The past fortnight has been shaped by departures and homecomings. Tony was away filming Peter Sheridan's Borstal Boy, while Leo left for Disney World Florida for 10 days with his godparents. This left me in my attic office, overlooking the rooftops of Manorhamilton wondering what surreal twist of fate presented me with such a landscape while son and partner tripped the light fantastic away from the vagaries of weather in the north-west.
Naturally the cat took the opportunity he'd been waiting for to teach me a lesson, and promptly took his leave ensuring I didn't even have him for company. I don't begrudge the cat this streak of revenge since I didn't even have a name to call out for, into the dark of the rain-lodged yard. The cat travelled with us as a family in our original configuration, making the journey from our home in Cork. We'd been given him as a present from a rather dour sculptor, whose personality the cat reflected from an early age.
There was too much going on in our life at the time to actually name him, so we all just tagged along together, until everything went belly up, and I returned to Dublin. The tenants who took over for that time took the cat on as a responsibility, though I'd been pretty sure he'd survive left to his own devices. Anyway, I had enough to cope with without worrying about an animal who seemed ambivalent towards us at the best of times.
When we returned, the cat didn't seem to notice the difference, pawing at the kitchen window with the same dedicated focus on food as he'd always done. But I just knew that the seed of sedition was in his heart, and that as soon as he got the opportunity to strike back he would. The upshot of his departure was that I spent the time without kith, kin or cat. With no other distractions to keep you occupied, being on your own in a small place means you welcome the idle chat of members of the community, who don't know you but who engage with you out of a natural sense of politeness.
Sitting in the Granary eating on my own, the invariably gregarious Noel who works there asked me where Tony was and how Leo was getting on in Florida. He even asked me for assistance on a crossword clue, which I looked up for him on the Internet when I got home. I rang him up and said "Hi Noel it's Emer", like we knew each other well, and gave him the answer. It made me feel useful, even though of course, Noel didn't need me to tell him the answer at all, I think he was just trying to keep my spirits up.
Without the usual rituals of family life to mark time, I realised how quiet my life had become almost by default. I became dependent on light and dark to navigate the day, to tell me when it was time to have breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I became dependent on the people I interact with in shops for social contact. So it was like the sun came out, and a momentous thing had happened when the lottery win came to Leitrim. Not only to Leitrim mind, but near enough to Manorhamilton.
"Did you hear the news," Seamus asked when I went in the following morning to get the sausages. Everywhere I went people were delighted, breaking the norm of begrudgery which people sometimes associate with Ireland, especially rural Ireland. It was a question of basking in geographic glory when discussing the man who had reached Lotto heaven.
"He only lives 10 miles away from me," one woman said in The Irish Gift Shop while buying her Christmas cards. The lady in front of her was even better placed.
"Sure he's only a mile up the road from me," she said with a knowing smile. Even though I was dying to find out, I just couldn't ask who the man was, lest I be accused of peddling someone's good fortune for my own gain.
Betty Eager sold the winning ticket in her newsagent and gift shop on Main Street; so as much as people were happy for the Leitrim millionaire, they were equally pleased that Betty would get a "few bob" and there was talk about the great celebrating that went on the night before in The Market Bar. I bought a Scratch card in Spar the following day, just in case lightning might strike twice, but really so I'd have a chance to talk again about the Lotto good fortune.
I was glad when Tony and Leo came home, with the cat smugly holding up the rear. "All's right in the world again," I thought, but better because somebody from Leitrim finally hit the big one.
