When All Is Said(50)

‘I dunno. I just do,’ you said. ‘They’re interesting. This one’s about the Mongols. One of their greatest weapons was that they smelt. Seriously, it says that no one ever wanted to be fighting downwind of these guys. That’s just hilarious.’

‘Yep. Hilarious,’ I said walking away from you, wondering where I’d gotten you at all.

Do you remember the time you came into the shed one evening and started mucking out? Fifteen, maybe you were. You stood right beside me and got stuck in. After years of hating muck and manure, you worked the whole evening in it. I looked at you out of the corner of my eye to see what you were at. Kept waiting for a question or something to explain this change of heart. But nothing came.

‘Will I start on them logs, Dad?’ you asked, pointing at the pile ready for chopping.

‘Go on so,’ I said, delighting in the idea of watching you struggle with the axe. On the other hand I was worried about what your mother would say when I’d tell her you’d lost a finger. But you fecker, you took up that thing as if you’d always worked one, a minor miracle. Lobbing the pieces into piles like you were some kind of lumberjack.

‘Anything else, Dad?’ you said, when you’d finished the lot.

‘No, you’re grand now. Come on, we’ll call it a night.’

I walked across the yard behind you wondering when it was finally going to come: the big reveal.

‘Tea?’ I asked, when we reached the warmth of the kitchen and I began to fill the kettle. You gave me the warmest of smiles, like I’d just handed you a hundred pounds.

‘Sure, go on so. Mine’s a coffee,’ you said, slouching into the refuge of one of the kitchen chairs.

‘Since when did you start drinking that stuff?’

‘Carl Bernstein only drinks coffee.’

I opened the press door and stood there looking at it like I was looking at a knitting pattern. I took down the Lyons then started to move the packets of soup and jars of jam and marmalade around, looking for the coffee.

‘Yeah, Bernstein, one of the greatest journalists alive. Nixon and all, Watergate?’ you said, raising your voice a little above the clatter. ‘Bernstein was one of the boys that broke the story.’ You were off your chair by now leaning on the counter right beside me. ‘That’s who I want to be. Well, when I say who I want to be, I mean—’

‘Got it,’ I said, pulling a blue Nescafé jar free. Looking at it, I rounded you to get at the kettle.

‘Did you know you can do a college course now to be a journalist?’

‘One spoon or two?’

‘Just the one. There’s a place in Dublin, Rathmines, where you can do a cert.’

The kettle clicked off.

‘Milk?’

‘No, I take it black.’

I brought the mugs to the table, with a handful of Fig Rolls, not bothering with a plate as I knew your mother was doing the ironing in front of the TV next door. Thursday was ironing day.

‘So, yeah, I was thinking I might look into it a bit more. See what points you need like.’

I sat sideways to the table, staring at the back door, while you started to slurp at the dark liquid. I could feel your eyes on me the whole time. In the background the kettle emitted little mini clicks, like sighs after all its exertions, as it cooled down.

‘Is that right?’ I finally said, ‘And tell me this, do you get extra points for drinking your coffee black?’

My son the journalist. I mean how the hell did that happen? I can just about manage to read the GAA results and the mart prices in the newspaper for Christ’s sake but write whole pages, give my opinion to the world – are you mad?

‘I hear himself wants to be a journalist?’ I said, to Sadie later, as we got ready for bed.

‘What?’ she said, looking in the mirror, concentrating on securing a wayward strand of hair into her curler.

‘Himself and the mucking out earlier? Turns out he wants to be a journalist.’

‘He’s told you so. I was wondering when he’d get around to it.’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Ah, Maurice, you know he’s always been into reading and writing.’

‘I know, but a career in it? Are there any jobs even?’

‘There’s no jobs in anything these days. Isn’t that what the teachers keep telling them? They’ll have to emigrate. Can you imagine, Maurice?’ she said, turning to me, looking horrified, as I sat in the bed. ‘Our little man leaving.’

‘Sure he’ll never make a penny at that game.’

‘Did you not hear me? It’s not about money, Maurice. We’re going to lose him. England or America.’

She turned from me with one of her exasperated sighs.

When you went off to college, the mourning went on for weeks. Even though you were only a few miles up the road in digs, where you were rung every evening and from which you came home every weekend with your backpack full of washing. But on a Saturday, I have to hand it to you, you still rose early to work alongside me.

‘Well?’ I’d say, ‘How are the books?’

‘Big,’ you said once, looking a bit hassled over the exams that were only a couple of weeks off.

‘Sure, didn’t I tell you this words business is a cod.’