Foster (4 page)

‘What do you mean?’

‘Their hair, what else?’

‘But Mrs Kinsella’s hair is black.’

‘Black? Aye, black out of the dye-pot, you mean.’ She laughs.

I wonder at her laughing like this. I wonder at the clothes and how I’d worn them and the boy in the wallpaper and how I never put it all together. Soon we come to the place where the black dog is barking through the bars of the gate.

‘Shut up and get in, you,’ she says to him.

It’s a cottage she lives in with uneven slabs of concrete outside the front door, overgrown shrubs, and tall Red Hot Pokers growing out of the ground. Here I must watch my head, my step. When we go in, the place is cluttered and an older woman is smoking at the cooker. There’s a baby in a high chair. He lets out a cry when he sees the woman and drops a handful of marrowfat peas over the edge.

‘Look at you,’ she says. ‘The state of you.’

I’m not sure if it’s the woman or the child she is talking to. She takes off her cardigan and sits down and starts talking about the wake: who was there, the type of sandwiches that were made, the queen cakes, the corpse who was lying up crooked in the coffin and hadn’t even been shaved properly, how they had plastic rosary beads for him, the poor fucker.

I don’t know whether to sit or stand, to listen or leave but just as I’m deciding what to do, the dog barks and the gate opens and Kinsella comes in, stooping under the door frame.

‘Good evening all,’ he says.

‘Ah, John,’ the woman says. ‘You weren’t long. We’re only in the door. Aren’t we only in the door, Child?’

‘Yes.’

Kinsella hasn’t taken his eyes off me. ‘Thanks, Mildred. It was good of you, to take her home.’

‘It was nothing,’ the woman says. ‘She’s a quiet young one, this.’

‘She says what she has to say, and no more. May there be many like her,’ he says. ‘Are you ready to come home, Petal?’

I get up and he talks on a little, to smooth things over, the way people do. I follow him out to the car where the woman is waiting.

‘Were you alright in there?’ she says.

I say I was.

‘Did she ask you anything?’

‘A few things, nothing much.’

‘What did she ask you?’

‘She asked me if you used butter or margarine in your pastry.’

‘Did she ask you anything else?’

‘She asked me was the freezer packed tight.’

‘There you are,’ says Kinsella.

‘Did she tell you anything?’ the woman asks.

I don’t know what to say.

‘What did she tell you?’

‘She told me you had a little boy who followed the dog into the slurry tank and died, and that I wore his clothes to Mass last Sunday.’

When we get home, the hound gets up and comes out to the car to greet us. It’s only now I realise I’ve not heard either one of them call him by his name. Kinsella sighs and goes off to milk. When he comes inside, he says he’s not ready for bed and that there will be no visitors tonight anyhow, on account of the wake – not, he says, that he wants any. The woman goes upstairs and changes and comes back down in her nightdress. Kinsella has taken my shoes off and has put what I now know is the boy’s jacket on me.

‘What are you doing now?’ she says.

‘What does it look like? And she’ll break her neck in these.’

He goes out, stumbling a little, then comes back in with a sheet of sandpaper and scuffs up
the soles of my new shoes so I will not slip.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘We’ll break them in.’

‘Didn’t she already break them in? Where are you taking her?’

‘Only as far as the strand,’ he says.

‘You’ll be careful with that girl, John Kinsella,’ she says. ‘And don’t you go without the lamp.’

‘What need is there for a lamp on a night like tonight?’ he says but he takes it anyhow, as it’s handed to him.

There’s a big moon shining on the yard, chalking our way onto the lane and along the road. Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this. It’s a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be. He takes small steps so we can walk in time. I think about the woman in the cottage, of how
she walked and spoke, and conclude that there are huge differences between people.

When we reach the crossroads we turn right, down a steep, sloping road. The wind is high and hoarse in the trees, tearing fretfully through the dry boughs, when their leaves rise and swing. It’s sweet to feel the open road falling away under us, knowing we will, at its end, come to the sea. The road goes on and the sky, everything, seems to get brighter. Kinsella says a few meaningless things along the way then falls into the quiet way he has about him, and time passes without seeming to pass and then we are in a sandy, open space where people must park cars. It is full of tyre marks and potholes, a rubbish bin which seems not to have been emptied in a long time.

‘We’re almost there now, Petal.’

He leads me up a steep hill where, on either side, tall rushes bend and shake. My feet sink in the deep sand, and the climb takes my breath away. Then we are standing on the
crest of a dark place where the land ends and there is a long strand and water which I know is deep and stretches all the way to England. Far out, in the darkness, two bright lights are blinking.

Kinsella lets me loose and I race down the far side of the dune to the place where the black sea hisses up into loud, frothy waves. I run towards them as they back away and run back, shrieking, when another crashes in. When Kinsella catches up, we take our shoes off. In places we walk along with the edge of the sea clawing at the sand under our bare feet. In places he leaves me to run. At one point we go in until the water is up to his knees and he holds me on his shoulders.

‘Don’t be afraid!’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Don’t be afraid!’

The strand is all washed clean, without so much as a footprint. Beyond a crooked line in the sand, close to the dunes, things have
washed up: plastic bottles, sticks, the handle of a mop whose head is lost and, further on, a stable door, whose bolt is broken.

‘Some man’s horse is loose tonight,’ Kinsella says. He walks on for a while then. It is quieter up here, away from the noise of the waves. ‘You know the fishermen sometimes find horses out at sea. A man I know towed a colt in one time and the horse lay down for a long time before he got up. And he was perfect. Tiredness was all it was, after being out so long.

‘Strange things happen,’ he says. ‘A strange thing happened to you tonight but Edna meant no harm. It’s too good, she is. She wants to find the good in others, and sometimes her way of finding that is to trust them, hoping she’ll not be disappointed but she sometimes is.’

He laughs then, a queer, sad laugh. I don’t know what to say.

‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just
because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’

Everything about the night feels strange: to walk to a sea that’s always been there, to see it and feel it and fear it in the half dark, and to listen to this man saying things about horses out at sea, about his wife trusting others so she’ll learn who not to trust, things I don’t fully understand, things which may not even be intended for me.

We keep on walking until we come to a place where the cliffs and rocks come out to meet the water. Now that we can go no farther, we must turn back. Maybe the way back will somehow make sense of the coming. Here and there, flat white shells lie shining and washed up on the sand. I stoop to gather them. They feel smooth and clean and brittle in my hands. We turn back along the beach and walk on, seeming to walk a greater distance than the one we crossed in reaching the place where we could not pass, and then the moon disappears
behind a darkish cloud and we cannot see where we are going. At this point, Kinsella lets out a sigh, stops, and lights the lamp.

‘Ah, the women are nearly always right, all the same,’ he says. ‘Do you know what the women have a gift for?’

‘What?’

‘Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.’

He shines the light along the strand to find our footprints, to follow them back, but the only prints he can find are mine.

‘You must have carried me there,’ he says.

I laugh at the thought of me carrying him, at the impossibility, then realise it was a joke, and that I got it.

When the moon comes out again, he turns the lamp off and by the moon’s light we easily find and follow the path we took out of the dunes. When we reach the top, he won’t let me put my shoes on but does it for me. Then he
does his own and knots the laces. We stand then, to pause and look back out at the water.

‘See, there’s three lights now where there was only two before.’

I look out across the sea. There, the two lights are blinking as before, but with another, steady light, shining there also.

‘Can you see it?’ he says.

‘I can,’ I say. ‘It’s there.’

And that is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his.

After a week of rain, on a Thursday, the letter comes. It is not so much a surprise as a shock. Already I have seen the signs: the shampoo for head lice in the chemist’s shop, the fine-tooth combs. In the gift gallery there are copy books stacked high and different coloured biros, rulers, mechanical drawing sets. In the hardware, the lunchboxes and satchels and hurling sticks are left out front, where the women can see them.

We come home and take soup, dipping our bread, breaking it, slurping a little, now that we know each other. Afterwards, I follow Kinsella out to the hayshed where he makes me promise not to look while he is welding. I am following him around today, I realise, but I cannot help it.
It is past the time for the post to come but he does not suggest I fetch it until evening, until the cows are milked and the milking parlour is swept and scrubbed.

‘I think it’s time,’ he says, washing his boots with the hose.

I get into position, using the front step as a starting block. Kinsella looks at the watch and slices the air with his hand. I take off, down the yard, the lane, make a tight corner, open the box, reach for the letters, and race back to the step, knowing my time was not as fast as yesterday’s.

‘Nineteen seconds faster than your first run,’ Kinsella says. ‘And a two-second improvement on yesterday, despite the heavy ground. It’s like the wind, you are.’

He takes the letters and goes through them, but today, instead of making jokes about what’s inside of each, he pauses.

‘Is that from Mammy?’

‘You know,’ he says, ‘I think it could be.’

‘Do I have to go home?’

‘Well, it’s addressed to Edna so why don’t we give it in to her and let her read it.’

We go into the parlour where she is sitting with her feet up, looking through a book of knitting patterns. There’s a coal fire in the grate, and little plumes of black smoke sliding back down into the room.

‘This chimney, we never got it cleaned, John. I’m sure there must be a crow’s nest in it.’

Kinsella slides the letter onto her lap, over what she is reading. She sits up, opens the letter and reads it. It’s one small sheet with writing on both sides. She puts it down then picks it up and reads it again.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘you have a new brother. Nine pounds, two ounces.’

‘Great,’ I say.

‘Don’t be like that,’ Kinsella says.

‘What?’ I say.

‘And school starts on Monday,’ she says. ‘Your mother has asked us to leave you up at the weekend so she can get you togged out and all.’

‘I have to go back then?’

‘Aye,’ she says. ‘But sure didn’t you know that?’

I nod and look at the page in her lap.

‘You couldn’t stay here forever with us two old forgeries.’

I stand there and stare at the fire, trying not to cry. It is a long time since I have done this and, in doing it, remember that it is the worst thing you can possibly do. I don’t so much hear as feel Kinsella leaving the room.

‘Don’t upset yourself,’ the woman says. ‘Come over here.’

She shows me pages with knitted jumpers and asks me which pattern I like best, but all the patterns seem to blur together and I just point to one, a blue one, which looks like it might be easy.

‘Well, you would pick the hardest one in the book,’ she says. ‘I’d better get started on that this week or you’ll be too big for it by the time it’s knitted.’ 

Now that I know I must go home, I almost want to go, to get it over with. I wake earlier than usual and look out at the wet fields, the dripping trees, the hills, which seem greener than they did when I came. I think back to this time and it seems so long ago, when I used to wet the bed and worry about breaking things. Kinsella hangs around all day doing things but not really finishing anything. He says he has no discs for his angle grinder, no welding rods, and he cannot find the vice grip. He says he got so many jobs done in the long stretch of fine weather that there’s little left to do.

We are out looking at the calves, who are feeding. With warm water, Kinsella has made up their milk replacement which they suck from
long, rubber teats until the teats run dry. It’s an odd system, taking the calves off the cows and giving them milk replacement so Kinsella can milk their mothers and sell the milk, but they look content.

‘Could ye leave me back this evening?’

‘This evening?’ Kinsella says.

I nod.

‘Any evening suits me,’ he says. ‘I’ll take you whenever you want, Petal.’

I look at the day. The day is like any other, with a flat grey sky hanging over the yard and the wet hound on watch outside the front door.

‘Well, I had better milk early, so,’ he says. ‘Right,’ and goes on down the yard past me as though I have already gone.

The woman gives me a brown leather bag. ‘You can keep this old thing,’ she says. ‘I never have use for it.’

We fold my clothes and place them inside, along with the books we bought at Webb’s in
Gorey:
Heidi
,
What Katy Did Next
,
The Snow
Queen
. At first, I struggled with some of the bigger words but Kinsella kept his fingernail under each, patiently, until I guessed it and then I did this by myself until I no longer needed to guess, and read on. It was like learning to ride the bike; I felt myself taking off, the freedom of going places I couldn’t have gone before, and it was easy.

Mrs Kinsella gives me a bar of yellow soap and my facecloth, the hairbrush. As we gather all these things together, I remember the days we spent, where we got them, what was sometimes said, and how the sun, for most of the time, was shining.

Just then a car pulls into the yard. It’s a neighbouring man I remember from the night of cards.

‘Edna,’ he says in a panic. ‘Is John about?’

‘He’s out at the milking,’ she says. ‘He should be finishing up now.’

He runs down the yard, heavy in his Wellington
boots, and a minute later, Kinsella sticks his head around the door.

‘Joe Fortune needs a hand pulling a calf,’ he says. ‘Would you ever just finish the parlour off? I have the herd out.’

‘I will, surely,’ she says.

‘I’ll be back just as soon as I can.’

‘Don’t I know you will.’

She puts on her anorak and goes down the yard to the milking parlour. I sit restless and wonder should I go out to help but come to the conclusion that I’d only be in the way. So I sit in the armchair and look out to where a watery light is trembling across the scullery, shining off the zinc bucket. I could go down to the well for water so she would have the well water for her tea when she gets back home tonight. It could be the last thing I do.

I put on the boy’s jacket and take up the bucket and walk down the fields. I know the way along the track and past the cows, the electric fences, could find the well with my eyes
closed. When I cross the stile the path does not look like the same path we followed on that first evening here. The way is muddy now and slippery in places. I trudge along, towards the little iron gate and down the steps. The water is much higher these days. I was on the fifth step that first evening here, but now I stand on the first and see the edge of the water reaching up and just about sucking the edge of the step that’s one down from me. I stand there breathing, making the sounds for a while to hear them coming back, one last time. Then I bend down with the bucket, letting it float then swallow and sink as the woman does but when I reach out with my other hand to lift it, another hand just like mine seems to come out of the water and pull me in.