Robert Wilson - Eureka Street - A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

It didn't. In the end, of course, I couldn't take the solitude.

So, six months late, I went to see my foster-folks.

Matt and Mamie had been my foster-folks. They sounded like a nineteen-fifties novelty act. And that, after a fashion, was what they were.

Matt and Mamie had fostered me when I was fifteen. When all the bad stuff happened with my real folks, the cops and the social workers had nabbed me. After a few weeks of courtrooms and hostels, they dragged me over to Matt and Mamie's house.

Years later, they'd told me what a wolf-boy I was when I arrived. I was violent, withdrawn, the usual stuff. The various arms of all the state services had recommended institutional care but some optimist, some humanist, had thought I was recognizably human. That was the someone who had thought of Matt and Mamie.

They didn't need to remind me. I'd never forgotten the first day I went to them.They lived on the Antrim Road then.They weren't solidly their home, their belongings were unimaginable to me. After I had mutinously fielded an evening of solicitous non-enquiry from them, they showed me my bedroom.

It had all been so bad, my childhood, my youth, it had all been so I'd seen it all through like a hardwood cowboy. Nothing had finally hurt me beyond endurance and, for all the damage I'd taken, I was still standing. But that night I cried, I wept to die. I sobbed silently until my head was hot and bursting and my nose ran like twin taps.

And it was only because of the coverlet on my bed. Mamie had laid a green embroidered coverlet on my bed. I had no idea what it was made of but it was heavy and felt like prosperity itself. It was only a piece of material but it was too much for me, that coverlet. I had never seen such green. I couldn't really understand that this woman I didn't know would have put this thing across the bed for my comfort, for my pleasure. I rubbed my hot, snotty face in it and slept in my clothes.

Later, I decided that it was no big deal. I decided that it was only bed-linen. Later still, I changed my mind. Perhaps green coverlets are not profound things but I think it made me understand something of what I might have there'd been nobody around to love me like they should.

I lived with Mamie and Matt for a couple of years. By the number of grateful men of various ages who called on them, I soon guessed that Matt and Mamie had done the foster thing before. I was right. They had had no children and had made up for it by fostering the kids nobody would touch. That basically meant males over fourteen. They'd had some shockers: delinquents, hardmen, wide-boys and paramilitaries of every description. Only one had turned out bad. He was dead already, shot by his own side in some Republican feud.

We kids had stolen from them, cheated them and assaulted kid had even come home one night with a UVF gun with which he was going to kneecap Matt, but Matt and Mamie had continued loving them all, absolutely and unconditionally. Eventually these wide-boys, these halfmen just had to learn that language.

Matt and Mamie had stopped fostering now. Or rather they'd been stopped. They were too old. They'd been retired from the caring business. But they'd done their bit. Seventeen kids had passed through their hands from 1964 onwards. Mamie always talked proudly of having the biggest family in the city. Some of these guys were in their forties. They were lawyers, doctors, builders; they were husbands and fathers.

Matt and Mamie had fostered generations of the city's scum and persistently and without reward made human beings out of them.

Matt and Mamie were weird.

Matt and Mamie had been leaving messages on my machine for months. I hadn't called back. I'd only ignored them because I'd known what they'd wanted. I hadn't seen them since Sarah had gone.

They were both in their sixties now, living in a big house out on the Shore Road. It was in the general area where I'd been doing my repo work. I'd always been a bit panicky in case I bumped into them, doing that work of which they would so disapprove. Mamie hadn't wanted to move to the Shore Road but Matt had insisted. He had partially maritime fantasies. He'd always wanted to work in the docks. He'd even tried to leave school when he was fifteen. they'd been childhood dissuaded him. He hadn't wanted to listen to her but since he had tried fruitlessly to have sex with her at least once every twenty minutes between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, she had a carrot he couldn't resist. The new house was on the north edge of the bay of the city and Matt liked to walk the coast of Belfast, concrete and crane, the docks thick with the quality of the sea. He liked to dream there.

I rolled up to the house about two. Matt was in the garden, his big back bent over some dwarf hedgerow. I called out to him. He stood up and shielded his eyes with his hand. It was not sunny.

'Good to see you, son.'

I shook his hand. There was some muck there. `Likewise,' I said.

We went inside. Mamie was in the kitchen, cooking something major. Her meals had always been complicated affairs, taking military amounts of time and tasting pretty military in the end. She kissed my cheek with her big cold lips and told me to sit at the table. She went on cooking.

`You've been a stranger,' she said, wiping her brow.

I smiled but nobody was looking at me. `Yeah, well, you know how it goes.'

'I'm not sure I do know how it goes.'

Matt coughed uneasily. `You want a drink, son?'

'I'd drink any coffee that's going.'

Matt busied himself with my request. Mamie turned to face me. `How's Sarah?'

I looked at my fingernails. It felt pretty blithe but I knew it would fool no one. `She's fine.'

`Mmm,' replied Mamie.

A lot of Mamie's conversation had always consisted of indeterminate noises, grunts, mumbles and grumbles, all invested with their own peculiar significance. `Mmm' was not a favourable noise.

But then, having finished with coffee, Matt started his own series of peacemaker noises, coughs, chokes, sneezes. I nearly laughed. This wasn't Foreign Office but nobody could deny its diplomacy.

`I must urinate,' he announced.

He left the room. It looked intentional. It looked like Mamie had something to say to me that Matt didn't want to hear.

`You look thin,' said Mamie.

`I haven't been eating your concrete casseroles for near a year.

She took a swipe at me with one floury hand. `You should call us more.'

`Yeah, I'm sorry. I will, I promise.'

She stopped what she was doing and stood facing me with her arms folded. `She's gone, hasn't she?'

'Who?'

'Sarah'

Matt and Mamie didn't like me to smoke but I lit a cigarette anyhow.

'Yes. She's gone.'

Matt and Mamie had been big Sarah fans. They had dug her. To Matt and Mamie, Sarah had been a good thing, she'd been the only good thing. Mamie knew my news already so she didn't freak but she gave me one of her old-woman looks. It was one of the things I'd noticed about Sarah going. Everybody thought it had been my decision. They were wrong. I hadn't packed any bags. But that stuff, all that stuff, it just took too long to explain.

'Who's for dinner?' I asked.

Mamie didn't mind the subject change but she blushed for me. John and Patrick are coming special.'

John and Patrick were the first and second of Matt and Mamie's fosterings.They were both in their late forties. She was always ill-at-ease when she split her affections like this. I'd made her feel bad that I wasn't getting my feet under her table that night. She needn't have worried. I was OK. Mamie's cooking was dreadful. She had to take the day off to make an omelette. John and Patrick were welcome to it.

'I'd have asked you but you were being all

I put my arms around her old shoulders. I put my lips to her old cheek.'Yeah, yeah,' I said.'Tell it to the marines.'