This was the room that Henry was rushing home to. This was their last chance, he was sure of it. He was panting when he turned onto Summerhill. He was getting old; he was twenty-six. His hair was greying, although he hadn’t seen it. He was stooped, carrying the heavy ghosts of his children. He could still feel them in his arms. He could smell them. Little Henry, little Lil. His love for them was an unending fight in his chest. He was always on the verge of seeing them. He didn’t sleep any more.
Henry was terrified.
Granny Nash was putting sheets of newspaper on the mattress, pages of the
Evening Mail
and the
Freeman’s Journal
.
—The baba will have plenty to read anyway, said Missis Drake.
Missis Drake was the local midwife, the handywoman. She was a huge woman, a mass of muscle and slopes that looked like babies’ heads bursting to get out. Melody wondered was there one in there for her, hoped and hoped there was. She sat on the chair and watched her mother laying the pages of paper on the bed. The buckets were full, one with hot, the other with cold water. The kettle was steaming.
—They say if there’s news of a war on any of the pages then it’ll be a girl, said Granny Nash.
She couldn’t read the headlines she was spreading on the mattress. She was finished now. The papers were flat and orderly and her hands were black. Missis Drake was over at the window.
—Don’t open it, said Granny Nash as she gave the papers a last pat,—till we’ve herself down on the paper. ’Else they’ll all blow away on me. Now, my lady, she said to my mother, her daughter.—Up you get now.
Melody stood up out of the chair. Melody melody elephant Melody. It was cruel, all over again; it was only eleven months since the last time she’d had to lie down on newspaper. She struggled the few feet to the mattress.
—Good girl yourself, said Missis Drake.—Off you go.
Melody lay back on the newspapers - they cracked and rustled under her - and Missis Drake lifted the window.
—That’s a grand lookin’ day out there, she said.—A smashing day for bringing a baba into the world.
The steam dashed to the open window. And the pain dashed through Melody.
—Stop whingein’, said Granny Nash.—You’ll give the child a hare-lip.
—None of that shitery now, said Missis Drake to Granny Nash as she rolled over to Melody.—You’re in charge of the water. Any more guff out of you and I’ll fling you out the window. And then we’ll hear some whingein’.
And Melody started laughing. More pain thumped her back right off the mattress. But she was still laughing when she landed.
Henry waited out on the street. He didn’t want to be too near. He paced back and forth, watched at windows by hundreds of people who knew and feared his tap tap. Henry saw none of them. There was no window of his own to look up at; he was on the wrong side of the house. He went through the house to the yard and looked up at his window. It was open. He listened - nothing. He couldn’t stay there - he felt trapped. His coat felt like armour. He’d be to blame if it went wrong again, if the baby didn’t live. It was an idea that had become a rock-solid conviction in the time it had taken him to get from Dolly Oblong’s to the house. It would be all his fault. He listened as he went to the back door - and heard Melody laughing.
She pushed.
—Good girl; there’s no rush. Give yourself a rest.
Missis Drake gathered the sweat from Melody’s brow with a cloth that was gorgeously cold. Granny Nash peered between Melody’s legs; she didn’t have to bend.
—Get away from there, you, said Missis Drake.—You’ll frighten the baba.
Melody laughed and pushed again.
Henry, back out on the street, wore half an inch off his leg as he stomped back and back again. He tried leaning on the railings, sitting on the steps, but he couldn’t stay still. He had to move. He thought about going for a pint or something smaller and stronger; his nerves were in dire need of settling, but he didn’t want to leave his post. She’d laughed. It was years since he’d heard her laughing. He was so frightened, he was terrified that that laugh would be the last thing he’d ever know of Melody. And it would be his fault, because of what he was. He hadn’t noticed it getting dark. It was suddenly night. A bad sign, a bad sign - poor Henry tried to ignore it. Night followed day - he ignored it, he ignored it.
Melody pushed.
Henry’s leg got shorter and shorter. He listened to the fading echo of his wife’s laughter.
Melody pushed.
He tried to hear, tried to remember it. He didn’t notice that he was listing dangerously, dangling over the basement steps.
Melody heaved; her back was turning to screaming stone.
—It’s a hairy head.
—Get out of my light!
Missis Drake cupped the head in her magical mitts.
—The warmth of it, she said and sighed.—There’s power there, I’ll tell you. Welcome home, my treasure.
Melody Melody pushed again.
Henry toppled into the well of the basement.
Melody pushed and I—
me—
Henry Smart the Second or Third came charging into the world on a river of water and blood that washed the news off the papers. Melody fell back on the mattress. Missis Drake held me up by the legs. She dangled me for all to see, like an almighty salmon she couldn’t believe she’d caught.
—It’s a lad, Missis Melody, she said.—He must be more than a stone. A lad and a feckin’ half, he is. His cord is as wide as me wrist.
She slapped my arse and the air around us sang. Granny Nash blessed herself, then high-tailed it out the door to tell my father.
Henry, my dad, looked up from where he’d landed on his back on the rubbish and waste blown down from the street. A shooting star went scooting across the black sky over Dublin. Henry forgot his pain and whooped. He saw Granny Nash squinting through the railings, trying to find him in the gloom and rubbish.
—I know, said Henry.—I know.
Where were the three wise men? Where were the sheep and the shepherds? They missed it, the fuckin’ eejits. They were following the wrong star. They missed the birth of Henry Smart, Henry S. Smart, the one and only me. On the 8th of October, 1901, at twenty-two minutes past seven. They all missed it. Missis Drake was there. Her hands that cupped my head tingled for the rest of her great, long life. Granny Nash was there. She picked up the
Freeman’s Journal
and discovered that she could read. And my parents? They were happy. For a tiny moment in their hard, hard lives my mammy and daddy were happy.
I was a broth of an infant, the wonder of Summerhill and beyond. I was the big news, a local legend within hours of landing on the newspapers.
—They say that he was born with the teeth already in his head.
—She has to use the blanket off the bed for his nappy.
—A woman seen him said he has enough meat on him to make triplets.
The local oul’ ones all queued up, across the landing, down the stairs, out onto the street, to have a dekko at me. The stairs groaned and threatened to cave in but the prospect of falling into the black well and the waiting rats below wouldn’t budge the oul’ ones. They had to see the famous baby. It wasn’t the weight of me they wanted to see - big brats were ten a penny, and cheaper - it was the glow. I was the Glowing Baby. I lay in a crib that was really an old zinc basin nicely stuffed and padded and I beamed out good health and vitality. I was pink and cream; every little movement of my adorable fists or face seemed to predict a bright future. The visiting women all looked at me, the great big bonny lad, and smiled. They said little, nothing that wasn’t pleasant. Lots of soft oohs and aahs and sighs that joined the sunlight. They nodded to my mother and to Missis Drake who was still looking after her until after she’d been churched, and all walked home happy. The women who’d seen me went through the rest of the day feeling special. Ailing, fading women found long-forgotten spring in their steps. Unhappy women caught themselves smiling. Grieving women tried to sing and found that they could. The Glowing Baby had entered their lives and tickled their misery with his pudgy wee fingers.
But that was all I was, a healthy, good-sized baby. The women had never seen one before. They looked at me and saw a fine lad who was going to live; there was no doubt about it at all, not a shadow. That was my miracle: I glowed guaranteed life. No fever would ever topple me; no cough would ever steal my last breath.
Only a week in the world and already there were stories spinning up and down the streets and alleys, through the open windows of the slums. There was the one about the rat family sitting on the rim of the basin looking in at me, mammy rat, daddy, the rat children and all the relations, tamed by my brightness when my mother woke up and saw them. She sat up and screamed, and they left calmly, out through a hole in the skirting board. The last one looked back and winked.
—Seen them with her own eyes, she did. They all marched off, like they were on their way to mass.
There was the one about Lady Gregory’s head gardener knocking on the door wanting to buy whatever fell into my nappy to spread around Lady Gregory’s rose-bushes; there’d be a man with a carriage and a bucket to carry my shite west to Coole every evening. Henry Smart the Second or Third - Henry, but not yet named - was famous.
Henry Smart the First, my father, was already famous. Still a bigger legend than his newly arrived son, the tap tap of his famous leg was a sound more feared than the banshee’s wail. (The banshee wasn’t folklore. The banshee was a fact, an evil old hag, perched on the roofs of the houses, combing her matted, rat-tailed hair, announcing the coming of death. She was a busy woman. Everyone had seen and heard her. My mother saw her many times. I saw her every time Granny Nash walked in the door.) After my birth, my father was also born. A new man - again - every time he picked me up and felt the life bounding through me he felt newer still. He held me gently, made an armchair of his colossal hands for me. He sat on his chair and I sat in him. He inhaled with me, and exhaled. And he sang to me.
Oh, the bridge is broke down and they all tumbled in
. This baby hadn’t been snatched away, never would be snatched away from him.
We’ll go home be the water, says Brian O’Linn
. My father adored me.
—Aren’t they the picture? said Missis Drake.
—Yes, said my mother.
—A fine pair of men, said Missis Drake.
—Yes, said Melody.
The room was full of food, offerings left behind by the visiting women. There was a sheep’s head, pigs’ feet, a big bag of winkles; there were bananas, apples, an orange; there was fancy bread and two buns fecked from Bewley’s. Missis Drake was skinning a rabbit.
—This boyo was out running this morning, she said.—The wind is still in his fur. Can you smell it?
—No, said Melody.
—I can, said Henry, but he was smelling me.
My mother was still in bed, seven days after my birth. Missis Drake wouldn’t let her get up yet. Anyway, my father had the chair and the stool was somewhere under Missis Drake - there was nowhere else for Melody to sit. She wasn’t to do any cooking until after she’d gone to the church and kneeled in front of the priest; she wasn’t to cut bread, peel a spud, anything. She’d contaminate the food and poison the lot of us if she laid a finger on it before the priest’s blessing had cleansed her. Melody was enjoying the luxury. For the first time in her life she was doing nothing.
Missis Drake was lowering the gutted bunny into the pot. My father stood and brought me over to my mother, holding me like a present he’d saved all his life to buy her. I left his confident hands and landed in my mother’s.
—In you go now, said Missis Drake to the disappearing rabbit.—And mind you don’t eat all the carrots.
My father sat on the bed. The air around him smelt of cleanliness and hope, soon to be joined by the stew. He felt good, strong. In the months coming up to my birth, an idea had taken hold and attached itself to the lining of his gut: he was to blame. It had clung, fed on him. It had grown and shoved its way through his body: he was to blame for the deaths of all his children. It had slithered into every cell. His children had been taken from him and Melody because of all the things he had done. All the messages he’d delivered. All the people he’d scared, just by walking, tap tap, all the money he’d squeezed out of people with no money. All the skulls his leg had dented, all the men he’d murdered, and women. His children had been the price for all that bullying and killing, all that badness. And all the bodies he’d disposed of, let slide into the waters that crawled their way through Dublin, let slide in or just threw. There’d been one man called Traynor, fed into the Tolka in four neat pieces. There was a man called Farrell who’d been caught taking money from three of Dolly’s girls. There were men whose names and crimes he never knew. Into the Liffey and the Tolka they went, and the other hidden rivers that ran under the city nibbling away at its floor or, overland, against high forgotten walls, through places that led nowhere and where no one ever looked. They were Dublin’s secret rivers and my father knew them all. The Poddle and the Hangman’s Stream, the Bradoge and the Cemetery Drain. He knew them all; his leg divined them. They took his offerings and kept them. And there were other bodies, vanished without the help of water. There was Costello, the fat rozzer. Costello, the greedy rozzer.
Alfie Gandon says Hello
. Costello had been fed to pigs in a farm beyond Tallaght, a farm with a beautiful view of the city. There were other men who’d ended up in the pigs and then on the morning plates of the city’s merchants and chancers, on the plates of their wives and brats. Eating Henry’s messages. There’d been a man called Lynch and another called O’Grady. There’d been a man with a huge purple birthmark pouring out of the neck of his shirt and another so handsome that Henry had almost let him go. And the women. There’d been two. Two of the girls. Got rid of for reasons he knew nothing about and never asked. One of them already dead, wrapped in bloody sheets, a parcel waiting on the bed. The other he’d killed, brought her for a walk. She’d told him about the town in Galway she’d come from, the last town before Boston, and about her family and her sister the nun and her brother the fisherman and about how none of them knew where she was or what she did, and that was when he’d killed her. Susie, and the other one was Antoinette, and both of them renamed Maria. They’d both gone into the water. He’d had nothing against any of them, the women or the men. He’d just done what he’d been told to do. He did a good, professional job, never got involved. He did what hundreds of others in the city were doing or waiting to do.
Alfie Gandon says Hello
. Once, just once, for some reason he didn’t understand, for a change, he whispered a different message.
Alfie Gandon says Goodbye
.