‘Mam, I’m grand, sure that honey drink you made me is working mighty.’
‘No matter. You’ll be in the upper room. We’ll take yours. Maurice, you can take the chairs in the kitchen.’
What I didn’t know until after he died was that my mother had watched her younger brother Jimmy die of the same thing. People didn’t talk much of things like that in those days. Death and illness were sacred and silent, not to be stoked and stirred. But it seems for years she’d been on alert, watching us with our coughs and colds, ready to pounce. Ready to begin battle with the demon that had taken her favourite brother. With Tony, her time had finally come.
She washed the sheets and eiderdown from our bed that day. She and my father slept fully clothed under a blanket until they finally dried. Meanwhile I set up my chairs, one facing the other, in the kitchen. A blanket and my mother’s winter coat around me. It was a while before I fell asleep that first night. I listened to Tony’s cough, his constant call, as I tried to figure out what this change in sleeping arrangements meant.
The next day was a Sunday as I recall, and my father left in the trap when it was still dark and returned two hours later with Doctor Roche. I watched from the shed, as they went inside. I ran to Tony’s window, to try to hear his fate. Jenny and May came out soon after. The three evictees stood in the blowing rain, waiting.
‘It’s got to be,’ Jenny whispered to May, as we huddled under the dripping thatch, leaning into the frame of the window as far as we could.
‘Don’t say that, Jenny. Don’t be wishing it on him.’
‘I’m not doing that, for heaven’s sake. I’m just saying, that’s what young Wall died of and Kitty told me that’s how it had started.’
‘Quiet, Jenny, Tony might hear.’
Later, we went to Mass in Duncashel, not the usual local church, in order to drop the doctor home. I felt sorry for the horse having to cart the lot of us that distance. Tony didn’t come. We journeyed in silence. In the pew, I watched my parents pray in concentration. My mother’s eyes shut tight, her wrinkles bunched up with the effort, as her busy lips tipped her folded hands.
After we got home, silence reigned. Jenny, May and me wandered about, waiting to be let in on the mystery. We never went near the shut door of the upper room where Tony slept. We moved between our bedroom and the kitchen, eventually deciding on the most sedate game of twenty-five I ever remember. After a while the girls rose to help Mother with the dinner while my father never lifted his head above his Sunday paper.
‘Tony has consumption,’ he said later, as we stared at our dinner plates. ‘But you’ll not say a word to anyone. Do you hear? As far as the world is concerned that boy has broken his leg from a fall in the field. Do you understand me now?’
The three siblings stole a glance at each other, then nodded our collusion.
‘The doctor won’t say a word to anyone. He wants us to move Tony to the upper shed. He’s afraid of it infecting the lot of us. But we’ll tend him here. He’ll not be put out…’ My father broke off his words and balled up his fists and pushed them deep into his pockets. ‘You girls will look after Tony in the mornings when Mam is working,’ he continued after a bit, ‘the doctor has told her what to do. Rest is the best cure, he says. We’ll not lose him. We’ll not lose that boy.’
The word went out Tony had broken his leg. If people knew the truth, we’d have been done for. TB was as contagious as gossip. The Dollards would have let us go there and then. As it turned out, none of us picked it up, although I do believe it lingered with my mother and that’s what hurried on her own death, years later. It was hard, keeping it a secret. People called. Well-wishers. Not often, mind, but the odd time, a neighbour would drop by. Jenny or May would run to meet them in the yard and make up all sorts before they got close to the house:
‘He’s not in great shape today. Sorry now, and you after coming over.’
‘He’s in a lot of pain. I’ll let him know you called. It’ll do him the world of good to know you’re thinking of him.’
‘He’s up there now trying to do those exercises the doctor gave him, but he’s frustrated; you know how it is.’
I’m sure after a while people began to suspect. But no one ever asked us.
The only time Tony was left on his own was on a Sunday when the rest of us headed off to Mass. Despite being away from him for those couple of hours, that time was still all about him. I did some pleading for his salvation myself as I held the host in my mouth. To my left and right, I knew the others were doing the same.
The doctor told us to feed him ‘nutritious’ food and give him stout every day, for the iron. Tony was thrilled at the prospect. But of course, it all cost money. Nutrition back then meant red meat and vegetables. We had the carrots, cabbage and potatoes growing out in the garden. Often that’s all we had. White meat was not so much of a problem, what with the few chickens we had running ’round the yard. When one got too old to lay, well, then she ended up on our plates. The red stuff was more difficult. Every now and again though, a bit would be found from somewhere. We didn’t begrudge him an ounce, that’s not to say we didn’t lick our lips as it roasted in the range. When I went up to him one evening, he told me to shut the door, all conspiratorial like.
‘Here, Big Man, have this,’ he said, as soon as the latch had lowered. There in his fist, in his handkerchief, he held a chunk of beef.
He must have had it there since dinnertime.
‘Ah Tony, I can’t be taking your food.’
‘Jesus man, they were stuffing it into me. The size of it. It was like there was a whole cow sitting on the plate. Take it. I kept it for you.’
‘They’ll kill me.’
‘I reckon they take little bites themselves. I could’ve sworn there was a hole in that piece when Jenny brought it in,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘For God’s sake man, sure you’re holding down two jobs now having to work with the auld lad when you get home from that place.’
All the doctors in Ireland would’ve been having heart attacks watching me take that from his spotted handkerchief, but I tell you now that morsel tasted like heaven. As cold and squashed as it was, it was pure tasty.
It felt wrong after all those days and years of Tony walking beside me to school, encouraging and supporting me, that I had to leave him in the bed every morning to go to the Dollards. I always left it till the last minute, hanging around chatting and messing with him when he was up to it, before my mother dragged me out the door. I went with a heavy heart, my boots feeling like they were filled with the weightiest of stones, slowing my path away from him. If I’d had my choice it would’ve been me waiting on him, bringing him his dinner, standing over him with a bowl when he was coughing his insides up, helping him up from the bed and getting him settled on the chamber pot so he could do his morning duty. The rest of the world could have mocked and jeered me all they liked but I would’ve done that and more for him if I’d been let.
I refused to allow the women to tend him all the time. I’d run all the way home from the job to grab his tea tray and bring it up before any of them had the chance. Gone, before Mam, long home from work by that stage, had time to protest. Although, I knew she approved as I caught her grin before I scarpered. Outside Tony’s door, I’d hold the tray with one hand under it and knock with the other.
‘Enter,’ he’d call, like he was lord of the manor. ’Course, he knew it was me, ’cause I’d have given him my trademark rap on the bedroom window, five beats, as I flew in home earlier.
‘Is that lazy fecker not up yet?’ I’d say in the hallway as I hung up my cap, loud enough so he could hear.
I’d smile at his reply and lift the latch. But God forgive me, every time I saw his hollowed-out face, it was a shock. It was always, always, like I was seeing it for the first time. The laughter gone out of me, only the remains of an embarrassed smile that admitted how bad I was at keeping up the pretence that there was nothing wrong with the brother I adored and that he wasn’t just one more cough away from leaving us.