprise, to see precisely what they'd achieved. She stared at the wall and actively wondered how much more stupid two people could have been.

She would tell the world when she was ready. She felt she'd a plan once she closed the door on them. She just could not recall what it was. She sat into the chair and immediately worried about what they had been saying in the bank, that Jimmy had gone to America to be shut of her.