Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? A Memoir(11)
The memories I have left are patchy and fleeting, but can still rise, fully formed. They’re not particularly impressive or spectacular; they’re the kind of homespun everyday things that shouldn’t really have stuck around.
1. I am in a car, Mammy’s car, and we’re driving down Abercorn Road.
I have no idea when this would have been, since I can’t place my own age, but we’re on our own in Mammy’s horrible old Datsun, a white car in the shape of a loafer that would subsequently grow old and mossy in the little parking area around the back of the house, behind the kitchen. There’s music on the radio. My knees are pressed up near my chest, because like all little boys I am locked in a constant, futile cycle of actions designed exclusively to be scolded for. She is telling me to put them down, and placing her left hand on mine for a moment, before changing gear. She is humming along to the radio, which is playing ‘Eternal Flame’ by the Bangles. She is still smiling from something just said by the presenter before the song began. I feel like we were travelling from William Street, but we could have been coming from Nazareth House on Bishop Street, or our parish church of St Columba’s, Long Tower.
2. I am shouting at her on my birthday.
I suppose it would make sense that it’s my fifth. I am sitting in the kitchen with my friends around me, and Daddy to my right. I have, bless my little heart, become a little over excited by the day’s events and, in that constant way of children’s birthday parties, reduced myself to something bestial and cruel, a godless little horror. I believe I have just witnessed someone eating some of my cake before I’d got a chance to, and decreed this to be the last mistake they’d make on this highest of high holy days. I scream at them to stop, and all my little friends are looking at each other, or suddenly seem quite fascinated by their fingernails. Mammy, quite understandably, remonstrates with me about being nicer to my friends, and I scream in her face, quite forcefully because she doesn’t understand me, birthdays, or cake.
3. She is coming in to pick me up from school.
I am in reception class, with Mrs Hartop, and being allowed to continue playing at the table where you sort things by shape or colour while all the other kids are packing up and going home. I’m afforded this extra few minutes because my mother is catching up with Mrs Hartop. They are both laughing and smiling, and Mrs Hartop grabs my mother’s arm at one point in that ‘oh no, stop it’ way you sometimes do to emphasise how little you want someone to stop it. They are at the back of the class, and I am proud that Mammy knows the teacher so well, because none of the other parents talk to her at all. She sticks out her hand in a wordless gesture that means we’re going and as I cradle my head to her knee she tells me to say goodbye.
4. We are on a bus on Bishop Street.
My mother is carrying shopping bags, and the plastic handles are digging into her fingers. The bus has either stopped for a long time, or has just been interrupted by the army. We are at the bottom end of Bishop Street, with the river on our left and Moore Walk on our right, just before the turn toward the dump, and the Brandywell. It’s a bright, sunny day, and there is a bomb somewhere on the road. The sunlight is coming in the window at such an angle that I have to cup my hand slightly over one eye to see the driver, who is talking to a soldier through the window. He looks bothered but not upset. Mammy, looking worried, puts her shopping down and holds my hand very tight. She is chewing her thumbnail. There are two more soldiers outside, not looking in but talking to each other; both are carrying machine guns, and are beside two armoured cars in which sit several other soldiers. There is a woman at the front of the bus, near the driver, who jokes with him after the soldier departs. We are not allowed to leave the bus. Instead we reverse back up Bishop Street until we can turn and take a detour some way back. I say the words ‘bomb scare’ for days afterwards.
5. She is dancing with Daddy.
We’re all in the kitchen with Mammy, when Daddy enters with a rose, or bouquet of roses, for Mammy. It’s Valentine’s Day or their anniversary or something, and he gives her a decidedly PG kiss on the cheek as he presents the flowers, with great theatricality for our benefit. Groans of displeasure ring out as he does so, and he takes delight in the sincere mortification evoked by his showing Mammy affection. Emboldened, he places a rose between his teeth like a crooning heart-throb and affects a Lothario facial expression, all arched eyebrows and tilted head. He takes Mammy by the hand and leads her around the kitchen, cheek to cheek, in an improvised waltz, the rose still in his mouth. There are squeals of laughter, and he sings something schmaltzy and adoring into her ear. Mammy is blushing and laughing, and I am screaming with delighted horror.
6. I am eating a Penguin bar.
It’s a Friday. Mammy has got off early, maybe. Someone is early, I can feel that for sure. It’s me, Fionnuala and Conall, the three youngest. We are sitting at the giant kitchen table, with a Penguin bar each and some lemonade. This is a party. It’s special, because Mammy doesn’t usually let us have chocolate or fizzy drinks, but on Fridays before the school ones come in, we have this little treat among ourselves. Mammy is asking us about our days, genuinely interested to know what we’ve been up to.
7. We are sitting in a caravan.
We’re in Westport, Mayo, and Mammy and I are sitting in the caravan, the old caravan that is too small for all of us but seems perfect for just us two. My friend Andrew and his mother are here too, because they’ve been staying in the same caravan park, and it was a surprise that they are there, and his mum comes in. They are speaking quietly in the back part, while we play with toys at the table to the side, both very confused as to how friends from school have somehow appeared, fully formed, 150 miles from our usual haunt, across a border where accents are unfamiliar and even the sweets are different. It is nine or ten at night, the light is dimming, and one or both of us has been woken up to see the other, so we can play while they chat. Mammy and Mrs McIvor are friends because they gave birth to us in adjacent hospital beds, he arriving three hours after me. Mammy is talking about hospitals again, and smiling for Mrs McIvor, and saying that things are in God’s hands. Mammy’s hands are in Mrs McIvor’s, who has clasped them between the handkerchief she’s been using to wipe her eyes.