In turn she was no longer going to keep a cow for Jimmy. She dismissed the idea.
*
I was shocked. Shocked for his father’s sake. I liked the fella. And then I didn’t like him. I want you to get a look at him. He was stringy-looking. Tall, with a mop of curly hair. He was a quiet man. It wasn’t that I expected he’d bring a man waving pompoms. But this fella was way too up in his head and it was not what Joanie said about the gays. See, he asked very few questions, so he did. I wished he’d asked more. We couldn’t be sure at first why Jimmy brought him to us. That night my husband spoke to me in bed which was rare, usually he either reached for me or he didn’t. As he’d say himself, I don’t get into bed to get into a heated debate if I want that I’ll turn on the radio where’s there’s plenty people with nothing to do but talk all day.
— Well, Himself said. There’s something fishy about that fella. He’s awful quiet.
— Aye. I never usually said aye. We were both beside ourselves. He’s a quiet man.
— Why has he brought him here?
— Perhaps he thinks he’s a nice man. A nice man for us to meet. We don’t meet so many men.
— I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all. I want him gone and I want no fuss made. You’ve to get rid of him.
*
For a man who wanted no fuss, he’d a strange way of going about it. At the breakfast table he stopped talking. To him the stringy one, and to all of us and when he left to go out down the field Jimmy raised his hands, palms up, at me inquiringly.
— I don’t think he’s well. It was a pure lie, but the only way to get rid of the two men was to invoke a set of circumstances where no person would stay. He might have cancer. Maybe it is that he’s the cancer, I said. I had the idea to say it because in the church listings at the back of the newsletter prayers were offered for a man out Balla way who’d the cancer of the prostate. It might be in his prostate, I said. We don’t know yet.
The two of them looked mighty uncomfortable.
I’d mulled the whole thing over I was not telling a lie after-all I had no exact science on what was happening in this man or any man’s prostate and it could have been full of mercury for all I knew.
Has he been to the doctor? That was Jimmy. Immediately skeptical, immediately practical Jimmy.
— I don’t know, I said. Sure he never tells me anything.
And good and timely the stringy but quiet, watery man said we’ll go. We don’t want to be a burden at a time like this.
I coulda nearly thrown me arms around him.
— If you could get the two o’clock train it might be as well. I said it politely, trying to hide my pleasure, but basically I wanted the whole thing sewn up before my husband came back for his lunch. I wanted them gone. I didn’t want to sit through another lunch. Sure you’ll be down again soon once this is all past. I said it the way mammies say such things. The verbal sweep of the hand, gentle feather duster smack to the back of the head.
Jimmy knew it was all a lie. I could tell by him. He went for the two o-clock train but he didn’t go easy.
*
Slipped into the bathroom, slipped him into the bathroom, the two of them, to get back at me, and if you could see the size of it, small enough to topple over with one man in it, never mind two. Two! And, the Lord save us, how I paced up and down the kitchen worrying if someone would come to the door, come in for tea and need to use the toilet and how would I explain the sight of the two of them coming out and the what on earth question in their eyes of “who is yer man with Jimmy?”
Twice I went to the bathroom door and once I spoke.
— Are you in there Jimmy?
— I am.
— Will you be long?
— Why?
And I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t tell him the truth. For the love of God get that man and his watery smile and his leather jacket outta there or we’ll never hear the end of it.
— I’m feeling a bit of an urgency. A bit of an urgency to go like ya know. I might have a spot of diarrhoea coming on.
It was ridiculous, but I had to get them out you understand?
The other fella answered.
— We’ll be about ten minutes, he shouted. And I found that awful bold of him. Sure in ten minutes if what I propose were actually true it’d be running down the hall. I was tempted to call into them don’t mind me I’ll just sit on a bucket, but I held back. They were going. That they would not come out of the bathroom was minor. I decided if anyone came to the back door before admitting them, I would say just to let you know the toilet facilities are out of order. I’d keep the door between the kitchen and the hall closed. I had my strategy.
Finally, when the bathroom door opened, I strode after them to the back bedroom and asked to speak to Jimmy. Alone. They were stood, the pair, with two towels — my towels, I wouldn’t mind but I’d used the one around the other fella under my feet that morning and meant to hide it away on the rail — around their waists and the stringy fella had his arm on Jimmy’s back and I almost expired at the sight of it.
— I need to talk to you Jimmy. I had to reclaim him from that hand.
— Can you wait ’til I get dressed?
— No I can’t. He followed me into my bedroom in his towel frustrated. What is it? Why are you acting like this?
— Who is that man? Who is that man and why have you brought him here?
— He’s my lover.
Lover, oh the choice of it, that word of all the words he could have chosen to use on me.
— Ssssh, I hissed as though the word alone would lift the roof of the place, would you sssh?
— You asked me. Jimmy, lifting his arms up, cranky.
— Why did you bring him Jimmy? Me, keeping my arms down, but raising my voice.
— He wanted to see where I grew up is all. If you have to know. Jimmy, snapping at me like a ten-year-old who’d lost his toy.
It all sounded ridiculous, so I quietened to have Jimmy retreat back to the room, a stream of water dropped down his back as he stomped away, and I heard the fella, whoever he was, muttering he’d go and Jimmy insisting not at all, if one goes we both go. And humphing out some slurry about his parents being backward and daft.
Backward! Daft! I’d a good mind to go in there and box him around the ears.
What was he expecting? An open-armed embrace? I didn’t want Jimmy to go, I wanted his father to think I could solve the problem, but despite my persuasion he was stubborn and determined. I expected more from you, Jimmy said. His father he could understand, but you, I thought you got it.
I do, I wanted to tell him, I do, but what more understanding can I have, given I married the man. I married a man and if you marry one, this is what you do. You organize the things that disturb him. I wanted to tell him to be careful if he marries a man. There are things to worry about when you marry someone.
Instead I just said nothing except: he is a nice fella, but you have to give me a warning about these things. A second lie, I had my reasons. He is a dull fella Jimmy and you can do better I should have told him.
*
I still had to get the pair of them to the two o’clock train without causing a riot in my hallway. Himself had absented himself to Balla to look at a trailer or some warble. Maybe it was up the legs of Red the Twit he was gone looking. I had my project, I’d things to manage here, I’d to get these two flumps out of the house before the man came home and got all hairy over them.
Jimmy, the divil roast him, was determined not to make this easy on me. He’d come to make a point and he wasn’t leaving ’til he’d stamped it on the inside of my wrist. I coulda told him then and there that I had seen him go places no young man should be going. I shoulda let rip at him, but I didn’t.