Foster

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 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 may 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?’

‘Say what you like. Isn’t it what you always do.’

Now, the woman 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,’ he says.

‘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, further 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. I am 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 and takes out knives and forks, teaspoons. He takes the lid off a jar of beetroot and puts it on a saucer with a little serving fork, leaves out sandwich spread and salad cream. My father watches closely as he does this. 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 you 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 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.