The shock takes her to a squat.
A sunken squat.
An utter of shock.
Before she moves quietly off, she takes another look. She has to see it again.
They’re still at the same malarky. It’s her son, her boy, and he’s shaking himself stronger against that young fella. He cannot bury himself deep enough in him. Flagrant, he’s got him by the hips, rattling in and out of them, almost like he’s steering a wheelbarrow that’s stuck on a stone, going no place.
*
Jimmy brought Patsy’s boy Martin back and offered him orange squash. My hand shook making it. I watched the two of them go out, they passed the kitchen window but stopped too soon, forgetting that single pane at the end where I could still see all. Jimmy kissed him goodbye and the boy squeezed his fist into Jimmy’s groin and laughed. There I have told you now. You have heard it now.
*
Oh and Patsy.
— Martin visits Jimmy often you know. I gave her the hook.
— Oh sure he’s awful fond of Jimmy, says Patsy, I’m glad of it. He’ll never go anywhere unless Jimmy is down. Otherwise he’s inside all the time with a long face on him. Martin’s clever, does ever so well at school. And boys can be such messers.
Patsy’s husband, a broad-cheeked man, missing so much of his hair, nature only left a band that folds delicately across his head, entered at that point from the fields, his wind-burnt skin gave him a glow. He hadn’t the dour quietness of my husband, instead he’s delighted to see me, perches on the edge of a chair, stacked with towels, refusing to let his wife remove them for not at all, he’s on his way out, and how’s she getting on and before she can reply, he’s onto Jimmy. How’s Jimmy doing in Dublin?
— He’s down, I said.
— Tell him to call in and see us, the father insisted. Sure Martin will be glad to see him. We’ll all be glad. He’s a great lad.
How intimately our boys get along. I believe I may have spotted my son inside your son yesterday. But no, he’s up and out, he’s cows to move and I am all thanks for the tea, you’ll have another, no, you will and no, I must carry on.
I left carrying more weariness than that with which I’d arrived. Not only had my son taken advantage of a boy, but a quiet boy, with a face as long as a month of Sundays. All terrible, all told terrible. The only thing left was to be shut of Jimmy for no one would believe it. Only that I saw it, and I could barely believe it.
*
She cannot bear Jimmy to touch her. He has been up a hole that nothing should go up. Only down, down, down. He’s done for. He must be gone from this country, this country where there is no forgiveness for such a thing.
Episode 3
The gang do not tell Our Woman that three of them are heading to the protests in Shannon.
Bina surprised them all and during the peaceful protest pulled a hammer from her handbag, charged one of the planes and gave it a few digs.
Our Woman saw her on the news.
— She never said she was going to do that.
— She did not.
— We had no idea.
The girls discussed why Bina had not told them she planned to do this.
— You’d have stopped me, Bina said.
— We would, they said.
To Our Woman, who saw the story on the news and recognized the back of Bina’s coat as they took the hammer from her, they only said, we didn’t tell you because we thought it would upset you what with Jimmy and the like.
— Not at all, not at all, she said quietly.
New territory. The territory of not upsetting the widow.
Episode 4
Get out and about a bit, my husband urged me, go in to town, have a look at the shops. I lived alone then with my husband. If you’re wondering I have three children, though now I have only two and no husband neither. No matter who called in to me, the loneliness inside my kitchen and my weary head would not abate. It was strange that. Strange like someone had thrown a cup of tea at the curtains that obscured my brain.
You’ve had enough I could have sworn they said that one time in the hospital when the doctor gave me a jab, I was certain they were putting me down like you would an old donkey. You’ve had enough, we’re going to let you go. But the nurse, when I looked at her, her lips weren’t moving.
— Go into town and have a look at the shops. Have a bowl of soup some place. It’ll do ya good.
It was the second time my husband instructed me that day. The shops, to the male, ever the solution to the glowering female, but in this instance they were no use whatsoever for unbinding me from my misery.
I could barely make out the colour of things, once inside I couldn’t find my way back out to the door, I would stand and stare at pillows or lamps, immobile for so long, eventually people asked was I OK and three times offered me a drink of water and a chair. But I commend my husband, his words about the bowl of soup hung about me and didn’t I take his advice and step into a place I never normally woulda gone near. The sort of place you might peer at, but you’d never have need in this lifetime to go in.
On the outside it had the look more of a pub than say a cafe, but it was the bar of a small bed and breakfast-type hotel. The woman at the bar had hair you might see on a shop dummy. Cut the same way for so long it would never change its shape. She and the place kept the form of the 1970s even though they were long gone and everything around the building had changed. They were like a tribute to it. Would you believe me if I told you, they reminded me of my wedding cake, but I sat hidden away inside there and my husband was right, it was quiet and it did me good. It did me snug, if you see what I mean.
Unfortunately, it was the reason I was so easy to find when Red the Twit came for me.
*
Our Woman lies in bed. Her skin feels as though it has been lit, beginning at the tip of her little finger, but her husband’s refusal to add a spoon of gasoline means it will be a slow burn, raising every centimetre of her flesh, scorching her East to West.
She peels back through the conversation, the homily, delivered by Red the Twit earlier that day in the window of that place she entered to escape from the world. Her ear on the pillow, facing away from him, and tears dribble and drip while she thinks on it. She swallows repeatedly to avoid sniffing for she does not want the turn of him, the what’s wrong with ye? Or what are you sniffing about?
You don’t know me, but I must talk to you. The woman, Red’s approach, inside that place she’d gone to sit and think, she remembers first. Taken unawares she was when Red struck, watching a woman through the window on the other side of the street with a collection box for The Hospice, entranced by how generous the stop of people was. Then she’d felt it. The grip of her arm: the battiness of Red’s first words: I have a confession but before I make it, you must pray with me. (Is that Dublin in her accent? She’s a puzzle. Red’s a puzzle.)
Chipped nails (could there be anything more common on a woman?) meshed with her forearm and she could feel the trace of the salt pot against her wrist — not even a wriggle — the woman had her tight. And she intoned, did Red, an adapted version of Grace, usually delivered before sprouts or spuds, for what I am about to say I ask the Lord’s forgiveness. Bless Philomena — she used Our Woman’s first name — for what she is about to hear O Lord, and then Our Woman became nervous, very, very nervous.