— Oh he did, of course he did, Jimmy said. No bitterness, nothing, no more words than were necessary. But we have to get you into bed, Jimmy said, it’s been a long day for you.
That someone knew I’d had a long day was something. You see I hadn’t really been present that day, I was floating above and around the whole thing, confused. I remember there were a lot of questions, but I never remember answering even one of them.
*
— Age is a great leveller, I told Jimmy on another walk. Daddy for example he’s not a bad man. He’s a desperate man, yes. But I too have given him the odd sight at despair he mighta been spared.
Jimmy looked at me. He did not believe me. But he kept it to himself, exactly the way I had trained him.
*
Another time when we walked that way we did, Jimmy said to me that he had watched me and had learned different.
— What d’ya mean? I said, not wanting to know at all what he meant.
— I know what it is to love a man and not be loved back.
— Was it the fella you brought down to us that time?
— No, he was the opposite. That’s why I brought him see. He was able to love me, I wanted you to see it, but you wouldn’t.
— I saw it. I said. I did. But he was awful dull.
— And so you’ve to stop worrying, he said lightly.
— I’ll never stop worrying, I told him. It’s why I am here.
I meant it, you know, I meant it in the way I am sitting here now looking out my back window, where it’s raining, waiting for the postman to come before I bring the flask of tea up to the Blue House to Jimmy and must be back before the girls descend in on me and start worrying if they don’t find me here. The doctor has already phoned, I’ve to call down to him tomorrow for the new prescription. My floor is washed because I have washed it. It looks well so it does. The cows are already fed. Today I am ahead of meself.
It’s beautiful when it all makes sense, so it is. Occasionally it makes sense, just for a moment.
Acknowledgements
The references to pink neon signs in Episode 5 refer to a 1997 visual art exhibit called “For Dublin” by Frances Hegarty and Andrew Stones, whose public art installation of neon script quotations from Molly Bloom’s soliloquy I remember so fondly.
Malarky is the culmination of ten years’ work. During that time many people offered encouragement and afforded me their patient ears despite my undulating despair.
Thank you to my agent Marilyn Biderman, Tara, Dan at Biblioasis and John Metcalf, Juliet Mabey & all at Oneworld for boldly embracing Malarky. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts & the BC Arts Council.
My mother Hannah has the best-looking bovines in Co. Mayo and is never short on humour. I thank her for helping me check dialect and place names. I thank my sister for the teabags and plane tickets.
Go raibh mile maith agat go Edel Ni Chonchubhair for translating a few chapters of Malarky as Gaeilge.
Thank you also to Helen Potrebenko for writing the novel Taxi!, Caroline Adderson, Jenny and Ian, Marina Roy, and Gertrude who told me to imagine an ideal reader. Cathy, Niamh, Edel, Mary, Ita, Siobhan, Tara, Annabel, Julie, Carol, thank you for all the love and support.
Suzu Matsuda and Larry Cohen, my family here in Vancouver, have helped me in so many ways, including their exquisite love of my son.
Finally thanks and love to my partner Jeremy Isao Speier and my son Cúán Isamu who has rocked my world for the past twelve years. I love you pet. You are the best.
About the Author
Anakana Schofield is an Anglo-Irish writer of fiction, essays, and literary criticism. Malarky, her first novel, won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, was selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, and was shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. It has also been named on sixteen different Best Books of the Year lists.