Hugo Hamilton - Every Single Minute

Everybody loved the Jesuit in the family. I had an aunt on my father’s side who left all she had to the Jesuits and the donkey sanctuary. Not that anyone should ever be expecting prize money from relatives when they die, or pegging their memory of a person to the sum received. Which is far from the truth in this case, because my aunt was very kind to us. We loved her. Me and my brother will never forget the time she took us down to Cork to see the donkey sanctuary for ourselves. I know it meant a lot to her. Also the Jesuits meant a lot to her.

It was not long after my aunt lost her husband, so she was still in mourning and didn’t want to travel all that distance alone. She took us with her for the company. We will never forget that journey to Cork because my aunt was in tears sometimes while she was driving, telling us about everything, the Rock of Cashel coming into view around the bend. We never imagined that anything as old as the Rock of Cashel could still exist in our time. I think it made my aunt feel better to be travelling. And then the car stalled on the steepest hill in Ireland, in Cork City. I can still remember the sound of the engine straining and her laughing, a frightened laugh that frightened us, thinking she had forgotten the handbrake and we were going to roll all the way back to where we came from. Until she stopped at an angle in the middle of the street and we got out. She said she knew somebody in Cork who could point the car forward again, back down the hill. She brought us for fish and chips which was something we never had the taste of before because my father was against food that was not cooked at home. Fish and chips was something foreign to our family and we never even spoke about it or wanted it. Fish and chips was for other people, not us. So having fish and chips in Cork was something I could never forget. It was the greatest kindness. Like something left to me in a will, something I can keep, something I can’t spend.

My aunt had the best smile that I ever saw, mostly with her eyes. She was very generous. She put us up in a hotel in Cork. I think it was the first time we ever stayed in a hotel. She had her room and we had our room, though I had to sleep with my brother in the same bed and we tried our best to stay separate, as far away from each other as possible. We said good night to my aunt, but then we got up again. We got dressed and went downstairs, I don’t really know why. I think we just wanted to be awake. We thought it was a waste to sleep in Cork. We didn’t talk, but I knew what my brother was thinking and he knew what I was thinking. We agreed without agreeing, saying only the least words necessary. We left the room and went down the stairs to explore, I suppose, that’s what we called it without saying the word.

We walked through the reception, out the door. I think we wanted to see the street in darkness, the front porch of the hotel with the lights on, one missing. We wanted to see people, anybody out there smoking, the smell of cigarettes in the open. The air in the street at night. Our own breath like smoke. And cars going by. Guessing by the headlights and the sound of the engine what model it could be, particularly motorbikes, what CC they were and what the maximum speed was on the speed dial.

And as we were standing there, we saw a man and a woman coming out of the hotel together holding hands. It took a few seconds to realise that we knew them. There was my aunt, walking towards us. I thought she must be coming to tell us to go to bed, we had no permission to be out there on the street. The man she was with was wearing a light-grey suit, so we didn’t recognize him at first. It was my father’s brother, the Jesuit. Even though he was not dressed as a Jesuit, we knew it was my father’s brother because we recognized his face and his voice. He had only recently been at the funeral of my uncle, my aunt’s husband, a few weeks before that, saying Mass for him.

I was sure they must have seen us standing next to the railings. We were so obvious. I could think of no excuse for being out in the street after we had already said good night. But then they passed us by. I suppose they were not expecting us to be there. Even though my father’s brother looked straight at me, in the eyes, he didn’t recognize me, he thought we were just boys at the railings.

My aunt was smiling. Her smile was full of sadness and happiness, if you can imagine that. When I saw my aunt at the funeral of her husband, my uncle, she could hardly walk, she had to be carried, people holding her arms on both sides. One of her shoes came off on the steps and they had to put it back on again for her, because she had no feeling in her feet, they were not even touching the ground any more. I could see what grief was and I was confused by it. I didn’t understand how it could be so close to happiness as well.

Maybe grief and happiness were the same thing, I thought.

My father’s brother, the Jesuit, put his elbow up in the air and she slipped her arm inside, hooking. That’s what we saw, my brother and me. We saw them walking away, arm in arm. We saw them stopping at the end of the street. My aunt leaned her head against his shoulder and they disappeared. I had no thoughts in my head only does he have sweets in his pocket. That’s what my brother was thinking about as well, both of us thought everything together, identical. Did my father’s brother have sweets in his left pocket when he was walking away with my aunt on his arm, wine gums usually? We didn’t say anything to each other. We couldn’t tell anyone, not my mother, not my father, not the Jesuit, not my aunt, not even ourselves. We were afraid to be found out. We didn’t know what to do with the information, so we pretended that we saw nothing, only cars and people passing by. We went back upstairs and put our pyjamas on and tried to sleep, side by side, he was always taking the blankets.

She’s worried about Buddy. We’re at the Berlin Wall and she turns to ask me if Buddy is all right. She wants me to tell her what Buddy is feeling right now. She wants to hear me say that he’s doing fine, he’s lying down with his snout laid out on the floor and his ears up for the tiniest noise, staring at the door, waiting for her to walk in so that he can jump up and run around in circles to welcome her back, celebrating the way that only dogs do. He’s perfectly happy, I tell her. For all he knows, you might as well be gone down the road to get a bottle of wine as off in Berlin. Besides, he was well used to her being away. Every time she went to New York, he stayed with Mary, her neighbour, so he was always at home. And whenever she came back, she would bring him straight down to Clare so they could walk across the Burren together, Buddy running ahead and coming back every now and again to make sure she was still there.

Is he OK, Liam, do you think?

He’s very well looked after, Úna.

Do you think he knows?

I can’t answer that. She is aware that dogs can tell what’s going on, they can smell illness, but I don’t want to remind her. She can be sure that Mary treats him like part of the family and he’ll be even more delighted to see her when she gets back.

We’re at the Berlin Wall now, what’s left of it, passing along the outside with all the graffiti. Outside or inside, it’s hard to know at this stage. We’re looking at the height of it and saying it’s not as tall as we thought, in comparison to other walls nowadays. She loves all the colour, the drawings. She gets Manfred to tell her the stories, the wall going up and families escaping, mothers handing babies across barbed wire, tunnels, spies, plus all the ironic things that happened later on when the wall came down again, like the man bringing back a library book he borrowed thirty years ago.