But I’m grateful for those years I had him. Isn’t that why I’m sitting here? Giving thanks for a man who shaped me, guided me, minded me and, most of all, taught me to never give up. But he’s fierce quiet today, son. Hasn’t said a word in my ear this whole time. I wonder, has my plan finally baffled him into silence.
Chapter Three
7.47 p.m.
Second Toast: to Molly
Glass of Bushmills – 21-year-old malt
If there’s one thing I like about the bar room of this hotel, it’s the light; not that I’ve ever shared that compliment with Emily. Perhaps I should. There’s something about how the evening creeps through those front windows. They’re not the original ones, the windows. They’re long, thin rectangular panes that stretch from top to bottom. You can’t open them. I’ve only ever seen the like in modern churches before. At first, I didn’t take to them but now I can’t get enough of watching that light streaming in at the slanted angles, showing up the dust and movement of the place. I could watch it for hours. Hypnotic, it is.
The bar is fairly hopping now. The men nod in my direction as they give their orders and extend their elbows, allowing the counter to take their weight. The cavalry has arrived to help Svetlana. Emily and a lad. Whizzing up and down. They’re all arms. You’d swear they’d more than just the two each, pulling one pint while reaching for another glass to start the pump beside it flowing. Their speed and efficiency are to be admired. I could watch this dance all evening.
I recognise most of the crowd. You would too, son. Crimmens joins me. Leaning on the bar, all serious, like he’s bothered by something. I take a sip of this fine whiskey before looking over at him again. It’s the suit that’s troubling him. He looks about as uncomfortable as I would in that get-up.
‘Let me get you a drink there, Mr Hannigan.’
‘I won’t, now. I’m grand with what I have.’
‘On the whiskey, what?’
‘Are you having one yourself? Here, Emily, could you throw on a pint for Crimmens here?’
‘Don’t be minding him. I’ve one over beyond.’
For the life of me, I can’t remember the chap’s first name. If you were here, you’d know it. I’m sure you would. I steer my way around my memory loss as best I can. It’s the faces I remember no problem these days, but the names have me stumped. He’s out of Lissman. Did some business together a few years back. One of the new breed, organic this and corn-fed that. I tried it for a while. But I’ve let it slip of late, like everything. Still, I have to hand it to these young farmers; they’ve a vigour and commitment to the land that’d make my father smile.
‘Do you know much about the solar panels, Mr Hannigan?’ he asks, after a moment of silence between us. ‘I’m thinking of getting into it. There’s lads over there in England who’ve made a fortune giving over fields and fields to it. What do you think, would I be mad?’
‘You’d be mad not to. If I were a younger man you wouldn’t hold me back. I’d have done it long ago and set my sheep to graze under them.’
‘Is that right? I might look into it so,’ he says, nodding his head to the counter.
And then we fall into our silent contemplation again. Happy with our wanderings over this farming life and all we do to keep the bellies of the world full and our own hearts and bank balances at ease. A gong booms in the background, making me near spill my Bushmills. I never knew the place had a gong, hardly surprising, I suppose. And true to Irish custom, the horde ignores its request. Each group has to be encouraged by the hotel staff to loosen their grip from their conversations and the bar. They herd them like sheep dogs, blocking all exits and means of escape, in the direction of their dinner. Gearstick would’ve loved this, giving it his all until he had every last arse sitting in their seats below.
‘That’s me so, Mr Hannigan.’ Crimmens stretches out his hand and shakes it with a strength I envy.
‘Good luck now,’ I say, as I watch him and the last of the crowd make their way out of the bar.
‘Can you believe they’ve actually gone in on time?’ Emily says, proud that all is going to plan. A bit of her hair has fallen out of her tight bun. It falls down at her cheek in a curl that reminds me of Sadie.
‘They’d be afraid not to,’ I say, grinning, getting down off my stool and heading in peace to the toilet. ‘And don’t be drinking that when I’m not looking,’ I say, pointing at my Bushmills before going through the door with a smile.
I remember the day I took my first sip of whiskey. I was no more than twenty when I had the notion to try it. My father never touched the stuff, but I was always drawn to that rich liquid sitting in the bottles behind the bar in Hartigan’s. One day I felt the bravery and ordered a glass. Well, it nearly cut the throat out of me. Coughing and spluttering, I was. Mrs Hartigan thought it hilarious. I swore there and then, I’d never do it again. But the taste stayed with me over the following days, its vileness mellowing with the passing of time, so much so that I did indeed take another. The day I tasted the 21-year-old malt, I took my cap off in reverence to her magnificence. This one here, son, is for the sister you never knew – Molly.
One of the pictures in my jacket pocket is of you on your christening day. You’re in your mother’s arms, wrapped in your white cocoon of a christening robe. She’s stood in front of our house right before we headed to the church. ’Course I’d pulled the old house down by then and built a brand spanking new one a bit further up from the road. I think I’d a Ford Cortina back then, a red one. Sadie in her pink tweed suit with matching pill-box hat. She loved that suit, hardly ever wore it. It was still in the wardrobe until recently. All packed away now with the rest of her stuff. She’s looking down on you like you’re the centre of her world, like no one else matters. I only remember her looking like that one other time, three years earlier, before you came along.
Forty-nine years ago, I met Molly, only once and only for fifteen minutes. But she has lived in this dilapidated heart of mine ever since. It seems your mother and me were never meant to have more than one child. Life was not on our side with that one. We had you relatively late. I was thirty-nine and Sadie, well, she must have been thirty-four. We’d been trying of course, from the get-go. Watched all around us have one baby after another while we were blessed with none. It was hard. I took my disappointment to the fields, to the dairy, anywhere but the house. Our silent burden. Month after month, year after year, we fell deeper and deeper into the quiet sadness of it. Sadie wouldn’t talk. Despite my fumbling attempts to engage her. If I’m being honest, I was relieved at her silence. What, after all, would I have said when I didn’t even want to hear my own pain, let alone face up to hers. But still, the guilt of that silence dogged me as I walked my lanes and turned the key in the tractor and blessed myself at the end of Mass. It sat on my shoulder, never letting me forget that I’d failed.
They say women are good talkers. If that is true, then your mother was the exception. I didn’t know her to have many friends around; acquaintances sure, but no one really close. Early on I suppose, when we were just married, she may have spoken to her mother. But I’m not convinced of that either. Their relationship didn’t strike me as being that type. There was a love but of the Irish kind, reserved and embarrassed by its own humanity. These days people are all for talking. Getting things off their chest. Like it’s easy. Men, in particular, get a lot of stick for not pulling their weight in that quarter. And as for Irish men. I’ve news for you, it’s worse as you get older. It’s like we tunnel ourselves deeper into our aloneness. Solving our problems on our own. Men, sitting alone at bars going over and over the same old territory in their heads. Sure, if you were sitting right beside me, son, you’d know none of this. I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s all grand up here in my head but to say it out loud to the world, to a living being? It’s not like we were reared to it. Or taught it in school. Or that it was preached from the pulpit. It’s no wonder at the age of thirty or forty or eighty no less, we can’t just turn our hand to it. Engineers are not born with the knowledge of how to construct a bridge. It has to be learned. But despite all of that for some reason, back then, with all that hurt and absence in our lives, I felt the urge to give it a go.