Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

ISN’T IT a fright to God to say that the sun splits the stones at the start of September every single year? The poor little children do be pasty-faced for the want of a sunny day and the very minute they’re back at school, it comes out to mock them! How is it at all? And then the crathurs has to go in to school wall-falling with the tiredness after their big trip to Dublin for the All-Ireland. When Tipp is in the final, win or lose, the next day should be a free day, and that’s all there is to it. That’s the kind of talk you’d always hear at the beginning of September. The sun that was weakening in August, though, was as a rule nearly spent by September. It wouldn’t really split the rocks at all; it would hardly even make them lukewarm. But people love giving out, Mother always said.

In September the cooking apples abroad on the trees beside the haggard would be bursting with ripeness and only barely clinging to the branch. Some would have turned to rot on the tree; more would have fallen to the earth — the barest puff of a breeze would dislodge a big fat cooking apple in September. You had to be quick to get to the windfalls before the scavenging insects. You’d pick one up thinking it to be good and turn it to see the other side was brown mush moving with worms and you’d fling it from you in disgust. You had to twist each apple off gently; otherwise no bud would reappear on that spot the next year. Only thick ignoramuses yanks apples off of trees, Mother always said. Like Uncle Frank — you couldn’t let that fella out to fill a bag for Theresa or you’d have nare a cooking apple of your own to bake a tart ever again. He’d wreck before him, that fella. He didn’t fit with nature.

September had its miserable strictness of school’s restart and freedom’s loss, its watery, mocking sun, and its big anti-climaxes above in Croke Park, but it also had tarts and crumble made with the finest of Mother’s own apples that were still ripening an hour before, and that nearly made up for everything.

JOHNSEY WOULD fill four or five boxes with apples for the bakery every year. He wondered whether it was best just to leave it this year, or to fill them as normal and have them ready, or to put a box up on his carrier and cycle down to the Unthanks and drop them in and sit down in the kitchen and drink a cup of tea and watch Herself cooking and listen to Mary with the Cod Eye getting mar dhea chatted up by them blackguards from the building site out the Ashdown Road and not mention anything to do with land or zones or newspapers or other people’s plans or consortiums or what have you. Wouldn’t that be the right job?

It was all the one for a finish: the Unthanks arrived in their old Nissan Bluebird on the Tuesday after the terrible Sunday and Johnsey said nothing about the land thing and nor did they and the three of them crossed the haggard and gathered windfalls in near silence. But now the comfort was gone from that silence and embarrassment had taken its place and they loaded the full bags into the Bluebird’s big boot and Himself praised the quality of the apples and promised to prune the trees back and Johnsey said twas grand, he’d do it and Himself said no, he loved doing it, wasn’t it a fine excuse to be out from under Herself’s feet? And he winked at Johnsey in mock conspiracy and Johnsey laughed and Herself asked what were they laughing at as she took Pyrex dishes of dinners out of the Bluebird and took them in to the fridge and everything was lovely and normal and comfortable and destroyed forever at the same time.

AFTER THE UNTHANKS had gone away and left Johnsey looking out the window after them with one of those painful lumps in his throat that are surely a blockage caused by a build-up of the words you should have spoken, a red car drove slowly past the gate. There was a blonde girl driving it. He heard the car pull up in the gravel out by the road, and a door slam. The blonde girl walked back past the gate. And a few seconds later, she passed up again in the opposite direction. She slowed and half turned to face into the yard and squinted against the sun and leaned a bit forward as though she needed to get closer to get a better look but didn’t dare pass in until she was sure of her place and Johnsey squinted back at her through the cat-scratched kitchen window and Mother of Divine God, it was Siobhán.

Maybe it’s better that a man is given no notice of the arrival of a beautiful woman. That way he can’t be expected to have readied himself and can be more easily forgiven for looking and sounding like a fool opposite her. Either way, Johnsey knew, he would make an awful bags of it. He couldn’t hide behind eye bandages or incapacity now. He’d have to be a proper person. Please God let Mumbly Dave arrive. She was in through the gateway now, starting to pick her steps through the caked yard, waving in at him with one hand and reaching for an invisible handrail with the other to steady her passage. He could see that she was only a couple of steps away from Daddy’s boot-worn track — she’d surely stumble and fall. That thought poked him in the back and propelled him out along the hall, his heart kicking at his ribcage. Just as he came through the front door into the yard, the edge of the rut grabbed the sole of her shoe and she was nearly toppled. But she righted herself with two quick steps forward and said Jesus, is this place booby-trapped?

What can you say to something like that? No? Yes? Ha ha? Mumbly Dave would have a funny reply out inside of a second; he’d be over to her like a hot snot, taking her hand to help her across the uneven ground, smart words spilling from his lips. The best Johnsey could do was: What are you doing here? And he’d hear himself saying those stupid words over and over again for hour after terrible, tortured hour that night. Siobhán said Oh, well that’s fucking lovely! After I risk my life to find you in this … bog ! And he tried to take it back: Oh cripes no, I didn’t mean that, it’s great to see you, I just wasn’t expecting … And she said Well, I did ask my social secretary to liase with yours, but that girl is just useless these days. And he looked at her like a gom and said Ha? Name of God, what was she on about? Oh, she was joking. Oh right, he said. Ha ha ha!

He could hear himself: the thickness of his voice, the fakeness of his stupid laugh. It was like the time Mother had made him go on the phone to her brother in Australia on account of he was dying and he was to ask him how was he and tell him he’d say a prayer for him but he knew that Mother’s brother was just as embarrassed as he was and he’d have preferred not to have to make small talk with imbecile nephews he’d never seen in the flesh and now never would on account of his kidneys were doing for him and Johnsey burned with mortification and misery and he could hear everything he was saying echoed back along the line from Australia a second after he said it and he could clearly hear how foolish he sounded and his uncle was dead a week later and Mother didn’t cry at all nor hardly seemed bothered but then she dropped a small box of eggs that she was only after collecting in the haggard one morning three weeks later and she started crying and didn’t stop for the rest of that day.

His brain was pulling against him big time. It was giving him no digout with all this talking, but it’d have a great time for itself later, playing it all back to him, tormenting him, making him want to saw his own tongue off with Mother’s old carving knife. It was leaving him down badly, as usual. Making him think of ancient phone calls to Australia and dropped eggs and tearful mothers and what have you in the middle of this emergency situation. What in the name of all that’s good and holy was he going to do? Oh God, why send an angel to a fool? What a waste.