Tom
Ger Doyle’s pub is all dark wood, a wall of shelves lined with bottles, stained glass from Murphy’s brewery, a typewriter and record player up on the bar.
Ger Doyle lets his two girls pull the pints.
I don’t like to see a woman pulling a pint.
They haven’t the wrists for it. One stands behind the bar, only a few years younger than me.
Smoking a cigarette, waiting for somebody to tell her what to do.
Another girl, perhaps my age, comes out from behind the bar in the full bloom of pregnancy.
She puts a shiver through me, which I choose to ignore.
‘The price of pork is gone astronomic.’
Bill Nevan says, sitting his pint on the bar.
Barrel-chested and going grey, he seems to be the oldest of these men.
I agree with him emphatically; I would agree with him if he said the price of pork had gone through the floor, also.
I try to somehow hide the sliced ham I bought this morning, though it’s wrapped and left on the counter in front of them all.
Whatever these men say, I will take on as my own opinion.
Just until we’re settled and they like us. Then I’ll see about speaking my mind.
‘Isn’t it a great thing?’
Another man, whose name I haven’t caught yet, replies. He is the only one drinking beer among pints of stout. Bill has the deepest, loudest laugh, which spills out of his mouth as he pats the man on the back.
‘’Tis well for you, boy.’
The unnamed man is some class of a pork farmer, I suppose.
Their conversation moves fast, and they don’t pause to catch me up.
I do what I can to laugh along and act like I know what they are talking about, afraid to say the wrong thing in case they revoke the offer to drink with them and pour my pint out onto the floor.
We stopped farming meat when I was a child, it’s just as well they moved on from pork.
‘What’s your game, Tom?’
John Moore asks. I have already met his wife in town, but I don’t mention this to him.
The words ‘medicine’ and ‘law’ almost jump out of my mouth.
The chance to make something of myself, here and now, is so tempting.
But I steer myself back to something truthful.
Better to be humble, to lie low. These don’t seem like the sort of men who would be impressed with anything too extravagant, anyway.
‘Turf.’
It’s only the last few years I’ve been a turf man. It doesn’t mean much to me, it’s just the most recent position I fell into. The false smiles they offer let me know that Ballycrea already has a turf man sorted. The conversation hops on again. But I can’t stop myself from interrupting.
‘But I was never workshy. You know the way. I was always glad to do whatever came my way. Turf, farming, barkeeping, you know, I’ve done it all like.’
I get a sympathetic nod from Bill. They know what I’m getting at. I can’t be the only man who has stood in this pub begging for a job. My God, it’s mortifying to try.
‘Con will give you a bit of work, I’m sure. I’d say he’s overrun with all his pigs.’
John Moore says. They all start laughing again as Con rolls his eyes, all of us absolutely certain that he won’t be giving me an ounce of work.
And at my own expense, I have to laugh along with them.
Well, at least I’ve learned another name.
They start to talk about horse racing; a man from two towns away is a jockey, and they all have opinions on him.
I don’t know the first thing about racing.
I don’t feel like much of a man right now.
When the pints are drained, all of us file out of the pub, and I let defeat take me by the hand.
This is the rhythm that most of my days have taken since we arrived in Ballycrea. Talking to whoever I can, wherever I can, so that I might get myself into a bit of employment before the money in the tin runs out. Mammy left us that money for our weddings. That almost makes me laugh now.
‘Mr O’Leary, how are things?’
Dr Desmond catches me off guard. A tall, handsome man. Too handsome for the likes of Ballycrea. Seeing me walk out of the pub at midday, with no job to go to.
‘Great! All great.’
I feel an enormous amount of pressure to impress him. Some part of me believes that if I am not funny, kind, or interesting enough, he will evict us from his cottage.
‘Everything okay above in the house?’
He looks me right in the eye. Between the damp and the dust and my family, there is very little right above in the cottage.
‘Perfect. All perfect.’
Surely he sees through this.
‘Good stuff. You’ll let me know if you’ve any trouble.’
He pats my shoulder and turns to leave without saying goodbye. Giving me no indication of how he feels about me.
It’s almost a full week that we’re here, and I still don’t feel I’m standing on solid ground with people.
Every day I’ve been in the pub, the post office, the shops and the square.
Conversing, charming, appearing friendly without appearing overbearing or desperate.
As though I’m only chatting for chatting’s sake.
And already, I have made an acquaintance of Mic Harney in the creamery, Ger Doyle and Bill Nevan in the pub.
Frank Lennox, who stands nearly all day on the corner stoop of his home across from Doyle’s, looking out on the town and commentating on all that happens before him.
I know John Moore and his wife, and now Con the pig farmer.
And while Anna berates me every evening for coming home without a job, at least I’m making a nice name for us in the town.
At least I’m trying. And doesn’t God love a trier?
’Tis no surprise that I’m the only one of us making an effort in Ballycrea. No surprise at all. Of course, Peggy goes to school, but besides that they only exist as rumours. Imagine, your Jack, afraid to venture out beyond the front door. Not the man you left. Not at all.
And in many ways, it’s making my life easier.
The less they are seen and known, the better chance I have at crafting a pleasing narrative for us.
As far as Ballycrea is convinced, we’re a perfectly lovely family.
Not too grand, not too shabby. Jack, a gentleman.
Peggy, an angel. Anna, a homemaker. And myself, head of the house.
Perhaps the locals are beginning to suspect that I’ve made up all these siblings of mine.
‘Tom, hello.’
Ciara Moore, John’s fed up-looking wife, greets me as I come into her shop. The little bell rings, an old man looks up at me from the chair by the door.
‘How are ye settling in?’
She asks, and I wonder if she already knows how poorly I just performed in conversation with her husband.
‘Oh great, yeah, ’tis a lovely place. Lovely people. Just the paper, thanks.’
I smile, hoping I look genuine, while I take a newspaper from the stand and leave it on the counter. I want to mean what I’m saying, but I can’t tell if I do.
‘I’ve a few bits inside that might be of use to ye. Plates and things, and the old armchair in the backroom. We’ve no use for it.’
Her charity is surprising. I’m not above accepting it. She’s nicer than she looks.
‘Listen, there’s a crowd calling down to ours this evening, it might be nice for you to come down and introduce the family around?’
Little things like this give me an enormous boost. They dull the feeling that every day is as hard as the first day.
They take away from the sting of hearing a murmuring group rush to a silence as I approach.
Knowing that people are talking about us, but not knowing what they are saying.
Misremembering names and initiating unwanted handshakes, and lying awake at night thinking about it.
Yes, for a while now I’ve felt stuck on the outside of an inside joke, but tonight, I am invited to John Moore’s gathering. Now that’s progress.
I nearly fall over myself accepting her offer, without a notion of how I’m going to get them three out of the house.
All the trouble they could bring me if they decide to exist as people on their own, without my supervision.
There’s another problem now, another thing to deal with. I better get home.
Walking out of the town, the houses begin to thin. Ours is the only cottage up the hill. A lonely walk, but I like having the time to myself where I’m not meeting anyone. Ahead, there are felled branches, looking like spines dropped in the field. Pure eldritch. Perhaps Jack was cutting firewood.
Something grey and maroon, unmoving, just before me.
A lamb in the road. Its insides out. Bloodied wool.
Organs pecked away by crows that don’t fly off when I come near.
Warm, thin vomit fills my mouth, and just as quickly is swallowed down again.
I’m glad we don’t keep sheep. This little woollen carcass isn’t my problem.
I draw a smile on, and I walk into the cottage, thinking that my life is to become problem-free. At long last.
—
I’ll say this, the people of Ballycrea aren’t bad. The town isn’t bad, not at all. And that’s without the thick optimism I’ve been spreading over everything. It really is a nice little place.
And although I haven’t found any yet, there’s work here.
There’s always lads out bringing their wares to the mart, repairing walls in the square.
Everything seems to be beaten by the sea wind, and they are incessantly fixing.
It would be easy to give up when the wind keeps blowing.
But they don’t give up. Isn’t that a great attitude to have?
Up at the cottage, as has become a routine, I find Peggy making a racket in the garden, Anna at the window, so far off in her thoughts that she might as well be back in Kilmarra, and Jack in the corner.
Sitting in quiet contemplation. I could guess what he’s thinking; I could probably speak it out loud as he thinks it.
And while there are probably a lot of things he would like to do and say, I feel quite confident that he will remain in the corner, almost motionless.
As I come in the door, Anna comes clambering to me, as though I am vital air.
As though I escaped and left her behind.
She doesn’t like me being out in the town for long, meeting new people.
It’s hard to say if she has noticed, but Anna has become incredibly dependent on me.
In the mornings, she makes me promise that I will be home for dinner.
As though I would leave and never come back.
Anna is always preparing for the next abandonment; it’s sad, and the reasons are too much to face.
‘If I was going to leave, don’t you think I would have come to Ballycrea alone rather than hauling all of ye along with me?’
She didn’t laugh when I asked this. She never laughs too much.
The trouble is, Anna doesn’t realise just how many chances I’ve had to leave.
A ticket to London with my name on it. A pub in Wexford that needed looking after.
Countless other lives that I have passed up out of loyalty to her and the other pair.
I use things like this to remind myself that I am a good man.
I could have left when you came into the picture, you were good for keeping them all in line.
A part of me wishes I had left then. All the disappointment I might have avoided.
How to convince them to come out to the Moores’ this evening? How easily I could remind Anna what a lack of friends leads to. How deeply the loneliness sinks its teeth; the sickening slow pace with which each minute passes.
Perhaps if I was just honest and told them that I want to build up credit with people. That I want to have somebody to fall back on besides the family, because they are always falling back on me.
I suppose the truth of it is, I know that there won’t be any convincing involved.
If I tell them we are going, they will have to follow.
The more of an effort we make here, the quicker we’ll get used to it.
I’ve found that, generally, people will get used to any situation they are put in, no matter how difficult.
And the best way to settle into something new is to be immersed in it.
I have to remind myself that it won’t always be like this.
A day will come soon that we are all so busy with work and friends that nobody will need to be coaxed out of the house.
A day will come when Kilmarra will just be a strange dream I once had, and the residual horror of it will drift off.
I will stop thinking that the sunrises there are like Holy God putting watercolour across the sky, and that here in Ballycrea, He is just switching on the big light.
A day will come when I think of you less.
It will, because it has to; because there was a time when I could think of nothing but Mammy and Daddy, and now there are weeks when I think of Daddy only once or twice.
Fleeting thoughts of my mother don’t hurt me much at all once they are gone.
We’ll get there. We’ll get popular, and employed, and it will be like you never happened to us at all.
And while I wait for that day, I will distract myself with Ballycrea.
They won’t be tepid towards us for long.
The brand-new family in Dr Desmond’s cottage will soon be just part of the scenery, as though we have always been here.
If I could just leash and muzzle the three of them and get them down to John Moore’s house.
Forgive me, but I must say that there is something freeing about being away from Kilmarra; to be where there isn’t a scrap of you.
Nobody knows your name or your face. Nobody knows what happened, or what it did to us all.
There’s nothing left now but a hazy, collective memory to remind us you were ever real at all.
My God, ’tis a year already. Madness. Just the thought of you makes me think of that sheep, and that maybe I should have had the mercy to at least kick its body into the hedge.