When All Is Said

by Anne Griffin

I too moved my hand to my heart. I pressed in hard as I could, trying to reach Tony, to turn on the switch that would tune him in. ‘Big Man, ya gobshite.’ He came in, loud and clear. And I laughed into my closed eyes, laughed down into my boots and into my fingers that had found him. And as true as I am sitting here holding this drink in these wrinkled, dried out hands of mine, he’s never left me since.

Love this.

In the late fifties, you see, we had begun to buy up little plots wherever we could find them. Farmers with their bags packed ready to leave for England, desperate to take what might be offered. We borrowed, counting on the economic tide eventually turning in our favour. We handed over the criminally small payments to those boys heading off, asking was there anyone else around in the market. If we were given a tip, we went straight there, arriving at the next deal with cash in our pockets. Some slammed their door on our insult. But others took it, ready to trade in their farming life for that of barman or labourer or miner. I often wondered, did those hands that pocketed our cash ever ache for the touch of the soil as they held the smooth glass or the cold concrete or the dusty coal of their new lives? At night in their dreams, did they move with the rhythm of a scythe or reach to calm the hind of a cow before milking?

A. How they accumulated wealth, more or less honestly, bit by bit. B. Love how Maurice muses and wonders how other people felt (eg his father, earlier re:Tony’s death)

I sat there on the floor, old negatives and pictures around me, staring at my favourite one: the one where we were sat in front of the butter churn outside the upper-room window of the old house. A creamy haze of a photo, curled in so much by then that I had to hold the edges back to see him properly. His left hand was raised to block out the sun. I concentrated on his face, trying to embed it in my brain. But the more I tried the more I failed. I had myself in such a state that Sadie had Lemsips, paracetamol and Vicks VapoRub all lined up. In the end I gave in, took the lot and went to sleep. I dreamed of the picture that night – Tony sitting on our old kitchen chair and me standing to his rear. My lower half hidden by the churn, my chest puffed out, smirking proudly. My hand lay protectively on Tony’s shoulder, holding on for dear life, refusing to let him rise, although he tried. In the end I remember his words like he was actually beside me. ‘Alright, Big Man, let me be. I’m not going anywhere.’

Love this. And next paragraph too. Which reveals both depth of love for Tony—and shallowness/lack of intimacy/honesty with Sadie?

The next morning, I rose, knowing he’d never leave me again. Sadie was amazed at my recovery. Quizzed me on the exact concoction I’d taken for future reference. For years after we had to abide by my made-up instructions of that supposed cure whenever any of us caught a cold or flu.

But it’s his living presence I’ve missed the most since your mother’s left. And no amount of talking to him in my head can take the place of being able to see the man, to touch the skin and bone of him, to hear him sup a pint in Hartigan’s. What I wouldn’t give for just one hour of his company. No need for much conversation at all. Our elbows on the counter. A bottle of stout each in front of us. Half empty glasses.

Sadie replaced Tony in his heart. Wait, then she “left”? Left Maurice for another? Or passed away? Also, the toast to Tony was over a stout. Tie in here.

These days people are all for talking. Getting things off their chest. Like it’s easy. Men, in particular, get a lot of stick for not pulling their weight in that quarter. And as for Irish men. I’ve news for you, it’s worse as you get older. It’s like we tunnel ourselves deeper into our aloneness. Solving our problems on our own. Men, sitting alone at bars going over and over the same old territory in their heads. Sure, if you were sitting right beside me, son, you’d know none of this. I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s all grand up here in my head but to say it out loud to the world, to a living being?

So good.

‘Maurice, do you not care about your only child’s wedding? It’s like as if you wouldn’t mind if the whole hotel went up in smoke.’ ‘If only dreams could come true, Sadie.’ A clever man would not have said that. Instead, he would have protested at such an injustice being levelled, proclaiming his unquestioning support for his son’s wishes.

So honest in his past pettiness and self-criticism.

Francie is making the ladders for the children for me. He’s working his magic as we speak. They’ll be ready in time for when you come, which won’t be long now – a matter of days.

Ok, was expecting Kevin to be dead, he seems to open up to the dead in his life. That and the toasts so far have been for the deceased....

Listening to the foreign sounds of that world. Coyotes instead of foxes, crickets instead of owls. It was into the afternoon before we returned to the house where I met his wife and a most welcome bowl of soup with what they called ‘biscuits’ on the side. Turns out they were scones, I corrected them on that.

It’s the little differences, you know.

‘The big boys have it sown up, Maurice, if you’ll excuse the pun. Can’t use our own seeds no more. They sue anyone who does. Have to buy theirs. Good friend of mine Kurt Lettgo, a seeder out Mission way, was put out of business. His family been doing that for four generations.’ ‘So let me get this straight, Mr Hampton,’ you interrupted, taking out your pen and that notebook you always carried, ‘you are compelled to buy someone else’s seeds?’ ‘God’s honest. Go look it up. It ain’t no secret. It’s the law.’ Turned out it was that story ‘Seeds Unsown’ that won you that big award two years later.

Just a wee bit too much, but still fun

‘And is he here, your father?’ ‘Da? No. He died there last year. Reckon he just gave up. Couldn’t hack it without her, you know.’ He looked at me all-sheepish, like he was considering whether I could be trusted with a secret. ‘I talk to him all the time in me head. Stupid, I know, but…’ I looked at him, son, and I swear to God I could’ve hugged him. A man who knew what it was to talk to ghosts.

David needs his father, Maurice needs his son (Kevin, but he’s way off in America)

No one, no one really knows loss until it’s someone you love. The deep-down kind of love that holds on to your bones and digs itself right in under your fingernails, as hard to budge as the years of compacted earth. And when it’s gone … it’s as if it’s been ripped from you. Raw and exposed, you stand dripping blood all over the good feckin’ carpet. Half-human, half-dead, one foot already in the grave.

She’s such a beautiful writer!

She didn’t lift her head once. In the end, I got my own cup and found my very own pot after about ten minutes of searching. We finished our meal in total silence, refilling our cups from pots that sat like two canons pointing at each other across the divide.

Delightful simile :)

‘Earl Grey,’ I said to him. ‘Give me a pot of Earl Grey.’ When I took the first sip, the liquid scalded the top of my mouth. It felt like she was sitting in the room, glaring at me as I drank, reminding me that it was far too late to make recompense for my sins now. Casey’s, that was the place in Dublin.

Doing all the things Sadie would have enjoyed. Also, like the realistic triggering of memory of the place in Dublin he couldn’t recall earlier

Jesus, son, I should have told her every feckin’ day what a marvel she was.

Starting to remind me of The Remains of the Day. But more self aware.

When he realised the truth of it all, he left to track Timothy down. Beat him to a pulp, and told him never to darken Rainsford’s door again. When Thomas was born, Grand-father couldn’t stand the sight of him. Treated him like he was an idiot, his entire life. Grandfather blamed him for every damn thing that went wrong in this God forsaken family. Poor Thomas. No child, Mr Hannigan, no child deserves that.’

Oh my.

‘What is it, Mr Hannigan?’ she asks, watching it written all over my face, the utter hopelessness of it all. She knows. She knows it like I do, its touch, its taste, its smell. It is then she lays her hand on mine. I stare at it, and am surprised at my instinct to want to place my other on top. But it will not move. ‘How have you coped?’ I say, instead. ‘With him dying, leaving you, how have you managed to keep going?’ ‘Ah. That. Does one really? That’s more the question. Does one really cope?

Finally found his support group he needs

‘You want me to be the bad guy, is that it?’ I look down at her expectant face. ‘If that’s how you wish to put it, then, yes, I want you to be the bad guy,’ she says, rising proudly and taking my hand, ‘please, Mr Hannigan, please. Just this one last time for us Dollards.’

I take another sip of Midleton and then ask: ‘Do you think if I’d given back the coin on the day he dropped it from the window, would it have made any difference to his life at all?’

Hadn’t thought of this angle: she was freeing him of some guilt (for Thomas), but laying it on (for Emily). Thomas would’ve been miserable no matter what, but Emily was forced to work the hotel.

I walk around the bed, over to the window, feeling my feet sink into the deep carpet. Not the easiest of dance surfaces, but nevertheless, I take my stance and waltz her. Feeling her back arch under my guidance as I move us through the steps. ‘Goodnight, Sadie. Goodnight, Sadie, I’ll see you in my dreams,’ my tired voice sings. ‘Irene,’ I imagine her protests, ‘it’s Irene, not Sadie.’

‘I want you to know I’ve read your articles, every one. It took me a while, I’ll admit, but in the last two years I’ve read every one. Even did a bit of your mother on it and looked it all up, and you, yes, I googled you. And there you were. The amount of stuff on you, I couldn’t believe it. Sure you’re everywhere.

Every morning, every hour of every day I’ve dragged her loss around with me. The worst thing has been the fear that I’ll wake one morning and she’ll be gone from my memory forever, and that, son, that, I just can’t do. I’m not half the man I was without her. I’m ready, ready to have her hand in mine for real again, not imagined any more.

‘And know this – if ever you need me I am beside you listening, always. I love you, Kevin. Take her handy, my boy. Bye for now.’

Killing me.

My eyes close one final time and I call to her: ‘Sadie, are you there? Are you ready? It’s me – Maurice. Can I come home?’

Why did he want to do it at the hotel? Who is that helping or hurting? Seems cruel to Emily most of all.

To John Boyne, the man who first encouraged me to write and who has incessantly supported my journey ever since – I am in your debt.

A teacher? :)