“Tell me about them,” she said.
I shrugged. “It’s hard to know where to start,” I told her. “Charles was a banker. He was quite rich, but he was always cheating on his taxes. He went to prison a few times for it. And when he was younger he always had a string of women on the side. But he was good fun. He was always telling me that I wasn’t a real Avery, though. I think I could have done without that.”
“That sounds quite mean on his part.”
“I honestly don’t think that he was trying to be cruel. It was more a matter of fact. Anyway, he’s dead now. They both are. And I was with him when he went. I miss him still.”
“And your mother?”
“Adoptive mother,” I said.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “She was your mother. Don’t be unkind.”
Something about the way she asserted that brought tears to my eyes. Because of course she was right. If anyone had been my mother, it was Maude.
“Maude was a writer,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I do,” she said. “I’ve read most of her books.”
“Do you like them?”
“Very, very much. Her work has great compassion. She must have been a very caring woman.”
I laughed, despite myself. “She really wasn’t,” I said. “She was a lot colder than Charles. She spent most of her time in her study, writing and smoking, emerging only occasionally in a fog to terrorize any visiting children. I think she just about tolerated my presence in the house. Sometimes she saw me as an ally and sometimes as an irritation. She’s been dead a long time now, though. Almost fifty years. I think about her a lot, though, because one way or another she’s become so much part of the Irish consciousness. The books, the films. The fact that everyone seems to know her. You know she’s on the tea towel now?”
“The tea towel?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a writers’ thing,” I explained. “Do you know that picture, eight old men who were supposed to be the best of the best? Yeats, O’Casey, Oliver St. John Gogarty, the lot of them. The same picture is on posters and mugs and table settings and coasters. Maude always said they’d never let a woman on the tea towel. And for years, she was right. But then they did. Because she’s right at the center of it now.”
“It’s not much of a legacy,” she said doubtfully.
“No, probably not.”
“And you had no brothers or sisters?”
“No,” I said.
“Did you want any?”
“It might have been nice,” I said. “I’ve told you about Julian in the past, of course. I suppose he was like a brother of sorts. Until I realized that I was in love with him. I only wish that I’d got to know Jonathan.”
“I think you’d have liked him.”
“I’m sure I would have. I liked him on that one occasion that we met. It seems quite cruel that you and I have only made this connection between us as a result of his death.”
“Well, Cyril,” she said, leaning forward and surprising me by her choice of words. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in more than seven decades of life, it’s that the world is a completely fucked-up place. You never know what’s around the corner and it’s often something unpleasant.”
“That’s quite a cynical view of the world, Mrs. Goggin,” I suggested.
“I’m not sure it is,” she said. “And I think we might have to move past Mrs. Goggin now, don’t you?”
I nodded. “I’m not quite sure what I should call you,” I said.
“How about Catherine?”
“Catherine, then,” I said.
“I never let anyone call me that in the Dáil,” she said. “I needed to have authority in there. I remember once when Jack Lynch called me by my first name and I looked him right in the eye and I said, Taoiseach, if you ever call me by that name again you’ll be banned from the tearoom for a month. The next day, I received a bunch of flowers and an apology note addressed to Mrs. Goggin. Nice man,” she added. “Of course, he was from Cork too. Like me. But I didn’t hold it against him.”
“I never would have dreamed of calling you by your first name,” I said. “I was terrified of you. Everyone was.”
“Me?” she asked, smiling. “Sure I’m a sweetheart. I can remember you when you were a little boy,” she added. “Do you remember that day you came in with your pal and pretended to be old enough to drink and I had to run you out of the place?”
“I do,” I said, laughing as I remembered the joy that Julian could offer in those days with his mischief and his cheek. “But you took down one of the priests while you were at it.”
“Did I?”
“You certainly did. I don’t think anyone had ever spoken to him like that before. Let alone a woman. I think that was the thing that infuriated him the most.”
“And good for me,” she added.
“Good for you.”
“He was the boy who was kidnapped, wasn’t he?” she asked.
“That’s right. Not long after that, actually.”
“That was such a big story back in the day. They cut off one of his ears, didn’t they?”
“One of them,” I said. “And a finger. And a toe.”
“Terrible,” she said, shaking her head. “The papers were so cruel about him when they found out how he died.”
“It was disgusting,” I said, feeling the anger grow inside me. I had said that I felt no bitterness but whenever I remembered this I found that dangerous emotion lurking deep within my soul. “No one had spoken about him in years and they took such pleasure in telling the country what had happened to him. I remember a woman calling in to a radio show to say that she had felt such sympathy for him when he was a child but now she only felt disgust. It would be better for everyone, she said, if all the gays were rounded up and shot before they could spread their disease.”
“But he wasn’t gay, was he?” she asked.
“No, he wasn’t.”
“Poor boy,” she said. “But then that’s Ireland for you. Do you think the place will ever change?”
“Not in our lifetime,” I said.
To my surprise, a moment later she placed her head in her hands just like the Minister for Finance on the other side of the room, and I reached across to her, worried that I had said something to upset her. “Mrs. Goggin,” I said. “Catherine, are you all right?”
“I’m grand,” she said, taking her hands away and offering me a half-smile. “Look, Cyril, there must be things you want to know. Why don’t you just ask me?”
“I don’t want to know anything that you don’t want to tell me,” I said. “Like I said, I’m not looking to cause you any trouble or pain. We can talk about the past or we can simply forget about it and look toward the future. Whatever you prefer.”
“The thing is, I never have talked about it,” she said. “Not to anyone. Not to Seán or to Jack. Not even to Jonathan. He knew nothing about you or what had taken place in Goleen in 1945. That’s a regret now. I don’t know why I never told him. I should have. He wouldn’t have cared; I know he wouldn’t. And he would have wanted to find you.”