When All Is Said(15)

‘Mam, is there nothing we can do about Tony’s cough?’ May complained one day. ‘It’s keeping me awake. I’m making a hames of this bread, I’m that tired.’

But there had been no need to alert my mother to Tony’s debility. I’d seen her watching him for days: as he crossed the yard slower than usual and coughed at the dinner table and slept in the armchair after the tea.

‘You’ll sleep in our room tonight, Tony,’ she told him, the day he had lifted his hand to his chest.

‘Mam, I’m grand, sure that honey drink you made me is working mighty.’

‘No matter. You’ll be in the upper room. We’ll take yours. Maurice, you can take the chairs in the kitchen.’

What I didn’t know until after he died was that my mother had watched her younger brother Jimmy die of the same thing. People didn’t talk much of things like that in those days. Death and illness were sacred and silent, not to be stoked and stirred. But it seems for years she’d been on alert, watching us with our coughs and colds, ready to pounce. Ready to begin battle with the demon that had taken her favourite brother. With Tony, her time had finally come.

She washed the sheets and eiderdown from our bed that day. She and my father slept fully clothed under a blanket until they finally dried. Meanwhile I set up my chairs, one facing the other, in the kitchen. A blanket and my mother’s winter coat around me. It was a while before I fell asleep that first night. I listened to Tony’s cough, his constant call, as I tried to figure out what this change in sleeping arrangements meant.

The next day was a Sunday as I recall, and my father left in the trap when it was still dark and returned two hours later with Doctor Roche. I watched from the shed, as they went inside. I ran to Tony’s window, to try to hear his fate. Jenny and May came out soon after. The three evictees stood in the blowing rain, waiting.

‘It’s got to be,’ Jenny whispered to May, as we huddled under the dripping thatch, leaning into the frame of the window as far as we could.

‘Don’t say that, Jenny. Don’t be wishing it on him.’

‘I’m not doing that, for heaven’s sake. I’m just saying, that’s what young Wall died of and Kitty told me that’s how it had started.’

‘Quiet, Jenny, Tony might hear.’

Later, we went to Mass in Duncashel, not the usual local church, in order to drop the doctor home. I felt sorry for the horse having to cart the lot of us that distance. Tony didn’t come. We journeyed in silence. In the pew, I watched my parents pray in concentration. My mother’s eyes shut tight, her wrinkles bunched up with the effort, as her busy lips tipped her folded hands.

After we got home, silence reigned. Jenny, May and me wandered about, waiting to be let in on the mystery. We never went near the shut door of the upper room where Tony slept. We moved between our bedroom and the kitchen, eventually deciding on the most sedate game of twenty-five I ever remember. After a while the girls rose to help Mother with the dinner while my father never lifted his head above his Sunday paper.

‘Tony has consumption,’ he said later, as we stared at our dinner plates. ‘But you’ll not say a word to anyone. Do you hear? As far as the world is concerned that boy has broken his leg from a fall in the field. Do you understand me now?’

The three siblings stole a glance at each other, then nodded our collusion.

‘The doctor won’t say a word to anyone. He wants us to move Tony to the upper shed. He’s afraid of it infecting the lot of us. But we’ll tend him here. He’ll not be put out…’ My father broke off his words and balled up his fists and pushed them deep into his pockets. ‘You girls will look after Tony in the mornings when Mam is working,’ he continued after a bit, ‘the doctor has told her what to do. Rest is the best cure, he says. We’ll not lose him. We’ll not lose that boy.’

The word went out Tony had broken his leg. If people knew the truth, we’d have been done for. TB was as contagious as gossip. The Dollards would have let us go there and then. As it turned out, none of us picked it up, although I do believe it lingered with my mother and that’s what hurried on her own death, years later. It was hard, keeping it a secret. People called. Well-wishers. Not often, mind, but the odd time, a neighbour would drop by. Jenny or May would run to meet them in the yard and make up all sorts before they got close to the house:

‘He’s not in great shape today. Sorry now, and you after coming over.’

‘He’s in a lot of pain. I’ll let him know you called. It’ll do him the world of good to know you’re thinking of him.’

‘He’s up there now trying to do those exercises the doctor gave him, but he’s frustrated; you know how it is.’

I’m sure after a while people began to suspect. But no one ever asked us.

The only time Tony was left on his own was on a Sunday when the rest of us headed off to Mass. Despite being away from him for those couple of hours, that time was still all about him. I did some pleading for his salvation myself as I held the host in my mouth. To my left and right, I knew the others were doing the same.

The doctor told us to feed him ‘nutritious’ food and give him stout every day, for the iron. Tony was thrilled at the prospect. But of course, it all cost money. Nutrition back then meant red meat and vegetables. We had the carrots, cabbage and potatoes growing out in the garden. Often that’s all we had. White meat was not so much of a problem, what with the few chickens we had running ’round the yard. When one got too old to lay, well, then she ended up on our plates. The red stuff was more difficult. Every now and again though, a bit would be found from somewhere. We didn’t begrudge him an ounce, that’s not to say we didn’t lick our lips as it roasted in the range. When I went up to him one evening, he told me to shut the door, all conspiratorial like.