Donal Ryan - A Slanting of the Sun

I thought on anyway all that day and landed myself in at cockcrow the next day. And wasn’t the whole place locked up tight and no car or anything to be seen. But when I tried the side house door wasn’t it open and I pushed it before me and stood up looking in, half afraid. Out of the dark inside she arrived in her nightgown and it ending in a bit of a frill half the way down to her knee and she pulling the two sides of it tight around herself and I saw once the morning light had a chance to touch her that one side of her top lip was bloody and swollen, and there was white lines down along her face where tears had cut their marks into her. Her nose was red from snotting. There was a woeful smell of liquor about the place. Aye, says she, aye go on, fill your eyes and run away home to your mammy and daddy and tell them the blow-in got her comeuppance at last and with them words she left a pitiful cry out of her, like a keening moan really, and I’ll say now in all truth I had a half a horn on me just looking at her there in her silky frilly nightgown and her bare legs and her big chest heaving and even the glisten on her face of tears and snots didn’t put me off and I stepped in over the threshold and Lord strike me down now if I tell you a word of a lie but didn’t I put my hand out to her in comfort and she took it in hers and without even looking up at me she put it to her breast and sure wasn’t that a finish to me there and then and she knew what was after happening and she softly laughed. Go on, says she, in a whisper, hoarse and throaty kind of, and she holding out a set of keys. Open up. And off I toddled not even feeling my own discomfort and not a word came between us all that day again so shocked was I and so distracted was she by her own troubles.

She put me on a day rate after that. I was gave a station in all elements of her business. Bar, shop, yard, solid fuel. Some days was long and more was short, but the same rate paid for all. And I’d say if all was wrote down in a sum of division or done on a calculator, the money paid over the hours worked, I’d say I was always a fair whack better off than the little part-timers that came and went like the rain with their hands forever out and their fighting over shifts and rosters and days of holidays and what have you and more time gave always to arguing about work than to working.

The husband was never again seen. Maybe he telephoned or wrote to her over the years to see to know how was she getting on but as far as I know he never landed back in person. Whatever they fell out over it was a big falling-out. That it ended in his raising his hand to her was known only to me. She stayed in the back till the swelling went down and left me out to deal with people. They’d rather see your face than mine anyway, says she. You’re one of them. You don’t frighten them the way I do, says she. And I only barely able that time to manage the pulling of pints and the working of the till and the ham-slicer in the shop and it was all go go go for a good long while and people used be craning their necks to get a look in through the kitchen door to see where was she and what in the hell the story was and where was Himself and why in the name of Jaysus was the lad of the Farrells keeping shop here from one end of the day to the other. And I spilling whiskey into glasses like it was water, unused as I was to them auld optics and the way you must lay off the push as the bubble gets bigger and for a small while that bar once more was true to its name of The House of the Big Small Ones. And several times I wounded myself on that auld ham-slicer cleaning it and smeared the blade of it with the blood of my body. And always those evenings once all was locked up and put away and tightened up she’d put a bit of a plaster on my cut and rub my hand and stand blue-eyed barefoot before me in that short nightgown and what blood was left in me would rush to gather in the one place and my head would spin and she’d lead me by the bandaged hand to her room below down the long hall and we’d go at each other like two starved wolves going at a fat sheep.

She never asked me to know what I thought of the closing of The House of the Big Small Ones and the knocking of it and of the house attached where I had stored such fond memories and of the building of the bungalow and the big new shop like a refrigerated warehouse lit bright like a Christmas tree and it being made into first a Londis and then a Mace and of the taking on of all the little young wans and she only ever asked me to know did I know their fathers and were they any bit respectable. And she never told where was she going the times she went off in Paddy Screwballs’s hackney all done up to the nines and Paddy’s auld beady eye all up and down her while he lifted her leather suitcase into his boot the very same as a real how-do-you-do gentleman and I wouldn’t ever give Paddy the satisfaction of asking him to know where did he drop her off but I suspect it was to the train station inside in the city for to travel north to attend family dos, weddings and what have you. And she never once asked me to know how was I after my mother passed away but I will say one thing, she gave a fair old squeeze of me at her funeral and whispered into my ear I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry, and I often wonder still was it for more than my loss of my mother she was sorry.

And over all the days and months and years we kept our goings and comings at a fair steady old rhythm.

And that hunger that came on us at times we sated with the flesh of one another.

And even when that wore off of us there was always the nearness and the certainty of one another.

And as sure as God and as sure as I’m sitting here I gave my life to her and never taught myself a thing outside or above what was needed to keep her business going and her books balanced for fear at all she’d someday up sticks and leave me.

And even my own father when he was old and faced with his end said Gor, you know, I wonder would it have been as well had I left you off that time to work with my cousin in the demolition beyond abroad the way you’d have seen something or done something, maybe.

And I took his hand and squeezed it the way I never once had when he was in his health and said No, Daddy, I was as happy here.

But happy I’ll never again be, I’d say. She’s gone from me now and for a finish and for good and for glory and I won’t see her again. And the shop and the petrol pumps and the bungalow and the bit of money that was put away all along the years is belonging now to some nephew or other from above in the north that never in all his days set foot in this village and he wants to know will I stay on the way I can keep a good eye on things for him and I think I won’t, I won’t I’d say. I’ll finish up this pint and go home and take off this tie that has me choked all day and tomorrow or the day after maybe I’ll walk up to the Height where she asked to be buried, God alone knows why because there’s no one here only me that’ll ever lay a flower on her grave or pull a weed from it.

And I’ll stand and say a prayer and before I turn from her I’ll say Sorry, Busty, for the time I told you to go way and fuck yourself, the way I should have that time years ago when I stood unrepentant before her in her dark kitchen.

THE UNIVERSE WAS once a dot, laden with the weight of everything that ever would be.

A man in a nylon shirt and unforgivable shoes came here a few days ago. You can’t have four hundred students, he said. In a school with two classrooms? I uttered phrases and words strung with mumbles: short semesters, intensive modules, research courses, distance learning, assignments, assessments, awards. And on and on I went, punctuating my litany with hard sucks on my inhaler, coughs and wheezes and dissembling and obfuscation. I was fabulous. He poked his narrow nose into each room of this place. Suramon sat dutifully at his teacher’s desk, facing the ranks of his invisible class. Where are your students? the poorly heeled fellow asked him. They are not here, Suramon replied, gesturing grandly at emptiness before clasping his hands tightly together on his desk. Where are they? the fellow asked again. A pen had leaked in his shirt pocket. I do not know, Suramon replied, his brown eyes twinkling as they lighted on the inky haemorrhage. Perhaps you have frightened them away.