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I wonder why my father lies about the hay. He is given to lying about things that would be nice, if they were true.
Beyond the kitchen, carpeted steps lead to an open room. There’s a big double bed with a candlewick spread, and lamps at either side. This, I know, is where they sleep, and I’m glad, for some reason, that they sleep together.
‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.’
‘God help you, child,’ she whispers. ‘If you were mine, I’d never leave you in a house with strangers.’
‘Wouldn’t it make you grateful, though?’ he says. ‘A man starved himself to death but here I am on a fine day with two women feeding me.’ ‘Haven’t you earned it?’ ‘I don’t know have I,’ he says. ‘But isn’t it happening anyhow.’
And so the days pass. I keep waiting for something to happen, for the ease I feel to end: to wake in a wet bed, to make some blunder, some big gaffe, to break something, but each day follows on much like the one before.
‘Come on in,’ Kinsella said. ‘Just cos I’ve none of my own doesn’t mean I’d see the rain falling in on anyone else’s.’
When we are out on the road, and the good-byes are said, Mildred strides on into a pace I can just about keep, and as soon as she rounds the bend, the questions start. She is eaten alive with curiosity; hardly is one question answered before the next is fired: ‘Which room did they put you into? Did Kinsella give you money? How much? Does she drink at night? Does he? Are they playing cards up there much? Who was there? What were the men selling the lines for? Do ye say the rosary? Does she put butter or margarine in her pastry? Where does the old dog sleep? Is the freezer packed solid? Does she
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Kinsella hasn’t taken his eyes off me. ‘Thanks, Mildred. It was good of you, to take her home.’ ‘It was nothing,’ the woman says. ‘She’s a quiet young one, this.’ ‘She says what she has to say, and no more. May there be many like her,’ he says. ‘Are you ready to come home, petal?’
Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this. It’s a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be. He takes shorter steps so we can walk in time. I think about the woman in the cottage, of how she walked and spoke, and conclude that there are huge differences between people.
‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’
And that is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his own.
