At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [79]
—Ireland, said Scrotes.
—Yes, this is Ireland.
CHAPTER NINE
Through the half-door of the cabin the sun came and tickled his face. It dazzled his eyes when they opened. There was a scent on the air that called him to Clare, to Coney Island with his mother’s people. Chickens clucked in the lane and the milk cow lowed for her milking. In a shake he was up and sitting, listening for his uncle and the surly stamp of the ass.
The pallet was strange. A motor honked, sounding nothing like the geese that honked on the Fergus. Nothing like the tide’s rush were the rasps that came from the shadows. A Dublin-bound tramp blew in the bay, lonely and cow-like and wanting.
He was home, but not on the island. Down the Banks, down in Glasthule. Yet something in the air had called him to Clare.
He rubbed the seeds from his eyes and sights and sounds adjusted. Torn loaf on the butter-box. Himself ’s suit in a crumple on the floor. He looked to the bed where came the rasping breath. The mouth hung open and fingers picked at the bedding. No sign of the ma, and Missy gone too. Where would she be so up and early?
The girls all were sleeping still on their shakedown in the corner. Like the leaves of a cabbage they lay, each leaf enfolding the next one down. Eleven, nine, seven, five: the same face told in tripping years. Red hair same like himself in the bed. Another had come and gone while he was away in Clare, and it disturbed him now that he could not recall her name. What name had they gave her, the little one with the tiny stone above in Deansgrange? He could not recall and it ailed him so to disremember.
Turf, that was it. Ship-coal had grown too costly in the war and now they were burning turf in Glasthule. He wondered how he didn’t notice it before. The whiff alone would heat you.
Burn everything English excepting their coal. Well, it was partly coming true.
He raked the fire that had a glow in the ashes yet. Then he pulled on his trousers and took the kettle to fill it. He felt in turns the dusty warm and shadowy cold as he padded between the cottages. All was still save a scrawny old bantam that pecked in the gutter. No birds, for they had no trees for birds to sing from, but he caught the hum of a woman’s voice, and coming to the yard where the pump stood he found his ma with her tub beside her, hushoing to Missy while she worked.
“Well, son.”
It was like she knew him from his shadow or the fall of his feet, for she did not look up to greet him, only kept at her work. It made him smile that she took such pains with her scrubbing, for it was form’s sake really. The stains she shifted with the hard of her stare.
“Is breagh an maidin é.”
Now she turned, humored by his Irish. “’Tis a fine morning all right, son, God’s blessing on the day.”
“Give us here little Missy,” he said. The shawl unwound and he took the bundle in his arms. “What way is she today?”
“Bright as the morning, thanks be to God.”
The fingers stretched and there was trouble in the eyes that only settled when the shawl was about her again. He too could smell his mother in the wool. “Did I tell you I can get milk for her, Ma?” he said. “I know a place sells Peamount milk.”
“Did you hear that, Missy? Your brother will get you milk. Isn’t he the fine and able man to be getting you milk, now?”
“Peamount milk is best. They do keep out the microbes at Peamount.”
The dirty water rinsed in the tub. “She has her plenty of milk, son.”
He chucked his head. She’d rarely admit any help, his ma. He humped the child in his arms, surprised at the weight. “All the same, she’s a deal heavy to