Biscuits and glasses of cold milk waited inside on the table. The clocks chimed. The priest said he had to do some private things: you were free to stay up or go to bed. Tiredness and the burden of nothing to do drove you to bed. You fell immediately asleep.
It was late when you woke, past ten on the clocks downstairs.
Father Gerald had already said Mass. John had served.
“I looked in at eight but you were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you. You have the long journey before you today,” he said.
That you were going home today was a shock. With Joan, before evening, you’d face your father. Now that it was lost, this house with the priest and John seemed a world where you could have stayed. You wished you could tell Father Gerald that you wanted to stay here for the rest of the holidays. You wished you could tell him that you were on your way to be a priest. You’d stay here in the long summers from Maynooth. But that was changed, it was lost, and there was a horror of attraction about it now that it was lost, your dream had strayed about it now, and you felt the pain as you poured milk over the cornflakes and tried to eat.
The windows were bleared with a soft steady drizzle outside and after breakfast you sat with the priest and read newspapers and watched out on the laurels shining with wet and the fresh dark gravel and the wet roof of the church.
He drove you into town when it was time, almost far as Ryan’s door but not quite.
“You’re on your own now,” he said. “There’s going to be no pleasantness over Joan’s going like this and I can’t seem to get involved. I have to remain in the parish. I’m their priest.”
“It’s alright, father. I didn’t expect you. You were very kind to drive me in. Thank you, father.”
“Good-bye. God guard you.”
You watched the car away, the tyres swishing in the wet. A sickness rose as you faced for Ryan’s, what was the use of all this effort, you wanted not to have to.
“I wonder if you could tell her I’m here, please,” you said to Ryan. You stood just inside the shop door. He went inside.
She was crying when she appeared with her case. You took it and went without saying anything out into the rain.
“Why are you crying, Joan?”
“They made me feel so awful going.”
“Did they do anything to you?”
“No. They never spoke a word to me after you left. They made remarks among themselves. They didn’t as much as shake hands there now.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s over. You’re going home. People like that aren’t worth cursing, never mind thinking about them. So just forget it. You’ll never have to see them again.”
Rain dripped from the lintel above the doorway you stood in, waiting for the bus to come.
Once you’d got the tickets in the bus she said, “What do you think he’ll say?”
“He’ll say nothing. I’ll just tell him what happened. You couldn’t stay on and that’s all.”
“What’ll I do then? Where’ll I go next?”
She might have asked the same question for yourself — for the first time you really looked in her face.
“I don’t know. Stay at home for a while.”
“But he’ll make it awful.”
“Go to England I suppose then.”
“Will I have to go to England? It’ll be horrid to face into all that strangeness.” Her eyes were asking to relieve some of the oppression, the despair. She watched people leave and board the bus with the same impassiveness with which she watched the raindrops slip down the bleared windows.
“We may be all in England soon.”
“You, too?”
“Me too,” you smiled cruelly.
“But are you going to leave soon?”
“No. I don’t think so but June isn’t far away — and the exams.”
“But you’ll get a good job here?”
“There aren’t many jobs.”
“But you’ve a good chance?”
“Oh, Joan, it doesn’t matter a curse. What the hell difference does it make? What the hell difference does anything make? We’ll always be in some bus or something or room or road and air in our ears while we’re in it no matter what happens.”
Her questioning, her fear exasperated you to that. Now you saw how she drew away from your violence, that was not what she needed, and it was only with someone simple and weak you were able to be violent or in your own walled head but you weren’t very violent with the priest two nights before.
“So we’re going home, Joan.” You placed your hand quickly on the back of her hand. “We’ll have the great honour and joy of meeting our beloved father soon.”
“Aye,” she began to smile.
“So you’re home, are you? Where’s the food going to come outa to fill extra bellies. God, Ο God, Ο God, what did I do to deserve this cross? The poor-house, it’s the poor-house ye’ll all wind up in, and ye needn’t say I didn’t warn ye.”
“O God, what did I do to deserve such a pack?” she took up shyly but laughing.
“Only for ye have your eejit of a father to come home to what would ye do? Then such thankless bastards the sun never saw.”
“The poor-house, the poor-house, the poor-house,” the girl was suddenly mimicking with real gaiety, taken out of herself, rocking with laughter when you took up where she stopped.
17
THERE WAS THAT MOMENTARY SILENCE OF SURPRISE WHEN they entered the kitchen by the back way and without knock¬ ing, opening slow the doors for warning. The evening meal was on the tables. They stood at the door, waiting for some reception, afraid.
“Joan, you’re home,” Mahoney was slow with surprise. He rose and took her hands and she kissed him, “You’re welcome.”
“Joan. Joan. Joan’s home,” the army of children showed a shouting of delight on their faces, but it was suppressed, because of their father’s presence. They gathered shyly round her, she was the attraction. No one had ever been away for so long before. She’d a half-pound of cream caramels for them too.
“You’re in the right time for the food,” the father laughed and soon they were at the tables, porridge of Indian meal, coarse and golden, dissolving in fine grains in the mouth, its delicate watery flavour drowned by the cream; and afterwards potatoes with buttered soda bread, and tea.
“It’s a long time since you got the Indian meal,” he joked, he seemed delighted. The scent of apples roasting in the baking-oven filled the kitchen, the hollow scooped in their centres full of melted sugar, and their green jackets turning to the yellow of butter. They were eaten as cards were played in the long evening afterwards, the father did not go out to the fields again though there was light, he took delight in the roasted apples and the playing.
“We’ll have pains in our bellies tonight after these apples. Do you know, I’m like a perfessor now,” he laughed, emphatically mispronouncing, as he rakishly dealt the cards, a pencil behind his ear, the sheet of foolscap on which he kept the scores by his elbow on the table.
“Sit on it. Wallop it,” he shouted every time a trump made a tentative appearance. “Whatever else you do, keep the top man down.”
“Ah, lucky card,” he called out caressingly when the easy fall trick came his way.
The lamp was lit late. The night went unnoticed in this flash of happiness. The children, and Joan with them, went smiling to bed after he’d kissed them good night.
“This night you’re home and safe at last,” he kissed Joan.
Only when they’d all drifted to their rooms and Mahoney sat dealing out cards of patience did the night change to uneasiness and problems.
“Joan’s home,” he mused.
“She’s home.”
“You didn’t stay long yourself with the Reverend Gerald?” he did not look up, crouched over the cards spread on the soft green surface of the table.