“I wasn’t sure. I thought I might be left standing here like O’Donovan’s donkey.”
My mother walked toward them, as happy as anyone to be out in the fresh air again. Unaware, of course, that a plan had been hatched somewhere between Newbridge and Rathcoole, Smoot didn’t pay any attention to her and focused entirely on his friend. “What about your father?” he asked. “Did you—”
“Jack, this is Catherine Goggin,” said Seán as she stopped next to him, doing her best to appear inconspicuous. Smoot stared at her, uncertain why the introduction was being made.
“Hello,” he said after a brief pause.
“We met on the bus,” said Seán. “We were sitting next to each other.”
“Is that so?” said Smoot. “Are you visiting family up here?”
“Not exactly,” said my mother.
“Catherine has found herself in a bit of bother,” explained Seán. “Her mammy and daddy threw her out of the house and they won’t have her back, so she’s come up to Dublin to try her luck.”
Smoot nodded, his tongue bulging in his cheek as he considered this. He was dark-haired, as dark as Seán was fair, and his cheeks were pockmarked with tiny scars. His broad shoulders gave my mother the immediate image of him carrying wooden barrels of Guinness around the forecourt of the brewery, swaying beneath the air-polluted stench of hops and barley. “There’s many who try that,” he said finally. “There’s chances, of course. Some don’t make it and they take the boat across the water instead.”
“I’ve had a recurring dream since I was a child that if I ever set foot on a boat, then it would sink and I would drown,” said my mother, inventing this bit of nonsense on the spot, for she’d never had any such dream and only said it now so that the plan that she and Seán had concocted on the bus would come to fruition. She hadn’t been scared before, she told me, but once she arrived in the city the idea of being left alone frightened her.
Smoot had no answer to this and simply stared at her with disdain before turning back to his friend.
“Sure we’ll get along then, will we?” he asked, putting his hands in his coat pockets and nodding at my mother to dismiss her. “We’ll go to our lodgings and then for a bite to eat. I’ve had nothing but a sandwich all day and I could devour a small Protestant if someone was to pour a little gravy over his head.”
“Grand job,” said Seán, and as Smoot turned to lead the way, Seán followed two steps behind with his suitcase in one hand, while Catherine trailed a few feet behind him. Smoot, glancing around, frowned and they both stopped, placed their bags on the ground. He stared at them as if they were both mad before walking on and once again they both followed. Finally, he turned to the pair of them, his hands on his hips in bewilderment.
“Is there something going on here that I don’t understand?” he asked.
“Listen, Jack,” said Seán. “Poor Catherine here is all alone in the world. She hasn’t a job or much money to find one. I said that maybe she could stay with us for a few days, just until she gets herself sorted. You don’t mind, do you?”
Smoot didn’t reply for a moment and my mother recognized the mixture of disappointment and resentment on his face. She wondered whether she should simply say that it was all right, that she didn’t want to be any bother to either of them and that she would leave them in peace, but then Seán had been so kind to her on the bus and if she didn’t go with him now, then where would she go?
“Do you two know each other from back home, is that it?” asked Smoot. “Is this some game you’re playing on me?”
“No, Jack, we only just met, I promise you.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Smoot, his eyes narrowing as he looked at my mother’s stomach, which, five months into my development, was becoming round. “Are you…? Is that…?”
My mother rolled her eyes. “I should take an ad out in the paper,” she said, “for the amount of interest there is in my belly today.”
“Ah here,” said Smoot, his face growing darker than ever. “Seán, has this got something to do with you? Are you bringing this problem to my door?”
“Of course not,” said Seán. “I told you, we only just met. We were sitting next to each other on the bus, that’s all.”
“And sure I was already five months gone by then,” added my mother.
“If that’s the case,” said Smoot, “then why does she become our responsibility? You’ve no ring on your finger, I see,” he added, nodding toward my mother’s left hand.
“No,” said my mother. “And little chance of getting one now.”
“Are you after Seán, is that it?”
My mother’s mouth fell open in a mixture of laughter and offense. “I am not,” she said. “Sure how many times do we have to tell you that we only just met? I’d hardly be setting my cap for anyone after a single bus journey.”
“No, but you’re happy to ask them for favors.”
“Jack, please, she’s alone,” said Seán quietly. “We both know what that’s like, don’t we? I thought a little bit of Christian charity wouldn’t do us any harm.”
“You and your fucking God,” said Smoot, shaking his head, and my mother, strong woman though she was, blanched at the obscenity, for people, as a rule, did not use such words in Goleen.
“It’ll be only for a few days,” repeated Seán. “Just until she finds her way.”
“But there’s very little room,” said Smoot in a defeated tone. “It was just meant to be for the two of us.” There was a long silence and finally he shrugged his shoulders and gave in. “Come along so,” he said. “It looks as if I’m to have no say in the matter, so I’ll make the best of things. A couple of days, you say?”
“A couple of days,” agreed my mother.
“Just until you get yourself sorted?”
“Just until then.”
“Hmm,” he said, striding ahead, leaving Seán and my mother to follow.
The Flat on Chatham Street
As they walked toward the bridge, my mother looked over the side of the railings into the River Liffey, a filthy determination of brown and green making its way urgently toward the Irish Sea as if it wanted out of the city as quickly as possible, leaving the priests, the pubs and the politics far behind it. Inhaling, she pulled a face and declared that it was nowhere near as clean as the water of West Cork.
“You could wash your hair in the streams down there,” she declared. “And there’s many that do, of course. My brothers go to a little creek at the back of our farm every Saturday morning for their wash with a single stick of Lifebuoy Soap between them and they come back shining like the sun on a summer’s day. Maisie Hartwell was caught watching them one time and her daddy leathered her for it, the filthy article. She was after their mickeys.”
“The buses,” declared Smoot, turning around and plucking the butt of a cigarette from his mouth before grinding it out beneath his boot, “go both ways.”