Mother’s Only Child

‘Not the mother,’ Barney said. ‘She gives me the willies, the mother, but her father’s all right. Fact is, I’ve thought for a while it’s a bloody shame for him to be lying in bed with the sun shining outside. Now that spring’s definitely here, I could push him about in a wheelchair on fine afternoons.’

‘You got a wheelchair?’

‘No, but I’m sure the doctor can get a loan of one from the hospital or some such place.’

Maria, when he broached the subject one day, after Sam had gone to sleep, was doubtful. ‘What harm could it do?’ Barney asked.

Maria couldn’t think of any. ‘Come on, Maria,’ Barney went on. ‘It would be just like him sitting up in bed, and he manages that, all right. Surely it’s not right for him looking at four bare walls when there is an alternative, and it would free Dora in the afternoons.’

‘All right,’ Maria said. ‘Speak to the doctor. If he’s in agreement and can get a wheelchair then I don’t mind at all. But what about your job?’

‘Oh, I start early morning, so I’m finished by the afternoon,’ Barney said.

In fact they finished long before that—in the early hours of the morning sometimes—and would go home to sleep until hunger drove them to find out if they had anything in the house at all edible. But that wasn’t something he wanted to share with Maria just yet a while.

The doctor was so enthusiastic about the proposal to take Sam out that all Maria’s worries about it floated away. She trusted Barney to care for him, of course she did, and Sam liked the young man. Still, she arranged for the first outing to be on a Saturday when she could see to her father and be on hand if there were problems.

It was Sam himself who was the most hesitant. Though he missed the fresh air and longed to go out, he was nervous.

‘It’s to be expected, Daddy,’ Maria said. ‘Even putting clothes on after all this time has got to be strange.’

The clothes Sam had once worn so comfortably now hung on his sparse frame. The effort of getting dressed, together with the fresh air, meant that the first outing wore Sam out so much it lasted only fifteen minutes. A week later it had risen to half an hour.

By then, Sam was the most enthusiastic of them all. He liked the chance to get out and about around the town, to be pushed to the pier or on the green and to look across the Foyle at the activity on the water and the docks. Sometimes he could hear and see the planes taking off. He also liked the chance to talk to people, to hear the news and gossip.

‘D’you know what I’d really like?’ he said to Maria that night after the first half-hour outing as she helped him into bed. ‘I’d like to go to the pub a time or two. D’you think Barney would take me with him some night?’

‘I don’t know that you would be able for that.’

‘Of course I would.’

Maria wasn’t at all keen and she couldn’t analyse why not. She asked herself, why shouldn’t her father go to the pub? It was a normal thing to do, for God’s sake. All the same she was glad her uncle was coming up the Friday that Barney had agreed to take Sam to the pub.

‘Keep an eye on him, Uncle Sean,’ she said as they were about to leave.

‘God, Maria, what d’you expect him to do? Dance naked up on the table?’

‘No.’

‘Well then, what is it?’

‘It’s silly, I know it is,’ Maria said. ‘It’s just that…look, Uncle Sean, Daddy hardly drank much before. He drank virtually nothing at all after the war started and before he began at the Derry boatyard, because he couldn’t afford it. But, well, he’s different now.’

‘A lot of things are different,’ Sean said gently. ‘Then he was a man, fit and well able to look after his family and put money on the table for anything needed—money to send his clever girl to college. What does he have now? I’m delighted Barney is taking him out each fine afternoon, but it’s still not much of a life, not compared to what he had. If he takes a drop too much and it helps him cope, can we blame him?’

‘No, no, of course not,’ Maria said. ‘I told you I was being silly.’

Despite the assurances Sean had given Maria, he’d been a little concerned to see the amount of hard stuff—whiskey and poteen—that Sam was drinking each night, certainly the weekends he’d been there. Sam had been a Guinness man, and that in moderation, but he supposed as Barney had begun to bring round the hard stuff there was nothing to do but drink it. He’d advise him to go easy tonight, though.

However, Sean was soon aware there were no words invented that could stop the drinks piled on Sam that night. It was his first foray into the pub since the accident and, as it was Friday, many of his old workmates were in there. Everyone wanted to clap him on the back and buy him a pint. Those workmates not there were sent for, and those passing in the street came into the pub on hearing Sam Foley was in there.

Rafferty’s had never done such trade. The noise, laughter, cigarette smoke and Guinness gave Sam back some of his pride, and when people sat beside him at the table, he was the same height as everyone else.

In the end, Sean had to hold Sam upright in the wheelchair while Barney pushed him home at just turned ten o’clock, for the man was very nearly comatose.

‘I couldn’t help it,’ Sean said to Maria when he saw her eyes flashing fire. ‘None of us could.’

‘It’s because it was his first time out,’ Barney said.

‘I had little myself,’ Sean said. ‘I’ll see to him, if you like. And I’m sure Barney here will stay for a cup of tea.’

‘No, no, I won’t, if you don’t mind,’ Barney said with a glance at the clock. ‘I said I’d meet Seamus later.’

When Barney let himself out, he slunk away in the shadows, down the hill and out of the town to the dark entry where Seamus was waiting in the lorry.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘I had to take Sam home,’ Barney said. ‘You mind I said I was taking him to the pub? I couldn’t leave him with Sean. He couldn’t sit upright even. Talk about legless.’

‘I’ll give you legless if you don’t get in this sodding lorry and quick,’ Seamus said, revving the engine as Barney leapt in. ‘Ten o’clock we’re supposed to start from here. You know this all boils down to timing. Can’t have them hanging about waiting for stuff.’

‘OK, I know,’ Barney said. ‘And I am sorry. It was his first night, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Filled that full of booze, it might be his last,’ Seamus said, and added callously, ‘Get him home for half-nine in future. It’s late enough for a cripple like him to be out anyway.’

‘That’s a bloody awful thing to say, Seamus.’

‘Look, Sonny Jim,’ Seamus snarled, ‘we’re not running a charity. This is how we live and I don’t see you complaining when you get your cut.’

‘No…‘

‘Well, then. Do what you like with whoever you like, but be here on bloody time or else.’

Barney knew what the ‘else’ meant. He’d been on the receiving end of it enough times and even now, fully grown as he was, he was frightened of his brother. ‘OK, OK. Keep your bloody hair on.’

‘As long as we get it straight,’ Seamus said grimly and he let out the throttle and the lorry roared through the back roads on its way to Derry.

‘Haven’t you sweetened up that girl enough to go out with you yet?’ Seamus asked Barney towards the end of June. ‘You’ve spent enough time with the father.’

‘I don’t take Sam out because of Maria,’ Barney said. ‘I did at first, but not now.’ Sam’s first trip to the pub was not his last and now he usually went once or twice a week. If Sean wasn’t there to take Sam home, Barney would deliver him to the door no later than a quarter to ten. He would never come in, claiming he had business with his brother.

‘Well, is she nicer to you because of it?

‘She’s pleasant enough, but then she’s always been pleasant,’ Barney said.

‘She’s had time and enough to get over lover boy, surely to God.’

Barney wondered if she’d ever get over him. The whole experience had changed her. There had used to be a gaiety about her, the liveliness of youth, but that was gone now. She was still incredibly thin and Barney often saw her looking pensive, her eyes glittering with unshed tears.