Chapter 6

‘Ye speak ta yar father yet?’ Margaret Rose asked. Her boys were back after Sunday evening tea at a chip spot and nodded their baseball-capped heads downwards like obedient stable horses. They fussed over Margaret Rose’s eyes for what would they do if Mammy didn’t see properly again? Margaret Rose dismissed such fears with a gentle swat of her hand, as if sight were an irrelevant condition of the modern age. As she spoke about their father’s absence, the mammy matador fixed her pink hoody high up on one shoulder.

Everyone has blips.

Margaret Rose was not oblivious to the knocks of the world and to the wants of a man. Just as she was finishing the last of the chips, complaining about a heavy hand with the vinegar, a man in an oversized checked sports jacket and hefty ginger moustache arrived on the Ward. He seemed uncertain as to whether he was in the right place, bowing down deferentially at myself, then Shane, across to Hegs, until he tracked back and arrived heave-ho to the end of Margaret Rose’s bed. Jane shot straight to him and greeted him in a flimsy night top with spaghetti straps like a dancer in a burlesque club.

‘Well now, who have we here, and a very good evening,’ she said, front-of-house. ‘Is Tom with you, I really do hope you brought him along for a pint?’

‘Indeed he’s not, I’m afraid, ma’am … very sorry,’ he replied, gentlemanly.

‘Ah that’s OK so, you see, what can you do?’

‘What can you do indeed, ma’am?’ he said, nodding.

‘But now, you see, that cow is a desperate long time calving, the poor thing. She’ll be exhausted if ye don’t pull the calf soon.’

The younger boys greeted the man quietly, by shaking his hand and nodding. One boy moved the bouquet of carnations that had lain on Margaret Rose’s nightstand down to her feet, showing them off, and in a swift changing of the guard, the boys gave up their space around her bed.

‘More power to ya, Mags … well, aren’t ya looking fresh?’ he said.

‘Jim, fetch a vase,’ she demanded of the visitor, and Jim mithered for a little while, awkward in the ill-fitting jacket, and a vase being unfamiliar territory. He eventually fell upon a flimsy plastic cup beside the sink, that would, they both agreed, do for now. And wasn’t it lovely of her sons to bring her flowers, how well she had reared them, she agreed.

Shane, like a blocked sink suddenly freed, let out a terrific guttural noise.