Malarky Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Episode 1

  Episode 2

  Episode 3

  Episode 4

  Episode 5

  Episode 6

  Episode 7

  Episode 8

  Episode 9

  Episode 10

  Episode 11

  Episode 12

  Episode 13

  Episode 14

  Episode 15

  Episode 16

  Episode 17

  Episode 18

  Episode 19

  Episode 20

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  For Jeremy Isao and Cúán Isamu with love.

  For Helen, Niamh, Cathy, & Tillie with thanks.

  Episode 1

  —There’s no way round it, I’m finding it very hard to be a widow, I told Grief, the counsellor woman, that Tuesday morning.

  —Are you missing your husband a great deal?

  —Not especially. I miss the routine of his demands it’s true, but am plagued day and night with thoughts I’d rather be without.

  —Are you afraid to be in the house alone?

  —Indeed I am.

  —Are you afraid someone’s going to come in and attack you?

  —Indeed I am not.

  —And these thoughts, do they come when you are having problems falling asleep?

  —No, I said, they are with me from the first sup of tea I take toto this very minute, since three days after my husband was taken.

  —Tell me about these thoughts?

  —You’re sure you want to know?

  —I’ve heard it all, she insisted, there is nothing you can say that will surprise me.

  I disbelieving, asked again. You’re sure now?

  —Absolutely.

  —Men, I said. Naked men. At each other all the time, all day long. I can’t get it out of my head.

  —Well now, she said and fell silent.

  She had to have been asking the Almighty for help, until finally she admitted she could think of no explanation and her recommendation was to scrub the kitchen floor very vigorously and see would a bit of distraction help.

  —Pay attention to the floor and mebbe they’ll stop.

  I recognized the potential a widow has to frighten people. I had frightened the poor woman something rotten.

  The next week I returned.

  —I have scrubbed the floor every day and I am still plagued by them.

  Grief was silent another good while.

  She had to be honest, she’d never come across a woman who’d experienced this. Usually a woman simply missed her husband without this interference.

  —Are you turning to your faith?

  —Oh God I am.

  The two of us would now pray for some guidance because she was at a loss.

  —Were they still the same images?

  —Worse, I said. Even more of them and at filthy stuff together and now they all seem to be bald regardless of their ages. Did she think the devil might target widows?

  —He might, Grief said. He very well might.

  —Would it be worth looking into them Nigerian preachers, the black fellas I seen on the telly who can exorcise them from the place?

  —It might, she said, it very well might.

  The girls in my gang asked why wasn’t I going to the grief counselling anymore.

  —There’s something awful morbid about her. She’s the sort who’d nearly put you off being alive.

  And we all laughed about it, until Joanie said be careful now I think that’s so and so, who’s married to so and so’s husband, who’s Patsy’s cousin and we’d never hear the end of it if it was to get back to her.

  —It’s awful complicated being a widow, you’ve to be careful what you say, I told them, as I’ll tell you all now. If you are a widow, be careful what you say. I think it’s why they started talking about Jimmy in the bank.

  Mebbe I said too much.

  In the corner of Joanie’s kitchen, atop her pine table, a helicopter wobbled on a muted television, with the Afghan mountains and the Afghan mist behind it. Something of the gherkin in its green machine shape: a bulging and inaccurate feel to it.

  Since the war ended, no one asked much about Jimmy assuming him, as Our Woman had, returned to The States, until one Friday morning, a handsome postcard arrived via a German military base informing her he’d been redeployed. Afghanistan this time. She recalled the morning well: it was the same Friday Joanie suggested she apply for Meals on Wheels and she’d been angered on both counts. She had not told the girls the news of Jimmy’s redeployment, fearing it would only endorse what they might be hearing in the bank, but still she found the coincidence of it appalling. All out to get me while I’m weak. I wouldn’t tell them a thing, it’ll only be the start of something.

  Something was suggestion: Our Woman cannot abide them. Impertinent, ill thought out, like flipping an egg before it was ready or pulling a loaf from the oven with the yeast still stretchy and wet. Get the facts, get the facts before you come at me, she wanted to sweep them all back. That a broom could hold back a population, what a grand prospect.

  Gentle and all as Joanie had been about the Meals on Wheels, it had stung her hard. With her diabetes, sure she could qualify for them, did she know? And 60, sure young as it was and indeed it was young, was as good an age as any to apply.

  It was the diabetes.

  The gang didn’t like the diabetes because she could no longer partake in the thick slices of fruitcake they all ate together. Will you ever be shut of it? Does it go away? The girls had asked replacing the lid on the cake tin with a deliberate, let down rattle. Any small change to their routine created a shudder and produced the very thing she despised: a volley of suggestions delivered to deafen her with their irritation.

  And down she’d go.

  Concertina’d, her brain sunk to her ankles for a full twenty-four hours, how those suggestions ate away at her when she might be beating an egg or straightening a cushion. Incessantly she examined them for hidden meaning and intimation. Did they think her older than them? Would they say it if she still had a husband? Did they think her hopeless because she was a widow? She discounted that one, there were two other widows in the group, but the other widows were still dancing and she was not. I loathe the dancing. I loathe the look of those swaying couples and the heat and the hair and the smell of the smoke afterwards. Nothing would tempt me back to it. I won’t go back. But the Meals on Wheels: wasn’t that now the sort of thing infirm, incontinent people needed? She must get her hair done. She’d get her hair done and that’d settle it. The girls would talk of her hair and leave the diabetes alone.

  Another worry. Maybe they’d figured out Jimmy. She must keep close to Patsy and her son, for it was at Patsy any leak would begin.

  In response to this burst of punitive anxiety, she told the gang she was busy the next two days. An unusual move to startle them, for not a day passed that several of them didn’t meet. They were like tight ligaments in each other’s life, contracting, extending and sustaining the muscle of each other, house to house, tongue to ear.

  The first afternoon without them she took on elaborate baking projects that mostly resulted in failure, making her feel steadily worse. A collapsed, rough looking spanakopita sent her plunging to a new low. The spinach was climbing outside the cratered pastry, diligently clawing its way up and over the pan, while the feta cheese swum for its life at the sides. A sunken, hopeless mess. The sugar free fruitcake came out squashed and flat as a cricket bat, as she puzzled over which ingredient exactly she had misread or misplaced. Baking powder was the culprit. It tasted worse than it appeared. The phone rang wh
ile she was outside offering these tasteless morsels to the chickens.

  Let it ring, let them wonder. She took time to slowly wind back down the garden with the bucket empty, pausing to unhook her boots, customarily bash them together and position them by the mat. She would be busy for another day. The suggestions had just nudged her again. Nipped the bottom of her brain, sent a twitch down her spine into her arms, and created that unsettled feeling in her stomach of having missed a step on the stairs, that indicated the return of the thought that was never far from her all these years: would Patsy’s son have said something to someone about Jimmy? It worried her a great deal more than her son being in a war zone.

  Monday, she’d talk to the girls on Monday. Monday, she’d be ready again.

  Mondays were difficult for other reasons.

  Her mind stretched back to remember last Monday and thoughts of that man’s stubbly neck still provoked her. A farmer he was of course, sure who else were you likely to find standing in the Co-op submerged in thoughts over bags of feed. Stood like a post he was in the third aisle beside the shelf that held the goat harnesses, beside the check red, warm shirts hanging up on the back wall.

  —Is that shirt neck size 16? he had called to her, waving a shirt. She was glad the aisle was wide enough to accommodate the smothering smell of him.

  —I’m looking for a sixteen. Is it sixteen? I can’t read the sizes. I’ve no glasses.

  He leaned over to her, opening his mouth for air and she spied cornflakes in there amid his mouthy parts of minimal teeth and expansive gums. The ingrained grey stubble on his face and the hostile reek of silage from his boots below gave him an air like an old jug. She marveled that the man could leave the house in such a state, whilst softened by his need for help. His request to her, pulling her closer to the end of the aisle, bringing her into a corner she would normally have drawn her tummy in and passed. His jumper, torn at the neck, had collected and displayed much of his farming during the past week. He had a warm face, she noted. A warm face made a grand amount of difference to what came below the neck. No matter the proximity she might live to him, they were of slightly different worlds, hers was a more insulated union of floral curtains, the odd ornament, a framed photo and cleanly, swept fireplace, while she could imagine his spartan bathroom arrangement, the Wellies sat beneath the table and perhaps a pan and brush laid against the far kitchen wall. She could see perhaps him and his brother sat at the kitchen table eating bread and butter, slurping milky tea, not saying much, if anything at all. She ceased thinking on his domestic arrangements for she felt herself grow itchy. Yet in those few minutes of rummaging for a shirt and him taking advantage of having her attention long enough to ask carefully where had she driven in from today, she felt useful.

  Hours later though, back at home, the interaction perturbed her. She worried hard: did she hand him a neck size 14? She strained to visualize the number of the label or was it on the packet? She couldn’t recall. He might never make the journey back to change it and would be stuck wearing the shirt with a neck too tight. Would his brother mock him quietly behind the milky tea, knowing he was after buying a shirt too small, maybe too smug to tell him? Would he go into Mass squeezed into it?

  At the peak of this anxiety, the day was ruined, utterly ruined and she saw no choice but to drive all the necessary miles back again and discreetly count the shirts. Might she, if she counted them, be able to find how many were missing and then know what size she’d given him?

  Behind the Co-op, amid the cars collecting feed and fluke, she struggled to find a place to park. She entered the shop, happy to see the young fella engrossed at the counter with two men measuring chains. There was one less shirt neck size fourteen when she looked. She hung around the back aisle ’til the men buying chain were gone. She approached the counter and confessed to the young fella, who had been in school with her Jimmy some years back.

  —I made a mistake, she said, I feel awful. I’ve given him the wrong size.

  —Sure if it’s the worse thing that ever happened to him, he’ll have a good life. The young fella laughed lightly before noticing she was serious. He tapped into the computer and told her, Don’t worry your head about it, I have it here, it was a size 16 your man bought.

  He came around from the back of the counter, took the two shirts from her.

  —You’re very good to come up and check, but next time phone and save yourself the journey, he said gently, walking her over to the door with his arm on her back.

  —How’s Jimmy? he asked as she stepped out past him.

  —Still away.

  —Must be awful hard. Where is he at now?

  —Afghanistan it is now, she said quietly.

  —Must be awful hard, he repeated.

  On the few steps back to the car, she lifted her hand and waved at a neighbour who was struggling to get a final sack of cattle meal (suckler nuts) into an already full car boot. It wasn’t true that young fellas were all drunkards, car thieves and vandals the way the newspapers claimed they were in every other headline. That young fella’s remarking was the most comfort she’d had in as many days. When she lowered the handbrake the awful thought struck her that the young fella inside might only have only asked about Jimmy because he was one of them homosexuals too. The small comfort evaporated and she remembered that Joanie had said after watching Elton John on the Late, Late Show that she noticed gays asked a lot of questions. Joanie had said it twice. She remembered it well because she’d wanted to move on from it after the first time, thinking it ridiculous that whomever you laid down beside might prompt the number of questions you asked. But the thought was back at her now. Was he one who asked questions, that fella? Or was he genuine? She knew his mother, now she’d have to call into her someday in search of the answer.

  Maybe the mother asked plenty questions too. She’d see. Suggestion, the pain of suggestions was at her again.

  The phone rang its encore as she put kettle to cooker. She lifted the receiver to hear Kathleen.

  —You weren’t down to us today, Kathleen began, and I worried about you. What’s wrong? Is it the diabetes?

  —No, not sick, just busy the next few days, her, reassuring back, while giving no clue to what might have her so engaged. The phone continued to ring, each of the five of them. Until finally when she considered not lifting the phone it rang the sixth time and she heard Joanie again.

  —Had she seen the television? Joanie wondered, the way people can wonder without explanation or making an inquiry. A helicopter with sixteen of them, I thought of Jimmy and I said I’d better ring to be sure where he is.

  —It’s not Afghanistan he’s at, she stated. It’s Iran, isn’t it?

  —No it is. He was redeployed there.

  —Well the Lord save us, I only hope he’s not among them, Joanie blurted.

  Our Woman added the number 16 to the bottom of the table mat where she records all the announced losses each time the radio news relayed them. A long line of numbers with a + religiously following each one.

  Episode 2

  —Mam.

  Jimmy stood eyeing her.

  —Mam.

  He smiled slightly and she knew exactly what he was about to say.

  She’d ignored it, the looks, the caught embraces and the horrifying teenage moment when haphazardly one afternoon she wandered up to the barn and lightly pushed the door ajar, a crack, to quietly see the shirtless outline of him. He must have been freezing, his pale body bleary and quivering, trousers at his ankles. She could make out a hand on one of his calves, the other arm wound around the back of his legs and could hear light moaning, and a gurgled aaah that gashed his breathing, while his legs rocked back and forward a bit, urging on whoever was at him below. Her gaze returned to his behind, squinted to see where fingers repeatedly squeezed it, intent on getting the last dregs out of him. She stayed with this motion, transfixed by the bold combining of hands in pulling desire and mouth bound in a thirsty filthiness of suck and thrust. T
hey were working hard, whoever was at him. A bit of a slobber, not unlike a thirsty cow’s tongue lapping swipe at the first sight of water.

  She ascertained by the hair and the shoes it was a male with its head stuck into Jimmy’s middle, but never having seen anything the like of it, she left as swift as she’d arrived, shaken, shaken to core, then disgusted and unsure what to do about it. If it was an animal, you’d put it to sleep. Or give it a kick.

  Mainly she had wanted to hit him about the head and shout these aren’t the things I have planned for you.

  She did nothing. Only the washing up. Angrily.

  An hour or two later Jimmy came in, happy, for his dinner, suggesting the wall in the barn needed a lick of paint. Had he noticed the wall while getting his ploughing? How could he concentrate on these small details amid the wave of what was happening below? He remarked on how well the pork chops tasted, and even though she longed to slap him repeatedly around his face, she found herself locked into a silence she could find no way out of. To the cooker and back she walked, lifting and replacing pan lids. She considered spitting it out at him, let him know all she’d seen, but he was tall now and she couldn’t dress him down, hissing at him like you would a six-year-old.

  —What do you think you’ll need to paint that wall? she said finally. Shift him out of the kitchen. Think straight again.

  Immediately she felt she must exhale him out of here, he must go and stay away. Yet later that night, as she lay in bed, she recalled the light and the way the two fell on each other unabashed, and she could not lose that repeated caressing motion of those hands on her son’s backside.

  —Mam.

  It had been years, and by the time the day came, she was ripe for it. Off the bus from college this Friday evening, home he was to her, stood in her kitchen, looking helpful – helpful was the way Jimmy looked.