Small Things Like These(9)

On the Saturday, when he got back from the morning round, Kathleen looked fed up, but they were down now to the last batch of orders. She handed him the dockets, saying a big order had just come in from the convent.

‘I’ll go on out now and tell them to get this one ready before evening,’ Furlong said. ‘I’ll deliver it myself in the morning.’

‘Tomorrow’s Sunday, Daddy.’

‘What choice have I? We’re more than full on Monday – and then it’s the half-day on Christmas Eve.’

He didn’t bother with lunch, just swallowed a mug of tea with a handful of biscuits, feeling the urgency to get back out, but he paused to warm himself for a minute at the gas heater. The heater on the lorry was giving out, and his legs and feet were cold.

‘Are you warm enough in here, Kathleen?’

She was sorting the invoices but seemed at a loss to find a space, to put them down.

‘I’m all right, Daddy.’

‘You’re all right?’

‘I’m grand,’ she said.

‘Have any of these men been giving you guff while I was out?’

‘No.’

‘If so, you have to tell me.’

‘There’s nothing like that, Daddy. Honest.’

‘Swear to God.’

‘I swear to God.’

‘What, then?’

She turned away and stiffened with the papers in her hand.

‘What’s the matter, a leanbh?’

She pushed the copy of the convent order down on the spike.

‘I just want to go out with my friends to the shops now before they close and see the lights and try on jeans, but Mammy called down earlier and says I have to go with her to the dentist.’

*



The next morning, when Furlong woke and lifted the curtain, the sky looked strange and close with a few, dim stars. On the street, a dog was licking something from a tin can, pushing it noisily across the frozen pavement with his nose. Already the crows were out, sidling along and letting out short, hoarse caws and longer, fluent kaaahs as though they found the world more or less objectionable. One stood tearing at a pizza box, holding the cardboard down with his foot and pecking, suspiciously, at what was there before flapping his wings and quickly flying off with a crust in his beak. Dapper, some of the others looked, striding along, inspecting the ground and their surroundings with their wings tucked in, putting Furlong in mind of the young curate who liked to walk about town with his hands behind his back.

Eileen was fast asleep, and for a while he watched over her, feeling the need of her, letting his gaze idle over her bare shoulder, her open, sleeping hands, the soot-black darkness of her hair against the pillowslip. The longing to stay, to reach out and touch her was deep, but he took his shirt and trousers from the chair and dressed in the dark, without her waking.

Before going downstairs, he went in to check on Kathleen, who was sleeping after having a tooth pulled. Beside her, Joan stirred a little and turned over, and let out a sigh. In the far bed, Loretta was wide awake. Furlong didn’t so much see as sense her eyes shining, through the gloom.

‘Are you all right, pet?’ Furlong whispered.

‘Yes, Daddy.’

‘I’ve to go out now. I’ll not be long.’

‘Do you have to go?’

‘I’ll be back in half an hour, child. Go back to sleep.’

In the kitchen, he didn’t bother with the kettle or tea, but simply buttered a cut of bread which he ate from his hand before going on, to the yard.

Outside, the streets were slick with frost, and his boots, on the pavement, sounded unusually loud, it being so early on a Sunday. When he reached the yard gate and found the padlock seized with frost, he felt the strain of being alive and wished he had stayed in bed, but he made himself carry on and crossed to a neighbour’s house, whose light was on.

When he knocked, softly, on the door, it wasn’t the woman of the house who answered it but a youngish woman in a long nightdress and shawl. Her hair, which was neither brown nor red but the colour of cinnamon, fell almost to her waist, and her feet were bare. Behind her, a gas cooker was throwing rings of flame up under a kettle and saucepan, and three small children he recognised were sitting around the table with colouring books and a bag of raisins. The room smelled pleasantly of something familiar which he could not name, or place.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ Furlong said. ‘I’m from just across the way and trying to get into the yard but the padlock’s froze.’

‘Tis no bother,’ she said. ‘Is it the kettle you’re after?’

She sounded like she was from The West.

‘Aye,’ Furlong said. ‘If you don’t mind.’

She lifted her hair back over her shoulder, and Furlong saw an impression, which was unintended, of her breast, loose, under the cotton.

‘The kettle’s on. Here,’ she said, reaching for it. ‘Won’t you take it on with you.’

‘Surely you’ll want this for your tea.’

‘Take it on with you,’ she said. ‘You know there’s no luck to be had in refusing a man water.’

When he’d released the padlock and went back and knocked and softly called and heard her saying to come in, and pushed the door, a candle was lighted on the table and she was pouring hot milk over bowls of Weetabix for the children.