I had to face it. I was going home. Well, I was going to the locality of home. For all I knew, my actual home - the cottage on Shore Road - wasn't there any more. How would I prepare myself? I picked over my memories . . . Yes! I had one very good one . . . Well, it wasn't as good as the mushroom morning, or as good as going to Dublin with Mammy when I won the essay competition. But it had more people in it. Nora was gone to the States, but everyone else was there. Both Ma and Da were at the table, which was unusual in itself. Annie was there in her capacity as Danny's steady girlfriend though she was only thirteen or fourteen - not that anyone had invited her, but she had nerves of steel where Danny was concerned, and she'd made herself a part of the household. My father was much more pleasant to her than to Danny.
And Ned was there - specially for me, because this was the Sunday I was leaving home to go up to Dublin to Trinity College. Nobody had ever formally left home before, because Nora disappeared with only what she had hidden in her schoolbag.
Maybe that's why they made an effort for me.
Mammy didn't try to light the range on Sundays - she cooked the meal on the bottled-gas stove. The day I left home she left the bacon bubbling when they went down to the pub, and myself and Annie washed the potatoes and put them on when the football match started on the radio. My mother came home by herself a bit early. She'd bought a tin of peas and a tin of carrots in the shop for the special occasion.
And I don't think my father meant to start getting at her. I mentioned myself that I was getting a room in Templeogue.
Teampall Mealoig! my father intoned. Mealoig - belonging to St Mallock. And it was where his church - his temple - was situated, hence, teampall!
He pushed his big lips out and rolled the II's as if his tongue were stuck to something gorgeous. This was one of the most boring things about him, I thought, not for the first time. If the name of any place gets mentioned he puts it back from English into Irish, and then starts telling all and sundry what the Irish words mean.
The number forty-nine bus from O'Connell Street. Am I right or am I wrong, Eileen?
That's right, she murmured.
Sean was sitting in the high chair behind her, making an awful noise. Mammy had given him a boiled potato in milk on a saucer, and he was trying to make it jump in the air. I remembered that now. He was such a funny little kid. Some blood thing, Danny said, when he phoned me at The English Traveller. He just faded away But did the child let himself die?
Templeogue was where your mother lived, Daddy picked up again. You might ask around, Cait, and see whether any of your relations on your mother's side are interested in knowing anyone by the name of de Burca.
We didn't know what he was getting at when he mentioned her family.
He must have had to marry her, Nora said to me once. The wedding certificate in the cardboard box under their bed said January, and Nora's birthday was in July. The certificate said "clerical assistant" for Daddy's occupation, and "shop worker" for Mammy's.
I don't know how she ever kept a job in a shop, Nora had said. She doesn't know what day it is as long as I've known her.
She had to marry him, too, I said. Don't forget that.
If this had been an ordinary Sunday Ma would have gone into her room at him jibing at her, and he'd have been satisfied with himself, and poured a drop of whisky into the mug of tea he had with his meal and given us whatever lecture on politics came into his head. But Mammy wouldn't be hunted out on this day. Actually, he was only trying to annoy her from habit. He was in a nice mood.
She said, Will you write to us, Kathleen?
I will, I said. And then, because I might as well say it, anyway, And you could come to Dublin and see me.
Don't wear Mrs Bates's suit on the bus, she said. You'll get it all creased.
The suit had been a present for winning the scholarship. It had been Mrs Bates's sister's in Boston. Mammy said the buttons on the jacket alone were worth a fortune.
It'll get creased in the bag, too, I said.
Daddy said, I'll go down to Mr Bates and get a few sheets of brown paper to wrap it in. When I was in the FCA I kept the spare shirt in brown paper and it was often remarked that my shirts were pristine. Danny! What does FCA stand for? Quick!
Forse Cosanta Aitiuil, I said, ruining his little game. Do you know, Daddy, if I was a man, I'd love to be in that, too. Go on courses and learn drill and how to fire guns. . .
He looked at me suspiciously, but he went off down to Bates's. He never did things like go to the shop. It made me take the whole going away more seriously.
My mother came after me into the bedroom and watched me put the parcel of the suit, my school jumpers, my pyjamas and my signed photo of the Beatles into the bag.
I have a little present for you, she said. For being such a great girl, Kath. And for getting yourself into Trinity College.
It was in a shiny black cardboard box with the name of the jeweller's in Kilcrennan town stamped on it in gold. The box was made with white satin. On a little puff of cotton wool lay a thin necklace of crystals. I looked up at her, and she was looking at me, her mouth just straightening at the corners - ready to smile at my smile. But it was like a knife in my heart to picture her pushing open the door of the jeweller's shop and going in carrying her big handbag, that was almost always empty because she had no money of her own.
Oh, Ma. . . I could have cried.
Don't get into trouble! my mother cut across me. She was standing in the bedroom and the light from the window was full on her thin face. Kathleen, whatever you do, mind yourself! Don't get into trouble whatever you do!
Which might have meant, Don't get pregnant, in which case it was about herself. Or it might have meant, You are a reckless person and you could ruin your life by being too casual about danger. In which case it was about me.
The parents didn't come down the road to where the bus turned around above the shore. Danny and Annie saw me off, and Sean, staggering around like a little drunk, until Uncle Ned gave him a piggyback. Bye, Attly! Bye, Attly! My mother and father watched from the window of their bedroom. The chain that crossed his waistcoat gleamed, and her face was a pale patch behind his shoulder.
Of course, suits were gone out: I knew when I took the parcel. I always wore my old jumpers and a miniskirt in Dublin.
I lost the necklace, within a week of getting it. I'd never had anything like it and I wore it all the time and I never even noticed when the chain must have parted.
I did hang on to Mrs Bates's suit. While I was at Trinity, my friends had a landlady who let them keep their things in the basement in the holidays. I used to bring my cardboard box to store it there, and every time, on top of the books and LPs, I'd see the brown parcel with the suit in it. My mother died. When I ran off to London I didn't stop to bring anything, so I didn't bring the suit. If I had brought it, it would have gone into the bin when I heard she was dead. When I was certain she was dead.
I told Jimmy all that about that last meal, once. He looked at me very seriously and said, Did I hear you say that that was one of your best memories?
Well, I said after a minute, I see what you mean. But in reality it was a lovely occasion. Maybe I haven't explained it right. But everyone was there - that was one of the good things. And there was no fighting at all. And Mammy gave me a present. And, you see, I took to being a student like a duck to water and I had a great time and I had two or three jobs and I didn't bother going back home - not even at Christmas. I never went back in the nearly two years before she got sick. So her words that day were the last she ever said to me.
My stomach began to hurt when I got nearer Kilcrennan. It really might have been a better idea to stay away - maybe come home another time. Not that this was at all like the place I remembered. There were suburbs on the western side of town that I'd certainly never seen before and yet the trees in front of the semidetached houses were mature. I drove towards the centre as slowly as possible. I wasn't feeling well at all. I could easily go on to the bridge beside the hospital and turn right for Dublin. Ah - a hotel. New. The Shamrock Manor. I drove in and checked that they had a night porter in case I came in late, and I paid in advance for a room for the night. I washed my face and combed my hair as well as I could and pinned it back very, very carefully and put on a dab of pink lipstick and a hint of mascara. Annie thought I was glamorous, after all. I put on earrings. I had a suede blouse on top to slip on over my jeans and sweater. I hoisted up my bra straps to give myself a better line.
An only life, I muttered to myself, can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never . . .
I often used poetry to keep harm away.
All the time, I kept glancing at the phone. I could cancel without the slightest problem. It would never occur to Annie that I'd be lying to her. Then I put all my things back in my bag. I wouldn't necessarily mention the room to anyone, but I'd have it in reserve, in case anything went wrong.
I drove down the hill past the station - the hill where I'd stayed in the B&B when I came back from college to see Mammy when she was in hospital. And then, with everything inside me trembling from shocks of remembrance, I parked the car on a bit of waste ground, and I went down an alley that I knew well from my teenage prowls with Sharon, out onto High Street, and turned right. There was no one behind the counter of the dry-cleaning shop, but through a rack of garments I could see my sister-in-law sitting at a table, mending something.