Jersey: May 1985

Joe had been thinking more and more about home of late, of that house above the butcher’s shop in Cloghane, of the mist coming up the estuary from the sea, of his brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. He’d been happy enough here with Geoffrey, but he hadn’t been home for forty years. He still called it that. Home. Could see the heavy horsehair chair that his father used to sit in, the dark mahogany chiffonier that his mother polished every Saturday, the kitchen range with its blackened pots and the privy outside with its horseshoe nailed to the door. He hadn’t seen any of the family for forty years either. The time had passed quick enough, but he should make amends before he died. Perhaps it had something to do with the letter from the Hummel woman, setting his mind on a train towards the past.

He pulled out his pad of Basildon Bond, his old Burnham fountain pen and bottle of Quink and sat at the table in his caravan. He hadn’t used the pen for years, and the ink-sac had corroded. He had to dip the nib in the ink, be careful it didn’t drip because he couldn’t find the blotting paper and he doubted you could buy it now. Everybody used biros these days, but he couldn’t use one of those, not for something important like this.

Dear Pat, he wrote. It seems to me that enough water has passed under the bridge and it is about time that we forgot and forgave. I trust you and your family are doing well.

He was about to write, and how is our mam? but thought better of it. She’d be well over a hundred by now, if she was alive. She’d probably been dead for years and no one had thought to find Joe and tell him. Was he so hard to track down? Hadn’t he sent them his address? They must have guessed he wouldn’t go far, would settle somewhere with the birds and the sea. Oh, that hurt, that they hadn’t sought to bring him back. Put a SOS notice out on the BBC. Will Joseph O’Cleary, late of Cloghane and St Helier, please contact his mother who is seriously ill… Pat Junior always had a spiteful streak about him, took after their father like that. Joe put down his pen, tore up the paper.

On the other hand, perhaps they had tried and he never knew. No, he told himself, placing the lined paper under another sheet. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Write.

There must be all sorts of nephews and nieces now who maybe don’t know their Uncle Joe. For alI I know, there could be grand-nieces and nephews.