When All Is Said(49)

‘He helped me with problem I had. He is very nice, very kind.’

‘He is that. You’re not from here then?’

‘Me? No!’ she says, as if it were madness to think any sane person could possibly be born, bred and still live here.

‘Latvia,’ said so proudly, it makes me smile.

‘What do you think of working here then, at the hotel?’ I ask, determined that she will drag nothing else from me.

‘Yes. It’s nice. Busy. Emily, is very nice person.’

‘Ah, Emily. Yes, a lady.’

‘Yes. Emily is lady,’ she states, like she’s confused at how I could possibly mix up her gender.

I smile more to myself than to her and think what an even richer man I’d be if I could bottle and sell that ballsiness of hers.



* * *



When you were small, no more than four, I came in late one evening. The kitchen was empty. Spick and span as it always was straight after the dinner. I knew Sadie would’ve been elbow deep in soapy water, scrubbing the kitchen back to order, not an hour before. My place lay set at the table. As I lifted the saucepan lid off my dinner and stuck it in the Aga, I could hear your voices from down the hall. I sat to the Meath Chronicle, perusing the market news. Try as I might not to let it, the laughter got the better of me in the end and I left the paper down and headed in your direction. The bathroom door was open, and as I passed it I could see the bath still quarter full, with a couple of surviving suds and a yellow duck floating among them. I held back in the hallway peering in at the pair of you next door in your bedroom.

‘Kevin, I love you. Your Mammy loves you,’ Sadie said, marking every word with a kiss to your tummy as you lay on the ground being dried. ‘She loves every bone of you, do you know that?’

‘Hmm hmm,’ you replied, happily watching puffs of white rise from the Johnson’s baby powder container every time you pressed its middle.

‘And does Kevin love Kevin?’ Puff upon puff of whiteness filled the air. Does Kevin love Kevin, I repeated in my head.

You didn’t reply. Instead you turned the talcum powder upside down, shaking it vigorously on to your tummy and the floor.

‘Because if you love this wee boy,’ she continued, dispersing the powder all over you, ‘and are always kind to him and always try to understand him then I think he will be the happiest little man in the whole wide world.’ She used the corner of the bath towel to rub the white smatterings from the carpet. ‘Will you do that, will you love Kevin for me? Will ya? Ya rascal,’ she asked, administering another tickle that let loose more squeals of laughter.

I never disturbed you but made my way into our darkened bedroom and sat on the side of the bed looking out at the silhouette of our trees and the hills against the night sky, brightened by one of the biggest moons I’d ever seen. It was too much even for me, a man of forty-three, to try to comprehend what Sadie had said, let alone a child of four. Loving yourself? The very thought. I reached for the bedside lamp, fumbling to find the switch under the shade. I pulled the curtains closed and stood looking at the brown flowers with their orange centres, one after another, row upon row. My finger rose to follow the pattern of the petals. My blackened nail and layers of hardened skin that had no hope of feeling the fibre circled anyway.

‘Oh, you’re home?’ Sadie said, from the door behind me.

‘Thought I’d change out of these,’ I said, my fingers pulling away from the flowers, pretending at taking off my jumper.

‘A first for everything, I suppose. I left the dinner for you.’

‘I saw that.’

‘This man’s off to bed.’ Her head nodded in the direction of your room. ‘Are you coming in to say good night?’

‘I’ll be in now.’

How many times did Sadie talk to you that way, I wonder. And is that why you are the man you are? So sure and happy in your life?



* * *



You never wanted the land, not even one bit interested. I tried. Made you work alongside me, from early on, out in your rain gear and boots. She’d have had you in bubble wrap if I’d let her. Aren’t children supposed to love the mud and getting themselves dirty? Not you. There were times I got so frustrated. That moanie head on you. Miserable you’d be. Wet and feckin’ miserable. Picking at the straw with your fork, like it was diseased.

‘Come on. Give it a bit of welly,’ I’d say, demonstrating how it should be done. You’d stretch the fork a little further, but that would be it. Soon you’d be back to picking at the edges.

‘Go in,’ I’d say, ‘go in to blazes. I’ll do it me feckin’ self.’

Off you’d go then, back inside, bawling. I’d see Sadie bend to comfort you through the kitchen window, unfurling you from all of your protective layers.

‘Ach, Maurice, he’s only wee, can you not be a little kinder?’ I didn’t need to hear what she’d have to say on the matter. I knew it by heart. I knew to leave well enough alone and not go in straight away, even if I’d been inclined. I bulled on outside, cursing your softness. I gave up trying after a few years. Left you to your books.

‘How do you read them yokes?’ I asked you once. ‘The size of them.’ You must have been in secondary by then. Sitting at the kitchen table when I came in, always at the books.