In the absence of Tony it was the McDonaghs’ neighbour, Diarmuid Row, who stood for me. I knew very little about him. He was a few years older than me and had a car. Don’t ask me what had them all so rich in Annamoe, but everyone around seemed to have one, so he seemed the perfect choice being able to drive the family to the church, while I fetched Noreen. If I wasn’t mistaken though, I saw a hint of something in his eye when he looked at Sadie that morning. She was admittedly breathtaking. I had my suspicions.
‘Would you go away,’ she said, when I mentioned it later. ‘Sure he’s engaged to Annie Mulligan.’
‘I’m just telling you what I saw, is all.’
The day went perfectly until it was time to bring Noreen home. After the ceremony we had gone back to the house in Annamoe for a breakfast and, as it turned out, a lunch. The morning grew into afternoon and things began to wind up as the various guests headed home, including my parents; my father had borrowed a car for the day, from who I haven’t a clue. But Noreen had other ideas about going back to St Catherine’s. And when her mother rose to get her ready, she clung on to me, then the door frame and finally the kitchen table. In the end her father had to pull her away. She must’ve had some grip on it because they were propelled against the wall when he finally managed to release her. He was pinned there, under her weight. We leapt to his aid but weren’t quick enough to stop her turning and digging her nails into his face. It took the three of us, her mother, Sadie and me to detach her. By then blood was streaming down on to his suit, which only seconds before had still boasted the freshness of being newly cleaned and ironed. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out his handkerchief to stem the flow.
‘The chair. Get her to the chair.’ We struggled to get her seated as her mother instructed. She had some strength in her.
‘No!’ Noreen screamed, thrashing at us with her arms and feet.
Meanwhile, the father sat defeated with his head in his hands, holding the handkerchief in place. His wife glanced back at him trying to assess the damage.
‘Michael!’ she shouted, over Noreen’s protests, ‘you’ll have to go for Doctor Kenny. Michael!’
He looked back at her dazed, nodded and then rose.
‘Should I go instead?’ I suggested, taking in the state of the man as he left the kitchen.
‘No. You stay,’ Mary said in a low voice, watching him leave, ‘he needs to get away from this. He can’t cope with it. He’ll be fine once he’s on the road.’
And then a miracle occurred. Mary bent low to Noreen’s ear and began to whisper. She kept at it, five minutes or so, until slowly Noreen’s screams lessened under her murmuring.
‘There, there, little one. There, there.’ The quiet words seemed to calm her daughter’s distress, coaxing it to a whimper. ‘There, there.’
She continued at that over and over, lulling even me into a stupor, never mind Noreen. I stood mesmerised as her hand moved back and forth on her daughter’s head, caressing it to the rhythm of her refrain. Noreen leaned into it like a cat, moving with the waves of her words. Time ticked on as we all stood watching and waiting. Michael may only have been gone ten minutes but it felt like a lot longer before we heard the sound of the car returning and doors opening and closing.
‘Maurice!’ Sadie said, calling me back, when she realised I had relaxed my grip.
‘You’ll need to be ready!’ she warned, nodding towards Noreen.
As soon as the door opened and the doctor and his medicine case appeared, we were thrown into Noreen’s raging storm again. As if there had been no lull, no calming of the seas, she rose again, greater and more vicious than before. She shouted out all kinds of profanities as she kicked and threw whatever limb she could at us. She glared at the doctor as he readied the syringe. He moved to my side.
‘Tightly now,’ he instructed.
I held her hand against the armrest with all of my strength. In it went, pressing down through her screams. Her eyes turned on him, red with anger, like you might imagine the Devil himself, boring into him. She spat and cursed and writhed. Slowly then she began to quieten, but not as before. No, this time she was frightened. Terrified that she was losing the battle, that something more powerful, more dangerous was taking charge. My tight grip eased to a caress and in that moment her eye caught mine and pleaded for help. It’s a rotten thing to feel powerless but even worse to feel like a collaborator. Rotten, Kevin, rotten. At last, her screams stopped. One by one we let go as her eyes closed. None of us felt relieved. Each stood looking at her, ridden with guilt.
When I met your mam it had been her intention to make her way home to Noreen, to be there to help out with her. She hoped to get a transfer to Donegal at some stage. But I scuppered her plans. Failing us moving there, it was Sadie’s wish that in later years Noreen would come to live with us, once your grandparents had passed. She told me once that she hoped this would coincide with medicine making such advances that Noreen might mellow, becoming at last the doted-on little sister of her longing. Only one wish was fulfilled when Noreen moved to Meath in seventy-four. Your Granny Mary died first with the father remaining to make the daily drive to Saint Catherine’s. It was a flu that was his downfall in the end. You don’t hear of that much these days, someone dying from flu, but it took that bull of a man. Noreen, to everyone’s surprise, didn’t seem at all upset by the prospect of a move hundreds of miles away to the brand spanking new nursing home in Duncashel. In fact, the day we arrived to pick her up, she beamed at us, not bothered by the recent loss of her father it seemed and delighted by the prospect of a new bedroom.
‘New room, new room,’ she repeated, intermittently as we drove south along the Donegal coastline, then east towards home.
Sadie was silent. I imagined a whole host of emotions churning around inside her. Sadness to have lost her father, fear that Noreen mightn’t settle, and concern that she, the big sister, might, once again, not be up to the job. You know what a worrier your mother was; she had herself in a state in the weeks building up to the move:
‘Maurice, what if she hates it? What if it sets her off on one of her fits and she doesn’t recover? I don’t know what I’d do. Would we have to bring her to live in the house with us then or what? Sure, we couldn’t bring her back to Donegal. Ach, are we doing the right thing at all?’
She sat in the passenger seat staring ahead the day of the move, like a scared little girl, needing to explain and defend this woman, merrily chatting away to herself in the rear. I reached my hand to hers as they writhed in her lap.
‘We’re in this together, Sadie,’ I said.
I think she nodded. My hand didn’t leave hers until the gears cried out. I felt her own hand move in under my left thigh then, where it nestled for the rest of the journey until we arrived on the gravel driveway of Duncashel Care Home. I’d barely stopped the car before Noreen was out and past the nurse standing waiting to greet us. We ran after her as she scurried down the corridors.
‘New room! New room!’ she chirped, louder and louder until the nurse finally caught up and escorted her to the yellow wallpapered room with its neat single bed and locker. And a large window at which she was to spend much of her life, looking out at the car park, waiting for us to arrive, or so your mother always thought.
Sadie cried buckets that night on leaving. It was utter relief, of course.
It became the tradition that Noreen came to our house every Saturday, thereafter. Most days, depending on her mood, she’d stay over long enough to attend Mass and then have Sunday dinner. You were about five at the time. You called her Auntie No-no.
‘No-no,’ she’d squeal, and so would you when you saw each other.
She wasn’t always a saint with you mind. Do you remember the rows? It was like having a second child. She was such a rummager, loved to poke about. One minute she was beside us and the next gone, and might have been for a while without us knowing. She was crafty in her escapes. In the early days we let her wander too much.