A Week in Winter(21)

‘Yes, when she is ready she’ll meet them. She’s not ready yet. Anyway, it would be making us centre stage at the wedding with our twin babies. It’s Nasey and Irene’s day.’

He saw it was sensible but his heart was heavy at the mother who couldn’t reach out in such a little way. He knew that Carmel was right. Not this time: it was enough that he would see his mother again. Things must be done in stages.

When Rigger saw his mother, he hardly recognised her. She seemed to have aged greatly. There were lines in her face that he never remembered and she walked with a stoop.

Could all this have happened in such a short time?

Nuala was perfectly polite to Carmel but there was a distance about her that was almost frightening. During the party in the pub, Rigger pulled his cousin Dingo aside.

‘Tell me what’s wrong with my mam? She’s not herself.’

‘She’s been that way for a good bit,’ Dingo said.

‘What way? Like only half listening?’

‘Sort of not there. Nasey says it was all the shock of . . . Well, whatever it was back then.’

Dingo didn’t want to rake up bad memories.

‘But she must be over that now,’ Rigger cried. ‘Things are different now.’

‘She felt she made a total bags of raising you. That’s what Nasey says. He can’t persuade her that it’s nonsense.’

‘What can I do to tell her?’

‘It’s got to do with the way she feels inside. You know, like those people who think they’re fat and starve themselves to death. They have no image of themselves. She probably needs a shrink,’ Dingo said.

‘God Almighty, isn’t that desperate.’ Rigger was appalled.

‘Here, I don’t want you getting all down about it. It’s Nasey and Irene’s day. Stick a smile on your face, will you.’

So Rigger stuck a smile on his face and even managed to sing ‘The Ballad of Joe Hill’, which went down very well.

And when Nasey was making his speech he put an arm around Rigger and Dingo’s shoulders and said that he had the two finest nephews in the western world.

Rigger looked over at his mother. Her face was empty.

Carmel noticed everything and understood most things without having them explained to her. It didn’t take her long to get the picture here. She had talked to her mother-in-law about subjects far removed from Rigger and the family. One by one, however, the topics she raised seemed to run into the ground. No use asking about television programmes – Nuala didn’t own a television set. She rarely went to the cinema. There wasn’t time to read. She admitted that it was harder to get decent jobs because of the recession. Nobody paid you more than the minimum wage. Women didn’t give you their clothes like they used to, they sold them online nowadays.

She answered questions as if it was an interview in a Garda station. There was none of the normal to and fro of a conversation. Apart from hoping that all was well back at Stoneybridge, she asked nothing about her grandson and granddaughter.

‘Do you take a drink at all, Nuala?’ Carmel asked.

‘No, no, I never got in the habit of it.’

‘Rigger doesn’t drink either, which makes him fairly unusual in our part of the world, but I do love the occasional glass of wine. Can I get you one?’

‘If you’d like to, yes,’ said Nuala.

Carmel brought two glasses of white wine back to their little table.

‘Good luck to the bride and groom,’ she said.

‘Indeed.’ Nuala raised her glass mechanically.

‘I’m taking a big risk here but I’m just going to tell you something. I love Rigger with all my heart. He is the perfect husband and the perfect father. You won’t know this because you haven’t seen him in that role. He works all the hours God sends. There is one thing he is not – he is not a son. He is nobody’s son. As a father himself now he would love to know something about his own father, but he wouldn’t ask you any questions about him, not in a million years. But much more important than anything, he wants his mother back. He wants so much to share this good life he has now with you.’

Nuala looked at her, astonished.

‘I haven’t gone away,’ she said.

‘Please, let me finish then I promise that I will never mention this again. He’s just not complete. You are the one piece of the jigsaw that’s missing. He never thinks that you were a bad mother. Every single thing he says about you is high praise. I would die happy if I thought my son Macken would talk so well of me. You don’t have to do anything at all, Nuala. You can forget I said any of this. I won’t tell him. He wanted to bring the children up to meet you but I asked him not to. I said that one day they would meet their grandmother Nuala, but not until she was ready. You say you feel guilty about letting him run wild. He now feels guilty that he has made you unbalanced and ruined your life.’

‘Unbalanced?’

‘Well, that’s what it is, isn’t it? You’ve got the balance wrong. You need someone to help you to mend the scales. Like as if you had a broken leg. It wouldn’t heal without someone to set it.’

‘I don’t need a doctor.’

‘We all need a doctor some time along the way. Why don’t you try it? If it’s no use then it’s no use, but at least you gave it a try.’