‘Maurice! Daddy just wants to take the case. Would you not let it go?’ Sadie’s words eventually made it through to my panicked brain.
‘The case? Yes. Right,’ I said, looking down at it. And yet, there it remained, still firmly stuck to my sweaty palm. ‘I’ll put it in the trap. Where are we?’ I strode off to God knows where with a foolish determination a man could only pity. I can still feel the trickle of sweat at my neck as I realised I hadn’t a clue what I was at, at all.
‘Maurice!’
I stopped, closed my eyes, steadied myself and turned. Sadie had a look as bewildered as my poor head, pointing to her right, and to a car. A car! I ask you? No one owned a car in those days. But there it was nevertheless, spotlessly clean, no hint that it lived in the countryside, with himself standing at its open boot like a bored taxi man waiting for his passengers to finally say their goodbyes and get the hell in.
‘Even better,’ I commended, like a man in the know, on top of things. I laid the case safely and finally inside, not daring even a glance in his direction.
‘Sadie, you can take the front. Maurice, you’re in the back – I hope you like dogs.’
I shared the journey to their home with Dinky, the sheep-dog, a temperament as good as Gearstick’s, who looked embarrassed on my behalf. I searched his one silver and one brown eye for help but he offered me nothing. Thankfully the reception at the house could not have been more different. Your granny hugged me like I was a hero. Laughed and smiled, perhaps knowing, by some Irish mother sixth sense, what had happened earlier and meaning to make up for it.
As we sat in the sitting room, Michael directed no conversation to me, only his daughter, enquired after her health and her job. She enthused away, delighting him with her replies. In an effort to build a bridge between the two men in her life, she spoke of my family, having met them by that stage, of course.
Actually, my mother had shown very little interest in meeting her when I first suggested it. My father, on the other hand, had been quite enthusiastic and insisted on coming for us in the trap. Sadie sat up front with him. Their chat, the whole way back out to the house made me proud. My sisters had the house gleaming. And the smell of freshly baked bread was inspired. They fluttered around your mother like she was a film star, admiring her summer coat, blue I think it was, and her dress and her pearls.
‘Ach, would you go on,’ she said, ‘these aren’t the real thing. My Aunt Maura gave them to me when I left home. She’s comfortable mind, but the money wouldn’t stretch to the real thing. But they do the job, don’t they? I only wear them on good occasions.’
Jenny and May laughed at the honour. And I was sure a flicker of a smile passed my mother’s lips as she bent to put another log in the range, holding its door with her apron. She said very little to Sadie, but she seemed to stay with the conversation, nevertheless, frowning and smiling at the appropriate times. We sat at the table, laid out with the best tablecloth and the willow china and my parents’ wedding cutlery. The soda bread and tea tasted better than ever I remembered. Plates with ham and tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs and scallions, beetroot and cheese were passed up and down with laughter and enthusiasm. We finished our meal with a choice of apple tart or Madeira cake. Sadie tried both. Tittering away, as her slender fingers worked the silver-plated fork delicately, taking tiny forkfuls until her plate was empty. After, we decided to take a stroll up the road. And as my sisters began to clear up, Sadie stalled our departure, attempting to help but they shooed her out the door, laughing.
‘They’re a pair,’ she said smiling, linking my arm, as we made our way on to the main road.
‘They’re not the worst, I suppose.’
‘What are you like? Could a man want for better sisters?’
‘I’d happily swap the armchairs for their bed.’
‘What you need is an extension, a little bedroom of your own out the back. You could work wonders.’
‘Is that right? Got your eye on the place already?’
‘You should be so lucky.’
‘Anyhow, they’re heading soon. Bristol. We have a cousin there works in the Cadbury’s factory.’
‘Lucky them.’
‘May’s to go first and Jenny not long after.’
‘I’ve never been to England.’
‘It’s Mam I worry about. It’ll only be me left, other than Dad of course.’
On our return, the goodbyes were exchanged with wide smiles and firm handshakes. Except for Mam. Although she raised her hand politely to shake Sadie’s, she quickly lay back against the chair’s headrest and became lost in her own world, almost ignoring her. Jenny and May distracted Sadie by making a fuss about wrapping a couple of slices of cake in a tea towel for her to bring home. They stood in the doorway then with my father, waving, as we set off in the trap under the summer-evening light.
When I returned, I found my mother alone, still in her chair. I stalled a little, wondering what to do. But eventually I felt the bravery.
‘Well, Mam, what do you think?’
‘Tony would have loved her, son.’
I stood beside her, my back to the range, leaning against the tea towel rail.
‘He’d have loved her,’ she repeated.
Her hand surprised me and patted mine gently and quickly.
‘I hope so, Mam.’
Silence fell, as we both, no doubt, thought of him.
‘Was he sweet on anyone, Maurice, before he died? Was there anyone who’d turned his head?’ she asked after a bit.
‘He never said a word to me,’ I replied, ‘but I always thought him and Kitty Moran would’ve made a great pair, though.’
‘A nice family, the Morans. Wouldn’t that have been a good one now? Them married. The little blondie babies they might have had.’ Her voice shook ever so slightly.
‘Ah, Mam, stop now. This isn’t doing you any good.’
‘I know, son. I know, but sometimes…’ she stopped and her eyes began to wander around the room, ‘do you think he ever got to kiss a girl?’
‘Mam!’
‘I’d just like to think, he knew what that felt like before he went, that’s all. It’s a bit of magic, isn’t it?’ Quickly and shyly she smiled in my direction, before returning her gaze to her hands in her lap. I was stumped, unable to think of how to reply. Tony had missed out on so much and at that moment I felt the guilt of my love for Sadie deeply. If I could’ve sacrificed a slice of it for him, I would’ve. I bent low on my hunkers and put my hands on my mother’s as the clock ticked from the corner.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ she said after a bit. ‘It’s time for my bed, anyway.’
She removed her hands from my cocoon, leaving one to rest for a second on mine before getting up.
I sat in her seat, gathering up the warmth she had left, and watched her disappear through the door, her walk more noticeably stooped in recent months. I wondered how hard it was for her seeing one son pass life’s milestones, while her other, cold in the ground, never got the chance. I felt a bit put out, if I’m honest, about how she was that evening. There I was, loyal and hardworking, had just brought home the best-looking woman this side of the Irish Sea, who was delightful and clever, but her conversation was all about Tony. ’Course I felt the guilt of that thought as soon as it entered my head. I sat arguing with it for a while before shrugging it away in disgust at myself, at my mother and at the world.
It wasn’t until after the wedding, when Sadie moved in, and the lower room became ours, what with my sisters gone by then, that Sadie began to see how Tony’s loss lingered in everything we did in the place. It clung in the very air, his name an afterthought of every sentence we spoke, until the day my mother died and she took its potency with her. We were left with a sorrow for her passing and Tony’s and my father’s that felt normal, if you understand me – it was sorrow, simple uncomplicated sorrow.