Belinda McKeon - Solace

‘Anyway,’ Sammy said, ‘they’re home here to us as often as they can. And they think they’ll be able to move back here in a couple of years.’

‘That’ll be grand for yourself and Helen,’ Tom was able to say.

‘It will,’ Sammy said. ‘But those children won’t be as small then as they are now. And those years when they were small and all that won’t come back to us again, no matter how close they build their house to us. I’m awful sorry I don’t see more of them sometimes. A lot of times, to tell you the truth. Do you know?’

‘I do, Sammy.’

‘The young fella talks to me over the phone at the weekends. David. Jesus, I don’t know what kind of accent he has on him. You wouldn’t understand the half of it. Granddad, I want to go with you on the truck, he says to me.’

‘The tractor,’ said Tom, and he was able, at least half able, to laugh.

Sammy pointed to the old Ford, half buried under logs in the turf shed. ‘Do you mind the time Mark was up with you on that yoke over there?’

‘Couldn’t get him off the thing,’ Tom said. ‘That was the sort of him.’

‘And a wee girl, of course, you won’t be putting a wee girl up on a tractor,’ Sammy said, and then he laughed. ‘Or maybe you might, if the mother will let you, but, Jesus, it’s nice to have them around you all the same, Tom. The small ones.’

Sammy bent to take the saw up again. As he lifted it, he shook his head. ‘Jesus, you wouldn’t know the years going by, Tom. Do you know?’

Was he drunk, Tom found himself thinking, but pushed the thought away. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t kind: Sammy was a good man, had always been a good friend. He was carrying the saw to the car now. After he had stowed it and slammed the boot down, he turned back to Tom. ‘That lassie could be nothing like her father, Tom,’ he said.

Tom looked at him. ‘The child?’ he said, and Sammy shook his head.

‘No, Tom. The girl. Mark’s girlfriend. Or his partner, I suppose.’

It was the first time Tom had heard her referred to like this. He swallowed. ‘The mother, you mean,’ he said.

‘The mother. What’s this it is?’

‘What?’

Sammy looked at him. ‘Her name, Tom,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ Tom said. ‘Joanne.’

‘Joanne. And any name on the child yet?’

Tom shook his head, more vigorously than he had meant to. It was a shock to hear that said. The child would be named.

‘No name,’ he said.

‘No name only Casey so far,’ said Sammy, and laughed.

‘Jesus,’ said Tom, ‘I hope so.’ And that was another shock, as it hit him: there was another Casey, now, in the world. Another of them. Another of his own.

‘Ah, I wouldn’t worry about that, Tom,’ Sammy said. ‘It was the same with David over there. Alan and Teresa weren’t married that time and I was wondering would she want to give him her own name, but they don’t really seem to. They seem to want to give them the father’s name.’

‘I see.’

‘And I was saying, you know, that the girl, she might be very different from the father.’

‘She might,’ Tom said, wanting to talk about anything else.

‘Sure face it, Tom, she must be, if Mark wants anything to do with her.’

‘I don’t know,’ Tom said. ‘It all happened very quick.’

‘Everything happens very quick, Tom. That’s what I’m saying to you. The years. The way they go.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Lookit, Tom,’ said Sammy, as he opened the door of his car, ‘the child is here now. Would you go up and have a look at her?’ He sat into the driver’s seat and gestured back to the boot with his thumb. ‘Thanks for looking at that engine for me.’

‘There wasn’t too much wrong with it, now,’ said Tom, and Sammy shook his head.

‘It needed to be looked at, Tom,’ he said, ‘and you were the only one who’d know what to do with it. I’ll see you some night in Keogh’s.’

Tom nodded. ‘Good luck.’

As Sammy headed off, his old Volvo estate bumping over the uneven ground leading from the yard to the drive, Tom thought he heard the sound of the phone from inside. But when he went closer to the back door he realized that he was imagining it. Nobody was looking for him. Nobody was standing at a phone some place where he couldn’t see them, waiting for him to pick up. He whistled to the dog and headed down the yard towards the lower fields.

Mossy turned up in Holles Street on Sunday, hung-over, carrying a bunch of flowers and a knitted baby’s hat in the shape of a strawberry.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Mark laughed when he unwrapped it. ‘Where did you get this thing?’

‘The Avoca shop,’ Mossy said, acting offended.

‘So you were drinking in O’Neill’s for the cure this morning?’

‘Stag’s,’ Mossy said sheepishly.

‘Don’t mind him, Mossy,’ Joanne said, fixing the hat on the baby’s head. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

Mossy sat with Aoife a while, holding her up too close to him, like he was afraid she would roll out of his grip. She couldn’t focus on anything yet, the nurse had told them, but she seemed to see his curls; she stared up at them. They sat there talking for a few minutes, and then there was a knock on the door, and there was Mark’s mother, smiling as proudly as though she were bringing a newborn of her own in to show them, and there was his father behind her, looking down at the floor.

As far as Mark could gather, his parents had been to one o’clock mass in the cathedral in Longford, and then they had been for their lunch in the Longford Arms, and then they had driven in the direction of home, his mother at the wheel. And when she had come to the turn for their lane, she had not taken it, but had kept going on the Dublin road.

‘And here we are,’ she said, not to him but to the baby. ‘What do you think of her, Mossy?’

‘Ah, you couldn’t resist her,’ said Mossy. He smiled up at Maura, and he looked, then, to where Tom still stood at the door. ‘I’d better let her introduce herself to her granddad,’ he said, and he offered Aoife out in his arms.

‘Tom,’ Mark’s mother said, a dip of pleading in her tone, and his father walked into the room. He stood at the bottom of the bed for a moment, clearly not knowing what to do. Then he shook Mark’s hand, stiffly, without looking at him, and Joanne’s hand, in the same way. And then, finding himself beside Mossy, he shook his hand, too.

‘Are you going to shake this one’s hand as well?’ Mossy said, and everyone laughed, and Tom looked as though he might laugh too, but he did not, and still he did not take the baby. He walked over to the window and looked out at the car park below, his back to the room.

‘Did you see anyone you know at one o’clock mass?’ Mark said, after a long moment. It was the standard question, the question his parents always asked each other, the question everyone asked everyone else at home, but it was the wrong question, he knew, as soon as it was out of his mouth. He saw his father stiffen.

‘Ah, you know, the usual,’ his mother said quickly. ‘Lots of people asking for you. Lots of people wondering how you were getting on, Joanne. And lots of people sending their congratulations.’

‘Breda Keogh was very worried about you,’ Mark’s father said then. They all looked at him in surprise.

‘Breda Keogh wasn’t at one o’clock mass, sure,’ Maura said, in a clipped tone. She glanced at Mark, and he saw the anxiety in her eyes. They both knew that whatever reason his father had for making this his first comment could not be a good one.

‘I was talking to her in the shop,’ Tom said, half turning, addressing himself not to Maura but to Joanne. ‘She was terrible worried about you when she heard you were after having the baby.’