Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [12]
She found a small smooth dent in the table and began to rub gently with her forefinger. “I made supper for Matt that evening while he sat and talked to my father. Those days my father was poorly. He’d had a stroke the winter before and couldn’t get about no more. His mind was the finest kind but he had a hard time talking. You had to listen close to know what he’d be trying to say. When the neighbours used to come and visit him, they’d talk like he wasn’t there, like he was gone with the fairies or couldn’t hear no more. Instead they’d go on to me with their old men’s talk and foolish jabbering. To begin with, I tried to include my father in the talk and be interested in what they had to say but in the end I’d just say yes and no and wish them gone. But now Matt, he sat and talked to him and listened to what he had to say. He told him about London in war time and about Ireland and the troubles there. He took time with him, answered his questions, what he could understand of them, and never seemed to get crooked. At the time I thought how nice it was to hear again the sound of a man’s voice about the place: a young man’s voice. My father asked him to bide awhile with us and I was right delighted.”
She took a deep breath and cleared her throat. “Later that night when my father got tired of all the talk, I saw him to bed in the front room: that was where he slept those days. It was easier for me. When I come back to the fire and sat down, it was a bit awkward between us, but after a bit I got around to speaking.”
“About Johnny, a message written on a piece of paper…well, it doesn’t put a man to rest, you know.”
Matthew Molloy leaned forward in his chair, his elbows coming to rest on his knees, his hands clasped together. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She leaned forward, alert, anxious not to miss a word. The back of his head was close to her face. There was a faint oily smell off his scalp. The hair was thick and coarse, cut close in at the back and sides. Her eyes followed the curve of his head up to the crown where tight curls twisted and turned into a thick clump. About his ears, tiny flecks of grey showed through. In that moment, she had an urge to reach out and touch those curls, to reassure herself that it was someone real who sat in the chair beside her, but even as the thought crossed her mind, his head came up, as if he had sensed what she was about to do.
She caught his eye, compelling him to look at her. “You know something, Mr. Molloy,” she said. “People don’t talk about Johnny no more, not even his own mother. Once the letter came that was it. It’s like he never existed.” His eyes dropped and he shifted in his chair, pulling back ever so slightly, but she paid no heed. “Sometimes I think I hear him laughin’ below in the yard. I think he’s goin’ to walk in through the door or sneak up behind me like he used to, and frighten the livin’ daylights out of me.”
For a fleeting moment laughter seemed to fill the kitchen and then just as quickly it was gone, leaving behind an empty silence.
“How did you come to meet Johnny?” Her question, hard and precise, dragged them back to reality.
“I met him purely by chance.”The answer was on the tip of his tongue, as if he had been anticipating the question. “It was a chilly evening in London, close to the end of October. I had things on my mind that night so I decided to take a walk down by the river near Victoria. The war was on everyone’s mind, it was all people talked