Tom
PICKING STONES FROM BILL’S FRONT field, I cannot help but think of Daddy.
He used to have me picking stones from dawn on Saturdays.
I’d leave his land without even the dust that would one day form a stone.
Spotless clay, sparkling crops. He would sit Jack up in the cart and let him do the ploughing.
Even though I was older. Even though I wanted to do it.
I see the back of the postman, Rob Keating, as a flash of colour cycling away up the hill.
‘You’ve a delivery here, Bill!’
Betty calls out to us from the house. It’s a glittering sort of day. Normally, Bill wouldn’t stop for the post, but today he seems excited. As though receiving post is a new and radical concept. He drops his pick and motions for me to follow.
A crate up on the table, stuffed with newspaper. Bill beaming at it. Obviously it is something he has been expecting. I feel wrong watching, as though his wonderful crate is private and should be enjoyed when I am gone home. Perhaps I should offer to leave.
But Betty pulls out a chair for me. She puts the water on and makes us all coffee. Bill takes off his coat, sweating in the cold.
‘Bill, will you leave those boots at the door and don’t be walking dirt into my house!’
Her shrill voice. I kick off my own boots before she starts at me. Bill uses a bar to pull the lid off the crate. We are faced with clothes, jars of tea, marmalade and lemon curd, and three pieces of a glowing fruit that I have never seen before.
‘This is what James sent over!’
Betty peers over his shoulder into the box, from Bill’s brother in Northampton, reaching in to feel the fabric of the clothes that have come. She reads the note to herself, and then a portion out loud to us, which says,
‘The peppers may be on the turn now, though hopefully the airmail was quick enough that you’ll get to taste them. In any case, they are filled with seeds which you should try to cultivate.’
‘You can’t get these in the shops at all.’
Bill says, and I never saw him happier, or prouder, as he reaches into the crate for one of the peppers. Feeling, for a moment, connected to his brother, all the way in England. And I suddenly feel inferior to this foreign food, and I aspire to be it. Isn’t that sad?
‘Peppers,’ he says, taking one in his hand and turning it over. ‘’Tis veg.’
James grew them from seeds, which were sent to him from Texas, America. To be honest, they look to me like they are gone past their best, slightly wrinkled at the surface. But they aren’t mouldy either. What do I know?
I suppose James envisioned the peppers being eaten in a meal. However, between us, we can’t think of what to put them in. Betty says the best thing to do is boil them, but they seem too special for that. Surely there isn’t any harm in eating them raw.
And so, we sit around the kitchen table eating these peppers, uncooked.
Not saving them for anything special, rather, making this ordinary moment into something special.
Bright yellow and green. James wrote that they can grow to a ripeness that turns them red.
It’s a sweet, sort of earthy taste. Not like the pepper you’d sprinkle onto the dinner, not at all.
These are the size of a hand, maybe a little bit less, and very light on the stomach.
I suppose that is what they want in the hot weather of Texas, I’m not sure how much call James would have for them over in Northampton.
I wouldn’t be in a rush to try them again. But isn’t it amazing that I’ve come to a point in my life where I am tasting imported vegetables that started as seeds all the way in America?
‘The lads must eat this sort of thing all the time in New York.’
Betty says, talking about her brothers. Her face fills up with happiness, and immediately then with sadness.
Although I try to keep to myself, and to remain immersed in the flavour and crunch of the peppers, her face is more captivating.
If I had to distil women to one thing, it would be a face like this.
The intense and easy union of joy and despair.
What would Mammy have made of these peppers, I wonder.
It’s hard for me to believe that these are real people and that this is real food.
That this is my life, you know? How quickly it has all changed.
I never met anybody so generous. I never felt more grateful.
It’s Bill, glorious Bill. A genius of a man, so genuine and generous, giving his time and life and peppers to me.
It’s as though he wants me to know everything that he knows, and to have every luxury that he has.
If I only knew what good deed I did in my life that paired us up.
Perhaps he is my guardian angel. Perhaps he has the spirit of my father guiding him, looking after us both.
And I must say, it all brings me back to you.
Not in a sad way. I’m just aware that peppers are something you never got to try.
Something you never even knew existed. It brings me back to the kitchen in Kilmarra, with you and Jack.
On days when Anna wasn’t feeling right, you would come up and make our dinner.
It all looks so warm in my memory, even though it hurt at the time.
Washed carrots and parsnips scintillating on the side, bread batter in your cuticles.
Every time, you would show Peggy something new. Even if it was just something small, just to keep her involved and learning. You made her feel so special.
I can still see Jack peering over your shoulder, unbothered when you batted him away, asking to be shown a certain technique for peeling again.
And you would show him, always, even when you knew he would never do the peeling and he would never really take it in.
I think he used to just let on that he wanted to learn so you would slow down and make it all last longer.
He was good for you, I think. Now that you’re gone, I really do know that ye were right for each other.
His hand on the small of your back. The golden sun coming in the window. A shame.
I was green watching ye, I can admit that now.
Absolutely green with envy. I’ll say it once: clearly, I was never in love with you, Lillian.
But my God, I was head over heels for the idea of you.
How swiftly it was all torn to the ground.
I wonder will you get the chance to taste a pepper where you are.
I blink away the slight pool that has gathered at my lashes and bring myself back to the small paradise of Betty’s kitchen.
Hot coffee in my cup and a seat saved for me.
Loose tea, lemon curd, peppers. These are the wonders in my life today, all granted to me by Bill. I want to write a poem about this moment. I want Bill to grade and praise it. I want to write him music and prayers.
It isn’t that I worship him, just I want him to feel worshipped.
I want him to feel how grateful I am. I want him to know what a good man he is, and how, in such a small amount of time, he has begun to repair the irreparable within me.
I take another bite of the pepper. Isn’t it sweet to be here?
For twenty-nine years I’ve been alive. For the last half an hour, I’ve lived.