When All Is Said(16)

‘Here, Big Man, have this,’ he said, as soon as the latch had lowered. There in his fist, in his handkerchief, he held a chunk of beef.

He must have had it there since dinnertime.

‘Ah Tony, I can’t be taking your food.’

‘Jesus man, they were stuffing it into me. The size of it. It was like there was a whole cow sitting on the plate. Take it. I kept it for you.’

‘They’ll kill me.’

‘I reckon they take little bites themselves. I could’ve sworn there was a hole in that piece when Jenny brought it in,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘For God’s sake man, sure you’re holding down two jobs now having to work with the auld lad when you get home from that place.’

All the doctors in Ireland would’ve been having heart attacks watching me take that from his spotted handkerchief, but I tell you now that morsel tasted like heaven. As cold and squashed as it was, it was pure tasty.

It felt wrong after all those days and years of Tony walking beside me to school, encouraging and supporting me, that I had to leave him in the bed every morning to go to the Dollards. I always left it till the last minute, hanging around chatting and messing with him when he was up to it, before my mother dragged me out the door. I went with a heavy heart, my boots feeling like they were filled with the weightiest of stones, slowing my path away from him. If I’d had my choice it would’ve been me waiting on him, bringing him his dinner, standing over him with a bowl when he was coughing his insides up, helping him up from the bed and getting him settled on the chamber pot so he could do his morning duty. The rest of the world could have mocked and jeered me all they liked but I would’ve done that and more for him if I’d been let.

I refused to allow the women to tend him all the time. I’d run all the way home from the job to grab his tea tray and bring it up before any of them had the chance. Gone, before Mam, long home from work by that stage, had time to protest. Although, I knew she approved as I caught her grin before I scarpered. Outside Tony’s door, I’d hold the tray with one hand under it and knock with the other.

‘Enter,’ he’d call, like he was lord of the manor. ’Course, he knew it was me, ’cause I’d have given him my trademark rap on the bedroom window, five beats, as I flew in home earlier.

‘Is that lazy fecker not up yet?’ I’d say in the hallway as I hung up my cap, loud enough so he could hear.

I’d smile at his reply and lift the latch. But God forgive me, every time I saw his hollowed-out face, it was a shock. It was always, always, like I was seeing it for the first time. The laughter gone out of me, only the remains of an embarrassed smile that admitted how bad I was at keeping up the pretence that there was nothing wrong with the brother I adored and that he wasn’t just one more cough away from leaving us.

‘Big Man,’ he’d say or splurt.

‘Still codding us that you’re sick, I see.’

I’d take my seat beside him on my mother’s chair, the one her mother had bought her when she married. If Tony were strong enough, I’d put the tray on his lap and he’d feed himself. But as time went on he wasn’t able to even pull himself up, and so I’d break up the bits of bread and feed it to him as he lay propped up slightly by a pillow. If he were in the eating humour, which wasn’t often, I’d put the bread anywhere but near his mouth. It made us laugh. It wasn’t that funny, I suppose, when I think of it now, but it was all we had.

Often, he was too weak to join in with my nightly updates on how my day had gone. I got used to the sound of my own voice, telling him what was going on over the boundary wall.

‘What I find mad, Tony, is that our own fields can’t be that different from theirs. But you should see the size of the stones I was pulling from those acres over there today. Boulders they were. Boulders. My back is near broken from them.’

Mostly he lay there listening. Not always able to reply.

‘Dollard senior’s getting worse, if that’s possible. Since he sent Thomas packing he’s like a briar. Apparently, the mother and daughter are no better. The cook says none of them are speaking now. I don’t know, a disinheritance over one bloody coin!’

I felt no guilt that it was me and the coin lying under my brother’s head that had caused Thomas’s banishment. Tony was the only one I ever told about the extent of what Thomas had done to me. The beatings. The constant fear of them. I wore the scar for all to see but no one, not my mother or father or sisters, had ever asked how I was about it all. And do you know, neither would I have wanted them to, I would have felt like a right eejit telling them how much it still stung. But sometimes as Tony lay sleeping, his face wincing with pain, I went over it.

‘Maurice,’ he said once, spluttering away, giving me a fright ’cause I thought he was asleep, ‘someday, achmm, achmm … someday that fecker’ll get his comeuppance.’

‘Take it easy, Tony. Here, take the water. Mam won’t like me getting you riled up like that. You weren’t supposed to hear all that anyway.’

He took the water and gripped my hand that held the cup. He held my eyes, his breath catching.

‘Maurice … it’ll come right, wait and see.’

When Tony slept with me beside him in the chair, his breath struggled to take in what it needed, growing more laboured with each day that passed. I’d sit watching the rise and fall of his sunken chest, willing it to cop on and right itself. The amount of prayers I said sitting in that chair, would have made my mother proud; decades upon decades of the rosary, my eyes squinting shut, asking God to get on with working a miracle. I’d stay like that ’til I fell asleep too and my father came to tap me on the shoulder and send me off down to the kitchen to get some tea myself before going out to do the jobs he couldn’t do alone during the day. I’d rise and lay a hand on Tony’s shoulder then, my parting words always the same.