‘Get out to blazes, ya pup.’
He pulled at me until there was nothing left in my grip of the leg of the bed and I gave way. I stood crying in my nightshirt. Screaming the odds, telling them I wouldn’t go back. My mother had to dress me with me holding my body as stiff as I could. I refused to take a crumb of food and went to school defiant and starving.
Day after day, Tony walked by my side still trying to encourage me. While my parents had long given up coaxing and pushing me out the door, Tony never stopped telling me I was full of greatness. People didn’t really do that back then, encourage and support. You were threatened into being who you were supposed to be. But it was because of Tony’s words that I made that journey to school every day and suffered through the darkness, when my brain felt exhausted from not knowing the answers. I didn’t want to let him down, you see. Couldn’t let him know that I knew I was totally and utterly thick.
Even after he’d left school, Tony walked by my side every day to the door, enduring my silence. It was the only way I’d go. It had been his idea that for as long as our father could spare him the twenty minutes, he’d walk the road every morning. In the classroom I never raised my hand or heard the sound of my own voice. I would sink so low in my seat that I was sure if you were standing at the back of the room you’d think no one sat there at all.
It took three more years before the master decided to walk the road to our farm. It was after school and I was already home, busy with the chickens. When I saw him in the yard I hid behind the coop. My mother came out, wiping her hands in her apron, looking worried. They spoke briefly before she pointed towards the lower field to where my father and Tony were working and off he went. Tony came up not long after.
‘What does he want?’ I asked, coming out from behind the coop and running alongside him as he made a steady pace towards the back door of the house.
‘I’ve no idea. I was told to go back up to the house for tea.’
‘For tea? It’s not that time. It’s about me, isn’t it?’
‘I told you, Maurice, nobody told me anything. I’m starving. Listen, I’ll be out in a minute. Go on you back to the coop.’
I did as I was told and returned to lean up against the wooden slats, to brood my way through all kinds of possibilities. The worst of which involved me being shipped off to some home for people who couldn’t read one line of a book without breaking into a sweat. I walked in circles around and around the coop, kicking at the chickens whenever one ventured out and got in my way.
‘Don’t worry, Big Man, it’ll all be OK,’ Tony said, coming out after a bit, the remnants of my mother’s soda bread still lingering around his mouth. But his eyes couldn’t hide his concern, no matter how much he smiled.
‘Whatever he says, Maurice, it’ll be OK, you know that. We’ll figure this all out together, right?’
I kicked at the straw, not able to raise my eyes to him.
‘Big Man, come on now. What is it I always say to you?’
I kicked again, refusing to be shaken from my silence.
‘You and me against the world. Isn’t that it? Come on, say it, Big Man. Let me hear you.’
‘You and me…’ I mumbled, my head still down, the sole of my shoe scuffing the earth, not wanting to repeat his bloody refrain any more. Because the truth of it was, there was no ‘him and me’ in this war, it was just me and my stupidity.
‘… AGAINST THE WORLD,’ he chanted, ‘that’s it.’ He gave me an encouraging puck to the shoulder.
We stayed in the coop until my father and the master came into view, walking slowly up the hill, deep in serious conversation. They stopped at the haggard wall to finish whatever it was occupied them. Then my father nodded, tipped his cap and watched him leave the yard. He looked over at Tony then, and beckoned him with the tilt of his head. He didn’t look at me, but simply turned back down to the field with my fate in tow. Tony laid his hand on my shoulder and whispered:
‘Remember what I said, me and you,’ then fell in behind my father.
An hour later, the whole family sat around the long kitchen table for our tea, Tony showing no signs of distress at having to go through it all again.
‘Master Duggan thinks you might be best working the land, Maurice,’ my father announced, ‘says you’ve grown grand and strong and that you’d make a fine farmer, like your big brother here. Well, what do you think? You’re not one for the books anyway. Am I wrong?’
I let the seconds slip by, swallowing the bread in my mouth, imagining it slipping down my throat sinking into the pit of my stomach.
‘No,’ I mumbled in reply, not lifting my eyes from the plate. My head nearly stuck in it, I was hunched that low.
‘Well, good, that’s that then. Your mother will make enquiries at the Dollards’ farm and see if they’re in need of an extra pair of hands. No school tomorrow so. You’ll work with us ’til something sorts itself out.’
My embarrassment hovered in the air between us, circling the teapot, the milk jug and the bowl of hardboiled eggs. I found it hard to swallow any further. Closing my eyes, I gulped at my tea, wolfing down my shame.
‘Big Man,’ Tony whispered later in bed, as we lay in the dark, ‘this is a good thing. School’s not for everyone. The land now, that’s a whole different story. See those hands of yours, that’s what they’re made for.’
I lifted my hands to my eyes, trying to examine them in the pitch dark. I knew he was right this time, but still I’d wanted to be so much more, for him most of all.
People used to say the Dollard house was beautiful, not that my mother ever did, though. She worked there too, you see, in the kitchen. To a ten-year-old boy, on his first day at work it was nothing but creepy. My mother walked me over, she talked at me all the way. I was too distracted by the chestnuts that littered our path through the fields to take much notice. More specifically it was the conkers inside waiting to be cracked open. Huge, perfect beasts for thrashing Joe Brady’s meagre offerings. I caught some of her words, though: ‘manners’ and ‘respect’. But the reality of the life ahead didn’t hit home until I was stuck under the watchful eye of the farm manager, Richard Berk. A stern man, a man well trusted by Hugh Dollard, the head of the house. Over my six years under his care, I often saw the two of them huddled together, heads almost touching, whispering. At ten, I had grown tall and was nearly as big as Mam, five foot two. I was broad and as strong as Tony. Berk hadn’t hesitated in taking me.
My mother worked in the mornings, helping the cook with the baking. Ten loaves of bread a day, mainly for the staff. For the Dollards, she made apple tarts and scones and much fancier affairs when they had guests. On our way across the fields, my mother always sang a tune: ‘Goodnight Irene’ was her favourite. I sang along with her. She loved to hear me sing, she said. A couple of years before, she’d signed me up for Father Molloy’s choir. I was put standing on the altar with the other recruits, all girls. Not a note came out of my mouth. Petrified I was, at the very thought of any kind of public performance. I was sent home never to return. It didn’t stop me from singing along with my mother whenever we were together, though. I knew them alclass="underline" ‘Boolavogue,’ ‘I’ll Tell Me Ma,’ ‘McNamara’s Band.’ In later years, I dazzled Sadie with my talent. I even sang you to sleep once or twice when she was at her wits’ end. I’d stroke your forehead and off you’d go. Nowadays, I sing into the wind at the foot of her grave.
My mother was softly spoken. What words she said were to the point. Nothing wasted. Neither was she one for smiling. I remember her laughter because it was rare. Sweet and quiet, embarrassed for intruding almost. My uncle John, my mother’s brother, brought home a banana from London on a visit, once. We’d never seen one before. He placed it on one of her willow plates, remember them? I think we still had some when you were little. Anyhow, there it was, placed right in the middle of the table like some precious jewel. My mother looked at it and laughed. Clear and melodious it was, like a song thrush. As each member of the family arrived to see the peculiar-looking fruit, my mother’s laugh started up once more. I willed others to come so she wouldn’t stop. I moved as close to her as I could, to taste and feel her happiness. I remember my head pushed in against the material of her apron, closing my eyes to hear her joy and feel her body vibrate. Irresistible. But, whatever chance I had of hearing her laugh at home there was no hope of it at work.