Mick fucking Wallace.
I touched her face and felt the coldness of her passing. My knees buckled instantly. Collapsed at the edge of our bed, I looked at her face only inches away. Contented, it was. Not a care. Still a red glow to her cheeks, or am I imagining that? My fingertips felt the softness of the lines around her eyes, then found her hand under the blankets. I held it between my own, trying to warm it. Holding it to my cheek, rubbing it. It’s not that I thought I could bring her back to life or anything, it’s just … I don’t know, it’s just what I did. I didn’t want her to be cold, I suppose. She hated being cold. It’s one of the only things I remember about her passing and the funeral – that quiet time with me and her alone, no one else. Don’t ask me what happened after, who came or who said what, it’s all a blur. I just sat in my chair in the sitting room, still holding her hand in my mind – my Sadie.
I phoned you, of course. At least that’s what you told me when I admitted months after I couldn’t remember. I should’ve been alright for you when you and Rosaleen and the children arrived to say your goodbyes. I remember seeing your arms rise to hug me as I stood at the front door and them falling back by your side when you saw my face. You offered me your hand, instead. You clasped mine tightly, and my eyes concentrated on the two of them locked together until you let go. You touched my shoulder then, as you moved past into the hall. I can feel it there still, the only signifier that you were more than just another acquaintance who’d come to pay his respects. The shame of it. I wish now I’d wrapped my arms around you and cried on your shoulder and given you the chance to do the same. But no, I didn’t have the room for your grief as well as my own, it seemed.
What’s more, I shouldn’t have let you go home to New Jersey fretting about me. But I couldn’t rise to it, could barely rise at all for that matter. If I managed to get out of the bed, it was just to make it to my chair in the front room. There I sat with Sadie, walking through our lives together, until a cup of tea appeared in front of me, wrenching me back to my unwanted widowerhood. And I know you wouldn’t have returned to the States so soon after only for Robert convincing you that he’d look in on me and ring at the first sign of any problem.
You all came home again the following Christmas. We were to go to your in-laws, Rosaleen’s family, for the dinner. Good people, not that I made much of an effort with them over the years. I refused to go at the last minute.
‘Too much to keep an eye on,’ I said.
I knew they were only the half hour out the road but I couldn’t leave Sadie, not the first Christmas, it didn’t feel right. So you sent Rosaleen and the children on and stayed behind with me. Can’t even remember what we ate. Soup from the press, maybe. They came back a couple of hours later with two black plastic bags full of the kids’ presents and two tin-foil-covered plates of Christmas dinner.
Did I even manage to buy the children presents that year? That had always been your mother’s department.
That was the start of it, the first of the talk about the home. Well, when I say that, I mean the first time it was ever discussed in my presence. I’m sure it had been the topic of many a conversation before it reached my ears. Sure I knew it would come. What poor widow or widower living alone out there hasn’t dreaded its arrival?
‘Would you feck off,’ I told you out straight. ‘Wouldn’t I look the right eejit sitting in playing Telly Bingo with a load of old women in cardigans rather than out tending the cattle?’
In fairness, you laughed. That big, confident laugh – perhaps there’s something of my vocal genius in you after all.
‘Alright, Dad,’ you said, laying a hand on my knee, ‘we just thought you’d be safer there.’
‘Safer? What do you mean safer?’
‘Well, you just hear stories nowadays about people, you know, coming on to your property and—’
‘Sure isn’t that what this beauty’s for?’ I said, laying a hand on my faithful Winchester.
You looked bewildered. But I wasn’t giving up my life until I was good and ready.
As hard as it might be to hear, in a way I’m glad you live as far away as you do. I couldn’t stand the constant reminder that I must be a worry. I’d say your biggest fear is that I’d end up shooting some poor unsuspecting fool of a hill walker who might stumble on to the land.
Perhaps it’s a small consolation but I hope when you’re home you see that at least I’m clean. I manage perfectly on that score. I don’t smell, not like some I could mention. Old age is no excuse for stinking to high heaven. Sparkling, that’s what I am, having a good wash every morning with the face cloth and, of course, there’s the bath once a week. I had one of those rail things put in about five years ago and now I can lower myself in and out as easy as lifting that first pint. I’m not one for showers, could never take to them. Whenever I look at one I feel cold, that’s why I refused to have one installed despite your mother’s protests.
My greatest discovery of late has to be the launderette over in Duncashel that collects my offerings and drops them back three days later. Not like the local one, you wouldn’t find her doing anything as helpful as that. Every week Pristine Pete’s gets my business, sending me back my shirts, crisper and cleaner than Sadie could ever have managed, however blasphemous that might sound.
And what’s more there’s Bess, cleaning the house. Twice a week, never fail. Polishing and scrubbing it back to perfection. I think your mother would’ve liked her.
‘I’ll take your best cleaner with no English,’ I told the agency in Dublin, ‘I don’t want anyone local. I want someone discreet who’s not a gossip. I’ll pay extra for her petrol if needs be.’
She cooks too. Leaves me a couple of stews for the week. Mind you, they taste nothing like Sadie’s; in fact, I couldn’t tell you what they are. It took me a while to get used to them. Garlic, lots of that, apparently. But I surprised myself when I started to look forward to them, especially the chicken one. All that time with Bess, keeping me going, Robert was killed telling me I could’ve gotten the Health Board to foot the bill for a cleaner and gotten Meals on Wheels into the bargain.
‘Are you mad?’ I said, ‘I’ve never had a handout in my life and I’m certainly not starting now.’
Svetlana has sauntered over. Finished with her inspections and cleaning and glass stacking. She’s been pacing the bar for the last few minutes, waiting for the hordes to arrive.
‘You here for dinner later, yes?’
I like that name of hers. Svetlana. It’s straight up, sharp yet still has a bit of beauty about it. I wonder how I look to her? Nuts, no doubt. Sitting here, lost in my thoughts, the odd mumble escaping every now and again. She leans forward on the counter, eager for something to happen, even a lame conversation with the auld lad at the bar will do, it seems.
‘I’m not,’ I say, and it’s there I’d normally leave it. But tonight is no ordinary night. ‘Is tonight your first night here?’ I ask.
‘Second. I work last night.’
I nod, swirl the last drop at the bottom of my glass, before downing it. Ready now to begin the first of five toasts: five toasts, five people, five memories. I push my empty bottle back across the bar to her. And as her hand takes it and turns away, happy to have something to do, I say under my breath:
‘I’m here to remember – all that I have been and all that I will never be again.’
Chapter Two
7.05 p.m.
First Toast: to Tony
Bottle of stout
There’s stirrings out in the foyer. Looks like the boys in all their finery are beginning to trickle in. I’ll not have this place to myself for much longer.
‘Another stout, there,’ I say to Svetlana who looks like she’s having an attack of first-night nerves. ‘Keep that seat for me there. Don’t be letting those lads take it. The best seat in the house.’