Daddy always said that that man did what he did out of avarice, and Johnsey believed that then, because when Daddy said a thing it was invariably true. But now, Johnsey was not so sure. Maybe he did it to have somewhere warm to sit of an evening, with someone familiar to look at and be silent beside in comfort. Maybe he knew that was worth more than a farm of land or a big pile of second-hand money, covered in the dirty prints of other men’s hands.
April
DADDY WOULD LEAVE the cattle out of the slatted house at the start of April. They’d think they were going to be milked and they’d queue up like fools at the milking-parlour door. Then Mother and Daddy and Johnsey would hunt them up the yard towards the long acre and they’d be looking back with their big scared eyes as much as to say Are ye sure? Are we really allowed out here? Mother would say Look at the auld eejits, go on, ye auld dotes, and the three of them would watch as one brave auld campaigner would mosey off in to the grass and the rest would get courage from her and follow on. Friesians are pure gentle auld crathurs. If they were Limousins, Daddy would say, they’d trample you to get to the field. They’d knock the feckin wall!
DERMOT McDERMOTT called up to the house at the start of that April. It was a Monday evening. Johnsey brought him in to the kitchen. When you came in through the front porch and into the hall, you could turn left into the kitchen or right into the front room, the good room. There was no way that curly prick was tramping his dirty rotten boots in around Mother’s good room that she fussed over for so many years and was forever tightening up for fear anyone would call. He’d probably sneer to himself at the pinkness and frilliness of the cushions and the lacy yokes Mother put over the backs of the couch and armchairs. And the picture in pride of place on the wall above the fireplace of Daddy and Mother and Johnsey, taken when he was a small boy by a professional photographer inside in town, with his hair all combed back and his good-wear clothes on him. Dermot McDermott would probably have a great time describing it all to his bigshot people. But then, they’d probably all done their fair share of nosing about the place when Mother and Daddy died. They’d surely been in the stream of people that had flowed in and out to offer their condolences and pay their respects. Johnsey couldn’t properly remember; those two sets of days were like dreams you only have a half a hold of when you wake.
What kind of dealings would he be made part of? Would he have to make a decision or give permission for something or talk about the lease on the land or agree to a right of way or some such adult thing that Daddy or Paddy Rourke or even Mother would be able to sort out with a wave of a hand and a few small words? When they spoke that way the unaccustomed listener could go away thinking nothing much had been said, but in those brief conversations not a word was wasted, each utterance contained a world of meaning. Dermot McDermott had never said a bad word to Johnsey — he had never said many words to Johnsey at all — it was a way that he had of not looking at you, or looking around while he was talking to you, like you were not quite deserving of his attention, so he would examine the countryside all about until you were gone away and had stopped usurping his precious time. At least he wouldn’t be bullshitting about calling up and calling down and doors being always open and other such lies people think are truths while they’re saying them.
This must be the way those fellas in wars felt before the little prick of an officer blew his old whistle and they had to climb up over the top of the trench and run at the enemy. Here was he feeling that same terrible fear over a conversation. The thought of talking to a fella his own age from over the road was the same as running towards a load of mad Germans who were firing machine guns at you! Imagine that. He’d have been shot as a coward for sure. Maybe running and firing a gun and trying to avoid being blown to bits were easier things than talking, though. It was surely less complicated. If you survived, you probably wouldn’t be lying awake that night thinking did I look like a spastic running through that field of barbed wire? Are all the other soldiers laughing at me?
DERMOT McDERMOTT wanted to know could he buy out the land.
Johnsey was caught on the hop rightly. All he could do was stand there with his mouth hanging open, staring at Dermot McDermott like an unadulterated gom, while the words hopped around his brain like them balls in the Lotto. Dermot McDermott told how their milk quota was going to be doubled shortly and they wanted to be sure of the land, like. How’s it he couldn’t just tell him to go on away and have a shite for himself, there was no one going buying out his father’s land? For a finish he told Dermot McDermott that he didn’t know, he’d have to ask. He’d have to ask! Imagine saying that. Who would you have to ask? Dermot McDermott’s eyes darted left and right and his bushy eyebrows furrowed together, as if searching for this phantom that needed to be consulted about the land. Maybe the ghost of Mother or Daddy would appear from the fireplace and say Go on out in the yard now, son, we’ll take care of this little bit of business. They would probably be better at this dead than he was alive.
WHY COULDN’T CANCER have minded its own business about Daddy? Why couldn’t Mother have toughed it out without him another while? Wasn’t it a solid fright to say that a chap could be left high and dry, with neither dinner nor bed made for him, and having to have dealings with sneaky neighbours over land and what have you? It was a fright to God and that’s for sure. Every word he had said he could hear back, clear as day, echoing around his thick skull, making him want to just turn off the lights and cover his head and never set foot in sunlight again. I’ll have to ask. Oh. Mother. Of. God.
Having a conversation like that, out of the blue, when a chap wouldn’t be prepared, could take it out of you. You had to let the thoughts about it just come and go by themselves. There was no point forcing yourself to think things or not to think things. You could do yourself damage trying to work things out too quick. There was no way he could sell the land. It wasn’t his, anyway. Uncle Michael who fell and was killed beyond in London, Granddad, Daddy, the IRA great-uncles — they were all still knocking about the place, Johnsey knew, keeping an eye. He was the end of their line, imagine. They must be browned off over that. Selling the land would be the last straw. You could be so much of a letdown and get left away with it by virtue of being a gom and not having full use of all of your faculties. To sell their land and give the rest of his born days sitting on his hole looking at the television, landless as well as friendless, that would beat all for badness.
JOHNSEY LOOKED AROUND the kitchen. It wasn’t the last word in cleanliness, but he had had it tightened up fairly okay. Dermot McDermott couldn’t be going back to his witchy old mother and telling her it was like a pigsty beyond, sure he wasn’t half capable of managing by himself. Imagine, though, if he was a bad yoke and he sold up to hell. Imagine the stuff he could buy! But there was money in a bank account belonging to Mother that belonged to him now. It was what she was paid by the insurance when Daddy died. There was also a big pile of money in the Credit Union below in the village belonging to him that Mother had put away over years. One of the aunties had told him all about it and how to go about getting it if he needed it, but what would he need it for? All that stuff to do with money and deeds and what have you was safely above in Daddy’s little office and there it could stay until some space in his brain could be freed up for such matters. Anyway, you couldn’t sell what wasn’t yours, and the land would never really be his. He could live on it and walk across it and for years he’d helped farm it, or at least he’d traipsed around behind Daddy and did his best not to balls anything up, but he was not of it the way that Daddy was. If he took money to let the land fall from Cunliffe hands he’d be a traitor and a blackguard.