Betty
THE LITTLE RADIO ON BILL’S locker mumbles out the news.
Normally, I would be glad to listen, but after our evening with the O’Learys, I just need a bit of hush.
The heel of the moon comes in and out of view over the hill.
Bill keeps saying he’ll hang the new curtains, but I like being able to see the moon.
Sure we’ve no neighbours, it’s grand. When the back of my foot touches our bedroom floor, I’m glad of the new slippers Bill bought me last week.
I’m grateful for everything in our house.
How warm and clean and proper it is. Oh, their dusty little cottage, so bare and cold.
The food on their plates uncooked, the mood in the air so stale.
It isn’t their fault. It isn’t my fault; but it lingers with me as though I should solve it.
‘God help us, you could have cut the tension with a knife.’
I say to Bill, layering on my night cream.
He is sitting up in bed, listening to something about Fianna Fáil that I decide not to engage with tonight, but which he is intent on hearing.
It’s as though the evening never touched him.
Like it was never strange at all. Bill is never affected by things the way that I am.
I watch him in the mirror, looking for any signs that he is listening to me, or feeling what I’m feeling.
But he is deep in the news. The little yellow light of my lamp falls on his left side.
Bill is the lucky sort of man that suits ageing.
Deeply handsome. Without much to say about the O’Learys, it appears.
I bless myself.
‘Lord God, thank you for the abundance of food in our house. Thank you for our happy, healthy home. And please, God, look after myself and Bill tonight. And please look after the O’Learys as they settle into Ballycrea.’
I kick off my slippers and get into bed beside him.
‘Couldn’t have said it better myself.’
He blesses himself, counting my prayer as his.
‘Aren’t we lucky, Bill, that we have enough food to spare that I was able to show that young girl how to prepare a fish?’
It’s only when I see people with so little that I realise how much we have. I try so hard not to be too proud or boastful that all of my small luxuries end up going unnoticed.
I twist the front of my hair into rollers. Bill nods in agreement. Always so chatty when out and about, but so quiet when it’s just us at home. I think he likes to be able to switch off, without the pressure of keeping a conversation going.
‘Ah I felt for her this evening, Bill, I really did. It can’t be easy, looking after everybody with nobody looking after her.’
He isn’t convinced, I know by the way he shifts in the bed. But he says nothing, leaning over to switch off the radio.
‘Imagine being above in that house tonight. I’d hate it! I feel so sorry for her.’
‘It isn’t Anna I feel sorry for.’
He says quietly, turning his head in the yellow light.
Looking at me as though I should have thought of this sooner.
The child. The poor, gorgeous child, who only wanted somebody to act interested in her.
So full of life, with so much to say and so many questions.
It takes nothing at all to smile and nod along with a child.
Why wouldn’t they do that for her? Yes, Bill is right; Anna isn’t the one I should be feeling sorry for at all.
‘Poor Peggy! What can we do for her, Bill?’
He opens his arms for me.
‘There’s nothing we can do for her. Only put manners on the rest of them, I suppose.’
I put myself under his chin, and I feel home again.
A big sigh leaves me. The whole day leaves me.
For a second, I wait for him to say that we can take Peggy in and look after her.
Just a small second of foolishness, before I realise that Bill knows better than to suggest that.
He probably knows that I’m thinking of it.
Maybe in another world, we could do all that.
In another world, I suppose, we might have had a child of our own.
There might be a noise in the house besides the sound of my expiring. I pull myself from my thoughts.
‘You sort out the lads so, and I’ll take care of herself.’
I tell him, patting his chest. He laughs and squeezes me, and kisses the top of my head. But he knows that I’m not joking, and that the O’Leary boys are to be his new project.
Bill falls asleep, and I lie awake, with the four O’Learys walking around in circles in my mind.
I can’t imagine what Peggy has been through.
First thing in the morning, I’ll call to Ciara and arrange for Peggy to go down and see her pups again.
Maybe I’ll even arrange for her to take one home with her.
On a heavy breath, I fall asleep, and dream that the devil comes in and washes his hands in my sink, and lies down on my spare bed.
And I watch from the doorway, and let him at it.