‘Kevin, I love you. Your Mammy loves you,’ Sadie said, marking every word with a kiss to your tummy as you lay on the ground being dried. ‘She loves every bone of you, do you know that?’
‘Hmm hmm,’ you replied, happily watching puffs of white rise from the Johnson’s baby powder container every time you pressed its middle.
‘And does Kevin love Kevin?’ Puff upon puff of whiteness filled the air. Does Kevin love Kevin, I repeated in my head.
You didn’t reply. Instead you turned the talcum powder upside down, shaking it vigorously on to your tummy and the floor.
‘Because if you love this wee boy,’ she continued, dispersing the powder all over you, ‘and are always kind to him and always try to understand him then I think he will be the happiest little man in the whole wide world.’ She used the corner of the bath towel to rub the white smatterings from the carpet. ‘Will you do that, will you love Kevin for me? Will ya? Ya rascal,’ she asked, administering another tickle that let loose more squeals of laughter.
I never disturbed you but made my way into our darkened bedroom and sat on the side of the bed looking out at the silhouette of our trees and the hills against the night sky, brightened by one of the biggest moons I’d ever seen. It was too much even for me, a man of forty-three, to try to comprehend what Sadie had said, let alone a child of four. Loving yourself? The very thought. I reached for the bedside lamp, fumbling to find the switch under the shade. I pulled the curtains closed and stood looking at the brown flowers with their orange centres, one after another, row upon row. My finger rose to follow the pattern of the petals. My blackened nail and layers of hardened skin that had no hope of feeling the fibre circled anyway.
‘Oh, you’re home?’ Sadie said, from the door behind me.
‘Thought I’d change out of these,’ I said, my fingers pulling away from the flowers, pretending at taking off my jumper.
‘A first for everything, I suppose. I left the dinner for you.’
‘I saw that.’
‘This man’s off to bed.’ Her head nodded in the direction of your room. ‘Are you coming in to say good night?’
‘I’ll be in now.’
How many times did Sadie talk to you that way, I wonder. And is that why you are the man you are? So sure and happy in your life?
You never wanted the land, not even one bit interested. I tried. Made you work alongside me, from early on, out in your rain gear and boots. She’d have had you in bubble wrap if I’d let her. Aren’t children supposed to love the mud and getting themselves dirty? Not you. There were times I got so frustrated. That moanie head on you. Miserable you’d be. Wet and feckin’ miserable. Picking at the straw with your fork, like it was diseased.
‘Come on. Give it a bit of welly,’ I’d say, demonstrating how it should be done. You’d stretch the fork a little further, but that would be it. Soon you’d be back to picking at the edges.
‘Go in,’ I’d say, ‘go in to blazes. I’ll do it me feckin’ self.’
Off you’d go then, back inside, bawling. I’d see Sadie bend to comfort you through the kitchen window, unfurling you from all of your protective layers.
‘Ach, Maurice, he’s only wee, can you not be a little kinder?’ I didn’t need to hear what she’d have to say on the matter. I knew it by heart. I knew to leave well enough alone and not go in straight away, even if I’d been inclined. I bulled on outside, cursing your softness. I gave up trying after a few years. Left you to your books.
‘How do you read them yokes?’ I asked you once. ‘The size of them.’ You must have been in secondary by then. Sitting at the kitchen table when I came in, always at the books.
‘I dunno. I just do,’ you said. ‘They’re interesting. This one’s about the Mongols. One of their greatest weapons was that they smelt. Seriously, it says that no one ever wanted to be fighting downwind of these guys. That’s just hilarious.’
‘Yep. Hilarious,’ I said walking away from you, wondering where I’d gotten you at all.
Do you remember the time you came into the shed one evening and started mucking out? Fifteen, maybe you were. You stood right beside me and got stuck in. After years of hating muck and manure, you worked the whole evening in it. I looked at you out of the corner of my eye to see what you were at. Kept waiting for a question or something to explain this change of heart. But nothing came.
‘Will I start on them logs, Dad?’ you asked, pointing at the pile ready for chopping.
‘Go on so,’ I said, delighting in the idea of watching you struggle with the axe. On the other hand I was worried about what your mother would say when I’d tell her you’d lost a finger. But you fecker, you took up that thing as if you’d always worked one, a minor miracle. Lobbing the pieces into piles like you were some kind of lumberjack.
‘Anything else, Dad?’ you said, when you’d finished the lot.
‘No, you’re grand now. Come on, we’ll call it a night.’
I walked across the yard behind you wondering when it was finally going to come: the big reveal.
‘Tea?’ I asked, when we reached the warmth of the kitchen and I began to fill the kettle. You gave me the warmest of smiles, like I’d just handed you a hundred pounds.
‘Sure, go on so. Mine’s a coffee,’ you said, slouching into the refuge of one of the kitchen chairs.
‘Since when did you start drinking that stuff?’
‘Carl Bernstein only drinks coffee.’
I opened the press door and stood there looking at it like I was looking at a knitting pattern. I took down the Lyons then started to move the packets of soup and jars of jam and marmalade around, looking for the coffee.
‘Yeah, Bernstein, one of the greatest journalists alive. Nixon and all, Watergate?’ you said, raising your voice a little above the clatter. ‘Bernstein was one of the boys that broke the story.’ You were off your chair by now leaning on the counter right beside me. ‘That’s who I want to be. Well, when I say who I want to be, I mean—’
‘Got it,’ I said, pulling a blue Nescafé jar free. Looking at it, I rounded you to get at the kettle.
‘Did you know you can do a college course now to be a journalist?’
‘One spoon or two?’
‘Just the one. There’s a place in Dublin, Rathmines, where you can do a cert.’
The kettle clicked off.
‘Milk?’
‘No, I take it black.’
I brought the mugs to the table, with a handful of Fig Rolls, not bothering with a plate as I knew your mother was doing the ironing in front of the TV next door. Thursday was ironing day.
‘So, yeah, I was thinking I might look into it a bit more. See what points you need like.’
I sat sideways to the table, staring at the back door, while you started to slurp at the dark liquid. I could feel your eyes on me the whole time. In the background the kettle emitted little mini clicks, like sighs after all its exertions, as it cooled down.
‘Is that right?’ I finally said, ‘And tell me this, do you get extra points for drinking your coffee black?’
My son the journalist. I mean how the hell did that happen? I can just about manage to read the GAA results and the mart prices in the newspaper for Christ’s sake but write whole pages, give my opinion to the world – are you mad?
‘I hear himself wants to be a journalist?’ I said, to Sadie later, as we got ready for bed.
‘What?’ she said, looking in the mirror, concentrating on securing a wayward strand of hair into her curler.