Rare Glimpse

The Old Man travels home on the ferry from Stranraer, catching the night train in Belfast and arriving for breakfast. Mam is grilling Denny sausages and Galtee rashers to beat the band before he’s taken his pea coat off.

“Come here to me, son,” he cries, sweeping me off my feet and dangling me upside down, my hair brushing the linoleum. “Did you miss your Da? Did you?”

“I did, Da. Yes.” I smell the whiskey mixed with his Old Spice aftershave, even from my distant position near the ground. After righting me and giving my shoulder a squeeze, he dances me around the kitchen table singing Percy French’s “The Mountains of Mourne.” Embarrassed, I wriggle out of his grip and plunk myself down at my chair, tipping the cornflakes into the bowl and trying hard to ignore his good mood.

“Arrah, you’ll dance with your ould fella,” he says to Mam, and drags her away from the cooker by the apron.

“Jesus, I’ll be dug out of you if the sausages are burnt,” she says.

“Give us a kiss.” The Old Man purses his lips and waits for Mam to give in. She shakes her head and laughs, kissing him on his bumpy nose. His hand lands on her bottom and Mam yelps like the neighbor’s poodle, the Old Man grins at her, one eyebrow raised.

“You’re a disgrace,” she says, smoothing the apron and returning to the sizzling pan on the cooker top.

Their good mood fills the kitchen, mixing with the smell of the frying rashers and sausages and I wonder how long it’ll be before the mirage fades away and the Old Man puts a lick on me with his belt, or yells at Mam for something stupid. In the meantime their happiness plays out through the fringe of hair hanging in front of my eyes.

One Potato, Two Potato

The Old Man limps one-eyed into the pinewood coffin. Driven by the curse of the tinker’s daughter, the weight of his guilt means it takes eight men to lower the box into the soil. Mam weeps into her lace handkerchief, the rain sleeting angular, the crows beading the makeshift village of umbrellas crowded about the graveside. Stuttering Father McDaid, three years before his murder charge, crosses the air and mutters the prayers for the dead.

I hold Mam’s hand, my feet squelch in the wet shoes, and the box inches its way into the dark. Over and over I repeat “One potato, two potato, three potato, four…” trying to choose which of the old people around the grave will be the next to die. When the coffin hits the bottom the men pull the ropes out and Father McDaid drops some soil on the lid and gestures at Mam to do the same. She peels off a black leather glove and fills a fist with wet clay from the pile beside the hole.

“Ah, Ronan. Don’t leave me,” she whispers. “Come on, Son, say a prayer for the Old Man,” she tells me, and presses some of the soil into my hand. “Our Father…” she begins. Together, we say the prayer, the soil rattles on wood and we turn in the direction of the car park. “Come on, Son. Let’s go home. It’s just you and me now.” Mam unfurls the umbrella and we plod along the gravel footpath that runs between the neat rows of headstones.

“Five potato, six potato, seven potato more,” I say, my eyes landing on a small boy riding his bicycle out on the road. A crow caws at us from the church gutter and the rain pelts down.

Cello

“Give your old aunt a kiss,” she says, and offers me a rouged cheek. Auntie Martha has stubble like the Old Man, and it hurts my lips when I kiss her. She smells like the bottom of the old suitcase on top of the wardrobe in my bedroom.

“Your auntie will be staying for a few weeks, while she looks for a job in town,” Mam says.

“Is Uncle Willie staying, too?” I ask.

The Old Man wanders in from the horse racing on the telly and says he doesn’t think she’d be going back to Uncle Willie. Something about him being a “cur” and leaving her “black and blue.”

“My, my,” Martha croons. “You’re growing into a big lad, altogether.”

I run upstairs to my bedroom and lie on the floor with Arthur Ransome’s “Winter Holiday.”

In the toilet, brown stockings hang from the shower curtain. I smell the toe of one of them and it has the same suitcase pong as Auntie Martha. Maybe Uncle Willie beats her because she smells weird, but he’s a nice man who always gives me a pound note when they visit. “Buy yourself some sweets,” he tells me. Mam gets annoyed with him when he says this and asks him if he knows how much rubbish a pound can buy at the sweet shop.

“Aren’t you a grand big lad, now,” Martha says, and I nearly jump into the bathtub. She rubs my shoulders, hugging me from behind. “You love your old Aunt Martha, don’t you?”

“Yes, Auntie. I have to run and do my homework,” I say, and pull away from her to escape back up the small flight of stairs to my bedroom.

As I do my homework on the bed the low moans of her cello leak from the spare room beside the toilet. It sounds so sad and lonely, just like I imagine Auntie Martha always feels inside.