When All Is Said(40)

* * *



When I met your mam it had been her intention to make her way home to Noreen, to be there to help out with her. She hoped to get a transfer to Donegal at some stage. But I scuppered her plans. Failing us moving there, it was Sadie’s wish that in later years Noreen would come to live with us, once your grandparents had passed. She told me once that she hoped this would coincide with medicine making such advances that Noreen might mellow, becoming at last the doted-on little sister of her longing. Only one wish was fulfilled when Noreen moved to Meath in seventy-four. Your Granny Mary died first with the father remaining to make the daily drive to Saint Catherine’s. It was a flu that was his downfall in the end. You don’t hear of that much these days, someone dying from flu, but it took that bull of a man. Noreen, to everyone’s surprise, didn’t seem at all upset by the prospect of a move hundreds of miles away to the brand spanking new nursing home in Duncashel. In fact, the day we arrived to pick her up, she beamed at us, not bothered by the recent loss of her father it seemed and delighted by the prospect of a new bedroom.

‘New room, new room,’ she repeated, intermittently as we drove south along the Donegal coastline, then east towards home.

Sadie was silent. I imagined a whole host of emotions churning around inside her. Sadness to have lost her father, fear that Noreen mightn’t settle, and concern that she, the big sister, might, once again, not be up to the job. You know what a worrier your mother was; she had herself in a state in the weeks building up to the move:

‘Maurice, what if she hates it? What if it sets her off on one of her fits and she doesn’t recover? I don’t know what I’d do. Would we have to bring her to live in the house with us then or what? Sure, we couldn’t bring her back to Donegal. Ach, are we doing the right thing at all?’

She sat in the passenger seat staring ahead the day of the move, like a scared little girl, needing to explain and defend this woman, merrily chatting away to herself in the rear. I reached my hand to hers as they writhed in her lap.

‘We’re in this together, Sadie,’ I said.

I think she nodded. My hand didn’t leave hers until the gears cried out. I felt her own hand move in under my left thigh then, where it nestled for the rest of the journey until we arrived on the gravel driveway of Duncashel Care Home. I’d barely stopped the car before Noreen was out and past the nurse standing waiting to greet us. We ran after her as she scurried down the corridors.

‘New room! New room!’ she chirped, louder and louder until the nurse finally caught up and escorted her to the yellow wallpapered room with its neat single bed and locker. And a large window at which she was to spend much of her life, looking out at the car park, waiting for us to arrive, or so your mother always thought.

Sadie cried buckets that night on leaving. It was utter relief, of course.

It became the tradition that Noreen came to our house every Saturday, thereafter. Most days, depending on her mood, she’d stay over long enough to attend Mass and then have Sunday dinner. You were about five at the time. You called her Auntie No-no.

‘No-no,’ she’d squeal, and so would you when you saw each other.

She wasn’t always a saint with you mind. Do you remember the rows? It was like having a second child. She was such a rummager, loved to poke about. One minute she was beside us and the next gone, and might have been for a while without us knowing. She was crafty in her escapes. In the early days we let her wander too much.

‘Auntie No-no, NO!’ we’d hear you scream from down the corridor.

We’d arrive to find some Lego thing you’d been building broken in bits on the floor. Your mam would stay with you and help set everything right again while I got Noreen out and back down to the sitting room, where she’d sit and watch the match with me, twiddling at my sleeve. In the end we had to lock your door when she came to stay. You’d take out a few toys to keep you going while she was there, bits that you didn’t mind sharing. She didn’t seem to care that your room was out of bounds. But still she’d check the door every time, in case we forgot.

You played endless games of Monopoly together.

‘What kind of rules are they playing in there at all?’ I asked your mother once, when I came in to find you both sprawled out on the sitting-room floor with It’s a Knock Out on the TV in the background. You had hotels and houses everywhere, in the jail, on the free parking, in the middle.

‘Their own,’ she said, smiling at me, laying the Saturday-evening fry in front of me.

It all ended in tears when she’d started to pocket the iron and the hat, not to mention the dog, your favourite.

‘Would you go see where that one is?’ Sadie said, this one Sunday when things seemed a little too quiet in the house. She was bending down to turn the roasting tin around in the Aga at the time. The aroma of the meat wafted around the kitchen, making my stomach howl. Reluctantly, I laid the sports section of the Sunday Independent down on the kitchen table and ventured forth.

‘Any sign of No-no, Kev?’ I asked, putting my head around the door of the sitting room to find you on your own, watching telly, giving it loads, pretending to be part of the action of the cowboy movie on screen.

‘Don’t let your mother see you on the back of that couch,’ I warned, as I left you to it.

‘Noreen,’ I continued, making my way down the corridor leading to our bedrooms, ‘are you there?’