Early on a Sunday, after first Mass in Clonegal, my father, instead of taking me home, drives deep into Wexford towards the coast where my mother’s people came from. It is a hot day, bright, with patches of shade and greenish, sudden light along the road. We pass through the village of Shillelagh where my father lost our red Shorthorn in a game of forty-five, and on past the mart in Carnew where the man who won the heifer sold her shortly afterwards. My father throws his hat on the passenger seat, winds down the window, and smokes. I shake the plaits out of my hair and lie flat on the back seat, looking up through the rear window. In places there’s a bare, blue sky. In places the blue is chalked over with clouds, but mostly it is a heady mixture of sky and trees scratched over by ESB wires across which, every now and then, small, brownish flocks of vanishing birds race.
I wonder what it will be like, this place belonging to the Kinsellas. I see a tall woman standing over me, making me drink milk still hot from the cow. I see another, less likely version of her in an apron, pouring pancake batter onto a frying pan, asking would I like another, the way my mother sometimes does when she is in good humour. The man will be no taller than her. He will take me to town on the tractor and buy me red lemonade and crisps. Or he’ll make me clean out sheds and pick stones and pull ragweed and docks out of the fields. I see him taking what I hope will be a fifty pence piece from his pocket but it turns out to be a handkerchief. I wonder if they live in an old farmhouse or a new bungalow, whether they will have an outhouse or an indoor bathroom with a toilet and running water. I picture myself lying in a dark bedroom with other girls, saying things we won’t repeat when morning comes.
An age, it seems, passes before the car slows and turns into a tarred, narrow lane, then a thrill as the wheels slam over the metal bars of a cattle grid. On either side, thick hedges are trimmed square. At the end of the lane there’s a long, white house with trees whose limbs are trailing the ground.
‘Da,’ I say. ‘The trees.’
‘What about ’em?’
‘They’re sick,’ I say.
‘They’re weeping willows,’ he says, and clears his throat.
In the yard, tall, shiny panes reflect our coming. I see myself looking out from the back seat wild as a gypsy child with my hair all loose but my father, at the wheel, looks just like my father. A big, loose hound whose coat is littered with the shadows of the trees lets out a few rough, half-hearted barks, then sits on the step and looks back at the doorway where the man has come out to stand. He has a square body like the men my sisters sometimes draw, but his eyebrows are white, to match his hair. He looks nothing like my mother’s people, who are all tall with long arms, and I wonder if we have not come to the wrong house.
‘Dan,’ the man says, and tightens himself. ‘What way are you?’
‘John,’ Da says.
They stand, looking out over the yard for a moment and then they are talking rain: how little rain there is, how the fields need rain, how the priest in Kilmuckridge prayed for rain that very morning, how a summer like it has never before been known. There is a pause during which my father spits and then their conversation turns to the price of cattle, the EEC, butter mountains, the cost of lime and sheep-dip. It is something I am used to, this way men have of not talking: they like to kick a divot out of the grass with a boot heel, to slap the roof of a car before it takes off, to spit, to sit with their legs wide apart, as though they do not care.
When Mrs Kinsella comes out, she pays no heed to the men. She is even taller than my mother with the same black hair but hers is cut tight like a helmet. She’s wearing a printed blouse and brown, flared trousers. The car door is opened and I am taken out, and kissed. My face, being kissed, turns hot against hers.
‘The last time I saw you, you were in the pram,’ she says, and stands back, expecting an answer.
‘The pram’s broken.’
‘What happened at all?’
‘My brother used it for a wheelbarrow and the wheel fell off.’
She laughs and licks her thumb and wipes something off my face. I can feel her thumb, softer than my mother’s, wiping whatever it is away. When she looks at my clothes, I see my thin, cotton dress, my dusty sandals through her eyes. There’s a moment when neither one of us knows what to say. A queer, ripe breeze is crossing the yard.
‘Come on in, leanbh.’
She leads me into the house. There’s a moment of darkness in the hallway; when I hesitate, she hesitates with me. We walk through into the heat of the kitchen where I am told to sit down, to make myself at home. Under the smell of baking there’s some disinfectant, some bleach. She lifts a rhubarb tart out of the oven and puts it on the bench to cool: syrup on the point of bubbling over, thin leaves of pastry baked into the crust. A cool draught from the door blows in, but here it is hot and still and clean. Tall ox-eyed daisies are still as the tall glass of water they are standing in. There is no sign, anywhere, of a child.
‘So how is your mammy keeping?’
‘She won a tenner on the prize bonds.’
‘She did not.’
‘She did,’ I say. ‘We all had jelly and ice cream and she bought a new tube and a mending kit for the bicycle.’
‘Well, wasn’t that a treat.’
‘It was,’ I say, and feel again the steel teeth of the comb against my scalp from earlier that morning, the strength of my mother’s hands as she wove the plaits tight, her belly at my back, hard with the next baby. I think of the clean pants she packed in the suitcase, the letter, and what she might have written. Words had passed between them:
How long should they keep her?
Can’t they keep her as long as they like?
Is that what I’ll say? my father said.
Say what you like. Sure isn’t it what you always do.
Now, Mrs Kinsella fills an enamel jug with milk.
‘Your mother must be busy.’
‘She’s waiting for them to come and cut the hay.’
‘Have ye not the hay cut?’ she says. ‘Aren’t ye late?’
When the men come in from the yard, it grows momentarily dark, then brightens once again when they sit down.
‘Well, Missus,’ says Da, pulling out a chair.
‘Dan,’ she says, in a different voice.
‘There’s a scorcher of a day.’
‘Tis hot, surely.’ She turns her back to watch the kettle, waiting.
‘Wouldn’t the fields be glad of a sup of rain.’
‘Won’t we have the rain for long enough.’ She looks at the wall as though a picture is hanging there but there is no picture on that wall, just a big mahogany clock with two hands and a big copper pendulum, swinging.
‘Wasn’t it a great year for the hay all the same. Never saw the like of it,’ says Da. ‘The loft is full to capacity. I nearly split my head on the rafters pitching it in.’
I wonder why my father lies about the hay. He is given to lying about things that would be nice, if they were true. Somewhere, farther off, someone has started up a chainsaw and it drones on like a big, stinging wasp for a while in the distance. I wish I was out there, working, as I’m unused to sitting still and do not know what to do with my hands. Part of me wants my father to leave me here while another part of me wants him to take me back, to what I know. I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.
The kettle lets off steam and rumbles up to boiling point, its steel lid clapping. The presence of a black and white cat moves on the window ledge. On the floor, across the hard, clean tiles, the woman’s shadow stretches, almost reaching my chair. Kinsella gets up and takes a stack of plates from the cupboard, opens a drawer, takes out knives and forks, teaspoons. He takes the lid off a jar of beetroot, places it on a saucer with a little serving fork, leaves out sandwich spread and salad cream. My father watches closely. Already there’s a bowl of tomatoes and onions chopped fine, a fresh loaf, a block of red cheddar.
‘And what way is Mary?’ the woman says.
‘Mary? She’s coming near her time.’ Da sits back, satisfied.
‘I suppose the last babby is getting hardy?’
‘Aye,’ Da says. ‘It’s the feeding them that’s the trouble. There’s no appetite like a child’s – and believe you me, this one is no different.’
‘Ah, don’t we all eat in spurts, the same as we grow,’ says the woman, as though this is something he should know.
‘She’ll ate – but ye can work her.’
Kinsella looks up. ‘There’ll be no need for any of that,’ he says. ‘The child will have no more to do than help Edna around the house.’
‘We’ll keep the child gladly,’ the woman echoes. ‘She’s welcome here.’
‘She’ll ate ye out of house and home,’ Da says, ‘but I don’t suppose there’ll be a word about it this time twelve months.’
When we sit in at the table, Da reaches for the beetroot. He doesn’t use the little serving fork but pitches it onto the plate with his own. It stains the pink ham, bleeds. Tea is poured. There’s a patchy silence as we eat, as our knives and forks break up what’s on our plates. Then, after some time, the tart is cut. Cream falls over the hot pastry, into pools.
Now that my father has delivered me and eaten his fill, he is anxious for his tobacco; to have his smoke, and get away. Always, it’s the same: he never stays in any place long after he’s eaten – not like my mother who would talk until it grew dark and light again. This, at least, is what my father says even though I have never known it to happen. With my mother it is all work: us, the butter-making, the dinners, the washing up and getting up and getting ready for Mass and school, weaning calves and hiring men to plough and harrow the fields, stretching the money and setting the alarm. But this is a different type of house. Here there is room, and time to think. There may even be money to spare.
‘I’d better hit the road,’ Da says.
‘What hurry is on you?’ Kinsella says.
‘The daylight is burning, and I’ve yet the spuds to spray.’
‘There’s no fear of blight these evenings,’ the woman says, but she gets up anyway and goes out the back door with a sharp knife. I want to go with her, to shake the clay off whatever she cuts and carry it back into the house. A type of silence climbs and grows tall between the men while she is out.
‘Give this to Mary,’ she says, coming in. ‘I’m snowed under with rhubarb, whatever kind of year it is.’
My father takes the rhubarb from her, but it is awkward as a baby in his arms. A stalk falls to the floor and then another. He waits for her to pick it up, to hand it to him. She waits for him to do it. Neither one of them will budge. In the end, it’s Kinsella who stoops to lift it.
‘There now,’ he says.
Out in the yard, my father throws the rhubarb onto the back seat, gets in behind the wheel and starts the engine.
‘Good luck to ye,’ he says, ‘I hope this girl will give no trouble.’ He turns to me then. ‘Try not to fall into the fire, you.’
I watch him reverse, turn into the lane, and drive away. I hear the wheels slam over the cattle grid, then the changing of gears and the noise of the motor going back the road we came. Why did he leave without so much as a good-bye, without ever mentioning that he would come back for me? The strange, ripe breeze that’s crossing the yard feels cooler now, and big white clouds have marched in across the barn.
‘What’s ailing you, child?’ the woman asks.
I look down at my feet, dirty in my sandals.
Kinsella stands in close. ‘Whatever it is, tell us. We won’t mind.’
‘Lord God Almighty, didn’t he go off and forget all about your bits and bobs!’ the woman says. ‘No wonder you’re in a state. Well, hasn’t he a head like a sieve, the same man.’
‘Not a word about it,’ Kinsella says. ‘We’ll have you togged out in no time.’
‘There won’t be a word about it this time twelve months,’ the woman says, imitating my father.
They laugh hard for a moment then stop. When I follow the woman back inside, I want her to say something, to put my mind at ease. Instead, she clears the table, picks up the sharp knife and stands in the light under the window, washing the blade under the running tap. She stares at me as she wipes it clean, and puts it away.
‘Now, girleen,’ she says. ‘I think it’s past time you took a bath.’
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. The woman takes me through to a bathroom, plugs the drain and turns the taps on full. The bath fills and the white room changes so that a type of blindness comes over us; we can see everything and yet we can’t see.
‘Hands up,’ she says, and takes my dress off.
She tests the water and I step in, trusting her, but this water is too hot.
‘Get in,’ she says.
‘It’s too hot.’
‘You’ll get used to it.’
I put one foot through the steam and feel again the same, hot scald. I keep my foot in the water, and then, when I think I can’t stand it any longer, my thinking changes, and I can. This water is deeper and hotter than any I have ever bathed in. Our mother bathes us in what little she can, and sometimes makes us share. After a while, I lie back and through the steam watch the woman as she scrubs my feet. The dirt under my nails she prises out with tweezers. She squeezes shampoo from a plastic bottle, lathers my hair and rinses the lather off. Then she makes me stand and soaps me all over with a cloth. Her hands are like my mother’s hands but there is something else in them too, something I have never felt before and have no name for. I feel at such a loss for words but this is a new place, and new words are needed.
‘Now your clothes,’ she says.
‘I don’t have any clothes.’
‘Of course you don’t.’ She pauses. ‘Would some of our old things do you for now?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Good girl.’
She takes me to another bedroom past theirs, at the other side of the stairs, and looks through a chest of drawers.
‘Maybe these will fit you.’
She is holding a pair of old-fashioned trousers and a new plaid shirt. The sleeves and legs are too long but she rolls them up, and tightens the waist with a canvas belt, to fit me.
‘There now,’ she says.
‘Mammy says I have to change my pants every day.’
‘And what else does your mammy say?’
‘She says you can keep me for as long as you like.’
She laughs at this and brushes the knots out of my hair, and turns quiet. The windows in this room are open and through these I see a stretch of lawn, a vegetable garden, edible things growing in rows, red spiky dahlias, a crow with something in his beak which he slowly breaks in two and eats, one half and then the other.
‘Come down to the well with me,’ she says.
‘Now?’
‘Does now not suit you?’
Something about the way she says this makes me wonder if it’s something we are not supposed to do.
‘Is this secret?’
‘What?’
‘I mean, am I not supposed to tell?’
She turns me round, to face her. I have not really looked into her eyes, until now. Her eyes are dark blue pebbled with other blues.
‘There are no secrets in this house, do you hear?’
I don’t want to answer back – but feel she wants an answer.
‘Do you hear me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s not “yeah.” It’s “yes.” What is it?’
‘It’s yes.’
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, there are no secrets in this house.’
‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.’
‘Okay.’ I take big breaths so I won’t cry.
She puts her arm around me. ‘You’re just too young to understand.’
As soon as she says this, I realise she is just like everyone else, and wish I was back at home so that all the things I do not understand could be the same as they always are.
Downstairs, she fetches the zinc bucket from the scullery and takes me down the fields. At first I feel uneasy in the strange clothes, but walking along I grow that bit easier. Kinsella’s fields are broad and level, divided in strips with electric fences which she says I must not touch – unless I want a shock. When the wind blows, sections of the longer grass bend over, turning silver. On one strip of land, tall Friesian cows stand all around us, grazing. Some of them look up as we pass but not one of them moves away. They have huge bags of milk and long teats. I can hear them pulling the grass up from the roots. The breeze, crossing the rim of the bucket, whispers sometimes as we walk along. Neither one of us talks, the way people sometimes don’t when they are happy – but as soon as I have this thought, I realise its opposite is also true.
Soon, we climb over a stile and follow a parched path worn through the grass. The path goes on, snakes through a long field over which white butterflies skim and dart, and we wind up at a small iron gate where broad, stone steps slope down to a well of dark water. The woman leaves the bucket on the grass and holds my hand, comes with me.
‘Look,’ she says, ‘what water is here. Who’d ever think there wasn’t so much as a shower since the first of the month?’
Down here, it is cool and still and when I breathe, I hear the sound my breath makes over the still mouth of the well – so I breathe harder for a while to feel these sounds I make, coming back. The woman stands behind, not seeming to mind each breath coming back, as though they are hers.
‘Taste it,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Use the dipper.’ She points.
Hanging on the wall is a mug, a shadow cupped in the dusty enamel. I reach out and take it from the nail. She holds the belt of my trousers so I won’t fall in.
‘It’s deeper than you’d think,’ she says. ‘Be careful.’
The sun, at a slant now, throws a rippled version of how we look back at us. For a moment, I am afraid. I wait until I see myself not as I was when I arrived, looking like a gypsy child, but as I am now, clean, in different clothes, with the woman behind me. I dip the ladle and bring it to my lips. This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted: it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone. I dip it again and lift it level with the sunlight. I drink six measures of water and wish, for now, that this place without shame or secrets could be my home. Then the woman pulls me back to where I am safe on the grass, and goes down alone. The bucket floats on its side for a moment before it sinks and swallows, making a grateful sound, a glug, before it’s torn away and lifted.
Walking back along the path and through the fields, holding her hand, I feel I have her balanced. Without me, I am certain she would tip over. I wonder how she manages when I am not here, and conclude that she must ordinarily fetch two buckets. I try to remember another time when I felt like this and am sad because I can’t remember a time, and happy, too, because I cannot.
That night, I expect her to make me kneel down but instead she tucks me in and tells me I can say a few little prayers in my bed, if that is what I ordinarily do. The light of the day is still shining bright through the panes. She is just about to hang a blanket over the curtain rail, to block it out, when she pauses.
‘Would you rather I left it?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you afraid of the dark?’
I want to say I am afraid but am too afraid to say so.
‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter. You can use the toilet past our room but there’s a chamber pot there too, if you’d prefer.’
‘I’ll be alright,’ I say.
‘Is your mammy alright?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your mammy. Is she alright?’
‘She used to get sick in the mornings but now she doesn’t.’
‘Why isn’t the hay in?’
‘She hasn’t enough to pay the man. She only just paid him for last year.’
‘God help her.’ She smooths the sheet across me, pleats it. ‘Do you think she would be offended if I sent her a few bob?’
‘Offended?’
‘Do you think she’d mind?’
I think about this for a while, think about being my mother. ‘She wouldn’t, but Da would.’
‘Ah yes,’ she says. ‘Your father.’
She leans over me then and kisses me, a plain kiss, and says good-night. I sit up when she is gone and look around the room. Trains of every colour race across the wallpaper. There are no tracks for these trains but here and there a small boy stands off in the distance, waving. He looks happy but some part of me feels sorry for every version of him. I roll onto my side and, though I know she wants neither, wonder if my mother will have a girl or a boy this time. I think of my sisters who will not yet be in bed. They will have thrown their clay buns against the gable wall of the outhouse, and when the rain comes, the clay will soften and turn to mud. Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.
I stay awake for as long as I can, then make myself get up and use the chamber pot, but only a dribble comes out. I go back to bed, more than half afraid, and fall asleep. At some point, later in the night – it feels much later – the woman comes in. I grow still and breathe as though I have not wakened. I feel the mattress sinking, the weight of her on the bed.
‘God help you, child,’ she whispers. ‘If you were mine, I’d never leave you in a house with strangers.’